lacking a certain logical force in the reasoning of bolder souls" who drive the inference one step further and ask what need there is of assuming a real Jesus at all. The " real Jesus " whom the critics invent certainly was not the author of the Christianity that exists. If the Christianity that actually exists in the world can get along without the Jesus which alone would account for it, why, they argue, must there be assumed behind it a Jesus which will not account for it; of whom this only may be said, — that He is a useless figure, the assump- tion of whom is so far from accounting for that great religious movement which we call Christianity, that it is certain that the movement did not arise in Him and did not derive its fundamental convictions from Him? Let us, then, assume, they say, that there never was any such person as Jesus at all, and the picture drawn of Him in the evangelists is pure myth.
It is interesting — almost amusing — to observe our disintegrating critics over against this more radical em- Can We ployment of their own methods, suddenly Save Any Jesus taking up the role of " apologists "" at All. ^j^j writing so in the spirit and with
the adoption of so many of the exact arguments of the " apologists," whom they have been wont to despise, as to lead the reader to exclaim, " Are these, too, among the prophets? " It is all, however, in vain. The fatal subjectivity which underlies their own view reasserts itself in the end and leaves them without adequate de- fense against extremists, simply because whether one
11 E.g. Albert Kalthoff, Das Christus-Problem, and Die Entstehung des Christentums, 1904; and William Benjamin Smith, Ne^ Testa- ment Criticism, Status and Drift of. Art. in the " Encyclopedia Ameri- cana," and, more fully, Der i>orchristlicke Jesus, etc., 1906.
^- E.g. Bousset, fVas ivissen wir von Jesus? 1904.
164 The Designations of Our Lord
stops with them or goes on with the others Is not a matter of principle, but only of temperament. It Is just as Impossible that Christianity can have sprung from the Jesus which these critics give us, as that It should have sprung up without any Jesus behind It at all, as the radicals assert. There Is just as little reason in a sound historical criticism to discover the Jesus of Bousset behind the Jesus of the evangelists, as there is for discovering with Kalthoff that there was no real Jesus at all behind the Jesus of the evangelists. The plain fact Is that the evangelists give us the primitive Jesus, behind which there Is none other; and the at- tempt to set the Jesus they give us aside In favor of an assumed more primitive Jesus can mean nothing but the confounding of all historical sequences. The real impulse for the whole assault upon the trustworthiness of the portrait of Jesus drawn In the Gospels lies not In the region of historical Investigation but In that of dogmatic prejudice, — or to be more specific, of natu- ralistic preconception. The moving spring of the crit- ical reconstruction Is the determination to have a " nat- ural " as over against the " supernatural " Jesus of the evangelists. There must be a more primitive Jesus than the evangelists' — this is the actual movement of thought — because their Jesus is already a supernatural Jesus, — " a miraculous Son of God, In whom men be- lieve, whom men elevate to a place by the side of God."^^ The plain fact, however, Is that this super- natural Jesus Is the only Jesus historically witnessed to us; the only Jesus historically discoverable by us; the only Jesus historically tolerable. We can rid ourselves of Him only by doing violence to the whole historical testimony and to the whole historical development as
13 Bousset, as cited, p. 57.
The Synoptic 'Jesus Primitive 165
well. Not only is there no other Jesus witnessed in the documents, but no other Jesus can have formed the starting point of the great movement which, springing from Him, has conquered to itself the civilized world.