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HANS ERICH BÖDEKER
which in the Christian view was crucial for salvation. For Herder, man was "an
analogue of the pervasive, all-feeling Godhead”, even “a god on earth”.’”
Consequently, man had only to realize himself in order to realize his likeness
to God and his own divinity; the model lay within man himself.’ Herder saw
man’s “higher intellectual power” and the gift of understanding and reason as
the structural features of man’s resemblance to God. “No, gracious God”, he
wrote, “you did not abandon your creation to cruel chance! You gave instinct
to the animals, and you etched your image, religion and humanity in the soul
of man." The idea of man as the image of God no longer meant merely that
he resembled God because of his creative powers, but that man was actively
involved in the process of educating himself toward humanity. Thus Herder
presents man’s likeness to God as a natural aptitude, in which his relationship
with God is closely related to the state of being human, to religion and human¬
ity. On the other hand, it is also true “that we are not yet fully human, but are
daily becoming it.”!°° Correspondingly, we read elsewhere that man is becoming
“more and more the image of God.”!° Herder’s idea of an involving likeness with
God no longer fully accorded with traditional Christian anthropology. In treat¬
ing humanity as a relative absolute, Herder’s notion of man becoming divine
was an important stage in the development of the concept of human autonomy.
From this concept of man as made in God’s image it was only a small step
to the idea of the divine nature of mankind. The tension inherent in Lessing’s
awareness of “human divinity” was typical of Enlightenment thinkers. Lessing
had also identified the sweeping away of the orthodox separation between the
divine and the human as the central image of Goethe’s ode Prometheus. In this
context, the myth of man’s likeness to God lost its pedagogical and heuristic
function for Lessing, because the self-assured, thinking, and reasoning indi¬
vidual who freely made his own decisions set his own purpose against God’s
divine providence. As a “limited God”, man was called to achieve independence
and the elevation of instinct into reason.’”
102 Tbid., cf. also vol. 15, 1.
103 Oncontemporary pantheism, the study of which, however, is beyond the scope of this article cf.
TımM, Hermann, Gott und die Freiheit. Studien zur Religionsphilosophie der Goethezeit, Vol. 1,
Die Spinozarenaissance, Studien zur Philosophie und Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts,
vol. 22, Frankfurt/M., Vittorio Klostermann, 1974., ibid., Die heilige Revolution. Schleiermacher
— Novalis — Friedrich Schlegel, Frankfurt/M., Syndikat,1978.
104 Ibid., 191. Cf. also 387.
15 Stolpe, Heinz (ed.), HERDER, Johann Gottfried, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Men¬
schheit, Berlin — Weimar, Aufbau, 1965, Vol. 1, 340.
Cf. HERDER, Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele; Werke, vol. 8, 291 f.
107 LESSING, Das Christentum der Vernunft; Schriften LM, vol. 16, 177, § 20; 178, § 22.
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