A genius / a Christian
That a genius is not something every man is, surely is something every man will concede. But that a Christian is something still more rare than a genius — this has been clean forgotten, or rather knavishly consigned to oblivion.
The difference between a genius and a Christian is that a genius is nature's extraordinary, no man being able to make himself a genius, whereas a Christian is freedom's extraordinary, or, more properly, freedom's ordinary, for though it is found extraordinarily seldom, it is what everyone ought to be. Therefore God wills that Christianity should be preached to all men absolutely, therefore the Apostles are very simple men, and the Pattern is in the lowly form of a servant, all this in order to indicate that this extraordinary is the ordinary, is accessible to all — but for all that a Christian is a thing even more rare than a genius.
Only be not deceived by the fact that it is accessible to all, possible to all, as if from this it followed that it must be an easy sort of thing and that there were many Christians. No, it must be possible for all, otherwise it would not be freedom's extraordinary, but, for all that, a Christian is a thing even more rare than a genius.
Assuming that it is all as it should be with these battalions of millions and millions of Christians, there emerges here an objection which is really significant, namely, that the case of Christianity is entirely without analogy in the rest of existence. Everywhere else we see the monstrous disproportions of existence: the possibility of millions of plants is carried away by the wind as the pollen of flowers, millions of possibilities of living beings are wasted, etc., etc., thousands and thousands of men go to make one genius, etc., always this enormous prodigality. Only in the case of Christianity is it different: in the case of what is even more rare than a genius it holds good that everyone that is born is a Christian.
Still another objection acquires great significance, if this thing about millions of Christians is to be taken as truth. The earth is only a little point in the universe — and Christianity would be reserved solely for it, and at such an absurdly low price that any and everybody that is born is a Christian.
The matter presents itself in a different light when we perceive that to be a Christian is so high an ideality that, instead of the twaddle about Christendom and the eighteen centuries of Christian history and the claim that Christianity is perfectible, the thesis must be proposed that Christianity never came into the world, that it stopped with the Pattern, or at the most with the Apostles — but after all they preached it so strongly in the direction of extension that the trouble began there. For it is one thing to work for extension in such a way that incessantly, early and late, one preaches the doctrine to all men; and it is another thing to be too hasty in permitting people by hundreds and thousands to assume the name of Christians, to give themselves out to be Christians.27 The Pattern's way of preaching was rather different. Absolutely as He preached the doctrine to all men, living only for this, just so absolutely did He hold back when it was a question of being a disciple or of being allowed to call oneself such. Though an assembly of the nation had suffered itself to be carried away by Christ's discourse, He certainly would not at once have allowed these thousands to call themselves disciples of Christ. No, He would have held back more stoutly. Therefore in three and a half years28 He won only eleven — whereas one Apostle in one day, maybe in one hour, wins three thousand disciples of Christ. Either the disciple is in this instance greater than the master, or the truth is that the Apostle is a little too hasty in striking a bargain, a little too hasty in the direction of extension, so that the trouble already begins here.
Only divine authority could impress the human race in such a way that the thing of absolutely willing the eternal became absolute seriousness. Only the God-Man can unite these two things: to work absolutely for extension, and absolutely to hold back on the question what is to be understood by being a disciple. Only the God-Man would be able to hold out (if you can imagine it) for a thousand years, and then another thousand years, working for the spread of the doctrine by preaching it, though He did not get a single disciple, if He could get them only by altering the terms. After all, the Apostle feels some selfish need of the relief of getting adherents, of becoming many, which the God-Man does not feel, Who has no need of adherents and therefore has only the price of eternity, no market price.
So the matter stood when Christ preached Christianity. The human race was absolutely impressed.
But naturam jurca expellas,29 yet it comes back. Man has a tendency to invert the situation. Just as a dog which is compelled to walk on two feet has every instant a tendency to go again on all four, and does so as soon as it sees its chance, waiting only to see its chance, so is Christendom an effort of the human race to go back to walking on all fours, to get rid of Christianity, to do it knavishly under the pretext that this is Christianity, claiming that it is Christianity perfected.
First they turned out the other side of the Pattern, the Pattern becomes no longer the Pattern but the Mediator, they dwelt upon His kind deeds and wished they were in their stead to whom they were shown, which is just as preposterous as if when a man is represented as a pattern of kindness, one were not willing to look upon him with the idea of imitating his kindness but with a view to wishing to be in their stead to whom the kindness was shown.
So then the Pattern passed out. Then they did away also with the Apostles as patterns, and thereupon also with the first Christian age as a pattern. And so at last they succeeded in getting to the point of going again on all fours, and making out that this, precisely this, was true Christianity. By the help of dogmas they secured themselves against everything which with any semblance of truth could be called a Christian pattern, and then they went with full sail in the direction of...perfectibility.
Translator's Footnote
27Acts 2:40. "Three thousand souls in one day."
28As suggested by the Fourth Gospel.
29You drive out nature with a fork, etc. A familiar proverb derived from Horace's Letters, I, 10, 24.