another kind of piety that his conviction was asserting against Rabbinical logic. Thus far it is only the Law versus the Prophets.
But when Jesus was taken before Pilate, then the world of facts and the world of truths were face to face in immediate and implacable hostility. It is a scene appallingly distinct and overwhelming in its symbolism, such as the world's history had never before and has never since looked at. The discord that lies at the root of all mobile life from its beginning, in virtue of its very being, of its having both existence and awareness, took here the highest form that can possibly be conceived of human tragedy. In the famous question of the Roman Procurator: "What is truth?" — the one word that is race-pure in the whole Greek Testament — lies the entire meaning of history, the exclusive validity of the deed, the prestige of the State and war and blood, the all-powerfulness of success and the pride of eminent fitness. Not indeed the mouth, but the silent feeling of Jesus answers this question by that other which is decisive in all things of religion — What is actuality? For Pilate actuality was all; for him nothing. Were it anything, indeed, pure religiousness could never stand up against history and the powers of history, or sit in judgment on active life; or if it does, it ceases to be religion and is subjected itself to the spirit of history.
My kingdom is not of this world. This is the final word which admits of no gloss and on which each must check the course wherein birth and nature have set him. A being that makes use of a waking-consciousness, or a waking-consciousness which subjects being to itself; pulsation or tension, blood or intellect, history or nature, politics or religion — here it is one or the other, there is no honest way of compromise. A statesman can be deeply religious, a pious man can die for his country — but they must, both, know on which side they are really standing. The born politician despises the inward thought-processes of the ideologue and ethical philosopher in a world of fact — and rightly. For the believer, all ambition and succession of the historical world are sinful and without lasting value — he, too, is right. A ruler who wishes to improve religion in the direction of political, practical purposes is a fool. A sociologist-preacher who tries to bring truth, righteousness, peace, and forgiveness into the world of actuality is a fool also. No faith yet has altered the world, and no fact can ever rebut a faith. There is no bridge between directional Time and timeless Eternity, between the course of history and the existence of a divine world-order, in the structure of which the word "providence" or "dispensation" denotes the form of causality. This is the final meaning of the moment in which Jesus and Pilate confronted one another. In the one world, the historical, the Roman caused the Galilean to be crucified — that was his Destiny. In the other world, Rome was cast for perdition and the Cross became the pledge of Redemption — that was the "will of God."[1]
- ↑ The method of the present work is historical. It therefore recognizes the anti-historical as well as the historical as a fact. The religious method, on the contrary, necessarily looks upon itself as the true and the opposite as false. This difference is quite insuperable.
