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The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History: A Critique of Schleiermacher's The Life of Jesus
English, German (translation)
169 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
About the author
David Friedrich Strauss
429 books19 followersIn 1808, David Friedrich Strauss was born. The German writer pioneered scholarship doubting the historicity of Jesus. Strauss became a Lutheran vicar in 1830, and studied theology under Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He was appointed to the Theological Seminary at the University at Tubingen. His book Life of Jesus (1835), dissecting the New Testament as largely mythical, was published to great acclaim, but lost him his teaching post. In 1836 he left the church. In his final book, The Old Faith and the New (1872), Strauss eschewed Christianity and the concept of immortality. British freethinking novelist George Eliot translated his first book into English. D. 1874.
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More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_St...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
http://www.nndb.com/people/178/000097...
http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/bce/str...
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July 14, 2026
A FAMOUS ‘LIFE OF JESUS’ AUTHOR CRITIQUES ANOTHER SUCH AUTHOR
David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) was a German theologian and writer. His 1835 book ‘The Life of Jesus Critically Examined’ was revolutionary, because it subjected the four gospels to a minutely-detailed critical examination, and unflinchingly pointed out various inconsistencies between them.
He wrote in the Foreword to this 1864 book, “In my new revision of ‘The Life of Jesus’ I sharply opposed Schleiermacher’s views on various matters. I did this on the basis of notes of his lectures on the life of Jesus, which I had before me… It is virtually certain that those to whom my judgments were offensive will say that it is easy to do battle with unprinted notebooks… but I accept the summons … because it is, moreover, a necessity for me to come to grips with Schleiermacher’s work, and because I may hope that … I can at the same time make even clearer several points in my own book on the same subject.” (Pg. 3)
He continues, “Schleiermacher’s ‘The Christian Faith’ has really but a single dogma, that concerning the person of Christ… Schleiermacher’s Christology is a last attempt to make the churchly Christ acceptable to the modern world. That Christ was a man in the full sense of the word… and at the same time, as traditional piety wishes, can be a divine redeemer, the object of our faith and of our cultus for all times… Schleiermacher’s Christ is as little a real man as is the Christ of the church… The illusion… that Jesus could have been a man in the full sense and still as a single person stand above the whole of humanity, is the chain which still blocks the harbor of Christian theology against the open sea of rational science. To break this chain is the purpose of the present work, as it has always been of all my theological writings.” (Pg. 4-5)
He states, “Now if, in the renunciation of a personal divine element in Christ, faith allows itself to be ‘tuned’ to science, the latter still cannot somehow avoid making a concession to faith… this concession by science to faith consists… in the acknowledgment that in Christ, in a way different from all other men, the God-consciousness is to have been the absolute, determinative factor in every moment of his life. The sentient consciousness throughout ruled without opposition, yet without impairing his complete humanity.” (Pg. 25-26)
He states, “now that that foundation [Christ’s sinlessness and absolute perfection] has been removed, these properties which are nevertheless to remain in Christ are without foundation. A sinless, archetypal Christ is not one whit less unthinkable than a supernaturally begotten Christ with a divine and a human nature. On the contrary, since he appears on the basis of a world view which otherwise excludes miracles or uncaused effects, a further contradiction clings to him from which the church’s Christology, which presupposes belief in miracles, is free.” (Pg. 29)
He asserts, “Schleiermacher’s treatment of the life of Jesus, insofar as it promised … to commence without dogmatic presuppositions, cannot keep its word; to be sure, it liberated itself from some of the fetters of church prejudice, but by no means did it liberate itself from all… Schleiermacher indeed kept his ears open, but had himself tied with cables to the mast of the Christian faith in order to sail past the dangerous island unharmed. His conduct is only half-free, therefore also only half-scientific. The truly scientific concept is to engage in criticism unfettered and with open ears, in which case it will turn out that the entire legend of the Sirens was but the whisperings of the old sorceress Circe.” (Pg. 36-37)
He acknowledges, “Schleiermacher had sharper insight than most theologians into the total difference between the first three Gospels and the Fourth; he recognized that here is it an either/or matter, that one cannot take the Gospel of John AND the Gospel of Matthew as apostolic writings, but that one can take at the most either the one or the other.” (Pg. 40)
Of the angel of the Lord appearing to Joseph in a dream, he comments, “This is the first and at the same time quite glaring test case of how Schleiermacher and his exegesis never completely outgrew the conceptual mode of rationalism and the halfway measures of its natural explanation of miracles.” (Pg. 53)
He argues, “That the consciousness of a pre-existence… of a life with God before the foundation of the world, must have disturbed the consciousness of Jesus, is a settled matter… But if Jesus had had such a consciousness, he says, he must also have shared something of its contents and given his disciples a conception of it… and these men, in turn, would not have kept it to themselves, because with it they could have generated more faith than with the preaching of his resurrection.” (Pg. 60)
He observes, “Schleiermacher’s pupils … took as their point of departure the view that a place has to be made for the power of tempting thoughts and the possibility of inner struggles within Jesus---if one is to take seriously his full humanity---then… if they thought that thereby they did not affect Jesus’ sinlessness, then that made the same mistake which Schleiermacher, conversely, made when he held the sinlessness of Jesus to be harmonizable with this true humanity.” (Pg. 77-78)
He points out, “An unusual light falls on Schleiermacher’s view of Jesus [when he asks], ‘Why… did Jesus make no use of his miracle power in that moment when his life was in danger, up to the last catastrophe?’ We naturally answer, Because he did not possess such a miracle power at all. But actually, in our purely human view of the person of Jesus, such a question cannot occur at all. That it occurs to Schleiermacher … shows precisely that he does not view Jesus as a true man.” (Pg. 98-99)
He explains, “Schleiermacher’s contention was that neither … the death of Jesus was real nor that it was not real, can be demonstrated. But now he shows only… the nondemonstrability of a real death. Where, if his position is so impartial, is the evidence that the unreality of Jesus’ death is equally impossible to demonstrate?… Whoever is so zealous, as… in Schleiermacher’s case, as to present Jesus’ condition after the resurrection as a perfectly natural one and as a pure continuation of the previous one, thereby confesses… that for him also the resurrection itself is but a natural resuscitation.” (Pg. 122-123)
He points out, “[Schleiermacher] would like very much to be able to imagine that the sequence of the two incidents was… that Magdalene previously had seen and spoken with them [the angels/men] and that Peter and John began to walk only afterwards and found the tomb empty, after the men … had departed. But since the narrative of his eyewitness (John) restrains him, he says, ‘something is obscure here.’ Something obscure remains… how such an explanation was possible for a man of intellect and taste.” (Pg. 136)
He reports, “according to Schleiermacher, Jesus took great pains to convince his disciples that his life after the resurrection was exactly like his life beforehand, and that absolutely nothing supernatural was in the picture… So we must say that [Jesus] had himself to blame that he did not achieve his aim, for he did not use… telling them how he came out of the tomb … in a totally natural way.’” (Pg.141-142)
He summarizes, “Schleiermacher… always finds himself grinned at by the masks of Bahrdt and Venturini. A disappearance of his hero into the spirit world or into an Essene society is the dilemma in which he leaves us.” (Pg. 157)
He concludes, “Schleiermacher … is a supernaturalist in Christology but in criticism and exegesis a rationalist. His Christ… still remains essentially a superhuman, supernatural being. In contrast, his exegesis, as far as it pertains to the miraculous… is distinguished from that of Paulus only by somewhat more spirit and subtlety…” (Pg. 160)
Strauss states his own conclusion: “As soon as we no longer expect to treat the Scriptures as other than a human book we will be able to treat them with full respect; as soon as we take courage to really put Jesus in the ranks of humanity, our reverence, or love, cannot fail.” (Pg. 162)
Strauss is one of the most interesting of the ‘Life of Jesus’ authors; and his commentary on a fellow author is quite interesting.
David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) was a German theologian and writer. His 1835 book ‘The Life of Jesus Critically Examined’ was revolutionary, because it subjected the four gospels to a minutely-detailed critical examination, and unflinchingly pointed out various inconsistencies between them.
He wrote in the Foreword to this 1864 book, “In my new revision of ‘The Life of Jesus’ I sharply opposed Schleiermacher’s views on various matters. I did this on the basis of notes of his lectures on the life of Jesus, which I had before me… It is virtually certain that those to whom my judgments were offensive will say that it is easy to do battle with unprinted notebooks… but I accept the summons … because it is, moreover, a necessity for me to come to grips with Schleiermacher’s work, and because I may hope that … I can at the same time make even clearer several points in my own book on the same subject.” (Pg. 3)
He continues, “Schleiermacher’s ‘The Christian Faith’ has really but a single dogma, that concerning the person of Christ… Schleiermacher’s Christology is a last attempt to make the churchly Christ acceptable to the modern world. That Christ was a man in the full sense of the word… and at the same time, as traditional piety wishes, can be a divine redeemer, the object of our faith and of our cultus for all times… Schleiermacher’s Christ is as little a real man as is the Christ of the church… The illusion… that Jesus could have been a man in the full sense and still as a single person stand above the whole of humanity, is the chain which still blocks the harbor of Christian theology against the open sea of rational science. To break this chain is the purpose of the present work, as it has always been of all my theological writings.” (Pg. 4-5)
He states, “Now if, in the renunciation of a personal divine element in Christ, faith allows itself to be ‘tuned’ to science, the latter still cannot somehow avoid making a concession to faith… this concession by science to faith consists… in the acknowledgment that in Christ, in a way different from all other men, the God-consciousness is to have been the absolute, determinative factor in every moment of his life. The sentient consciousness throughout ruled without opposition, yet without impairing his complete humanity.” (Pg. 25-26)
He states, “now that that foundation [Christ’s sinlessness and absolute perfection] has been removed, these properties which are nevertheless to remain in Christ are without foundation. A sinless, archetypal Christ is not one whit less unthinkable than a supernaturally begotten Christ with a divine and a human nature. On the contrary, since he appears on the basis of a world view which otherwise excludes miracles or uncaused effects, a further contradiction clings to him from which the church’s Christology, which presupposes belief in miracles, is free.” (Pg. 29)
He asserts, “Schleiermacher’s treatment of the life of Jesus, insofar as it promised … to commence without dogmatic presuppositions, cannot keep its word; to be sure, it liberated itself from some of the fetters of church prejudice, but by no means did it liberate itself from all… Schleiermacher indeed kept his ears open, but had himself tied with cables to the mast of the Christian faith in order to sail past the dangerous island unharmed. His conduct is only half-free, therefore also only half-scientific. The truly scientific concept is to engage in criticism unfettered and with open ears, in which case it will turn out that the entire legend of the Sirens was but the whisperings of the old sorceress Circe.” (Pg. 36-37)
He acknowledges, “Schleiermacher had sharper insight than most theologians into the total difference between the first three Gospels and the Fourth; he recognized that here is it an either/or matter, that one cannot take the Gospel of John AND the Gospel of Matthew as apostolic writings, but that one can take at the most either the one or the other.” (Pg. 40)
Of the angel of the Lord appearing to Joseph in a dream, he comments, “This is the first and at the same time quite glaring test case of how Schleiermacher and his exegesis never completely outgrew the conceptual mode of rationalism and the halfway measures of its natural explanation of miracles.” (Pg. 53)
He argues, “That the consciousness of a pre-existence… of a life with God before the foundation of the world, must have disturbed the consciousness of Jesus, is a settled matter… But if Jesus had had such a consciousness, he says, he must also have shared something of its contents and given his disciples a conception of it… and these men, in turn, would not have kept it to themselves, because with it they could have generated more faith than with the preaching of his resurrection.” (Pg. 60)
He observes, “Schleiermacher’s pupils … took as their point of departure the view that a place has to be made for the power of tempting thoughts and the possibility of inner struggles within Jesus---if one is to take seriously his full humanity---then… if they thought that thereby they did not affect Jesus’ sinlessness, then that made the same mistake which Schleiermacher, conversely, made when he held the sinlessness of Jesus to be harmonizable with this true humanity.” (Pg. 77-78)
He points out, “An unusual light falls on Schleiermacher’s view of Jesus [when he asks], ‘Why… did Jesus make no use of his miracle power in that moment when his life was in danger, up to the last catastrophe?’ We naturally answer, Because he did not possess such a miracle power at all. But actually, in our purely human view of the person of Jesus, such a question cannot occur at all. That it occurs to Schleiermacher … shows precisely that he does not view Jesus as a true man.” (Pg. 98-99)
He explains, “Schleiermacher’s contention was that neither … the death of Jesus was real nor that it was not real, can be demonstrated. But now he shows only… the nondemonstrability of a real death. Where, if his position is so impartial, is the evidence that the unreality of Jesus’ death is equally impossible to demonstrate?… Whoever is so zealous, as… in Schleiermacher’s case, as to present Jesus’ condition after the resurrection as a perfectly natural one and as a pure continuation of the previous one, thereby confesses… that for him also the resurrection itself is but a natural resuscitation.” (Pg. 122-123)
He points out, “[Schleiermacher] would like very much to be able to imagine that the sequence of the two incidents was… that Magdalene previously had seen and spoken with them [the angels/men] and that Peter and John began to walk only afterwards and found the tomb empty, after the men … had departed. But since the narrative of his eyewitness (John) restrains him, he says, ‘something is obscure here.’ Something obscure remains… how such an explanation was possible for a man of intellect and taste.” (Pg. 136)
He reports, “according to Schleiermacher, Jesus took great pains to convince his disciples that his life after the resurrection was exactly like his life beforehand, and that absolutely nothing supernatural was in the picture… So we must say that [Jesus] had himself to blame that he did not achieve his aim, for he did not use… telling them how he came out of the tomb … in a totally natural way.’” (Pg.141-142)
He summarizes, “Schleiermacher… always finds himself grinned at by the masks of Bahrdt and Venturini. A disappearance of his hero into the spirit world or into an Essene society is the dilemma in which he leaves us.” (Pg. 157)
He concludes, “Schleiermacher … is a supernaturalist in Christology but in criticism and exegesis a rationalist. His Christ… still remains essentially a superhuman, supernatural being. In contrast, his exegesis, as far as it pertains to the miraculous… is distinguished from that of Paulus only by somewhat more spirit and subtlety…” (Pg. 160)
Strauss states his own conclusion: “As soon as we no longer expect to treat the Scriptures as other than a human book we will be able to treat them with full respect; as soon as we take courage to really put Jesus in the ranks of humanity, our reverence, or love, cannot fail.” (Pg. 162)
Strauss is one of the most interesting of the ‘Life of Jesus’ authors; and his commentary on a fellow author is quite interesting.
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