THE MYSTERY OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD THE SECRET OF JESUS’ MESSIAHSHIP AND PASSION BY ALBERT SCHWEITZER Author of “The Quest of the Historical Jesus” TRANSLATED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WALTER LOWRIE NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1914 DEDICATED WITH SINCERE RESPECT AND DEVOTION TO _Dr. H. J. Holtzmann_ BY HIS GRATEFUL PUPIL ALBERT SCHWEITZER [pg 003] PREFACE THE attempt to write a life of Jesus, commencing not at the beginning but in the middle, with the thought of the Passion, must of necessity sometime be made. Strange that it has not been made earlier, for it is in the air! The fact is that all presentations of the life of Jesus are satisfactory up to a certain point,—the inception of the thought of the Passion. There, however, the connection fails. Not one of them succeeds in rendering intelligible why Jesus now suddenly counts his death necessary, and in what sense he conceives it as a saving act. In order to establish this connection one must try the experiment of making the thought of the Passion the point of departure, for the sake of rendering the former and latter periods of the life of Jesus comprehensible. If we do not understand the idea of the Passion, may not that be due to the fact that we have formed an erroneous notion of the first period of the life of Jesus and so have precluded for ourselves in advance all possibility of attaining insight into the genesis of the Passion idea? The last years of research have revealed on [pg 004] what slight grounds our historical conception of the life of Jesus really rests. It cannot be concealed that we are confronted by a difficult antinomy. Either Jesus really took himself to be the Messiah, or (as a new tendency of the study now seems to suggest) this dignity was first ascribed to him by the early Church. In either case the “Life of Jesus” remains equally enigmatical. If Jesus really regarded himself as Messiah, how comes it that he acted as if he were not Messiah? How is it to be explained that his office and dignity seem to have nothing to do with his public activity? How are we to account for the fact that only after his public activity was ended (not to reckon the last few days at Jerusalem) did he disclose to his Disciples who he was, and at the same time enjoined upon them strict silence with regard to this _secret?_ It explains nothing to suggest that such conduct was prescribed by motives of prudence or by pedagogical considerations. In the Synoptical accounts where is there even the slightest hint that Jesus wished to educate the Disciples and the people up to a knowledge of his messiahship?