RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Strasburfr Strauss
London, 1846) was written at this period, in the short space of one year.
The impression of profound theological scholarship which the " Life of Jesus " makes on the reader is the more remarkable in view of the " Life of fact that it was the work of a young Jesus." man of twenty-seven. There were at that time three parties to the controversy on the problem of the life of Jesus: supernaturalists, who accepted the New-Testament narratives and miracles; rationalists, who rejected the miracles; and radical rationalists, who rejected the Gospel narratives as fabrications, though this position was held practically alone by Paulus at Heidelberg. Strauss took an independent position. He began with the assumption that the Gospel narrative must be interpreted exactly like any other historical work. But although he rejected the miracles, he refused to attribute intentional fabrication to the Evangelists. To reconcile these two positions, he advanced his " mythical " theory. This conception he derived from Hegel's philosophy of religion. Philosophical ideas are preceded by mythical presentations which are comparatively inaccurate, but are true to the intellectual state of the myth-maker. But even though an idea be promulgated with full knowledge on the part of its author of its fictitious character, it may be called " myth " if it is accepted and passed on confidently by the multitude as being in harmony with their religious feelings and ideas. A certain remoteness in time is necessary to constitute a myth. Hence the Gospel of John could not have been written by an eyewitness, i.e., not by John the apostle. The synoptic Gospels do not claim to have been by eye-witnesses. Another Hegelian conception Strauss applied to the theory of the life and personality of Jesus. According to the supernaturalists, Jesus was a unique and perfect personality, and, as such, God's son. Strauss replies that the " idea " does not realize itself in this fashion — by pouring itself in all its completeness into one example; but rather, through a multitude of examples that mutually supplement one another. The true God-man, hence, is not an individual, but humanity as a species. The writers of the Gospels, he asserts, had before their eyes the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, and ascribed to Jesus words and deeds that should have been his according to the prophecies; in doing so, however, they often added original ideas and breathed a new soul into the old material. Strauss' work was throughout critical. In his opinion, the time had not yet come for a constructive picture.
His book caused so great a sensation that one may call the year of its appearance, 1835, a turningpoint in modern theology. It brought squarely before the Christian world the question: Results Who was Jesus, the founder of the upon his Christian religion? Strauss had to bear Career, almost atone the storm of attacks that followed. He was released from his repetentship and transferred to the lyceum at Ludwigsburg. This position he soon left and removed to Stuttgart, where he wrote his Streitschriften zur Verteidigung meiner Schrift uber das Leben Jesu und iur Characteristik der gegenwartigen Theologie (1837),
which is one of his most brilliant performances. His friends succeeded in getting him an appointment to the University of Zurich, but clerical opposition prevailed, and he was not permitted to enter upon his duties. He refused to resign voluntarily, but drew to the end of his days the pension of 1,000 francs that was granted him, a large portion of which he spent in charity.
His next most important work, Die christliche Glaubenslehre in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung und im Kampfe mit der modernen Wissenschaft (2 vols., Tubingen, 1840-41), was begun while he was preparing to go to Zurich. It is more Later negative in character than the Leben Life and Jesu, sharply polemical, and from a Works. literary point of view superior to his first work. It bears clear traces of the author's sense of the injustice that had been done him. During the following twenty years Strauss wrote nothing on theology. His marriage to the opera-singer, Agnes Schebest, proved unhappy. For a short time he represented Ludwigsburg in the Wiirttemberg Landtag. He published a volume of political speeches (1847) and biographies of Schubart (2 vols., Berlin, 1849), Christian Marklin (1850), Nikodemus Frischlin (Frankfort, 1855), Ulrich von Hutten (3 parts, Leipsic, 1858-60), and Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1862). Strauss returned to theology in 1860 with a translation of the conversations of Ulrich von Hutten, to which he prefixed a polemic against the Wiirttemberg prelate, Mehring. He then set to work upon a new Leben Jesu fur das deutsche Volk (1864). While the work was still in manuscript, though nearly completed, Renan's brilliant " Life of Jesus " appeared, and Strauss for a while thought of letting his own work go unpublished. But, on second thought, he concluded that his book might serve for the German people just as Renan's did for the French. The new work was an attempt at positive construction, but the author finally was obliged to admit that the data for such an attempt were insufficient: " It all still remains in a certain sense a tissue of hypotheses." He was unable to bridge the chasm between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history. In the winter of 1869-70 Strauss delivered some lectures from which arose the masterly little work on Voltaire (1870). The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war called forth two patriotic open letters to Ernest Renan that met with universal applause in Germany. In 1872 he again issued a popular version of a theme he had handled long before: Der alte und der neue Glaube. Artistically it was a masterpiece, according to Zeller on the same high plane as the work on Voltaire. It aroused, however, a storm of criticism and even of abuae for its skeptical views. To the question, " Are we still Christians?" the author answers bluntly, " No." To the question " Have we still religion? " ho replies, " Yes or no," according to one's conception of religion; the old belief in a personal God and in immortality is gone; there remains the feeling Of absolute dependence on the universe. The tone of the book in disoussing the nature of the soul is materialistic. The author adopts the Darwinian theory and takes his stand frankly on the ground of natural science. His last
Strauss Strigel