when the work of Strauss appeared. The Hegelian philosophy gave him the
constructive side of his work, and criticism the destructive. Setting out
with the preconception which had lain at the basis of German philosophy
and theology since Kant, that the idea was more important than the
fact,(814) the mythical interpretation of history furnished to him the
medium for applying this conception as an engine of criticism.
The mythical system of interpretation, though slightly suggested by his
predecessors in criticism, was Strauss’s great work. The difference
between allegory, legend, and myth, is well known. Our blessed Lord’s
miracles would be allegories, if they were, as Woolston claimed, parables
intentionally invented for purposes of moral instruction, or facts which
had a mystical as well as literal meaning: they would be legends if, while
containing a basis of fact, they were exaggerated by tradition: they would
be myths if, without really occurring, they were the result of a general
preconception that the Messiah ought to do mighty works, which thus
gradually became translated into fact. A legend is a group of ideas round
a nucleus of fact: a myth is an idea translated by mental realism into
fact. A legend proceeds upwards into the past; a myth downwards into the
future.(815) Strauss’s peculiarity consisted in trying to show that if a
small basis of fact, heightened by legend, be allowed in the gospel
history, the influence of myth is a psychological cause sufficient to
explain the remainder. The idea is regarded as prior to the fact: the need
of a deliverer, he pretends, created the idea of a saviour: the
misinterpretation of old prophecy presented conditions which in the
popular mind must be fulfilled by the Messiah. The gospel history is
regarded as the attempt of the idea to realise itself in fact.
The fundamental fallacy of the inquiry is apparent from one consideration.
Legends are possible in any age; myths, strictly so called, only in the
earliest ages of a nation. Comparative philology has lately shown that
mythology is connected with the formation of language, and restricted to
an early period of the world’s history.(816) But the encouragement offered
to the mythic interpretation by Hegel’s philosophy will be apparent. The
mythus embodying itself in the facts of the gospel was the miniature of
the process of universal nature. Everywhere the idea strives for
realisation.
The scheme of Strauss formed the link between philosophy and criticism.
Philosophy had explained the doctrines of Christianity, but not the facts
of Christian history. Criticism had explained the facts by historical
examination, but not by philosophy. Strauss attempted, for the first time,
to present the philosophical explanation of facts as well as doctrines. He
explained them, neither by charge of fraud, nor by historical causes, but
by reference to the operation of a psychological law, the same which the
Hegelian philosophy regarded as exemplified universally. Early Christian
fiction was resolved into a psychological law, regulated by a definite law
of suggestion, of which plausible instances were traced. The gospel
history was regarded to be partly a creation out of nothing, partly an
adaptation of real facts to preconceived ideas. This same philosophy,
which thus contributed to the critical or destructive side of the theory,
also furnished the reconstructive. The facts in Christianity were
temporary, the ideas eternal. Christ was the type of humanity. (36) His
life and death and resurrection were the symbol of the life, death, and
resurrection, of humanity. The former were unimportant, the latter
eternal. An exoteric religion for the people might exhibit the one: the
esoteric for the philosopher might retain the other.(817)
This is Strauss’s system and position. The book itself comprises three
parts;—first, an historic introduction, in which the history of previous
criticism and of Hermeneutics, and of the formation of the mythical theory
is most ably presented:(818)—secondly, the main body of the work, which
consists of a critical examination of the life of Christ,(819) subdivided
into three parts; viz. an examination of the birth and childhood of
Jesus,(820) of his public life,(821) and of his death;(822) the object of
which is to point out in the narrative the historic or mythic
elements:—and thirdly, a philosophical conclusion,(823) in which the
doctrinal significance of the life is given. As a specimen of didactic and
critical writing it is perhaps unrivalled in the German literature. The
second part is the embodiment of all the difficulties which destructive
criticism had presented. If the historic sketches captivate by their
clearness, the critical do so by their surprising acuteness and
dialectical power; and the philosophical by the appreciation of the ideal
beauty of the very doctrines, the historic embodiment of which is denied.
It is the work of a mind endowed with remarkable analytical power; in
which the force of reflective theory has overwhelmed the intuitional
perception of the personality and originality of the sacred character
which is the subject of his study.(824)
The effect of the publication of the work was astonishing. It produced a
religious panic unequalled since the Wolfenbüttel fragments. The first
impulse of the Prussian government was to prevent the introduction of the
book into the Prussian kingdom; but Neander stood up to resist the
proposal, with a courage which showed his firm confidence in the permanent
victory of truth; saying that it must be answered by argument, not
suppressed by force; and forthwith wrote his own beautiful work on the
life of Christ in reply to it. Yet neither the peculiarity of Strauss’s
theory nor the nature of the work gave ground for the panic. For the book
was in truth not a novelty, but merely a fuller development of principles
already existing in Germany; and Schleiermacher, before his death, when
contemplating the tendency of religious criticism, had predicted(825) the
probability of such an attempt being made. Nor was the work irreligious
and blasphemous in its spirit, like the attacks of the last century. It
professed to be executed solely in the interests of science; and, though
subversive of historic religion, to be conservative of ideal. The critical
part was only a means to an end; its real basis was speculative. But the
literary aspect of the question was lost sight of in the religious. The
heart spoke forth its terror at the idea of losing its most sacred hope,
the object of its deepest trust, an historic Saviour. The alarm had not
been anticipated by the author of the attack. He is described by a hostile
critic(826) as a “young man full of candour, of sweetness, and modesty, of
a spirit almost mystical, and as it were saddened by the disturbance which
had been occasioned.” But he became a martyr for his act, and an outcast
from the sympathy of religious men. Unable to exercise his singular gifts
of teaching in any professorship, he has continued to write from time to
time literary monographs of more defiant tone; proofs of his ability, but
vehicles for the expression of his opinions. (37)
The effect on the different theological critics throughout Germany, both
friendly and hostile, was so remarkable, that the year 1835, in which the
book was published, is as memorable in theology as the year 1848 in
politics. The work carried criticism and philosophy to its farthest
limits, and demanded from theologians of all classes a thorough
reconsideration of the subject of the _origines_ of Christianity.(827) The
ablest theologians either wrote in refutation of it, or reconsidered their
own opinions by the light of its criticisms. (38) The alarm at the loss of
the historic basis of Christianity created a strong reaction in favour of
the Lutheran orthodoxy, the commencement of which has already been
named;(828) and gave the death-blow, not only to the Hegelian school, but
almost to the passion for ontological speculation in Germany. While some
thus assumed a churchly and conservative aspect, others outstripped
Strauss, and, uniting with French positivism, advanced into utter
pantheism and materialism.
The Hegelian party, to which Strauss belonged, and which would fain have
been excused from this _reductio ad absurdum_ of its principles,(829)
became split into sections through the various attempts made to parry the
blow, and reconstruct their system on the philosophical side. The critical
tendency had now too found a home, by means of Strauss’s work, among the
Hegelians; and this led to the creation of a new school of historical
criticism to be hereafter described, which arose in Strauss’s own
university of Tübingen.(830)
We have now explained the circumstances attending the change which closed
the second and introduced the third period in German theology.
In this third period, which is that of contemporary thought, we may
distinguish four broadly marked tendencies; three within the church, and
one directly infidel in character outside of it.(831)
The last named, which we shall describe first, started from Strauss’s
position, and advanced still farther. It sprang from the destructive side
of the Hegelian philosophy, and has sometimes been named the young
Hegelian school. From the first it lacked the air of respect toward
religion which Strauss did not throw aside in his work; and it also
extended itself from theology to politics.
Bruno Bauer,(832) a Professor at Berlin, by turning suddenly round from
the most orthodox to the most heterodox position in his school, may be
classed with Strauss in his method, though not in his spirit. He carried
out Strauss’s critical examination of the Gospels with a coarse ridicule;
and extended it by denying the historic basis of fact, and imputing the
myth to the personal creation of the individual writer. But his successors
advanced even farther. As Bauer developed the critical side of Strauss,
Feuerbach(833) and Ruge(834) developed the philosophical, and destroyed
the very idea of religion itself, by showing that the idea of God or of
religion is of human construction, the giving objective existence to an
idea. The aspiration, instead of guaranteeing the existence of an object
toward which it is directed, is represented as creating it. This was the
final result of the subjective point of view of the Kantian philosophy,
and of the idealism of Hegel. Reason must, it was pretended, be followed,
to whatever extent it contradicts the feelings. Theology becomes
anthropology; religion, mythology; pantheism, atheism; man, collective
humanity, becomes the sole object of the belief and respect which had been
previously given to Deity; religion vanishes in morality. The love of man
becomes the substitute for the love of God. This was a position analogous
to that which positivism reached in France, but from a mental instead of a
physical point of view. This form of thought found expression in
literature through the poetry of Heine,(835) and linked itself with
political theories of communism more extreme than the contemporary ones in
France.
Still the lowest point was not reached: religion was treated as a
psychological peculiarity, and the virtue of benevolence recognised. But
when religion was felt to be only an idea, and the belief of the
supernatural to be the great obstacle to political reform, an intense
feeling of antipathy was aroused; and Schmidt,(836) under the pseudonym of
Stirner, reached the naturalistic point of view held by Volney, the
worship of self-love. This new school, which had arisen in the few years
subsequent to Strauss’s work, mingled itself with the revolutionary
movements of Germany in 1848, and was the means of exciting the alarm
which caused the suppression of them. Since that date the school has been
extinct as a literary movement.
The tendency just described was entirely destructive. The three others,
which remain for consideration, exist within the church, and are in their
nature reconstructive, and aim at repelling the attacks of Strauss and of
other previous critics. The one that we shall describe first is that which
is most rationalistic, and approaches most nearly to Strauss’s views; and
is frequently called, from the Swabian university which has been its
stronghold, the Tübingen school.(837) It is a lineal offshoot in some
slight degree from the school of Hegel, and more decidedly from the
critical school of De Wette, before named. But it stands contrasted with
the latter by caution, as marked as that which separates recent
critics(838) of Roman history from earlier ones, like Niebuhr. Like
Strauss, it restricts its attention to the New Testament; but it is a
direct reaction against his inclination to undervalue the historical
element. The great problem presented to it is, to reconstruct the history
of early Christianity, to reinvestigate the genesis of the gospel
biographies and doctrine. Declining to approach the books of the New
Testament with dogmatic preconceptions, it breaks with the past, and
interprets them by the historic method; proposing for its fundamental
principle to interpret scripture exactly like any other literary work.
Pretending that after the ravages of criticism, the Gospels cannot be
regarded as true history, but only as miscellaneous materials for true
history, it takes its stand on four of the Epistles of St. Paul, the
genuineness of which it cannot doubt, and finds in the struggle of Jew and
Gentile its theory of Christianity.(839) Christianity is not regarded as
miraculous, but as an offshoot of Judaism, which received its final form
by the contest of the Petrine or Judæo-Christian party, and the Pauline or
Gentile; which contest is considered by it not to have been decided till
late in the second century. By the aid of this theory, constructed from
the few books which it admits to be of undoubted genuineness, it guides
itself in the examination of the remainder, tracing them to party
interests which determined their aim, pronouncing on their object and date
by reference to it.(840) In this way it arrives at most extraordinary
conclusions in reference to some of them. Not one single book, except four
of St. Paul’s Epistles, is regarded to be authentic. The Gospel called
that of St. John is considered as a treatise of Alexandrian philosophy,
written late in the second century to support the theory of the Λόγος. It
will thus be perceived that the inquiry, though it professes to be
objective, yet has a subjective cast.
The leader of this school was Christian Baur, (39) lately deceased; a man
of large erudition; a wonder of acuteness even in Germany; distinguished
for the extraordinary ability displayed in his reply to the attacks made
on Protestantism by the celebrated Roman catholic theologian Moehler: and
though the doctrinal result of the school is ethics or pure Socinianism
and naturalism, and the critical opinions obviously are most extravagant,
the sagacity and learning shown in the monographs published by it make
them some of the most instructive, as sources of information, in modern
theology, to those who know how to use them aright. From an orthodox point
of view the effect of the school is most destructive; but, if viewed in
reference to the preceding schools, it manifests a tenacious hold over the
historic side of Christianity, and has affected in a literary way the
schools formerly described, which claim lineage from the older critics.
As the tendency just described is the modern representative of the older
critical schools; so the next holds a similar position to the
philosophical.
The school is frequently on this account described by the same name, of
“Mediation theology,”(841) originally applied to Schleiermacher, because
it attempts to unite science with faith, a true use of reason with a
belief in scripture. It comprises the chief theological names of Germany,
some of whom were disciples of Schleiermacher, others of the orthodox
portion of the Hegelian party. Their object is not simply, like the
revivers of Lutheran orthodoxy, to surrender the judgment to an external
authority in the church, nor to give unbounded liberty to it like the
critical school: not going back like the one to the ancient faith of the
church, nor progressing like the other to new discoveries in religion,
they seek to understand that which they believe, to find a philosophy for
religion and Christianity.
Two theologians stand out above the others, as evincing vitality of
thought, and boldly attempting to grapple with the philosophical
problems;—Dorner(842) and Rothe,(843) both very original, but bearing
traces of the influence of their predecessors. The former, moulded by the
Hegelian school, investigates the Christological problem which lies at the
basis of Christianity; the latter, moulded rather by the school of
Schleiermacher, has attempted the cosmological, which lies at the basis of
religion and providence.
The work of Dorner on “the Person of Christ” formed an epoch in German
theology, by its fulness of learning, its orthodoxy of tone, and its union
of speculative powers with historic erudition. The Christian doctrine of
the incarnation is, that God and man have been united in an historic
person as the essential condition for effecting human salvation. If the
doctrine be viewed on the speculative side, the problem is to show _à
priori_ that this historic union ought to exist; if viewed on the
historic, to prove that it has existed as a fact. The great aim of the
Christology of the Hegelian system was to effect the former; the aim of
Strauss was to destroy the latter. Dorner strove to reconstruct the
doctrine, by making the historical study of its progress the means of
supplying the elements of information for doing so. He commences by an
examination of other religions,(844) in order at once to show the
existence in them of blind attempts to realise that truth which the
incarnation supplied, and to prove the impossibility that the Christian
doctrine can have been borrowed from human sources, as the critical and
mythical interpreters would assume. He discovers in all religions the
desire to unite man to God; but shows(845) that the Christian doctrine
cannot have been derived from the oriental, which humanised God; nor from
the Greek, which deified man; nor from the Hebrew in its Palestinian form,
which degraded the idea of the incarnate God into a temporal Messiah; nor
in its Alexandrian form, which never reached, in its theory of the Λόγος,
the idea of the distinction of person of the Son from the Father. Thus
establishing the originality of the idea in Christianity, and exhibiting
it as the fulfilment of the world’s yearnings, he traces it in the
teaching of the apostles, and of the apostolic age,(846) next as marking
the different heretical sects,(847) which respectively lost sight of one
of the two elements, till he finds the church’s explicit statement of the
doctrine in its fulness;(848) and then pursues it onwards through the
course of history to the present time.(849) Though the work is to an
English mind difficult, through the air of speculation which pervades it,
and perhaps open to exception in some of its positions; yet, viewed as a
whole, it is a magnificent argument in favour of Christianity; exhibiting
the incarnation as the satisfaction for the world’s wants, as the original
and independent treasure in Christianity; and showing the process through
which Providence in history has caused the doctrine to be evolved and
preserved.
The other great problem, the origin of things, and the relation of God to
the world, which is at the basis of religion, as the incarnation is at the
basis of Christianity, has been less frequently handled. Originally
discussed, like the latter, in controversy with the early unbelievers, it
had been touched upon in the speculations of Averroes and Spinoza, in the
materialism of French infidelity, and in the earlier systems of
speculative philosophy in Germany itself. It was this problem which was
attempted by Rothe. (40) Advancing beyond this first question, he has
considered the scheme of Providence in the development of religion, and
the theory of the Christian church in relation to political society. It is
unnecessary here to explain his system: his mind is too original to admit
of comparison without injustice; yet the speculations of our own
Coleridge, who on philosophical principles makes the state to be the
realisation of the church, will perhaps give some imperfect conception of
the character of his attempts.
This second school that we have been considering, though approximating
extremely nearly to orthodoxy, and furnishing the works of most value in
the modern theology, yet seeks to approach religion from the psychological
or philosophical side. It speculates freely, and believes revelation
because it finds it to coincide with the discoveries of free thought. But
there is a third tendency, which believes revelation without professing to
understand it; which rests on the revelation in scripture as an objective
verity, and believes the Bible on the ground of evidence, without
questioning its material.(850)
The first germ of this reaction in favour of rigid orthodoxy was
observable in the feeling aroused by the theses of Harms, in 1817, already
named, on occasion of the celebration of the tricentenary of the
Reformation; but it was quickened by the attempts, initiated by the
Prussian king, between the years 1821 and 1830, to unite the Lutheran and
Calvinistic branches of the Protestant church.(851)
The time seemed then to thoughtful men a fitting one, when doctrines were
either regarded as unimportant or superseded by the religious
consciousness, to unite these two churches under the bond of a common
nationality, and the practice of a common liturgy. But the old Lutheran
spirit, which still survived in the retirement of country parishes, was
aroused, and some pastors underwent deprivation and persecution rather
than submit to the union.(852) This new movement at first caught the
spirit of pietism, just as had been the case with that of Schleiermacher;
but gradually abandoned it for a dogmatic and churchlike aspect, as he for
a scientific expression. Its aim was to return to the Lutheranism of the
sixteenth century, and to rally round the confessions of faith of that
period. Hengstenberg(853) at Berlin, and Hävernick,(854) are the names
best known as representing this party at the period of which we speak.
Their efforts were directed to criticism rather than to doctrine, to
reconstruct the basis for Christianity in Judaism by defending the
authenticity and credibility of the ancient scriptures. In doctrine and
the canon, they reverted to the position of the Reformation. But the alarm
ensuing upon the work of Strauss, in 1835, invested this movement with a
more reactionary character; and the journal(855) which gave expression to
Hengstenberg’s views, gradually assumed the character of an ecclesiastical
censorship, frequently marked by defiance and severity, like the tone of
Luther of old.