Note 5 — Chapter XVII · THE JESUS-FIGURE OF M. LOISY

The primary evangel having thus simply disappeared, we revert to the Jesuine Teaching (addressed in large part only to the disciples) which had formed among disciples and adherents such a “religious life” as served to develop the conviction that the Master could not really die, and so prepared the foundation upon which Paul built historic Christianity.5 We have seen how M. Loisy vacillates over the Founder’s conception of the Kingdom of God in relation to his moral teaching. When it is a question of a myth theory, M. Loisy insists upon exactitude. “In order that the thesis should be sustainable, it would be necessary that a well-defined myth should have existed in some Jewish sect.”6 But there is no call for well-defined proofs or notions when it is a question of defending the tradition. For our critic, Jesus is first and foremost an intense believer in a miraculous advent of that Kingdom which had come simply to mean “the sovereignty of God.”7 Even this conception is of necessity vague to the last degree:—