A History of the Quests for the Historical Jesus, Volume 1: From the Beginnings of Christianity to the End of World War II

By Colin Brown and Craig A. Evans

A comprehensive, two-volume reassessment of the quests for the historical Jesus that details their origins and underlying presuppositions as well as their ongoing influence on today's biblical and theological scholarship.

Jesus' life and teaching is important to every question we ask about what we believe and why we believe it. And yet there has never been common agreement about his identity, intentions, or teachings—even among first-century historians and scholars. Throughout history, different religious and philosophical traditions have attempted to claim Jesus and paint him in the cultural narratives of their heritage, creating a labyrinth of conflicting ideas.

From the evolution of orthodoxy and quests before Albert Schweitzer's famous "Old Quest," to today's ongoing questions about criteria, methods, and sources, A History of the Quests for the Historical Jesus not only chronicles the developments but lays the groundwork for the way forward.

The late Colin Brown brings his scholarly prowess in both theology and biblical studies to bear on the subject, assessing not only the historical and exegetical nuts and bolts of the debate about Jesus of Nazareth but also its philosophical, sociological, and theological underpinnings. Instead of seeking a bedrock of "facts," Brown stresses the role of hermeneutics in formulating questions and seeking answers.

Colin Brown was almost finished with the manuscript at the time of his passing in 2019. Brought to its final form by Craig A. Evans, this book promises to become the definitive history and assessment of the quests for the historical Jesus.

• Volume One covers the period from the beginnings of Christianity to the end of World War II.
• Volume Two (sold separately) covers the period from the post-War era through contemporary debates.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Release date: Nov 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9780310125495

Colin Brown

Colin Brown (1932–2019; DD, University of Nottingham; PhD, University of Bristol) was senior professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He taught and wrote on the historical Jesus, Christology, philosophical theology, New Testament theology, history and criticism, and miracles. He served as editor of?The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology?and was the author of several books, including?Miracles and the Critical Mind, History and Faith,?and?Jesus in European Protestant Thought.

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EDITOR’S PREFACE

REGRETTABLY, Professor Colin Brown did not have the opportunity to write a preface for his lengthy and learned work that appears in these two volumes. Not long after he finished a first draft of A History of the Quests for the Historical Jesus he became ill, and a few months later in 2019, he passed away at the age of eighty-seven. It has fallen to me to edit and finish his work.

Brown was born in Bradford, England, in 1932. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1958 and became vice principal of Tyndale Hall Theological College, which later became Trinity College, Bristol. Brown earned his BA at Liverpool University, an MA from Nottingham University, and a PhD from the University of Bristol. In 1978 he joined the faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where he remained until his retirement in 2010.

I taught summer school at Fuller for twenty-five consecutive years, and it was thanks to these regular visits that I became acquainted with Colin Brown. He and I often took lunch together and then sat in his office discussing various aspects of Jesus research. It was in this collegial setting that I learned about his book—which he thought he could finish in about five years, but at the time of his death he had been at it for two decades!

As I sifted through two large boxes of drafts and notes, I came to appreciate the extent of Colin’s labors. He had read thousands of books, chapters, and journal articles in English, French, and German. As I worked through his 1,500-page manuscript, I was struck by the depth of his learning. Colin had mastered the relevant primary and secondary literature and, at the same time, had gained a great deal of insight into the lives of the major scholars themselves. It became clear that the social settings of the thinkers who influenced the discussion had a profound influence on them as well.

In my opinion Colin’s most significant contribution in the present work was his decision to abandon the framework of Albert Schweitzer’s survey of Jesus research, which began with the posthumous publications of a lengthy manuscript penned by Hermann Samuel Reimarus. Colin rightly recognized that there were several important precursors whose contributions to Jesus research had been overlooked or underestimated. Colin also wisely steered his discussion away from the three-quest schema that has been in vogue for more than a century. The result is a stimulating and insightful analysis of this rich and complicated field of study. Colin’s expertise in epistemology and his critical assessment of supernaturalism equipped him to undertake this onerous task at a level that few in the field can equal.

Failure to publish what will be regarded as Colin Brown’s magnum opus would have been an egregious sin of omission. But we have managed to publish his work thanks to the generosity and diligence of Nancy Rothwell, trustee of the Colin Brown estate, and the good people at Zondervan, who early on recognized the value of Colin’s book and agreed to publish it in good time and in its full form. For this I am very grateful to Katya Covrett and Dr. Stan Gundry, as well as to Matt Estel for copyediting, to Vanessa Carroll, Becky Danley, and Lynn Wilson for assistance in proofing, and to Sandra Judd for indexing. It is my hope that readers at all levels of expertise will benefit from this learned work.

C. A. Evans

Houston Baptist University

INTRODUCTION

FOR MORE than a century, historical-Jesus studies were shaped by one man and one book. The man was Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), brilliant philosopher and theologian, internationally renowned organist and musicologist, medical missionary in the jungles of West Africa, and Nobel Laureate. Schweitzer’s book was published in Gothic script in 1906, with a title that threatened to consign it to university library shelves of unread books—Von Reimarus zu Wrede. Eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung—From Reimarus to Wrede: A History of Life-of-Jesus Research.¹

The title suggested a pedantic catalogue of biographies written between dates set by writers known only to scholars. The Gothic script remained for decades to come. However, in the second enlarged edition the subtitle of the 1st edition supplied the title for the entire book. The new title gave the impression that the book was indeed the definitive History of Life-of-Jesus Research. The names of Reimarus and Wrede dropped out of sight,² but at the expense of concealing their significance in Schweitzer’s narrative.

At first the academic community gave Schweitzer’s book a mixed reception. The turnaround came with the English translation under the title The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (1910). In the preface Cambridge professor F. C. Burkitt assured readers of the book’s significance. It set before them as no other book has ever done, the history of the struggle which the best-equipped intellects of the modern world have gone through in endeavoring to realize for themselves the historical personality of our Lord.³ Over the years Schweitzer’s book achieved near canonical status as the definitive account of what its English title promised to deliver. Even those who questioned Schweitzer’s portrait of Jesus could not deny the verve of his narrative or his mastery of material.

Canonical status was reasserted in the English-speaking world by publication of The Quest of the Historical Jesus, first complete edition (2000).⁴ The work was in fact a revision of William Montgomery’s original translation, with supplementary chapters from the second German edition of 1913. Schweitzer wrote them in response to developments between 1906 and 1912. The foreword by Dennis Nineham, the notes by the editor, and the appreciation of Schweitzer by Marcus J. Borg offered no serious critical assessment of Schweitzer’s contribution or account of developments after 1912. For all intents and purposes, Schweitzer had given the definitive account of the quest of the historical Jesus.⁵

Today it is customary to speak of three quests: the original quest chronicled by Schweitzer, the New Quest initiated in Germany in the 1950s by members of the Bultmann school, and the subsequent Third Quest popularized by Marcus Borg, N. T. Wright, and others. However, there is reason to think that the notion of three quests owes more to the entrepreneurial spirit of British publishers than to scholars actually engaged in Jesus studies.

It began with the title given to the English translation of Schweitzer’s book, published in London by A. & C. Black, which introduced the word Quest. Their word choice intimated a narrative akin to Raiders of the Lost Ark or at least suggested that the Jesus of history was quite different from the Christ of Christian tradition and the Jesus of liberal Protestantism. This goal was, in fact, what Schweitzer had in mind. The feeling of excitement generated by the quest was heightened by Montgomery’s translation. However, the editor of the first complete edition found it bombastic. It needed correction to bring it into line with Schweitzer’s clear, matter-of-fact and often witty prose.⁶

History repeated itself half a century later in connection with a paper presented to the Oxford Congress on the Four Gospels (1957) by a brilliant young American scholar, James M. Robinson. The paper was entitled, The Kerygma and the Quest of the Historical Jesus.

Discussions with the editor of the SCM Press in London about turning the paper into a book led to the proposal of getting rid of jargon and entitling the book A New Quest of the Historical Jesus. The editor’s suggestion was finally agreed upon. Later, Robinson described it as an afterthought.⁷

Robinson’s intention was not to start a New Quest but to carry forward ideas set out by Rudolf Bultmann in Jesus and the Word (1926). His aim was not to create a post-Bultmann Jesus but to understand the historical Jesus through existential response to the kerygma. Robinson, however, became both the historian of the New Quest and its leading advocate in the New World.

Given this history, it was almost inevitable that the term Third Quest should be coined to describe approaches that were different from the other two quests. It gained currency through N. T. Wright. Wright used it in his capacity as editor of a handbook of New Testament scholarship published by the Oxford University Press and later in his own writings.⁸ Unlike its predecessors, the Third Quest stressed the Jewishness of Jesus. However, it is not clear whether it was intended to cover all writers who shared this emphasis,⁹ or whether membership of the Third Quest was limited to those who subscribed to a particular methodology.

Bultmann defined authenticity with regard to recognizing genuine traditions about Jesus in terms of the criterion of double dissimilarity—dissimilar to both Judaism and Christianity, thus characterizing the authentic teaching of Jesus by its distinctive eschatological temper.¹⁰ In response, Wright proposed a criterion of double similarity and double dissimilarity for identifying authentic passages relating to Jesus. "It is thus decisively similar to both the Jewish context and in the early Christian world, and at the same time importantly dissimilar. . . . [W]hen something can be seen to be credible (though perhaps deeply subversive) within first-century Judaism, and credible as the implied starting point (though not the exact replica) of something in later Christianity, there is a strong possibility of our being in touch with the genuine history of Jesus."¹¹

This is not the place to pursue this debate further. Right now, it is more important to note that the term Third Quest implies only two previous quests. It suggests that Schweitzer was right to begin with Reimarus and that Reimarus had no predecessors. However, it is a reminder of Schweitzer’s omissions. He focused on writers in Germany and France. He ignored Martin Kähler’s critique. He also ignored Jewish scholarship and perceptions of Jesus outside the domain of New Testament studies.¹²

The three-quest scenario ignores many developments outside its purview. It is not for nothing that the facetious term No Quest was coined to denote the vast areas outside the three-quest scenario. It is in this facetious sense that No Quest is used in the present book to discuss contributions outside the confines of the three quests. Schweitzer’s Quest of the Historical Jesus was not the impartial historical investigation that it is often imagined to be. As we shall see in due course, it was a monument of self-vindication.

My work has its origins in the Hensley Henson Lectures in the University of Oxford, which I was honored to give in 1993. Their title was The Question of Miracle and the Quest of the Historical Jesus. Behind the topic was my doctoral work in the University of Bristol. It was eventually published in the United States, where I have lived since 1978. The book bears the title Jesus in European Protestant Thought, 1778–1860.¹³ Also behind the topic of my lectures was my investigation into the changing role of miracles in the history of theology and philosophy, Miracles and the Critical Mind.¹⁴

Every guest speaker in a distinguished lecture series is faced by the choice of whether to publish the lectures more or less as delivered or to develop them into a more substantial book. With the encouragement of colleagues, I decided upon the latter course. While I have tried not to lose sight of my original aim of investigating changing attitudes toward miracles in the quest, I have chosen to explore it in contexts wider than a short lecture series permitted.

Along the way I have abandoned Albert Schweitzer as a guide to the course of the quest of the historical Jesus. I have also abandoned the three-quest scenario because of its shortsighted limitations. Although it may seem like reinventing the wheel, we have no option but to start again with our eyes open to the pitfalls of the past. We need a willingness to listen to what others have to say and to try to understand where they are coming from. The quest of the historical Jesus involves hermeneutics as well as exegesis—a merging of horizons, beliefs, and philosophies.

To help readers navigate through the labyrinth of conflicting ideas, I offer below what I call a road map, which sets out the argument chapter by chapter. In addition, each chapter has its own list of topics. I make no claims to completeness. What I offer is the results of a personal pilgrimage, which has experienced many changes of heart and mind over the years.

I end this introduction on a personal note. Some readers may wonder why the author of this book, who has spent much of his career teaching systematic theology, should presume to trespass on an area commonly regarded as the preserve of New Testament scholars. I offer two explanations.

The first has to do with the nature of the quest of the historical Jesus. From the outset it has been a multidisciplinary enterprise, involving more than biblical studies. In the modern era it has become ever more complex. Biblical study cannot be divorced from philosophy, hermeneutics, historical theology, archaeology, sociology, the study of antiquity and its literature and languages. This list is not intended to be exhaustive. It merely gives some idea of the range of disciplines that are relevant to the quest. No one can achieve mastery in all these fields. But one can be attentive to the expertise of others.

The second explanation has to do with my understanding of systematic theology. In my opinion it has nothing to do with teaching systems like Calvinism or Arminianism or an infallible method. It has more to do with exploration than with indoctrination. For much of my career, teaching systematic theology has involved asking three questions over and over again: What do we believe? Why do we believe the things that we believe? How do we put it together?

In seeking answers I am guided by my study of Scripture, the ecumenical confessions of faith, and a host of scholars past and present. In my last decade of classroom teaching, I added a fourth question: How are our beliefs influenced by culture?

In short, my approach is like what medieval scholars termed Quaestiones Disputatae or what Karl Rahner called Theological Investigations.¹⁵ The historical Jesus is important to every question we ask and try to answer.

A Road Map

Quests of the Historical Jesus contains twenty-one chapters on specialized subjects. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction and table of contents. The aim of this road map is to give an overview of the book. It takes the form of a guide to help to readers navigate their way through the labyrinth of its contents by explaining the underlying strategy and tactics. The strategy identifies four major areas of investigation. The tactics explain the issues discussed in the chapters in the four areas.

The first area of investigation, Quests before Schweitzer, consists of chapters 1–4. They explore the background necessary for appraising Schweitzer’s Quest. On a deeper level they serve to understand the separation of Christianity and Judaism as well as the emerging orthodoxies of both faiths. From the sixteenth century on, Europe underwent significant religious and intellectual climate changes, culminating in deism. These changes precipitated the modern quest of the historical Jesus.

The second area of investigation (chaps. 5–8), The European Scene, explores quests of the historical Jesus in Europe. It begins with a reappraisal of Schweitzer and his narrative of the quest from Reimarus to himself. It then examines the rise of the history of religions school, form criticism, and dialectical theology. The dominant figure was Rudolf Bultmann. However, Bultmann’s combination of radical criticism with dialectical theology bordered on docetism. Under the leadership of Ernst Käsemann, Bultmann’s former students embarked on the short-lived New Quest of the Historical Jesus.

The term No Quest is used facetiously to denote ongoing quests that flew under Bultmann’s radar screen. It includes major contributions to understanding the world of Jesus—the languages, history, and culture of Second Temple Judaism—and early reclamations of Jesus. On the darker side was the rise of National Socialism and its impact on Jesus studies. In the postwar period Joachim Jeremias and Oscar Cullmann were the most prominent advocates of recognizing the importance of the historical investigation of Jesus.

The third area of investigation (chaps. 9–15), Britain and North America, focuses on developments in the English-speaking world. It retraces our steps in order to assess the impact of European scholarship. We begin with Britain and a discussion of the role of Anglican Church politics in historical Jesus studies. We then turn to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the part they played in introducing Schweitzer and his Quest to English readers. In the early part of the twentieth century William Sanday at Oxford and F. C. Burkett at Cambridge were the towering figures. As the century wore on, their place was taken by B. H. Streeter, C. H. Dodd, and T. W. Manson. Among the key figures after the Second World War were John Macquarrie, Austin Farrer, David Daube, W. D. Davies, and J. D. M. Derrett.

The twentieth century witnessed the growing importance on the world stage of American scholarship. Up until then, American schools were primarily colleges preparing men for the professions. It was the custom for scholars to go to Europe to round off their education. The twentieth century saw major American universities emerge as research institutions. In view of this transformation, Jesus studies are examined at four leading schools: Princeton Theological Seminary and the divinity schools at Yale, Chicago, and Harvard. The focus then shifts to the rise and fall of the New Quest in America. It takes the form of four case studies of leading participants during and after the episode: James M. Robinson, Schubert M. Ogden, Reginald H. Fuller, and Norman Perrin. The segment concludes with discussion of the endeavors of Paul Tillich and Hans Frei to detach Christology from its dependence on the vagaries of historical criticism, as well as Leander H. Keck’s response.

The fourth area of investigation (chaps. 16–21), Ongoing Issues, reviews the contemporary state of scholarship. The word ongoing is used in two ways. In chapter 16 it refers to an issue that spans a period of time. The role of Apollonius of Tyana as a rival to Jesus has been debated for centuries. In chapter 17 ongoing refers to the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s nihilism attracted Albert Schweitzer and continues to influence contemporary philosophy. The remaining chapters are devoted to current issues: methods, criteria, sources (chap. 18), Jesus the Jew (chap. 19), and a two-part reassessment of the historical Jesus today (chaps. 20–21).

I. Quests before Schweitzer

CHAPTER 1: THE FIRST QUEST. A case is made for thinking that the quest of the historical Jesus did not begin in Europe in the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment. It began in Jesus’ lifetime when a delegation of scribes was sent from Jerusalem to Galilee to investigate Jesus. Oddly enough, the purpose of their mission could be described in words taken from the title of Reimarus’s final Fragment. Their goal was to investigate the aims of Jesus and his disciples. The answers were different, but the questions were the same.

The scribes’ verdict was that Jesus was casting out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons; Satan had got into him, and he was leading multitudes astray. Jesus fit the profile laid out in Deuteronomy 13:1–5. Such a prophet was guilty of a capital offence. According to the mandates of the Torah, prophets and dreamers of dreams who performed signs and wonders in order to lead astray should be put to death. Evil should be purged from the people of Israel.

Mark’s gospel gives a succinct narrative of events. Jesus had come from Galilee for the express purpose of being baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan. As Jesus was coming out of the water, he experienced the Spirit of God swooping down upon him like a dove. A voice from heaven declared that Jesus was the Son of God.

After John’s arrest Jesus returned to Capernaum on the north end of the Sea of Galilee, not to his family home in Nazareth. Capernaum was the initial center of his operations. Jesus began by calling the nucleus of a band of disciples. Eventually their number rose to twelve. In the meantime, Jesus established his reputation as a teacher, healer, and exorcist.

Some people thought him mad. His family tried to restrain him. Following the scribes’ verdict, the family tried again. Jesus’ mother, brothers, and sisters made the long journey from Nazareth in the hill country to Capernaum to reason with him. Jesus refused to meet them and opted for his family of followers who did the will of God. From now on relations with his biological family were dysfunctional. It was evident that Jesus must get out of Capernaum. Jesus and the Twelve escaped in a boat under the protection of darkness. The remainder of Jesus’ life was spent on the move. It was not a matter of choice. Henceforth, Jesus lived the life of a fugitive with nowhere to lay his head.

Mark’s gospel was written to vindicate Jesus. Mark stressed the anointing of Jesus by the Spirit at his baptism. It made him the Anointed One, the Christ, the Son of God. This anointing was the source of Jesus’ authority. It was seen as a fulfillment of prophecy about the One on whom the Spirit of the Lord would come. His mission was to baptize Israel with the Spirit of God.

In form and genre, Mark’s gospel represents the state of the art in Jewish Hellenistic literature. Mark’s composition as a tragic epic can be traced back to Aristotle’s Poetics. It has a five-act structure with a prologue and an epilogue.¹⁶ The prologue sets out the dynamics of the action that followed. The epilogue transforms the tragedy of Jesus’ death and burial into a triumphant ending: news of his resurrection.

In Aristotle, the rules for narrating fiction and history were the same. Fiction described the kind of events that could happen; history dealt with events that had happened.¹⁷ Tragedies were performed by actors; epics were narrated by a single person. The reason why performances of Mark today are so successful stems from the fact that it was written to be narrated.

The gospels of Matthew and Luke were built on Mark’s framework. John was different. His gospel was also a vindication of Jesus. But as we shall see, John took a different course.

CHAPTER 2: EVOLUTION OF ORTHODOXY. Chapter 2 examines the parting of the ways that separated Christianity from Judaism and the formation of orthodoxy in both faiths. The separation had begun already in the time of the New Testament. Their respective orthodoxies were developed in isolation from each other. It is one of the great tragedies of history that in their formative years communication ceased and hostility prevailed. Jewish teachers, especially in the Babylonian Talmud, vented their frustration in coded caricatures of Jesus.

In the Christian creeds and the decrees of the ecumenical councils, Jesus became a virtual gentile. The conciliar decrees defined orthodoxy in terms of metaphysical theology that mediated between warring theological factions. They were more concerned with conceptual formulations of Jesus’ divinity and humanity than with his life and teaching. They omitted to say that Jesus was Jewish.

No mention was made of the role of God’s Spirit—apart from in Jesus’ conception—or the controversies with Jewish authorities that occupy so much of the canonical Gospels. In the Nicene Creed only a punctuation mark separates became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was man from For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. The ancient creeds and the definitions of Nicea and Chalcedon remained authoritative statements of orthodoxy in both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Reformation.

CHAPTER 3: POST-REFORMATION ALTERNATIVES. Chapter 3 examines discontent within Protestantism, beginning with voices of dissent—the protests of Servetus regarding the doctrine of the Trinity and the Arminian conflict within Calvinism. The chapter then traces the rise of anti-Trinitarianism as it took shape in Socinianism and Unitarianism.

In England the greatest scientist of the age, Sir Isaac Newton, wrote more (unpublished) manuscripts on theology than he did on science. He was fiercely critical of Nicea and its defender Athanasius. Newton’s friends William Whiston and Samuel Clarke were charged with reviving Arianism, the heresy condemned at the Council of Nicea.

The final part of the chapter is devoted to the rise of skepticism in view of its critical role in later thought. Modern European skepticism may be traced to Pyrrhonism, the revival of interest in the ancient Greek skeptic Pyrrho through the writings of Sextus Empiricus. Pyrrhonism influenced the rationalism of René Descartes and the skepticism of David Hume.

Hume is often described as an empiricist in philosophy. The term betrays an unrecognized connection with Sextus Empiricus. Hume saw himself as a moderate Pyrrhonist. Systematic doubt was ultimately self-destructive, but a modicum of doubt was useful. In Hume’s day, miracles had come to be viewed as legitimation of Christianity as a belief system. Hume, like Thomas Hobbes and Benedictus de Spinoza before him, questioned whether evidence for them was adequate to bear this burden.

CHAPTER 4: DEISM AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS. The previous chapter dealt with what might be called intellectual climate change. Chapter 4 begins with a review of British deism. It is followed by discussion of deism in America and Germany.

British deism was amorphous. Leading figures include Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Charles Blount, John Toland, Anthony Collins, Thomas Woolston, and Matthew Tindal. All but Tindal were private scholars. Their unity, if it existed at all, could be defined by what they opposed: institutional Christianity. Blount introduced English readers to Apollonius of Tyana, a rival to Jesus. An anonymous work outlined the rational pantheism of Spinoza. Toland criticized mysteries in religion and propagated his own brand of Spinozism.

Anthony Collins, a friend of John Locke and member of the English gentry, published two anonymous treatises after Locke’s death that undermined predictive prophecy. Appeal to prophecy, particularly in Matthew, was regarded a one of the twin pillars of Christian apologetics: prophecy and miracles. Collins’s exact scholarship showed that passages credited with foretelling Jesus and his times actually were fulfilled in their own times. Collins planned a critical treatment of miracles but was preempted by Thomas Woolston.

Woolston was a former Cambridge scholar who was deprived of his fellowship on grounds of mental instability. He gained notoriety for a series of pamphlets—the social media of the age—that he marketed himself. Woolston called them Discourses on the Miracles of Our Saviour. They were progressively more hostile and defamatory. If the gospel miracle stories bore any truth, it was as allegories. Whether this claim is credible—or whether it was a case of theological lying—is disputed. Woolston was tried and convicted for blasphemy. The case became a cause célèbre.

Unitarianism and deism spread to America. The most famous representative was Thomas Jefferson, framer of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States. Under the influence of the English Unitarian Joseph Priestley, Jefferson was won over from deism to Unitarianism. An outcome was the unpublished Jefferson Bible. It was actually a scissors-and-paste version of the four canonical Gospels. Jefferson compiled it by snipping verses from printed versions of the Bible and pasting them in a book. He cut out all references to the supernatural. Jefferson was convinced that one day Unitarianism would become the religion of America.

Knowledge of British deism was widespread in German intellectual circles. Modern scholarship has shown that Reimarus possessed a comprehensive collection of deists in his personal library. Schweitzer was reliant on the extracts of Reimarus’s work posthumously edited by Lessing. The full text of Reimarus’s Apology or Defense of the Rational Worshippers of God was first published in 1972 and reveals extensive knowledge of the deists whom Reimarus ranked among the rational worshippers of God.

Immanuel Kant is remembered as the philosopher of Protestantism. It might be more accurate to see him as the philosopher of deism. He described God as a postulate of practical reason but insisted that knowledge of God could not be inferred from it. He rejected revelation and did not refer to Jesus by name. Kant insisted that morality was based on unconditional moral laws. Although he castigated the Fragmentist, he also denounced priestcraft. He preferred to speak of the personified idea of the Good principle. The great teacher of natural religion who figured in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason was more a project of thought embodying ideal morality than a historical figure. Kant was closer to being a deist than the Christian theist he claimed to be.

II. The European Scene

CHAPTER 5: SCHWEITZER AND THE OLD QUEST. Chapter 5 examines the origin and contents of Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (1906; ET 1910).

Before Schweitzer embarked on his career in theology, he obtained a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Strassburg. The subject of his 1899 dissertation was Kant’s philosophy of religion from Critique of Pure Reason to Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Regardless of whatever else he got from Kant, it seems that from then on Schweitzer was set on a course for constructing theology within the boundaries of mere reason. Before he became an admirer of Nietzsche, Schweitzer was a devotee of Kant. This enthusiasm is understandable if we remove, as Schweitzer did in his dissertation, the postulate of God from Kant’s later critical philosophy.

The starting point of Schweitzer’s Quest was Lessing’s extracts from an unpublished text by Heinrich Samuel Reimarus. Lessing published them as Fragments of an Unnamed Author, using the subterfuge that he had discovered them in his capacity as librarian to the Duke of Brunswick at Wolfenbüttel. The extracts are frequently referred to as the Wolfenbüttel Fragments.

What is not often realized is the fact that the Quest was written as a monumental vindication of an earlier work. In 1901 Schweitzer published a two-volume dissertation on the Lord’s Supper for his qualification to teach theology at Strassburg. Volume 1 (first published in English translation in 1982) was devoted to proving that Jesus did not intend the Last Supper to be replicated down the ages. Volume 2 outlined events leading up to the Last Supper and was published in English translation in 1914 with the title The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus’ Messiahship and Passion.

Schweitzer had begun to form his ideas about eschatology and the kingdom of God as early as 1894. Johannes Weiss had persuaded him that Jesus understood the kingdom of God eschatologically, as the advent of a new world order. Jesus came to believe that his death as a martyr would inaugurate it. However, on the same day that Schweitzer’s book was published, William Wrede published a book on the same subject that overshadowed Schweitzer. Wrede contended that the messianic secret was characteristic of Mark’s gospel but could not be traced back to Jesus himself.

Wrede’s book set Schweitzer on a course of self-vindication. He would show that readers ultimately would be confronted by the choice between Wrede’s thoroughgoing skepticism and his own thoroughgoing eschatology. In point of fact, it was a choice between different forms of skepticism. As a modern thinker, Schweitzer was no less skeptical about eschatology than Wrede. However, for Schweitzer eschatology was the key to understanding the actions of Jesus.

Along the way leading up to this ultimate choice were three critical turning points. Each marked a phase from which there was no turning back. The first presented the choice between a purely historical Jesus and the supernatural Jesus of tradition. The leading proponent of the purely historical Jesus was D. F. Strauss. Strauss’s career led him from graduate studies at Tübingen under F. C. Baur, to enthusiasm for Hegel in Berlin, and to disenchantment with Schleiermacher. The outcome was Strauss’s The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835–36). The gospel miracles were the product of myth making based on alleged fulfillment of Old Testament narratives about what the Messiah would do. Strauss’s book earned him a place in the history of scholarship at the expense of sacrificing his academic career. In later life Strauss wrote a second life of Jesus, which dropped his earlier Hegelianism in favor of Kantianism.

The second turning point was the elimination of John’s gospel from historical study. Schweitzer credited it to F. C. Baur and the Tübingen school and to his own mentor, H. J. Holtzmann. The third turning point was the triumph of Johannes Weiss’s eschatological Jesus over the noneschatological Jesus of liberal Protestantism. The final confrontation pitted Schweitzer’s thoroughgoing eschatology against the thoroughgoing skepticism of Wrede.

Many readers today remember Schweitzer from the paragraph that concluded the first edition of his Quest. He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou me!’ and sets us the task which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.¹⁸

There is something ironical about citing an incident described in John 21:9–19, a gospel that Schweitzer dismissed as unhistorical, having already announced the exclusion of the supernatural from serious history. Taken out of context, the passage reads like a rehabilitation of orthodoxy. Taken in context, it pictures what was left among the rubble that remained from Schweitzer’s demolition of traditional belief and critical scholarship. B. H. Streeter was nearer the truth than he perhaps realized when he described Schweitzer’s portrait of Jesus as a little like the Superman of Nietzsche dressed in Galilean robes.¹⁹ Schweitzer had long been an admirer of Nietzsche and his vision of the Übermensch. Schweitzer himself saw his results as the triumph of mysticism as the alternative to orthodoxy and critical positivism.

CHAPTER 6: FROM OLD QUEST TO NEW. Chapter 6 traces the trajectory of Jesus research from Wilhelm Bousset and the history of religions school in the early years of the twentieth century to the last great representative of that school, Rudolf Bultmann. Together with Schweitzer, Bousset and Bultmann set the agenda for much of the scholarship of the twentieth century. Bultmann declared his conviction that the central theme of Bousset’s Kyrios Christos (1913) was also that of New Testament theology—the history of belief in Christ.²⁰

According to Bousset, pre-Pauline Palestinian theology viewed Jesus as a cult figure. He was given the title Kyrios (Lord), which was derived from the mystery cults. Paul introduced a mysticism that turned Jesus into a supraterrestrial power. Paul did not proclaim the faith of Jesus, but faith in Jesus. In Paul’s writings Jesus became the Last Adam and the sender of the Spirit. The estrangement of the Johannine circle from the primitive figure of Jesus of Nazareth was nothing short of docetism.

Bultmann was heir to Bousset in a double sense. On Bousset’s death in 1920, Bultmann succeeded to his chair at Giessen. Bousset’s convictions and agenda regarding the stratification of early Christianity provided the basis for Bultmann’s own account. Bultmann was a pioneer of form criticism. However, the English term does not do full justice to what the German Formgeschichte (literally, form history) implies.

To Bultmann, what was important was not merely the classification of different forms embedded in the writings of the New Testament. It was also their history (Geschichte), which he analyzed at great length in successive editions of The History of the Synoptic Tradition (1921). The Gospels were not biographies depicting historical events in the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God. They were collections of stories compiled to satisfy the curiosity of believing communities about the one who gave rise to the kerygma. Mark was the creator of this sort of Gospel; the Christ myth gives his book, the book of secret epiphanies, not indeed a biographical unity, but a unity based upon the myth of the kerygma.²¹ Matthew and Luke followed suit.

In one important respect, Bultmann parted company from Bousset. Bousset belonged to the world of cultural Protestantism. Early in his career Bultmann embraced the dialectical theology of Karl Barth. Instead of rejecting liberal theology like Barth did, Bultmann came to believe that dialectical theology made historical critical study more fruitful.

This combination of belief in the transcendent act of God with radical criticism, together with the history-of-religions understanding of the thought world of the New Testament, resulted in the demythologizing program that characterized Bultmann’s later writings. The message of Jesus was the presupposition of New Testament theology rather than part of that theology. "Christian faith did not exist until there was a Christian kerygma; i.e., a kerygma proclaiming Jesus Christ—specifically Jesus Christ the Crucified and Risen One—to be God’s eschatological act of salvation."²²

The New Quest was launched by Bultmann’s former students in the 1950s. They felt that Bultmann’s radical emphasis was vulnerable to charges of docetism. Jesus was reduced to a shadowy figure whose historical reality was discounted if the exalted Lord of the kerygma was severed from the humiliated Lord in history. Ernst Käsemann, Ernst Fuchs, Günther Bornkamm, and Hans Conzelmann were among those who voiced concerns. However, in an address to the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (1959), Bultmann brought about the end of the New Quest, rebuking his former students by name. It was not their critical skills that were at fault. It was their theological failure to grasp that the kerygma had changed the once of the historical Jesus into the once for all of the church’s proclamation. The proclaimer had become the proclaimed.

CHAPTER 7: THE NO QUEST IN EUROPE TO WORLD WAR II. Chapter 7 examines developments outside the purview of Schweitzer and the history of religions school. It has three sections: Early Reclamations of Jesus; The Recovery of Jesus’ World; and Later Reclamations of Jesus. The term reclamation draws attention to the fact that Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Nazi scholars zealously reclaimed Jesus in their narratives of their heritage.

The early reclamations of Jesus began with a lecture series delivered extempore at the University of Berlin in the Winter Semester of 1899–1900. The lectures were delivered by the eminent church historian Adolf Harnack. His theme was the essence of Christianity, a hot topic of the day. The English translation was given the title What Is Christianity? (1901). Sales far outstripped those of Schweitzer’s work on the messianic secret. By the time of the fourteenth printing in 1927, Harnack’s work had shipped 71,000 copies.

For Harnack, Jesus was first and foremost a teacher. His message could be summed up under three headings: the kingdom of God and its coming, God the Father and the infinite value of the human soul, and the higher righteousness and the commandment to love. Echoing the language of Nietzsche but inverting its meaning, Harnack insisted that the teaching of Jesus amounted to a transvaluation of all values.

Harnack’s view of the essence of Christianity found widespread approval among liberal protestants. A different view was taken by the leading Old Testament scholar, Julius Wellhausen, who in his later career turned to New Testament studies: Jesus was not a Christian but a Jew. . . . His teaching, according to Mark, is almost entirely a polemic directed against the scribes and Pharisees. . . . He undermined the uniform binding authority of the Law. He took the Decalogue out of its context and reduced its scope to love of God and one’s neighbor. . . . He demanded purity of heart and of actions, which were directed not to God but to human beings.²³

Harnack’s lectures drew a swift reply from Alfred Loisy, leader of the French modernist movement in the Roman Catholic Church. Loisy’s remark that Jesus announced the kingdom of God, and what came was the church²⁴ is widely taken to mean that the church was an anticlimax. In context, it meant the opposite. Building on John Henry Newman’s idea of the development of doctrine, Loisy argued that the church was the outworking in history of Jesus’ preaching about the kingdom. Harnack had made the mistake of thinking that an adult person’s identity was understood by examining the person in infancy.

Irish Catholic modernist George Tyrrell famously summed up Loisy’s case in the remark: The Christ that Harnack sees, looking back through nineteen centuries of Catholic darkness, is only the reflection of a Liberal Protestant face, seen at the bottom of a deep well.²⁵

Reform rabbi Leo Baeck complained that Harnack was ignorant of Jewish sources, especially rabbinic haggadic tradition. Jesus had a thoroughly Jewish outlook. The day had come for gentiles to absorb Israel’s teaching.

Joseph Klausner was born in Lithuania to Jewish parents. He earned a doctorate from the University of Heidelberg and spent his early career in Odessa on the Black Sea. A Zionist, he emigrated to Palestine, eventually teaching Hebrew language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Klausner’s Jesus of Nazareth (1921; ET 1925) demonstrates exceptional thoroughness in research and a deep appreciation of his subject. Klausner dismissed Harnack’s Jesus as a product of the liberal anti-Jewish Germany of the early twentieth century.²⁶ Wellhausen fared scarcely better. Klausner argued that Jesus, as a Jew, had one idea: to implant the nation with the idea of the coming Messiah and to prepare them for it. Jesus’ ethical ideals surpassed those of Hillel. But apart from that, he gave nothing to the nation and to Jewish national life.

The second section of chapter 7 is devoted to the recovery of Jesus’ world. The importance of the subject was recognized by Emil Schürer. His History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (1877) was originally intended as a textbook. Its various editions culminated in the extensively revised form of the multivolume reference work The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (1973–87), edited by Geza Vermes and others. The work is like an immense background without a portrait—since Jesus himself makes only fleeting appearances.

The Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (1922–61), or Hand-Commentary to the New Testament drawn from Talmud and Midrash, is commonly called Strack-Billerbeck. The names are those of the project’s founder, Hermann L. Strack, and its primary researcher, Paul Billerbeck. Later volumes were edited by Joachim Jeremias. The work was conceived as a means of initiating readers into the world of Judaism by noting parallels with the Talmud and Midrashic exegesis. However, it assumed that rabbinic Judaism represented normative Judaism and predated the important Dead Sea Scrolls. Additionally, nonexperts had a difficult time judging the relevance of alleged parallels in the absence of expert guidance.

The languages spoken by Jesus were explored by a number of scholars. In The Words of Jesus (1898; 2nd ed., 1930; ET 1902) Gustaf Dalman sought to ascertain the meaning of Jesus’ words, as they would have been heard by Aramaic-speaking hearers. Dalman’s Jesus-Jeshua (1922; ET 1929) argued the case that Jesus knew three languages: Aramaic, his mother tongue; Greek, the language of commerce and government; and Hebrew, the language of Scripture and theological discourse. Dalman went on to show how his interpretation affected our understanding of Jesus’ words in the synagogue, the Sermon on the Mount, his final Passover meal, and his words from the cross. In an appendix, Dalman made a comparison between Jewish proverbs and maxims and those of Jesus.

Adolf Deissmann drew attention to the Greco-Roman world in Light from the Ancient East (1908; 4th ed., 1923; ET 1927). Deissmann maintained that the language of the New Testament was not a form of Semitic Greek barely understandable in the Hellenistic world but was the everyday Greek known as Koine Greek. A planned dictionary of New Testament Greek failed to come to fruition. It fell to Walter Bauer to produce the standard work used by scholars the world over A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (1928; 3rd English ed., 2000).

Gerhard Kittel, a leading authority on Judaism, gave his name to the reference work known in English as the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 10 vols. (1964–76). Actually Kittel edited only the first four volumes; the remaining six were edited by Gerhard Friedrich. The project went back to Adolf Deissmann’s desire to place the vocabulary of the New Testament into living linguistic connection with its contemporary world. However, the task of identifying the distinctive features of New Testament language proved in retrospect more complex than contributors to the Dictionary thought. The grouping of words by a common stem led to interpretations based on etymology that did not do justice to usage.

The links between Kittel and National Socialism cast a dark shadow on the Dictionary’s achievements. Kittel joined the National Socialist Party in 1933. The same year he gave a public lecture on the Jewish Question, which recommended separating Jewish Christians from gentile churches. Karl Barth, Martin Buber, Ernst Lohmeyer, and Adolf Schlatter (to whom the Theological Dictionary was dedicated) were among those who disowned Kittel’s views. After World War II, Kittel was not allowed to return to his professorial chair or resume editorship of the Dictionary.

The third section of chapter 7 examines three later reclamations of Jesus. The first is the work of Adolf Schlatter, the Tübingen professor who taught many of the major theologians of the twentieth century. Among them were Karl Barth, Ernst Käsemann, Ernst Fuchs, and Gerhard Kittel. Schlatter’s biblical commentaries shunned critical introductions and interaction with other scholars. On the other hand, they were crammed with citations in Greek and Hebrew from Josephus, the Mishnah, the Talmuds, and other primary sources. They show the Jesus of the Gospels deeply rooted in the world of Judaism and the importance of Jewish literature for understanding him. The historical Jesus was the Christ of faith, who was to be found by entering into the world of the text. To reach Jesus we must listen to the Evangelists.

By contrast, Rudolf Otto’s approach was through the phenomenology of religion. His seminal work on The Holy (1917) identified the concept as the numinous mystery that produces awe and fear while it also attracts and exalts. Otto’s last major work The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man (1934; ET 1938) built on this idea. Jesus was a Galilean charismatic itinerant preacher and healer.

As a Galilean, Jesus did not belong to official Judaism. At first, Jesus thought that he was the representative of the Son of Man. Later he saw himself as the Son of Man. The Last Supper was a prophetic sign showing his willingness to assume his messianic obligation to suffer. The working of the Spirit of God through Jesus’ healing and exorcisms were manifestations of the dawning kingdom of God.

Walter Grundmann did more than anyone to bolster the pro-Nazi German Christians. He had earned his doctorate under Kittel and later assisted him in work on his Theological Dictionary. He became a professor at the University of Jena and director of research at the nearby Institute for Investigation into Jewish Influence on German Church Life and Its Eradication. In 1940 he published Jesus der Galiläer und das Judentum (Jesus the Galilean and Judaism) with a view to giving a scholarly answer to the burning question of the day. This book is well remembered by New Testament scholars for asserting that Jesus was no Jew.

Grundmann explored two avenues. The first was Jesus’ message and clash with Judaism. Jesus was a charismatic who possessed an inner vision. Inevitably, it brought him into conflict with official Judaism. Jesus repudiated charges of impurity, being in league with the devil, and leading people astray. It was Jesus’ adversaries who killed prophets and opposed the will of God. For a Jew to declare himself Son of God was blasphemous, but it was not so for the Romans. The Jews adopted the cynical ploy of representing Jesus as a dangerous political messiah. The act of handing Jesus over to the Romans for execution revealed the chasm between Jesus and Judaism.

The other avenue that Grundmann explored was Jesus’ ethnic background. Grundmann claimed that for most of its history Galilee had been separate politically and ethnically from Judea. He inferred that Jesus was not a Jew but descended from one of the ethnic streams existing in Galilee. The Gospel genealogies and narratives linking Jesus’ birth to Bethlehem in Judea were untenable fabrications, devised to foster acceptance of Jesus’ Davidic descent and messiahship. Jesus was a servant, not a messianic ruler.

After World War II, Grundmann protested that his former actions were designed to save the church from Nazi oppression. He became a leading theologian in the communist German Democratic Republic. Among his many postwar writings was his massive account of The History of Jesus Christ (1956; 3rd ed., 1961). It dropped Grundmann’s former attempts to make Jesus an Aryan. Otherwise, it fits the description coined by the nineteenth-century French writer Alphonse Karr: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, or The more it changes, the more it is the same thing.

CHAPTER 8: THE NO QUEST IN EUROPE AFTER WORLD WAR II. One way of exploring this theme would be to examine articles in leading theological journals. In the case of the Theologische Rundschau, research was facilitated by the compilation of reports by Werner Georg Kümmel over a period of forty years.²⁷ Chapter 8, however, is more limited in scope. It focuses on three scholars who attracted international attention: Ethelbert Stauffer, Joachim Jeremias, and Oscar Cullmann.

Ethelbert Stauffer, professor of New Testament at Erlangen, wrote a series of books designed to locate Jesus in the worlds of Rome and Judaism for the benefit of general readers. They include Christ and the Caesars (1955), Jerusalem und Rom (1957), and Jesus and His Story, which was published in different translations in England (1960) and the United States (1959). Though popular in style, his works have endnotes rich with primary sources. Stauffer promised to stick to facts and omit interpretations, including his own. However, one interpretation must be considered: Jesus’ interpretation of himself. It was impossible to fit John into the Synoptics’ chronology, but it was possible to fit the Synoptics into John’s.

Stauffer traced the Sanhedrin’s decision to destroy Jesus to the raising of Lazarus (John 11:38–50). He used Mark for events leading to Jesus’ conviction for blasphemy. On the question of Jesus’ identity, Stauffer argued that Jesus did not refer to himself as the Messiah. He used Son of Man more frequently than any other title, often as a direct counter to Messiah. Jesus’ most important self-designation was I am he. It led to Jesus’ condemnation. I am was the divine self-designation found in the Hebrew Scriptures. On the lips of Jesus, it was the historical epiphany of God.

To some reviewers, Stauffer represented a step back into the precritical era. He paid no attention to genre, and his use of John seemed out of date. His claim to stick to facts, independent of interpretation, appeared naïve and positivistic. But to say this is not to deny that Stauffer’s work contained important insights. Among them is his pioneering work in seeking to uncover the roots of hostility that Jesus aroused. These roots raised their own far-reaching hermeneutical questions.

In 1956 Joachim Jeremias delivered a seminal paper on The Present State of the Debate about the Problem of the Historical Jesus. He saw gains in the Bultmann school’s attention to the kerygma. But he also saw grave dangers in surrendering the affirmation the Word became flesh and in ignoring the "salvation history [Heilsgeschichte]" of God’s activity in Jesus of Nazareth. The church was in danger of docetism when Christ became an idea. It was dangerous to put the proclamation of Paul in the place of the good tidings of Jesus. On one level, Jeremias was sending a warning to the church and to its theologians. On another level, he was describing the agenda for his life’s work, which took place primarily from the University of Göttingen.

Jeremias had already begun addressing this agenda in The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (1935, subsequently enlarged). The Last Supper was a Passover meal with a fourfold structure. In the gospel narratives of the meal, Jeremias detected Jesus’ ipsissima vox—that is, his distinctive manner of speaking. There were three elements: the phrase Truly I say to you; the use of the theological passive for God’s activity through Jesus; and a predilection for similitudes, comparisons, and parabolic expressions. Jeremias interpreted the injunction Do this in my remembrance as a plea that God would remember Jesus’ death as a Maranatha cry.

Jeremias’s study of The Parables of Jesus went through numerous editions, culminating in the sixth German edition (1962; ET 1963). Following in the footsteps of Adolf Jülicher, Jeremias rejected allegorical interpretation. Parables were not the prime means of spreading the gospel; this was done through other ways, such as communal meals, the offer of forgiveness, and the call to follow Jesus, which embodied God’s outreach through Jesus to sinners. The parables were defenses of these actions and what they signified. Characteristic themes were as follows: now is the day of salvation, God’s mercy for sinners, the great assurance, the imminence of catastrophe, it may be too late, the challenge of the hour, realized discipleship, the Via Dolorosa and the exaltation of the Son of Man, the consummation, and Jesus’ acts as parabolic actions. The parables challenged hearers to come to a decision about Jesus’ person and mission. The secret of the kingdom of God (Mark 4:11) was eschatology that was in process of realization.

The Prayers of Jesus (1967) brought together studies of key themes. Jeremias interpreted the word Abba as a unique expression of Jesus’ personal intimacy with his heavenly Father. He suggested that the word derived from the childhood expression Daddy. Abba denoted the total surrender of the Son to the Father. The Lord’s Prayer is preserved in two forms in the Gospels. Matthew’s longer form (6:9–13) reflects liturgical tradition in Jewish Christian communities. Luke’s shorter form (11:2–4) suggests gentile Christian tradition. Jeremias interpreted both forms eschatologically. The petition regarding bread asked God for sustenance in the end time. The petition regarding temptation referred not to everyday temptations but to deliverance from the time of trial in the end time.

Oscar Cullmann was one of the most versatile New Testament scholars of his day. Among his range of studies was an early investigation of the dating of the Gospel of Thomas. Another was on the date of Christmas, which could not be December 25. The early church did not celebrate Christmas in the same way they celebrated Easter. The only hint of the time of year given in the New Testament comes in Luke’s account of the shepherds. December was too cold for shepherds to keep watch over their flocks outdoors at night. The adoption of December 25 was in line with the emperor Constantine’s policy of uniting the worship of Christ with that of the sun, whose chief festival coincided with the winter solstice. The decision was comparable with Constantine’s edict of 321 CE, which made the day of the sun (which coincided with the Lord’s Day) the authorized day of rest throughout the empire.

Cullmann’s Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr was a contribution to the quest of the historical Peter, yet it indirectly involved the historical Jesus.²⁸ The case for connecting Jesus with the church (ekklēsia, Matt 16:18) was rejected by the Bultmann school. It was not just because the passage contains one of only three instances of ekklēsia in the Gospels, which are all in Matthew. The idea of the church seemed incompatible with the imminent coming of the kingdom of God. Cullmann pointed out that ekklēsia was common in the Old Testament to denote the people of God. Confession of Jesus as Messiah implied the existence of a messianic people.

The idea of Heilsgeschichte gained prominence in the nineteenth century through J. C. K. Hofmann. For Cullmann, God’s saving actions in Christ were the dominant theme of theology. In contrast with Greek cyclical views of time and the more recent views of Schweitzer, Bultmann, and Barth, Cullmann set out a linear view of time in Christ and Time (1946; rev. ET 1964). He returned to the subject in his last major work, Salvation and History (1965; ET 1967). Echoing the language of World War II, Cullmann compared Heilsgeschichte with D-Day (the Allied invasion of Europe) and VE-Day (Victory in Europe Day). Christ had won the decisive battle (D-Day). The final victory (VE-Day) would be Christ’s parousia.

Jeremias and Cullmann were the theological superstars of the postwar scene. When on tour, they packed university auditoriums. Chapter 8 would not be complete without noting the less-than-enthusiastic comments of the generation that followed. Nevertheless, Jeremias and Cullmann merit a second hearing.

III. Britain and North America

CHAPTER 9: ANGLICAN CHURCH POLITICS AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS. The Church of England, also known as the Anglican Church, occupies a unique position in English history. Since the Reformation in the sixteenth century it has been the legally established national church in England. Over the years, other denominations acquired legal recognition. However, church-state relations in national life have been monopolized by the Anglican Church. The two ancient English universities of Oxford and Cambridge were uniquely tied to the Anglican Church until well into the reign of Queen Victoria. All this meant that theological dissent within the Anglican Church had legal implications. The ensuing discussion focuses on two critical issues: programmatic essays calling for the church to adapt to the times and revisionist clergy who stirred up controversy.

The section on Essays Calling for Change discusses four Anglican symposia, each of which mapped out controversial theological programs. Essays and Reviews (1860) was a mild, rambling attempt by Oxford broad-church scholars to introduce readers to the world of modern scholarship. It backfired with disastrous results.

Lux Mundi (Light of the World, 1889) was the work of clergy with links to Oxford. Its central thesis argued that whatever adjustments may be required by modern scholarship, the incarnation must remain the church’s central belief. In addressing the theme of The Holy Spirit and Inspiration, the editor, Charles Gore, introduced to Anglican readers the idea of kenosis. Jesus’ differences with modern scholars over historical details of the Old Testament might be understood in light of the divine self-emptying of certain divine attributes—omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence—during the period when God became man. To opponents, Gore’s proposal was tantamount to surrendering the incarnation altogether.

Foundations (1912), edited by B. H. Streeter, was closer in spirit to Essays and Reviews than it was to Lux Mundi. Although its authors were born in the age of Queen Victoria, their review of the foundations of Christianity was directed at the post-Victorian age. Essays Catholic and Critical (1926), edited by E. G. Selwyn, was a synthesis in the tradition of Lux Mundi for readers living in the post–World War I era.

The section on Revisionist Clergy focuses on individuals who sparked controversies over Christology and the historical Jesus. A common factor was the figure of Charles Gore—not the avant garde liberal Catholic of 1889 but the diocesan bishop and guardian of creedal orthodoxy.

CHAPTER 10: JESUS AT OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE. The chapter has three main sections. Section 1 reviews early precritical Lives of Jesus under the heading Victorian Perspectives.

Section 2 examines Jesus at Oxford. William Sanday pioneered Jesus scholarship in England. He introduced F. C. Burkitt at Cambridge to the work of Wrede and Schweitzer. In so doing, he flamed Burkitt’s enthusiasm