The effect on the different theological critics throughout Germany, both friendly and hostile, was so remarkable, that the year 1835, in which the book was published, is as memorable in theology as the year 1848 in politics. The work carried criticism and philosophy to its farthest limits, and demanded from theologians of all classes a thorough reconsideration of the subject of the origines of Christianity.[827] The ablest theologians either wrote in refutation of it, or reconsidered their own opinions by the light of its criticisms. ([38]) The alarm at the loss of the historic basis of Christianity created a strong reaction in favour of the Lutheran orthodoxy, the commencement of which has already been named;[828] and gave the death-blow, not only to the Hegelian [pg 274] school, but almost to the passion for ontological speculation in Germany. While some thus assumed a churchly and conservative aspect, others outstripped Strauss, and, uniting with French positivism, advanced into utter pantheism and materialism.
The Hegelian party, to which Strauss belonged, and which would fain have been excused from this reductio ad absurdum of its principles,[829] became split into sections through the various attempts made to parry the blow, and reconstruct their system on the philosophical side. The critical tendency had now too found a home, by means of Strauss's work, among the Hegelians; and this led to the creation of a new school of historical criticism to be hereafter described, which arose in Strauss's own university of Tübingen.[830]
We have now explained the circumstances attending the change which closed the second and introduced the third period in German theology.
In this third period, which is that of contemporary thought, we may distinguish four broadly marked tendencies; three within the church, and one directly infidel in character outside of it.[831]
The last named, which we shall describe first, started from Strauss's position, and advanced still farther. It sprang from the destructive side of the Hegelian philosophy, and has sometimes been named the young Hegelian school. From the first it lacked the air of respect toward religion which Strauss did not throw aside in his work; and it also extended itself from theology to politics.
Bruno Bauer,[832] a Professor at Berlin, by turning suddenly round from the most orthodox to the most heterodox position in his school, may be classed with Strauss in his method, though not in his spirit. He carried out Strauss's critical examination of the Gospels with a coarse ridicule; and extended it by denying the historic basis of fact, and imputing the myth to the personal creation of the individual writer. But his successors advanced even farther. As Bauer developed the critical side of Strauss, Feuerbach[833] and Ruge[834] developed the philosophical, and destroyed the very idea of religion itself, by showing that the idea of God or of religion is of human construction, the giving objective existence to an idea. The aspiration, instead of guaranteeing the existence of an object toward which it is directed, is represented as creating it. This was the final result of the subjective point of view of the Kantian philosophy, and of the idealism of Hegel. Reason [pg 276] must, it was pretended, be followed, to whatever extent it contradicts the feelings. Theology becomes anthropology; religion, mythology; pantheism, atheism; man, collective humanity, becomes the sole object of the belief and respect which had been previously given to Deity; religion vanishes in morality. The love of man becomes the substitute for the love of God. This was a position analogous to that which positivism reached in France, but from a mental instead of a physical point of view. This form of thought found expression in literature through the poetry of Heine,[835] and linked itself with political theories of communism more extreme than the contemporary ones in France.
Still the lowest point was not reached: religion was treated as a psychological peculiarity, and the virtue of benevolence recognised. But when religion was felt to be only an idea, and the belief of the supernatural to be the great obstacle to political reform, an intense feeling of antipathy was aroused; and Schmidt,[836] under the pseudonym of Stirner, reached the naturalistic point of view held by Volney, the worship of self-love. This new school, which had arisen in the few years subsequent to Strauss's work, mingled itself with the revolutionary movements of Germany in 1848, and was the means of exciting the alarm which caused the suppression of them. Since that date the school has been extinct as a literary movement.
The tendency just described was entirely destructive. The three others, which remain for consideration, exist within the church, and are in their nature reconstructive, and aim at repelling the attacks of Strauss and [pg 277] of other previous critics. The one that we shall describe first is that which is most rationalistic, and approaches most nearly to Strauss's views; and is frequently called, from the Swabian university which has been its stronghold, the Tübingen school.[837] It is a lineal offshoot in some slight degree from the school of Hegel, and more decidedly from the critical school of De Wette, before named. But it stands contrasted with the latter by caution, as marked as that which separates recent critics[838] of Roman history from earlier ones, like Niebuhr. Like Strauss, it restricts its attention to the New Testament; but it is a direct reaction against his inclination to undervalue the historical element. The great problem presented to it is, to reconstruct the history of early Christianity, to reinvestigate the genesis of the gospel biographies and doctrine. Declining to approach the books of the New Testament with dogmatic preconceptions, it breaks with the past, and interprets them by the historic method; proposing for its fundamental principle to interpret scripture exactly like any other literary work. Pretending that after the ravages of criticism, the Gospels cannot be regarded as true history, but only as miscellaneous materials for true history, it takes its stand on four of the [pg 278] Epistles of St. Paul, the genuineness of which it cannot doubt, and finds in the struggle of Jew and Gentile its theory of Christianity.[839] Christianity is not regarded as miraculous, but as an offshoot of Judaism, which received its final form by the contest of the Petrine or Judæo-Christian party, and the Pauline or Gentile; which contest is considered by it not to have been decided till late in the second century. By the aid of this theory, constructed from the few books which it admits to be of undoubted genuineness, it guides itself in the examination of the remainder, tracing them to party interests which determined their aim, pronouncing on their object and date by reference to it.[840] In this way it arrives at most extraordinary conclusions in reference to some of them. Not one single book, except four of St. Paul's Epistles, is regarded to be authentic. The Gospel called that of St. John is considered as a treatise of Alexandrian philosophy, written late in the second century to support the theory of the Λόγος. It will thus be perceived that the inquiry, though it professes to be objective, yet has a subjective cast.
The leader of this school was Christian Baur, ([39]) lately deceased; a man of large erudition; a wonder of acuteness even in Germany; distinguished for the extraordinary ability displayed in his reply to the attacks made on Protestantism by the celebrated Roman catholic theologian Moehler: and though the doctrinal result of the school is ethics or pure Socinianism and naturalism, and the critical opinions obviously are most extravagant, the sagacity and learning shown in the monographs published by it make them some of the most instructive, as sources of information, in modern theology, to those who know how to use them aright. From an orthodox point of view the effect of the school is most destructive; but, if viewed in reference to the preceding schools, it manifests a tenacious hold over the [pg 279] historic side of Christianity, and has affected in a literary way the schools formerly described, which claim lineage from the older critics.
As the tendency just described is the modern representative of the older critical schools; so the next holds a similar position to the philosophical.