Jesus worked through His spiritual power upon the nervous system of the
sufferer; sometimes He used medicines known to Him alone. The latter
applies, for instance, to the cures of the blind. The disciples, too, as
appears from Mark vi. 7 and 13, were not sent out without medicaments, for
the oil with which they were to anoint the sick was, of course, of a
medicinal character; and the casting out of evil spirits was effected
partly by means of sedatives.
Diet and after‐treatment played a great part, though the Evangelists say
little about this because directions on these points would not be given
publicly. Thus, the saying, “This kind goeth not out save by prayer and
fasting,” is interpreted as an instruction to the father as to the way in
which he could make the sudden cure of the epileptic into a permanent one,
viz. by keeping him to a strict diet and strengthening his character by
devotional exercises.
The nature miracles suggest their own explanation. The walking on the
water was an illusion of the disciples. Jesus walked along the shore, and
in the mist was taken for a ghost by the alarmed and excited occupants of
the boat. When Jesus called to them, Peter threw himself into the water,
and was drawn to shore by Jesus just as he was sinking. Immediately after
taking Jesus into the boat they doubled a headland and drew clear of the
storm centre; they therefore supposed that He had calmed the sea by His
command. It was the same in the case where He was asleep during the storm.
When they waked Him He spoke to them about the wind and the weather. At
that moment they gained the shelter of a hill which protected them from
the wind that swept down the valley; and they marvelled among themselves
that even the winds and the sea obeyed their Messiah.
The feeding of the five thousand is explained in the following way. When
Jesus saw the multitude all hungered, He said to His disciples, “We will
set the rich people among them a good example, that they may share their
supplies with the others,” and he began to distribute His own provisions,
and those of the disciples, to the people who were sitting near them. The
example had its effect, and soon there was plenty for every one.
The explanation of the transfiguration is somewhat more complicated. While
Jesus was lingering with a few followers in this mountainous district He
had an interview upon a high mountain at night with two dignified‐looking
men whom His three companions took for Moses and Elias. These unknown
persons, as we learn from Luke ix. 31, informed Him of the fate which
awaited Him at Jerusalem. In the early morning, as the sun was rising, the
three disciples, only half awake, looked upwards from the hollow in which
they had been sleeping and saw Jesus with the two strangers upon the
higher part of the mountain, illuminated by the beams of the rising sun,
and heard them speak, now of the fate which threatened Him in the capital,
now of the duty of steadfastness and the hopes attached thereto, and
finally heard an exhortation addressed to themselves, bidding them ever to
hold Jesus to be the beloved Son of the Deity, whom they must obey....
Their drowsiness, and the clouds which in an autumnal sunrise float to and
fro over those mountains,(23) left them no clear recollection of what had
happened. This only added to the wonder of the vague undefined impression
of having been in contact with apparitions from a higher sphere. The three
who had been with Him on the mount never arrived at any more definite
knowledge of the facts, because Jesus forbade them to speak of what they
had seen until the end should come.
In dealing with the raisings from the dead the author is in his element.
Here he is ready with the unfailing explanation taken over from Bahrdt
that they were only cases of coma. These narratives should not be headed
“raisings from the dead,” but “deliverances from premature burial.” In
Judaea, interment took place three hours after death. How many seemingly
dead people may have returned to consciousness in their graves, and then
have perished miserably! Thus Jesus, owing to a presentiment suggested to
Him by the father’s story, saves the daughter of Jairus from being buried
while in a cataleptic trance. A similar presentiment led Him to remove the
covering of the bier which He met at the gate of Nain, and to discover
traces of life in the widow’s son. A similar instinct moved Him to ask to
be taken to the grave of Lazarus. When the stone is rolled away He sees
His friend standing upright and calls to him joyfully, “Come forth!”
The Jewish love of miracle “caused everything to be ascribed immediately
to the Deity, and secondary causes to be overlooked; consequently no
thought was unfortunately given to the question of how to prevent these
horrible cases of premature burial from taking place!” But why does it not
appear strange to Paulus that Jesus did not enlighten His countrymen as to
the criminal character of over‐hasty burial, instead of allowing even his
closest followers to believe in miracle? Here the hypothesis condemns
itself, although it has a foundation of fact, in so far as cases of
premature burial are abnormally frequent in the East.
The resurrection of Jesus must be brought under the same category if we
are to hold fast to the facts that the disciples saw Him in His natural
body with the print of the nails in His hands, and that He took food in
their presence. Death from crucifixion was in fact due to a condition of
rigor, which extended gradually inwards. It was the slowest of all deaths.
Josephus mentions in his _Contra Apionem_ that it was granted to him as a
favour by Titus, at Tekoa, that he might have three crucified men whom he
knew taken down from the cross. Two of them died, but one recovered.
Jesus, however, “died” surprisingly quickly. The loud cry which he uttered
immediately before His head sank shows that His strength was far from
being exhausted, and that what supervened was only a death‐like trance. In
such trances the process of dying continues until corruption sets in.
“This alone proves that the process is complete and that death has
actually taken place.”
In the case of Jesus, as in that of others, the vital spark would have
been gradually extinguished, had not Providence mysteriously effected on
behalf of its favourite that which in the case of others was sometimes
effected in more obvious ways by human skill and care. The lance‐thrust,
which we are to think of rather as a mere surface wound, served the
purpose of a phlebotomy. The cool grave and the aromatic unguents
continued the process of resuscitation, until finally the storm and the
earthquake aroused Jesus to full consciousness. Fortunately the earthquake
also had the effect of rolling away the stone from the mouth of the grave.
The Lord stripped off the grave‐clothes and put on a gardener’s dress
which He managed to procure. That was what made Mary, as we are told in
John xx. 15, take Him for the gardener. Through the women, He sends a
message to His disciples bidding them meet Him in Galilee, and Himself
sets out to go thither. At Emmaus, as the dusk was falling, He met two of
His followers, who at first failed to recognise Him because His
countenance was so disfigured by His sufferings. But His manner of giving
thanks at the breaking of bread, and the nail‐prints in His uplifted
hands, revealed to them who He was. From them He learns where His
disciples are, returns to Jerusalem, and appears unexpectedly among them.
This is the explanation of the apparent contradiction between the message
pointing to Galilee and the appearances in Jerusalem. Thomas was not
present at this first appearance, and at a later interview was suffered to
put his hand into the marks of the wounds. It is a misunderstanding to see
a reproach in the words which Jesus addresses to him. What, then, is the
meaning of “Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed”? It is
a benediction upon Thomas for what he has done in the interests of later
generations. “Now,” Jesus says, “thou, Thomas, art convinced because thou
hast so unmistakably seen Me. It is well for those who now or in the
future shall not see Me; for after this they can feel a firm conviction,
because thou hast convinced thyself so completely that to thee, whose
hands have touched Me, no possible doubt can remain of My corporeal
reanimation.” Had it not been for Thomas’s peculiar mental constitution we
should not have known whether what was seen was a phantom or a real
appearance of the reanimated Jesus.
In this way Jesus lived with them for forty days, spending part of that
time with them in Galilee. In consequence of the ill‐treatment which He
had undergone, He was not capable of continuous exertion. He lived quietly
and gathered strength for the brief moments in which He appeared among His
own followers and taught them. When He felt his end drawing near He
returned to Jerusalem. On the Mount of Olives, in the early sunlight, He
assembled His followers for the last time. He lifted up His hands to bless
them, and with hands still raised in benediction He moved away from them.
A cloud interposes itself between them and Him, so that their eyes cannot
follow Him. As he disappeared there stood before them, clothed in white,
the two dignified figures whom the three disciples who were present at the
transfiguration had taken for Moses and Elias, but who were really among
the secret adherents of Jesus in Jerusalem. These men exhorted them not to
stand waiting there but to be up and doing.
Where Jesus really died they never knew, and so they came to describe His
departure as an ascension.
This Life of Jesus is not written without feeling. At times, in moments of
exaltation, the writer even dashes into verse. If only the lack of all
natural aesthetic feeling did not ruin everything! Paulus constantly falls
into a style that sets the teeth on edge. The episode of the death of the
Baptist is headed “Court‐and‐Priest intrigues enhance themselves to a
judicial murder.” Much is spoiled by a kind of banality. Instead of
“disciples,” he always says “pupils,” instead of “faith,” “sincerity of
conviction.” The appeal which the father of the lunatic boy addresses to
Jesus, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief,” runs “I am sincerely
convinced; help me, even if there is anything lacking in the sincerity of
my conviction.”
The beautiful saying in the story of Martha and Mary, “One thing is
needful,” is interpreted as meaning that a single course will be
sufficient for the meal.(24) The scene in the home at Bethany rejoices in
the heading, “Geniality of Jesus among sympathetic friends in a hospitable
family circle at Bethany. A Messiah with no stiff solemnity about Him.”
The following is the explanation which Paulus discovers for the saying
about the tribute‐money: “So long as you need the Romans to maintain some
sort of order among you,” says Jesus, “you must provide the means thereto.
If you were fit to be independent you would not need to serve any one but
God.”
Among the historical problems, Paulus is especially interested in the idea
of the Messiahship, and in the motives of the betrayal. His sixty‐five
pages on the history of the conception of the Messiah are a real
contribution to the subject. The Messianic idea, he explains, goes back to
the Davidic kingdom; the prophets raised it to a higher religious plane;
in the times of the Maccabees the ideal of the kingly Messiah perished and
its place was taken by that of the super‐earthly deliverer. The only
mistake which Paulus makes is in supposing that the post‐Maccabean period
went back to the political ideal of the Davidic king. On the other hand,
he rightly interprets the death of Jesus as the deed by which He thought
to win the Messiahship proper to the Son of Man.
With reference to the question of the High Priest at the trial, he remarks
that it does not refer to the metaphysical Divine Sonship, but to the
Messiahship in the ancient Jewish sense, and accordingly Jesus answers by
pointing to the coming of the Son of Man.
The importance of eschatology in the preaching of Jesus is clearly
recognised, but Paulus proceeds to nullify this recognition by making the
risen Lord cut short all the questions of the disciples in regard to this
subject with the admonition “that in whatever way all this should come
about, and whether soon or late, their business was to see that they had
done their own part.”
How did Judas come to play the traitor? He believed in the Messiahship of
Jesus and wanted to force Him to declare Himself. To bring about His
arrest seemed to Judas the best means of rousing the people to take His
side openly. But the course of events was too rapid for him. Owing to the
Feast the news of the arrest spread but slowly. In the night “when people
were sleeping off the effects of the Passover supper,” Jesus was
condemned; in the morning, before they were well awake, He was hurried
away to be crucified. Then Judas was overcome with despair, and went and
hanged himself. “Judas stands before us in the history of the Passion as a
warning example of those who allow their cleverness to degenerate into
cunning, and persuade themselves that it is permissible to do evil that
good may come—to seek good objects, which they really value, by intrigue
and chicanery. And the underlying cause of their errors is that they have
failed to overcome their passionate desire for self‐advancement.”
Such was the consistently rationalistic Life of Jesus, which evoked so
much opposition at the time of its appearance, and seven years later
received its death‐blow at the hands of Strauss. The method is doomed to
failure because the author only saves his own sincerity at the expense of
that of his characters. He makes the disciples of Jesus see miracles where
they could not possibly have seen them; and makes Jesus Himself allow
miracles to be imagined where He must necessarily have protested against
such a delusion. His exegesis, too, is sometimes violent. But in this, who
has the right to judge him? If the theologians dragged him before the
Lord, He would command, as of old, “Let him that is without sin among you
cast the first stone at him,” and Paulus would go forth unharmed.
Moreover, a number of his explanations are right in principle. The feeding
of the multitudes and the walking on the sea must be explained somehow or
other as misunderstandings of something that actually happened. And how
many of Paulus’ ideas are still going about in all sorts of disguises, and
crop up again and again in commentaries and Lives of Jesus, especially in
those of the “anti‐rationalists”! Nowadays it belongs to the complete duty
of the well‐trained theologian to renounce the rationalists and all their
works; and yet how poor our time is in comparison with theirs—how poor in
strong men capable of loyalty to an ideal, how poor, so far as theology is
concerned, in simple commonplace sincerity!
VI. THE LAST PHASE OF RATIONALISM—HASE AND SCHLEIERMACHER
_Karl August Hase._ Das Leben Jesu zunächst für akademische
Studien. (The Life of Jesus, primarily for the use of students.)
1829. 205 pp. This work contains a bibliography of the earliest
literature of the subject. 5th ed., 1865.
_Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher._ Das Leben Jesu. 1864.
Edited by Rütenik. The edition is based upon a student’s note‐book
of a course of lectures delivered in 1832.
_David Friedrich Strauss._ Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus
der Geschichte. Eine Kritik des Schleiermacher’schen Lebens Jesu.
(The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History. A criticism of
Schleiermacher’s Life of Jesus.) 1865.
In their treatment of the life of Jesus, Hase and Schleiermacher are in
one respect still wholly dominated by rationalism. They still cling to the
rationalistic explanation of miracle; although they have no longer the
same ingenuous confidence in it as their predecessors, and although at the
decisive cases they are content to leave a question‐mark instead of
offering a solution. They might, in fact, be described as the sceptics of
rationalism. In another respect, however, they aim at something beyond the
range of rationalism, inasmuch as they endeavour to grasp the inner
connexion of the events of Jesus’ ministry, which in Paulus had entirely
fallen out of sight. Their Lives of Jesus are transitional, in the good
sense of the word as well as in the bad. In respect of progress, Hase
shows himself the greater of the two.
Scarcely thirteen years have elapsed since the death of the great Jena
professor, his Excellency von Hase, and already we think of him as a man
of the past. Theology has voted to inscribe his name upon its records in
letters of gold—and has passed on to the order of the day. He was no
pioneer like Baur, and he does not meet the present age on the footing of
a contemporary, offering it problems raised by him and still unsolved.
Even his “Church History,” with its twelve editions, has already had its
day, although it is still the most brilliantly written work in this
department, and conceals beneath its elegance of form a massive erudition.
He was more than a theologian; he was one of the finest monuments of
German culture, the living embodiment of a period which for us lies under
the sunset glow of the past, in the land of “once upon a time.”
His path in life was unembarrassed; he knew toil, but not disappointment.
Born in 1800, he finished his studies at Tübingen, where he qualified as a
Privat‐Docent in 1823. In 1824‐1825 he spent eleven months in the fortress
of Hohenasperg, where he was confined for taking the part of the
Burschenschaften,(25) and had leisure for meditation and literary plans.
In 1830 he went to Jena, where, with a yearly visit to Italy to lay in a
store of sunshine and renewed strength, he worked until 1890.
Not without a certain reverence does one take this little text‐book of 205
pages into one’s hands. This is the first attempt by a fully equipped
scholar to reconstruct the life of Jesus on a purely historical basis.
There is more creative power in it than in almost any of his later works.
It manifests already the brilliant qualities of style for which he was
distinguished—clearness, terseness, elegance. What a contrast with that of
Bahrdt, Venturini, or Paulus!
And yet the keynote of the work is rationalistic, since Hase has recourse
to the rationalistic explanation of miracles wherever that appears
possible. He seeks to make the circumstances of the baptism intelligible
by supposing the appearance of a meteor. In the story of the
transfiguration, the fact which is to be retained is that Jesus, in the
company of two unknown persons, appeared to the disciples in unaccustomed
splendour. Their identification of His companions as Moses and Elias is a
conclusion which is not confirmed by Jesus, and owing to the position of
the eyewitnesses, is not sufficiently guaranteed by their testimony. The
abrupt breaking off of the interview by the Master, and the injunction of
silence, point to some secret circumstance in His history. By this hint
Hase seems to leave room for the “secret society” of Bahrdt and Venturini.
He makes no difficulty about the explanation of the story of the _stater_.
It is only intended to show “how the Messiah avoided offence in submitting
Himself to the financial burdens of the community.” In regard to the
stilling of the storm, it seems uncertain whether Jesus through His
knowledge of nature was enabled to predict the end of the storm or whether
He brought it about by the possession of power over nature. The “sceptic
of rationalism” thus leaves open the possibility of miracle. He proceeds
somewhat similarly in explaining the raisings from the dead. They can be
made intelligible by supposing that they were cases of coma, but it is
also possible to look upon them as supernatural. For the two great
Johannine miracles, the change of the water into wine and the increase of
the loaves, no naturalistic explanation can be admitted. But how
unsuccessful is his attempt to make the increase of the bread
intelligible! “Why should not the bread have been increased?” he asks. “If
nature every year in the period between seed‐time and harvest performs a
similar miracle, nature might also, by unknown laws, bring it about in a
moment.” Here crops up the dangerous anti‐rationalistic intellectual
supernaturalism which sometimes brings Hase and Schleiermacher very close
to the frontiers of the territory occupied by the disingenuous
reactionaries.
The crucial point is the explanation of the resurrection of Jesus. A
stringent proof that death had actually taken place cannot, according to
Hase, be given, since there is no evidence that corruption had set in, and
that is the only infallible sign of death. It is possible, therefore, that
the resurrection was only a return to consciousness after a trance. But
the direct impression made by the sources points rather to a supernatural
event. Either view is compatible with the Christian faith. “Both the
historically possible views—either that the Creator gave new life to a
body which was really dead, or that the latent life reawakened in a body
which was only seemingly dead—recognise in the resurrection a manifest
proof of the care of Providence for the cause of Jesus, and are therefore
both to be recognised as Christian, whereas a third view—that Jesus gave
Himself up to his enemies in order to defeat them by the bold stroke of a
seeming death and a skilfully prepared resurrection—is as contrary to
historical criticism as to Christian faith.”
Hase, however, quietly lightens the difficulty of the miracle question in
a way which must not be overlooked. For the rationalists all miracles
stood on the same footing, and all must equally be abolished by a
naturalistic explanation. If we study Hase carefully, we find that he
accepts only the Johannine miracles as authentic, whereas those of the
Synoptists may be regarded as resting upon a misunderstanding on the part
of the authors, because they are not reported at first hand, but from
tradition. Thus the discrimination of the two lines of Gospel tradition
comes to the aid of the anti‐rationalists, and enables them to get rid of
some of the greatest difficulties. Half playfully, it might almost be
said, they sketch out the ideas of Strauss, without ever suspecting what
desperate earnest the game will become, if the authenticity of the Fourth
Gospel has to be given up.
Hase surrenders the birth‐story and the “legends of the Childhood”—the
expression is his own—almost without striking a blow. The same fate
befalls all the incidents in which angels figure, and the miracles at the
time of the death of Jesus. He describes these as “mythical touches.” The
ascension is merely “a mythical version of His departure to the Father.”
Hase’s conception even of the non‐miraculous portion of the history of
Jesus is not free from rationalistic traits. He indulges in the following
speculations with regard to the celibacy of the Lord. “If the true grounds
of the celibacy of Jesus do not lie hidden in the special circumstances of
His youth, the conjecture may be permitted that He from whose religion was
to go forth the ideal view of marriage, so foreign to the ideas of
antiquity, found in His own time no heart worthy to enter into this
covenant with Him.” It is on rationalistic lines also that Hase explains
the betrayal by Judas. “A purely intellectual, worldly, and unscrupulous
character, he desired to compel the hesitating Messiah to found His
Kingdom upon popular violence.... It is possible that Judas in his
terrible blindness took that last word addressed to him by Jesus, ‘What
thou doest, do quickly,’ as giving consent to his plan.”