THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
purpose a unique worth, goes without saying. The understanding of Christ made known in the New Testament bears so unique a relation to the unique working of the exalted Christ, 3. The that it is well, by means of the term, Biblical the "Biblical" Christ, to express the Christ. difference in intensity between his revealing activity in the apostolic age and that of the later periods. This term will differentiate the unique beginning of the post-terrestrial revealing activity of Christ from the later acts of revelation, and combine the former with his earthly work. This Biblical Christ is for us the historical Christ, the only principle for the knowledge of God. But the term "Biblical" Christ is not to denote that everything in primitive Christianity, everything apostolic, belongs to the eternal; not even all that is meant to glorify Christ. By this conception we merely wish " to suggest how important for all posterity, provided we believe at all in a real revelation of our God in our Lord, is the knowledge of Christ which the first witnesses had and which he himself as the Lord of the Spirit called forth in them " (Haring). But if nevertheless we differentiate in the primitive Christian conception of Christ the elements taken from the notions of the day and an eternal germ which grew out of the spirit of Christ, we must inquire what is to be recognized as such. Will the simple answer suffice: all taken from the history of that time is unessential, and only that which is unanimously received, which has developed from the spirit of Christ, is the essential, that is, that which truly reveals the eternal?
But, just as the answer, that the essential is the unanimously received, is for several reasons unsatisfactory, so also is the assertion that everything taken from the history of the time is unessential. Does the denial of an independent newness in the case of all the New-Testament views conditioned by the history of the time mean also the sacrifice of their value as revelations? For example, is the thought that Jesus had a personal preexistence condemned merely because it is conditioned by a Jewish formula? Baldensperger has declared that even for Jesus himself it was a formula that explained his own personality, which he experienced as a wondrous mystery. In this, too, consists his originality, to speak with Wellhausen, that he perceived the true and eternal in the mass of chaotic rubbish, rejected the incidental, the caricatured, the dead elements, and in the lens of his individuality gathered together that which has eternal worth, the human-divine. But may not such a gathering have been also the pneumatic achievement of the spirit of a Paul, or of primitive Christianity as a whole? In this way, e.g., the whole primitive Christian angelology could be stamped as revelation. Scientific theology will no longer raise question about that. But not only that which the earthly Jesus himself gathered as eternally valid out of the mass of New-Testament factors that are historically conditioned is to be received as imperishable, but also that which, without contradicting the spirit of Jesus has, under the pneumatic manifestations of the Exalted One, undergone a new development
out of that gathered by him. Thus, e.g., we judge the thought of Paul's faith concerning the incarnar tion of Christ Jesus as an ethical act of self-denying love, by virtue of which he " entirely emerges from the bounds of Jewish speculations about the Messiah " (Pfleiderer), without antagonizing the humble spirit of Jesus. On the other hand, it is impossible to construe the whole angelology common to primitive Christianity as a development of Jesus' belief concerning angels, which was, compared with that, meager and super-Jewish.
When we place restrictions upon the principle, " only that in the New Testament has value as a revelation which is not conditioned by the history of the time," we have, in the
4. Sum- last analysis, to look back to the mary. earthly from the exalted Christ who glorified himself in primitive Christianity. The two taken together make the Biblical, the historical Christ, the only principle for the knowledge of God and things divine. We conclude, then, that this is the pneumatic life of the earthly Christ and that which has logically unfolded itself therefrom in the primitive Christians under the influence of the pneumatic manifestations of the exalted Christ. This presupposes that the pneumatic life of the earthly Christ can be ascertained from the Evangelical tradition, in order that by this touchstone the primitive Christian preaching may be tested as to its consistency. In declaring that such testing is necessary one declares, by this very fact, that the earthly Jesus is the real foundation of the knowledge of God — but his resurrection must also be added — this alone, not also the proofs of it, viz., the appearances of the risen one, which belong to the exalted Christ. In Rom. i. 3-4, we find that which is fundamental in the principle of theological knowledge, by which both the Old Testament, mentioned in v. 2, as well as the preaching even of a Paul (v. 1, 5) must be tested; he is indeed, by virtue of an act of revelation by the Risen One, his greatest apostle, and yet no absolutely infallible lawgiver in matters of faith. Karl Thieme.
Bibliography: A. Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysik, Bonn, 1887; J. Kaftan, in Zeitschrift fiir Theologie und Kirche, i (1891), 479-549; M. Kahler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, pp. 11 sqq., Leipsic, 1893; idem, Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichlliche biblische Christus, ib. 1896; M. Reischle, Der Glaube an Jesus Christus und die geschichtliche Erforschung seines Lebens, Leipsic, 1893; idem, Der Streit uber die Begriindung des Glaubens auf den " geschichtlichen " Jesus Christus, in Zeitschrift fiir Theologie und Kirche, vii (1897), 171- 264; O. Ritschl, in Zeitschrift fiir Theologie und Kirche, iii (1893), 371-426; W. Hermann, Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott, Stuttgart, 1896; P. Kolbing, Die heilige Schrift als oberste Norm der christlichen Glaubenserkenntnis, Gnadau, 1896; G. Ecke, Die theologische Schule Albrecht Ritschls und die evangelische Kirche der Gegenwart, Berlin, 1897.