The quest of the historical Jesus : $b a critical study of its progress from Reimarus to WredeSchweitzer, Albert
Religion
The quest of the historical Jesus : $b a critical study of its progress from Reimarus to Wrede
Schweitzer, Albert
Jesus Christ -- Biography -- History and criticism; Jesus Christ -- Historicity
_Dr. Schweitzer’s book does not pretend to be an impartial survey. He has
his own solution of the problems, and it is not to be expected that
English students will endorse the whole of his view of the Gospel History,
any more than his German fellow‐workers have done. But valuable and
suggestive as I believe his constructive work to be in its main outlines,
I venture to think his grasp of the nature and complexity of the great
Quest is even more remarkable, and his exposition of it cannot fail to
stimulate us in England. Whatever we may think of Dr. Schweitzer’s
solution or that of his opponents, we too have to reckon with the Son of
Man who was expected to come before the apostles had gone over the cities
of Israel, the Son of Man who would come in His Kingdom before some that
heard our Lord speak should taste death, the Son of Man who came to give
His life a ransom for many, whom __ they would see hereafter coming with
the clouds of heaven. __“__Who is this Son of Man?__”__ Dr. Schweitzer’s
book is an attempt to give the full historical value and the true
historical setting to these fundamental words of the Gospel of Jesus._
_Our first duty, with the Gospel as with every other ancient document, is
to interpret it with reference to its own time. The true view of the
Gospel will be that which explains the course of events in the first
century and the second century, rather than that which seems to have
spiritual and imaginative value for the twentieth century. Yet I cannot
refrain from pointing out here one feature of the theory of thoroughgoing
eschatology, which may appeal to those who are accustomed to the venerable
forms of ancient Christian aspiration and worship. It may well be that
absolute truth cannot be embodied in human thought and that its expression
must always be clothed in symbols. It may be that we have to translate the
hopes and fears of our spiritual ancestors into the language of our new
world. We have to learn, as the Church in the second century had to learn,
that the End is not yet, that New Jerusalem, like all other objects of
sense, is an image of the truth rather than the truth itself. But at least
we are beginning to see that the apocalyptic vision, the New Age which God
is to bring in, is no mere embroidery of Christianity, but the heart of
its enthusiasm. And therefore the expectations of vindication and judgment
to come, the imagery of the Messianic Feast, the __“__other‐
worldliness__”__ against which so many eloquent words were said in the
nineteenth century, are not to be regarded as regrettable accretions
foisted on by superstition to the pure morality of the original Gospel.
These ideas are the Christian Hope, to be allegorised and
__“__spiritualised__”__ by us for our own use whenever necessary, but not
to be given up so long as we remain Christians at all. Books which teach
us boldly to trust the evidence of our documents, and to accept the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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