people on that morning knew nothing of the trial of Jesus, but came to
Pilate with the sole object of asking the release of a prisoner, as was
the custom at the feast (Mark xv. 6‐8). The idea then occurs to Pilate,
who was just about to hand over, willingly enough, this troublesome fellow
and prophet to the priestly faction, to play off the people against the
priests and work on the multitude to petition for the release of Jesus. In
this way he would have secured himself on both sides. He would have
condemned Jesus to please the priests, and after condemning Him would have
released Him to please the people. The priests are greatly embarrassed by
the presence of the multitude. They had done everything so quickly and
quietly that they might well have hoped to get Jesus crucified before any
one knew what was happening or had had time to wonder at His non‐
appearance in the Temple.
The priests therefore go among the people and induce them not to agree to
the Procurator’s proposal. How? By telling them why He was condemned, by
revealing to them the Messianic secret. That makes Him at once from a
prophet worthy of honour into a deluded enthusiast and blasphemer. That
was the explanation of the “fickleness” of the Jerusalem mob which is
always so eloquently described, without any evidence for it except this
single inexplicable case.
At midday of the same day—it was the 14th Nisan, and in the evening the
Paschal lamb would be eaten—Jesus cried aloud and expired. He had chosen
to remain fully conscious to the last.
XX. RESULTS
Those who are fond of talking about negative theology can find their
account here. There is nothing more negative than the result of the
critical study of the Life of Jesus.
The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who
preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of
Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never
had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with
life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb.
This image has not been destroyed from without, it has fallen to pieces,
cleft and disintegrated by the concrete historical problems which came to
the surface one after another, and in spite of all the artifice, art,
artificiality, and violence which was applied to them, refused to be
planed down to fit the design on which the Jesus of the theology of the
last hundred and thirty years had been constructed, and were no sooner
covered over than they appeared again in a new form. The thoroughgoing
sceptical and the thoroughgoing eschatological school have only completed
the work of destruction by linking the problems into a system and so
making an end of the _Divide et impera_ of modern theology, which
undertook to solve each of them separately, that is, in a less difficult
form. Henceforth it is no longer permissible to take one problem out of
the series and dispose of it by itself, since the weight of the whole
hangs upon each.
Whatever the ultimate solution may be, the historical Jesus of whom the
criticism of the future, taking as its starting‐point the problems which
have been recognised and admitted, will draw the portrait, can never
render modern theology the services which it claimed from its own half‐
historical, half‐modern, Jesus. He will be a Jesus, who was Messiah, and
lived as such, either on the ground of a literary fiction of the earliest
Evangelist, or on the ground of a purely eschatological Messianic
conception.
In either case, He will not be a Jesus Christ to whom the religion of the
present can ascribe, according to its long‐cherished custom, its own
thoughts and ideas, as it did with the Jesus of its own making. Nor will
He be a figure which can be made by a popular historical treatment so
sympathetic and universally intelligible to the multitude. The historical
Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma.
The study of the Life of Jesus has had a curious history. It set out in
quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him it
could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Saviour. It loosed
the bands by which He had been riveted for centuries to the stony rocks of
ecclesiastical doctrine, and rejoiced to see life and movement coming into
the figure once more, and the historical Jesus advancing, as it seemed, to
meet it. But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His
own. What surprised and dismayed the theology of the last forty years was
that, despite all forced and arbitrary interpretations, it could not keep
Him in our time, but had to let Him go. He returned to His own time, not
owing to the application of any historical ingenuity, but by the same
inevitable necessity by which the liberated pendulum returns to its
original position.
The historical foundation of Christianity as built up by rationalistic, by
liberal, and by modern theology no longer exists; but that does not mean
that Christianity has lost its historical foundation. The work which
historical theology thought itself bound to carry out, and which fell to
pieces just as it was nearing completion, was only the brick facing of the
real immovable historical foundation which is independent of any
historical confirmation or justification.
Jesus means something to our world because a mighty spiritual force
streams forth from Him and flows through our time also. This fact can
neither be shaken nor confirmed by any historical discovery. It is the
solid foundation of Christianity.
The mistake was to suppose that Jesus could come to mean more to our time
by entering into it as a man like ourselves. That is not possible. First
because such a Jesus never existed. Secondly because, although historical
knowledge can no doubt introduce greater clearness into an existing
spiritual life, it cannot call spiritual life into existence. History can
destroy the present; it can reconcile the present with the past; can even
to a certain extent transport the present into the past; but to contribute
to the making of the present is not given unto it.
But it is impossible to over‐estimate the value of what German research
upon the Life of Jesus has accomplished. It is a uniquely great expression
of sincerity, one of the most significant events in the whole mental and
spiritual life of humanity. What has been done for the religious life of
the present and the immediate future by scholars such as P. W. Schmidt,
Bousset, Jülicher, Weinel, Wernle—and their pupil Frenssen—and the others
who have been called to the task of bringing to the knowledge of wider
circles, in a form which is popular without being superficial, the results
of religious‐historical study, only becomes evident when one examines the
literature and social culture of the Latin nations, who have been scarcely
if at all touched by the influence of these thinkers.
And yet the time of doubt was bound to come. We modern theologians are too
proud of our historical method, too proud of our historical Jesus, too
confident in our belief in the spiritual gains which our historical
theology can bring to the world. The thought that we could build up by the
increase of historical knowledge a new and vigorous Christianity and set
free new spiritual forces, rules us like a fixed idea, and prevents us
from seeing that the task which we have grappled with and in some measure
discharged is only one of the intellectual preliminaries of the great
religious task. We thought that it was for us to lead our time by a
roundabout way through the historical Jesus, as we understood Him, in
order to bring it to the Jesus who is a spiritual power in the present.
This roundabout way has now been closed by genuine history.
There was a danger of our thrusting ourselves between men and the Gospels,
and refusing to leave the individual man alone with the sayings of Jesus.
There was a danger that we should offer them a Jesus who was too small,
because we had forced Him into conformity with our human standards and
human psychology. To see that, one need only read the Lives of Jesus
written since the ’sixties, and notice what they have made of the great
imperious sayings of the Lord, how they have weakened down His imperative
world‐contemning demands upon individuals, that He might not come into
conflict with our ethical ideals, and might tune His denial of the world
to our acceptance of it. Many of the greatest sayings are found lying in a
corner like explosive shells from which the charges have been removed. No
small portion of elemental religious power needed to be drawn off from His
sayings to prevent them from conflicting with our system of religious
world‐acceptance. We have made Jesus hold another language with our time
from that which He really held.
In the process we ourselves have been enfeebled, and have robbed our own
thoughts of their vigour in order to project them back into history and
make them speak to us out of the past. It is nothing less than a
misfortune for modern theology that it mixes history with everything and
ends by being proud of the skill with which it finds its own thoughts—even
to its beggarly pseudo‐metaphysic with which it has banished genuine
speculative metaphysic from the sphere of religion—in Jesus, and
represents Him as expressing them. It had almost deserved the reproach:
“he who putteth his hand to the plough, and looketh back, is not fit for
the Kingdom of God.”
It was no small matter, therefore, that in the course of the critical
study of the Life of Jesus, after a resistance lasting for two
generations, during which first one expedient was tried and then another,
theology was forced by genuine history to begin to doubt the artificial
history with which it had thought to give new life to our Christianity,
and to yield to the facts, which, as Wrede strikingly said, are sometimes
the most radical critics of all. History will force it to find a way to
transcend history, and to fight for the lordship and rule of Jesus over
this world with weapons tempered in a different forge.
We are experiencing what Paul experienced. In the very moment when we were
coming nearer to the historical Jesus than men had ever come before, and
were already stretching out our hands to draw Him into our own time, we
have been obliged to give up the attempt and acknowledge our failure in
that paradoxical saying: “If we have known Christ after the flesh yet
henceforth know we Him no more.” And further we must be prepared to find
that the historical knowledge of the personality and life of Jesus will
not be a help, but perhaps even an offence to religion.
But the truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as
spiritually arisen within men, who is significant for our time and can
help it. Not the historical Jesus, but the spirit which goes forth from
Him and in the spirits of men strives for new influence and rule, is that
which overcomes the world.
It is not given to history to disengage that which is abiding and eternal
in the being of Jesus from the historical forms in which it worked itself
out, and to introduce it into our world as a living influence. It has
toiled in vain at this undertaking. As a water‐plant is beautiful so long
as it is growing in the water, but once torn from its roots, withers and
becomes unrecognisable, so it is with the historical Jesus when He is
wrenched loose from the soil of eschatology, and the attempt is made to
conceive Him “historically” as a Being not subject to temporal conditions.
The abiding and eternal in Jesus is absolutely independent of historical
knowledge and can only be understood by contact with His spirit which is
still at work in the world. In proportion as we have the Spirit of Jesus
we have the true knowledge of Jesus.
Jesus as a concrete historical personality remains a stranger to our time,
but His spirit, which lies hidden in His words, is known in simplicity,
and its influence is direct. Every saying contains in its own way the
whole Jesus. The very strangeness and unconditionedness in which He stands
before us makes it easier for individuals to find their own personal
standpoint in regard to Him.
Men feared that to admit the claims of eschatology would abolish the
significance of His words for our time; and hence there was a feverish
eagerness to discover in them any elements that might be considered not
eschatologically conditioned. When any sayings were found of which the
wording did not absolutely imply an eschatological connexion there was
great jubilation—these at least had been saved uninjured from the coming
_débâcle_.
But in reality that which is eternal in the words of Jesus is due to the
very fact that they are based on an eschatological world‐view, and contain
the expression of a mind for which the contemporary world with its
historical and social circumstances no longer had any existence. They are
appropriate, therefore, to any world, for in every world they raise the
man who dares to meet their challenge, and does not turn and twist them
into meaninglessness, above his world and his time, making him inwardly
free, so that he is fitted to be, in his own world and in his own time, a
simple channel of the power of Jesus.
Modern Lives of Jesus are too general in their scope. They aim at
influencing, by giving a complete impression of the life of Jesus, a whole
community. But the historical Jesus, as He is depicted in the Gospels,
influenced individuals by the individual word. They understood Him so far
as it was necessary for them to understand, without forming any conception
of His life as a whole, since this in its ultimate aims remained a mystery
even for the disciples.
Because it is thus preoccupied with the general, the universal, modern
theology is determined to find its world‐accepting ethic in the teaching
of Jesus. Therein lies its weakness. The world affirms itself
automatically; the modern spirit cannot but affirm it. But why on that
account abolish the conflict between modern life, with the world‐affirming
spirit which inspires it as a whole, and the world‐negating spirit of
Jesus? Why spare the spirit of the individual man its appointed task of
fighting its way through the world‐negation of Jesus, of contending with
Him at every step over the value of material and intellectual goods—a
conflict in which it may never rest? For the general, for the institutions
of society, the rule is: affirmation of the world, in conscious opposition
to the view of Jesus, on the ground that the world has affirmed itself!
This general affirmation of the world, however, if it is to be Christian,
must in the individual spirit be Christianised and transfigured by the
personal rejection of the world which is preached in the sayings of Jesus.
It is only by means of the tension thus set up that religious energy can
be communicated to our time. There was a danger that modern theology, for
the sake of peace, would deny the world‐negation in the sayings of Jesus,
with which Protestantism was out of sympathy, and thus unstring the bow
and make Protestantism a mere sociological instead of a religious force.
There was perhaps also a danger of inward insincerity, in the fact that it
refused to admit to itself and others that it maintained its affirmation
of the world in opposition to the sayings of Jesus, simply because it
could not do otherwise.
For that reason it is a good thing that the true historical Jesus should
overthrow the modern Jesus, should rise up against the modern spirit and
send upon earth, not peace, but a sword. He was not teacher, not a
casuist; He was an imperious ruler. It was because He was so in His inmost
being that He could think of Himself as the Son of Man. That was only the
temporally conditioned expression of the fact that He was an authoritative
ruler. The names in which men expressed their recognition of Him as such,
Messiah, Son of Man, Son of God, have become for us historical parables.
We can find no designation which expresses what He is for us.
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake‐
side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same
word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil
for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise
or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the
sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an
ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.
INDEX OF AUTHORS AND WORKS
(Including Reference To English Translations)
Ammon, Christoph Friedrich von. Fortbildung des Christentums (Leipzig,
1840);
Die Geschichte des Lebens Jesu mit steter Rücksicht auf die vorhandenen
Quellen (1842‐1847), 11, 97, 104 f., 117 f.
Anonymous Works—
Das Leben Napoleons kritisch geprüft. Aus dem Englischen (see under
Whateley) nebst einigen Nutzanwendungen auf das Leben‐Jesu
von Strauss (1836), 112
Did Jesus live 100 B.C.? (London and Benares, Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1903), 327
Dr. Strauss und die Züricher Kirche (Basle, 1839), 103
Wichtige Enthüllungen über die wirkliche Todesart Jesu (5th ed.,
Leipzig, 1849);
Historische Enthüllungen über die wirklichen Ereignisse der Geburt und
Jugend Jesu (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1849), 161 f.
Zwei Gespräche über die Ansicht des Herrn Dr. Strauss von der
evangelischen Geschichte (Jena, 1839), 100
Baader, Franz. Über das Leben‐Jesu von Strauss (Munich, 1836), 100
Bahrdt, Karl Friedrich. Briefe über die Bibel im Volkston (1782);
Ausführung des Plans und Zwecks Jesu (1784‐1792);
Die sämtlichen Reden Jesu aus den Evangelien ausgezogen (1786), 4, 5,
38, 39 f., 46, 53, 59, 299, 313
Baldensperger, Wilhelm. Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der
messianischen Hoffnungen seiner Zeit (Strassburg, 1888, 2nd
ed. 1892, 3rd ed. pt. i. 1903), 12, 233‐237, 250, 266, 278 f.,
365, 366
Barth, Fritz. Die Hauptprobleme des Lebens Jesu (1st ed. 1899, 2nd ed.
1903), 301
Bauer, Bruno. Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des Johannes (Bremen,
1840);
Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker (Leipzig, 1841‐1842);
Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs (Berlin,
1850‐1851);
Kritik der Apostelgeschichte (1850);
Kritik der Paulinischen Briefe (Berlin, 1850‐1852);
Philo, Strauss, Renan und das Urchristentum (Berlin, 1874);
Christus und die Cäsaren (Berlin, 1877);
Die gute Sache der Freiheit und meine eigene Angelegenheit (Zurich,
1843), 5, 9, 10, 12, 137‐160, 186 f., 221, 231, 256‐258, 305
f., 312, 315, 328, 332, 335 f., 338, 342, 346, 358, 368, 388
Baumer, Friedrich. Schwarz, Strauss, Renan (Leipzig, 1864), 191
Baur, Ferdinand Christian. Kritische Untersuchungen über die kanonischen
Evangelien (Tübingen, 1847), 25, 58, 68, 87, 89, 124, 182,
195, 201, 229
Bergh van Eysinga, Van den. Indische Einflüsse auf evangelische
Erzählungen (Göttingen, 1904), 290
Bernhard ter Haar (Utrecht). Zehn Vorlesungen über Renans “Leben‐Jesu”
(German by H. Doermer, Gotha, 1864), 191
Beyschlag, Willibald. Über das Leben‐Jesu von Renan (Berlin, 1864);
Das Leben‐Jesu (pt. i. 1885, pt. ii. 1886, 2nd ed. 1887‐1888), 6, 10,
190, 215 f., 218
Binder, 68, 69
Bleby, H. W. The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth considered as a Judicial Act
(1880), 391
Bleek, 229, 231
Böklen, E. Die Verwandtschaft der jüdisch‐christlichen und der parsischen
Eschatologie (1902), 287
Bolten, Johann Adrian. Der Bericht des Matthäus von Jesu dem Messias
(Altona, 1792), 271, 276
Bosc, Ernest. La Vie ésotérique de Jésus de Nazareth et les origines
orientales du christianisme (Paris, 1902), 294, 327
Bousset, Wilhelm. Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judentum. Ein
religionsgeschichtlicher Vergleich (Göttingen, 1892);
Die jüdische Apokalyptik in ihrer religionsgeschichtlichen Herkunft und
ihrer Bedeutung für das Neue Testament (Berlin, 1903);
Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (1902);
Was wissen wir von Jesus? Vorträge im Protestantenverein zu Bremen
(Halle, 1904);
Jesus (Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher, herausgegeben von Schiele,
Halle, 1904) (English translation, _Jesus_, by J. P.
Trevelyan, London, 1906), 241‐249, 255 f., 262, 264, 267,
280, 300, 359, 398
Brandt, Wilhelm. Die evangelische Geschichte und der Ursprung des
Christentums auf Grund einer Kritik der Berichte über das
Leiden und die Auferstehung Jesu (Leipzig, 1893), 241,
256‐261, 267, 301, 309, 312, 313, 391
Bretschneider, Karl Gottlob, 85, 118
Brunner, Sebastian. Der Atheist Renan und sein Evangelium (Regensburg,
1864), 190
Bugge, Chr. A. Die Hauptparabeln Jesu. (From the Norwegian) (Giessen,
1903), 263
Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias, Ritter von. Das Leben Jesu, vol. ix. of
Bunsen’s “Bibelwerk” (published by Holtzmann, 1865), 200
Cairns, John. Falsche Christi und der wahre Christus, oder Verteidigung
der evangelischen Geschichte gegen Strauss und Renan. Aus dem
Englischen übersetzt (Hamburg, 1864) (_False Christ and the
True_, A sermon delivered before the National Bible Society of
Scotland, Edinburgh, 1864), 191
Capitaine, W. Jesus von Nazareth (Regensburg, 1905), 294
Cassel, Paulus. Bericht über Renans Leben‐Jesu (Berlin, 1864), 191
“Casuar.” Das Leben Luthers kritisch bearbeitet. Herausgegeben von Jul.
Ferd. Wurm (“Mexiko, 2836”), 112
Chamberlain, H. S. Worte Christi (1901), 310
Charles, R. H. “The Son of Man” (Expos. Times, 1893), 267
Colani, Timothée. Examen de la vie de Jésus de M. Renan (Strassburg,
1864);
Jésus‐Christ et les croyances messianiques de son temps (Strassburg,
1864), 182, 189, 209, 221 f., 226, 229, 233, 248, 372
Cone, Orello. “Jesus’ Self‐designation in the Synoptic Gospels” (The New
World, 1893), 266
Coquerel, Athanase (jun.), 189, 209
Credner, 89
Dalman, Gustaf. Grammatik des jüdisch‐palästinensischen Aramäisch
(Leipzig, 1894);
Die Worte Jesu. Mit Berücksichtigung des nachkanonischen Schrifttums und
der aramäischen Sprache, I. (Leipzig, 1898) (authorised
English translation by D. M. Kay, _The Words of Jesus_,
Edinburgh, 1902), 269, 271, 273‐275, 278, 279‐281, 286‐289,
363, 391 f.
Darboy, Georges. Lettre pastorale de Monseigneur l’Archevêque de Paris sur
la divinité de Jésus‐Christ, et mandement pour le carême de
1864, 188
Delff, Hugo. Geschichte des Rabbi Jesus von Nazareth (Leipzig, 1889), 11,
323
Delitzsch, Franz, 273, 285
Deutlinger, Martin. Renan und das Wunder. Ein Beitrag zur christlichen
Apologetik (Munich, 1864), 190
Didon, Le Père, de l’ordre des frères prêcheurs. Jésus Christ (Paris,
1891, 2 vols., German, 1895) (English translation, _Jesus
Christ_, 2 vols., 1891), 295
Dieu, Louis de, 14
Dillmann, 223
Diodati, Dominicus, 271
Döderlein. Fragmente und Antifragmente (Nuremberg, 1778), 25
Dulk, Albert. Der Irrgang des Lebens Jesu. In geschichtlicher Auffassung
dargestellt (pt. i. 1884, pt. ii. 1885), 294, 324
Dupanloup, Félix Antoine Philibert, Évêque d’Orléans. Avertissement à la
jeunesse et aux pères de famille sur les attaques dirigées
contre la religion par quelques écrivains de nos jours (Paris,
1864), 188
Ebrard, August. Wissenschaftliche Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte
(Frankfort, 1842), 97, 116 f.
Edersheim, Alfred. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (London, 1st
ed. 1883, 3rd ed. 1886, 2 vols.), 233
Eerdmanns, B. E. “De Oorsprong van de uitdrukking ’Zoon des Menschen’ als
evangelische Messiastitel” (Theol. Tijdschr., 1894), 276
Ehrhardt. Der Grundcharakter der Ethik Jesu in Verhältnis zu den
messianischen Hoffnungen seines Volkes und zu seinem eigenen
Messiasbewusstsein (Freiburg, 1895);
Le Principe de la morale de Jésus (Paris, 1896), 249
Eichhorn, Johann Gottfried, 78, 89
Emmerich, Anna Katharina. Das bittere Leiden unseres Herrn Jesu Christi.
Herausgegeben von Brentano (1858‐1860, new ed. 1895) (English
translation, _The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ_,
London, 1862);
Das Leben Jesu, 3 vols. (1858‐1860), 109 f., 295