The Romantic School— Fichte's explanation of the world of subject and object as the ob jectifying of Moral Will led to the Romantic School. This school was started by a group of young men, all born between 1765 and 1775, the two Schlegels, Tieck, Novalis, the philoso pher Schelling, and the theologian Schopen hauer. The Romanticists substituted Emotion for the Moral Will of Fichte, as their imper sonal Deity. The world of objects is what emotion makes it. Dream out your world; it is a dream of the inner life,— a projection of Emotion into time and space. In Christ, the Absolute first becomes truly objective; his Godhead is not that of a Person. Josiah Royce, late Alford professor of natural re ligion, moral philosophy and civil polity, at Harvard, always retained the voluntarism of Schopenhaner.
Hugo Mfinsterberg late professor of Psy chology in Harvard, was likewise voluntaristic in his philosophy. In seeking a substitute for Kant's noumenon — the useless thing-in-itself— he set down, as the ultimate category of objec tivity, not Sein, not the being of the thing-in itself ; nor Miissen, not the must-be of a thing —a universal necessity consequent upon scientific consciousness; nor Sollen, of the Freiburg school of critical transcendentalists, not the ought-to-be — a necessity consequent upon Moral Will; but Wollen, an over-indi vidual Will, reminiscent of the Welt With of Schopenhauer. Nietzsche's Absolute, Will Power, is also of the Romantic school. He deems Pontius Pilate to have been the nearest approach to Superman in the Gospel story.
Hegel (1770-1831), in his Absolute Idealism, is a monist. He identifies subject and object in a unity of all things; and consequently his Deity is not a Person, his Christ is an Idea. To explain the world, that seems to be out side the thinking subject, Schelling starts from the Absolute; Hegel starts from the Idea. The Absolute is the pure Idea in itself ; Na ture is the Idea manifested: Spirit is the Idea turning back on Itself — the Idea as Soul, So ciety, God. The Christ is the supreme mani festation of the Idea. Among recent Neo Hegelians are Bradley, the Cairds, Bishop .D'Arcy of Down and Canon Inge.
The Christ of the sub jectivism of Kant led up to the various forms of the impersonal Ideal Christ, which the foregoing pantheists substituted for a real, personal Christ, a rival school of Christology founded its views on the existing fact of the Christ and the Christian consciousness thereof.
Schleiermacher (1768-1834) started by denying that religion is a philosophy or any science at all: it is not knowing, but feeling. Every new religion is determined by a new feeling or in tuition of the world outside the self. Christ had such a new intuition. His divinity lies in a consciousness of mediatorship and Godhead. He had not eternal existence, did not rise from the dead; he is divine in the complete satisfac tion he gives to the Christian conscience. Rothe (1799-1867) followed Schleiermacher in denying the identity of Christ with God the Father, and affirming a divinity that is found ed on the consciousness that Jesus had of his mission, and upon the Christian consciousness of the worth of the Christ. Ritschl (1822 89) followed in the wake of Schleiermacher and Rothe; and steered by the beacon of Kant. At first a disciple of Bauer, in the search and research for a Christ of History, he in time wearied of the unconscionable ar bitrariness with which his master carved out parts of the New Testament and recast the Gospels. So Ritschl harked back to the Kantian Ought. Since pure reason is inca pable of attaining to the thing-in-itself, the Christ in himself does not matter. What mat ters the categoric imperative of practical reason in the realm of Christology? Religious knowledge finds expression in independent and direct value-judgments—in judgments, for in stance, about the Christ, that are independent of scientific knowledge, and the direct dictate of practical reason. By the Kantian Ought, we are conscious that immortal joy is assured to us, and that the Christ is of value in bringing us to that end. No motives intervene to lead pure reason. The appropriation of the Christ-values is a direct and independent act of faith, or trust, of the will. Ritschlians are numerous among Christological writers of to-day; such are Weinel, Widgery, Fairbairn, Roberts, Bur ton, Mathews, Macmillan, Armitage.
Somewhat akin to the Christology of Ritschl is that of the Pragmatists. James, Dewey, Schiller and others unite in making satisfactoriness their variable criterion of truth and goodness. James proposes a Deity that is impersonal, and an immortality of the soul •that is not personal. That is good, in matters religious, which works i and, in so far forth as it is satisfactory, it is true. Logic ally the variable Christology of pragmatism is whatsoever works, gives satisfaction, in one's attitude toward the Christ.