in a lecture at Leipzig,[1] "has aroused a painful interest. We had learnt to know him in many aspects; we were not prepared for such an apostasy from his own past. How long is it since he brought about the dismissal of Kuno Fischer from Heidelberg because he saw in the pantheism of this philosopher a danger to Church and State? It is still fresh in our memory that it was he who in the year 1852 drew up the report of the Theological Faculty of Heidelberg upon the ecclesiastical controversy raised by Pastor Dulon at Bremen, in which he denied Dulon's Christianity on the ground that he had assailed the doctrines of original sin, of justification by faith, of a living and personal God, of the eternal Divine Sonship of Christ, of the Kingdom of God, and of the credibility of the holy Scriptures." And now this same Schenkel was misusing the Life of Jesus as a weapon in "party polemics"!
The agitation against him was engineered from Berlin, where his successful attack upon the illiberal constitution of the Church had not been forgiven. One hundred and seventeen Baden clerics signed a protest declaring the author unfitted to hold office as a theological teacher in the Baden Church. Throughout the whole of Germany the pastors agitated against him. It was especially demanded that he should be immediately removed from his post as Director of the Seminary. A counter-protest was issued by the Durlach Conference in the July of 1864, in which Bluntschli and Holtzmann vigorously defended him. The Ecclesiastical Council supported him, and the storm gradually died away, especially when Schenkel in two "Defences" skilfully softened down the impression made by his work, and endeavoured to quiet the public mind by pointing out that he had only attempted to set forth one side of the truth.[2]
The position of the prospective martyr was not rendered any more easy by Strauss. In an appendix to his criticism of Schleiermacher's Life of Jesus he settled accounts with his old antagonist.[3] He recognises no scientific value whatever in the work. None of the ideas developed in it are new. One might
- ↑ Die modernen Darstellungen des Lebens Jesu. (Modern Presentments of the Life of Jesus.) A discussion of the works of Strauss, Renan, and Schenkel, and of the Essays of Coquerel the Younger, Scherer, Colani, and Keim. A lecture by Chr. Ernest Luthardt, Leipzig. 1st and 2nd editions, 1864. Luthardt was born in 1823 at Maroldsweisach in Lower Franconia became Docent at Erlangen in 1851, was called to Marburg as Professor Extraordinary in 1854, and to Leipzig as Ordinary Professor in 1856. He died in 1902.
- ↑ Zur Orientierung uber meine Schrift "Das Charakterbild Jesu." (Explanations intended to place my work "A picture of the Character of Jesus" in the proper light.) 1864. Die protestantische Freiheit in ihrem gegenwartigen Kampfe mit der kirchlichen Reaktion. (Protestant Freedom in its present Struggle with Ecclesiastical Reaction.) 1865.
- ↑ Der Schenkel'sche Handel in Baden. (The Schenkel Controversy in Baden.) (A corrected reprint from number 441 of the National-Zeitung of September 21, 1864.) An appendix to Der Christus des Galubens und der Jesus der Geschichte. 1865.
