No more successful has been the attempt to evade the problem by _sublimating_ the eschatology, as though Jesus had translated the realistic conceptions of his time into spiritual terms by using them in a figurative sense. The work of Eric Haupt _(Die eschatologischen Aussagen Jesu in den synoptischen Evangelien,_ 1895) is based upon this thought. But there is nothing to justify us in assuming that Jesus attached to his words a non-natural sense, whereas his hearers, in accordance with the prevailing view, must have understood them realistically. Not only are we at a loss for a rational explanation of such a method on Jesus’ part, but he himself gives not the slightest hint of it. So the problem remains as urgent as ever, how the juxtaposition of two discordant views of the world is to be explained. The sole solution seems to lie in the assumption of a gradual development. Jesus may have entertained at first a purely ethical view, looking for the realisation of the Kingdom of God through the spread and perfection of the moral-religious society which he was undertaking to establish. When, however, the opposition of the world put the organic completion of the Kingdom in doubt, the eschatological [pg 086] conception forced itself upon him. By the course of events he was brought to the pass where the fulfilment of the religious-ethical ideal, which hitherto he had regarded as the terminus of a continuous moral development, could be expected only as the result of a cosmic catastrophe in which God’s omnipotence should bring to its conclusion the work which he had undertaken. Thus a complete revolution is supposed to have occurred in Jesus’ thought. But the problem is veiled rather than solved by disposing the terms of the contrast in chronological sequence. The acceptance of the eschatological notion, if it is to be rendered intelligible in this fashion, signifies nothing less than a total breach with the past, a break at which all development ceases. For the eschatological thought, if it be taken seriously, abrogates the ethical train of thought. It accepts no subordinate place. To such a position of impotence it was brought for the first time in Christian theology as the result of historical experience. Jesus, however, must have thought either eschatologically or uneschatologically, but not both together—nor in such a wise that the eschatological was superadded to supplement the uneschatological. [pg 087]