“The Experience of God” is the first chapter of volume three of Inner Land, Experiencing God.
Arnold opens this volume with the words, “The more shaking the historical events of a time period, the more necessary it is to recognize what spiritual power determines their course. Outward events as violent as those of our day call for an insight into this ultimate will and its aim” (1). These and similar sentiments can be found in earlier editions of Inner Land, where the First World War provides the immediate context. While this event remains in the foreground, Arnold’s following words address some of the different political factions that came to prominence in the tumultuous period that followed.
The first of these groups he identifies is the nationalists. They “think we have to give first place to patriotic ideas and the historic task laid on the nation” (1). While not mentioned explicitly, Arnold’s description fits the Nazis and their supporters.1 Second, Arnold mentions communists and socialists. They “believe in a historical development to raise to power in every nation all those oppressed and exploited by competition and private enterprise” (2).2 These first two groups are often contrasted in Arnold’s writings. A third also appears here, however. They are the liberals, whose political platform is defined by the pursuit of economic and individual freedoms.
Nationalism, communism, and liberalism do not expect much, if anything, from Christianity. Liberalism does not expect much of anything in the first place, and adherents “have no fear that their egotistical life might be shattered by the kingdom of God” (2). Arnold continues, “To the right and to the left, people think more seriously” (2). But for the right, the nationalists, Christianity is merely a tool to support their political program. They do not want to understand Christ, let alone submit to him. For the left, the communists, Christianity is the enemy because it is an essential component of a class-based society. It has no interest in changing present conditions but only in deferring liberation to life after death.
This creates a problem for the churches and their message because they have lost “the prophetic clarity of intense and confident waiting for a final kingdom” (3). They have nothing to say to the different groups that are trying to create a new world on a basis other than Christ. But Christ preached the coming kingdom, a kingdom that radically changes the present through the faith of those who anticipate it.
In addition to the political movements that take place both within and outside of the churches, Arnold addresses three contemporary theological and philosophical streams that have attempted to court people of faith. The first of these is the claim that God is “wholly other”: “There are still those who point out seriously that God is wholly other than man, wholly other than all man of himself wants or does” (3).3 This phrase was popularized in the early nineteenth century by Rudolf Otto. He used it to denote the unfathomable and entirely different nature of God in comparison to human beings.4 It was then adopted by the influential Protestant theologian Karl Barth, who made the idea central to his whole theological project, though he was also careful to emphasize that God’s otherness does not prevent us from knowing him; he has come to us in Christ.5
Arnold continues to explore God’s otherness in this connection, and his exposition demonstrates broad agreement with Barth’s theology. But Arnold does raise one caveat. Unfortunately, theological discussion does not always translate to faithful action: “there are very few who believe in this wholly other God so truly that they see the approach of his reign and comprehend it,” very few who “lend a hand in faith so that a fundamental change that will affect everyone and all conditions actually begins” (3). That is, Christian faith must not only hold that God is completely different from human beings and our world, but it must expect transformation from this God, and therefore it gives its all to work in accordance with him and his coming kingdom.
Following this, Arnold provides a brief description of how people have experienced encounter with God. First, “the experience of God is terrifying, because it discloses truth.” That is, “God’s light shows up our darkness” (5); we become conscious of our sin. And we cannot know God unless we accept that we are what he shows us to be, sinful. Importantly, though, it was not always like this. God created us to be in communion with him, and we were given his image. But sin brought humanity into darkness so that “only God himself could give us back what we have lost: himself and his image” (5). As such, God sent Jesus to restore fallen humanity to its original created goodness.
This account of divine encounter occasions a brief discussion of a second theological stream. Arnold writes, “Even in the gift of his presence, one decisive thing remains unchanged: we cannot become God” (6). God’s otherness is the source of a new world and a new way of life, and we are redeemed to be what we were created to be, but God did not create us to be him. To say otherwise is a form of “nature mysticism” (6), Arnold’s description of any claim that equates human beings with God, such as pantheism, or which implies we can become like God.6 Arnold finds an alternative to pantheism in the philosophy of dialogue: “There is no ‘we’ between us and God. There is only ‘Thou’…. God goes out to us, and a personal community between ‘Thou’ and ‘thou’ is the result” (7).
The language Arnold uses here is taken from the Jewish philosopher and founder of dialogical philosophy Martin Buber.7 For Buber, truly encountering another human being requires seeing them as a “thou” (or “you”) and not an “it.” It means being fully present to, and open and genuine with, others, rather than simply using them for particular ends or analyzing, objectifying, and categorizing them. If this is how we should treat our fellow human beings, it is all the more profoundly so when it comes to God.8 Like Barth’s idea of the wholly other God, Arnold demonstrates broad agreement with this aspect of Buber’s philosophy, which provides an alternative to pantheism or “nature mysticism.” That is, Buber provides a way to account for unity between human beings and God that does not require identifying the two. This unity is rather “a moral relationship of unity in will and deed” (7–8).
Finally, Arnold addresses the assumption that God does not really intervene in the world, that he does not “make himself known as a living God in the hearts and lives of those who receive him” (8). As with his criticism of pantheism, it is not clear if Arnold is addressing a particular figure here, but his comment on exalting “the limited theological thinking of the human brain as the only faith to be experienced” is suggestive of liberal theology, a movement that arose among educated, bourgeois Protestants in the late eighteenth century and often sought to provide rationalistic or naturalistic explanations for traditional Christian claims. Notably, Arnold does not seem to feel the need to offer an explicit alternative to this objection. He simply rejects the view as inadequate to a real understanding of the gospel.
Having addressed various theological and philosophical currents represented by his contemporaries, Arnold returns to the claim that God reveals who we truly are when we encounter him. This also allows him to revisit the different political commitments he touched on at the start of the volume. No human ideology can exonerate our actions when God’s light shows them to be darkness: “His all-inclusive will for peace reveals the will to murder and the urge to set limits that characterize all our ideals. Whether they are based on individualism, patriotism, proletarianism, or any other ‘ism’ makes little difference” (9).9
For Arnold, then, encountering God means becoming conscious of our sin. But encounter should lead to unity with God, and unity requires the destruction of sin. “Therefore, fundamental in any experience of God is the forgiveness and remission of sin. Forgiveness is the taking away of what is given up (that is, sin)” (10). Importantly, the ongoing consciousness of sin – a consciousness that increases the closer an individual grows toward God – prevents believers from confusing themselves with God in the process of unification. God remains wholly other, infinitely greater, and incomprehensible so that “if faith were a human function, it would be nothing. It could have nothing but a human object; it could never grasp God” (11). The faith needed to know God can only come from God himself.
Next, Arnold turns to consider God’s greatness. The people of Israel knew this in a special (and terrifying) way: “In the time of the prophets, the sight of God cast the beholder to the ground and killed him” (13). While there may not be many today whose reverence matches this, we can at least come to know God in the natural world. True, God surpasses nature and should not be confused with it, but the vastness and might of nature in human experience nonetheless serve as an illustration of his greatness. Interestingly, Arnold claims that this is just as much the case with earthquakes, volcanoes, and thunderstorms as it is with the mystery of life that fills even the smallest of living things.
Similarly, history provides us with an image of God’s greatness – though, again, “faith never confuses God and history (as if the course of events could be God himself), yet God is never experienced without history” (17). And history, too, provides us with a twofold picture. God’s power and wrath are seen in war and the destruction of nations, just as his love and unity are seen in peace and nations working together. Importantly, God is working in history through the person of Jesus, who is “the decisive point of all history for the whole of creation!” (17) In addition to his earthly coming two thousand years ago, he continues to guide history to its end in resurrection – an end that has already broken into the present and is at work in the church.
The mention of resurrection in the context of history provides Arnold with a useful point of departure to about this act of renewal in greater detail. He begins with a potential misconception, represented by the metaphor of a moth burning up in the flame. This image can be found in “Persian mysticism,” and illustrates the losing of oneself to find unity with God.10 For Arnold, though, it cannot apply to the believer’s experience of unity with God in Jesus. While it is true that our old nature is extinguished in God’s presence, we also emerge new and transformed; we ourselves are not annihilated: “In Christ, the weaker life is not meant to lose itself in the stronger” (19).
Arnold goes on to explore the extent of renewal. Our transformation is not simply an internal process, but it should lead us to a life lived in accordance with Jesus’ life of love. It must be reflected in our actions; otherwise, we are unfit for the kingdom of God: “When we pray for God’s kingdom to come, we ought to stop and ask ourselves whether we are prepared, whether we want to accept and represent all the changes that God’s rule involves” (22). In particular, Arnold draws attention to the social and public consequences of our conversion, as God’s rule in his kingdom extends to every area of creation:
Peace ruling in people’s hearts as God’s unity enables them to become builders and bearers of outward peace. From the church of God as the center, the driving-out of all spirits of unpeace, war, and civil war, including the spirit of competition and private property, will take place. Joy in the love of God fills the believing heart with such overflowing joy that it must go out to all people in love (23).
Changing course again, Arnold turns to our consciousness of sin in encountering God. He recounts Martin Luther’s experience of terror before God, which led him to despair of God’s holiness, judgment, and wrath. But Luther ultimately met Jesus in this state, too, and received a renewed and radical appreciation for faith and God’s grace that would constitute the heart of the Reformation in Germany. This story was well known among Arnold’s German readers, who generally held Luther in high esteem. Arnold uses it as a springboard to talk about the central place of Christ in Christian faith – so central that Christ is pretty much identified with faith: “Here is no human definition of faith; it is simply a matter of Christ. Christ comes down to us and becomes our life. His coming is faith; what he does is faith” (28). Faith, rightly understood, is not the exercise of a human faculty but the person of Jesus working within us.
But Arnold’s exploration of the nature of faith in conversation with Luther ends with something of a provocation: “Here we must go beyond Luther, for he goes no further” (28). We soon learn why this is the case. Faith means sharing everything you have with God. While Luther would have agreed with Arnold on this point, the latter goes a step further and finds an analogy between sharing with God and sharing with other people. Faith compels us to say to our fellow believers, “What is mine is yours. What is yours is mine” (30). For Arnold, this practice, sometimes called “community of goods,” means that everything should be held collectively in Christian community; ultimately, it means the abolition of all private property as God’s kingdom advances. The practice was adopted by various groups throughout history, such as the early church (e.g., Acts 2:44–55), the Hutterites from the sixteenth century on, and Arnold’s own Bruderhof. As a pattern for all Christians throughout history, however, it was rejected by both Catholics and Protestants alike.11
Again, Arnold does not dwell on one point for long. The mention of community of goods leads him back to its foundation in faith. Such a demanding practice is bound to fail without this faith, because it requires constant power from the Holy Spirit. Put differently, “living in community takes living in the light for granted” (35). Without faith, there could not be any Christian community. In a similar way, any faith that rejects community or the imperative to share everything has not understood Jesus; it represents a compromise in the life he has called us to.
Before returning to the theme of faith without compromise, Arnold briefly comments on the role of the cross in Christian life. Those who follow Jesus “sacrifice their own old life just as Jesus sacrificed his perfectly pure life” (36). This means leaving our former, sinful ways behind us, but it also means being ready to die for him in the journey of discipleship. Of course, this also ties into the idea of faith without compromise. Without suggesting specific examples – he has already made the claim that following Jesus means Christian community – Arnold offers some difficult words in connection to this theme:
Only the whole Christ for the whole of our life transforms and renews everything. Half of Jesus for half of our life is a lie and a delusion. The Spirit of Life tolerates no choosing of principles or elements of faith such as a self-willed spirit selects from God’s truth. Truth is indivisible. Christ does not let himself be dissected. Those who do not take the same attitude as Jesus in everything have rejected Jesus. Not even the most ingenious explanation for their halfheartedness protects them from the words: “He who is not with me is against me” (40).
As Arnold approaches the end of the chapter, he reflects on the main theme of the volume: experiencing God. He contrasts people who “travel in rushing vehicles from country to country, hastily skimming over the beauties of the whole world” with those who are grounded in a single place (43). While the lives of the first group might appear more exciting, it is people in the second group who truly experience life in its daily and seasonal rhythms. Their experience provides a metaphor for the breadth and depth of the life God gives – one that also lives in hope of a better world.
Arnold gives the final word to love. True hope for a better world is one that is accompanied by love put into action because “there is no love that does not come to living expression in deeds” (45). In particular, love is essential for recognizing and countering the great suffering that is felt all over the world: “The perfect strength of all-powerful love, surpassing every other power or greatness, is needed to penetrate our devastated world with God’s rule and Christ’s message” (46).
Continue:
Introduction
1.1. The Inner Life
1.2. The Heart
1.3. Soul and Spirit
2.1. The Conscience and Its Witness
2.2. The Conscience and Its Restoration
3.1. The Experience of God
3.2. The Peace of God
4.1. Light and Fire
4.2. The Holy Spirit
5.1. The Living Word
1. Numerous other nationalist groups existed around this time, such as the Freikorps, the Stahlhelm, and the German National People’s Party (DNVP), though the Nazis grew increasingly prominent in the late 1920s and later either absorbed or shut down these groups.
2. Arnold may be thinking historically, as left-wing groups in Germany were heavily suppressed (and, apart from some underground elements, largely eradicated) from 1933 on.
3. Translation adjusted. The English text has “quite” instead of “wholly.”
4. E.g. “The truly ‘mysterious’ object is beyond our apprehension and comprehension, not only because our knowledge has certain irremovable limits, but because in it we come upon something inherently ‘wholly other,’ whose kind and character are incommensurable with our own, and before which we therefore recoil in a wonder that strikes us chill and numb.” Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, second ed., trans. John W. Harvey (Oxford University Press, 1950), 28. The first German edition was published in 1917.
5. E.g. “By hope we are saved – inasmuch as in Jesus Christ the wholly other, unapproachable, unknown, eternal power and divinity … of God has entered into our world.” Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (Oxford University Press, 1933), 314. Cf. this article on Arnold and Barth.
6. It is unclear whether Arnold is targeting a particular figure or group here. Pantheistic tendencies can be found in the writings of prominent German philosophers such as Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), and their work remained influential in the philosophy, theology, and cultural movements of Arnold’s day.
7. On Arnold and Buber, see this article.
8. Buber’s dialogical philosophy is given its most famous expression in his Ich und Du, first published in 1923. Two major translations have appeared in English. The most recent is Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970). “Thou” has mostly fallen out of use in contemporary English as a more familiar alternative to “you,” though it persists in discussions of Buber’s philosophy.
9. The movements Arnold lists correspond to liberalism, nationalism, and communism/socialism, discussed above.
10. “Persian mysticism” likely refers to Sufi Islam. The image perhaps goes back to the mystic Mansour Hallaj (858–952). See Louis Massignon, The Passion of al-Hallāj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam, trans. Herbert Mason, vol. 3, The Teaching of al-Hallāj (Princeton University Press, 1982), 289–90.
11. So Luther writes in his “Preface to the Acts of the Apostles”: “Even St. Augustine and many others have looked upon the fact that the apostles had all things in common with Christians [Acts 2:44–45; 4:32–37] as the best example which the book contains. Yet this practice did not last long and in time had to stop.” In Luther’s Works, vol. 35, Word and Sacrament I, ed. E. Theodore Bachmann (Muhlenberg, 1960), 363, brackets original.
