Is Jesus of Nazareth a historical individual, or is he purely a creation of fancy? While he is commonly thought to have lived in Palestine nineteen hundred years ago, Christendom has recently been disturbed by occasional voices proclaiming that this current belief is altogether without foundation in fact. Jesus' life of association with disciples, his ministry of healing and teaching, his conflicts with the religious leaders of that day, his death on the cross, in fact the whole of his alleged earthly career depicted in the New Testament is held to be entirely fictitious. He is not to be classed among those historical founders of religion who left so strong an impression upon their contemporaries that after death their memory was held in peculiar reverence by their followers; he belongs rather with those heroes of mythology who never had any earthly existence except that created for them by the anthropomorphizing fancy of naïve and primitive peoples.
This doubt about Jesus' existence is not an
2
entirely new problem. Its classic expression is to be found with Bruno Bauer more than half a century ago. Yet in its modern form it has new and important characteristics. Not only has it won a larger following than formerly, but it has been argued in a variety of ways and from several different points of view. It is often presented with a zeal which challenges attention even when the argument would not always command a hearing. Its advocates are occasionally accused, and perhaps not always unjustly, of displaying a partisan temper not consistent with the spirit of a truly scientific research, yet they sometimes vigorously declare themselves to be working primarily in the interests of genuine religion. Even though their position may ultimately be found untenable, the variety and insistency with which it is advocated cannot well be ignored.
There is also a certain degree of pertinency about this recent protest against Jesus' historicity. The problem has not been forced to the front in a purely arbitrary fashion. It might have been expected as one of the accompaniments—a kind of by-product one might almost say—of modern criticism's research upon the life of Jesus. When one sees how radically
3
the traditional conception of Jesus' person has been reconstructed by recent criticism, the possibility of denying his very existence is at least suggested. This question would have needed consideration even had it not arisen in the peculiar and somewhat unfortunate manner in which it has recently been presented. Too often its discussion has been left to those whose tastes are seemingly not primarily historical, and for whom the mere possibility of proposing this query seems to have meant a strong presupposition in favor of a negative answer.
Moreover the so-called historical Jesus of liberal theology is the specific target at which the skeptical arguments are aimed. The assailants, assuming that the traditional view of Jesus is unhistorical, believe that they can also demolish this figure which the liberal theologians set up as the Jesus of history. Has modern criticism, through its rejection of the older views about Jesus, set in motion a skeptical movement which proves equally destructive when directed against its own reconstruction of the history? This seems to be the point from which the problem of Jesus' historicity must at present be approached.
To what extent has the newer method of
4
study provoked doubt, or even supplied a plausible basis for questioning Jesus' existence? An examination of the chief critical attempts to reconstruct the picture of Jesus reveals the following significant elements of the so-called "liberal" thought.
In the first place, the philosophical presuppositions formerly underlying christological speculation have been supplanted by a world-view in which natural law is given a higher and more absolutely dominant position. Consequently the gospel stories of Jesus' mighty works are reinterpreted to bring them within the range of natural events, or else they are dismissed as utterly unhistorical. The ancients we are told were unable to distinguish critically between natural and supernatural activities, so that many events which today would be accounted perfectly normal, seemed in antiquity wholly abnormal and miraculous. Just as sickness and death were connected in thought with the action of superhuman agencies, so to calm the excitement of a lunatic, to stimulate by mental suggestion the withered nerves of a paralytic, to arouse a sick person from a death-like coma immediately became miracles of healing and resurrection.
5
Or, again, events that might not of themselves have seemed unusual may have been unduly magnified by an uncritical and miracle-loving imagination. To illustrate, it is held that the generous example of Jesus and his disciples in sharing their food with the members of the multitude who had no provisions inspired a similar generosity on the part of others in the crowd, and out of this circumstance grew the gospel stories of Jesus' feeding the five thousand and the four thousand. Similarly Jesus' instruction to Peter to catch a fish and sell it to procure money for the payment of the temple tax becomes a miraculous prediction about a coin to be found in a fish's mouth. A parable about a barren fig tree grows into a story of Jesus' unusual power to wither a tree which failed to supply him food for his breakfast. Many other miracle stories admit of a similar explanation, so it is asserted.
Again, it is thought that literary inventiveness, the use of the Old Testament, legends about the wonderful doings of the heroes of other religions, and a desire so to picture Jesus' career as to create admiration and awe may have combined to produce narratives which have not even a natural basis in the actual
6
history. To this class the nativity stories, the descent of the dove at baptism, the transfiguration incident, the resurrection and ascension narratives, and even the greater number of Jesus' alleged miracles, might conceivably be assigned. But whether they were originally unusual natural events, or ordinary happenings magnified into the miraculous, or mere creations of the narrator's imagination, the result is the same for modern thought of Jesus. He is no longer the miracle-working individual whom the gospels portray.[1] And if in this particular the gospel representation is fictitious perhaps it is not surprising that some persons should ask whether the whole portrait may not be a work of fancy.
[1] With the Deistic movement in England in the seventeenth century, and rationalism in Germany a century later, there appeared a pronounced tendency to rid Christianity of the miraculous. In 1696 Toland wrote Christianity not Mysterious, a Proof That in the Gospels Nothing Is Opposed to or Beyond Reason. Reimarus (Von dem Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jünger: Noch ein Fragment des Wolfenbüttelschen Ungenannten, Herausgegeben von G. E. Lessing, Braunschweig, 1778) expressed the opinion that Jesus had not worked miracles, for had he possessed this ability his failure to meet the demand for a sign, and his allowing the crisis at Jerusalem to pass without displaying his power to the utmost, would be incomprehensible. The "Rationalists," of whom Paulus (Das Leben Jesu als Grundlage einer reinen Geschichte des Urchristentums, Heidelberg, 1828) is one of the best representatives, explained all miracles as natural events. But Strauss (Das Leben Jesu, Tübingen, 1835 and 1836) easily showed to what absurdities such attempts led, and he accordingly regarded the miracle stories as pure fictions. Since Strauss, "liberal" theology has not concerned itself very seriously with this problem. By general agreement the supernaturalistic faith of former times is rejected. The rationalistic explanation is applied to part of the gospel miracles, while for others the mythical theory of Strauss is adopted.
7
Furthermore, religious knowledge is no longer thought to be supernaturally acquired. Instead of relying upon some record of a supposedly supernatural revelation as a basis for authentic religious knowledge, reason and human experience have been made fundamental. It is now said that even the Bible writers were wholly conditioned by their own mental grasp upon the world of thought surrounding them. For then the earth was a disk with the arched roof of heaven above, the abode of the departed beneath, and God and spirits plying back and forth in these regions in truly anthropomorphic fashion. Not only were all religious ideas limited to the intellectual outlook of that age, but the religious experience of the ancients was primarily the outcome of their own spiritual reaction upon their world. So historical events and persons are significant for the present chiefly as a means of enlarging our sphere of reality, thus supplying a domain
8
for the enrichment of thought and experience. In other words, religious knowledge must be acquired by the same laws and through the same channels—and through no others—employed for the acquirement of human knowledge in general.
It follows that so far as religion can claim to be "truthful" this quality must inhere in its very nature—it cannot be derived from an external authority. Nearly a century and a half ago Lessing expressed the idea tersely in his ninth "axiom": "Religion is not true because the evangelists and apostles taught it, but they taught it because it is true"—or because it seemed to them true, moderns would add.[1] What has been recorded may represent the noblest thought of a past age, but no fact of history can be established so surely, and no notion of the past stands so wholly above the limited ideas of its own age, that a later generation may safely make these things objective norms for testing the validity of its knowledge. A world-view cannot be built on scripture, nor
[1] Axiom 10 also puts the main point clearly: "Aus ihrer innern Wahrheit mussen die schriftlichen Ueberlieferungen erkläret werden, und alle schriftliche Ueberlieferungen können ihr keine innern Wahrheit geben, wenn sie keine hat." And again: "Zufällige Geschichtswahrheiten können der Beweis von notwendigen Vernunftwahrheiten nie werden."
9
can the highest type of religious experience result merely from acceptance of an objectively authenticated creed. In the opinion of "liberal" theologians, if the content of Christian thinking today would be "truthful" it must answer to the highest intellectual demands of modern times and must be in harmony with the noblest type of spiritual ideals at present attainable.
Accordingly the religious values of life are no longer thought to be conditioned by the truth or falsity of alleged historic facts. These values have a self-attesting quality quite apart from any supposition as to where or how the recognition of their worth first came to expression in history. Indeed, to condition present-day religious ideals by norms and decrees of a past age, or to measure values by past standards, is now thought detrimental to the highest type of spiritual attainment. Bondage to legalism, whether in the realm of thought or conduct, means a deadening of the genuine life of the spirit, hence the need to break the "entangling alliance" between religion and history in order to give the spirit liberty. Reflection upon the life of the past may prove helpful and even inspirational if one avoids
10
thinking of it in terms of a deadening legalism. But the greatest values of religion are not to be found fossilized in the strata of Jewish and Christian history; they still await production in the present and the future.
When this modern attitude on the general question of religious authority is brought to bear upon one's thought of the historical Jesus the traditional conception of his authority is radically modified. Since the "liberals" maintain that religious knowledge is neither acquired nor made valid by supernatural means and that spiritual attainments have not been standardized once and for all time by supernatural demonstrations, even if Jesus is assumed to be the fountain of supernaturally revealed religious knowledge, there is now no absolutely certain means of knowing just what had been thus revealed. The evangelists wrote about him, as about everything else, in terms of the limited notions of their time. Their ideas—and, so far as our information goes, his ideas too—moved only in the atmosphere of first-century thinking, and so cannot be normative for the truthfulness of twentieth-century thought. And since religious values today must be judged by the tests of modern demands, past values, though they
11
proved sufficient for the first century, may no longer have abiding worth. If they do retain their value this is not because of their historic origin, even should that be Jesus himself, but is wholly due to their modern efficiency. Had they never before existed, in all probability modern needs would have produced them just as new values are being created today to meet contemporary needs. Thus Jesus becomes so relatively insignificant as an authority in religious matters that it is scarcely strange to find an inclination in some quarters to deny his existence outright.
Still more disturbing is the fact that the Jesus of "liberal" theology is not a supernatural person, at least not in any real sense of that term as understood by the traditional Christology. The Johannine logos-idea and the Pauline notion of pre-existence are not now treated as fundamental items in one's thought of the historical Jesus; these are rather the product of primitive interpretation. Also the stories in Matthew and Luke about unusual happenings attending Jesus' entrance into the life of humanity are believed to be merely the attempts of early faith to supply an appropriate background in the imagery of that day
12
for its conception of his uniqueness. Jesus, it is affirmed, can be best and most truly known as a man among men, and his personality is to be estimated in terms of the qualities displayed in the ordinary activities of his earthly life. All efforts to make his origin supernatural are held to be the work of interpretation, originating in an age which found its highest thought-categories in supernaturalism.
Likewise the constitution of his personality in general is regarded by the "liberals" as belonging wholly in the natural sphere. His thinking had a truly physical basis in its contact with local phenomena, and its processes, so far as they were normal, were in line with regular psychological laws. If they were abnormal they are to be placed on the same basis as abnormal mental processes in general. Descriptions of personal contact with Satan, ministrations of angels, personal communications with a Moses or an Elijah, and the like, are all taken as pictures to express vividly normally conditioned spiritual experiences of Jesus; otherwise he must have been the victim of hallucinations. Those who hold this view would not deny that Jesus' experience was of an exceedingly rich and pure type, but only
13
that it was not something miraculously given to him from without. It was rather a personal attainment through the ordinary processes of spiritual activity, and his uniqueness lay in the exceptional way in which he cultivated these processes and in the unusual quality of perfection he thus attained.
With respect to Jesus' mental activities, "liberal" interpretation seems not to have worked its view out quite so consistently and clearly as at some other points. This is particularly true regarding the question of his messianic self-consciousness. Beyond all question his mental condition as viewed by the evangelists is explicable only on the assumption that his thinking was supernaturally controlled, or that he was mentally unbalanced. The alternative is to make the blurred gospel picture of him responsible for the distortion, and this is the solution usually adopted by "liberal" interpretation. Yet Jesus is allowed to set himself forward in all seriousness as the Messiah. At once the question arises, How far and in what sense can he have claimed messiahship and still have preserved mental normality? We are usually told that he arrived at this conviction experientially; it was a deduction drawn
14
from his sense of unique spiritual kinship to God. He transfused the current conception of messiahship with a supremely spiritual interpretation; yet as his work on earth failed to bring about the complete establishment of the kingdom, Jesus came to believe, and announced his conviction to his followers, that he would in the near future come upon the clouds to set up the kingdom in its perfection. But for any individual whose personality is ex hypothesi non-supernatural, to confer upon himself the prerogatives of that superhuman messianic figure of apocalyptic imagery is a severe strain upon our notion of normal mental action even in that age.[1] Hence it is not so strange that some interpreters should find Jesus making no
[1] DeLoosten, Jesus Christus vom Slandpunkte des Psychiaters (Bamberg, 1905), thinks Jesus was mentally unsound and so subject to delusions. For Rasmussen, Jesus: Eine vergleichende psychopathologische Studie (Leipzig, 1905; translated from the Danish Jesus, en sammenlignende Studie, 1905), Jesus was an epileptic. Against these views frequent protests have been made. Kneib, Moderns Leben-Jesu-Forschung unter dem Einflusse der Psyckiatrie (Mainz, 1908), lays the blame for these theories upon what seems to him the a-priori exclusion of supernaturalism from Jesus' person. His abnormality is to be explained by his divinity: "ent-weder war Jesus Christus geisteskrank oder er war Gottmensch." Werner, Die psychische Gesundheit Jesu (Gross-Lichterfelde, 1909), contends for the mental soundness of Jesus, but, like Kneib, thinks that any interpretation which brings Jesus down to a purely human level must admit his insanity. Weidel, Jesu Persönlichkeit: Eine psychologische Studie (Halle a.S., 1908), adopting the results of modern gospel criticism, still finds Jesus to have acted quite unusually but credits this to his possession of an unusual volitional energy. Schaefer, Jesus in psychiatrischer Beleuchtung: Eine Kontroverse (Berlin, 1910), from the standpoint of a physician who is at the same time inclined to liberal theological views, protests especially against deLoosten's treatment of Jesus as a paranoiac. Sanday, Christologies Ancient and Modern (Oxford, 1910), though not discussing this particular topic, finds, in the subliminal regions of Jesus' mental life, a special, divine influence which produced a unique effect in his conscious mental activities. The real problem is thus pushed a little farther back but is still left unsolved. Cf. Coe, "Religion and the Subconscious," American Journal of Theology, XIII (1909), 337-49.
15
personal claims to messiahship; or that the more radical critics should imagine that his first interpreters, who admittedly created his superhuman personality, may also have evolved out of their own fancy the entire picture of his earthly career.
The religion and worship which grew up in the Apostolic age about the name of Jesus the Messiah formerly was thought to have been founded upon, and fostered by, special supernatural manifestations. But the "liberal" estimate of Christianity's historical origin would also eliminate these features. The miraculous resurrection of Jesus is undoubtedly a tenet of the first Christians' faith, but to go back of that faith and establish by critical tests the reliability of any corresponding objective fact
16
is held to be no longer possible. Furthermore, the point of departure for the early belief in Jesus' resurrection is said to be a conviction on the part of certain persons that Jesus had been seen by them after his burial,[1] and these visions may have been due to a combination of purely natural circumstances. For a long time the disciples had been under a severe strain; they had passed through particularly unnerving experiences at Jerusalem; then they returned to scenes of former association with Jesus where memories of him were newly awakened and former hopes revived with increased power. These circumstances brought about unusual psychic experiences interpreted by those who shared them as visions of the risen Jesus. Thus the indelible impression of his historical personality upon their lives bore its natural fruitage. He was "risen" more truly than they realized. Not ecstatic experiences induced by an over-wrought nervous condition, nor an
[1] In the New Testament tradition about the origin of the resurrection faith, one readily recognizes the subordinate place occupied by the empty tomb. Its discovery meant nothing until some member of the company experienced an "appearance." Cf. Lake, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (London and New York, 1907, pp. 241-53); and the present writer's article "The Resurrection Faith of the First Disciples" in the American Journal of Theology, XIII (1909), 169-92.
17
interpretation of these experiences in terms of current notions about the visibility of angels and spirits, but their own renewed and increased spiritual energy truly proved Jesus' return to life. The real corner-stone of the new religion was not the resurrection appearances, but the "Easter faith" by which the spirit of Jesus' own life found living expression in the person of his disciples.
Similarly the whole range of the early church's enthusiastic life, once imagined to be a miraculous attestation of the genuineness of the new faith, is now explained on the purely natural basis of religious psychology. The early believers, like most men of that time, were highly emotional and superstitious. They peopled the world about them with a generous supply of spirits, evil as well as good. Any unusual state of nervous excitement took on a highly religious significance, and even ordinary events were readily magnified into marvelous manifestations of the supernatural. Consequently the abnormal phases of life loomed largest in their vision, and they turned to this region above all others to find evidence for the validity of their new faith. Nor was their search in vain. Soon they found themselves
18
able to speak with "tongues," they performed "miracles," they saw visions and dreamed dreams, angels ministered to them in moments of special distress, and, indeed, at times God drew so near that the earth trembled as did Mount Sinai in days of old. For the primitive Christians these experiences were the divinely given anticipatory signs of the coming messianic age; for moderns the whole ecstatic life of that period seems to have become only an interesting study in folk psychology.
Even the whole scheme of theological thinking constructed about the person of the heavenly Christ is now regarded as mainly a product of the first interpreters' fancy. Paul and his contemporaries built largely upon the expectation of Jesus' early return to bring an end to the present world-order. The fact of his ignominious death seemed a serious objection to the doctrine of his messiahship, so believers were compelled to find some explanation that would bring this event into harmony with their messianic faith. Paul was exceptionally successful in this effort, in that he made Jesus' death a fundamental element in the Messiah's saving mission. By reflection this figure of the heavenly Messiah grew in prominence until he became
19
the object of a godlike reverence and worship. In fact, by degrees, believers began to transfer to the risen Jesus many notions which they formerly would have entertained with reference to God only. In like manner the tenets of first-century Christology were worked out to meet various inclinations and necessities of contemporary thinking.
Hence the religion which has Jesus as its object is to be sharply distinguished from the personal religion of Jesus. It is now believed by the "liberals" that he did not set himself forward as an object for reverence and worship, but that his primary concern was to point men directly to God, the God whom he himself worshiped with full devotion of heart, soul, and mind. In this way he entered into a rich realization of sonship to God and he craved for all men the blessings of a similar attainment. As for his own position, the attitude of deification assumed by the early church after his death was farthest from his thoughts. "He desired no other belief in his person and no other attachment to it than is contained in the keeping of his commandments. . . . This feeling, praying, working, struggling, and suffering individual is a man who in the face of his
20
God also associates himself with other men."[1] Lessing's sentences on the "Religion of Christ" state the point so clearly, showing at the same time how keenly the problem was grasped more than a century ago, that we venture to repeat them slightly condensed:
Whether Christ [i.e., "Jesus," in modern usage] was more than man is a problem. That he was truly man, if he was man at all, and that he never ceased being man, is admitted. Consequently the religion of Christ and the Christian religion are two quite distinct things. The former is that religion which he himself as a man recognized and practiced, and which every man can have in common with him. The latter is that religion which assumes that he was more than a man and makes him as such the object of its worship. The existence of these two religions in Christ [i.e., in "Jesus"] as in one and the same person is inconceivable. The teachings and principles of both are scarcely to be found in one and the same book; at least it is clear that the religion of Christ and the Christian religion are quite differently contained in the gospels. The former is there expressed most clearly and distinctly. The latter, on the other hand, is so uncertain and ambiguous that there is hardly a single passage with which any two persons have connected the same thought.
But in the New Testament story of the Apostolic age this supernatural figure of the heavenly
[1] Harnack, What Is Christianity (London and New York, 1901, pp. 125 f.; Das Wesen des Christentums, Leipzig, 1900).
21
Christ certainly stands in the foreground. The early Christians' gaze was directed mainly to the future, not to the past. Their hope was in the Coming One. Recognition of Paul's lack of concern with the earthly Jesus and his whole-souled devotion to the heavenly Christ is a commonplace of modern thinking. Under these circumstances it would appear that we must expect to find the story of Jesus' earthly career so portrayed as to show supernatural traits befitting one who will later enjoy messianic honors in the divine sphere. But if the first Christians in their religion and worship formed this highly colored picture of the Christ largely out of subjective elements of their own thinking, as the "liberals" tell us, and then carried back into an earthly career foreshadowings of his dignity and power, may not the very idea of an earthly existence have the same subjective origin? If so, the anthropomorphizing interest was merely one of the steps in the general process of making concrete and objective those notions which seemed of greatest worth in primitive religious thinking. It is at least only fair to admit that modern critical study has prepared the soil out of which queries of this sort readily spring. Perhaps
22
they are only a mushroom growth, yet it is not so surprising that they should seem to some eyes to be the seedlings of giant oaks.
It must be admitted that modern critical study, on its negative side, largely discounts the traditional history of Jesus, if it does not indeed provoke doubt about his very existence. Yet "liberal" theology's own belief in the historicity of Jesus is not in the least disturbed. When the traditional view of him has been virtually demolished, moderns assert that they have only removed fungoid growths from his real historical form, and that they would thus not only restore his original figure but also make him more significant for religious thought. Accordingly they propose to return to Jesus—not merely to the gospel representation of him, and not even to the oldest available sources' picture of him, but back beyond all these "interpretations" to the original Jesus unadorned by the fancy of his admiring followers. While this task is not easy, it is thought to be possible by means of a careful literary and historical criticism. Its advocates do not claim to be able to produce full details of Jesus' career but only to restore a partial, yet real, glimpse of his personality. The main features
23
of his activity, the essential elements of his teaching, and the deep impression which his life made upon his associates are held to be recoverable.
Of course not all "liberal" investigators agree exactly in their positive results, and this fact is sometimes used as an argument against the reliability of any of their work. Yet, in what they regard as essentials, there is in the main uniformity of opinion. It is commonly agreed that Jesus' own personal religious life shall be made the basis for estimating his character and significance. Abandoning metaphysical speculations about his origin and nature, we are asked to fix attention upon him as a man among men in order that we may discover the content of that religion which he actually embodied in his own life, and sought by example and precept to persuade others to realize for themselves. He met life's issues in a perfectly natural way, yet he shared that full inspiration of spirit which is available for every noble, normal, spiritually minded individual. For him religion meant perfect fellowship with God and loyalty to the highest ideals of personal duty toward one's fellows. In revealing this noblest thought of the divine, Jesus was
24
revealing God, and so was performing a saving work for mankind. Thus the historically reliable and important features of his career are not his alleged display of miracle-working ability, or any other demonstrations of supernatural and messianic authority, but his impressive personal religious life.
As for his teaching, it was chiefly concerned with the establishment of God's kingdom. This, more specifically, meant the realization on man's part of true sonship to God, who, in his essentially loving attitude toward humanity, was the Father. The highest privileges for men lay in becoming sons of God through the cultivation in their own lives of this divine quality of love. Only in the light of this thought could the values of life be estimated aright. The human soul and its eternal welfare was the thing of first importance. The soul's safety was to be insured by a life of fidelity to the divine will, the individual trusting at the same time in the goodness of the heavenly Father who was more willing to forgive and love men than human parents were to show a similar attitude toward their children. For the true son of God, heart righteousness was fundamental. Casuistry and formality were to be
25
eliminated; only that which was essential and genuinely sincere was worth while. When formalism was set aside and men turned in sincerity to the Father, salvation was assured. Thus Jesus' teaching was fundamentally a message of salvation—not a salvation whose realization must be awaited in some far-away time, but a present spiritual possession.
During Jesus' lifetime the significance of his work and teaching had, according to this interpretation, been but very imperfectly comprehended. Traditional notions about a Messiah who was to deliver the Jews from their bondage to foreign rulers bulked so large in men's thoughts that Jesus' emphasis upon the more distinctly spiritual values of religion received only a feeble response. Yet when his death shattered the disciples' last lingering hopes that he would relieve Israel from Roman oppression, they did not dismiss him from their thoughts and count him among those mistaken messianic agitators with whom the Jewish people, since the time of Judas of Gamala, had become more or less familiar. Instead of abandoning hope Jesus' disciples built, on the foundation of their memory of personal association with him, the daring structure of
26
new hope such as no one in Israel had ever before ventured to surmise. They confidently proclaimed that a human being, even a man who had died, was to figure as the supernatural Messiah coming in glory on the clouds. This new messianism was not however the heart of the new faith; it was only the outward expression of an inward life-stimulus which went back to Jesus as its source. The new hope served as a vehicle to bear along for a few generations this new spiritual energy which had emanated from Jesus, but ultimately the vehicle was to be discarded. History soon proved that these hopes were false. Yet the Jesus-life continued to make a successful appeal to men, prompting new interpretations of his person and work. Thus began that struggle which has sometimes caused great distress in religious thinking—the struggle to readjust christological speculations. But Jesus' place in the founding and perpetuating of Christianity is one of life rather than of theory, and "liberal" interpreters are disposed to confine thought of him to the former realm.
We need not, it is said, go beyond this simple picture of Jesus' life and teaching, the power of which has been practically demonstrated
27
in the founding of Christianity, to find those features which give his personality its paramount significance for religion today. As stated by some of the best-known representatives of the liberal view:
The nearer we draw to Jesus in the tradition the more does all dogmatic theology recede. We behold a man who, more than any other, by his clear word makes us understand ourselves, the world, and God, and who goes with us amid the needs and struggles of our time as the truest friend and guide on whom we may rely for comfort.[1]
In spite of our remoteness in time and the frequently painful uncertainty of the tradition, we who are thus distantly connected with the great story of Jesus handed down through the centuries can still find him, in his trust in God and his nearness to God, in his relentless moral earnestness, in his conquest over pain, in his certainty of the forgiveness of sins, and in his eternal hope, to be the guide of our souls to God.[2]
This unique historical personality, apart from all outer forces, alone through his inner greatness created the world-encompassing spiritual movement of Christianity. . . . He is the founder of our inner Christian life as well. . . . His powerful personality constrains us to share both his faith in God's holy and fatherly
[1] Wernle, Sources of Our Knowledge of the Life of Jesus (London, 1907, p. 163; Die Quellen des Lebens Jesu, Tübingen, 1905).
[2] Bousset, Jesus (3. Aufl., Tübingen, 1907, pp. 99 f.; cf. English tr., Jesus, London and New York, 1906, p. 211).
28
love and his own life of holy love. Thus he makes us truly joyous and happy, giving to our life true worth and abiding meaning.[1]
Such in brief is the historical Jesus of "liberal" theology. Needless to say, this reconstruction of Jesus' career, and this interpretation of his significance, have met with severe opposition from different quarters. Of necessity adherents of the older Christology must declare unceasing war upon so free a treatment of the traditions, and especially upon so thoroughgoing a rejection of supernaturalism. This complete elimination of supernaturalism is also repellant to the semi-liberal school of theologians who have come to be known as "modern positivists."[2] All these opponents urge that Jesus' person and worth have been seriously underestimated. On the other hand, a radical type of interpretation insists that too high a value has been placed upon him. We are told that he has no such significance for modern religion as even the "liberals" imagine. His ideal individuality, his high ethico-religious
[1] A. Meyer, Was uns Jesus heute ist (Tübingen, 1907, pp. 41 f.).
[2] A convenient summary of their position is given by Bousset in the Theologische Rundschau, IX (1906), 287-302, 327-40, 371-81, 413-24; and by G. B. Smith in the American Journal of Theology, XIII (1909), 92-99.
29
thought, and the like, are said to be only modern ideas read back into his historic figure. This process is held not to be different in principle from that employed by the first-century interpreters in constructing a Christology which should embody the most valuable ideas of their age. Furthermore this modern "Jesusism" is declared to be inadequate to meet the demands of modern life. Ethically it does not supply sufficient values, socially it is not closely enough in touch with present-day conditions, intellectually it ignores metaphysical questions and philosophical problems in general with too easy a conscience.
And then come the extremists who would wipe the historical Jesus entirely off the slate. They subscribe to the objections raised above, combining and supplementing them in a way to prove, they think, that Jesus never lived. The conservative theologians also unite with these extreme radicals in contending that the historical Jesus whom modern critical study posits never could have supplied to primitive Christianity its initial incentive. His personality is too shadowy, too ordinary, to have exerted so unique an influence—his figure must be greatly enlarged. But in what direction
30
shall the enlargement be made? At this point conservatives and radicals come to a sharp parting of the ways. The former maintain that a genuinely historical Jesus must be identified with the real supernatural Christ, the latter hold that an alleged historical Jesus must give place to the fanciful image of a mythical Christ. When the conservatives rejoice over the fate which the Jesus of liberal theology has met at the hands of these modern radicals, they would seem to be sounding the death knell of their own christological views. For if the earthly Jesus must go, how much more completely must any supposed reality of a supernatural Christ be abandoned! Indeed he is denied existence by the very presuppositions of the radicals' thought, while the earthly Jesus is, at least ostensibly, argued out of existence.
Hence an attempt from the conservative point of view to refute the particular type of denial at present urged against Jesus' historicity could in the nature of the case amount to but little more than the assertion of one set of presuppositions as over against another set. There is no common ground on which arguments pro and contra may rest. One view places
31
primary stress on supernaturalism, the other dismisses supernaturalism before argumentation begins. Therefore, for practical purposes, if on no other grounds, it is desirable to meet the opposition at its own point of attack. And since denial of Jesus' existence proceeds directly against the so-called liberal interpretation, the most immediate and practical question is, Can his existence be successfully defended from the "liberal" theology's own position? This is the present problem.
Go to The Historicity of Jesus by S.J. Case table of contents.