for the fact that instead of leading to the right explanation, it only introduced a wearisome and unproductive controversy. [1]
In the end there remains scarcely a shade of distinction between Kalthoff and his opponents. They want to bring their "historical Jesus" into the midst of our time. He wants to do the same with his "Christ." "A secularised Christ," he says, "as the type of the self-determined man who amid strife and suffering carries through victoriously, and fully realises, His own personality in order to give the infinite fullness of love which He bears within Himself as a blessing to mankind-a Christ such as that can awaken to new life the antique Christ-type of the Church. He is no longer the Christ of the scholar, of the abstract theological thinker with his scholastic rules and methods. He is the people's Christ, the Christ of the ordinary man, the figure in which all those powers of the human soul which are most natural and simple-and therefore most exalted and divine-find an expression at once sensible and spiritual." But that is precisely the description of the Jesus of modern historical theology; why, then, make this long roundabout through scepticism? The Christ of Kalthoff is nothing else than the Jesus of those whom he combats in such a lofty fashion; the only difference is that he draws his figure of Christ in red ink on blotting-paper, and because it is red in colour and smudgy in outline, wants to make out that it is something new.
It is on ethical grounds that Eduard von Hartmann [2] refuses to accept the Jesus of modern theology. He finds fault with it because in its anxiety to retain a personality which would be of value to religion it does not sufficiently distinguish between the authentic and the "historical" Jesus. When criticism has removed the paintings-over and retouchings to which this authentic portrait of Jesus has been subjected, it reaches, according to him, an unrecognisable painting below, in which it is impossible to discover any clear likeness, least of all one of any religious use and value.
Were it not for the tenacity and the simple fidelity of the epic tradition, nothing whatever would have remained of the historic Jesus. What has remained is merely of historical and psychological interest.
At His first appearance the historic Jesus was, according to
- ↑ Against Kalthoff: Wilhelm Bousset, Was wissen wir von Jesus? (What do we know about Jesus?) Lectures delivered before the Protestantenverein at Bremen. alle, 1904. 73 pp. In reply: Albert Kalthoff, Was wissen wir von Jesus? A settlement of accounts with Professor Bousset. Berlin, 1904. 43 pp. A sound historical position is set forth in the clear and trenchant lecture of W. Kapp, Das Christus- und Christentumsproblent bei Kalthoff. (The problem of the Christ and of Christianity as handled by Kalthoff.) Strassburg, 1905. 23 pp.
- ↑ Eduard von Hartmann, Das Christentum des Neuen Testaments. (The Christianity of the N.T.) 2nd, revised and altered, edition of the "Letters on the Christian Religion." Sachsa-in-the-Harz, 1905. 311 pp.
