Hermann Cohen’s view on the Holy Spirit is that it is a “correlation of God and man.” He comes to this conclusion by investigating the “spirit of man” (100) and its relation to holiness.  The “spirit of holiness” (104) is a facet of the “spirit of man” insofar as it is an attribute which the “spirit of God” also possesses. With this is mind, holiness is seen as morality, which is the same morality as the morality of God. It is important to distinguish that the unification is not a connection between God and man; rather, it is unification through a shared spirit of holiness, qua morality, which must be thought of as a correlation. This view staunchly opposes the Christian view of the Holy Spirit. Karl Barth views the Holy Spirit as a distinct “person” that is a part of the triune Godhead. Like Cohen, Barth offers a sophisticated exposition of the Trinitarian doctrine and outlines various nuances with respect to the Holy Spirit. Although Barth’s views on the Holy Spirit is a stark contrast to Cohen’s views on the Holy Spirit, there are many areas of commonality, that, if distilled, have a similar theological approach. Still, this paper will argue in favor of Barth; although not an adjudication, it will suggest some advantages to Barth’s views over Cohen.  

For Cohen, the holy spirit must be understood as a correlation. Cohen’s use of the term “spirit” should not be confused with the term “soul”. The spirit does not refer to a substance that is a part of man; rather, it is an essence or a definitive quality. With this is mind, Cohen says, the spirit “mediates holiness” (100) to bring about the “correlation of God and man.” (100) This is to say that the role of the spirit is as the “connecting link of the correlation” (105); the “spirit of holiness” is “fully as much the spirit of man as the spirit of God.” (102)

Cohen’s use of “holiness” must not be confused with traditional notions of piety or purity. “Holiness” is the “medium that accomplishes the correlation.” (105) Thus, “when the spirit is called holy, […] one means its realization of the correlation [between God and man].” (101) It is important to note that the spirit, as the “connecting link of the correlation,” is always present; however, the spirit is not always a holy spirit. The holy spirit is an ideal relation that is strived towards, and it is “understood as a continuously new creation.” (104) This correlation is created, on the part of man, through the active processes of “self-sanctification” (104).

He describes holiness on the part of man as consisting in “self-sanctification” (111), which, he says, “can have no termination, […] but only infinite striving and becoming.” (111) The holiness of man, the correlation with God, is an “abstraction of eternal moral becoming.” (111) This relates back to Cohen’s metaphysics – becoming strives towards being.  It is a morality with a metaphysical grounding. Again, man’s “moral tasks” are always in a state of becoming, it is “infinitely distant” (108); however, in this action, this striving, man becomes “the carrier and guarantor of the holy spirit.” 

The holy spirit, the correlation between God and man, provides for us the “unequivocal elucidation of the concept of holiness.“ (106) One can only have a sense of morality through the correlation with God; that is, it is the foundation on which morality stands. When the correlation, or the holy spirit, is limited to the scope of morality, “holiness becomes morality” (106). The common ground between God and man is holiness qua morality – “holiness” here being a “task and ideal of action.” (111) “Holiness unifies God and man. There is no other morality but that of man, which even includes the morality of God. And there is no other holiness of God but that of man, which even includes the holiness of God.” (109) There is nothing more to God and man but the correlation, as Cohen writes, “God is determined by the holiness of the spirit, and, according to the correlation, so also is man.” (103) Man is to be “established and founded by the holy spirit” (106). In other words, man as the I and man as the thou; “man in accordance with the uniqueness of God, man himself as unit as individual” (106). On this view, God is an idea of moral perfection. Man’s “knowledge of God” (109) is limited to the holy spirit.

The holy spirit is only present when man “sanctifies” (110) himself, and in doing so, man “accomplishes the sanctification of God.” (110) “[T]he holy spirit […] stamps itself onto the moral spirit, onto moral reason.” (106) Cohen’s God doesn’t give laws; the commandments are internal. Commandments would restrict man’s autonomy, his will, and this violates Kantian understanding of morality. Rather than laws, our moral actions are to emulate God so we can be like him, and this is done through moral practice.

There is nothing more to man than being called to holiness qua morality, which is also the essence of God. There is a co-dependence, or “reciprocal effect” (103):  ”to every man the commandment of holiness is issued, thus God desires to be hallowed through every man.” (103) God depends on man because “God accomplishes his holiness in man,” (103) and man depends on God to “men fulfill their striving for holiness in the acceptance of the archetypal holiness of God.” (103) Put more lucidly: “God depends on the correlation with man. And man is dependent on the correlation with God. The high point of this correlation is reached in the concept of the holy spirit.” (105) This reciprocity can be thought of as an “abstract” “unification” (105); however, God and man are still ontologically unique and distinct. Cohen adds, “The correlation does not remain limited to God and man, but inasmuch as it becomes more profoundly defined as reciprocal effect, it extends over the concepts of holiness as well as of the spirit.” (112)

It is “not so much related to God as to man, so that it is not thought of as a specific characteristic of God.” (101) The holy spirit is mentioned “only three times” (101) in the Old Testament (Isaiah 63:9-10, Isaiah 63:11, and Psalm 51). Notably, God puts his holy spirit in “the people” because they “represent man better than even Moses […]” (101). In Psalms, the holy spirit has a role in man’s sinfulness; it reveals “forgiveness as a specific attribute of God,” (102) and the holy spirit “leads us upon this road.” (102)

There is an issue of the “materialization and personification of the Logos as a holy spirit mediating between God and man.” The issue is that when it is “imagined as a material connection of powers, which afterwards becomes person, the connection assumes the form of a community.” (100) This would result in holiness being “made into a special task of a particular agency of this community.” (This becomes a problem later, as we see that holiness is reserved for God and man, and their special correlation.)

Cohen’s views are meant to reflect Judaism. “Judaism is still reproached by Christianity […] for not allowing any connection between God and man.” (105) Jews have unification rather than connection. There’s a “limitation of the holy spirit to morality.” (106)

Barth’s views reflect, indeed, stem from Christianity. The nuances that separate Christian denominations are not significant for the purpose of this essay; still, it should be mentioned that Barth’s theology is Calvinistic.

The Trinitarian doctrine defines God as a one ousia, or essence, and three hypostasis, or distinctness within the essence. The ousia refers to the “persons” – the Father, Son, and Spirit – having the same “sense of identity of substance.” (351) It is important to note that each “person” of the Godhead is distinguish by their “freedom, ontic and noetic autonomy.” (307) Barth says, “if there is to be a valid belief in revelation, then in no sense can Christ and the Spirit be subordinate [to the Father].” (353) The three persons of the trinity are equally God, but this does not mean that there are three gods (tritheism). The trinity means that “He is not just in one mode but […] in the mode of the Father, in the mode of the Son, and in the mode of the Holy Ghost.” (359) Barth sums up the meaning of the Trinitarian doctrine by saying “God is the One who reveals Himself.” In other words, the Spirit is the “revealer,” the Son is the “revelation,” and the Father is “being revealed.” (359) Still, one must leave aspects of the trinity in the “mysterium trinitatis.” (368)

To Barth, the Holy Spirit is not an agent per se. He describes the Holy Spirit as the “togetherness or communion of the Father and the Son.” (469) What makes the Holy Spirit distinct is paradoxically the “common factor in the mode of being of God the Father and that of God the Son.” (469) This is to say that what unites the Father and the Son is itself a distinct thing, which is the Holy Spirit. Thus, Barth says, “the Holy Spirit could not possibly be regarded as the third ‘person’.” (469) Barth is wary of attributing a robust sense of agency to the Holy Spirit; rather, the Spirit is another mode of the Godhead.

The role of the Holy Spirit is particularly important with regards to the revelation. The Holy Spirit “is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Son of God crucified in the flesh for us, or (which says the same thing), the Spirit is the Word of the Father spoken to us.” (28) Jesus is the revelation, “the Word,” of the Father, “in His passage through death to life.” (451) Furthermore, the revelation is to not only “come to man,” but through the Holy Spirit, but to also “be in him,” which consequently achieves revelation in the man as well. (453)  The Holy Spirit “guarantees man what he cannot guarantee himself, his personal participation in revelation.” (453) Moreover, “The status of being a child of God is simultaneous with receiving the Holy Spirit.” (457)

To understand the Holy Spirit’s relation to us, it is important to first elucidate Barth’s theological approach. Barth has a special brand of theological humility where we, the creature, are entirely dependent on God and we cannot do anything without him; indeed, we need “the Creator to be able to live.” (450) We need a “relation to Him” but we are not in a position to create this relation. (450) Through the Holy Spirit, “God creates it [the relation] by His own presence in the creature and therefore as a relation of Himself to Himself.” (450) God becomes present to man “not just externally, not just from above, but also from within, from below, subjectively.” (451) 

There is a great chasm that separates us from God. This chasm is to be understood as not only sin, but as our limitations in knowing God. Barth writes, “There can be no question of rationalising because rationalising is neither theologically nor philosophically possible here. That is to say, as philosophers we cannot give a full interpretation of the object with an apparatus of concepts already elucidated – for we have come up against the fact that from the standpoint of the object the decisive act of interpretation is an elucidation of the conceptual apparatus which is so radically ill-suited to this object.” (368) This epistemology outlines our limitations in comprehending God.

The Holy Spirit is the bridges the chasm between us and God. Everything must be done by God: “No other intercedes with Him on our behalf except Himself. No other intercedes with us on His behalf except again himself. No one else speaks from us when He speaks through us except himself.”  (465) We are in no position to bridge this chasm, so by grace God does this for us. “The deity of the Holy Spirit is thus demanded.” (465) With the Holy Spirit in us, he does not “merely come to man.” But he also “encounters Himself from man.” (451) In this revelation, “God and man, Creator and creature, the Holy One and sinners” are united “so they become Father and child, in the same way He is in Himself the communion, the love, which unites the Father to the Son and the Son to the Father.” (486)

Barth argues that the Holy Spirit plays three roles: creator, atoner, and redeemer. This is, of course, a synthetic distinction and merely serves as a heuristic tool. It must also be noted that all three members play a role in the human life; after all, they are three-in-one. Keeping in mind Barth’s theological humility, he does not claim to build a robust theological system.

First, as a creator, the Holy Spirit is “the only reason that humans actually exist in the image of God.” (1) This is not limited to our physical bodies, but this ineffable quality – that is the “free work of the Creator in his creation” – “only comprehensible as grace.” (1) Without the Spirit, we cannot hear God speak to us. “We exist as spiritual creatures, or created spirits, because the Holy Spirit continually creates spirit within us. This becomes the access point for God to commutate divine truth to us.”  (18)

By creating a spirit to communicate divine truth to us, the Holy Spirit elucidates our morality. The ethics of Barth is based on a sole reliance on God. The thoughts of humans “are bound by our confinement to the space-time continuum,” so “thoughts we create in and of ourselves cannot ever be said to be God or to accurately represent God.” (8)  According to Barth, “theological ethics cannot be done in such a manner that we think we are able to know what God’s command is, either by referring to the alleged truth contained within creation, or even by referring to this or that verse of scripture.” (15) The attempt itself at cognizing the commands of God through our reasoning distorts what God actually expects of us. God must actively work within us to impart his knowledge through the Holy Spirit; thus, without the Holy Spirit, we cannot understand the Bible nor what God demands of us. We can only know God’s demands through revelation, and this is a process that is done entirely by the Holy Spirit’s “being and work” within us. (1) Only in the Holy Spirit can we hear “God’s words […] not lost in the darkness of [our] human ignorance.” There is no way to do this without the Holy Spirit.

This is divine command theory at its purest form. We cannot comprehend morality because morality is the Word of God which “we are not able to hear.” (16)  Barth writes: “Ethics, however, must not decide on these things, in and of itself, because the concern of the Word of God ultimately belongs to God alone. Any ethics that thinks it can know and establish the commands of god the Creator sets itself on the throne of God.” (15)  It is clearly has no room for any Kantian deontological system; in fact, any attempt would be idolatry. Succinctly put, “God alone is the law; only in God’s own concrete acts of commanding and prohibiting does He pronounce freedom and guilt. (31) Barth adds, “what a careless ethic unequivocally wants to name sin, can always be justice from God’s prospective and vice versa.” (31)

This is another illustration of Barth’s theological humility. We are entirely dependent on God for moral guidance at every step, and any attempt to grasp at the morality for ourselves would be self-defeating. “We can neither awaken nor educate ourselves to this hearing; we can neither achieve nor maintain it for ourselves. We have, in what we hear, no security, no self-made guarantee of truth, other than that which has been given to us to hear itself. We only really hear in the act of hearing, in the divine certainty within our human uncertainty, which corresponds to the fact that this hearing is the miracle of God.” Indeed, every moral ideology “tastes like human vanity and not divine truth.” (17)  Above all, Barth writes, “Theological ethics, like all of theology, has to serve the Word of God.” (15)

The Holy Spirit, as an atoner, is involved in the forgiveness of sins. The Holy Spirit as an atoner “Atoner” is originally the German “Versohner,” which can be more closely translated as “Reconciler,” but Barth uses it to emphasize the spirit’s role in salvation. (2) The “holiness” of the Holy Spirit does not refer to it being radically different from our spirits; rather, it “refers to the Spirit’s opposition toward the serious and radical perversion and sin of the created spirits.” (19) Our sin is “hostility towards God” and “even towards grace.” (20) The Holy Spirit is “the One engaged in this struggle and victory of grace over the hostility to grace in humans.” (20) The Holy Spirit is what defines a Christian. Paradoxically, only when we are saved – that is, receive the Holy Spirit – can we know, through the Holy Spirit, that we were in doomed. He gives the following parable in illustration: “the legend of the rider who crossed the frozen Lake of Constance by night without knowing it. When he reached the opposite shore and was told whence he came, he broke down, horrified. This is the human situation when the sky opens and the earth is bright, when we may hear: By grace you have been saved! In such a moment we are like that terrified rider. When we hear this word we involuntarily look back, do we not, asking ourselves: where have I been? Over an abyss, in mortal danger! What did I do? The most foolish thing I ever attempted! I was doomed and miraculously escaped and now I am safe! You ask: ‘Do we really live in such danger?’ Yes, we live on the brink of death.” (32) The paradox is that we only know we are condemned after we are pardoned. He writes, “The cross is where God gives Himself to death in our flesh and where we find ourselves buried with Him in this death. The yes is thoroughly hidden under this no.” (35) The cross is where God simultaneous rejects sin yet accepts us. The “yes” refers to God accepting us and “no” refers to rejecting sin.

Barth writes, “the office of the Holy Spirit must be, above all, a disciplinary office, not in spite of, but indeed because, He is the Atoning Spirit of God.” (29) Here, the German word (Strafamt) for “disciplinary” also carries the ideas of “prison, punishment, and penal sentence.” We hear that Holy Spirit is the comforter, but he cannot comfort those who are “hard headed and arrogant hearted.” (30)

Thus we come across the concept of sanctification: the Holy Spirit is “the finger God, by whom we are sanctified.” (10) Barth explains sanctification as such: “since we are the ones whom God has forgiven, God’s own radical and powerful opposition falls on us.” (41)Here, God’s opposition is towards sin, and it is our duty to follow him in opposing sin. The Christian, the one who hears the Word of God, merely “exist as people who do God’s Word.” (41)

But here again we come across the problem of the ineffability of morality. We must be obedient to the Word, yet “our obedience is so obviously hidden from us.” (42) We do not know what our actions should be; it “never becomes even partially clear to us.” (42) “Only in the Holy Spirit is it determined if the given action is obedience and not disobedience.” (43) Barth stresses that “the attempt to justify oneself by works” is a “sin humans cannot get rid of.” (2) It is all through God that we are saved, and “this means that our works are categorically removed.” (28) He rejects the “work-righteousness of popular Catholicism.” (29) We are free from the law of God, “which man has misunderstood and misused,” (456) and ready for “real revelation.”

The Holy Spirit, as a redeemer, is the “Spirit of Promise.” (3) This means the following: “In the Holy Spirit, that is, in the finality and futurity of the principle of his existence in the afterlife, the human is a new creature: God’s child.” (3) The spirit transforms the individual into a “child of God,” which is a dynamic process, completed in the afterlife or Christ’s coming.

The Holy Spirit has an “eschatological” presence in our spirit. (48) This is to say that the Holy Spirit “promises to have His actual will with us in an ultimate and future sense.” (48) This will refers to the release “from the temporality of our created nature and from the contradiction of being ‘at once the sinful person and the justified person,’ and eternally belong to Him.” (50) In other words, overcoming of death and sin, and achieving resurrection and eternal life. Moreover, the Holy Spirit “works to deliver us to God when our own end comes to pass.” (47)

Furthermore the Holy Spirit conforms us to the likeness of Christ. In the Holy Spirit, we meet the “principle of existence in the afterlife” and are accordingly changed into a child of God. (3) This transformation is a dynamic process, which is to be completed in the afterlife or in the event of Christ’s coming. “Having been hidden with Christ in God the human always has a Conscience leading him into all truth, and because freedom he is bound always in gratitude to God, he prays and is heard while he prays.” (3) Believers of Christ has the Holy Spirit like a person’s conscience speaks to them, the spirit does too.

“All these things, faith, knowledge, and obedience, exist for man ‘in the Holy Spirit.’” (453) The Holy Spirit directs us to becoming a child of God, and gives “instructions and guidance he cannot give himself.” (454) The spirit is a catalyst for repentance and trust and Christ, which are key in faith; thus without the spirit, there can be no faith or salvation. (2) It is how “He establishes and executes His claim to lordship over us by His immediate presence.” (454) This is not to say that the Holy Spirit becomes “identical” with ourselves, or that we lose our identity because of the Spirit. (454) The creature the Holy Spirit is imparted to “by no means loses its nature and kind as a creature so as to become itself, as it were, the Holy Spirit.” (462) That is, “man remains man, sinner sinner,” and the “Holy Ghost God remains God.”

I now move on to comparing and contrasting Cohen and Barth, with a particular emphasis on Barth. My aim is to assess the coherence of their views on the Holy Spirit or the spirit that is holy; accordingly, I attempt to distill this from their religious convictions. I attempt to be as objective as possible, yet I must note that I adhere to many of Barth’s presuppositions – primarily, the general doctrine of Christianity. As such, I reframe from addressing issues specific to religions…

Sources

Barth, Karl. Trans. by Michael Raburn. The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life. 2002.

Barth, Karl. Trans. by G. W. Bromiley. Church Dogmatics Volume 1. 1975.

Cohen, Hermann. Trans. by Simon Kaplan. Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism.1995.