Adolf Wuttke · 95 of 107
Section LXXVIII. The Inner Revelation and the Conscience. (Concl'd) · SECTION CXLI.
All moral activity is of a communion-forming character, and all true communion is an expression of love,—in nature an expression of immanent divine love, in humanity, an expression of human love. The highest end of the moral life is indeed the full morally-acquired communion with God, but man, as an individual being placed in natural and spiritual relations to other creatures, fulfills his moral destiny not in an exclusive communion with God, but only in a communing at the same time with the children of God, and hence he has it as a moral duty to form this his relation to other men into a moral communion, without which his personal perfection cannot be reached. The most primitive natural communion is sexual communion, from which naturally arises the second form. that between parents and children; both forms are to be raised from the merely natural. to the moral communion of the family.
As all love presupposes some form of communion, though it be ante-moral and merely natural, hence the moral forming of this communion is not an absolutely new creating of a communion, but the spiritual exalting of one that already exists naturally. Though moral communion with God is the highest good, still this does not exclude, but includes, a communing with other rational creatures, for God is himself in communion with them. Mystical quietism is but a refined self-seeking, and conflicts with the essence of Christianity; for God did not create mere isolated beings, but destined them for each other; “it is not good,” not in harmony with the moral destination of the race, “that man should be alone,” for an isolated person lacks a very essential sphere of moral activity-that upon which he can not only (as in his relation to God) appropriate and obey, and not only (as in his relation to nature) dominate, but also, as relating to beings like himself, form and appropriate at the same time in mutual moral reciprocity. Without moral communion with other men morality cannot come to its full development; communion is not a mere inactive condition, but it is a productive good, a condition of new, higher morality. This of itself is a condemnation of the hermit-life; of such a life the Scriptures know nothing; solitude may indeed be salutary as a preliminary preparation for a calling that requires great collection of soul [Luke i, 80], as indeed the Son of man himself resorted thereto for a while [Matt. iv]; but the -introspection of the soul cannot, as opposed to an active life among men, be made the exclusively-legitimate life. The recluse life, even where the severest discipline is exercised against the sinful nature, is an immoral renouncing of the moral duties of man toward his fellows, a dissolving of the kingdom of God into mere atoms, into mere isolated individuals, and hence it was utterly foreign to the earliest Church.
The communion of man with his fellows is primarily of a merely natural character; but man is to have in his whole being and nature, and above all in his spiritual nature, nothing which he has merely naturally received and not also morally appropriated to, and formed for, himself. The communion of the sexes, as well as that between parents and children, is primarily as yet extra-moral,—does not yet distinguish man from the brute; both forms of communion need to be raised to a moral character, otherwise they will sink to an immoral one; even parental love may be sinful.
(a) THE FAMILY.
