Note 107 — II THE JESUS OF THE GOSPELS

How much trouble have not our theologians taken, and do they not even now take, to show even one single point in Jesus’ doctrines which may justify their declaring with a good conscience his “uniqueness” in the sense understood by them, and may justify their raising their purely human Jesus as high as possible above his own age! Not one of all the passages quoted to this end has been allowed to remain. The Synoptic Jesus taught neither a new and loftier morality, nor a “new meekness,” nor a deepened consciousness of God; neither the “indestructible value of the individual souls of men” in the present-day individualistic sense, nor even freedom as against the Jewish Law, nor the immanence of the kingdom of God, nor anything else, that surpassed the capabilities of another intellectually distinguished man of his age. Even the love, the general love, of one’s neighbour, the preaching of which is with the greater portion of the laity the chief claim to veneration possessed by the historical Jesus, in the Synoptics plays no very important part in Jesus’ moral conception of life; governing no wider sphere than had already been allowed it in the Old Testament.107 And if the pulpit eloquence of nineteen hundred years has nevertheless attempted to lay stress on this point, it is because it counts on the faithful not having in mind the difference between the Gospels, and on their peacefully permitting the Gospel of John, the one and only “gospel of love,” which, however, is not supposed to be “historical,” to be substituted for the Synoptic Gospels. And so we actually see the glorification of Jesus’ doctrines which, a short time ago, flourished so luxuriantly, appearing recently in more and more moderate terms.108