Bible. New Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Jesus Christ -- Historicity
victory over the powers of earth, and enables him to anticipate,
even in this life, the blessedness of his real and final redemption
in a life to come. [352] But the spirit of Christ as such is equally
the divine spirit. So that the redeemed, as they receive the spirit
of Christ, are the "sons" of God himself, and this is expressed by
saying that with the spirit they "inherit the glorious freedom of the
children of God." [353] For, as Paul says, "the Lord is the spirit;
but where the spirit is, there is freedom." [354]
So that when the Christian feels himself transformed into a "new
creature," equipped with power of knowledge and of virtue, blest in
the consciousness of his victorious strength over carnal desires,
and wins his peace in faith, this is only the consequence of a
superhuman spirit working in him. Hence the Christian virtues of
Brotherly Love, Humility, Obedience, &c., are necessary consequences
of the possession of the Spirit: "If we live by the Spirit, by the
Spirit let us also walk." [355] And if the faithful suddenly develop
a fulness of new and wonderful powers, which exceed man's ordinary
nature--such as facility in "tongues," in prophecy, and in the
healing of the sick--this is, in the superstitious view of the age,
only to be explained by the indwelling activity of a supernatural
spirit-being that has entered man from the outside. Certainly it
does not seem clear, in the Pauline conception of the redemption, how
this heavenly spirit can at the same time be the spirit of man--how
it can be active in man without removing the particular and original
spirit of man, and without reducing the individual to a passive tool,
to a lifeless puppet without self-determination and responsibility;
how the man "possessed" by such a spirit can nevertheless feel himself
free and redeemed by the Spirit. For it is in truth an alien spirit,
one that does not in essence belong to him, which enters man through
the union with Christ. Yet it is supposed to be the spirit, not merely
of the individual man, but also Christ's personal spirit. One and the
same spirit putting on a celestial body of light must be enthroned on
the right hand of the Father in heaven, and must also be on earth the
spirit of those who believe in it, setting itself to work in them as
the source of Gnosis, of full mystic knowledge; and, as the power of
God, as the spirit of salvation, must produce in them supernatural
effects. [356] It must be on the one hand an objective and actual
spirit-being which in Christ becomes man, dies, and rises again; and
on the other hand an inner subjective power, which produces in each
individual man the extinction of the flesh and a new birth which
is to be shared by the faithful as the fruit of their individual
redemption. That is perhaps comprehensible in the mode of thought
of an age for which the idea of personality had as yet no definite
meaning, and which consequently saw no contradiction in this, that
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