proclaimed at Pentecost constituted a problem, and he sought a solution
for it. He recognised, further, that the solution of the problem of the
life of Jesus calls for a combination of the methods of historical and
literary criticism. He felt that merely to emphasise the part played by
eschatology would not suffice, but that it was necessary to assume a
creative element in the tradition, to which he ascribed the miracles, the
stories which turn on the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy, the
universalistic traits and the predictions of the passion and the
resurrection. Like Wrede, too, he feels that the prescription of silence
in the case of miracles of healing and of certain communications to the
disciples constitutes a problem which demands solution.
Still more remarkable is his eye for exegetical detail. He has an
unfailing instinct for pregnant passages like Matt. x. 23, xvi. 28, which
are crucial for the interpretation of large masses of the history. The
fact is there are some who are historians by the grace of God, who from
their mother’s womb have an instinctive feeling for the real. They follow
through all the intricacy and confusion of reported fact the pathway of
reality, like a stream which, despite the rocks that encumber its course
and the windings of its valley, finds its way inevitably to the sea. No
erudition can supply the place of this historical instinct, but erudition
sometimes serves a useful purpose, inasmuch as it produces in its
possessors the pleasing belief that they are historians, and thus secures
their services for the cause of history. In truth they are at best merely
doing the preliminary spade‐work of history, collecting for a future
historian the dry bones of fact, from which, with the aid of his natural
gift, he can recall the past to life. More often, however, the way in
which erudition seeks to serve history is by suppressing historical
discoveries as long as possible, and leading out into the field to oppose
the one true view an army of possibilities. By arraying these in support
of one another it finally imagines that it has created out of
possibilities a living reality.
This obstructive erudition is the special prerogative of theology, in
which, even at the present day, a truly marvellous scholarship often
serves only to blind the eyes to elementary truths, and to cause the
artificial to be preferred to the natural. And this happens not only with
those who deliberately shut their minds against new impressions, but also
with those whose purpose is to go forward, and to whom their
contemporaries look up as leaders. It was a typical illustration of this
fact when Semler rose up and slew Reimarus in the name of scientific
theology.(19)
Reimarus had discredited progressive theology. Students—so Semler tells us
in his preface—became unsettled and sought other callings. The great Halle
theologian—born in 1725—the pioneer of the historical view of the Canon,
the precursor of Baur in the reconstruction of primitive Christianity, was
urged to do away with the offence. As Origen of yore with Celsus, so
Semler takes Reimarus sentence by sentence, in such a way that if his work
were lost it could be recovered from the refutation. The fact was that
Semler had nothing in the nature of a complete or well‐articulated
argument to oppose to him; therefore he inaugurated in his reply the “Yes,
but” theology, which thereafter, for more than three generations, while it
took, itself, the most various modifications, imagined that it had finally
got rid of Reimarus and his discovery.
Reimarus—so ran the watchword of the guerrilla warfare which Semler waged
against him—cannot be right, for he is one‐sided. Jesus and His disciples
employed two methods of teaching: one sensuous, pictorial, drawn from the
sphere of Jewish ideas, by which they adapted their meaning to the
understanding of the multitude, and endeavoured to raise them to a higher
way of thinking; and alongside of that a purely spiritual teaching which
was independent of that kind of imagery. Both methods of teaching
continued to be used side by side, because there were always contemporary
representatives of the two degrees of capability and the two kinds of
temperament. “This is historically so certain that the Fragmentist’s
attack must inevitably be defeated at this point, because he takes account
only of the sensuous representation.” But his attack was not defeated.
What happened was that, owing to the respect in which Semler was held, and
the absolute incapacity of contemporary theology to overtake the long
stride forward made by Reimarus, his work was neglected, and the stimulus
which it was capable of imparting failed to take effect. He had no
predecessors; neither had he any disciples. His work is one of those
supremely great works which pass and leave no trace, because they are
before their time; to which later generations pay a just tribute of
admiration, but owe no gratitude. Indeed it would be truer to say that
Reimarus hung a mill‐stone about the neck of the rising theological
science of his time. He avenged himself on Semler by shaking his faith in
historical theology and even in the freedom of science in general. By the
end of the eighth decade of the century the Halle professor was beginning
to retrace his steps, was becoming more and more disloyal to the cause
which he had formerly served; and he finally went so far as to give his
approval to Wöllner’s edict for the regulation of religion (1788). His
friends attributed this change of front to senility—he died 1791.
Thus the magnificent overture in which are announced all the _motifs_ of
the future historical treatment of the life of Jesus breaks off with a
sudden discord, remains isolated and incomplete, and leads to nothing
further.
III. THE LIVES OF JESUS OF THE EARLIER RATIONALISM
_Johann Jakob Hess._ Geschichte der drei letzten Lebensjahre Jesu.
(History of the Last Three Years of the Life of Jesus.) 3 vols.,
1400 pp. Leipzig‐Zurich, 1768‐1772; 3rd ed., 1774 ff.; 7th ed.,
1823 ff.
_Franz Volkmar Reinhard._ Versuch über den Plan, welchen der
Stifter der christlichen Religion zum Besten der Menschheit
entwarf. (Essay upon the Plan which the Founder of the Christian
Religion adopted for the Benefit of Mankind.) 500 pp. 1781; 4th
ed., 1798; 5th ed., 1830. Our account is based on the 4th ed. The
5th contains supplementary matter by Heubner.
_Ernst August Opitz._ Preacher at Zscheppelin. Geschichte und
Characterzüge Jesu. (History of Jesus, with a Delineation of His
Character.) Jena and Leipzig, 1812. 488 pp.
_Johann Adolph Jakobi._ Superintendent at Waltershausen. Die
Geschichte Jesu für denkende und gemütvolle Leser, 1816. (The
History of Jesus for thoughtful and sympathetic readers.) A second
volume, containing the history of the apostolic age, followed in
1818.
_Johann Gottfried Herder._ Vom Erlöser der Menschen. Nach unsern
drei ersten Evangelien. (The Redeemer of men, as portrayed in our
first three Gospels.) 1796. Von Gottes Sohn, der Welt Heiland.
Nach Johannes Evangelium. (The Son of God, the Saviour of the
World, as portrayed by John’s Gospel.) Accompanied by a rule for
the harmonisation of our Gospels on the basis of their origin and
order. Riga, published by Hartknoch, 1797. See Herder’s complete
works, ed. Suphan, vol. xix.
That thorough‐going theological rationalism which accepts only so much of
religion as can justify itself at the bar of reason, and which conceives
and represents the origin of religion in accordance with this principle,
was preceded by a rationalism less complete, as yet not wholly dissociated
from a simple‐minded supernaturalism. Its point of view is one at which it
is almost impossible for the modern man to place himself. Here, in a
single consciousness, orthodoxy and rationalism lie stratified in
successive layers. Here, to change the metaphor, rationalism surrounds
religion without touching it, and, like a lake surrounding some ancient
castle, mirrors its image with curious refractions.
This half‐developed rationalism was conscious of an impulse—it is the
first time in the history of theology that this impulse manifests
itself—to write the Life of Jesus; at first without any suspicion whither
this undertaking would lead it. No rude hands were to be laid upon the
doctrinal conception of Jesus; at least these writers had no intention of
laying hands upon it. Their purpose was simply to gain a clearer view of
the course of our Lord’s earthly and human life. The theologians who
undertook this task thought of themselves as merely writing an historical
supplement to the life of the God‐Man Jesus. These “Lives” are, therefore,
composed according to the prescription of the “good old gentleman” who in
1829 advised the young Hase to treat first of the divine, and then of the
human side of the life of Jesus.
The battle about miracle had not yet begun. But miracle no longer plays a
part of any importance; it is a firmly established principle that the
teaching of Jesus, and religion in general, hold their place solely in
virtue of their inner reasonableness, not by the support of outward
evidence.
The only thing that is really rationalistic in these older works is the
treatment of the teaching of Jesus. Even those that retain the largest
share of supernaturalism are as completely undogmatic as the more advanced
in their reproduction of the discourses of the Great Teacher. All of them
make it a principle to lose no opportunity of reducing the number of
miracles; where they can explain a miracle by natural causes, they do not
hesitate for a moment. But the deliberate rejection of all miracles, the
elimination of everything supernatural which intrudes itself into the life
of Jesus, is still to seek. That principle was first consistently carried
through by Paulus. With these earlier writers it depends on the degree of
enlightenment of the individual whether the irreducible minimum of the
supernatural is larger or smaller.
Moreover, the period of this older rationalism, like every period when
human thought has been strong and vigorous, is wholly unhistorical. What
it is looking for is not the past, but itself in the past. For it, the
problem of the life of Jesus is solved the moment it succeeds in bringing
Jesus near to its own time, in portraying Him as the great teacher of
virtue, and showing that His teaching is identical with the intellectual
truth which rationalism deifies.
The temporal limits of this half‐and‐half rationalism are difficult to
define. For the historical study of the life of Jesus the first landmark
which it offers is the work of Hess, which appeared in 1768. But it held
its ground for a long time side by side with rationalism proper, which
failed to drive it from the field. A seventh edition of Hess’s Life of
Jesus appeared as late as 1823; while a fifth edition of Reinhard’s work
saw the light in 1830. And when Strauss struck the death‐blow of out‐and‐
out rationalism, the half‐and‐half rationalism did not perish with it, but
allied itself with the neo‐supernaturalism which Strauss’s treatment of
the life of Jesus had called into being; and it still prolongs an obscure
existence in a certain section of conservative literature, though it has
lost its best characteristics, its simple‐mindedness and honesty.
These older rationalistic Lives of Jesus are, from the aesthetic point of
view, among the least pleasing of all theological productions. The
sentimentality of the portraiture is boundless. Boundless, also, and still
more objectionable, is the want of respect for the language of Jesus. He
must speak in a rational and modern fashion, and accordingly all His
utterances are reproduced in a style of the most polite modernity. None of
the speeches are allowed to stand as they were spoken; they are taken to
pieces, paraphrased, and expanded, and sometimes, with the view of making
them really lively, they are recast in the mould of a freely invented
dialogue. In all these Lives of Jesus, not a single one of His sayings
retains its authentic form.
And yet we must not be unjust to these writers. What they aimed at was to
bring Jesus near to their own time, and in so doing they became the
pioneers of the historical study of His life. The defects of their work in
regard to aesthetic feeling and historical grasp are outweighed by the
attractiveness of the purposeful, unprejudiced thinking which here
awakens, stretches itself, and begins to move with freedom.
Johann Jakob Hess was born in 1741 and died in 1828. After working as a
curate for seventeen years he became one of the assistant clergy at the
Frauminster at Zurich, and later “Antistes,” president, of the cantonal
synod. In this capacity he guided the destinies of the Church in Zurich
safely through the troublous times of the Revolution. He was not a deep
thinker, but was well read and not without ability. As a man, he did
splendid work.
His Life of Jesus still keeps largely to the lines of a paraphrase of the
Gospels; indeed, he calls it a paraphrasing history. It is based upon a
harmonizing combination of the four Gospels. The matter of the Synoptic
narratives is, as in all the Lives of Jesus prior to Strauss—with the sole
exception of Herder’s—fitted more or less arbitrarily into the intervals
between the Passovers in the fourth Gospel.
In regard to miracles, he admits that these are a stumbling‐block. But
they are essential to the Gospel narrative and to revelation; had Jesus
been only a moral teacher and not the Son of God they would not have been
necessary. We must be careful, however, not to prize miracles for their
own sake, but to look primarily to their ethical teaching. It was, he
remarks, the mistake of the Jews to regard all the acts of Jesus solely
from the point of view of their strange and miraculous character, and to
forget their moral teaching; whereas we, from distaste for miracle as
such, run the risk of excluding from the Gospel history events which are
bound up with the Gospel revelation.
Above all, we must retain the supernatural birth and the bodily
resurrection, because on the former depends the sinlessness of Jesus, on
the latter the certainty of the general resurrection of the dead. The
temptation of Jesus in the wilderness was a stratagem of Satan by which he
hoped to discover “whether Jesus of Nazareth was really so extraordinary a
person that he would have cause to fear Him.” The resurrection of Lazarus
is authentic.
But the Gospel narrative is rationalised whenever it can be done. It was
not the demons, but the Gadarene demoniacs themselves, who rushed among
the swine. Alarmed by their fury the whole herd plunged over the precipice
into the lake and were drowned; while by this accommodation to the fixed
idea of the demoniacs, Jesus effected their cure. Perhaps, too, Hess
conjectures, the Lord desired to test the Gadarenes, and to see whether
they would attach greater importance to the good deed done to two of their
number than to the loss of their swine. This explanation, reinforced by
its moral, held its ground in theology for some sixty years and passed
over into a round dozen Lives of Jesus.
This plan of “presenting each occurrence in such a way that what is
valuable and instructive in it immediately strikes the eye” is followed
out by Hess so faithfully that all clearness of impression is destroyed.
The parables are barely recognisable, swathed, as they are, in the mummy‐
wrappings of his paraphrase; and in most cases their meaning is completely
travestied by the ethical or historical allusions which he finds in them.
The parable of the pounds is explained as referring to a man who went,
like Archelaus, to Rome to obtain the kingship, while his subjects
intrigued behind his back.
Of the peculiar beauty of the speech of Jesus not a trace remains. The
parable of the Sower, for instance, begins: “A countryman went to sow his
field, which lay beside a country‐road, and was here and there rather
rocky, and in some places weedy, but in general was well cultivated, and
had a good sort of soil.” The beatitude upon the mourners appears in the
following guise: “Happy are they who amid the adversities of the present
make the best of things and submit themselves with patience; for such men,
if they do not see better times here, shall certainly elsewhere receive
comfort and consolation.” The question addressed by the Pharisees to John
the Baptist, and his answer, are given dialogue‐wise, in fustian of this
kind:—_The Pharisees_: “We are directed to enquire of you, in the name of
our president, who you profess to be? As people are at present expecting
the Messiah, and seem not indisposed to accept you in that capacity, we
are the more anxious that you should declare yourself with regard to your
vocation and person.” John: “The conclusion might have been drawn from my
discourses that I was not the Messiah. Why should people attribute such
lofty pretensions to me?” etc. In order to give the Gospels the true
literary flavour, a characterisation is tacked on to each of the persons
of the narrative. In the case of the disciples, for instance, this runs:
“They had sound common sense, but very limited insight; the capacity to
receive teaching, but an incapacity for reflective thought; a knowledge of
their own weakness, but a difficulty in getting rid of old prejudices;
sensibility to right feeling, but weakness in following out a pre‐
determined moral plan.”
The simplest occurrences give occasion for sentimental portraiture. The
saying “Except ye become as little children” is introduced in the
following fashion: “Jesus called a boy who was standing near. The boy
came. Jesus took his hand and told him to stand beside Him, nearer than
any of His disciples, so that he had the foremost place among them. Then
Jesus threw His arm round the boy and pressed him tenderly to His breast.
The disciples looked on in astonishment, wondering what this meant. Then
He explained to them,” etc. In these expansions Hess does not always
escape the ludicrous. The saying of Jesus in John x. 9, “I am the door,”
takes on the following form: “No one, whether he be sheep or shepherd, can
come into the fold (if, that is to say, he follows the right way) except
in so far as he knows me and is admitted by me, and included among the
flock.”
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Reinhard’s work is on a distinctly higher level. The author was born in
1753. In 1792, after he had worked for fourteen years as Docent in
Wittenberg, he was appointed Senior Court Chaplain at Dresden. He died in
1812.
“I am, as you know, a very prosaic person,” writes Reinhard to a friend,
and in these words he has given an admirable characterisation of himself.
The writers who chiefly appeal to him are the ancient moralists; he
acknowledges that he has learned more from them than from a “collegium
homileticum.” In his celebrated “System of Christian Ethics” (5 vols.,
1788‐1815) he makes copious use of them. His sermons—they fill thirty‐five
volumes, and in their day were regarded as models—show some power and
depth of thought, but are all cast in the same mould. He seems to have
been haunted by a fear that it might some time befall him to admit into
his mind a thought which was mystical or visionary, not justifiable by the
laws of logic and the canons of the critical reason. With all his
philosophising and rationalising, however, certain pillars of the
supernaturalistic view of history remain for him immovable.
At first sight one might be inclined to suppose that he frankly shared the
belief in miracle. He mentions the raising of the widow’s son, and of
Lazarus, and accepts as an authentic saying the command of the risen Jesus
to baptize all nations. But if we look more closely, we find that he
deliberately brings very few miracles into his narrative, and the
definition by which he disintegrates the conception of miracle from within
leaves no doubt as to his own position. What he says is this: “All that
which we call miraculous and supernatural is to be understood as only
relatively so, and implies nothing further than an obvious exception to
what can be brought about by natural causes, so far as we know them and
have experience of their capacity. A cautious thinker will not venture in
any single instance to pronounce an event to be so extraordinary that God
could not have brought it about by the use of secondary causes, but must
have intervened directly.”
The case stands similarly with regard to the divinity of Christ. Reinhard
assumes it, but his “Life” is not directed to prove it; it leads only to
the conclusion that the Founder of Christianity is to be regarded as a
wonderful “divine” teacher. In order to prove His uniqueness, Reinhard has
to show that His plan for the welfare of mankind was something
incomparably higher than anything which hero or sage has ever striven for.
Reinhard makes the first attempt to give an account of the teaching of
Jesus which should be historical in the sense that all dogmatic
considerations should be excluded. “Above all things, let us collect and
examine the indications which we find in the writings of His companions
regarding the designs which He had in view.”
The plan of Jesus shows its greatness above all in its universality.
Reinhard is well aware of the difficulty raised in this connexion by those
sayings which assert the prerogative of Israel, and he discusses them at
length. He finds the solution in the assumption that Jesus in His own
lifetime naturally confined Himself to working among His own people, and
was content to indicate the future universal development of His plan.
With the intention “of introducing a universal change, tending to the
benefit of the whole human race,” Jesus attaches His teaching to the
Jewish eschatology. It is only the form of His teaching, however, which is
affected by this, since He gives an entirely different significance to the
terms Kingdom of Heaven and Kingdom of God, referring them to a universal
ethical reorganisation of mankind. But His plan was entirely independent
of politics. He never based His claims upon His Davidic descent. This was,
indeed, the reason why He held aloof from His family. Even the entry into
Jerusalem had no Messianic significance. His plan was so entirely non‐
political that He would, on the contrary, have welcomed the severance of
all connexion between the state and religion, in order to avoid the risk
of a conflict between these two powers. Reinhard explains the voluntary
death of Jesus as due to this endeavour. “He quitted the stage of the
world by so early and shameful a death because He wished to destroy at
once and for ever the mistaken impression that He was aiming at the
foundation of an earthly kingdom, and to turn the thoughts, wishes, and
efforts of His disciples and companions into another channel.”
In order to make the Kingdom of God a practical reality, it was necessary
for Him to dissociate it from all the forces of this world, and to bring
morality and religion into the closest connexion. “The law of love was the
indissoluble bond by which Jesus for ever united morality with religion.”
“Moral instruction was the principal content and the very essence of all
His discourses.” His efforts “were directed to the establishment of a
purely ethical organisation.”
It was important, therefore, to overthrow superstition and to bring
religion within the domain of reason. First of all the priesthood must be
deprived for ever of its influence. Then an improvement of the social
condition of mankind must be introduced, since the level of morality
depends upon social conditions. Jesus was a social reformer. Through the
attainment of “the highest perfection of which Society is capable,
universal peace” was “gradually to be brought about.”
But the point of primary importance for Him was the alliance of religion
with reason. Reason was to maintain its freedom by the aid of religion,
and religion was not to be withdrawn from the critical judgment of reason:
all things were to be tested, and only the best retained.
“From these data it is easy to determine the characteristics of a religion
which is to be the religion of all mankind: it must be ethical,
intelligible, and spiritual.”