Real gods die forever. Unamuno, Life 4.12

Unamuno continues discussing the difference between Lutheran Protestantism, with its emphasis on rational ethics, and Catholicism, with its irrational orientation towards eternal life.

En la primera edición de los Loci communes, de Melanchton, la de 1521, la primera obra teológica luterana, omite su autor las especulaciones trinitaria y cristológica, la base dogmática de la escatología. Y el Dr. Hermann, profesor en Marburgo, el autor del libro sobre el comercio del cristiano con Dios (Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott), libro cuyo primer capítulo trata de la oposición entre la mística y la religión cristiana, y que es, en sentir de Harnack, el más perfecto manual luterano, nos dice en otra parte, refiriéndose a esa especulación cristológica —o atanasiana—, que «el conocimiento efectivo de Dios y de Cristo en que vive la fe es algo enteramente distinto. No debe hallar lugar en la doctrina cristiana nada que no pueda ayudar al hombre a reconocer sus pecados, lograr la gracia de Dios y servirle en verdad. Hasta entonces (es decir, hasta Lutero) había pasado en la Iglesia como doctrina sacra mucho que no puede en absoluto contribuir a dar a un hombre un corazón libre y una conciencia tranquila.» Por mi parte, no concibo la libertad de un corazón ni la tranquilidad de una conciencia que no estén seguras de su perdurabilidad después de la muerte. «El deseo de la salvación del alma —prosigue Hermann— debía llevar finalmente a los hombres a conocer y comprender la efectiva doctrina de la salvación.» Y a este eminente doctor en luteranismo, en su libro sobre el comercio del cristiano con Dios, todo se le vuelve hablarnos de confianza en Dios, de paz en la conciencia y de una seguridad en la salvación, que no es precisamente y en rigor la certeza de la vida perdurable, sino más bien de la remisión de los pecados.

Y en un teólogo protestante, en Ernesto Troeltsch, he leído que lo más alto que el protestantismo ha producido en el orden conceptual es en el arte de la música, donde le ha dado Bach su más poderosa expresión artística. ¡En eso se disuelve el protestantismo, en música celestial! Y podemos decir, en cambio, que la más alta expresión artística católica, por lo menos española, es en el arte más material, tangible y permanente —pues a los sonidos se los lleva el aire— de la escultura y la pintura, en el Cristo de Velázquez, ¡en ese Cristo que está siempre muriéndose, sin acabar nunca de morirse, para darnos vida!

In the original edition of his Commonplaces, the one published in 1521 as the first work of Lutheran theology, Melanchthon (†) avoids any speculation on the Trinity or the nature of Christ, which constitute together the dogmatic foundation for eschatology. And in our own time, Dr. Hermann, a professor at the University of Marburg, has given us an entire book on the communion that exists between the Christian and God, a book that begins by discussing the opposition between Christianity and mysticism, and goes on to earn Harnack's judgment that it constitutes the most perfect Lutheran manual of religion (‡). In this book, Hermann dismisses Athanasian attempts to approach the nature of Christ thus: "The effective knowledge of God and Christ in which faith lives is something utterly distinct from such speculation. Christian doctrine should have no room for something so useless to mankind in the task of recognizing sins, obtaining the grace of God, and serving him thereafter in truth. Up until that moment (meaning the age of Luther), many things had passed for sacred doctrine in the church despite their total inability to make any positive contribution toward freeing the human heart and pacifying our conscience." For my own part, I cannot conceive any freedom of the heart or peace of conscience without secure foundation in eternity: we must know that such things endure beyond death. "The soul's desire for salvation," Hermann continues, "ought to bring humanity eventually to recognize and understand the effective doctrine of salvation." In the end, however, the only effective doctrine of salvation that this eminent Lutheran offers, in his book on holy communion, is that we should have confidence in God and put our minds at ease. This has precisely nothing to do with any certainty of eternal life; its only concern is the remission of sins.

I have read elsewhere—in the work of another Protestant theologian, Ernst Troeltsch (*)—that the greatest contribution Protestant religion offers to conceptual order lies in the art of music, whose expression Bach perfected, showing the full range of its power (⁑). That is the end of Protestantism: celestial music! And in this vein we can say that the greatest artistic expression of Catholicism, at least in Spain, has been more grossly material (for sound is carried off by the wind!). Catholicism ends in sculpture and painting, in the Christ of Velázquez (⁂): the Christ who is always dying and never dead, so that he may give us eternal life!

---

(†) Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560) was a colleague of the original Protestant reformers, including Luther, and the principal author of the Augsburg Confession (laid before the diet of Augsburg in 1530), which presented an explicit Protestant creed differentiating their approach to faith from the Catholic. He became a professor at the University of Wittenberg, first of Greek and then of theology, and published his Commonplaces (Loci communes rerum theologicarum seu hypotyposes theologicae) as an extended meditation on the emerging Lutheran approach to Christian doctrine. This approach did away with many things familiar to Catholics (the cult of saints, transubstantiation, penance).

(‡) The Communion between Christian and God (Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott) was first published in 1886. The University of Marburg, which kept Hermann as faculty and published his book, was founded by Philip I, the Landgrave of Hesse, who heard Martin Luther with sympathy as a youth, at the Diet of Worms (1521), and converted to Lutheranism as an adult after listening to Melanchthon.

(*) Troeltsch (1865-1923) was another academic, teaching theology, history, and philosophy at a series of German universities (Göttingen, Bonn, Heidelberg, and finally Berlin). He maintained that Catholicism and Protestantism formulate the same problems, but offer different solutions.

(⁑) Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) spent much of his life working in positions whose primary requirement was performance rather than composition, and his skill as a composer was not universally known or recognized until after his death (in the nineteenth century, when performances by Wesley and Mendelssohn revived interest in his work).

(⁂) Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599-1660) learned to paint in his hometown of Seville. His skill surpassed that of his master, Francisco Pacheco, and upon the death of the royal painter Rodrigo de Villandrando, he was summoned to Madrid to work in the court of Philip IV. His paintings are vivid and realistic, often employing chiaroscuro to dramatic effect.