5: Nineteenth-Century Liberals versus Liberals on Alternative Theories
5
Nineteenth-Century Liberals versus Liberals on Alternative Theories
Throughout the more than a century of New Testament scholarship dominated by the reign of German liberalism, we have seen that various major naturalistic theories were proposed to account for at least the supernatural portion of the resurrection accounts. These theories came in a number of different subvarieties as well. But one of the most intriguing aspects of this back-and-forth dialogue is that while each of the liberal scholars of course supported their own personal alternative formulations, they quite frequently attacked the positions taken by their liberal colleagues. Neither did they shy away from leveling some of the strongest, most potent critiques against those who held positions other than their own, often pointing out some of the most serious issues with these natural responses, ones that are still employed today more than a century later. Several of the critiques even rather surprisingly went well beyond substance alone to comments that contained very caustic flavors.
Thus, some of the most memorable critiques of these natural hypotheses came from the pens of these German liberal scholars as they sparred with their colleagues. The best-known comment by far is David Strauss’s unforgettable denunciation of the swoon or apparent death theory held by Heinrich Paulus and others. This criticism by Strauss remains the most common single rejoinder to the swoon thesis still voiced today.
Another example is that of Theodor Keim’s detailed, multifaceted critique of Strauss’s subjective vision theory, which arose after Keim’s best initial efforts to unpack and understand the hallucination thesis. Keim’s comments were also a major, well-evaluated effort, exhibiting criticisms that are still heard presently.
But even the briefer criticisms and one-liners were sometimes quite memorable, pertinent, and insightful. In this chapter we will view a number of these liberal German critiques of the resurrection hypotheses supported by contemporary liberal scholars. However, it ought to be noted that not the slightest effort is being made to construct a systematic, multifaceted, or detailed critique, let alone a complete one. The very nature of reporting these complaints from fellow liberals rather necessitates that the comments be far scantier and piecemeal, as well as more disorganized than might be hoped. Still, these efforts should be helpful in grasping the historical atmosphere of these debates as well as revealing the substance of key complaints and some of the very best retorts to these alternative ideas.
Schweitzer’s Critiques of Historical Jesus Studies
In earlier chapters, we identified the two most popular paths that the German liberal scholars took in approaching the historical Jesus. The earlier, rationalistic tendency was inclined to accept most of the underlying, particular Gospel account as historical while substituting a natural hypothesis in place of the supernatural portion. On the other hand, the more radical mythical approach tended to reject large portions of the account or even the entire passage altogether, considering it to be the result of later, nonhistorical accretion in various ways. These two methods were in competition that sometimes sparked rivalries along with some agreed-upon similarities.
Albert Schweitzer very helpfully described this and other liberal rivalries throughout his major work on German liberalism. In the process, he definitely had a knack for getting to the heart of controversies and locating key flash points. For example, the setting for one of these memorable clashes was the intersection of ideas between two of the liberal giants: Schleiermacher and Strauss. When Schleiermacher lectured on the historical Jesus for the last time in 1832, Schweitzer graphically asserted with his frequent flair for words that Schleiermacher’s work was already “rendered obsolete by the work of Strauss. For the questions raised by the latter’s Life of Jesus, published in 1864, Schleiermacher had no answer, and for the wounds which it made, no healing.” Further, according to Schweitzer, the rational method “received its death-blow at the hands of Strauss” (56).
Schweitzer frequently critiqued the nineteenth-century German scholars for making assumed, a priori decisions and rejections, and did so in some graphic language as well. For example, he remarked further concerning Schleiermacher, who he thought “comes to the facts with a ready-made dialectic apparatus and sets his puppets in lively action” (62). Likewise, Schweitzer thought that Otto Pfleiderer failed to ground his own Christology: “He laboriously brings together wood, straw, and stubble, but where he gets the fire from to kindle the whole into the ardent faith of primitive Christianity he is unable to make clear” (314–15).
Schweitzer also commented regarding the competing rational versus mythical approaches within German liberalism as well as internal group debates. For example, he discussed in great detail Bruno Bauer’s theses, such as his critique of F. C. Baur’s “four great Pauline Epistles, which the Tübingen school fondly imagined to be beyond the reach of criticism.” But Schweitzer judged that Bauer’s “transference of the Epistles to the second century is effected in so arbitrary a fashion that it refutes itself” (157). But as if that were not enough, Bauer also moved the Gospels to the second century as well.
Moreover, Bauer’s last book on Christ and the Caesars “is even more unsatisfactory than that suggested in the preliminary work on the Pauline epistles.” This is due to Bauer abandoning the historical method altogether and attempting to base his thesis about Christianity on “an imaginary picture of the life of Seneca.” Here, Seneca’s ideas are seen as some sort of mystical precursor for Paul’s writings (157). In the process of evaluating these ideas, Schweitzer repeatedly uses terms for Bruno Bauer’s research such as “subjective,” “arbitrary,” “unsatisfactory,” and “eccentric” (148, 157, 159). That these negative terms were employed on separate pages where Bauer was addressed perhaps indicates that this caricature was essentially what Schweitzer thought of him.
As a result of missteps such as these in his research, Bruno Bauer’s views were largely disregarded by the German liberal scholars of his day. This includes his position that Jesus never existed, which was simply judged to be too far off the beaten scholarly path to have gained much influence, especially when, as Schweitzer argued, Bauer’s theses were far too poorly reasoned. Placing even Paul’s authentic epistles as well as the Gospels in the second century in order to support his thesis of Jesus’s nonexistence was also too uninformed and ungrounded. As a result, Schweitzer reported that Bauer “failed to exercise any influence. His work was simply ignored” (138). Further, “he had long been regarded by theologians as an extinct force; nay, more, had been forgotten” (158).
For Schweitzer, in discussing two of the more radical German liberal thinkers, another of Bauer’s chief problems was his being overshadowed by Strauss. Born just one year apart (Strauss in 1808 and Bauer in 1809), Strauss’s ideas commanded much more attention. One reason for this was due to the relative outlandishness of too many of Bauer’s views, as just noted. The result was that, therefore, “Bauer passed practically unnoticed, because every one was preoccupied with Strauss.” Yet, whereas Bauer’s arguments themselves were misplaced, it might be concluded that his critical spirit alone made a mark (158–59).
Needless to say, then, the view that Jesus never existed was a trial balloon tested among the German scholars, though it never went anywhere. With Bauer, the thesis barely made it a few feet off the ground before it was either shot down by Strauss, or, more likely, simply ignored by other researchers.
Some of the liberal critiques of other liberals were quite trenchant as well. After the appearance of Strauss’s first Life of Jesus, forty or fifty essays on the subject appeared during the next five years alone. This is quite a number when the state of printing at that time is considered. Still, Schweitzer thinks that only four or five of them were valuable responses. To one of his interlocutors, Tübingen pastor Eschenmayer, Strauss replied with this ad hominem: “This offspring of the legitimate marriage between theological ignorance and religious intolerance, blessed by a sleep-walking philosophy, succeeds in making itself so completely ridiculous that it renders any serious reply unnecessary” (97).
In spite of this, Schweitzer asserts immediately after this last comment by Strauss that, “for all the sarcasm Strauss does not show himself an adroit debater in this controversy, any more than in later times. . . . It is indeed remarkable how unskilled in polemics is this man.” However, “Strauss on his part seemed to be stricken with a kind of uncertainty, lost himself in a maze of detail, and failed to keep continually re-formulating the main problems which he had set up for discussion” (97). No doubt, at least some of Strauss’s readers may have thought otherwise after studying and digesting his works.
On a different topic, Schweitzer also noted that French critical scholars from “the Strassburg school” [sic] of interpretation were disappointed with Ernest Renan’s volume Vie de Jésus. Schweitzer explained that they did not appreciate Renan’s reliance on the Gospel of John, judging that his work could not be termed the life of the Jesus of history, for it was more like the Christ of the Fourth Gospel (189)!
Even from these few hints, controversies over various interpretations and other aspects of the historical Jesus (always the major occupation during this era) were quite common. Just as these German liberal scholars would often challenge those with whom they disagreed, so it was with Jesus’s resurrection in particular. Scholars who had developed their own naturalistic responses to this key event often seemed to think that it was necessary for them to detail and critique the other liberal responses before them that would take alternate paths to the same goal of sidestepping the resurrection! It often appeared as if it was not enough to be on the same side in denying the event of the resurrection; presumably, these authors seemed to think that they all needed to agree on the best natural alternative road to take, and it had better be the approach of the one doing the writing!
The Swoon or Apparent Death Hypotheses
We have already deliberated in some detail regarding the much-discussed topic of Schleiermacher’s view of Jesus’s death by crucifixion. We concluded that it was un-determined whether or not Schleiermacher truly thought that Jesus had died on the cross. Schweitzer was one of the many scholars who thought that, for Schleiermacher, Jesus was less than fully dead. So Schweitzer offered at least two critiques of what he took to be Schleiermacher’s stance here: “By what right does Schleiermacher currently speak of it as a ‘resurrection,’ as if resurrection and reanimation were synonymous terms?” Further, did Schleiermacher truly think, as he states, that it makes absolutely no difference whether or not Jesus was actually risen from the dead or merely reanimated?
Strauss noted different varieties of swoon hypotheses, such as Jesus slumping into a coma, there being a plot to rescue him (complete with the administering of drugs or potions), or Jesus being taken off the cross before his death. He refers to Karl Venturini’s “arbitrary suppositions” that tended in some similar directions as Bahrdt. Although the rationalist Heinrich Paulus conveniently rejected nails having been placed in Jesus’s feet, Strauss protested that the evidence favored their presence, asserting that if there were nails in Jesus’s feet, then Paulus’s swoon thesis had weighty and severe troubles. Strauss added that the Roman spear wound in the chest would also have killed Jesus in very short order anyway. Altogether, it would be exceptionally difficult to understand how Jesus could have survived crucifixion without medical assistance. Finally, the common cognate hypothesis that Jesus’s ascension consisted of Jesus simply walking off in a cloud “falls to the ground of itself.” Hence, all the probabilities are against the suppositions of apparent death.
Though he did not aim his celebrated comment directly at Schleiermacher, Strauss’s critique of the swoon or apparent death thesis remains the most famous of the German liberal criticisms aimed at other alternative resurrection views, as mentioned above: “It is impossible that a being who had stolen half-dead out of the sepulcher, who crept about weak and ill, wanting medical treatment, who required bandaging, strengthening and indulgence . . . could have given to the disciples the impression that he was a Conqueror over death and the grave, the Prince of Life.” Thus, Strauss held that the most damaging roadblock to postulating the notion that Jesus never died on the cross was not whether this or that life-ending blow had been administered to him during the crucifixion process. Rather, the chief point is the events that transpired after he emerged from the burial tomb and visited his followers. His disciples would observe for themselves that he was obviously alive, but they would know equally well that by no means had he been raised from the dead. A stooped, pale, badly limping, bleeding individual who clutched constantly at his side and tried to catch his breath would demand the immediate attention of a physician rather than passing for being the risen Son of God!
The major issue here is that from the very outset Jesus’s appearances were preached exactly the opposite way: that after his death, Jesus was seen alive, vibrant, appearing and disappearing, teaching, and so forth. The two views were polar opposites, but how would the preaching of the earliest eyewitnesses embrace both images, alternating from the Jesus of the swoon thesis to the orthodox view? This was Strauss’s chief concern, and the majority of scholars ever since him have agreed.
Strangely enough, and adding to the mystery of his own position, Schleiermacher made a similar comment himself concerning the swoon thesis in a volume that was not published until about the same time as Strauss issued his famous quotation:
If we think of Christ as bearing the external marks of his crucifixion and of his body as it had been before, that is to say, as a sick man with weakened life force, the journeying hither and yon seems quite improbable, but this improbable action took place as early as the first day. Then he appears as one quite healthy, who walks without difficulty to Emmaus and back again. All this clearly belongs to the picture of his state. We cannot represent him as those do who maintain the hypothesis of an apparent death. We cannot think of him as spending this time with his life force at a low ebb.
Keim was familiar with Strauss’s critique, which is evident both from the similarity of the wording below and, more precisely, because he cites Strauss at this point as well as mentions similar sentiments from Neander and Holtzmann: “Then there is the most impossible thing of all: the poor, weak, sick Jesus, with difficulty holding himself erect, in hiding, disguised, and finally dying—this Jesus, an object of faith, of exalted emotion, of the triumph of his adherents, a risen conqueror and Son of God! Here, in fact, the theory begins to grow paltry, absurd, worthy only of rejection.”
Schleiermacher also criticized the rational form of liberal theses that involved plots to rescue Jesus from the cross before his death (presumably regarding positions such as those of Karl Venturini and Karl Bahrdt), calling them “groundless.” Renan concluded that the Jewish leaders’ hatred toward Jesus alone would be a sufficient guarantee that Jesus was indeed dead! Réville thought that the Gospel texts, which indicated that the disciples doubted and failed to recognize Jesus after his resurrection, plus the additional abilities that Jesus manifested, such as appearing and disappearing, were all further indications that this was not a case of Jesus simply avoiding death.
These critiques by their fellow German liberals apparently had their effect on those who held or considered swoon theories during the early rationalistic phase of liberalism. This is especially the case with many scholars being quite aware of Strauss’s devastating comments. Quite intriguingly, this alternate position was the most popular option during the earlier portions of the nineteenth century, though Schweitzer lists no proponents of the thesis after about 1840.
Fraud Types 1 and 2: Jesus’s Disciples or Others Stole Jesus’s Dead Body (and Other Tomb Theses)
We have seen earlier that only a few of the German liberal scholars preferred any of the more minor burial alternative considerations, such as Jesus’s body not being buried in Joseph’s tomb or the women going to the wrong tomb. The more major challenges proposing that the disciples (Fraud Type 1) or someone else (Fraud Type 2) stole Jesus’s dead body were exceptionally rare. Apparently due to the general neglect of these tomb theses ever since the eighteenth-century writings of English deist Thomas Woolston and German rationalist Hermann Samuel Reimarus, there is even less mention in these nineteenth-century writings of any critiques of the various versions of fraud or stolen body views. The result is that one has to look carefully for critiques pertaining especially to the second fraud category that non-disciples stole Jesus’s body from the tomb and other somewhat-related tomb theses. This entire category of approaches was neither popular, respected, nor well regarded.
For instance, Schweitzer refers to Reimarus’s early work Von dem Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jünger, published by Gotthold Lessing in 1778, as an anonymous work and calls it “a polemic, not an objective historical study.” Reimarus had “a wrong perspective” and that resulted in his arriving at “a mere makeshift hypothesis to derive the beginnings of Christianity from an imposture.” The imposture or deception mentioned here is the disciples’ actions in stealing Jesus’s body, not to mention their ensuing lies about what happened.
Regarding the idea that Jesus’s own disciples could have stolen Jesus’s body out of the tomb, even Strauss attests that such a motive “could not possibly have animated them . . . amid the greatest perils” or otherwise account for “the astonishing revolution from the deep depression and utter hopelessness of the disciples at the death of Jesus, to the strong faith and enthusiasm.” But if they had acted in this manner, the exuberant change in Jesus’s followers “would be inexplicable.”
Strauss also complained concerning the deists, specifically referring to Thomas Woolston by name, along with others from that era who held similar views involving fraud. Pointing to the comment above regarding the nineteenth-century scholarly lack of regard or interest in these fraud hypotheses, Strauss noted that the views of Lessing and the others were opposed by the “great majority of German theologians.”
In sum, the loose collection of tomb theories that we have termed the fraud theses, including that Jesus’s disciples or someone else stole Jesus’s body along with a variety of other odd suggestions concerning Jesus’s burial, tend more or less to be blips on the nineteenth-century critical screen. Only the brief suggestion by Lake (who interestingly actually supported the view that Jesus was truly raised from the dead!) that the women could possibly have gone to the wrong tomb garnered much interest at all, perhaps because of its novelty. The idea also arrived toward the end of this era, meaning it could have received even more attention had it been produced earlier. As it was, the conservative scholars of this time noticed it more frequently. Otherwise, this group of theses were pretty well rejected en toto by other liberal scholars.
The Hallucination or Subjective Vision Theory and Similar Subjective Views
Due to Strauss’s prominence in popularizing the subjective vision theory, many of the German liberal scholars aimed their comments at him pertaining to this hypothesis. This applies to Strauss’s treatments of the disciples’ experiences as well as the apostle Paul’s, so we will treat each subject in turn.
Subjective Visions and the Disciples
Schleiermacher aimed many comments at this general idea. He argued that the appearances were “so substantiated that I cannot entertain the idea that they were either an invention of a later time or were due to self-deception on the part of the disciples.” Since the risen Jesus was both seen and heard, the likelihood of hallucination plummets considerably. For Schleiermacher, the accounts are specific, realistic, and sufficient enough to conclude the certainty that Jesus appeared to his disciples and lived with them again after his death.
In agreement with Schleiermacher, Paulus also held that the sorts of appearances recorded in the Gospels of the risen Jesus were not the sorts of manifestation that could be accounted for by hallucinations, for they were too real, including physical confirmation. This is especially the case in the last two canonical Gospels, and it must be remembered here that John was the preferred Gospel at this time.
For Christian Weisse, writing about the same time that Strauss’s initial edition of Das Leben Jesu first appeared, Strauss’s concept of myth was ungrounded historically. As such, it would simply consist of a critical objection that was not linked to good theory. The result is that Weisse judged that Strauss had not found a way between the rationalistic and supernatural views of Jesus’s resurrection.
Schweitzer leveled several detailed critiques at Strauss. For instance, similar to Weisse’s comments, Schweitzer also thought that Strauss “sometimes rules out statements by assuming their impossibility on purely dialectical grounds.” But a priori dismissals are no place to begin building a thesis. Further, Strauss is often very arbitrary, such as in his spiritualizing of unwanted aspects of the Gospel depictions of Jesus or his attempts to take Jesus’s resurrection teachings in a metaphorical manner (which actually foreshadows a few twentieth-century scholars). What many of these items have in common is Strauss’s “awkward, arbitrary handling of the history.” He spends much more effort as a critic tearing down texts instead of also creatively building the portions that are well grounded.
More specifically, Schweitzer thinks that Strauss overestimates “the importance of the Old Testament motives in reference to the creative activity of the legend.” But even if one knows the form taken by the legend, this does not explain its origin. Further, Schweitzer judged that the Gospels “must have as [their] basis some historical fact. . . . The substratum of historical fact in the life of Jesus is much more extensive than Strauss is prepared to admit.” But being critical of the Gospel content fails to disprove it. Any sort of report can be riddled with problems while still being substantially accurate in at least key portions of what is being described.
Subjective Visions and Paul of Tarsus
Kirsopp Lake adds another substantial angle on this matter, stating the problem rather succinctly. As he explains, the subjective vision hypothesis “seems to fall to pieces against the experience of St Paul. . . . Thus, to explain St Paul’s experience in this way demands the reconstruction of an elaborate psychological process.”
Lake’s prediction is, in fact, exactly what we find both before and since that time—that in order to apply the subjective vision (or almost any other natural theory) to Paul’s conversion, an entire alternate scenario generally has to be contrived around Paul’s own reports, usually without any data whatsoever. This seems to be what Lake is referring to here. Further, this approach is all done in spite of the critically ascertained “authentic” Epistles of Paul clearly teaching very different views!
As an example of precisely Lake’s last point, German liberal scholar F. C. Baur criticized proposed natural scenarios such as Paul encountering thunder or lightning on his way to Damascus, noting “how unsatisfactory this is” since these options have “no foundation in the text.” The same should be said of probably the most popular natural view concerning Paul, which postulates that he had some species of subjective reaction due to an overwrought guilt complex from persecuting Christians, a state of mind which is absolutely contrary to everything we know about Paul. As incredible as it sounds, Baur’s comment above was made in spite of the fact that he even crossed his own line. He is one of those scholars who concludes (and quite confidently too, it might be added) that Paul experienced some species of subjective experience contrary to the authentic information concerning Paul that Baur himself recognized and accepted!
Arnold Meyer makes almost the same point as does F. C. Baur, although he was criticizing Baur and Carl Holsten regarding their attempts to formulate Paul’s psychology on the way to Damascus. Meyer, an exegete, charges that Baur and Holsten depart from the New Testament texts at will, supposing in an a priori manner that Paul had developed “scruples of conscience as to his persecution proceedings” in spite of what Paul himself states. Meyer thinks that much of this reaction is due to Baur’s school of thought embracing pantheistic rationalism with a prior disbelief in miracles.
Pfleiderer also follows Baur in making this move. After referring to Paul’s doubts, Pfleiderer remarks how these misgivings must have weighed heavily on Paul. Thus, his vision most likely originated from Paul’s nervous and agitated disposition. One must wonder where these assertions about Paul were derived. Yet, Pfleiderer makes what appears to be a surprisingly enigmatic reference here, apparently asserting that whether Paul’s conversion was due to natural or supernatural reasons, God was the ultimate cause of whatever occurred to the apostle. Depending on Pfleiderer’s meaning, this may potentially have other than a typically naturalistic meaning.
Hermann Fichte critiqued Strauss’s view of Paul’s conversion on some related grounds. First, for Paul to have had a vision of the risen Jesus would have contradicted psychology’s laws, in that these subjective experiences should not have arisen from the previous and contrary unbelieving mental state that Paul himself describes for us. Second, no preexisting Christian faith could be found in Paul. Third, Strauss’s imagining of Paul’s mindset of supposed remorse and guilt at his persecuting of Christians is totally contrary to Paul’s own accounts.
Fichte’s three responses as observed in this critique of Strauss and the many other scholars like Baur who so commonly adjusted Paul’s mindset despite and even against the known data supplied by the apostle himself to meet their own theoretical needs actually can be quite a sophisticated analysis, even in twenty-first-century psychological terms. This is especially the case when considering the 1869 date of Fichte’s original composition.
The Most Detailed Critique of Strauss’s Hallucination Theory
During the nineteenth century, the criticisms leveled by German liberal scholar Theodor Keim were the most comprehensive with regard to the popular subjective vision theories. Since Keim was often inclined to write by backtracking and repeating earlier points in his writings, it is difficult to produce an ordered list of his complaints regarding Strauss’s thesis, at least in precise order. Still, an approximate enumeration of his major critiques is possible. Keim makes at least each of the following points:
(1) According to the prevailing view among German liberal scholars (as favored by Strauss, Renan, and others), it was necessary for the disciples to switch from their previous negative mental states of depression, despair, and hopelessness caused by Jesus’s sudden death by crucifixion and being ripped away from their ministry. But it was thought that a significant amount of time was needed for their mindsets to change, and up to a year had been suggested for this process to occur. In place of the prior hopelessness, the apostles needed to exude self-generated excitement, enthusiasm, and optimism in order to produce the necessary visions.
But Keim pointed out some of the problems involved with demanding this new outlook, which were never observed or otherwise hinted at in the early New Testament texts. The sources agree that the appearances before Paul’s began to take place almost immediately—within three days or so. Once again, as already remarked above, a number of these German critical scholars adjusted the narratives to fit their alternative thesis, like hallucinations. On the other hand, if the relevant writings are established, then alternative views such as Strauss’s and Renan’s have a major problem. According to the prevalent thinking at that time, the disciples would not have been in the proper frame of mind to produce subjective visions.
(2) Throughout the New Testament, subsequent visions witnessed by the apostles, including Paul, were clearly distinguished from Jesus’s resurrection appearances, signaling that the latter were a qualitatively different sort of phenomena. This distinction also argues against the disciples’ resurrection appearances being subjective visions since the subsequent visions were of that sort.
(3) The cessation of the appearances after a few weeks (except for Paul’s) makes sense if they were caused by God. But if they were self-generated, subjective visions, it would seem that these occurrences actually should have increased, even exponentially, as more converts entered the church and claimed to have seen the risen Jesus just as the apostles did. Hence it would seem that many more such visions would be a natural development, given the circumstances. So how is this sudden discontinuation to be explained?
It is also worth making a critical observation here. Some of the strongest and most common objections aimed at the subjective vision hypotheses over the past few decades were seldom raised during the late nineteenth century, presumably due to the content of these particular items simply not being known from the textual or psychological research at that time, or perhaps because certain New Testament reports were simply regarded as legendary and thus ignored. Several examples may be very briefly helpful here.
Initially, one of the most potent objections in current parlance, backed by the early appearance reports, testifies to groups of believers seeing the risen Jesus together. But rather incredibly, this was seldom mentioned in the nineteenth century. This was no doubt the case for more than one reason. The best data that favors these group appearances (1 Cor 15:3–7) were generally untreated in much of the research of that time. Further, the important considerations provided by the scientific developments in the field of psychology were quite unknown then. Moreover, even some conservative authors actually conceded the reality of group manifestations. But the tide has certainly shifted today, for instance, with group appearances in the case of the earliest Christian witnesses generally being allowed by the majority of critical scholars who address the issue.
Another contemporary argument contrary to subjective visions is that of Jesus’s tomb being unoccupied on the first Easter morning, which is also allowed by the majority of critical scholars today, whereas the empty tomb was probably more often than not considered by the German liberals simply to be a straightforward legend. Even Keim accepted this legendary view. Still other serious considerations at present are derived from facts such as the conversions of Paul and James the brother of Jesus, who were almost assuredly not in the proper frames of mind to hallucinate the risen Jesus.
But given the scholarly situation at the end of the reign of German liberalism, believers and others were largely left to critique the subjective vision thesis apart from what are now considered to be the best comebacks. This is all the more reason why strong critiques such as Keim’s multifaceted case against hallucinations were so remarkable.
The Objective Vision Theory
The telegram, telegraph, or objective vision hypothesis popularized by Keim and a few others was of course not a naturalistic thesis (as recognized freely by critical scholars), for it postulated that Jesus was really raised from the dead and taken to heaven by God the Father, from which they cooperated to send nonbodily images to his disciples. These appearances were for the purpose of convincing Jesus’s followers that he was indeed alive and that he was sending them out to tell others the good news of God’s kingdom. Hence, these events were recognized as supernatural miracles from start to finish.
Nonetheless, it will just be mentioned briefly that the objective vision theory was not without its detractors. Schleiermacher may have had something like this notion in mind, though as with his position on Jesus’s death, he once again seems to be confused here. Even though the chief work of Christian Weisse came slightly after Schleiermacher’s death, this may be an indication that such concepts were involved in the conversation at that time, decades before Keim seemed to favor nonbodily appearances.
Schweitzer was critical of Weisse for only accepting the Galilean appearances of the risen Christ, a move that was judged for not helping his overall thesis very much. But it was thought further to be rather one-sided because it failed to solve the problem of the two traditions of appearances in both Galilee and Jerusalem. But this was actually a rather odd thing for Schweitzer to blame on Weisse, given that most of the scholars who held either the subjective or objective vision theses at that particular time placed the appearances in Galilee.
Strauss made a few rather snide remarks about those who thought that a supernatural cause was behind Jesus’s resurrection appearances. Responding to the well-known philosopher Spinoza, for example, Strauss referred to this scholar’s view as “the magic circle of the supernatural.” With regard to Christian Weisse’s conception of objective visions, Strauss similarly blamed him for holding on to “objective magical facts.” Common to both of these responses is Strauss’s accusation that belief in miracles is akin to invoking magic.
The critiques directed at the objective vision theory were both milder and less common than those of the natural resurrection hypotheses. This could have been for more than one reason, such as the view having attracted several major German liberal scholars as well as Keim’s major effort coming slightly past the time of some of the more critical and creative alternative liberal responses.
The Legend or Myth Theory
In the late nineteenth century, certain theological trends may have seemed quite unrelated to earlier aspects of German liberalism, even while still manifesting some similar core characteristics. One of the most influential was the religionsgeschichtliche Schule and its prominent quest to separate Hellenistic from Jewish influences on early Christianity. Another conspicuous, overlapping trend attempted to trace myriads of mythological stories through various cultures, implying or stating that Christianity may have been just another of these alternative accounts.
There is a sense that many of these scholars often had their readers at a disadvantage. For example, their attempts to parse out Hellenistic from Jewish influences drew some very fine lines, making it appear that only very specialized scholars could actually participate. However, decades later it turned out that a large portion of this research was largely guesswork.
While there was some specific knowledge at this time regarding the ancient mythical tales of god-men, miracles, and demons, there was not enough generally available, accurate data to make certain the most crucial distinctions. This resulted in the presence of many troublesome issues. For example, there were such wildly variant tales of the same pagan stories (such as Isis and Osiris) that it was even difficult to refer to them as the same accounts. Another simply huge issue was the date of these ancient tales. If some of the earliest forms of the most crucial stories were post-Christian, this would obviously be highly relevant to the question of whether Christians simply borrowed from these tales. But that’s precisely the problem; because much of this more specific information was unavailable, many crucial distinctions could not be made at that time.
Particular scholars were aware of some of these issues but were still cautious of drawing tight conclusions. For Kirsopp Lake, “The difficulty is to decide how far this theory is based on fact, and how far it is merely guess work. . . . The evidence is not sufficient at present to prove that this is so.” Specifically pertaining to the resurrection, Lake goes on to say that “there is a solid basis of history” in the Markan empty tomb and Paul’s appearance account “which cannot be explained as efforts of the imagination. . . . It is history, not theology or mythology.”
Actually, both of Lake’s points are well supported. These general mythic or legendary hypotheses are indeed particularly well known for incorporating much conjecture. By stating or even just overemphasizing something in just a slightly different manner, or by arbitrarily choosing one version of a story over others, relevant comparisons can appear more similar than they are in reality. For instance, mentioning mystery religions where the heroes were said to have been raised after three days of course makes a much closer comparison to Christianity. But what about the cases where the same hero is raised one, two, or perhaps even four days later?
Lake’s second critique is even more penetrating. As many scholars have mentioned over the years, the Christian claim is not merely that Jesus must have been raised since he was a great hero like the others. Thus, the resurrection was not an event that was merely added to the end of Jesus’s life as if it were the “thing to do.” Rather, Jesus’s followers claimed to actually have seen him again after his death. Moreover, they claimed to have found an empty tomb. The point is that they could have been mistaken, but hearing other tales would not account for empirical experiences.
Troeltsch thought that perhaps the most crucial issue for contemporary scholarship to solve was whether the ideas of Jesus’s divinity and the Christian notion of salvation were originally based upon reports from the apostolic community. Or could these beliefs have progressed in a non-Christian or non-Jewish context like those of the mystery religions, featuring their interests in savior-gods? Though the pagan origin was a possibility, Troeltsch pointed out that no one had ever identified accurately the non-Christian culprit. Further, and like Lake’s earlier question, Troeltsch thought that the similarities that were raised were too superficial and arbitrary. Last, we need to see the actual evidence that “such a grafting ever occurred.”
Then quite surprisingly, and also similar to Lake, Troeltsch went on to state that justice must be done to the indispensably historical nature and character of the Christian claims: “The development of the Christian belief in salvation and in the saving death of Christ must be traced back to the impact of the person of Jesus himself, i.e., to the resurrection faith.” This includes the “resurrection appearances” along with other aspects of the “assured body of facts,” among other aspects of Christianity that are “clearly historical.” In these aspects, Troeltsch even sounds rather conservative rather than like a distinguished member of the German liberal camp.
Therefore, even though similarities among the various stories were reported during the end of the liberal period, scholars called for careful substantiation. Claiming that a particular belief is of a similar or identical nature to another one and demonstrating it as such are often two different things. As a matter of fact, we will see later that as this specific research continued, the history of religions claims were not sustained.
Conclusion
The reign of nineteenth-century German liberal thought marked the beginning of systematic studies of the historical Jesus. Schweitzer states that the very first lecture on this subject by a theologian was given by Schleiermacher in 1819. Edited slightly from the title of Schweitzer’s famous volume, this period has been termed the First Quest for the historical Jesus. Though it would be greatly exaggerated to say so, it does seem sometimes that almost every major liberal scholar who wrote during more than a century penned a volume with some variety of the words Das Leben Jesu in the title!
This German liberal period also marked the heyday of naturalistic theories directed at the resurrection of Jesus. The development of these suggested natural suppositions to replace Jesus’s resurrection is an intriguing phase of critical thought. It might be expected that some major “pushback” would be forthcoming from the conservative scholars during this time to challenge firmly these alternative liberal ideas and critique them, and that is precisely what occurred. Holding honored positions in major universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Aberdeen, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and elsewhere, these equally well-trained conservative scholars opened their own chapter of resurrection studies. When the smoke cleared, quite an impressive body of pro and con literature was available.
While the conservative onslaught was naturally to be expected, it was much more surprising to witness the German liberals critiquing each other’s alternative theories. As we have seen, sometimes the critiques took on the appearance of quite nasty attacks! The usual result is that each of the hypotheses had considerations aimed in the direction of their often quite “creative” ideas. Occasionally the critical comebacks may have successfully convinced scholars to move in other directions!
More striking, some of the liberal criticisms of their own colleagues were so damaging that the general consensus by even the German liberal community was that particular naturalistic hypotheses had been rendered passé and hence were no longer considered to be live options. Such instances were noted by many liberal scholars. Such was certainly the case, for example, with Strauss’s leveling of the swoon or apparent death thesis in a devastatingly thorough yet brief critique. An incredible indication of this, mentioned already, is that Schweitzer basically does not mention a swoon theorist after 1840, even though it was the most popular thesis before that time.
We also saw that other major scholars, such as Schleiermacher and Keim, “piled on” against the swoon thesis, employing critiques that seem to be borrowed from Strauss’s critique, especially in Keim’s case.
After producing more criticisms of the swoon thesis, Keim even reports in 1872, “On these grounds, the theory of apparent death has in recent times been rejected by critics almost without exception.” Then he mentions several liberals who agree regarding this conclusion. Toward the end of the German liberal reign, Eduard Riggenbach among others even added that the swoon theory was no longer a live option and was not to be found among the liberal scholarly ranks! Other examples of these conclusions from the contemporary conservative scholars will be mentioned in the next chapter.
Another example is Schweitzer’s comment that the first version of the fraud theory, whereby Jesus’s disciples stole his dead body and then lied about the appearances, was long rejected by the liberal scholars as a whole. Strauss likewise commented that the majority of German liberal scholars had rejected such an option. We have already commented earlier in this chapter that Fraud Type 2—at least the option where someone else besides the disciples stole Jesus’s body from the tomb as an act of deception—was never supported in the first place by the German liberal community but was only propounded by English deists such as Thomas Woolston and German rationalists like Herman Samuel Reimarus, who wrote before the beginning of the liberal era.
In fact, Keim attested the crucial observation that critical scholars had abandoned all “explanation from external facts.” In other words, the German liberals had stopped seeking to reject the resurrection due to alternative influences from nature, human actions, or otherwise outside the mind of individuals. The latter was therefore the only realm worth looking at regarding the subject—that of “mental facts . . . thoughts . . . feelings which established itself in the inner life of men.”
Thus, it might be said that as nineteenth-century German liberalism was coming to an end, only the hallucination or subjective vision theory, and perhaps a version or two of the legend or mythical hypotheses, were still on the table, even though they had also been criticized in much detail. But the final dismantling of these last options remained for later twentieth-century scholarship to get involved with.
The objective vision option was not a naturalistic thesis, yet it definitely survived the First Quest for the historical Jesus. Not only did it endure, but during the middle third of the twentieth century, a modified version of Keim’s creative formulation may well have been the most popular approach to the resurrection appearances of Jesus, and it has had its representatives on into the twenty-first century.
So ends for now the discussion here of the German liberal quest for a plausible naturalistic theory for the resurrection of Jesus. Though initially there were several categories of such nineteenth-century hypotheses, only a couple of species survived, along with the supernatural objective vision option. This is the state of the issue as scholars moved further into the twentieth century.
Notes
Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, trans. William Montgomery (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 62. Throughout the rest of this section, page references to this work will appear in-text.
Another example is David Strauss’s criticism of Daniel Schenkel’s work on the historical Jesus, Das Charaktererbild Jesu. After Schenkel criticized Strauss in this work, Strauss fired back his own critique of Schenkel’s work, censuring it for being too unoriginal as well as taking a “both-and” perspective of the various views that he entertained. Strauss published his own text against Schenkel, entitled Der Schenkel’sche Handel in Baden. Schweitzer seemed to agree with Strauss’s critique (210).
Adding to the interest here is that Strauss and Bauer critiqued each other’s views both regarding the subject of the historical Jesus as well as their respective interpretations of Hegel. These works are David Friedrich Strauss, In Defense of My “Life of Jesus” against the Hegelians, trans. and ed. Marilyn Chapin Massey (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1984); Bruno Bauer, Philo, Strauss, Renan, und das Urchristentum (Berlin: Hempel, 1874); Bauer, “Rezension: Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet von David Friedrich Strauss,” Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik 109 (1835): 879–80; 111 (1835): 891; 113 (1835): 905–12; 86 (1836): 681–88; 88 (1836): 697–704, the last source as listed by Douglas Moggach, “Bruno Bauer,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, December 18, 2013, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bauer/.
Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 65, as per Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Life of Jesus, ed. Jack Verheyden, trans. S. Maclean Gilmour (Mifflintown, PA: Sigler, 1997), 415–17, esp. 415.
David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. George Eliot (Mifflintown, PA: Sigler, 1997), 698, 718, 737–38.
Strauss, 678–79, 737–38, 751, also 473, 485, quotation on 751.
David Friedrich Strauss, The New Life of Jesus, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1879), 1:408–12.
One could of course postulate that the disciples who were the original witnesses of the sickly Jesus could have been a different group than the ones who were proclaiming the joyous appearances of Jesus. Strauss did not need any help to think of this idea on his own, but evidently rejected it. This thesis would run aground of much of the data in the first volume of this study. For example, critical scholars agree that Paul interviewed the original eyewitnesses in Jerusalem just three years after his conversion, thus about AD 35–36. The original apostles knew nothing of the sickly Jesus, but only the risen Jesus who was healed immediately after the crucifixion. The continuity here is crucial.
Schleiermacher, Life of Jesus, 455–56. A cautionary note is in order here, since it is at least possible that this quotation came from one of the students who put this volume together some thirty years after Schleiermacher’s death.
Theodor Keim, The History of Jesus of Nazara: Considered in Its Connection with the National Life of Israel, and Related in Detail, trans. Arthur Ransom, 6 vols. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1883), 6:330–31.
Schleiermacher, Life of Jesus, 443.
W. J. Sparrow-Simpson is the scholar who reports this but lists the source only as Renan’s Life of Jesus, without a page number. See Sparrow-Simpson’s text, The Resurrection and the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1968), 44.
Albert Réville, Jésus de Nazareth: Études critiques sur les antécédents de l’histoire évangélique et la vie de Jésus, 2 vols. (Paris: Fischbacher, 1897), 2:455. Of course, it should be remembered here that Réville himself did not take the Gospels at face value but rather was just remarking how the texts point otherwise than to Jesus’s apparent death. It still should be mentioned concerning his statement, however, that those few scholars who wished to defend the swoon thesis could respond to Réville that the doubting and the failure to recognize Jesus could simply be normal reactions when one thinks he has seen a dead person. The differences in Jesus’s appearance could also have resulted from the scourging and the results of crucifixion. However, Réville certainly would be correct that such natural explanations could not account for Jesus’s appearing and disappearing!
Schweitzer does mention Karl von Hase’s Geschichte Jesu: Nach akademischen Vorlesungen, published in 1876, but this is a revised and edited version of Hase’s earlier text, Das Leben Jesu zunächst für akademische Studien, first published in 1829, where his views are actually quite close to Schleiermacher’s position. This means that the 1876 work is still basically before 1840. Moreover, in the end, it must be remembered that the works of these two scholars may not actually teach the swoon theory anyway!
Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 22–23.
Strauss, Life of Jesus, 739.
Strauss, 45–48, 707.
Schleiermacher, Life of Jesus, 474.
Schleiermacher, 440, 442, 473–74. Some related thoughts also can be found in Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 2:417–24, esp. 420. Schweitzer provides a few more details concerning this response by Schleiermacher; see Quest of the Historical Jesus, 64.
Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus, Das Leben Jesu als Grundlage einer reinen Geschichte des Urchristentums, 3 vols. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1828), 1:265, 281–82.
Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 130–31.
Schweitzer, 84, 196–99.
Schweitzer, 84.
Kirsopp Lake, The Historical Evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (London: Williams & Norgate, 2012), 266–67.
Ferdinand Christian Baur, Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life and Works, His Epistles and Teachings; A Contribution to a Critical History of Primitive Christianity, trans. A. Menzies, 2 vols. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1873, 1875; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003). The two quotations are taken from 63–64 and 70–71, respectively.
Baur, 1:67–92, 255–59, 264; 2:251–53.
Arnold Meyer, Die Auferstehung Christi: Die Berichte über Auferstehung, Himmelfahrt und Pfingsten (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,1905), xxii, xxvi.
Otto Pfleiderer, Das Urchristentum, seine Schriften und Lehren in geschichtlichem Zusammenhang beschrieben, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Berlin: Reimer, 1902), esp. 1:40–46.
Immanuel Hermann Fichte, Vermischte Schriften zur Philosophie, Theologie und Ethik, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1869), 2:164–66.
Keim, History of Jesus of Nazara, 6:338–64, esp. 338, 342–43, 353–61. See also Theodor Keim, Die Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, in ihrer Verhaltung mit dem Gesamtleben seines Volkes frei untersucht und ausführlich erzählt, 3 vols. (Zurich: Orell and Füssli, 1867–1872), esp. 3:506–621, on Jesus’s burial and resurrection, with some specific pages from both the German and English versions listed in this and the previous chapter.
Ernest Renan, Les apôtres, histoire des origines du christianisme (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1880), 2:45–46.
The reason for this emphasis at the middle to end of the nineteenth century was that exuberance and excitement were necessary for the positive experiences that followed. However, this emphasis has shifted in some studies today. While this positive frame of mind is still thought to be necessary in some sorts of subjective experiences, it is not the case with postmortem visions, for example. The latter do indeed occur to persons who are still forlorn, downcast, and depressed after a loved one has died. Then again, not all scholars take this last category of experience to necessarily be hallucinatory anyway, but that is another discussion. On this subject, see for instance, see J. Steve Miller, Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for an Afterlife (Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek, 2021). Another volume in this set by Miller is forthcoming. Thus, to make a similar or equivalent point today, much more nuance would be necessary here. But that’s hardly surprising in our time after well over 100 years of further research have ensued.
For example, see James Orr, The Resurrection of Jesus (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908; repr., Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1965), 219; Sparrow-Simpson, Resurrection and the Christian Faith, 113; John McNaugher, Jesus Christ: The Same Yesterday, Today and Forever (New York: Revell, 1947), 151. However, this was sometimes denied by conservative scholars such as Wilbur M. Smith, The Supernaturalness of Christ: Can We Still Believe in It? (Boston: Wilde, 1954), 217. As noted in the material in this volume on hallucinations and related phenomena, this discussion requires that careful distinctions be made. While group phenomena such as more objective illusions (as with magical show performances) certainly do occur, subjective hallucinations in groups are quite a different matter altogether.
Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 2:420.
Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 131.
Strauss, Life of Jesus, 740.
Strauss, 744, esp. n. 29.
Lake, Historical Evidence, 262–63.
Lake, 263–64, cf. 198–99.
Ernst Troeltsch, The Christian Faith, ed. Gertrud von le Fort, trans. Garrett E. Paul (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 87–88.
Troeltsch, 88.
Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 62.
This may have been the case with Schleiermacher, and it could possibly explain the apparent conflicts in his own testimony as described above, but that is difficult to determine for sure. Keim reports an example where Ludwig Noack, in his partially fictional account of Jesus’s life, changed his earlier alternative response to the resurrection, but it is quite difficult to know if it was due to liberal critiques. While Noack still rejected the literal event later, it seems that he embraced Spinoza’s view in his 1876 volume, Die Geschichte Jesu auf Grund freier geschichtlicher Untersuchungen über das Evangelium und die Evangelien (Mannheim: Schneider, 1876). See also Keim, History of Jesus of Nazara, 6:326n2, 332–33; cf. Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 174–79.
Though Schleiermacher died two years before the release of Strauss’s second volume of his Das Leben Jesu, and his own text Das Leben Jesu was not published until his students reassembled his lectures posthumously thirty years later, it is certainly possible, if not fairly likely, that Strauss’s critique was already “in the air” both because Strauss and Schleiermacher spent time together personally and because Strauss had already been lecturing for two years before Schleiermacher’s death. See Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 70. Even more importantly, when Schleiermacher’s students published his notes from decades earlier, the notes contained their own strong criticism of the swoon theory; see Schleiermacher, Life of Jesus, 455–56. Perhaps Schleiermacher had been reconsidering these matters later in his life, especially if he and Strauss had discussed these specific matters. But at the least, these words were quite likely what his students considered to be Schleiermacher’s view at that earlier time.
Keim, History of Jesus of Nazara, 6:331, citing Strauss, Neander, Holtzmann, Noack, and Schleiermacher.
Eduard Riggenbach, The Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Eaton & Mains, 1907), 48–49.
Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 26, also 22–23.
Strauss, Life of Jesus, 45–48, 707.
Keim, History of Jesus of Nazara, 6:331.