Page images
PDF
EPUB

DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS:

A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF MODERN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.

II.

THE

HE moment the Leben Jesu appeared, even before the second volume was published, there broke out a controversy of the bewildered and stormful sort distinctive of religious panics. Men known and unknown, schools old and new, clergy and laity, every one who could carry a stick or even spring a rattle,* joined in the melee. The Prussian Government proposed to place the book under ban, but Neander protested-" Let it be answered by argument, not by authority." The Pietists and High Lutherans hailed it as the caput mortuum of the speculative and critical schools, and began the reaction they called revival. The Hegelians, anxious to disown their too radical confrère, made a valiant effort to affiliate him to Schleiermacher, but the sons of the divine victoriously vindicated his true descent. And the storm of words did not come alone; more material penalties followed. Strauss was cast out of the university where he had given and tasted the promise of a brilliant career, and had to return to a home which was none of the happiest. His rationalist mother stood loyally by him, but his pietist father held him in horror, turning to unkindliest uses the dark rumours and cruel criticisms which filled the air. Hence came discords that shortened the mother's days, and did not sweeten the son's. He had, too, to teach in the Lyceum at Ludwigsburg-a drudgery not lightened by its contrast with the

* Das Leben Jesu für des Deutsche Volk, p. 157.

Kleine Schriften, N. F., p. 265.

congenial work and still more congenial society of Tübingen. Altogether those were evil days, fruitful of bitter memories that would not be forgotten, least of all when the intellect was busied with things religious.

But Strauss was not a man to bear criticism in silence, and his speech now was most characteristic. He replied to his critics by counter criticism, repelled their assault by assailing themselves. He selected from the hosts opposed to him certain men, representatives of various tendencies, and fell on them in the most vigorous way. The selected were Steudel, of Tübingen fame, supernaturalist and traditional theologian; Eschenmayer, philosopher and physician, a believer in animal magnetism, demoniacal possession, and other things ghostly; Wolfgang Menzel, literary critic and mythologist, a layman who acted the severe moralist; Hengstenberg, High Lutheran, standing by the letter of the Scriptures and the creeds; Bruno Bauer, just beginning his changeful career, an orthodox Hegelian, conciliator of knowledge and faith; Ullmann, a theologian, modern irenical, anxious to give to reason the things that are reason's, to faith the things that are faith's.* Strauss' criticism, save in Ullmann's case, to whom he was studiously courteous, spared neither the men nor their writings. Steudel, dolorous, incompetent, was a Pietist permeated with Rationalism, heir to a past he had not mind enough to inherit, or courage to renounce. Eschenmayer was but a succession of ever-repeated incoherences and contradictions. Menzel was a literary Ishmaelite, a critic without insight, who but blundered when he judged. Hengstenberg was full of latent Pantheism, and B. Bauer understood neither Hegel nor theology. Literary amenities seldom distinguish theological controversies, but in this case the truculence was transcendent. Strauss compared his critics to women set a-screaming by the going off of a gun.† Eschenmayer, who had denounced him as the modern

#

The replies and counter-criticisms first published in 1837, were in 1841 issued in a collective form under the title: "Streit-Schriften zur Vertheidigung Meiner Schrift über das Leben Jesu und zur Charakteristik der gegenwärtigen Theologie." The replies were in three parts. The first was the answer to Steudel and his school, that of a rational and reasoned supernaturalism, and was certainly a very merciless exposure of the self-illusions it had indulged. The second part contained the reply to Eschenmayer and Menzel. Eschenmayer is best known by his contributing through Schelling to the alliance of Natural and Transcendental Philosophy. He and Strauss met as antagonists on another field-spiritualism, or what would be now so called. Eschenmayer, in a book on "The Conflict between Heaven and Hell," sketched in a distantly Dantesque style the nether regions, where he places those who corrupt and falsify the Word, assail, deny, and blaspheme the Son of Man himself. There, of course, Iscariot is sent, and the Mythicists in general, who cry, "Great is the Goddess Idea of Berlin." Strauss thought such superfine imbecile wit laughable where not disgusting (v. Charakter u. Krit. 355, 376). The third part contained answers to Hengstenberg, the Hegelians, and the theologians of the conciliatory school, the men of the Studien u. Kritiken. The criticism of the Hegelians is of considerable autobiographical worth, and the letter to Ullmann is most pacific in tone and purport. A positive and constructive part was intended to follow, but it was embodied in the 3rd ed. of the Leben Jesu.

Leben Jesu, 2 Aufl. vor.

66

'as firm as a stone, and But, in this case, behind

Iscariot, guilty of the sin against the Holy Ghost,* was described as no inspired man of God, the Spirit not being given to plagiarism, even from himself,† while his book was characterized as the child, born in lawful wedlock, of theological ignorance and religious intolerance, consecrated by a somnambulating philosophy. Wolfgang Menzel thought his author like the devil, without conscience,§ and Strauss could not read B. Bauer's speculations without feeling as if he were in the witches' kitchen in Faust, listening to the clatter of a whole choir of a hundred thousand fools. Hengstenberg said the prophecy of Lichtenberg was fulfilled-the world had got so fine as to think the belief in God as ridiculous as the belief in ghosts. Strauss was a man without a heart, or had one like Leviathan **. hard as a piece of the nether millstone." the verbal ferocities was a mind that knew the enemy it faced, and delighted in his absolute antagonism. Hengstenberg thoroughly understood the Leben Jesu. To vanquish its speculative Pantheism the old Lutheran theology must be revived, subscription to the confessions, in their literal sense, enforced. To conquer the mythical theory, historical reality must be claimed for the narratives alike of the Old and New Testaments. If it was allowed a foothold in the one, it could not be held out of the other. The spirit of the age was to be met, not by conciliation, but by contradiction. To mediate was to be faithless. The Church, suckled on its old creeds, was to do its old work. The strength given by a narrow aim and definite belief favoured for a while the reaction; but the times proved too strong even for Hengstenberg. Churches, after an intellectual revolution, can as little return to their old confessions as countries after a political can go back to their old constitutions.

The replies Strauss noticed had, with one exception, no permanent worth. Relevant criticism was, indeed, then hardly possible. But two or three attempts at it deserve mention. Tholuck †† not only achieved a brilliant occasional success, but struck Strauss on his weakest point. He argued that the inadequate criticism of the sources made the critical life of Jesus uncritical, left its mythical theory baseless. Strauss flung a scornful complimentary sneer at the high horse of his many-sidedness,‡‡ the jewelled spoils from the ancient and modern classics sprinkled over his pages,§§ but the sting in the sneer did not neutralize the sting in the

* Streitschriften 2, p. 3. Eschenmayer's critique bore the title, "The Iscariotism of our Day."

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

criticism. Alexander Schweitzer, leader of Schleiermacher's left wing, assailed the dogmatic construction, vindicated the reality and rights of creative personalities in every province of thought and action, but especially the religious. The founder made the religion, not the religion the founder. Individual genius was here as everywhere the creative force. But there were three men who exercised on Strauss a confessedly modifying influence-De Wette, Ullmann, and Neander. De Wette,f the then most authoritative sacred critic, pronounced against his uncritical method and positions, especially as to the Fourth Gospel. Ullmann ‡ criticized the mythical theory, analyzed the idea of myth, distinguished its varieties, argued that the Gospels may be histories with mythical elements without being mythical histories. Nor were they our only sources. Paul and the primitive Church had been ignored, but they show a faith rooted in fact. Christ created the Church, not the Church Christ; the seed grew into the plant, not the plant into the seed. Neander § opposed the historical to the mythical Christ. He was arbitrary and subjective, too anxious to find an ideal and modern. in the real and ancient Christ, expected too much from a change of the contra- into the supra-natural. But his work had one pre-eminent quality, was an honest effort, marked by sympathetic insight into the character portrayed, to get face to face with the facts, to construe evangelical as actual history; and so it tended to create in the reader a consciousness of reality that could confront the mythical theory undismayed.

Some points personal to Strauss must now be noticed. He defended his work as a scientific search after truth, and for science there did not exist the holy, but only the true. He was not the enemy, but the apologist of the Christian faith, had proved its essence independent of critical inquiries. He had not wished to destroy the faith of the people, only to translate its transcendental matter into a scientific form. Hence he had written for the learned alone. Why not in Latin then? That had been to put new wine into old bottles, with the usual' certain result. He did not mean to be unchurched, was thoroughly happy and at home in the Christian religion; could be refreshed in spirit from its old yet perennially young sources." The critic did not write for edification but for science; and science, while it denied the reality of the facts, affirmed the reality of the faith. Miracles were, but the faith in them was not, unreal. The great point was not the occurrence of the resurrection, but the belief in it.tt He wished the clergy

**

Studien u. Kritiken, 1837, pp. 459-510.

† Leben Jesu, dritte Aufl.; vor., Charak. u. Krit. vor. ; de Wette, Erklarung des Ev. Johannis, Schluss betrachtung.

Studien und Krit. 1836, pp. 776 ff.

§ Neander, das Leben Jesu Christi, 1837. Streitschriften 1, p. 92.

Streitschr. 1, p. 88; 3, p. 132. ** Ibid. 1, p. 9.

tt Ibid. 1 pp. 33—48; 3, p. 41.

to preach Christ, not Schleiermacher and Hegel. But the irenical spirit apparent in these personal apologetics soon became much more pronounced. The consensus eruditorum, joined with his present loneliness and cheerless outlook for the future, constrained him into concessions and efforts at conciliation. In his third Streitschrift (1837), in the third edition of his Leben Jesu (1838), and in the Zwei Friedliche Blätter (1839), he successively and increasingly modified the cardinal points of his position, the criticism of the sources, the mythical theory, and the speculative Christology.

In the third edition of the Leben the critical attitude to the Fourth Gospel was changed. Strauss confessed that his zeal against the theologians had made him unjust to John; he now doubted his own denials, could as little say John's Gospel is genuine as it is spurious. And with these doubts as to the sources, the mythical theory could hardly retain its old rigour. Jesus became more historical; his speeches, even the Johannine discourses, more genuine, the latter giving, not the master's ipsissima verba, but the ideas they had given to the scholar.† But the less nebulous Jesus grew, the more extraordinary he became; as the range of the unconsciously creative phantasy was limited, the reality of the consciously creative person was increased. While the speculative Christology was allowed to stand, the individual had his rights conceded by Jesus being raised into the world's preeminent religious genius, creator of the Church, maker of Christianity, the emprical or real as distinguished from the absolute or ideal Christ. At the head of all world-historical events individuals stood, were the subjectivities through which the absolute substance was realized. In the field of religion, especially where Monotheistic, the grand creative forces had been individuals. And Christianity was the product of a creative individuality. "Certainly this does not again bring Christ into the peculiar Christian sanctuary, but only places him in the chapel of Alexander Severus, where, with Orpheus and Homer, he has to stand beside not only Moses, but also Mahomet, and must not be ashamed of the society of Alexander and Cæsar, Raphael and Mozart." But this disquieting co-ordination was qualified by two considerations: first, religion is not only the highest province in which the divine creative power of genius can be manifested, but is related to the others as centre to circumference. Of the religious genius in a sense quite inapplicable to poet or philosopher can it be said, "God reveals Himself in him." Secondly, as Christianity is the

† Ibid. vol. ii. 740.

Leben Jesu, dritte Aufl. vor. p. 5. Ibid., vol. ii. 770-779. This conciliatory and conclusory chapter embodied the views and modifications of the third Streitschrift; and replaced a chapter in the first edition which had given special offence.

« PreviousContinue »