necessary, nay, a self-evident consequence. The allegation, therefore, that the Incarnation is a purely empirical fact, which could be made known only by means of a revelation in the theological sense, betrays the most crass religious materialism; for the Incarnation is a conclusion which rests on a very comprehensible premiss. But it is equally perverse to attempt to deduce the Incarnation from purely speculative, i.e., metaphysical, abstract grounds; for metaphysics apply only to the first person of the Godhead, who does not become incarnate, who is not a dramatic person. Such a deduction would at the utmost be justifiable if it were meant consciously to deduce from metaphysics the negation of metaphysics.
This example clearly exhibits the distinction between the method of our philosophy and that of the old speculative philosophy. The former does not philosophize concerning the Incarnation as a peculiar, stupendous mystery, after the manner of speculation dazzled by mystical splendour; on the contrary it destroys the illusive supposition of a peculiar supernatural mystery; it criticises the dogma and reduces it to its natural elements, immanent in man, to its originating principle and central point—love.
The dogma presents to us two things—God and love. God is love: but what does that mean? Is God something besides love? a being distinct from love? Is it as if I said of an affectionate human being, he is love itself? Certainly; otherwise I must give up the name God, which expresses a special personal being, a subject in distinction from the predicate. Thus love is made something apart: God out of love sent his only-begotten Son. Here love recedes and sinks into insignificance in the dark background—God. It becomes merely a personal, though an essential, attribute; hence it receives both in theory and in feeling, both objectively and subjectively, the rank simply of a predicate, not that of a subject, of the substance; it shrinks out of observation as a collateral, an accident; at one moment it presents itself to me as something essential, at another, it vanishes again. God appears to me in another form besides that of love; in the form of omnipotence, of a severe power not bound by love, a power in which, though in a smaller degree, the devils participate.
So long as love is not exalted into a substance, into an essence, so long there lurks in the background of love a subject, who
