Chapter XIX · THE HISTORY OF THE DISCUSSION

In all things, finally, one must be prepared for a boundless operation of the spirit of controversy, which is as it were the atmosphere of intellectual progress, and, like the physical atmosphere, is traversed by much dust, many gusts, and many persistent currents. An infinite quantity of mere insolence and mere personal aspersion arises round every problem that disturbs widespread prejudice: we have seen some of it even in a survey which aims solely at bringing out the main arguments on our issue. And where a body of doctrine is related to an economic foundation, controversy is sure to be specially protracted.

This has already been abundantly seen in the development of the “liberal” view of the human Christ, of which M. Loisy may be taken as an advanced representative; while Professor Schmiedel may rank as an exponent too advanced to be otherwise than suspect for some of the school. It is instructive to realize that M. Loisy stands to-day very much where Strauss did eighty years ago. What was then revolutionary heresy is now become a very respectable form of professional theology. Only in his old age did Strauss himself realize to what philosophical conclusions his critical method led; and on the historicity question he seems to have made no serious advance at all. Challenged by Ullmann to say whether, on his theory, the Church created the Christ of the Gospels or he the Church, Strauss replied that the alternative was false, and that both things had happened; the Christ being created by the faith of the Church, which faith in turn was created by the person of the historical Jesus. From that gyratory position he never really departed; and that is the position of M. Loisy to-day.

Later, another—or the same?—anonymous German, also cited by Strauss, in a review article condemned every attempt to find a historical basis for the Gospel myths; but in both cases the anonymity sufficiently told of the general resentment against any such view. And when Strauss himself, the first to handle the problem with an approach to scientific thoroughness, not only adhered to the central assumption of historicity, but argued confidently that the mythical dissolution of so many of the details made no difference to faith, it was natural that interest in his undertaking should slacken. The fact that it had ruined his career would perhaps count for still more. Freedom of academic discussion in Germany has never meant any minimizing of pious malice; and Strauss all his life long had to bear his cross for the offence of a new advance in historical science.

But his mood and his method not only made him fail to establish his mythical theory; they meant miscarriage in the very conception of it—a mere substitution of a subjective notion for the method of inductive science. Bauer’s final way of putting the theory merely discredits it. He decides that the whole myth was the creation of one evangelist, whereby he shows that he is no mythologist. He never reached the true myth basis. After all, “the German temperament” seems to fall short, at some rather essential points, of the faculty for solving great historical problems; one feels it somewhat acutely when Dr. Schweitzer comes to the undertaking himself.

The great merit of Schweitzer’s book is its manly and genial tone; though, as this is freely bestowed on the most extreme heretics, he may make another impression when he speaks of the “inconceivable stupidity” of the average Life of Jesus in the treatment of the connection of events. What his book mainly demonstrates is the laborious futility of the age-long discussion maintained by the professional theologians of Germany. When he comes to the latest developments, which are but extensions of the common-sense analyses of Bruno Bauer, he is full of admiration for criticisms which, I can testify, have occurred spontaneously to unpretending Freethinkers with no claim to special training. Some of the most important myth elements in the Gospels—for instance, the story of Barabbas—he does not even glance at, having apparently, like the other specialists, never realized that there is anything there to explain.

By Dr. Schweitzer’s account, the great mass of the German specialists for a century past have been unable to see contradictions and incompatibilities in the Gospels which leap to the eyes; to himself, Wrede’s statement of some of them appears to be a revelation. It would seem that the simple old “Secularist” method of exposing these had covered ground which for the specialists was wholly unexplored. Thus it comes about that the myth theory, addressed to men who had never realized the character of their own perpetually conned documents, fared as it might have done if addressed to the Council of Trent.

The bare statement of the proposition hardly reveals its significance. Dr. Schweitzer’s “dreamer” is not M. Loisy’s, who is conceived as having had something to teach to his disciples, and even to the multitude. Dr. Schweitzer’s Jesus has, indeed, disciples for no assignable reason, but he is expressly declared to be no Teacher, even as Wrede’s Teacher is expressly declared to be no Messiah. The joint result is to leave the ground tolerably clear for the scientific myth theory, of which Dr. Schweitzer has not come within sight, having omitted to inquire about it. As he sums up:—

Let us see, then, to what the eschatological theory amounts, considered as a residual historical explanation.