Footnote 66:[ (return) ]
See the farewell discourses in John, the fundamental ideas of which are, in my opinion, genuine, that is, proceed from Jesus.
Footnote 67:[ (return) ]
The historian cannot regard a miracle as a sure given historical event: for in doing so he destroys the mode of consideration on which all historical investigation rests. Every individual miracle remains historically quite doubtful, and a summation of things doubtful never leads to certainty. But should the historian, notwithstanding, be convinced that Jesus Christ did extraordinary things, in the strict sense miraculous things, then, from the unique impression he has obtained of this person, he infers the possession by him of supernatural power. This conclusion itself belongs to the province of religious faith: though there has seldom been a strong faith which would not have drawn it. Moreover, the healing miracles of Jesus are the only ones that come into consideration in a strict historical examination. These certainly cannot be eliminated from the historical accounts without utterly destroying them. But how unfit are they of themselves, after 1800 years, to secure any special importance to him to whom they are attributed, unless that importance was already established apart from them. That he could do with himself what he would, that he created a new thing without overturning the old, that he won men to himself by announcing the Father, that he inspired without fanaticism, set up a kingdom without politics, set men free from the world without asceticism, was a teacher without theology, at a time of fanaticism and politics, asceticism and theology, is the great miracle of his person, and that he who preached the Sermon on the Mount declared himself in respect of his life and death, to be the Redeemer and Judge of the world, is the offence and foolishness which mock all reason.
Footnote 68:[ (return) ]
See Mark X. 45.—That Jesus at the celebration of the first Lord's supper described his death as a sacrifice which he should offer for the forgiveness of sin, is clear from the account of Paul. From that account it appears to be certain, that Jesus gave expression to the idea of the necessity and saving significance of his death for the forgiveness of sins, in a symbolical ordinance (based on the conclusion of the covenant, Exod. XXIV. 3 ff., perhaps, as Paul presupposes, on the Passover), in order that His disciples by repeating it in accordance with the will of Jesus, might be the more deeply impressed by it. Certain observations based on John VI., on the supper prayer in the Didache, nay, even on the report of Mark, and supported at the same time by features of the earliest practice in which it had the character of a real meal, and the earliest theory of the supper, which viewed it as a communication of eternal life and an anticipation of the future existence, have for years made me doubt very much whether the Pauline account and the Pauline conception of it, were really either the oldest, or the universal and therefore only one. I have been strengthened in this suspicion by the profound and remarkable investigation of Spitta (z. Gesch. u. Litt. d. Urchristenthums: Die urchristl. Traditionen ü. den Urspr. u. Sinnd. Abendmahls, 1893). He sees in the supper as not instituted, but celebrated by Jesus, the festival of the Messianic meal, the anticipated triumph over death, the expression of the perfection of the Messianic work, the symbolic representation of the filling of believers with the powers of the Messianic kingdom and life. The reference to the Passover and the death of Christ was attached to it later, though it is true very soon. How much is thereby explained that was hitherto obscure—critical, historical, and dogmatico-historical questions—cannot at all be stated briefly. And yet I hesitate to give a full recognition to Spitta's exposition: the words 1 Cor. XI. 23: εγω γαρ παρελαβον απο του κυριου, 'ο και παρεδοκα 'υμιν κ.τ.λ. are too strong for me. Cf. besides, Weizsäcker's investigation in "The Apostolic Age." Lobstein, La doctrine de la s. cène. 1889. A. Harnack i.d. Texten u. Unters. VII. 2. p. 139 ff. Schürer, Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1891, p. 29 ff. Jülicher Abhandl. f Weizsäcker, 1892, p. 215 ff.
Footnote 69:[ (return) ]
With regard to the eschatology, no one can say in detail what proceeds from Jesus, and what from the disciples. What has been said in the text does not claim to be certain, but only probable. The most important, and at the same time the most certain point, is that Jesus made the definitive fate of the individual depend on faith, humility and love. There are no passages in the Gospel which conflict with the impression that Jesus reserved day and hour to God, and wrought in faith and patience as long as for him it was day.
Footnote 70:[ (return) ]
He did not impose on every one, or desire from every one even the outward following of himself: see Mark V. 18-19. The "imitation of Jesus", in the strict sense of the word, did not play any noteworthy rôle either in the Apostolic or in the old Catholic period.
Footnote 71:[ (return) ]
It is asserted by well-informed investigators, and may be inferred from the Gospels (Mark XII. 32-34; Luke X. 27, 28), perhaps also from the Jewish original of the Didache, that some representatives of Pharisaism, beside the pedantic treatment of the law, attempted to concentrate it on the fundamental moral commandments. Consequently, in Palestinian and Alexandrian Judaism at the time of Christ, in virtue of the prophetic word and the Thora, influenced also, perhaps, by the Greek spirit which everywhere gave the stimulus to inwardness, the path was indicated in which the future development of religion was to follow. Jesus entered fully into the view of the law thus attempted, which comprehended it as a whole and traced it back to the disposition. But he freed it from the contradiction that adhered to it, (because, in spite of and alongside the tendency to a deeper perception, men still persisted in deducing righteousness from a punctilious observance of numerous particular commandments, because in so doing they became self-satisfied, that is, irreligious, and because in belonging to Abraham they thought they had a claim of right on God). For all that, so far as a historical understanding of the activity of Jesus is at all possible, it is to be obtained from the soil of Pharisaism, as the Pharisees were those who cherished and developed the Messianic expectations, and because, along with their care for the Thora, they sought also to preserve, in their own way, the prophetic inheritance. If everything does not deceive us, there were already contained in the Pharisaic theology of the age, speculations which were fitted to modify considerably the narrow view of history, and to prepare for universalism. The very men who tithed mint, anise and cummin, who kept their cups and dishes outwardly clean, who, hedging round the Thora, attempted to hedge round the people, spoke also of the sum total of the law. They made room in their theology for new ideas which are partly to be described as advances, and on the other hand, they have already pondered the question even in relation to the law, whether submission to its main contents was not sufficient for being numbered among the people of the covenant (see Renan: Paul). In particular the whole sacrificial system, which Jesus also essentially ignored, was therewith thrust into the background. Baldensperger (Selbstbewusstsein Jesu. p. 46) justly says. "There lie before us definite marks that the certainty of the nearness of God in the Temple (from the time of the Maccabees) begins to waver, and the efficacy of the temple institutions to be called in question. Its recent desecration by the Romans, appears to the author of the Psalms of Solomon (II. 2) as a kind of Divine requital for the sons of Israel, themselves having been guilty of so grossly profaning the sacrificial gifts. Enoch calls the shewbread of the second Temple polluted and unclean. There had crept in among the pious a feeling of the insufficiency of their worship, and from this side the Essenic schism will certainly represent only the open outbreak of a disease which had already begun to gnaw secretly at the religious life of the nation": see here the excellent explanations of the origin of Essenism in Lucius (Essenism 75 ff. 109 ff.) The spread of Judaism in the world, the secularization and apostacy of the priestly caste, the desecration of the Temple, the building of the Temple at Leontopolis, the perception brought about by the spiritualising of religion in the empire of Alexander the Great, that no blood of beast can be a means of reconciling God—all these circumstances must have been absolutely dangerous and fatal, both to the local centralisation of worship, and to the statutory sacrificial system. The proclamation of Jesus (and of Stephen) as to the overthrow of the Temple, is therefore no absolutely new thing, nor is the fact that Judaism fell back upon the law and the Messianic hope, a mere result of the destruction of the Temple. This change was rather prepared by the inner development. Whatever point in the preaching of Jesus we may fix on, we shall find, that—apart from the writings of the Prophets and the Psalms, which originated in the Greek Maccabean periods—parallels can be found only in Pharisaism, but at the same time that the sharpest contrasts must issue from it. Talmudic Judaism is not in every respect the genuine continuance of Pharisaic Judaism, but a product of the decay which attests that the rejection of Jesus by the spiritual leaders of the people had deprived the nation, and even the Virtuosi of Religion of their best part (see for this the expositions of Kuenen "Judaismus und Christenthum", in his (Hibbert) lectures on national religions and world religions). The ever recurring attempts to deduce the origin of Christianity from Hellenism, or even from the Roman Greek culture, are there also rightly, briefly and tersely rejected. Also the hypotheses, which either entirely eliminate the person of Jesus or make him an Essene, or subordinate him to the person of Paul, may be regarded as definitively settled. Those who think they can ascertain the origin of Christian religion from the origin of Christian Theology will, indeed, always think of Hellenism: Paul will eclipse the person of Jesus with those who believe that a religion for the world must be born with a universalistic doctrine. Finally, Essenism will continue in authority with those who see in the position of indifference which Jesus took to the Temple worship, the main thing, and who, besides, create for themselves an "Essenism of their own finding." Hellenism, and also Essenism, can of course indicate to the historian some of the conditions by which the appearance of Jesus was prepared and rendered possible; but they explain only the possibility, not the reality of the appearance. But this with its historically not deducible power is the decisive thing. If some one has recently said that "the historical speciality of the person of Jesus" is not the main thing in Christianity, he has thereby betrayed that he does not know how a religion that is worthy of the name is founded, propagated, and maintained. For the latest attempt to put the Gospel in a historical connection with Buddhism (Seydel, Das Ev von Jesus in seinen Verhältnissen zur Buddha-Sage, 1882: likewise, Die Buddha-Legende und das Leben Jesu, 1884), see, Oldenburg, Theol. Lit-Z'g 1882. Col. 415 f. 1884. 185 f. However much necessarily remains obscure to us in the ministry of Jesus when we seek to place it in a historical connection,—what is known is sufficient to confirm the judgment that his preaching developed a germ in the religion of Israel (see the Psalms) which was finally guarded and in many respects developed by the Pharisees, but which languished and died under their guardianship. The power of development which Jesus imported to it was not a power which he himself had to borrow from without; but doctrine and speculation were as far from him as ecstasy and visions. On the other hand, we must remember we do not know the history of Jesus up to his public entrance on his ministry, and that therefore we do not know whether in his native province he had any connection with Greeks.
Footnote 72:[ (return) ]
See the brilliant investigations of Weizsäcker (Apost. Zeitalter. p. 36) as to the earliest significant names, self-designations, of the disciples. The twelve were in the first place "μαθηται," (disciples and family-circle of Jesus, see also the significance of James and the brethren of Jesus), then witnesses of the resurrection and therefore Apostles; very soon there appeared beside them, even in Jerusalem, Prophets and Teachers.
Footnote 73:[ (return) ]
The Christian preaching is very pregnantly described in Acts XXVIII. 31. as κηρυσσειν την Βασιλειαν του Θεου, και διδασκειν τα περι του Ιησου Χριστου.
Footnote 74:[ (return) ]
On the spirit of God (of Christ) see note, p. 50. The earliest Christians felt the influence of the spirit as one coming on them from without.
Footnote 75:[ (return) ]
It cannot be directly proved that Jesus instituted baptism, for Matth. XXVIII. 19, is not a saying of the Lord. The reasons for this assertion are: (1) It is only a later stage of the tradition that represents the risen Christ as delivering speeches and giving commandments. Paul knows nothing of it. (2) The Trinitarian formula is foreign to the mouth of Jesus and has not the authority in the Apostolic age which it must have had if it had descended from Jesus himself. On the other hand, Paul knows of no other way of receiving the Gentiles into the Christian communities than by baptism, and it is highly probable that in the time of Paul all Jewish Christians were also baptised. We may perhaps assume that the practice of baptism was continued in consequence of Jesus' recognition of John the Baptist and his baptism, even after John himself had been removed. According to John IV. 2, Jesus himself baptised not, but his disciples under his superintendence. It is possible only with the help of tradition to trace back to Jesus a "Sacrament of Baptism," or an obligation to it ex necessitate salutis, though it is credible that tradition is correct here. Baptism in the Apostolic age was εις αφεσιν 'αμαρτιων, and indeed εις το ονομα χριστου (1 Cor. I. 13; Acts XIX. 5). We cannot make out when the formula, εις το ονομα του πατρος, και του 'υιου, και του 'αγιου πνευματος, emerged. The formula εις το ονομα expresses that the person baptised is put into a relation of dependence on him into whose name he is baptised. Paul has given baptism a relation to the death of Christ, or justly inferred it from the εις αφεσιν 'αμαρτιων. The descent of the spirit on the baptised very soon ceased to be regarded as the necessary and immediate result of baptism; yet Paul, and probably his contemporaries also, considered the grace of baptism and the communication of the spirit to be inseparably united. See Scholten. Die Taufformel. 1885. Holtzman, Die Taufe im N.T. Ztsch. f. wiss. Theol. 1879.