throughout life, but that He "is manifestly a beautiful nature from the first." Thus, for all Strauss's awkward, arbitrary handling of the history he is greater than the rival[1] who could manufacture history with such skill.
Nevertheless, from the point of view of theological science, this work marks a standstill. That was the net result of the thirty years of critical study of the life of Jesus for the man who had inaugurated it so impressively. This was the only fruit which followed those blossoms so full of promise of the first Life of Jesus.
It is significant that in the same year there appeared Schleiermacher's lectures on the Life of Jesus, which had not seen the light for forty years, because, as Strauss himself remarked in his criticism of the resurrected work, it had neither anodyne nor dressing for the wounds which his first Life of Jesus had made.[2] The wounds, however, had cicatrised in the meantime. It is true Strauss is a just judge, and makes ample acknowledgment of the greatness of Schleiermacher's achievement.[3] He blames Schleiermacher for setting up his "presuppositions in regard to Christ" as an historical canon, and considering it a proof that a statement is unhistorical if it does not square with those presuppositions. But does not the purely human, but to a certain extent unhistorical, man, who is to be the ultimate product of the process of eliminating myth, serve Strauss as his "theoretic Christ" who determines the presentment of his historical Jesus? Does he not share with Schleiermacher the erroneous, artificial, "double" construction of the consciousness of Jesus? And what about their views of Mark? What fundamental difference is there, when all is said, between Schleiermacher's de-rationalised Life of Jesus and Strauss's? Certainly this second Life of Jesus would not have frightened Schleiermacher's away into hiding for thirty years.
So Schleiermacher's Life of Jesus might now safely venture
- ↑ Strauss's second Life of Jesus appeared in French in 1864.
- ↑ "I can now say without incurring the reproach of self-glorification, and almost without needing to fear contradiction, that if my Life of Jesus had not appeared in the year after Schleiermacher's death, his would not have been withheld for so long. Up to that time it would have been hailed by the theological world as a deliverer; but for the wounds which my work inflicted on the theology of the day, it had neither anodyne nor dressing; nay, it displayed the author as in a measure responsible for the disaster, for the waters which he had admitted drop by drop were now in defiance of his prudent reservations, pouring in like a flood."-From the introduction to The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History, 1865.
- ↑ "Now that Schleiermacher's Life of Jesus at last lies before us in print, all parties can gather about it in heartfelt rejoicing. The appearance of a work by Schleiermacher is always an enrichment to literature. Any product of a mind like his cannot fail to shed light and life on the minds of others. And of works of this kind our theological literature has certainly in these days no superfluity. Where the living are for the most part as it were dead, it is meet that the dead should arise and bear witness. These lectures of Schleiermacher's, when compared with the work of his pupils, show clearly that the great theologian has let fall upon them only his mantle and not his spirit."-Ibid.
