Though professing great esteem for Strauss, and admitting that from the purely historical point of view he is in the right, the author feels bound to congratulate the Zurichers on having refused to admit him to the office of teacher.
The pure rationalists found it much more difficult than did the mediating theologians, whether of the older or younger school, to adjust their attitude to the new solution of the miracle question. Strauss himself had made it difficult for them by remorselessly exposing the absurd and ridiculous aspects of their method, and by refusing to recognise them as allies in the battle for truth, as they really were. Paulus would have been justified in bearing him a grudge. But the inner greatness of that man of hard exterior comes out in the fact that he put his personal feelings in the background, and when Strauss became the central figure in the battle for the purity and freedom of historical science he ignored his attacks on rationalism and came to his defence. In a very remarkable letter to the Free Canton of Zurich, on "Freedom in Theological Teaching and in the Choice of Teachers for Colleges,"[1] he urges the council and the people to appoint Strauss because of the principle at stake, and in order to avoid giving any encouragement to the retrograde movement in historical science. It is as though he felt that the end of rationalism had come, but that, in the person of the enemy who had defeated it, the pure love of truth, which was the only thing that really mattered, would triumph over all the forces of reaction.
It would not, however, be true to say that Strauss had beaten rationalism from the field. In Ammon's famous Life of Jesus,[2] in which the author takes up a very respectful attitude towards Strauss, there is a vigorous survival of a peculiar kind of rationalism inspired by Kant. For Ammon, a miraculous event can only exist when its natural causes have been discovered. "The sacred history is subject to the same laws as all other narratives of antiquity." Liicke, in dealing with the raising of Lazarus, had thrown out the question whether Biblical miracles could be thought of historically at all, and in so doing supposed that he was putting their absolute character on a firmer basis. "We," says Ammon, "give the opposite answer from that which is expected; only historically conceivable miracles can be admitted." He cannot away wilh the constant confusion of faith and knowledge found in
- ↑ Uber theologische Lehrfreiheit und Lehrerwahl fur Hochschulen. Zurich, 1839.
- ↑ For full title see head of chapter. Reference may also be made to the same author's Forthbildung des Christentums zur Weltreligion. (Development of Chris- tianity into a World-religion.) Leipzig, 1833-1835. 4 vols. Ammon was born in 1766 at Bayreuth; became Professor of theology at Eriangen in 1790; was Professor in Giittingen from 1794 to 1804, and, after being back in Eriangen in the meantime, became in 1813 Senior Court Chaplain and "Oberkonsistorialrat" at Dresden, where he died in 1850. He was the most distinguished representative of historico-critical rationalism.
