Note 1 — Chapter IX · CONCLUSION

M. Loisy puts the last point in his suggestion, in criticism of Drews, that he who thinks to break down either all the traditional or the “liberal” orthodoxies by denying the historic actuality of Jesus will find he has “only furnished to their defenders the occasion to persuade a certain not uncultivated public that the divinity of Christ, or at least the unique character of his personality, is as well guaranteed as the reality of his life and his death.”1 Had M. Loisy then forgotten that his own attempts to elide from the documents a number of details which he saw to be mythical have given occasion to the defenders of the faith to assure a not uncultivated public that the disintegration of the gospels destroyed all ground for belief in any part of them?2