Feuerbach - The essence of Christianity

Ludwig Feuerbach - The Essence of Christianity

The mystery of Christ, that is to say, God as a person

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) was no doubt one of  the fathers of modern atheism. His critique of religion, especially Christianity, consists in a reduction of the supernatural to mere expression of feeling and desire of men. Far from considering religion as something to be fought or to be thrown in the trash, he makes of it an object of investigation to discover the deepest human needs. Religion expresses the innermost needs and allows therefore a more profound knowledge of the human soul. For this reason Christianity is considered the highest among religions by virtue of the perfection of the object, Jesus Christ, who is the model of the perfect human being.

The ancients said that if virtue could become visible, its beauty would win and

inspire all hearts. The Christians were so lucky as to see even this wish fulfilled.

The Jews had a written law; the Christians had a model — a visible, personal, living law, a law made flesh. Hence the joyfulness especially of the primitive Christians, hence the glory of Christianity that it alone contains and bestows the power to resist sin.

In place of the merely imperative law, He presents himself as an example, as an object of love, of admiration and emulation, and thus becomes the Saviour from sin.

The law does not give me the power to fulfil the law; no! It is hard and merciless; it only

commands, without troubling itself whether I can fulfil it, or how I am to fulfil it;

it leaves me to myself, without counsel or aid. But He who presents himself to me

as an example lights up my path, takes me by the hand, and imparts to me his

own strength.

The law speaks only to the understanding, and sets itself directly in opposition to the instincts; example, on the contrary, appeals to a powerful instinct immediately connected with the activity of the senses, that of involuntary imitation.

But in Christ all anxiety of the soul vanishes; he is the sighing soul passed into a song of triumph over its complete satisfaction; he is the joyful certainty of the resurrection no longer merely hoped for, but already accomplished; he is the heart released from all oppressive limits, from all sufferings, the soul in perfect blessedness, the Godhead made visible.

Hence, what God is in essence, that Christ is in actual appearance. The Christian religion may justly be called the absolute religion. God, who in himself is nothing

else than the nature of man, has a real existence as such, this is the goal of religion; and this the Christian religion has attained in the incarnation of God.