V. Indifference toward critique

204 "One feels it fairly, complains Marheineke p. 11, as the greatest shame and indignity which can be done to theology, that one cannot place oneself on its standpoint without renouncing that of reason."

[Notes for 204 here]

205 However, not only religion itself and reason — Marheineke says: "pietism and atheism" p. 12 — agree in that they both cannot stand on the same standpoint, but theology itself, which wants to mediate both, must confess that when it wants to preserve religion, it must give up reason and ignore all proofs of reason or regard them as highly indifferent. "Where or when, asks Marheineke p. 66, has the church, through all the vexations it has suffered, seen itself induced to alter its creed in all substantial teachings, or where and when has it taken from the Bible, despite all critical movements, doubts and attacks which have left only few books of the N. T. untouched, its transmitted value and standing in the congregation?"

[Notes for 205 here]

206 The question would first have been correctly posed and certainly also received its correct, but admittedly very dangerous, answer if Marheineke had asked and investigated whether those critical "doubts and attacks", about which the church cared so little, were mere doubts and attacks and not rather in the end also proofs and victories. If they were the latter — and they were in fact — what then does the conduct of the church prove? What else than that theory is highly indifferent to it, that it lets nothing be prescribed or commanded to it by reason, because it is not accessible to reason? To the theoretical victory and proof it simply opposes its practical interest, to the theoretical work which has dissolved the Bible it opposes the arm of the bookbinder, who knows how to ensure that the canon always remains complete and intact. Against its will theory can accomplish nothing, because it is the will of unreason and of limited need. It does honour to theory that it has not tired in the struggle against reasonless indifference and indolence and has worked unceasingly at the completion of its proof; whether it does honour to the church, however, that it behaves indifferently towards proofs, about that let those reflect once more who were so quick with the praise of that indolence.

[Notes for 206 here]

207 Considered more precisely, however, it is only an illusion when individual theologians think that the church has not been touched by the theological war. Has the church not in fact become another, if it no longer has the same power over its confessors as before and can no longer present the critical "attacks" on the books of holy scripture as a sacrilege against the most holy and most certain documents, which were issued by God himself, to general abhorrence? Is it not already very bad with the church itself, if its champions represent the "attacks" on the holy documents as something in itself highly indifferent? Is it not a proof that the church is in its very core already become indifferent towards holy scripture?

[Notes for 207 here]

208 Indeed! It is already on the retreat, even if its defenders do not know and consider in what dangerous situation they find themselves by giving up and abandoning the most important bastions. "If it could in general seem as if the basis were immediately withdrawn from the Evangelical faith with the assault on the Gospels, then it must be answered: it is not so; — it is Herr Gruppe who p. 35 answers so definitely and signs and issues the bulletin about the well-being of the church — it is not so; for this confession is grounded not so much — let one hear the theological: not so much — on the Gospels as rather on the 'Gospel', i.e., the church has so completely lost all healthy digestion that it can no longer tolerate real food and lives on air or on painted food. It has assumed the nature of that Scholastic who did not want to eat real fruit, cherries, plums, pears, apples, but fruit as such. Or rather, it no longer gets real fruit at all, it no longer has the real Gospels in its possession, but one offers it the fruit and it has only 'the Gospel'."

[Notes for 208 here]

209 The theological evasion that one still has "the Gospel", even if the real Gospels are "assaulted", i.e., dissolved by critique, is indeed a shameful flight, but at the same time a progress of ecclesiastical development, if it is proper to the church to be dependent on an unrecognised presupposition. Who is a greater servant: he who still really sees his lord, or he who fears a mere shadow, a phantom, a nothing, a nothing which he may not even shape, if he does not want to fear that he will lose it and that his beloved servitude will soon come to an end? Say once what "the Gospel" is, speak once more definitely of the content of "the Gospel" — and you must take refuge in the real Gospels, in a reality, therefore, on which you can no longer "rely". You must jealously ensure that "the Gospel" does not cease to be the nothing in whose glorious bosom you alone feel safe.

[Notes for 209 here]

210 The theological evasion that one still has "the Gospel", even if the real Gospels are "assaulted", i.e., dissolved by critique, is indeed a shameful flight, but at the same time a progress of ecclesiastical development, if it is proper to the church to be dependent on an unrecognised presupposition. Who is a greater servant: he who still really sees his lord, or he who fears a mere shadow, a phantom, a nothing, a nothing which he may not even shape, if he does not want to fear that he will lose it and that his beloved servitude will soon come to an end? Say once what "the Gospel" is, speak once more definitely of the content of "the Gospel" — and you must take refuge in the real Gospels, in a reality, therefore, on which you can no longer "rely". You must jealously ensure that "the Gospel" does not cease to be the nothing in whose glorious bosom you alone feel safe.

[Notes for 210 here]

211 The theological evasion that one still has "the Gospel", even if the real Gospels are "assaulted", i.e., dissolved by critique, is indeed a shameful flight, but at the same time a progress of ecclesiastical development, if it is proper to the church to be dependent on an unrecognised presupposition. Who is a greater servant: he who still really sees his lord, or he who fears a mere shadow, a phantom, a nothing, a nothing which he may not even shape, if he does not want to fear that he will lose it and that his beloved servitude will soon come to an end? Say once what "the Gospel" is, speak once more definitely of the content of "the Gospel" — and you must take refuge in the real Gospels, in a reality, therefore, on which you can no longer "rely". You must jealously ensure that "the Gospel" does not cease to be the nothing in whose glorious bosom you alone feel safe.

[Notes for 211 here]

212 Another turn receives this witty game, which fixes a nothing in the place of the earlier reality, when the defenders of the church come to speak of the relation of "the spirit" to "the letter". Then it is said that only "superstition" could think that the spirit and the eternal truth of Christianity depend on the authenticity of this or that passage of scripture or this or that book, in general on the letter." Now, if it is so, if the spirit "is so completely independent of the fate of the letter", how can Marheineke in the same breath, while proclaiming this relation of the independence of the spirit and its indifference towards the fate of the letter, at the same time say (p. 67): "this is in general the hardest critical point about which it is at present a question"? How is it possible that under the presupposition of this indifference "the strongest dissensions occur in the application and determination of limits"? Nothing is more natural: this boundless confusion of indefiniteness is a necessary consequence when a serious scientific question is to be decided with religious categories.

[Notes for 212 here]

213 "The truth is rather, says Marheineke p. 68 against the heretics who want either only the spirit or only the letter, that, since the inner relation to each other is to be recognised as the mutual one, according to the content of scripture itself the letter is subordinate to the spirit. On this standpoint of the spirit free in itself places itself critique, without which Protestant theology cannot be."

[Notes for 213 here]

214 No! on this standpoint it truly does not place itself; it has stood on it, but it no longer stands on it when it has completed itself. Never will it place itself on a standpoint where unclarity is at home. If it had remained on it, it would not have become real critique.

[Notes for 214 here]

215 First, what does that mean: "the inner relation to each other is to be recognised as the mutual one"? Namely: is the inner relation really completely designated when it is called the subordination of the letter under the spirit? Let us not deceive ourselves: in that Marheineke wanted to discuss and determine "the inner relation of spirit and letter" — if only in one sentence — he wanted to designate it "speculatively" as a mutual one, i.e., as a reciprocal relation in which both sides, each after the other, take over the same role, so that when the one side is recognised as the determining, the same favour also falls to the other in its time and in the right place: he really also says that the inner relation of both to each other is to be recognised as "the mutual one", but in an instant the letter is subordinate to the spirit.

[Notes for 215 here]

216 With a subordination of the letter under the spirit brought about so quickly and in such a way, however, critique will know nothing to do, will bring nothing to completion, only the previous critique, which was not yet really free and was led astray at every step it took by its religious presuppositions, would have contented itself with it.

[Notes for 216 here]

217 Why? Because the spirit which boasts of this dominion over the letter is not really the free spirit, but still the religiously determined spirit. It is only the spirit which is religiously interested and fetches from the letter that which is to count for it as religion, and indeed as its real, so to speak personal religion.

[Notes for 217 here]

218 As if this spirit, which prides itself so much on its dominion, even when it actually exercises it and drives it to the utmost arbitrariness, were not the servant of the letter. Let it be ever so Protestant and protest against the dominion of the letter: it is still only a servant, and all the more a servant since it lets its satisfaction of its religious needs be given to it by its servant or by its subordinate, and then also the confirmation of this satisfaction.

[Notes for 218 here]

219 And this servant still wants to assert that it is not dependent on the fate of its servant? It only asserts it because it does not know what critique is.

[Notes for 219 here]

220 It thinks that "the spirit of Christianity does not depend on the authenticity of this or that passage of scripture, or of this or that book of scripture."

[Notes for 220 here]

221 But it was only a question of the authenticity of this or that passage, of this or that book, so long as critique was not really critique, so long as it was still religiously determined and interested, i.e., so long as it was the same servant as the one against whom it fought. Critique attacks this or that passage, this or that book of scripture, because it no longer wanted this or that passage, this or that book to determine what is to count as religious truth; thus, by fighting in this sense against a passage or a book, it recognised that if the passage or the book were authentic, it would have to recognise in the passage or in the book its lord and master. The first origin of critique was the religious interest.

[Notes for 221 here]

222 Now, however, critique has destroyed the last trace of its limited origin, and only insofar as the practical interest expresses itself about it, can it still be said of it that it depends on its results whether the Bible is to determine religiously. If critique — so can those say who regard it from the standpoint of religious interest — has dissolved the Bible, good! then there is no longer any document which can give us permission for religion or force us to religion. So must those speak who have hitherto served the letter as servants, and so must the question also be posed, if it is a question of the practical relation of the critics to the ruling religion and to the Christian dependence on the letter. (We say: to the Christian dependence on the letter: for if one wants to come to us with the evasion that Christianity ruled before there was a Bible, we answer and critique has proved that Christianity as a positive religion was first completed when the Gospels existed and had obtained validity, and that before the composition of the Gospels the O. T. with its depictions of the Messiah was the letter on which the faith in the Messiah was based.)

[Notes for 222 here]

223 So must the letter-servant speak — yet he does not always speak so — he must therefore be brought to recognition, so that he sees how little is gained with his talk about spirit and letter and that the negotiation about this matter is by no means so quickly or even so much to his advantage, as he thinks, brought to an end.

[Notes for 223 here]

224 So "the spirit and the eternal truth of Christianity does not depend on the authenticity of this or that passage, of this or that book?" What does "authenticity" mean? The origin of the passage or the writing from the author to whom it is ascribed? No! that is too little! The origin from the author to whom the book is ascribed through its own statements and presuppositions — e.g., that of a historical work its origin from an eyewitness or even from this particular eyewitness is presupposed?

[Notes for 224 here]

225 Critique, however, does not even ask only in this limited form about the authenticity of a biblical book — not even in this limited sense about the "authenticity" of all the books of the N. T.

[Notes for 225 here]

226 Rather it asks whether all the presuppositions — not merely the presupposition that they originate from this or that author — whether the religious presuppositions of the N. T. books are in fact grounded.

[Notes for 226 here]

227 Rather it asks whether all the presuppositions — not merely the presupposition that they originate from this or that author — whether the religious presuppositions of the N. T. books are in fact grounded. By religious presuppositions it understands, however, again not only that presupposition that the content of these books is inspired by God or that Jesus is the Messiah sent by God, but in the last instance the presupposition that in general a final given, a positive, a something over which the authors and the communities had no more power, lay before. It is a question of whether the community was right when it presupposed its foundation by Jesus, whether the same presupposition, as it is worked up in the epistles of the N. T. and in the Gospels, is grounded.

[Notes for 227 here]

228 If now all these presuppositions are overthrown by critique, can it still be said that the essence of Christianity does not depend on the fate of the letter? If the letter is dissolved down to the last atom, does the essence of Christianity still remain untouched?

[Notes for 228 here]

229 What is the letter in the last instance other than the presupposition of Christianity to be founded by this One, the Messiah? Is not the letter the presupposition, the essence of Christianity itself? See your tautology, your way of saying the same thing twice! And by saying the same thing twice, only not knowing that you say it twice, by confronting the same thing with itself only in different disguises, you say that the matter does not fall when it crashes to the ground. You are capable of saying that the presupposition of Christianity remains and is untouched when it is dissolved.

[Notes for 229 here]

230 Critique is no longer exposed to all these aberrations, because it is knowledge — it is not the absurdity of the "spirit free in itself, to which the letter is subordinate", it is the spirit which gives itself to the given — let us call it the letter for once — which lets it free and lets its own nature develop and present itself, in short, which does not prevent it from itself becoming spirit and proving itself as spirit. Critique is the movement and development of self-consciousness — of self-consciousness namely, in which the observer, the subject and the observed object posit themselves as one, the freedom which makes the object free and thereby becomes real freedom, the life which enlivens itself in the living, the fire which strengthens itself in the inner fire of the object, the power which first lets the object be itself, actually first creates it and through this creative activity is first power.

[Notes for 230 here]

231 What a difference between this relation of freedom and the material, anxious interest of that so-called spirit, i.e., of the religious un-spirit, which boasts of being free and is the servant of the letter, which it may not set free if it does not want to perish! This so-called free spirit must convulsively hold fast to the letter, if it does not want to lose itself, since it is nothing but the fettered and distorted letter. And even when this "free spirit" has really swindled itself up to complete indifference towards the letter — as it has succeeded in doing in some sects — it is still nothing but the formless and bloated or the letter evaporated into a gas.

[Notes for 231 here]

232 What do you think of the letter then? that it is of stone, a piece of paper, a wood? Only torment it no more as hitherto, let it speak and talk as it wants, listen closely to the tone of its voice and you will no longer doubt that it is spirit born of spirit, a phenomenon of self-consciousness.

[Notes for 232 here]

233 But easier than recognising in it a definite phenomenon of self-consciousness is it to have thoughts "about" it in general and finally outright, like Herr , to declare: "a solemn chiaroscuro will always remain here and precisely this does one good."

[Notes for 233 here]

234 By all means! let it do you good in the indefiniteness of thinking and in the solemn chiaroscuro into which you wrap the matter: but then you should at least not, as you do, pronounce judgment on thorough researches. Yet no! You must! You must, as you do, pronounce judgment on the earnestness and thoroughness of research, because you cannot grasp it and yet feel that it threatens your indefiniteness and unthoroughness!

[Notes for 234 here]

235 By all means! let it do you good in the indefiniteness of thinking and in the solemn chiaroscuro into which you wrap the matter: but then you should at least not, as you do, pronounce judgment on thorough researches. Yet no! You must! You must, as you do, pronounce judgment on the earnestness and thoroughness of research, because you cannot grasp it and yet feel that it threatens your indefiniteness and unthoroughness!

[Notes for 235 here]

236 My proofs, the proofs which I have carried through thoroughly and indefatigably through all particulars and general determinations, Marheineke calls in part hypotheses snatched purely from the air.

[Notes for 236 here]

237 Why then tant de bruit pour une omelette? Why so much noise about hypotheses which will disappear without trace, like countless other hypotheses which have been "snatched from the air" by scholars?

[Notes for 237 here]

238 Marheineke should first have proved that my proofs are hypotheses — proof for proof, tooth for tooth, eye for eye! — or at least on one example he should have shown that I have snatched at the air, and then it was his duty towards the government to make it noticeable to it that it was very wrong of it to have made so much ado about a few threads which a critic has drawn from the air and even to have cast upon the church the suspicion that its existence was seriously threatened by the arbitrary fancies of a Privatdozent and critic.

[Notes for 238 here]

239 Herr Gruppe should also have acted so. If he thinks, "it is not so easy — of course for him who cannot read, cannot study and who only feels comfortable in the solemn chiaroscuro, it is not easy — to say wherein actually the new consists which B. brings," then he has defended the government very badly if he designates its procedure against me as necessary.

[Notes for 239 here]

240 If Herr Gruppe further (p. 38) confesses that my book "makes upon him the impression that the author tortures himself to achieve something which yet will not succeed for him, namely to bring to light a new view in all haste" — then he should first have proved that the ease of my presentation and analysis is not the sign of the complete mastery of the subject, but precisely not ease, but the opposite, but a torture to which I stretch myself, the matter and the unfortunate readers; he, the worthy, excellent man, should have shown that I have brought nothing new to completion; he should also have demonstrated somewhat more fully and not only asserted in one sentence that a proof which I carry through in four rather substantial volumes is a hastily puffed-up notion — oh, what would such a worthy, thorough man not still have had to do! in the end it would also have been his duty to defend the government for fearing the fall of the church from a notion and for having chased the frivolous critic from the chair because of his notion, instead of letting him be refuted by the thorough, serious theologian.

[Notes for 240 here]

241 After Marheineke has forgotten that my proofs are in part "hypotheses snatched purely from the air", he conducts the case of critique before the judgment seat of the government in still another way. 74 Indifference towards critique. "The general progress in the sciences, the extension and distribution of the whole theological territory into individual disciplines brought it about that one reserved the teachings of inspiration as a dogma of dogmatics and critique took the human side of scripture, which it equally undeniably has, all the more into investigation" (p. 70).

[Notes for 241 here]

242 I.e., one quieted the religious conscience by confessing to it once and for all that one was godless, and after this general confession sinned away merrily. In dogmatics one professed inspiration, in criticism one denied it. For dogmatics one reserved an assertion which one forgot in criticism.

[Notes for 242 here]

243 And one is still indignant when the true critic speaks of the hypocrisy of theological consciousness and cannot express his indignation about it strongly and vividly enough? Is that not hypocrisy, when the theologian sets up a dogma which he, precisely when he should prove that he is in earnest with it, sets aside and deliberately neglects? Where does the theologian have to prove that inspiration is a truth for him, if not precisely in the consideration of holy scripture?

[Notes for 243 here]

244 "One also has no reason, says Marheineke, to presuppose at once of all biblical critics that they deny the dogma of divine inspiration."

[Notes for 244 here]

245 Bad enough if the theologians are the only class of men who claim the privilege that the saying: "by their fruits ye shall know them" shall and may not be applied to them! Bad enough if one must presuppose a different disposition in them from that which one would have to presuppose according to their works!

[Notes for 245 here]

246 However, the hypocrisy is not only the one, that theological criticism pushes the theological dogma of inspiration under the bench, but also the other, that criticism only gives itself out for criticism, is not real criticism.

[Notes for 246 here]

247 "There have been among the orthodox theologians great critics, like Bengel, Knapp and others," says Marheineke (p. 70).

[Notes for 247 here]

248 Great critics? Not even real critics! Why? Because their critical activity was limited by their presupposition of the divine origin of the Bible, and when it wanted to become real criticism, was hindered in its best intentions, or rather the dogmatic presupposition did not even let these men come to the thought and the intention of becoming real critics.

[Notes for 248 here]

249 Let real critique appear and you will see — no! we have seen how dogmatic bias breaks out against it and even those who hitherto boasted of their critical vein prove that water, not blood flows in them.

[Notes for 249 here]

250 Let these brave gentlemen see blood and horror will seize them and the water of their veins will rise as sweat of fear on their brow! Let them smell powder and they will conjure down upon you the heavenly lightning of dogma and hurl it upon you themselves!

[Notes for 250 here]

251 We know, however, how terrible this lightning is when the theologians themselves do not shrink from it, become critics, boast of criticism — and indeed of what criticism! I have shown in what maltreatment and subjugation of the letter under every whim of arbitrariness this criticism consists.

[Notes for 251 here]

252 Critics are these people at the cost of their dogmatic locus on inspiration, and dogmatists they are at the cost of criticism. They are neither critics nor dogmatists, and their works are the hypocritical pact between criticism and dogmatics — a pact in which each of the two sides deceives the other, but each, by thinking it has deceived the other, actually only deceives itself, since its deception does not prevent the other from rather deceiving it.

[Notes for 252 here]

253 Critics are these people at the cost of their dogmatic locus on inspiration, and dogmatists they are at the cost of criticism. They are neither critics nor dogmatists, and their works are the hypocritical pact between criticism and dogmatics — a pact in which each of the two sides deceives the other, but each, by thinking it has deceived the other, actually only deceives itself, since its deception does not prevent the other from rather deceiving it.

[Notes for 253 here]

254 "One can, says Marheineke p. 70, 71, determine the undeniable share of the divine spirit in the composition of holy scripture in still very manifold ways, regard it as the nearer or more distant one."

[Notes for 254 here]

255 In naked, correct words: that pact can be concluded on a more or less broad foundation; the deception can be cruder or finer, it can make more or less circumlocutions necessary. And moreover thus: if the dogma of inspiration is still in force, it is only a leap with which the theologian, e.g., a Bengel, plunges into criticism, and criticism is accordingly itself leaping, fragmentary, a mad series of critical leaps. If, however, that dogma suffers from consumption, the theologian creeps to his critical assertions, his turns are creeping, crooked and squint, and his criticism is thoroughly infected by the creeping fever of the dogma. With the older theologians, again — a Bengel — the folly of the dogma is ruthless and just as decided the craziness of criticism. The dogma of the moderns is a labyrinth of indefinite phrases, in which criticism goes astray until, after a thousand sufferings, it loses its reason.

[Notes for 255 here]

256 Finally, Marheineke renounces the matter so far that he asserts that all this (namely what concerns the divine origin of holy scripture, the faith in this origin and in the necessity of this origin) rests in part on very subtle distinctions, of which perhaps non-theologians understand nothing, but which are necessary in theology." (p. 71) I.e., such simple things as the necessity of faith in the divine origin of scripture are now so dissolved, so tousled and unravelled, that they have become a prey of theology, which disposes of them arbitrarily, sometimes throws them away, but sometimes brings them out again when it is a question of crushing critique.

[Notes for 256 here]

257 Yet what was perhaps still possible two years ago is no longer so now. I do not believe that there are still many theologians who will be so bold as to hold up the dogma of inspiration to critique sincerely, without further ado and with the opinion of having thereby refuted it. Even if the theologians may not understand the more recent critique and not know what its method consists in, the thoroughness, the earnestness, the decided freedom and secularisation of critique will nevertheless make upon them the involuntary impression that they may no longer come with their old "dogmatic hypocrisies"; theology has finally been so secularised by critique itself that hypocrisy must become worldly.

[Notes for 257 here]

258 — "Critics like Griesbach and Eichhorn, Lachmann and Schleiermacher and many others, says Marheineke p. 71, have therefore (because in the indicated way the dogma of inspiration has become a prey of theology) — not let themselves be stopped or hindered by dogmatic considerations in their critical operations."

[Notes for 258 here]

259 They were, however, therefore not yet free, not yet real critics. In the end, namely, the religious presupposition falls completely into the worldly and transforms itself into a worldly presupposition, e.g., into the presupposition of a primitive gospel or of the possibility that individual events from the life of Jesus could have been written down by individual and indeed very different eyewitnesses on little slips of paper or told to others who wrote them down in slips, that these countless little slips in their infinite dispersion could have preserved themselves for a long time, until various people collected individual slips and finally a last one came who joined these scattered collections into a single one: in general into the presupposition that the presuppositions of the Gospels are correct, that their reports are based on real history, just as much as they presuppose or, better still, indefinitely how much. One can call it a decline of the religious presupposition when it falls so deep into the worldly — in the ground, however, it is the completion of religious domination when it continues itself, maintains itself under worldly form even within critique, and hinders the free movement of the human spirit.

[Notes for 259 here]

260 No Bengel, no theologian after the Reformation — to think of a Calvin and Luther would be too great an insult for these men — no man before the Reformation has been such a great servant of the letter as, e.g., Schleiermacher in his writing on the Gospel of Luke. Never before had the dominion of the letter been more horrible.

[Notes for 260 here]

261 But when need is highest, help is nearest. When the religious presupposition has run itself into worldly research and bored itself into it, it is lost, since it now only needs to become earnest with research in order to dissolve it completely in the form of the worldly presupposition.

[Notes for 261 here]

262 On the assertion (p. 74) that I fall "into a one-sided spiritualism which misrecognises the nature of truth, which also makes its reality necessary, and sacrifices the historical without scruple to a general category" — I, who have freed critique from all previous presuppositions, who lets scripture and only scripture testify of itself and lets the fate of the same be decided only through the free movement of the object, — on this assertion I will not enter further.

[Notes for 262 here]

263 I thank, however, for the company which Marheineke has intended for me, when he says that opposite my "spiritualism" stands "just as one-sidedly a so-called merely historical theology, which has nothing but history and letter" — as if I had not shown that this theology does not have the letter, but rather strangles it.

[Notes for 263 here]

264 "If finally Marheineke remarks: it is well to consider that the one side is worth just as much as the other," so I will not say: "it is rather to be proved" that both are to be placed together in this way, so I will not even need to raise anew the thousand questions which would have had to be treated here and first affirmed against the result of my writing through counter-proofs, e.g., whether Christianity is absolute truth, whether the reality which the religious representation makes "necessary" must be a tangible one, whether in general the religious consciousness is capable of correctly grasping its truth, its essence, its reality and historical presupposition — these questions, which critique has decidedly denied.

[Notes for 264 here]

265 "If, however, Marheineke (ibid.) arrives at the reckoning that, by my proceeding to my goal by means of my polemic against the apologists and their arbitrarinesses, my guilt is at least half theirs," then I must confess that my astonishment has risen to the highest degree. By abolishing theological hypocrisy, I thus share the guilt half with the hypocrites? By working my way through the theological turns in order to make the path to truth accessible, by levelling this path, I share half the guilt with those who have barricaded it?

[Notes for 265 here]

266 Critique has rather atoned for itself, when it voluntarily entered once more into all the turns of theological consciousness and dissolved them through their contradictions as well as through the power of the freed object. It has become pure from the stain which it had from its historical origin out of the religious interest, pure from the dirt which the entanglement with the material and egoistic interests of theological consciousness had drawn upon it.

[Notes for 266 here]

267 In consideration of this purity of critique, the question of its relation to Christianity would accordingly be easy to answer, if its opponents were capable of grasping its true character. Since, however, Herr Gruppe does not know how to say what the new in my works consists in, he must indeed fall into great embarrassment when he is to answer that question, until a miracle, i.e., a favourable chance, gives him the conviction that it is simply unchristian, and inspires him to a holy war against it.

[Notes for 267 here]

268 Marheineke, on the other hand, will continue his system of excuses until it comes out that my works harmonise with Christianity in the best way and are nothing but error, if also a pardonable error.

[Notes for 268 here]

269 We shall therefore have first to investigate the Christian appearance of critique.

[Notes for 269 here]