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A. The holy Schleiermacher B. Warning for the theological consciousness
The Good Cause of Freedom and My Own Affair

VII. The incompetence of critique's opponents

English machine

Author: Bruno Bauer  Year: 1842 

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A. The holy Schleiermacher

330 Herr Gruppe is too modest when he not only calls Schleiermacher the greatest theologian of our time, but also praises him as the one who "principally" exercised "higher criticism". Herr Gruppe — we must be just — is by far greater than Schleiermacher: he is a greater theologian, a greater critic, he exercises not only higher criticism, but the highest, the very highest criticism — a criticism on whose height no one can follow him.
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331 In the same breath where Herr Gruppe (p. 34) praises Schleiermacher as theologian and as critic and assigns him the first place, he says: "the epistles of Paul and Peter bear all traces of authenticity in themselves" — great, greatest theologian and critic! was it perhaps an inner tickling that incited you to place this extraordinary truth just here after the eulogy on Schleiermacher? Did you want to force us to a comparison of your greatness with the greatness of Schleiermacher, and if this was until now the greatest, with the greatness of all theologians and critics of our time? No, that you did not want!
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333 Great critic, you need only look at "the epistles" of Paul and Peter — no! not even look at them! — but only mention them in order to recognise them immediately as authentic! No! No! This great theologian does not recognise the "epistles" of Paul and Peter as genuine, but he makes them genuine through his mere will. Miracle upon miracle! He does not even need to exert himself if he wants these "epistles" of the dear men of God to be genuine, he does not need to fight against the godless who have wanted to affix the stain of inauthenticity to some of these epistles, but en passant and not otherwise than playfully he makes them genuine. So easily does he perform the summary miracle that through the mere impression which the sight of this ease must make on us, he brings into oblivion the great literature which has been written together on the question of the authenticity of those epistles. The magic power of his will even causes us to forget also the missive of the greatest critic and theologian of our time, the missive of Schleiermacher on the so-called first letter of Paul to Timothy. Herr Gruppe does wonders and goes away without looking around. He wants to make no sensation with his wonders.
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334 It was very modest of him that he did not name to his readers in order the theologians who have not only doubted whether the letters of Peter, whether all letters of Paul are real letters of these apostles, but rather think they have furnished the proof that they are only so-called "letters of Paul and Peter", too modest that he did not even remark that he had become master over Schleiermacher's missive to Gaß.
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335 Let us look at the great, the very greatest and most modest sentence once more.
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336 "The epistles of Paul bear all traces of authenticity in themselves, which to our knowledge has been doubted by no one."
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337 What? Herr Gruppe does not know that Schleiermacher issued a missive on the so-called first letter of Paul to Timothy to Gaß in the year 1807? He does not know the great literature which could have taught him that — that eh, then he is precisely the greatest miracle-worker, if he does not even know what mighty wonders he does! — He remains the greatest critic, the greatest theologian and the model of modesty. How easy it would have been for him to refute all the theologians who have doubted the authenticity of some Pauline letters? He simply did not want to, however; he did not even want to trouble himself about their doubts and proofs, in order not to fall into the painful situation of having to cause them pain by refuting their proofs. He did not want to make unnecessary noise, so that not all the world would run together to admire the mighty warrior. He is the most magnanimous and most modest opponent!
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338 What? Herr Gruppe does not know that Schleiermacher issued a missive on the so-called first letter of Paul to Timothy to Gaß in the year 1807? He does not know the great literature which could have taught him that — that eh, then he is precisely the greatest miracle-worker, if he does not even know what mighty wonders he does! — He remains the greatest critic, the greatest theologian and the model of modesty. How easy it would have been for him to refute all the theologians who have doubted the authenticity of some Pauline letters? He simply did not want to, however; he did not even want to trouble himself about their doubts and proofs, in order not to fall into the painful situation of having to cause them pain by refuting their proofs. He did not want to make unnecessary noise, so that not all the world would run together to admire the mighty warrior. He is the most magnanimous and most modest opponent!
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339 Even if I wanted to wish for such a modest opponent: in Herr Gruppe I have found him.
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340 I have found him! But unfortunately I do not want him and must show him that I wish for quite other opponents. Yet I must be content: true critique can find no better opponents.
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341 Also Schleiermacher has found the man who understands him! He who does not understand the principle of true critique can also not understand the principle and method of the unfree, the limited, the still theologically limited critique.
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342 Herr Gruppe has read Wilke's work, he did not need to study it, he also did not need to heed my exposition that Wilke only decided the question of the form of the synoptic Gospels, but the other question of the origin of the content not only not, but even falsely — he has completely understood and characterised Wilke when he says: "Wilke asserts — asserts? Herr Gruppe! read Wilke's writing once and marvel at the power of the proofs, if your modesty permits you to read proofs! — asserts: that the work of Mark is not the copy of an oral primitive gospel but an artificial composition."
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343 Herr Gruppe has read Wilke's work, he did not need to study it, he also did not need to heed my exposition that Wilke only decided the question of the form of the synoptic Gospels, but the other question of the origin of the content not only not, but even falsely — he has completely understood and characterised Wilke when he says: "Wilke asserts — asserts? Herr Gruppe! read Wilke's writing once and marvel at the power of the proofs, if your modesty permits you to read proofs! — asserts: that the work of Mark is not the copy of an oral primitive gospel but an artificial composition."
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344 Now the readers know what Wilke asserts! —
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345 I come to the turn (p. 38): "if Bauer arrives at the result that all Gospels are literary works with artistic composition, inventions of the individual, then that is only a hasty generalisation of the just cited words of Wilke."
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346 "Not the principle, the method, the work of Wilke does Herr Gruppe know, but only the cited words." I have only these "words" in several volumes — "generalised". And moreover very hastily, although Herr Gruppe in the first part of the same sentence which informs us of this discovery had said that I "had arrived at the result that w." Now, if one arrives at a result, are there then not methods, developments, expositions which lead to the result and are also worth speaking of?
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347 No! Herr Gruppe had to hurry to save the church! The detour which leads from Wilke's method to mine, from Wilke's way of grasping the question to mine, from the terrain where Wilke holds the investigation fast to that to which I have raised it, this detour was too burdensome for Herr Gruppe; he also counted only on readers who wanted to see the church saved as quickly as possible and shunned all detours.
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348 With the same speed Herr Gruppe makes out that I — I! I, B. Bauer, who has everywhere represented with the greatest precision how far the Gospels are literary products of the evangelists and how far they rested on general presuppositions which were given in the views of the community — that I, in considerable contradiction with what has just been set forth — write down a couple of indefinite, badly stylised words, such as e.g. "literary works with artistic composition", Herr Gruppe calls to his readers stilling the appetite and setting forth the matter, that I teach that the Gospels are products of the self-consciousness of the community.
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349 But this splendid "exposition" of my teaching Herr Gruppe needed in order, again in all speed, "to set forth" that I, just as I have actually only somewhat hastily "generalised" the just cited words of Wilke, as I have my method and direction as well as many of my views in common with Strauss, so also appear to stand under the influence of Schleiermacher's tradition-view.
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350 What? I, who have completely overthrown the tradition-hypothesis, I under the influence of Schleiermacher's tradition-view?
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351 But still more! Schleiermacher, who — yes, Herr Gruppe, do you know how Schleiermacher lets the slips arise on which the eyewitnesses or the curious people who listened in on eyewitnesses wrote down individual anecdotes, how Schleiermacher lets these slips be glued together? do you know that, Herr Gruppe? — Schleiermacher, who runs around all Palestine with the curiosity of an anecdote-collector to find out who can vouch for this or that anecdote as correct, who witnessed this or that little story and first wrote it down on a little slip — this, this Schleiermacher would profess the tradition-view, this Schleiermacher would be the man with whom the true critic would want to have even the slightest community, the man against whose old-wives'-anecdote-mania the critic should not protest so vividly, with such a thorough indignation, that even the last trace of an appearance of agreement with him or dependence on him or even the slightest touch with him must disappear?
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352 "For this tradition — which? Herr Gruppe! — could only take place among the confessors, i.e., within the community" — these words, which are to represent the appearance that I stand under the influence of Schleiermacher's tradition-view through the "set forth" contradiction of my theory as a very thorough one, these splendid, witty, yes these words surpassing all understanding we must leave to Herr Gruppe: we can do nothing with them if Herr Gruppe does not permit us to represent them as a nothing or to dissolve them into their nothing. Herr Gruppe must, however, still have something left to do; he may therefore explain to us on occasion what this "tradition" is — for neither I nor Schleiermacher speak of tradition, whether perhaps the anecdote-mongering which a couple of curious private persons carried on with a couple of people from Capernaum according to Schleiermacher's view can be called tradition and an affair of the community, or whether it is a contradiction if I prove that the evangelists have looked into the heart of the community and satisfied the essential interests of the same, or whether I am therefore an adherent of the tradition-hypothesis because I prove that the evangelists have worked out the general religious view of the community into the particular and historical, whether — yes what not all? Herr Gruppe will have to begin from the beginning if he is to say the first intelligent word about the subject which he has treated in his "well-meaning" writing.
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353 We shall see whether, when it has concerned itself more thoroughly with the matter and only lets the power of the matter work upon it, but really also presents the matter, it can then still occur to anyone to impute "low motives" to his writing (p. 3), or whether he can then still consider it possible that someone will impute such motives to it, whether he then at all needs only to express the "hope" that no one will be in a position to impute "low motives" to his writing.
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354 We shall see whether, when it has concerned itself more thoroughly with the matter and only lets the power of the matter work upon it, but really also presents the matter, it can then still occur to anyone to impute "low motives" to his writing (p. 3), or whether he can then still consider it possible that someone will impute such motives to it, whether he then at all needs only to express the "hope" that no one will be in a position to impute "low motives" to his writing.
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355 Has Herr Gruppe heard that it even occurs to us critics, when we fight for freedom and truth, that someone could come upon the thought that it is low motives which drive us into battle, that someone could offend our free chivalry through false suspicion? Everyone knows that we fight for our fatherland and our home when we defend the realm of truth and freedom — also Herr Gruppe knows it, even if he holds our realm for a chimera.
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356 Fatherland and our home fight, when we defend the realm of truth and freedom — also Herr Gruppe knows it, even if he holds our realm for a chimera.
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357 A chimera, however, Herr Gruppe cherishes and cultivates — of course, as far as with his thoroughness and power of devotion he can cherish and cultivate something, namely the chimera that the "tradition-view", which is so thoroughly combated by the more recent critique, is something quite excellent, that therefore also Schleiermacher, who is now to intervene absolutely (p. 40), must have cherished it. When Herr Gruppe comes to his catchword "tradition", then he cries: "Land!" when he writes it down, then he triumphs (p. 87): "here we are again with Schleiermacher!" Schleiermacher has recognised tradition — note the language! — for the Gospels" (p. 91).
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358 Although I have therefore shown in my writing how Schleiermacher in his curious anxiety does not rest until he has forced the eyewitnesses to take over the guarantee for the scattered anecdotes, I must show once more how little he has thought of what alone can be called tradition. Schleiermacher, yes, that is a critic as he should be, a critic after God's own heart, the critic after the heart of the critic Gruppe! Schleiermacher has (p. 34) exercised criticism "with circumspection and sometimes — really? — with boldness". It is, however, long since proved that his circumspection was the cringing and fear of the letter-servant and that his boldness is only extraordinary when it is a question of throwing away reason and freedom. I will prove it once more.
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359 Herr Gruppe praises (p. 37) Schleiermacher's "critical spirit and acumen". If acumen is that which hits the nail on the head, spirit that which finds the essence, the spirit of the matter, be it only as a presentiment, spirit that which as creative power produces the matter once more by finding its truth and giving it the form which essentially belongs to it, if spirit is that which knows how to discover the spirit of the matter, cites it and lets its secret be expressed: — then Schleiermacher has in his critical work on the Gospel of Luke proved neither spirit nor acumen.
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360 If Herr Gruppe thinks that the lower criticism might "protect itself with the authority of Schleiermacher" (p. 34), he only proves how he has read my writing. Can the critic, who must speak with moral indignation of the tricks of Schleiermacher's criticism, of its cretin-like nature, of its coquetry and fondness for trifles, come upon the idea of placing himself under its protection? Since when is it custom that the warrior, in the heat of battle, when he has sharp weapons at his command, seeks blunt pins to pierce the enemy with them? Since when is it custom that the warrior, who courageously offers his breast to the enemy, hides behind a straw shield, behind a paper wall?
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361 Herr Gruppe knows in truth how warriors behave and what the custom of war is! A fine hero who fights with straws and creeps behind a straw shield!
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362 Herr Gruppe — Herr Gruppe is in truth dangerous to us! Herr Gruppe — what would the church be without Herr Gruppe! — Herr Gruppe has made the discovery "that the more recent critics cannot count as continuers and completers of Schleiermacher's view, but rather are his declared opponents" (p. 37).
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363 Firstly, Herr Gruppe! one can be the opponent of a great man whose principle one completes. Yes, Herr Gruppe! look around in the whole of history, whether you do not always find it so, that the men who have completed a principle are the opponents of those from whom they received it and who wanted to see it through only in a limited version.
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364 I, however, at least I do not have the honour of being an opponent of Schleiermacher, I cannot even be it, because he stands much too deep below the standpoint where I have to work. I am also not a "continuer and completer of his view": Others have fought against him and his view was even of such a kind that it could not even be continued and completed: childish attempts must only be laid aside, from the dream one has only to awake, straw shields can only be thrown away.
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365 The men with whom the more recent critique alone had to fight, and whose principle it had to complete, are Strauss, Weisse and Wilke — other men than the critic Schleiermacher!
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366 I could only enter into Schleiermacher's view in my work because I had to present the struggle of the letter-servant with the letter completely and the higher "view" will expose the subordinate standpoint still more decisively, at least still more decisively represent it as one with which a complete break is to be made, than did that view which previously combated it.
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367 When I spoke of Schleiermacher, I did it without sympathy and antipathy — for both he is too foreign to the more recent critique — and my indignation was only aroused when the cringing and cunning of the letter-servant was held up by others as a weapon or as a model against the openness and sincerity of true critique.
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368 Of all this Herr Gruppe knows Nothing. My book was not there for him.
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369 So once more Schleiermacher!
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370 I will be able to do nothing further than to bring together the "views" of Schleiermacher which I have already mentioned and judged in their place in my writing. The critique of them I will naturally not give again, I will not be able to communicate again the correct explanation of the evangelical narratives, and no one will blame me if I have no desire to copy my book over and over again, as long as it pleases people and great men like Herr Gruppe to annihilate me. Herr Gruppe and all modern church fathers who swear by Schleiermacher will now therefore know what they must refute before we understand to let ourselves be rebaptised on the saint they venerate, on the holy Schleiermacher.
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371 Our new saint (Schleiermacher on the writings of Luke p. 59, 60) says therefore that the reports of Luke and Matthew on the activity of the Baptist "are based on One essay" and indeed a quite historical essay, which without particular regard to the relation of John to Jesus (!!) and without giving news of the baptism of Christ, thus also probably not composed by a Christian, contained "memorabilia from the public life of John" — let one read, if one has a mind, further in the book itself, especially how Schleiermacher praises the fortune that the reports of Luke and Matthew "complement each other and from both together the whole is at least (!) according to its plan (!), although (!) it also cannot very well (!) have been of very great extent, easy to construct."
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372 Our new saint (Schleiermacher on the writings of Luke p. 59, 60) says therefore that the reports of Luke and Matthew on the activity of the Baptist "are based on One essay" and indeed a quite historical essay, which without particular regard to the relation of John to Jesus (!!) and without giving news of the baptism of Christ, thus also probably not composed by a Christian, contained "memorabilia from the public life of John" — let one read, if one has a mind, further in the book itself, especially how Schleiermacher praises the fortune that the reports of Luke and Matthew "complement each other and from both together the whole is at least (!) according to its plan (!), although (!) it also cannot very well (!) have been of very great extent, easy to construct."
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373 The narrative of Jesus' preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:16-30) is "written down in Greek according to an Aramaic oral (!) narrative of an eyewitness." "Whether by Luke himself I may, says Schleiermacher with the praised 'circumspection', not decide." (p. 64.)
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374 The "multitude of individual narratives" Luke 4:31-7:10 existed originally as "individual narratives," Schleiermacher now discovers that "the first are strikingly distinguished from the last" by the interest they are to satisfy, and this discovery leads quite of itself to the thought of two collectors, who, proceeding from different points of view, have procured news about Jesus from the region of his usual place of residence (Capernaum), be it now (what circumspection! what spirit! and besides the acumen!) — that they went there themselves or that they elsewhere had opportunity to question local inhabitants from that time. Both collections have come into the hands of Luke and he communicates them immediately one after the other; perhaps also (oh, about the circumspection and the acumen!) — they were already earlier united into one. (p. 65, 66.)
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375 For all his circumspection Schleiermacher has forgotten that he had just said that the individual narratives had "originally", as their concluding formulas were also to prove, existed as "individual" ones. Instead of explaining and also afterwards, where it really comes to the slip-theory, he gives us not the highly necessary explanation — how it came about that the slips, with all the chance to which they must have been exposed, presented themselves so splendidly symmetrically to the collectors that these could form their groups, instead he loses himself all at once in the environs of Capernaum, in order to call together here the people who are to pull him out of the embarrassment. Out of the rain he has, however, fallen into the gutter, since he can just as little explain to us that each of the two collectors, whether in the region of Capernaum itself or through travelling Capernaites, happened to hear precisely such narratives as fitted a group corresponding to his point of view.
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376 — Let us now see how the circumspection, the boldness and the spirit and the acumen proved themselves in the judgment of the individual narratives.
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377 Each of the three Synoptists, remarks Schleiermacher p. 68, "brings some individual circumstance of the healing of Peter's mother-in-law, which also all can be very well united, and all three narratives thus seem (!) to have to be traced back to eyewitnesses, yet one may not — by no means, if one wants to proceed with circumspection — conclude that these belonged precisely to the household of Jesus: but — the duty of circumspection wills it so — only remember that Jesus was certainly (!) each time from the synagogue accompanied home by the most distinguished (!!) among his applauding hearers."
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378 At least three therefore of these "most distinguished among the applauding hearers" of Jesus, who had accompanied him into the house of Peter's mother-in-law and in whose presence the miracle of the healing occurred, have composed a written report of the event, or told it to another who wrote it down, and indeed on a slip? One would think that circumspection would command Schleiermacher to examine once more a view which can make even such questions possible, one would think that boldness must sometimes be frightened, that spirit cannot be brought into many a matter at all: but no! what would acumen be for, if it should not also treat the most ridiculous questions prosaically seriously? Through the unfortunate manner in which Peter is introduced on this occasion in the writing of Luke, Schleiermacher lets himself be at least led to the remark (p. 69) that Luke "also here only communicates something found. For whoever individually told or wrote down (!) this story to someone, who could otherwise know who Peter was, could have no vocation to introduce and present him properly."
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379 There follows the narrative of the miraculous draught of fishes! (Luke 5:1-11). Again a strange way of introducing Peter! Peter behaves like one who now comes together with Jesus for the first time, while before, before he was "properly introduced", he appears as a confidant of Jesus! "The event," answers Schleiermacher (p. 71, 72), "is also certainly older, only the collector, whose work Luke here gives us again unchanged, and who, intent only on the miraculous, is less concerned about the natural arrangement of the news he collects, has learned this later and, as he learned it, appended it to the other."
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380 "The parallel narratives of Matthew and Mark of the calling of Peter were (p. 73) either originally taken up more fleetingly or have been obscured through passage through several hands."
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381 This "either-or" is, however, for a man who has to provide for all cases with circumspection, not yet enough: Schleiermacher first feels calmed when he has made the nearest and most distinguished eyewitnesses as responsible as possible for the condition of a narrative.
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382 "In how different a way," he says p. 73, "sometimes more clearly, sometimes more precisely, sometimes again not, cannot the three disciples have told this event, which certainly always remained remarkable to them."
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383 With what extraordinary circumspection, further, does Schleiermacher assemble the public which is to hear the Sermon on the Mount, but which is sent back home by criticism! (p. 82-84).
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384 He who has ears to hear, let him hear, i.e., he whose thread of patience does not break too quickly, let him read the following section, which is indeed unique in its kind, but not the only one of this kind in Schleiermacher's writing.
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385 "About the course of events for this speech our (Luke's) narrative tells us more than Matthew, who introduces it without any introduction; only the way in which one has almost universally interpreted this more does not seem to me the correct one. First, that Jesus spent the night on the mountain in prayer, which, however, literally no one can have known, is probably to be seen in no immediate connection with the event itself. The very striking thing about it loses itself — (with some circumspection) if one does not overlook the hint in Matthew that Christ only went into Capernaum after the speech, thus probably had not come from there, but from elsewhere. And most easily, obviously, one imagines the occurrence on the return from a festival journey, where a twofold crowd surrounded him, on the one side — yes! the circumspection! — the caravan with which he had travelled, to which many had probably also joined themselves on the way, and which he now, in order to set the crown on the occasional conversations on the journey, being about to return to his place of residence, wanted to dismiss with a more detailed farewell address. This numerous company had perhaps so filled the inns
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386 "About the course of events for this speech our (Luke's) narrative tells us more than Matthew, who introduces it without any introduction; only the way in which one has almost universally interpreted this more does not seem to me the correct one. First, that Jesus spent the night on the mountain in prayer, which, however, literally no one can have known, is probably to be seen in no immediate connection with the event itself. The very striking thing about it loses itself — (with some circumspection) if one does not overlook the hint in Matthew that Christ only went into Capernaum after the speech, thus probably had not come from there, but from elsewhere. And most easily, obviously, one imagines the occurrence on the return from a festival journey, where a twofold crowd surrounded him, on the one side — yes! the circumspection! — the caravan with which he had travelled, to which many had probably also joined themselves on the way, and which he now, in order to set the crown on the occasional conversations on the journey, being about to return to his place of residence, wanted to dismiss with a more detailed farewell address. This numerous company had perhaps so filled the inns that they had become too noisy for Jesus and he preferred, in the good season and in the known region, to spend the last night in the open air and so — after this circumspect provision of the holy critic — he ascended the mountain. His arrival, however — what circumspection! — became known everywhere where the company spent the night: and if some hasty ones had gone even into Capernaum late in the evening, also there and therefore there assembled on the other side a second crowd, partly those in need of help, who had now long awaited him, partly adherents and admirers, who came to meet him from Capernaum. In this way is explained a more than ordinary concourse, which precisely induced our narrator, what he also perhaps would not have done with another speech, to place before our eyes the whole sensual image, how Christ, in the act of descending from the mountain, when he became aware of the unexpectedly great throng, first
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387 so filled that they had become too noisy for Jesus and he preferred, in the good season and in the known region, to spend the last night in the open air and so — after this circumspect provision of the holy critic — he ascended the mountain. His arrival, however — what circumspection! — became known everywhere where the company spent the night: and if some hasty ones had gone even into Capernaum late in the evening, also there and therefore there assembled on the other side a second crowd, partly those in need of help, who had now long awaited him, partly adherents and admirers, who came to meet him from Capernaum. In this way is explained a more than ordinary concourse, which precisely induced our narrator, what he also perhaps would not have done with another speech, to place before our eyes the whole sensual image, how Christ, in the act of descending from the mountain, when he became aware of the unexpectedly great throng, first
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388 Enough, however!
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389 To explain the differences of the Sermon on the Mount of Matthew and the speech of Luke, Schleiermacher remarks: "the reporter of Luke seems partly to have had a more unfavourable place for hearing, therefore not to have heard everything and here and there to have lost the connection, partly he may have come to writing down later, when much had already escaped him, partly he may .......... partly also can ......... partly he has probably etc." (p. 89, 90.)
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390 Does the reader's patience still suffice for one more sample? Well, it shall and can indeed only be a test of patience! So one more sample, with what circumspection Schleiermacher knows how to discover in the letter the features and the handwriting of this or that eyewitness.
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391 Luke explains the address of the Gadarene demoniac: "what have we to do with each other, Jesus, Son of God" through the remark that Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man; Matthew does not have this remark; yes, says Schleiermacher p. 128, "that is, however, also a very probable, but certainly this time not correct supplement of our (Luke's) reporter, who, perhaps somewhat occupied on the ship and somewhat left behind, came up just at this address and now believed that Jesus' command must have already preceded."
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392 Previously Schleiermacher had with his usual circumspection made out that on the voyage to the opposite shore, where Jesus met the demoniac, besides the closer disciples still other people were on the ship": it is the same circumspection when he remarks: "so there arises for us very naturally the question to which of the two classes our (Luke's) witness belonged."
[Notes for 392 here]
393 Answer: (p. 128—130) "the just cited (that remark, Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out) proves well by no means that it could not have been one of the disciples. For they were owners of the ship and one therefore had to arrange what was necessary for it. Rather, if we consider the description of the healed man now lying at the feet of Jesus (of course, with the proper circumspection!) — so we recognise well one who also sat there and took a very close interest in the matter, thus one from the immediate surroundings of Jesus. (That means to proceed circumspectly and at the same time to let boldness come to the aid of circumspection!) — . And if we first go to the last event, the revival of the daughter of Jairus and remark with what unchanged accuracy and unchanged tone here also the circumstances are narrated which, presupposing namely that one, as Schleiermacher with much circumspection demands, regards the boundless confusion in the report of Luke with a gracious eye, thus under this presupposition only Paul, John or James could immediately know: so we can hardly do otherwise than either trace our whole report directly back to one of these three or at least assume that the narrative, if also by another, yet also from the immediate surroundings, who therefore accompanied Jesus even to the house of Jairus, and had the more precise circumstances, which from now on must escape him, told to him by one of those three. Yet the former remains more probable to me; although I do not want to assert that one of them wrote, but only told, but that the narrative was taken down in writing very immediately, while everything was still fresh and living. If we look, on the other hand, at the narrative in Matthew on the same question of which class the witness was, we will be inclined to ascribe it to one of the other class. For already this, that the storm — during the crossing to the opposite shore — is narrated proportionally much more fully than the event on the shore, that here the description of the raging man after his healing, his wish and Jesus' answer are entirely lacking, already this looks very much like one who did not come into the vicinity of Jesus at all, but was instructed to stay with the ship. If now the narrative in Matthew has such a first originator: then he also remained, when they landed at Capernaum, with the ship. The narrative, however, of the revival of the daughter of Jairus Matthew has from another hand, but as one sees from the abbreviations at the end and from the inaccuracy at the beginning, also not from so immediate a one as ours."
[Notes for 393 here]
394 Enough! Schleiermacher has had the boldness to forget that they are writers who want to be explained, parallel reports whose relation is to be investigated, miracle-reports whose nature is to be examined.
[Notes for 394 here]
395 Enough! Schleiermacher has had the boldness to forget that they are writers who want to be explained, parallel reports whose relation is to be investigated, miracle-reports whose nature is to be examined.
[Notes for 395 here]
396 For all his circumspection he has forgotten to examine his presupposition of the credibility of the reports: his sole work consists in smelling out from the reports how "fresh and living everything still was" when they were recorded, smelling out whether they had already passed through several hands when they came to the evangelists.
[Notes for 396 here]
397 If he is the greatest naturalist who, instead of anatomising plants, examining their structure, investigating the circulation of their juices, dissecting their root and analysing the soil on which they thrive, the mixture of elements they require for their existence, rather hears the grass grow — then Schleiermacher is also the greatest critic.
[Notes for 397 here]
398 With all recognition of the circumspection with which he knows how to discover the most delicious possibilities, the boldness with which he offers his adventurous discoveries and the trifles of his critical inventions to the faith of his readers deserves an even more fiery admiration.
[Notes for 398 here]
399 But infinitely greater still is the boldness which, after the works and proofs of the more recent critique, still dares to praise this "circumspection", which measures by the length and brevity of the reports, thus by the yard, how many steps nearer or farther the reporters stood from the supposed event, to us as a model. Herr Gruppe and the other heralds of the holy greatness of Schleiermacher will well say to themselves what, in my view, the correct name for this boldness is, and if they really knew Schleiermacher's book on the writings of Luke and had concerned themselves more sincerely with the works of the more recent critique, they would not have let it come to the point that I must call their conduct — I may not hold back the only correct word — shameless.
[Notes for 399 here]
400 There are two ways of finishing with a thoroughly executed work without having to enter seriously into it: the one way Herr Gruppe has chosen; we can call it the from the outset superior or simply transcendent. It is proper only to great spirits, great critics, great theologians, in short those modest great ones who do not like to press too importunately upon their enemy, do not like to be burdensome to their opponent. They only murmur something somewhat disagreeably, that it is not easy to say wherein the peculiarity of this or that work consists, the author brings forward again only the same thing one has long heard from others, but on the other hand one should only hold to this or that holy man, who would solve all riddles for us with much "circumspection and boldness" — and they are finished with their critique.
[Notes for 400 here]
401 The other way of conquering is still the transcendent one, that our opponent, from the outset in the consciousness of his superiority, flies over our proofs and does not concern himself about them, but he does not fly over our work at once, but sticks in the detail, namely in such a way that he combats our work in detail, but completely ignores our proofs, our developments and expositions. A grand opponent like Herr Gruppe swings himself with one start over our edifice: people whose wings do not have the same momentum hop from point to point, from corner to corner and call out to us always, when they hop further, with great self-satisfaction: now we are thus conquered.
[Notes for 401 here]
402 A flying judgment of my book of the latter kind has been delivered by the Berlin Yearbooks in the June issue of this year. I used it immediately, as it appeared, to show by its example how theological consciousness regards and judges critique, gave the essay the title: "Warning for Theological Consciousness" and sent it to the editors of the German Yearbooks, but the censorship in Leipzig refused it the imprimatur, probably because it wished this consciousness a quicker downfall or because it assumed that the warning letter would not be accepted by the addressee.
[Notes for 402 here]
403 In no case could I understand not to publish my warning. If theological consciousness does not want to let itself be warned, it only makes its guilt complete all the sooner and the critic has done his duty if he has done his part to bring about the reckoning. In any case this reckoning will close with an eternal beneficent peace, for which all preliminaries are already given and whose final conclusion no longer needs to be unnecessarily delayed.
[Notes for 403 here]

B. Warning for the theological consciousness

404 The true theologian as such must to a certain extent still be religious and is in fact to that extent still religious, that he recognises as a boundary mark for his free and scientific movements a point beyond which he lives only from grace. This point may now lie more or less far out; so that the theologian enjoys more or less freedom on this side of it: enough, beyond it grace begins, freedom dies, and since, given the decisive importance of this point, it is the theologian's duty to keep it always in sight, it must also work on this side, police the free movement of the theologian, thus make freedom into a merely apparent one and transform it into its opposite.
[Notes for 404 here]
405 The grace from which the theologian as such lives even on this side and in the midst of his so-called researches is naturally the theoretical one, that presuppositions are given to him as a gift, which hold without further ado, which first give his works their support and which he only needs to express in order to annihilate his critical opponent.
[Notes for 405 here]
406 The grace from which the theologian as such lives even on this side and in the midst of his so-called researches is naturally the theoretical one, that presuppositions are given to him as a gift, which hold without further ado, which first give his works their support and which he only needs to express in order to annihilate his critical opponent. Through the gracious protection of his presuppositions the theologian works wonders.
[Notes for 406 here]
407 If, however, the grace is theoretical, it is clear that it must lead to sophistry. The theologian works, researches, observes, investigates, he gives out his works for researches, observations and investigations and yet he has fundamentally not worked, but let himself be guided by presuppositions which were given to him from the outset. Therefore, because he talks himself into believing that he has really worked, the theologian does not give the honour due to the presuppositions which he opposes as theoretical truths to critique and philosophy. He presents them in a manner, speaks them with an accent and offers them to us with a turn, as if he had really found them, perhaps just now through his observations and works. He sets them up as if he had proved them, as if he had posited them.
[Notes for 407 here]
408 That is a sacrilege, an attack on grace, the presumption of being free and active, a rebellion against heaven, a blasphemy of the guardian spirit of theology.
[Notes for 408 here]
409 Theology must still be purified, i.e., grace must be secured against the attacks of the theologian. The theologian may no longer think that he lives at the same time from grace and from his freedom, that he only lets himself be illuminated by the heavenly light beyond the boundary of his understanding and on this side carries his own light in himself, still less may he imagine that the heavenly world of presuppositions is a system of proofs. He must from now on live only from grace; the presupposition as such must attain to recognition and sole rule.
[Notes for 409 here]
410 The critic will help theology to its truth and to self-knowledge. He must combat it to that end until it surrenders at discretion and gives up its imagination that it still has proofs in its possession. Theology must be brought to the point that it does public penance and confesses on its knees that it wants from now on, in this world and in the next, purely and alone to live from grace. When grace triumphs, the pact will be signed and eternal peace concluded between theology and critique.
[Notes for 410 here]
411 Naturally, the conclusion of this peace and the complete contrition of the theologian can only be expected when it is shown to him what grace actually is, which he is to recognise and which has hitherto alone guided and equipped him in all his doing and in his struggle against critique.
[Notes for 411 here]
412 Why is it the worst transgression of the theologian if, in the face of this grace, he asserts that he has really researched, earnestly worked and investigated the matter? Why? Because grace is the testimony of the theologian against himself, because it is his own doing or rather his not-doing, namely the limit which he himself has set to his working and researching. Grace is nothing but the end which freedom has given itself, the surrender of freedom to arbitrariness, to chance, to the first best thing that comes to man in the accidental position in which he happens to find himself.
[Notes for 412 here]
413 Why should the theologian attain self-knowledge by having his presuppositions as such brought to recognition? Because these presuppositions are his own doing or rather only another expression for his lack of energy, for his lack of courage and for the weakness that he does not dare to go to the bottom of the matter and forms a conception of it which is connected with it only in name, but has nothing to do with its essence.
[Notes for 413 here]
414 Why is the theologian under the protection of these presuppositions so brave and successful against critique? Because they preserve him from really coming into contact with it.
[Notes for 414 here]
415 If therefore the theologian is to be brought to the point that he recognises grace and no longer profanes his presuppositions through the frivolous assertion that they are proofs, that means at the same time: he is to recognise that he has really not worked and researched, that he rather as theologian — because religiosity is his duty — must be powerless and may not "assail", not heartily attack, not recognise the object.
[Notes for 415 here]
416 All previous works of critique are at the same time rehabilitations of grace, to which the theologian owes everything and which he yet blasphemes when he gives out its inspirations for results of a real research, i.e., these works of critique are the proof that theology has never yet really researched, they are therefore also preparatory works for that conclusion of peace which we are soon to expect, even if the theologians are of the opinion that matters have not yet progressed so far that they would soon have to sign the peace treaties on their knees.
[Notes for 416 here]
417 All previous works of critique are at the same time rehabilitations of grace, to which the theologian owes everything and which he yet blasphemes when he gives out its inspirations for results of a real research, i.e., these works of critique are the proof that theology has never yet really researched, they are therefore also preparatory works for that conclusion of peace which we are soon to expect, even if the theologians are of the opinion that matters have not yet progressed so far that they would soon have to sign the peace treaties on their knees.
[Notes for 417 here]
418 They have not wanted to let themselves be warned. Good! So I will let a particular warning go out to them, a warning for which the reviewer of my writing in the Berlin Yearbooks gives me occasion.
[Notes for 418 here]
419 The theologian would not like to concede that the more recent critique has surpassed Strauss's standpoint; he must even take Strauss's part, because this one has still taken over theological elements into his conception of the origin of the Gospels. "The author, says Rev. No. 107, p. 853, combats the Straussian principle, according to which it is not One, but the Many, whose religious view produces the evangelical history, he finds this principle 'mysterious', obviously — as if I had not developed the matter in detail, as if I had treated it so obscurely that I would have to leave the interpretation to the conjectures of the theologians — obviously because it is supposed to be the divine-human genus which proves itself active in these Many."
[Notes for 419 here]
420 In the end, therefore, it is a particular hatred which I harbour against the "divine-human genus" that has prejudiced me against Strauss? Unfortunately the Rev. has not explained himself about it, "obviously" because he did not know to what extent it lies in the essence of critique to declare itself against such a mysterious, pantheistic expression as "divine-human". It is even the question whether he knew anything of that hatred of critique and thought that it does not speak of a divine-human genus, but knows only the human and self-consciousness. No! No! he knew nothing at all of this difference and thought — yes what did he think?
[Notes for 420 here]
421 What? For that reason I find Strauss's principle mysterious, because it is supposed to be the genus which proves itself in the Many? And also because it is not One, but the Many, whose view produces the evangelical history? For both reasons? In what connection do the two stand? The Rev. is silent. 1. I do not think of committing the stupidity of grasping the opposition on which it depends only numerically as that of the Many and the One. 2. Strauss never makes earnest with ascribing the production of sacred history to the Many or showing how they proceeded in this production. So far he does not at all enter into the process of the matter. 3. Therefore I find Strauss's principle mysterious, because the universal, the genus, the spirit of the community, tradition works immediately and the mediation through self-consciousness and through its formative energy does not come to recognition.
[Notes for 421 here]
422 "However, continues the Rev. ibid., has the author then got beyond this principle — namely beyond this principle not even clearly and distinctly depicted by the Rev. — by putting in the place of the Many the one self-consciousness of the writer?"
[Notes for 422 here]
423 That I have not done, and it would be very little, very false, if I had done it. I will be very careful and think I have done something special if I have played with numbers, exchanged numbers. Only the theologian can come upon the thought that a detailed and important dialectic consists only in a play with numbers. Incidentally, I could not even come upon the thought of only exchanging numbers, since Strauss never seriously sets the Many in activity and has given us not the slightest idea of how they were active and how their products fitted together into one whole. The factor of which Strauss seriously speaks is rather tradition. The opposition is therefore not numerical, but an essential one: the opposition of genus and self-consciousness, of substance and subject. I also do not think of solving the opposition by retaining only one side. Strauss's error is not that he sets a universal power in motion, but that he lets it work as universal and purely out of its universality. That is still religious, that is wonderful, the reproduction of the religious view on the critical standpoint, that is the religious ingratitude and hardness against self-consciousness.
[Notes for 423 here]
424 Incidentally, I could not even come upon the thought of only exchanging numbers, since Strauss never seriously sets the Many in activity and has given us not the slightest idea of how they were active and how their products fitted together into one whole. The factor of which Strauss seriously speaks is rather tradition. The opposition is therefore not numerical, but an essential one: the opposition of genus and self-consciousness, of substance and subject. I also do not think of solving the opposition by retaining only one side. Strauss's error is not that he sets a universal power in motion, but that he lets it work as universal and purely out of its universality. That is still religious, that is wonderful, the reproduction of the religious view on the critical standpoint, that is the religious ingratitude and hardness against self-consciousness.
[Notes for 424 here]
425 Do I then say, however, as the theologian must always conceive it, that the One has made the evangelical history? Do I not show the universal power, which became energy in the individual, in all those possibilities, presuppositions, general views and interests of the community which drove the individual to work and which he brought to appearance in new forms?
[Notes for 425 here]
426 "That this (ibid.) is not the case (namely that I have not got beyond Strauss's principle) shows itself from his (B. B.) own argumentation, when he says — says! and I prove it — the tradition-hypothesis leads itself necessarily back to the individual self-consciousness as the last source — source! as if I used such expressions, thought to settle important investigations with such words! — back. Instead of the author having overcome the Straussian principle, he has only carried it to its formal consequence."
[Notes for 426 here]
427 That there is no question here of something merely formal, I have just shown.
[Notes for 427 here]
428 The Rev. has, incidentally, thereby betrayed the whole crudeness of the theological conception of the overcoming of a principle. Thus a principle is not overcome when its consequence is posited? Judaism is not overcome when its consequence, Christianity, is posited? The feudal state not overcome by its consequence, absolute monarchy, this not by its consequence, revolution and restoration and constitutional monarchy, this not by its consequence, the republic? Must something only be overcome by something foreign, by a clout thrown at its head? by thunder and lightning? Indeed, that is the theological refutation, the refutation by the hundredth and thousandth, by the most foreign. To the theologian everything is foreign.
[Notes for 428 here]
429 How foreign the present state of things is to the Rev., how little the theologian is able to orient himself in this world, he proves when he (ibid.) says: I had "only accomplished the same in the territory of evangelical history that Strauss himself has done in religious-philosophical respect through his ideas on the cult of genius." What ignorance, not to know that on the standpoint of the more recent critique nothing is present which could be placed in parallel even remotely with that proclamation of the cult of genius. Only the standpoint which has reintroduced the religious relation into the world of thought and freedom was capable of the thought of a cult which brings the religious category into free, human relations and raises real self-consciousness away from the ground of the earth and out of the movement of history to a ghostly transcendence. The thought of the cult of genius is the last attempt to stain the human free relations with a religious tincture, the last effort of religion, after it has been driven out of its chimerical world, to maintain itself in the real world of self-consciousness, it is the perversion of freedom and humanity within its inner world, their perversion in their own free house into their opposite, into transcendence and foreignness; it is the last attack on the domestic right of free man, the last cunning of religion to talk us into believing that the houses of our fellow men are chapels. And is the more recent critique to take part in this religious cunning?
[Notes for 429 here]
430 The theologian could not pose this question to himself, for to be able to ask, one must understand something of the matter. Also with Strauss, he says ibid., in his thought of the cult of genius, as in my conception of the origin of sacred history — so at least I must understand the unclear sentence — "the universality has become absolute individuality." The Rev. knows excellently how to handle philosophical categories and especially to find the category for the more recent critique. The theologian cannot even imagine that and how far critique has freed itself from every contact with religious categories.
[Notes for 430 here]
431 Critique knows nothing of the "absolute individuality" of the theologian, it knows no individuality which is, so to speak, a pure metamorphosis of the universal. Only religion knows this absurdity of an immediately existing absolute individuality. Only in the cult of genius can there be reprints, lithographs of this absolute individuality of religion.
[Notes for 431 here]
432 How can I speak of an absolute individuality, how can anyone — except the theologian — come upon the thought that I speak of such an absurdity, since I show how necessarily one evangelist is supplemented by the other, how the evangelical view had to go through this process from Mark to John, since I point out the great number of conditions which determined the evangelists and how? determined them, pulled them hither and thither and how? pulled them hither and thither? How slavishly dependent are they on their conditions, how mechanically they copy one another, until finally the Fourth came and copied all three predecessors! How they copied the O. T.! Those would be absolute individualities?
[Notes for 432 here]
433 How can I speak of an absolute individuality, how can anyone — except the theologian — come upon the thought that I speak of such an absurdity, since I show how necessarily one evangelist is supplemented by the other, how the evangelical view had to go through this process from Mark to John, since I point out the great number of conditions which determined the evangelists and how? determined them, pulled them hither and thither and how? pulled them hither and thither? How slavishly dependent are they on their conditions, how mechanically they copy one another, until finally the Fourth came and copied all three predecessors! How they copied the O. T.! Those would be absolute individualities?
[Notes for 433 here]
434 "If B. Bauer (ibid.) had really overcome the Straussian principle, then instead of his holding to the 'consciousness of these individual writers' — (namely of these absolute individualities) — the knowledge of the One would have dawned on him, whose consciousness is the actual starting point of evangelical history; (I only remark in passing how the theologian can never speak purely, can never stay with the matter: I speak of evangelical historiography, the theologian throws in the 'starting point' etc.) —; but as it is, by still letting the community, if only in the person of the individual evangelists, be the creator of evangelical history, he betrays that he himself still stands within the standpoint which he wants to overcome."
[Notes for 434 here]
435 Yes indeed! Only he who confesses Jesus Christ is beyond Strauss.
[Notes for 435 here]
436 Only he who presupposes or arrives at the result that Jesus is this one absolute individuality is beyond Strauss's critique.
[Notes for 436 here]
437 I would be beyond Strauss's critique if I jumped from it into a quite different territory.
[Notes for 437 here]
438 The μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος is the art and salvation of theology.
[Notes for 438 here]
439 Indeed I still stand within the standpoint which I overcome, because it is the true one — the standpoint for which the Gospels, according to content and form, are products of humanity.
[Notes for 439 here]
440 Strauss was still supernaturalistic on this standpoint, by taking the miracle-theory with him onto it and letting the universal as such work. It was only a matter of freeing the standpoint of freedom and humanity from the fog of supernaturalism.
[Notes for 440 here]
441 Before the Rev., after these critical expectorations about the principle, enters more closely into whether I have succeeded in overthrowing the tradition-hypothesis, he remarks beforehand (p. 855) that I had often merely presupposed the priority of the Gospel of Mark. "Presupposed!" — The theologians are terrible. For what is a lie, they have no judgment any more. On this standpoint a lie is no lie. I have written two volumes, also a third, to prove the originality of the Gospel of Mark; but it costs the theologian no trouble to ignore my work and to assert that I had often merely presupposed the priority of that Gospel.
[Notes for 441 here]
442 Wilke, of course, can also not satisfy the theologian. Wilke is nothing at all, he has only grasped individual things — for the comprehensive, general points of view which Wilke gives, the theologian has no eye, he has not penetrated into the "spirit" of the Gospels. Brave Wilke, the general data which you give are too heavy for the theologian for him to receive them and draw the proof with you. Does no harm! "Spirit" in the mouth of a theologian means: vapour.
[Notes for 442 here]
443 I have examined the Synoptics not only philologically, not only aesthetically, but also historically and as members in the historical development of religious consciousness, thus religious-philosophically, and as the result of this extended investigation gained the insight into the priority of Mark. I have, however, also not penetrated into the spirit of the Gospels; I have made no vapour for myself.
[Notes for 443 here]
444 If I say: principles, fundamental principles, general views and the creation of a new essential world were what initially alone occupied the community and later drove it to form individual views, points, contrasts and sayings, the Rev. remarks on the contrary No. 107, p. 856: "we would very gladly admit this proposition if it kept itself in the limited version in which alone it has truth — (i.e., in which the theologian can set it up without ceasing to be a theologian, in which the theologian can assert it without giving up his dearest presuppositions, i.e., if I set it up in a manner in which a back door for communication with theological consciousness would remain open, in a manner in which it would at the same time be denied, secretly revoked) — namely that the first Christian community indeed lived in the principle insofar as before life itself, before the practical element, the properly historical interest, as it later makes itself known in the composition of the Gospels, receded."
[Notes for 444 here]
445 Thus "receded"! Receded is, as I have already shown in the letters on Dr. Hengstenberg, a genuinely theological word, a word indispensably necessary to the theologian, a word with which the whole nature of historical development can be distorted and every moment made crazy, a word which gives itself the appearance as if it admitted historical development, but does not admit it in earnest and sincerely, for what recedes is there, and indeed not only there in itself, but bodily, with skin and hair there, and only stands behind the door or between the wings.
[Notes for 445 here]
446 "We therefore (!) give the proposition right so far, continues the Rev. No. 108, p. 857, as it is directed only against that view which would have the Gospels written already in the first Christian time."
[Notes for 446 here]
447 That then was the core of the matter! That meant the receding! Everything was already there, only not yet written down!
[Notes for 447 here]
448 "We would like still to know what in the above objection 'life' and 'the practical element' is supposed to be. If the historical interest is to recede before another side, then this other side of the opposition can only be an interest in the universal, the essence, universal principles. What is life supposed to be then?
[Notes for 448 here]
449 The theologian cannot grasp the question correctly, not sharply. I speak — by staying with the matter — of different determinateness and of the development of theory: first the theory and view which stops at the universal, at the elements and shapes the elements in still general form, in simple positive propositions — were they also historical propositions, that Christ is the Messiah, that he is risen, these propositions are nevertheless general — later elaboration into the empirical, the particular. Practical element, if it is not general principles, what is it? Life, what is it? Nothing, nothing in this theological indefiniteness. Is there anything human without its expressing itself in determinations, in speech, in thoughts, in forms? Life and practical element in theological usage are themselves, however much the theologians pretend to shrink from it, a category, if only in the manner that with all fresh appearance and practical inflation they are only a word, only vapour, fog, only a perverted, unfruitful, lifeless category, the category of impotence and embarrassment. Life in the mouth of the theologian is the category of pure indefiniteness, the opposition against the determinateness of thought and reality, the rebellion of the brutal against the human, of the fist against the active, creating hand, of nothing against the real.
[Notes for 449 here]
450 It is the weapon of the theologian against real life, the word with which all rational determinations are made senseless, the Jesuitical feint which also makes the other side of the opposition Jesuitical. Not the historical interest, says the Rev., receded before life, but the "properly" historical interest, thus life, the practical interest is improperly historical interest, everything is everything, according as one takes it properly or improperly, everything is nothing.
[Notes for 450 here]
451 These are the Jesuitical antitheses which play tricks on each other, mock each other and have no sense, no hold, nor connection.
[Notes for 451 here]
452 That a proposition like mine, that the determinate and particular first forms itself when the essence and the universal have become common property and firm possession in a life-circle, could find a place in a writing whose whole standpoint is a philosophical one, "is to be wondered at", says Rev. No. 108, p. 857. It is rather the general law of historical development that a principle always first appears in a quite immediate manner, in concrete form, before it is grasped in its abstract universality.
[Notes for 452 here]
453 The theologian, that is general law, refutes philosophical determinations without understanding them, he refutes them all the better the less he understands of them, and determinations in which the historical and logical law interpenetrate, he will certainly and surely let be swallowed up by a quite hollow abstraction.
[Notes for 453 here]
454 Is immediate manner and concrete form the same? As little as the elements are already the formation which is given in the organic world. The immediate of a beginning can also be abstract, yes the most abstract thing in the world.
[Notes for 454 here]
455 Further: do I say that the principle was first present in abstract universality? I say it, according as one understands it correctly and reasonably.
[Notes for 455 here]
456 Have I at all meant to settle the matter with such words as abstract, concrete? Have I at all used these words? I have very well guarded against being prodigal with them, because I know that theology has entered into possession of these words — if a philosophy develops further, theology always appropriates the catchwords of the old standpoint in order to play its game with them. I preferred to develop the matter with somewhat more ordinary words. Critique speaks German, theology Latin.
[Notes for 456 here]
457 Do I say that Christianity was first expressed in the abstract form of its principle, first grasped in abstract universality? No! but: in the form of fundamental principles and not in the form of anecdotes. These fundamental principles are universal, insofar as they form the ground of this determinate, the Christian world, but precisely for that reason they are at the same time very determinate: e.g., Jesus is the Messiah, Christ is risen, he has abolished the law, the law no longer binds the believer — that is, however, not yet history of how Christ behaved in particular cases and towards the particular commandments of the law, those are not yet anecdotes of how Jesus was crucified and risen and under what particular circumstances.
[Notes for 457 here]
458 Those general propositions are therefore in themselves facts, historical statements, but not yet anecdotes, not yet Suetonian biography.
[Notes for 458 here]
459 These first propositions: Jesus is the Messiah, is risen, is the end of the law, are now, while they at the same time form general principles and the essential determinations of this world, in this spiritual world at the same time the immediate manner — to use this word once — in which the principle is first and in general present, the concrete form in which the principle is in general initially for consciousness, the form which, because of the lack of development, can just as well be called abstract. In them the being of the principle is in general first expressed: Jesus is the Christ, is risen — these propositions are therefore, because simple being forms their content, general and they have for the world in which they hold the value of principles.
[Notes for 459 here]
460 That in the development and history of the spiritual world — and it is only in the world of spirit that the development of religion takes place — general propositions can have immediate concrete form and at the same time be abstract, the theologian will never learn to understand, because he sees the immediate and concrete only in what can be grasped with hands.
[Notes for 460 here]
461 More closely, the Rev. grasps the first "immediate and concrete" appearance of the Christian principle thus (ibid.), that "the founder of the community expressed his new principle not in general, abstract version, but in a purely practical concrete manner with reference to the individual relations of life and that it was only a matter of raising the principle to its universality."
[Notes for 461 here]
462 Thus Jesus gave the principle only occasionally, only in the strict restriction to accidental occasions, and the community led the same out of chance into necessity, out of the house into the school, from the street into the church.
[Notes for 462 here]
463 — Good! Let us grasp the matter once more precisely. Jesus violated, for example, the Sabbath law — we see namely this or any other case according to the theological presupposition of the Rev. Could he now violate it without knowing his general justification? Certainly not! But briefly and well, he violated the Jewish statute. The later ones then first made a law out of this? how? Out of an occasional deed of Jesus? Is it not rather law that the merely occasional, if it remains occasional, very soon passes away without trace?
[Notes for 463 here]
464 It could only be preserved if it was striking, and not only that, but also if it was discussed. The Rev. also assumes that Jesus expressed himself about it. But what did he speak? What could he alone speak? Again only an occasional word about this incident? Could he justify himself if he did not bring the universal, the law to speech? Is it not the first thing we demand and expect of a mature person in such cases, that he knows how to set up general points of view? Dare Jesus, if he knew the universal, to conceal it? No one would have been satisfied if he did not bring it to speech. If this happened, however, and he had moreover made the universal vivid and impressed it through the deed, then one is supposed to have had to argue for a long time later in order to find and fix general points of view?
[Notes for 464 here]
465 The dispute of the first church about such things as the conception and validity of the law was only possible if the example and precedent of Jesus was not yet given. First one rather argued about the principles and then, when they were found, one confirmed them through sayings and through the example of Jesus, through anecdotes. The later origin of these sayings and anecdotes I have, incidentally, proved from themselves.
[Notes for 465 here]
466 On the Pauline epistles, says the Rev. ibid., I may not appeal. Paul cannot come into consideration. "How quite isolated (ibid.) and taken up by unceasing struggles the figure of this man appears to us precisely in those letters."
[Notes for 466 here]
467 That is theological language! The mouth of the theologian is that well from which at the same time sweet and bitter, Yes and No gush. The theologian is meanwhile of the good opinion of uttering a simple Yes, Yes! or No, No! But is the fighter isolated? If he fights unceasingly, does he not then also stand unceasingly in conflict and contact with his surroundings? Must he not intervene in everything? Pay attention to everything? Refer everything to himself? Would not Paul have had to appeal to the example of Jesus, to the presuppositions which held there where and against which he fought, if they were already present?
[Notes for 467 here]
468 "The Jewish Christianity" held fast to the form of the Christian principle as its founder had illustrated it in his person! (p. 858.) "Tradition" had given to the life of the first, namely the Jewish Christian community "its determinate content."
[Notes for 468 here]
469 Since the Rev. now assumes that tradition is found fixed in the Gospels, he would have had to prove that the evangelists who fixed in writing the particular of Jesus' life were Jewish Christians or, what is the same, that among the Jewish Christians the views prevailed which are found in the Gospels. The Rev. would thus have to prove the absurdity that the Jewish Christians could think about the law and its validity, about the origin of Jesus as they would have had to think if they were in possession of the tradition which is supposed to be fixed in the Gospels.
[Notes for 469 here]
470 Since the Rev. now assumes that tradition is found fixed in the Gospels, he would have had to prove that the evangelists who fixed in writing the particular of Jesus' life were Jewish Christians or, what is the same, that among the Jewish Christians the views prevailed which are found in the Gospels. The Rev. would thus have to prove the absurdity that the Jewish Christians could think about the law and its validity, about the origin of Jesus as they would have had to think if they were in possession of the tradition which is supposed to be fixed in the Gospels.
[Notes for 470 here]
471 The Gospels were written and formed according to their content only when the struggle with the Jewish Christians was essentially decided and the Christian principle, so far as it was possible for it in its canonical and biblical form, had freed itself from the Jewish fetters.
[Notes for 471 here]
472 The Gospels were written and formed according to their content only when the struggle with the Jewish Christians was essentially decided and the Christian principle, so far as it was possible for it in its canonical and biblical form, had freed itself from the Jewish fetters.
[Notes for 472 here]
473 The struggle of the Jewish Christians and the Pauline direction is impossible if the content of the Gospels is given, it is also not to be conceived as one usually imagines it, that from the outset for the Jewish Christians, who according to the Rev. formed the first and only stem of the community, since only Paulinism first brought "the properly spiritual element" into the church, the tradition and historical view of the life of Jesus was present as finished.
[Notes for 473 here]
474 The struggle of the Jewish Christians and the Pauline direction is impossible if the content of the Gospels is given, it is also not to be conceived as one usually imagines it, that from the outset for the Jewish Christians, who according to the Rev. formed the first and only stem of the community, since only Paulinism first brought "the properly spiritual element" into the church, the tradition and historical view of the life of Jesus was present as finished.
[Notes for 474 here]
475 B. B. the matter of knowledge.
[Notes for 475 here]
476 Rather, the Jewish Christians are that party of Jewish life which first raised the view of the Messiah to the concept of reflection and first constituted and consolidated itself in the form in which it appears in the Pauline letters, when Paul decided the break with Judaism and thereby made it possible for that Jewish party to separate itself from the bosom of Judaism, because its interest now went outward and it had to direct itself against a party which also confessed the Messiah, but freed itself from the law.
[Notes for 476 here]
477 If, incidentally, the Rev. (ibid.) says that also in the original tradition the side of the evangelical legend which lets itself be recognised of itself (!) as the darker one, (to the theologian everything is understood of itself) the more external, the miracle-legend etc. (a theological etc.!) "receded", then he should have told us more definitely what the tradition was without the "darker side, the more (!) external, the miracle-legend" and without the "etc." Probably the same nothing of which everything consists that the theologian says, speaks, thinks and what is present for the theologian in general.
[Notes for 477 here]
478 And of all such assertions the theological reviewer always says: "it follows, it also follows, it follows incidentally, it follows likewise."
[Notes for 478 here]
479 From what does all this follow? Only from the fact that the theologian can do everything, accomplishes everything he wants, refutes detailed investigations and proofs with a single word.
[Notes for 479 here]
480 "From what has been said (continues the Rev. p. 859) it follows likewise what is the case with the assertion that the consciousness of the community, after the principle had been established, formed individual views from it and that thus the evangelical history of the Synoptics arose."
[Notes for 480 here]
481 The theologian needs only to say something against my book — what he says I have illuminated — in order to pronounce as a result that a developed principle, a proof carried through all philological, historical, aesthetic, religious-philosophical moments is nothing — absolutely nothing. He needs only to say and to let follow from what has been said what he wants.
[Notes for 481 here]
482 The Rev. comes to speak of what I have set forth about the mutual relation of the synoptic Gospels. With a "remark", he says — for the theologian all proofs are transformed into "remarks" — with a "remark concerning the relation of the Synoptics", I placed myself in a strange contradiction with the preceding — namely the "remark" that the universal had preceded the elaboration into the particular." (p. 859.) The contradiction is said to be that I hold the Gospel of Mark with its careful elaboration of the particular for the earlier, that of Matthew with its general abstract formulas for later.
[Notes for 482 here]
483 One sees, for the theologian general determinations are crossbars on which he must stretch everything, everything without distinction. Yet he does more; he also enters into the matter.
[Notes for 483 here]
484 "Must not rather, he asks p. 859, 860, at the first written fixation of the evangelical history, when one still stood nearer to the first time in which the practical interest predominated, must not then likewise (!) this practical interest still predominate, while only gradually also the external, historical gained more importance?"
[Notes for 484 here]
485 Is there historiography without externality? Now, I also merely show — and indeed in every section — that Mark can really write like a human being, that he could only write because he first formed, when he strove for coherence and intelligent motivation, that he had to strive for coherence if he did not want to write his things into the air. Nothing further! I merely show — and again in every section — that Luke and Matthew, where they create nothing new, are copyists, have copied the Gospel of Mark badly and had to copy it badly, because religious consciousness, once it has a positively given form before it, no longer pays attention to the motives and the coherence. Nothing further!
[Notes for 485 here]
486 How "abstract" it is to demand that when general views have formed themselves into particular forms, the matter is at an end. The theologian will not be able to stop the development, nor prevent the general religious consciousness from again directing itself against its particular creations and drawing them together into the abstract, the indifferent, finally into nothing.
[Notes for 486 here]
487 The theologian must himself still in our time prove the progress and advance of this development. Is it not he who lets enormous masses of evangelical history "recede"? Is it not his consciousness in which the cruder materials of the Gospels, the "more external, the miracle-legend" are dissolved and volatilised — indeed in a theological manner — in the manner which I have depicted in my book — volatilised? And is it not precisely the high point which religiosity has attained in our days, that it counts as an axiom that religion would continue to exist even if it were shown that much in the Gospels is not correct? Has it not come so far that religiosity is so bold as to say: take the Gospels from me by all means, religion remains to me nonetheless?
[Notes for 487 here]
488 Now, each time expresses that differently. Matthew in his time, when he produced his compilation, proved only the negligent indifference of the general religious consciousness towards the finite and contemptible determinations of coherence and motivation. In any case, however, the particular products of the general consciousness return into this again. In the time after the composition of the Gospels, the church sought its dogmas in them. "If B. Bauer (p. 860) appeals to the usual (so?) course of historiography, we reply to him that we recognise in the evangelical history no historiography in the sense in which the word must be understood here."
[Notes for 488 here]
489 So? Yet so it is right! Historiography, but not in the sense in which one otherwise speaks of historiography! Historiography, but no proper historiography! Now I am annihilated.
[Notes for 489 here]
490 So easily does the theologian make it for himself when he should depict "the divine art of sacred historiography", indicate the laws of divine aesthetics!
[Notes for 490 here]
491 The Rev. continues in his rejoinder in the same sentence, whose splendid stream I have just interrupted: "that we see in it only the artless fixation of tradition." Now everything is decided, when we learn what the theologian sees in the evangelical history.
[Notes for 491 here]
492 Do I then speak only of art, of artificiality in my critical proofs? No! Of the activity of self-consciousness.
[Notes for 492 here]
493 Tradition, concludes that dictatorial sentence, "which only through this artlessness and the peculiar power of the object receives a poetic tinge."
[Notes for 493 here]
494 The theological Strauss sticks his head into a bush. Whoever does not know my writing must think I had declared the Gospels for poetic wonders, and the talk is solely and alone of how much share the subjectivity of the evangelists had in the formation of sacred history.
[Notes for 494 here]
495 If I, incidentally, call the conceptions and the presentation of Mark artistic, it is clear that it is to be understood only as relative and in comparison with the works of Luke and Matthew. Everyone must know that who has only cast a glance at how I dissolve the presentation of Mark and demonstrate in it the inconveniences, contradictions and uglinesses grounded in religious consciousness.
[Notes for 495 here]
496 In the fourth, the latest Gospel, the Rev. (ibid.) rejoins anew, is yet "the external for the most part very much painted out and the plan far more methodical." To the theologian, whose joy is the external, whether it be dead or living, I have — not with a few words, not in a precarious or boldly thrown-down sentence, but in a writing — shown that the organism of the fourth Gospel is a lifeless appearance, which immediately vanishes when one treats it with earnestness. I have shown how the external is painted out, how in the fourth Gospel the religious consciousness has completely triumphed over the plasticity of the primitive gospel and over that which in the writings of Luke and Matthew still has form and shape, and how the vivid and determinate of the preceding historiography has here passed over into the nebulous, the artificial, the affected and the immeasurably exaggerated.
[Notes for 496 here]
497 The prehistory!
[Notes for 497 here]
498 "The absence of the prehistory", remarks the Rev. p. 861, is not yet a decisive ground for the priority of the Gospel of Mark; but indeed it is the most apparent one.
[Notes for 498 here]
499 The theologian is easily satisfied. I have given it out for no ground at all. Positive data rather I have sought out in the Gospel of Mark itself, which prove that on its standpoint, at the time when it was written, the prehistory was not yet present.
[Notes for 499 here]
500 The theologian is easily satisfied. I have given it out for no ground at all. Positive data rather I have sought out in the Gospel of Mark itself, which prove that on its standpoint, at the time when it was written, the prehistory was not yet present.
[Notes for 500 here]
501 "The proceedings in the investigation of the Gospel of Mark are by far not yet closed."
[Notes for 501 here]
502 The theologian is very hard, he is not at all to be satisfied, when one furnishes him with proofs and thoroughly worked works. Him satisfy only his presuppositions and bold assertions.
[Notes for 502 here]
503 "To cite only one thing — genuine theological formula, which gives itself the appearance of overflowing richness and yet only badly conceals the theological presumption of immediately conquering — what can be objected against the explanation, already set up elsewhere, that precisely because of the contradiction between the conceptions of the two other Synoptists, the author of the Gospel of Mark, independent of these, left out the prehistory?"
[Notes for 503 here]
504 "To cite only one thing — genuine theological formula, which gives itself the appearance of overflowing richness and yet only badly conceals the theological presumption of immediately conquering — what can be objected against the explanation, already set up elsewhere, that precisely because of the contradiction between the conceptions of the two other Synoptists, the author of the Gospel of Mark, independent of these, left out the prehistory?"
[Notes for 504 here]
505 To cite only one thing — namely not to cite, for example, that the evangelists were not yet critics, nothing further, than that the theologian must first take closer knowledge of the critical achievements he judges and then prove that Mark's view, for example, of the baptism of Jesus, Mark's presupposition of the relation of Jesus to his mother and family, the presupposition that Jesus had siblings, does not exclude the prehistory, that these presuppositions not only here, in the Gospel of Mark, have sense and meaning and their place, and what the two others have taken up from them does not stand in contradiction with their later standpoint and their prehistory.
[Notes for 505 here]
506 The Rev. fights for the proposition that Jesus had to proceed from David's lineage.
[Notes for 506 here]
507 The Rev. fights for the proposition that Jesus had to proceed from David's lineage. "To complete the opposition and bring the matter to decision, I have said more for it than the Rev., he would therefore have had to exert himself all the more to refute what I have set forth against it, instead of asking whether it is indeed something so wonderful, striking that the founder of the new principle (!) really proceeded from the lineage to which the same (!) was tied for the Old Testament."
[Notes for 507 here]
508 "To complete the opposition and bring the matter to decision, I have said more for it than the Rev., he would therefore have had to exert himself all the more to refute what I have set forth against it, instead of asking whether it is indeed something so wonderful, striking that the founder of the new principle (!) really proceeded from the lineage to which the same (!) was tied for the Old Testament." The new principle, whose founder (!) Jesus was, is thus already tied for the O. T. etc.?
[Notes for 508 here]
509 The new principle, whose founder (!) Jesus was, is thus already tied for the O. T. etc.? Is the new not the abolition of the O. T.? Or do the "founders" of the new proceed only from the princely houses of the old? Was I wrong to say that the heroes of the new are born on the hem of the old and express through their origin the inner negative dialectic of the new against the old? The heroes of a new principle are wont to be homines novi.
[Notes for 509 here]
510 Nothing wonderful, striking do I find in that pretended origin, but silly I find the theological obstinacy of insisting on it absolutely.
[Notes for 510 here]
511 If only the Rev. had rather heeded that in the Gospel of Mark the designation of Jesus as the Messiah occurs only once, that only this Gospel in this legend keeps the correct measure and remains in agreement with the type of the evangelical history, and that the disciples, when Jesus asks them what the people think of him, and asks them in such a way that he at the same time wants to know their opinion, know nothing of his being the Son of David.
[Notes for 511 here]
512 Jesus' question: what do the scribes say that Christ is the Son of David, does not have (p. 861), as I explain it, a polemical direction against the assumption that Jesus is David's Son. However, as I have argued — and the Rev. has not dissolved this conclusion — this question has the same construction, the same direction, the same sense and origin as the others: what do the scribes say that Elias must first come? As in this question the negative direction is contained against the demand that Elias must immediately come himself or the Baptist, if he is to be the forerunner, must immediately be the Elias of the O. T., so Mark, when the view of the prophets of the Son of David was transferred to Jesus, formed that other question to show that this name is to be grasped only ideally.
[Notes for 512 here]
513 In my explanation of the report of the supernatural generation of Jesus the Rev. can "see only an all too immediate transference of the later consciousness, in which history comes off too short."
[Notes for 513 here]
514 The theologian should have conscientiously asked himself whether he saw correctly. I had, says the Rev., derived the relevant view after Weisse's precedent "immediately from the Christian principle." The theologian even as reporter cannot tell the truth: he lies. Weisse and I, we also determine the influences which the pagan view had on the formation of that Christian one, I speak very extensively of the relation of the Old Testament presuppositions of this view to itself: all that does not prevent the Rev. from rendering a report which is as slovenly as false, we will not determine whether with or without will a lie, in any case theological. The theological lie is characterised precisely by the fact that in it consciousness and unconsciousness, will and thoughtlessness, negligence and intention so interpenetrate that they can no longer be distinguished from one another.
[Notes for 514 here]
515 As if he now brought forward ever so much new against me, the Rev. rejoins (p. 863): "well was the Christian principle the foundation on which the idea of the supernatural generation supported itself, but for its origin it needed a further historical mediation."
[Notes for 515 here]
516 As if critique had not designated and characterised the moments of this mediation, the forces which worked in this process.
[Notes for 516 here]
517 "The faith in the supernatural generation is nothing but the completion of the O. T. Messianic concept, as it was indeed only possible on Christian ground."
[Notes for 517 here]
518 Critique develops extensively what is the case with this completion, the theologian believes to refute critique and to say something new to it when he transforms its developments into a rigid, stiff sentence.
[Notes for 518 here]
519 "Also in the explanation of the star of the Magi the author (who thus, as the Rev. can see from this, very gladly lets himself be instructed and would immediately follow the Rev. if he led him to the truth) attaches himself to Weisse. However, let us look first only at the narrative itself, where then is the thought indicated here that in paganism itself lies a tendency of development towards Christianity?"
[Notes for 519 here]
520 The thought precisely not; also there is no talk of my indication as if Matthew had wanted to point to this thought with consciousness; critique only says that Matthew had hit it in happy instinct so that the star received that significance.
[Notes for 520 here]
521 The thought precisely not; also there is no talk of my indication as if Matthew had wanted to point to this thought with consciousness; critique only says that Matthew had hit it in happy instinct so that the star received that significance.
[Notes for 521 here]
522 "The star is rather given to the Magi only as a sign from outside."
[Notes for 522 here]
523 But only because the idea is first grasped plastically, as a single incident, then because it is presented religiously. On the religious ground God alone must give and what he gives must give from outside.
[Notes for 523 here]
524 "Moreover, however, whence should this deep idea come, that paganism had, as it were, in itself a star which led it to Christianity? How should in a time where even Paul saw in paganism nothing other than a worship of demons hostile to God, such a profound myth have arisen?"
[Notes for 524 here]
525 The time was, however, also one that wanted to draw paganism to itself with force. Then the struggling consciousness raises itself to views which showed it in the interior of paganism a power which presses mightily towards the new principle. Then women appear, like the Canaanite, men like the centurion of Capernaum, pagans who through their faith put Israel itself to shame.
[Notes for 525 here]
526 "That narrative is in truth originally — such sentences which with an 'originally' arouse the expectation that afterwards a development follows of what is still contained in the original determinateness, but leave this expectation unsatisfied, or suddenly abandon the direction they would now have to take, are genuinely theological — nothing other than a pictorial view of Christ as the star which also appeared to the pagans."
[Notes for 526 here]
527 Now, dear soul, analyse these words once for yourself, and admit what follows from this original. Is Christ the star which appeared to the pagans, have they then not already in their nature-view worshipped the image of this archetype? Has the symbol not led them to the truth? Has Matthew then not involuntarily hit it very well? Must we, like the theologian, stop at the star, gape at nothing but the star, let the star be star and overlook that the star is also borrowed in the O. T., in Balaam's blessing, from nature-view, the view which in paganism was earnest and religious view? Must we theologically stop at the external, that God sent the star, must we not rather think that the means which God used is in itself very appropriately chosen, that the religious view, what it lets come to man from outside, can take from nowhere else than from the interior of man — for with all apparent transcendence it cannot go beyond man — that therefore God took this means from the Magi — in secret — from the heart, if he, i.e., Matthew, also did not trace back the matter in detail, i.e., critically? Did he not make a lucky grab? A lucky grab into the heart of the pagans? Now, dear soul, further critique says nothing and further the matter is nothing.
[Notes for 527 here]
528 In reference to the critical explanation of the report of the procedure of Herod and the flight to Egypt, the Rev. (No. 109. p. 865) "indeed gladly admits that etc." namely admits pretty much the main thing, "but by no means, he continues, can the origin of the narrative be derived immediately just from this, as B. Bauer wants."
[Notes for 528 here]
529 Full stop! Now the matter is settled; now critique is theologically refuted and the Rev. can immediately add that critique has not got beyond Strauss. Veni, vidi, vici cries the Rev. The theologian speaks and it stands as he commands.
[Notes for 529 here]
530 "But by no means can the origin of the narrative be derived from this, as B. Bauer wants etc." The matter is decided!
[Notes for 530 here]
531 Now the Rev. can immediately (p. 865) continue: "Of itself falls with the previous also the proof which B. Bauer leads for the origin of the prehistory from the consciousness of the evangelists, as if the same namely because of its inner coherence could not originate from tradition."
[Notes for 531 here]
532 Yes, if the present-day theologians were still in possession of the trumpets of Jericho! Their predecessors were so fortunate as to possess these wonderful trumpets and, when they had brought the walls of worldly systems to fall, to find faith with the believers. Faith is now lacking.
[Notes for 532 here]
533 As if I had proved the literary origin of the prehistory only from the coherence! I simply refer back to my proof.
[Notes for 533 here]
534 As regards the prehistory of Luke and its supposed coherence, I assume wrongly, thinks the Rev. p. 866, that the narrative of Simeon is the summit of the whole, since here also reference is made to the pagans and the suffering of Jesus. "— from the mere fact that it is so, I have truly drawn no conclusion, but from the fact that this turn to the universal could not be missing at the end!"
[Notes for 534 here]
535 That one may not expect knowledge of the sacred text from the theologian, I have often proved in my writing. "The salvation prepared for all peoples, the light for revelation of the peoples" (Luke 2:31, 32) recedes according to the view of the Rev. The theologian is wont to put the light under a bushel.
[Notes for 535 here]
536 "and the reference to the future suffering can already be explained from the fact that the speech of Simeon had to have a peculiar content."
[Notes for 536 here]
537 What maltreatment of a writer! Fine way of finishing with his creations, to say that he just had to have peculiar content at this and that place. He just needed content, peculiar content and drew it with a blind grab from the drawer of his memory. So easily do only theologians make it for themselves!
[Notes for 537 here]
538 What maltreatment of a writer! Fine way of finishing with his creations, to say that he just had to have peculiar content at this and that place. He just needed content, peculiar content and drew it with a blind grab from the drawer of his memory. So easily do only theologians make it for themselves!
[Notes for 538 here]
539 If finally the Rev. has not understood what I have said about the chronology of the prehistory of Luke and its connection with the following part of the Gospel, then let him only read through my exposition once more.
[Notes for 539 here]
540 His discovery, however, that the prehistory of Luke is Ebionite, thus could not have been worked out by the same writer as the Gospel itself, which is obviously of Pauline character, he should have made somewhat clearer to us. Only to say: I have discovered new land, and to show us no ground on which we can place our foot, is yet a far too great shamelessness. That the Gospel of the child, who is begotten by the Holy Spirit, from the cradle the light of the pagans, is Ebionite, we cannot believe without further ado, even if someone told us who is no theologian.
[Notes for 540 here]
541 "Particularly difficult must it become for B. Bauer to unite his view of the origin of the prehistory of Matthew with its alleged dependence on Luke" (p. 866).
[Notes for 541 here]
542 "Particularly difficult must it become for B. Bauer to unite his view of the origin of the prehistory of Matthew with its alleged dependence on Luke" (p. 866).
[Notes for 542 here]
543 How far it is difficult, I have shown and shown so that it does not need the conjecture of the Rev. It is not a question, however, whether it is difficult, but whether it is true. Only to the theologian is truth difficult, yes impossible. In itself it is very easy, the work for it is not sour and it frees us from the ballast without which, according to the view of theology, we cannot sail through the sea of life.
[Notes for 543 here]
544 Why did Matthew not notice the contradictions between his prehistory and that of Luke? asks the Rev. (p. 867).
[Notes for 544 here]
545 Answer: because he was no modern critic, because he did not critically compare his work with that of his predecessor, because he, as I have shown, took another centre.
[Notes for 545 here]
546 In the manner in which Matthew depicts the conduct of Joseph at the pregnancy of Mary, I show the work of later reflection.
[Notes for 546 here]
547 In the manner in which Matthew depicts the conduct of Joseph at the pregnancy of Mary, I show the work of later reflection. "However, the presentation of Matthew, rejoins the Rev. p. 867, does not at all aim to explain the conduct of Joseph, rather it has thereby the quite ideal purpose of illustrating the miraculous of the birth."
[Notes for 547 here]
548 The theologian cannot, absolutely cannot read. I do not say it, I set it forth that Matthew wants to make the miracle not merely vivid, but quite certain. I set forth why: in order to lift doubt in general through the doubt of Joseph. Joseph must doubt, so that he is convinced, so that the matter is drawn down into the empirically documenting, into the juridical — theological-juridical — witness-proof and all possibility of doubt is removed.
[Notes for 548 here]
549 "Viewed from here, continues the Rev., the presentation is certainly the most natural in the world."
[Notes for 549 here]
550 As if I had accused it of unnaturalness! The theologian cannot stay with the matter.
[Notes for 550 here]
551 I fall into a contradiction, thinks the Rev., if I say that Matthew presupposes Bethlehem artlessly as the place of residence of Jesus' parents, while I let him be biased in regard to Joseph's conduct (p. 867).
[Notes for 551 here]
552 What is the case with the latter bias has just been shown, i.e., I have, after having developed it in my writing, briefly repeated.
[Notes for 552 here]
553 Why, however, does Matthew presuppose the parents of Jesus without further ado and from the outset in Bethlehem, while Luke needs a special lever to bring them there? Because afterwards the journeys to Egypt and Nazareth give him trouble enough, because he needed a fixed starting point beforehand on account of these journeys and because this could not be Nazareth, since quite special reasons and arrangements would first have to be necessary to bring the child Jesus there.
[Notes for 553 here]
554 That I learn gladly and willingly, I think my scientific development has shown. If, however, the theological instructions are twaddle, the twaddle of incapacity, limitation, thus of presumption, then one will not blame the critic if he becomes indignant. Only the circumstance that the theologian cannot speak and judge otherwise, that he must misunderstand and treat with unscrupulous levity everything that goes beyond the theological boundary of his insight — however far it may be pushed out — can secure patience for the critic in the face of these theological presumptions, give him endurance in the consideration of the theological scruples and a general interest in his illumination of them.
[Notes for 554 here]
555 We continue to keep in view the theological turns of the Rev.
[Notes for 555 here]
556 Never will a theologian, when he has learned something from his critical opponent, be able to suppress the remark that the new discovery is after all nothing special; he will rather use a turn whereby the matter is brought back as much as possible to its old standpoint; i.e., he will show us that he has in fact learned nothing.
[Notes for 556 here]
557 In speaking of my critique of the evangelical reports of the activity of the Baptist, the Rev. declares his agreement with what I have set forth about the messianic expectations of the Jews at the time of Jesus, but remarks that no more important significance is to be attached to this exposition, "because, even without the concept of the Messiah having already attained a formation among the Jews of that time itself, the Old Testament view could nevertheless exercise its influence on the evangelical history." No. 109. p. 869. The Rev. speaks as if I had denied this influence, he speaks as if he brought forward something completely new, as if it first needed his conjecture to secure recognition for the possibility of this influence, and I had not rather proved this influence as a real one. The Rev. did not see the difference which lies in whether an already finished messianic system determined the evangelical historiography from the beginning or whether it first needed a new principle to see the scattered prophetic views in reflected connection.
[Notes for 557 here]
558 In speaking of my critique of the evangelical reports of the activity of the Baptist, the Rev. declares his agreement with what I have set forth about the messianic expectations of the Jews at the time of Jesus, but remarks that no more important significance is to be attached to this exposition, "because, even without the concept of the Messiah having already attained a formation among the Jews of that time itself, the Old Testament view could nevertheless exercise its influence on the evangelical history." No. 109. p. 869. The Rev. speaks as if I had denied this influence, he speaks as if he brought forward something completely new, as if it first needed his conjecture to secure recognition for the possibility of this influence, and I had not rather proved this influence as a real one. The Rev. did not see the difference which lies in whether an already finished messianic system determined the evangelical historiography from the beginning or whether it first needed a new principle to see the scattered prophetic views in reflected connection.
[Notes for 558 here]
559 "It is further self-evident, continues the Rev. ibid., that we also in this part of the investigation (on the activity of the Baptist) have to abstract from what is reported about the relation of the Synoptists."
[Notes for 559 here]
560 To abstract from this is indeed very easy for the theologian, even if he has to ignore the most detailed and thorough investigations in doing so, all the easier for him since it is self-evident that he has to abstract from it.
[Notes for 560 here]
561 The theologian has the right, without further ado, to assert the opposite of what the critic proves as correct and certain.
[Notes for 561 here]
562 "If Mark does not have individual features which we find in Matthew, this can just as well originate from the fact that his presentation is an abbreviated one."
[Notes for 562 here]
563 Can? Indeed! But does it come to such an empty and thoughtless possibility? Have I left room for such a one? Is the short or long alone to decide? Have I ever concluded originality from brevity or length? No! The relation of the parts to each other, their inner coherence or contradiction, their inner nature: that is what I conclude the relation of the reports from and what also results from it.
[Notes for 563 here]
564 "For its (!) later origin speaks especially the remark that it reports nothing at all of the preaching of the Baptist except precisely what, according to B. Bauer himself, is most decidedly unhistorical."
[Notes for 564 here]
565 In the end, have I then asserted that what the two others have more is less unhistorical or could possibly be historical? I have rather proved that it stands in no inner relation to the core which we find in the writing of Mark, but rather in contradiction, that it is in itself without coherence and falls apart through its inner contradictions.
[Notes for 565 here]
566 The Rev. comes to my critique of the reports on the baptism and temptation of Jesus.
[Notes for 566 here]
567 "As regards the former, the significance of the presentation of Matthew is a different one than the author wants." (Ibid. p. 870). If I am now somewhat curious after the great exposition I have communicated on this point, I must hear: "it (that significance) follows of itself, as soon as it is once recognised that the baptism of Jesus for the first Christian view is nothing other than the messianic anointing."
[Notes for 567 here]
568 The Rev. says I have denied this significance. I ask: where? The result — not what has followed of itself, but the result of a thorough investigation is rather that the baptism as the initiation of Jesus to his messianic work has sense, meaning and place only in the writing of Mark, but not in the other Gospels, in which it stands in contradiction with this its significance against the later presuppositions.
[Notes for 568 here]
569 The Rev. says I have denied this significance. I ask: where? The result — not what has followed of itself, but the result of a thorough investigation is rather that the baptism as the initiation of Jesus to his messianic work has sense, meaning and place only in the writing of Mark, but not in the other Gospels, in which it stands in contradiction with this its significance against the later presuppositions.
[Notes for 569 here]
570 I have only combated and proved as groundless the assumption that the baptism of Jesus is the consecration to his calling, if it is to count as historical under the presupposition that he was the Messiah. That is a great difference.
[Notes for 570 here]
571 "The answer which Jesus gives (Matt. 3:15) has quite simply the sense that this baptism is grounded in the divine order (insofar as it is to be the messianic anointing)."
[Notes for 571 here]
572 What, then, is to be accomplished with that? What does the theologian gain if he ignores my treatise and holds the matter back at the point which is precisely still to be investigated by critique and proves itself untenable? What further help is it to the theologian simply to repeat my proofs and, by substituting the legend for the writer, to say: "the utterance of the Baptist is nothing other than an objection which the legend itself makes in the person of the Baptist, as to how namely the baptism of Jesus by the Baptist is to be united with their mutual position"? First overthrow my proof that that answer of Jesus is a theological evasion, an empty tautology, as good as no answer, and that it was possible with the refusal of the Baptist to baptise Jesus only on the standpoint where other presuppositions held than on that which Mark occupied!
[Notes for 572 here]
573 The theologian, to whom above all a "historical foundation of the report" is a matter of concern, is capable of repeating the twaddle sufficiently illuminated by critique (p. 871), that the baptism miracle, as we find it narrated in Matthew and Mark, is undeniably (!) nothing other than a vision of Jesus, which indeed (!) at the same time (!) is accompanied by an objective spiritual (!) process.
[Notes for 573 here]
574 "Still less can it, incidentally said, B. Bauer explain why Matthew, as the latest, yet likewise has this favourable version, while with Luke, whom he is supposed to presuppose, the process is kept quite sensual."
[Notes for 574 here]
575 What audacity! Matthew is supposed to presuppose Luke's account for his report of the baptism of Jesus? Yet I notice: the Rev. is so incapable of distinguishing and giving things their correct position and their true name, that he is of the opinion that the critic thinks the later report always presupposes every earlier report. The matter is that Matthew this time could not use the earlier report of Luke at all, this could have no influence on his, his report therefore could not have that of Luke as presupposition, since the latter has drawn the whole together — why? I have proved — very negligently and clumsily. For his report of the baptism Matthew could only use the Gospel of Mark. Luke, incidentally, has only used the more sensual designation for the baptism miracle, but otherwise the whole is presupposed by Mark and Matthew in the same way as a sensual process; Luke only placed that designation because he has greatly abbreviated the matter and therefore had to give the reader an obtrusive hint as to how he should understand the whole.
[Notes for 575 here]
576 "The explanation which B. Bauer gives of the baptism history could in any case only be recognised within a certain scope, says the Rev. ibid.; for that the religious view only in general had so viewed the connection between Jesus and the Baptist as his historical presupposition, as if Jesus himself had gone through the baptism of John, that is not credible because, as emerges from the presentation of Matthew — (should and can the critic still keep patience here? Yet let us let the theological artifice develop itself completely.) — the legend would never have placed Jesus in a relation of apparent subordination to the Baptist if another moment, the idea of the messianic anointing, had not been added. Also in this the legend has expressed a historical truth: the appearance of the Baptist, so can — (oh, about the new discovery!) — the matter be summarised, was the historical presupposition of the still higher greater activity of Jesus, therefore the Baptist anoints Jesus."
[Notes for 576 here]
577 The reader will know those hard blockheads who, after having long argued against us, finally come to the point that they turn our own thesis, as the one they had defended against us from the outset, against us. With these hard heads one can only finish by reminding them of what they earlier asserted and showing them that they do not even understand our proposition, which they have suddenly appropriated, and express it very falsely.
[Notes for 577 here]
578 Just now the Rev. has said that the baptism of Jesus for the first Christian view "is nothing other than the messianic anointing." This and nothing other was the baptism of Jesus hitherto also for the "view" of the reviewer. Since when does he now see in the baptism of Jesus or, to use his words, in the "idea of the messianic anointing" — for this theological language is heavy, is impossible to analyse — in the "messianic anointing" that other "historical truth"? Was this "truth" also for the "Christian view" or not? The Rev. is silent!
[Notes for 578 here]
579 Yet the question is still another! Where do I assert that the religious view "only", "only in general" objectified that historical connection in the baptism of Jesus? Do I deny the "other moment, the idea of the messianic anointing"? On the contrary! I place both in detail in their inner relation. I do not say: the foundation of this view of the baptism of Jesus was the idea that the appearance of the Baptist was the historical presupposition of the activity of Jesus and that "therefore" the Baptist anoints Jesus — accordingly it would come back to that "only in general" which the Rev. believes he must censure in my explanation; that the Baptist baptises Jesus would then namely be only a consequence of the fact that in general only the historical presupposition of the activity of Jesus is to be brought together with this personally. I have rather set forth that the religious view wanted from the outset to fix and more closely determine the moment where the Lord is called and consecrated as Messiah, and that it could find no more suitable means for this purpose than to let Jesus go personally through the mediation which is the historical presupposition of the Gospel.
[Notes for 579 here]
580 So is the matter. The Rev., however, fights against me by presupposing that I had set up only the one side of this explanation, and it is precisely he who fixes this side, thus grasps it falsely and cannot even correctly present it as this one side.
[Notes for 580 here]
581 Although the Rev. now says, therefore the Baptist anoints Jesus, because the appearance of the former is the historical presupposition of the activity of the latter or — if it is to be expressed intelligibly at all — was to be represented as this presupposition, he said the moment before that Matthew proves that the evangelical view would never have placed Jesus in a relation of apparent subordination if the other moment, namely the idea of the messianic anointing, had not been added. However, as I have already asked, do I deny this moment? Do I not rather place it first? Has the Rev. not reversed the relation of the moments? And what is Matthew supposed to do? Does he not prove precisely through the offence he takes at the baptism of Jesus that the original production of this view lies far behind him? that he is therefore not to be cited at all, that he has no voice at all when it comes to explaining the origin of this view?
[Notes for 581 here]
582 The difficulty which would lie in the baptism of Jesus, if it were a pure work of the Christian view, insofar as the same view "would have placed Jesus of its own accord in a relation of apparent subordination to the Baptist", the author uses at the same time for the purpose of concluding from it the historical foundation of the whole (p. 872.)
[Notes for 582 here]
583 However, the baptism miracle makes this conversation into a passing appearance. The difficulty disappeared in its necessity, which was posited with the fact that Jesus was to be consecrated to his work and could most appropriately receive this consecration only if he was led through the historical presupposition of his work.
[Notes for 583 here]
584 Against my explanation of the temptation history the Rev. remarks first, as regards the relation of the reports — according to it a report would have to be the original one in which all external determinations are present, but the spiritual content is lacking. (p. 872). Naturally, to set up this assertion, the Rev. must ignore my demonstration of the spiritual content and, to do yet an extra thing — for actually the theologian settles everything with a single decree, yet also the way he does an extra thing is theologically to make a couple of decrees in detail. So he says (p. 872) "the mention of the animals in the presentation of Mark is a feature which is merely to emphasise the miraculous in the temptation history." Further: "a merely external miraculous significance has also the statement of the service of the angels, as it is placed in Mark."
[Notes for 584 here]
585 Naturally, to set up this assertion, the Rev. must ignore my demonstration of the spiritual content and, to do yet an extra thing — for actually the theologian settles everything with a single decree, yet also the way he does an extra thing is theologically to make a couple of decrees in detail. So he says (p. 872) "the mention of the animals in the presentation of Mark is a feature which is merely to emphasise the miraculous in the temptation history." Further: "a merely external miraculous significance has also the statement of the service of the angels, as it is placed in Mark."
[Notes for 585 here]
586 We have already seen above that the theologian is capable, when he cannot finish with the plastic work of a writer, of asserting that individual features are there merely for the sake of the miraculous. He who enters into the purpose of the miraculous and seeks to recognise this in the plastic whole is, according to the theologian, a fool who tires himself with superfluous brooding. As a theologian the Rev. is capable of the summary procedure of asserting that the purpose of the Gospel of Mark is not at all to give a history of Jesus, and that it therefore holds itself in many respects summarily, he is therefore capable of letting everything, even the most determinate, even a plastic precisely worked-out work, vanish in the vapour of his theological indefiniteness through a single decree.
[Notes for 586 here]
587 "It can be admitted, says the Rev. No. 110, p. 873, that in the individual temptations (— of which Luke and Matthew report —) views of the community of its own later struggles are contained." But the determinateness of the explanation I have given cannot suit the theologian. He must apply a magic formula to kill the thought, even if it were a formula that is nothing but a clumsy distortion of my explanation. "The proper — without this word, which brings the matter into hovering and wavering, the theologian cannot exist — the proper significance of the temptation history is rather a historical one" — again a word which the theologian only needs to utter to annihilate critique. Have I not first illuminated the historical significance of the temptation history when I show that it is a presentation of the world-historical struggles of the community? What then does the Rev. want with his "historical"? He means: "the origin" of the temptation history is that the religious consciousness had to regard that complete overcoming of everything opposed to the Christian principle as the necessary presupposition of the public activity of Jesus." Truly, there is no greater impudence than that of the theologian: I have said the same — but not with this false pretension which gives the whole a distorted turn — not said, but developed, and the theologian directs it against me! I have shown that the community had to grasp and present its presuppositions as presuppositions of Jesus, its struggles as struggles of Jesus, its victories as victories of Jesus, and the Rev., the theologian, comes now and acts as if he overturned my developments when he snatches together individual catchwords from them and gives them the turn against me? This game is too spiritless — it is only possible with the theological limitation which does not see how it runs itself into a corner, and with the theological tic of absolutely making objections against the results of critique which are adopted by the gentlemen. Let them: their punishment lies in the fact that even the truth which they accept becomes in their possession malicious limitation.
[Notes for 587 here]
588 As the Rev. now "passes over to the great theatre of the activity of Jesus", he sends a short comparison between the method of Straussian critique and mine. That he has not even understood my method, however, the sections of the writing "Hegel's Doctrine of Art and Religion" belonging here will teach him.
[Notes for 588 here]
589 I will now show that he has grasped nothing of what I set forth about the "relation of the three Synoptists", has read and considered nothing thoroughly, that nothing of his objections is tenable, in short, that he has read my writing as a theologian and combats it as a theologian.
[Notes for 589 here]
590 For every non-theologian it is clear that the statement of Matthew ch. 4:13, that Jesus after his return from the wilderness where he was tempted left Nazareth before he moved to Capernaum, while yet of a return to Nazareth and of a stay there there was absolutely no mention, that this statement comes only from the fact that Matthew remains true to the type of the Gospel of Mark and inserts into this the narrative of Luke of the appearance of Jesus in Nazareth in the form of that disturbing and clumsy excerpt.
[Notes for 590 here]
591 "Can this statement not, however, asks the Rev. (p. 875), be explained far more simply — i.e., from the air, a priori, theologically, without regard to the text and the relation of the synoptic reports — from the fact that it must have been natural for the evangelical historical view to imagine the first appearance of Jesus as proceeding from Nazareth?"
[Notes for 591 here]
592 The matter in its simplicity is solely and alone that Matthew had remarked with no word that Jesus, when he returned from the wilderness, had gone to Nazareth.
[Notes for 592 here]
593 One can, however, only leave a city which one has actually entered and in which one has stayed.
[Notes for 593 here]
594 "Moreover, asks the Rev. ibid., if Matthew here presupposes the narrative of Luke, why has he not also made this incomparably richer, more elaborated narrative his own?"
[Notes for 594 here]
595 Answer: because he here, as elsewhere, remains truer to the type of the evangelical history as he finds it in the writing of Mark than Luke; because he seeks to retain this type at least as much as possible.
[Notes for 595 here]
596 But why does he remain true here to the original type, "why has he not also, like Luke, placed the narrative at the beginning of the public activity of Jesus?"
[Notes for 596 here]
597 I.e., why has he not worked even worse than he already has? why has he not made his error even greater? Because, what the theologian could already have learned from Wilke, the Sermon on the Mount determines the plan and the arrangement of this first part of his Gospel of the activity of Jesus; because he already has the Sermon on the Mount in mind and, to arrive at it, may not bring too much detail beforehand, because he therefore must stay with the shorter type of the history which he finds in Mark, because all those interests determined him which I have demonstrated in my writing.
[Notes for 597 here]
598 "Must it not have been a very natural view for the later one to let Jesus first enter upon his office in Nazareth itself."
[Notes for 598 here]
599 What words! Is Mark thereby to be signalled as the still later one? Luke and Matthew are indeed the later ones in relation to him, who spoiled the original type of the Gospel by forcing into it an assumption which seemed natural to them. That Jesus immediately after the return from the wilderness finds himself at the lake seemed to Luke indeed unmotivated, he did not see namely that the motive lay in the fact that Jesus was to find the disciples who were to introduce him into the centre of his public activity, into Capernaum. He found something more natural which is very unnatural for the original type of the history. And what does the theologian not find natural?
[Notes for 599 here]
600 Mark proves himself, says the Rev. p. 876, "also thereby as the later, that he lets Jesus say: believe in the Gospel." However, precisely the first, for whom the Gospel was not yet the positive and written, could only be capable of this anachronism. The later ones became uncertain about the expression and left it out.
[Notes for 600 here]
601 Against my explanation of the report of the calling of the first disciples the Rev. remarks p. 876, "in Matthew and Mark the calling of the first apostles is placed first according to the natural later view." On the philological proof for the originality of the Gospel of Mark, on the proof that Luke has presented the calling of Peter in a perverted and groundless manner because he copies Mark awkwardly, on the aesthetic judgment of the reports the theologian naturally does not enter.
[Notes for 601 here]
602 "The later view, which was accustomed to imagine Jesus always with the retinue of his disciples, believed therefore also that it had to place their calling at the beginning of the activity of Jesus."
[Notes for 602 here]
603 Of course it is not to be expected of the theologian that he heed the proof that Luke is clumsy enough — as a thoughtless copyist — to have placed Jesus in relation to Peter before his calling. The theologian has no eye for the fact that Jesus stands in this relation before he has called Peter as one hitherto unknown to him. Theology is the science whose confessors must renounce hearing and seeing.
[Notes for 603 here]
604 The Rev. does wonders of familiarity with the "later" view and overlooks that it is not the circle of disciples in general that is called by Jesus at the lake, but that it is only the first disciples who were called at the beginning, so that the bond with Capernaum might be tied. He speaks very categorically of how the later or earlier ones had to place the events chronologically and yet asserts "on chronology and in general on the external connection the Synoptists notoriously take only all too little regard."
[Notes for 604 here]
605 A "notoriously" is sufficient for the theologian to overthrow from the ground my proof that Mark pays very good attention to coherence and chronology, to completely enervate the development of how the two others came to destroy this coherence. To the theologian everything is a "notoriously", everything follows and is understood of itself.
[Notes for 605 here]
606 If I explain the contradiction that Matthew remarks in the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount that the speech is addressed to the disciples and at the end suddenly lets the people wonder at the powerful sermon, the theologian naturally may not even recognise the contradiction, not even understand the solution of the contradiction.
[Notes for 606 here]
607 "It is not so absurd at all, he says p. 877, that Jesus held a speech mainly for the instruction of his disciples, without thereby the relation to the people being excluded."
[Notes for 607 here]
608 Where do I say that it is absurd that Jesus etc.? Man! learn to see and hear, i.e., theologian, give yourself up before you completely stifle or deprave man. The matter is rather only that Matthew does not say from the outset that Jesus also had people around him who could hear his words. The matter is — hear, man! — that the people according to Matt. are not only not with Jesus, not only have not followed him onto the mountain, but that Jesus had expressly withdrawn from the people on the mountain where he held the speech.
[Notes for 608 here]
609 Where do I say it is absurd that etc.? Do I not rather set it forth — but not with a senseless, theological decree — that in the speech itself lies the demand to be heard before a great multitude? Is the matter not only alone that Matthew has cut off the fulfilment of this demand from the outset, thus borrowed the speech from a writing which he copied very clumsily and whose tendency he paralysed through foreign presuppositions?
[Notes for 609 here]
610 So the theologian understands critical works!
[Notes for 610 here]
611 The Rev. says I had derived that contradiction from Matthew's dependence on Mark, and I say on the contrary expressly that Luke forced Matthew to mention the people at the end of the speech, I show that this contradiction — first the disciples, then the people mentioned as hearers — is at least not unnatural in the writing of Luke, insofar as the people really hear the speech, I only say that Mark induced Matthew to place the speech precisely where he placed it, I show how Mark could dominate and determine Matthew in this case.
[Notes for 611 here]
612 The Rev. should have read all that properly, but not only read, but studied: he would then also have understood what I have often set forth about the servitude of religious consciousness under the letter, he would then not have exposed himself so much as to say that my explanation of the slavish dependence of the later evangelists on the given letter from religious consciousness is not correct. He would then know in general what the talk is about.
[Notes for 612 here]
613 I have proved in the evangelical historiography that the freedom of religious consciousness is a simply indefinite one and precisely for that reason immediately the hardest and most determinate servitude.
[Notes for 613 here]
614 This proof, however, the Rev. annihilates through the remark that I have here again — with what success the Rev. previously made me the process for a similar transgression, we have seen — "confused two quite different spheres." (p. 878). "Such a juxtaposition of freedom and dependence is only possible in the practical, properly religious territory." "But it is quite another thing when a writer — why does the Rev. not say a religious writer? of a Homer, of a Thucydides, of a Hume there is no talk — composes freely on the historical territory — but do I speak of pure historiography? As little as of pure artistic activity. Or does the Rev. know what he speaks of? — out of ideal interest."
[Notes for 614 here]
615 Free? Ideal? The writing on Hegel's doctrine of art and religion did not need first to appear to instruct the Rev. that there can be no talk of freedom and ideality in evangelical historiography. True religion does not know the ideality of formation, it does not know pure, free theory, it is throughout determined by material interest and empirical need.
[Notes for 615 here]
616 "The fourth evangelist, remarks the Rev., is the 'most striking' example of how little a writer who proceeds from ideal interest in his literary composition is concerned with holding fast to the external letter." Now everything is settled with one sentence. My proof that precisely the fourth evangelist is most determined by sensual interests, because in him the indefinite freedom of religious consciousness has received its most completed expression, is now invalid. In the third volume of my writing the Rev. will learn that the Fourth has precisely proved how far dependence on the letter can go. Until then, that this volume will be permitted to appear, the Rev. will reach into his breast to learn from his own theological person how much the sublimated religious consciousness, when it thinks itself at its highest, sees itself forced to cling to the letter. Is the enlightened theologian not the most terrible servant when he seeks with ruthless force to assert the letter precisely where an evangelist has erred, as glorious, eternal and as without contradiction? Is the Rev. not precisely dependent on the weakest passages of the Gospel of Matthew? Is he not, according to the above utterance, precisely prejudiced in favour of the most senseless externality, that of the fourth Gospel?
[Notes for 616 here]
617 If I prove that for the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount of Matthew the Beatitudes of Luke are the literary presupposition, that thus it is Matthew who has reworked the sensual determinations of the latter into the spiritual, the Rev. remarks, "this is not the usual course of legend, which rather is wont to sensualise the spiritual."
[Notes for 617 here]
618 It will never succeed for the theologian to set up an important general proposition when he speaks as a theologian and fights for his theological presuppositions. What is legend to me? Do I speak of legend? No, of religious consciousness and its further formation! It is precisely religious consciousness which dissolves and volatilises the cruder remnants of an earlier time, the firmer forms of the past.
[Notes for 618 here]
619 Do I then say that the Beatitudes of Luke are the older because they are more sensual? I do not think of it. I prove their earlier origin and the dependence of Matthew from the structure and arrangement of both speeches.
[Notes for 619 here]
620 Do I call the Beatitudes of Luke outright and simply sensual? No! I only say that they still attach themselves more immediately to the Jewish view of the suffering righteous — in the third volume I show that Luke has copied them from the O. T. — and that Matthew as the later has given them a more abstract bearing.
[Notes for 620 here]
621 That sensualisation the Rev. (p. 879) finds probable with the "predominance of Jewish Christianity in the first Christian time." So before, Jewish Christianity predominated less? Before, the Beatitudes were more spiritual? Before, Matthew — or did tradition babble these Beatitudes? These complicated sentences rolled through the community, Matthew fixed them in their freedom and Luke made them sensual? — what vapour and fog, where it only depends on keeping the eyes awake and looking at the matter exactly!
[Notes for 621 here]
622 "With Luke, says the Rev., we also find elsewhere that view for which the rich are identical with the godless and the poor with the pious." Now, is it then not probable that they are the work of Luke? No! the theologian must, under the pressure of this mass of presuppositions, make the matter ever more confused. Luke "represents Paulinism", thus could have drawn those views only from Ebionite sources or seems from Ebionite... We do not ask whether everything is settled with that when the matter is shoved onto an earlier writer, we do not recall that the speech of Luke is a coherent work, that it belongs to the plan of the Gospel, that it does not distinguish itself through its language from the other parts of the Gospel, we only remark that it will soon be at an end with the Paulinism of Luke, as one formerly imagined it, or rather, The incapacity of the opponents of critique. since no definite idea was connected with it, as one formerly carried it in one's mouth. The Paul of the Acts is — as is now already shown from various sides — not the true, the real Paul.
[Notes for 622 here]
623 "Finally, however, this argumentation of B. Bauer (p. 879) is not at all admissible because the Sermon on the Mount of Matthew has a quite different significance from the corresponding speech in Luke."
[Notes for 623 here]
624 That means to help oneself out of the matter briefly! Have I then denied that the tendency and significance of the speech of Matthew is different from that of Luke? Have I not rather set forth this significance? Have I not, with reference to this difference, proved the originality of the speech of Luke? Could Matthew not rework the earlier speech of Luke according to a later point of view? That is what it is about, which of the two speeches is the more original according to its structure, its rhythm and inner coherence, and whether the later could arise if its author did not have that of his predecessor lying on the table before his eyes. These are questions which one cannot solve with a theological, thus in itself perverted, common-place. The theologian cannot even grasp the question in its sharpness.
[Notes for 624 here]
625 I break off. I would gladly still take the penance upon myself and, as hitherto, expose sentence for sentence the theological scruples of the Rev. in their nullity. However, since only the same theological turns repeat themselves, since those scruples are grounded not in the matter, but only in the arbitrariness of the theological presuppositions and limitation, since they can therefore also be arbitrarily increased by the theologian — insofar as he could namely still trouble more sections with his scruples or, if he is more thorough in arbitrariness, could still more enter into the details of the investigation and oppose his fancies to them, since therefore the arbitrary infinity of the theologian cannot be bounded and it depends alone on the characterisation of his essence, which is always the same, I will jump somewhat further ahead and show how the Rev. regards my critique of the synoptic historical narratives.
[Notes for 625 here]
626 If the theologian is not ashamed when he sees how his clever scruples are set right, and if he nevertheless wants all his fancies to be appreciated, I will gladly be ready for this sacrifice as soon as I have convinced myself that it will serve the general good.
[Notes for 626 here]
627 So that it does not seem as if I wanted arbitrarily to pick out weaker parts from the theological work of the Rev., I look again immediately where the Rev. begins to judge my critique of the individual synoptic historical narratives.
[Notes for 627 here]
628 He wants to defend Matthew against the "harsh reproaches" with which I had to begin the second volume of my writing. The miracle of the two miracle-days the Rev. does not want to admit, he must therefore also enervate my proof in detail.
[Notes for 628 here]
629 If critique proves that the report of the healing of the leper in the writing of Matthew does not stand in its original place, since according to its presupposition Jesus is surrounded by the crowd when he forbids the leper to make the miracle known, the Rev. asks (No. 111, p. 883): "does it then follow from this that Matthew must have borrowed the whole from Mark?" Certainly not! But from the fact that the comparison of the texts proves that Matthew could only have taken his narrative from the writing of Mark. What critic will fall upon the senseless conclusion which the Rev. imputes to me with that question! Only from the fact that it shows how the arrangement in the writing of his predecessor brought him to bring the narrative here, does the dependence of Matthew on Mark follow.
[Notes for 629 here]
630 "Does the contradiction not explain itself, asks the Rev. further, taking up the long since dissolved argumentation of Olshausen — but there is no turn so worn out, none so absurd, that it would not be used again and again by the theologians — from the fact that the Synoptists in general take so little account of external arrangement, and that Matthew in particular lays the least weight on the external?"
[Notes for 630 here]
631 So it is in vain that critique draws the matter out of this half-darkness where all determinateness ceases, into the light, where the question is immediately whether a man who originally composes and is not thoughtlessly dependent on a foreign writing can write in such a way that he violates presuppositions which he wrote down the moment before? It has helped critique nothing to prove that Mark very well knows what coherence is — he sends the leper to Jesus when this is on the journey and is to be thought alone at this moment — it was in vain that it proved through what interests the compiler Matthew was brought to the point that he overlooked the most glaring contradictions? No, it helps nothing so long as the theologian remains a theologian, i.e., biased by his presuppositions, which make it impossible for him even to grasp correctly the first rudiments, the nature and position of the questions.
[Notes for 631 here]
632 What conception must a man have of critique who is capable of asking (ibid.): "does the contradiction become more explicable from the fact that the whole is supposed to be taken from Mark?" The critic will truly guard against the crude conception of thinking to have solved the contradiction merely by proving or "asserting" that Matthew was dependent on Mark. The critic rather shows how Matthew came, in his dependence on Mark, after this is proved, — to proceed as he proceeded. Only then does the critic know the contradiction solved from the dependence on Mark, when in this and in the entire relation of Matthew to his predecessor, to the matter and in the plan of his work the genesis and the ground of the contradiction is completely uncovered. Not so easily as the theologian imagines it and as he himself does, does the critic make it for himself.
[Notes for 632 here]
633 "And if finally B. Bauer half and half ascribes to Matthew himself a consciousness of this contradiction and wants to explain a circumstance in the narrative from this, is it then still credible that Matthew placed the whole narrative with the prohibition here?" The state in which the theologian reads critical works can be no other than that intermediate state between sleep and waking — it is the state which must indeed occur when into the night of his presuppositions a ray of light suddenly falls and his eye can only blinkingly notice the ray. If he expresses his displeasure that he is disturbed on the couch of his presuppositions by the new day, he speaks in such a way that he mixes into the description, i.e., into the accusation of the day, his nocturnal presuppositions, his dreamings, i.e., describes the day as night or as foggy twilight. What does that mean: I have half and half ascribed to Matthew a consciousness of his contradiction? Half and half? I have said that it was impossible for Matthew to copy what would have violated too strongly his presupposition that Jesus was at this moment surrounded by the crowd. That Jesus "earnestly threatened" the leper, not to speak of the matter, that he leaves out. The conclusion of the narrative of Mark, that the healed man, despite the prohibition, made the matter known, the conclusion which as an opposite to the strict prohibition is simply necessary, he likewise leaves out, because it would have been far too adventurous in this situation where the people surround Jesus, and yet the Rev. speaks as if Matthew had placed the "whole" narrative here? He has only narrated as much as he had to narrate if he did not want to bring in another story — the healing and the prohibition of making it known — the prohibition he could not and might not leave out, since it is the point of the whole, but it remains that this prohibition is only motivated in the writing of Mark and has sense and meaning.
[Notes for 633 here]
634 "How easily, concludes the indefatigable, but only in the discovery of empty possibilities indefatigable theologian, Matthew could also have put another miracle in its place." Indeed, if he had copied another writing than that of Mark, a writing in which he would not read this miracle at the place where Jesus after his first departure from Capernaum and before his return, at the place where he himself now stands.
[Notes for 634 here]
635 "Still stranger (ibid. p. 883) is the explanation that in a healing of two blind men, where according to B. Bauer likewise the presence of the people is supposed to be presupposed, nevertheless only of these two blind men it is said that they spread the miracle of this healing everywhere." What is strange? My explanation that of these blind men it is said etc.? Have I first to explain that from the text? Does it not stand (Matt. 9:31) in plain words? Or is it strange that I prove from the context that the people are present, while the blind men were forbidden to speak of their healing?
[Notes for 635 here]
636 "The assumption of a present crowd, thinks the Rev., is here by no means necessary."
[Notes for 636 here]
637 Such things then must I write down once more, things which are not worth that I have already written them down once in my writing, after Wilke had already drawn attention to the coherence of the narrative? But since they are of infinite value for the theologian, i.e., since it is of infinite significance for the theologian that they are never brought to clarity, because otherwise his presuppositions collapse, I must indeed remark once more that, when the blind men go away, a demoniac is brought to Jesus and, as the demon goes out of him, the crowd and the Pharisees make their remarks about it (Matt. 9:32-34). The sacred text, however, does not exist for the theologian.
[Notes for 637 here]
638 "And why then, asks the Rev., is Mark again necessary for the explanation of this circumstance — (namely if the crowd should really be present)?"
[Notes for 638 here]
639 Because the catchwords of the narrative of the healing of the blind men are borrowed from him, because only in his writing does the matter have its coherence.
[Notes for 639 here]
640 He who does not want to let himself be awakened from his sleep can repel the importunate one who disturbs him with a single angry cry and lie down again on his ear: so the theologian helps himself with a single decree. Sometimes, however, the disturbed sleeper can also make known his displeasure in a multitude of reproaches quickly murmured one after another: so the theologian sometimes presses the critic with a multitude of questions and reproaches which clearly let it be heard that they are spoken still half asleep. The Rev. is this time in full swing.
[Notes for 640 here]
641 "And how strange, he remarks, is the explanation that Matthew took that notice likewise from the narrative of the leper."
[Notes for 641 here]
642 What does "explanation" mean here again? I rather only show that the notice that the blind men made the miracle known is senseless here where Matthew writes it, that it is mechanically copied from a foreign writing, that it, as the words prove, can only be copied from the writing of Mark.
[Notes for 642 here]
643 "Why, if Matthew once placed the narrative of the leper itself in a quite unsuitable place, why should he not then at the same time also have added that notice?"
[Notes for 643 here]
644 So! That then was what the Rev. above found strange, that "only" of the two blind men, not of the leper, it was said that they "spread the miracle of their healing everywhere"! — fine language: "spread the miracle"!
[Notes for 644 here]
645 Why then did Matthew not give that conclusion to the narrative of the healing of the leper? Answer: because he had just mentioned the people there, thus knew them present from the outset. Here, however, after he had copied the story of the healing of the blind men from Mark, he first brings the people onto the scene by copying from Mark the story of the healing of the demoniac, a story in which the people are also mentioned, he therefore did not know beforehand that he would presuppose the people as present the moment after — nevertheless he connected both stories so closely that the presupposition of the second story, which was to remain foreign to the first, nevertheless crept into it without his noticing.
[Notes for 645 here]
646 "What a conception, finally concludes the Rev. p. 884 his reasoning, as if this notice (that Jesus' prohibition was in vain) had been so important to Matthew that he still had it in his head with the healing of the blind men."
[Notes for 646 here]
647 He knew where it is to be read, and he came to copy it here because the prohibition of Jesus reminded him of it and induced him to seek out again the similar story of the leper.
[Notes for 647 here]
648 "Just as little tenable, continues the Rev., are the other grounds which B. Bauer brings forward in this section."
[Notes for 648 here]
649 I have the right to say that of the same nature are the twaddles which the Rev. also further brings forward against critique. I have shown that the two miracle-days which Matthew created are also wonderful in that no night separates them; I have also shown how Matthew in the frenzy of his dependence on Mark made these two miracle-days so wonderful. I cannot copy the process of the proof here again from my book and will only characterise the scruples of the Rev. briefly.
[Notes for 649 here]
650 He catches me at the word, p. 884, that also Mark 4:35, where Matthew has learned that sometimes there is no night between two days, the same contradiction is to be found. However, here, with Mark the matter is quite different, namely the time quite differently distributed than in the report of Matthew, thus also differently distributed than as it was distributed in the report of Mark of the first stay of Jesus in Capernaum ch. 1:32-35.
[Notes for 650 here]
651 He catches me at the word, p. 884, that also Mark 4:35, where Matthew has learned that sometimes there is no night between two days, the same contradiction is to be found. However, here, with Mark the matter is quite different, namely the time quite differently distributed than in the report of Matthew, thus also differently distributed than as it was distributed in the report of Mark of the first stay of Jesus in Capernaum ch. 1:32-35. At that time namely, when Jesus had entered Capernaum for the first time with the just called disciples, he is occupied the whole evening with the healing of the sick, the time is thus definitely bounded, the evening is completely filled by this definite activity, it must therefore also, as Mark does not fail to remark, be reported when Jesus departs from Capernaum. It happened in the morning after that evening. On the other hand, later (ch. 4 in the writing of Mark) Jesus had used the day for the instruction of the people, when it had become evening — thus at the close of the day, when it had become evening, he gives the command for the crossing over the lake, there we know indeed when he departs, it is expressly said when he departs — he departs when it was still time for it, not after he had healed crowds of sick the whole evening — and this notice that Jesus, when it had become evening, set out from the near shore, is then followed by the presupposition of the following report, the presupposition that it was night when the disciples were frightened by the storm, the presupposition which in itself is indeed as unnatural as the corresponding one in the other storm and sea story, in a natural way. When the company landed on the opposite shore, that it happened in the morning, Mark does not remark, because he has the idea and presupposes that everyone will form the same idea from the impression of the report, that after the stilling of the storm, when the waves subsided and everything became bright, the morning had broken. Matthew has therefore very much mistaken himself when he jumped directly from the former passage of the writing of his predecessor to the second and forgot over the presuppositions of the latter the quite different ones of the former.
[Notes for 651 here]
652 "In such passages in general with the Synoptists no weight at all is to be placed on the coherence."
[Notes for 652 here]
653 I.e., if the theologian wants it so, because he fears danger for his presuppositions, we must close our eyes and let all thoughts pass away from us. "If one takes the matter, the Rev. is so frank as to confess, as it immediately presents itself, then indeed the greatest contradictions arise."
[Notes for 653 here]
654 Indeed: one must take the matter as it must be according to theological presuppositions. By no means as it immediately presents itself. Its conception must be mediated through theological consciousness, which has a thousand interests to satisfy. There are so many interests to spare, so many presuppositions to preserve, so many needs to satisfy, that no matter may presume to want to count as that which it immediately presents itself. Everything must first receive its consecration and last anointing through theological consciousness. Theological consciousness is the death-chamber for everything living. What does not want to let itself be buried alive must be strangled.
[Notes for 654 here]
655 One would hardly believe that after all that has already been replied to the theologian on this, someone could again appear and assert like the Rev. that the Synoptists "do not reflect at all on time and circumstances thereby — thereby! what language! probably the Rev. means: in such contradictions".
[Notes for 655 here]
656 I should not have believed that anyone could still dare this assertion, after I have proved that Mark indeed knows what coherence is, that his theological transition formulas are clear and definite and really motivated, and why with his successors the opposite takes place — but in regard to theological consciousness nothing is incredible, because nothing is impossible to it. Calculation, rule, law is not applicable with it, unless it be in the sense that its law is to be lawless and to mock all laws.
[Notes for 656 here]
657 After all the previous negotiations the Rev. is still so audacious as to assert that "thus such narratives, even if they follow one another according to the words, yet in fact do not cohere, because their coherence is by no means a conscious one for the writer."
[Notes for 657 here]
658 Can anyone insult and revile the evangelists more grievously than the theologian does? So also this shall and must I say once more to the Rev., what he could have heard and learned on every page of my writing, that it is the critic who secures the sacred writers against the machinations of the theologians? Shall I say everything once more? Also how it stands this time with the coherence?
[Notes for 658 here]
659 So if Jesus (according to the report of Matthew) heals the sick in the evening and, when he sees the crowd, gives the command for the crossing over the lake, that is no coherence? No conscious coherence? "When he saw the crowd", that is nothing, absolutely nothing?
[Notes for 659 here]
660 It is conscious, intended coherence, but in the writing of Matthew indeed the adventurous coherence of a dream. In a dream, i.e., in his dependence on Mark, Matthew wants to have coherence, he thinks he has accomplished coherence, but he only dreams. With Mark there is real coherence. If the Jesus of Matthew heals the sick and when he sees the crowd — as if he had not already seen it long before — gives the command for the crossing, that is even less than the coherence of a dream. But Matthew wants to have coherence.
[Notes for 660 here]
661 In the writing of Mark Jesus heals the sick in the evening and only in the morning does he travel on, and when he, where Matthew suddenly after the healing of the sick stands, wants to cross the lake, he is already at the shore, in the boat and has instructed the people, i.e., he does not first see the people after he has already long occupied himself with them, but thinks he has done enough for his obligation towards them for today.
[Notes for 661 here]
662 Has the theologian no eye for all that? No! Not even when it is explained to him in detail. This or that theologian can let himself be convinced, but the theologian as such cannot; if one sacrifices his presuppositions to truth, thousands throw themselves into the sacrificial fire to save the presuppositions, even if they are already half burnt, at least in part. The relics of the earlier more massive presuppositions have a higher price and enjoy a greater veneration than at the time when they stood in sap and strength.
[Notes for 662 here]
663 It is now proved by the more recent critique that the historical material in the Gospel of Mark is arranged in a highly systematic manner, while in the writing of Matthew — it is also shown why — it is thrown together in motley confusion.
[Notes for 663 here]
664 It is now proved by the more recent critique that the historical material in the Gospel of Mark is arranged in a highly systematic manner, while in the writing of Matthew — it is also shown why — it is thrown together in motley confusion.
[Notes for 664 here]
665 Yes, says the Rev. p. 885, "the grouping of similar material is rather a sign of the later time, which also concerns itself more with external arrangement."
[Notes for 665 here]
666 The theologian cannot judge and combat critique otherwise than according to his presuppositions. He thinks critique operates with general possibilities. Is there only talk of grouping of similar material? No! of literary coherence, which is present in the writing of Mark, but not in that of Matthew, because this one has thrown together the catchwords of Mark in the wildest manner, made the motives of Mark into those which motivate nothing, the consequences into absurdities which are not grounded, in short, because he has placed in the air what in the writing of Mark has ground and soil.
[Notes for 666 here]
667 "A particularly awkward position, however, has the view of B. Bauer where it itself must give the preference to the report of Matthew."
[Notes for 667 here]
668 As if it were a principle of critique or in general a universal law that the later must make it absolutely and simply worse than his predecessors. The more recent critique is furthest from setting up such empty and indefinite laws; it was still theological when it did violence to the object through maxims whose truth it presupposed; now — but, where it knows what belongs to determining the relation of four writers, whose unbiased conception and judgment is made difficult by thousand-year-old prejudices, now it guards itself very well against setting up general laws before it has worked its way through the particular.
[Notes for 668 here]
669 And awkward would that position be? It would rather be a question whether it can be maintained victoriously to the end. It is not even awkward, it is like every position that truth gives, pleasant, full of pleasure, and it is only unpleasant to answer once more against objections which are already thoroughly answered in my writing.
[Notes for 669 here]
670 If I, thinks the Rev. p. 885, recognise the narrative of Matthew of the centurion of Capernaum as the more appropriate one and if then the report of Luke is nevertheless declared the more original, this rests partly only on the general presupposition of the dependence of Matt., partly on the admittedly unsuitable position of the narrative.
[Notes for 670 here]
671 Naturally, with what right, has already been said a thousand times — thinks on the contrary the Rev., on the position and arrangement of the events no weight is to be placed for the critique of the synoptic Gospels, here, however, in the present case all the less because the preceding Sermon on the Mount as such is only an ideal view and Matthew has already spoken before it of the preaching of Jesus in Galilee in general.
[Notes for 671 here]
672 — Because therefore the Sermon on the Mount — what language! — is an ideal view — the Sermon on the Mount an ideal view! — so Matthew may throw the events together as it just occurs to him? Does Mark leave everything to chance and are his reports not also products of the ideal view? Is the speech of Luke, from which Matthew has made the Sermon on the Mount, not also an "ideal view" and is it not perfectly motivated that Jesus speaks concerning the centurion as if he had already worked for a longer time in Israel?
[Notes for 672 here]
673 Further: if Matthew lets Jesus preach before and the Sermon on the Mount is yet to be the proclamation of the Messiah and his kingdom, therefore we are now to cease brooding over the lack of all coherence, cease to seek philologically the ground of this incoherence, and by no means pronounce as the result of the investigation that that contradiction explains itself from the dependence on Luke and Mark? Therefore, because it pleases the theologian so, are we to let all thoughts pass away from us?
[Notes for 673 here]
674 It is simply impossible for the theologian to grasp a pure and exact development purely and exactly. He says: "the greater simplicity and appropriateness in the report of Matthew, on the other hand, can (!) B. Bauer only explain from his otherwise already refuted view that for Matthew, because he is the later, the broader elaboration had no more interest."
[Notes for 674 here]
675 To prove his extraordinary cleverness, the theologian speaks from above about the possibilities which a critic has at his command in case of need; to grasp the reality of the state of facts and of the proof is too difficult for him. To talk at random about possibilities is indeed easier than to recognise reality, easier at least for the theologian, for the man of understanding and will it would, however, be harder, yes it would count for him as the hardest and most terrible thing if he should content himself with empty possibilities and be excluded from all reality.
[Notes for 675 here]
676 From the fact rather that the instinct of the idea taught him that in Mark's report of the Canaanite woman the same thing is treated as here in Luke's narrative of the centurion, and that he now altered the latter report according to the former, have I explained the greater simplicity of Matthew's presentation. Luke, who first worked up Mark's report, has not yet done it happily. Matthew has returned to the archetype.
[Notes for 676 here]
677 Not "the power of the idea" I say, as the Rev. falsely enough conceives it, drove Matthew to his presentation, but the power of the idea which is contained in Mark's presentation attracted him involuntarily and determined him to give up Luke's report insofar as it contradicted the archetype.
[Notes for 677 here]
678 If the Rev. now says against this, "this explanation — namely this explanation unjustly imputed to me — has with B. Bauer no place at all" — what a tenuous, meagre language! — "for the predominance of the idea is the original in the tradition, only later does the external also form itself" — so the Rev. hides himself in a common-place, which is, however, hollow enough for the theologian to creep into it, and moreover could nowhere be chosen more inopportunely than here, where the question alone is how two very definite presentations of the same idea relate to each other: so no one will blame me if I have no desire to creep after the Rev. into his empty, theological barrel. Let us wait only a moment: he will of himself come out of his hiding-place again and try a new turn.
[Notes for 678 here]
679 That Luke hesitated to let the Lord come into immediate contact with a pagan, says the Rev. p. 886, is an explanation which is incompatible with the spirit of a Gospel "which has from of old counted as the Pauline one" and with the spirit of a narrative which is itself in the pagan-Christian sense.
[Notes for 679 here]
680 Answer: much has counted as Pauline up to now which is not, or whose Pauline foundation is to be grasped quite differently than it has from of old been wont to happen.
[Notes for 680 here]
681 That the execution of the report in the Gospel of Luke contradicts its inner original idea, I have already explained from the fact that the material — the meeting of Jesus with a forerunner of the pagans who in the power of faith abolish the Jewish delimitation of the kingdom of heaven — had come to Luke from outside, and the incoherent of his whole presentation critique has completely explained when it shows how roughly he has snatched together and thrown together the materials from the writing of Mark.
[Notes for 681 here]
682 Rather, says the Rev., "the insertion of the messengers has a quite opposite ideal ground, for on the one hand thereby the humble sense of the centurion comes out still more."
[Notes for 682 here]
683 Answer: in the archetype, in the narrative of the Canaanite woman, does humility then not come out strongly enough, not very strongly, as it is plastically presented in the words and in the bearing of the woman?
[Notes for 683 here]
684 "On the other hand, through the twofold message the individual moments, namely the humility and then the faith of the centurion, each for itself, are brought right to view." Splendid! First the humility, when the centurion has the Lord invited into his house through the Jewish elders, then the faith, when he, since he is already on the way, has him told that he is not worthy that he should come into his house! The matter is that the second message after the first is silly and a fickle retraction of the first request.
[Notes for 684 here]
685 Indeed the narrative of Luke is "an obvious expansion of the original simpler narrative" but this original narrative is found only in the writing of Mark, not in that of Matthew, which no one will any longer presuppose and designate with impunity as the oldest of the synoptic Gospel writings. An occasion for that expansion was for Luke also the circumstance that he transferred the event to Galilee and here thought he might not omit the Jews as intermediate persons.
[Notes for 685 here]
686 "That the more painting presentation of Mark in the storm scene is a proof of its later origin, that remains after what was said earlier now unassailed."
[Notes for 686 here]
687 So? Have I perhaps said that the more painting etc. is a proof of its earlier origin? That would be as false, as ill-considered, as abstract, in short as theological as the assertion of the Rev. that it is a proof of its later origin? The harmony, the proportionality of the parts, rather proves critique, in relation to the holey, broken-through and groundless presentation of the later reports is the testimony for the originality of the narrative of Mark. Besides the already given other moments of the proof, the Rev. will to his horror in the third volume of my writing learn a new moment. Mark has formed the story from elements which the book of Jonah and Ps. 107 furnished him, he has drawn from the source; the two others knew neither the source, nor did they know how to appreciate the coherence in the narrative of Mark: thereby, but not through the less painting presentation, they betray themselves as the later.
[Notes for 687 here]
688 I break off here again; for I can say nothing new, since only the same theological misunderstandings, the same decrees against the critical proofs, the same twaddles about the simplest truths repeat themselves. Not even in one point is anything to be learned from the Rev.: he has nowhere brought forward a scruple against me which would be grounded even in the remotest way in the matter — he cannot even speak intelligibly.
[Notes for 688 here]
689 In the face of critique, when it has reached its completion, theology has lost its language, insofar as it now proves that it cannot speak even one human, intelligible and in itself clear sentence. Theology cannot understand critique, it cannot even speak about it.
[Notes for 689 here]
690 The method, the proofs and results of critique are unshakeable; the matter is settled, mankind can now in perfect freedom devote itself to other, worthier tasks, and if theology still finds it good to continue speaking for some time, its chatter will only serve to make its character and essence finally manifest also to those who have hitherto held it for an extraordinary, in general for a power. Its secret will become generally known through its last resistance against truth.
[Notes for 690 here]
691 The Rev. still expresses himself about how I abolish the historical validity of the evangelical reports, and seeks to save it in several cases against me. I will and cannot enter into his reasoning. I will not take the trouble to show him that he has nowhere dissolved a proof, that he has nowhere understood it: The sheets I have just written will fully prove that I have the right to demand of the theologian that he first learn what it is about before he dares to give his voice about it publicly. To demonstrate to the Rev. his misunderstandings, I would have at the same time to enter into philological investigation of the text, since he likewise, in order to operate against me, takes it up again: I would thus have to do the same thing which I have now done sufficiently, namely again show that the Rev. can correctly grasp neither the sacred text nor the critical appreciation of it. I would again have to fight with the same distortions, crooked turns, obstinate assertions which rest on nothing but the obstinacy of the theologian, thus with the same splendid things with which I have now had to struggle to the point of disgust. Besides, I must also leave something for the other theologians who will appear against me, which they can still discuss with their original impartiality.
[Notes for 691 here]
692 I will not warn them extensively in this latter point of the investigation, especially since it is in vain, as they will just as little as the Rev. enter into the critique of the reports, thus, with all that theological arbitrariness is incalculable, will yet agree with the Rev. in that they will decide from their sovereign arbitrariness about the historical foundation of the reports. A: "it can also be," "it could be," "why should that not be," finally "it is self-evident," "it follows of itself" — that is all that the theologian can afford against critique, that makes all theologians equal and makes it possible for me to break off at any point the answer to a theological scruple or judgment, since the next theological review is in any case of such a nature that I can without further ado link on again at the point where I had stopped and continue the matter.
[Notes for 692 here]
693 The theological objections which are opposed to me give me no opportunity to illuminate and clarify the matter from new sides, not even opportunity to determine my development more closely in individual parts. The earlier theological explanations had, with all the arbitrariness which also characterised them, the significance that they were errors which showed the way to truth. They were the errors of the seeking spirit. Now, however, when the truth is found, the theological scruples are the pure products of arbitrariness, which no longer has to do with the matter. They no longer help to clarify the matter; if they are discussed, it can only happen in the sense that they are used for the characterisation of theological consciousness. So I have regarded the scruples of the Rev.; so and not otherwise will I be able to regard all theological objections which are opposed to me in future. It is no longer a question of the Gospels and sacred history, but of whether theological consciousness is to prevent the recognition of truth. The matter itself is completely withdrawn from theological consciousness, the question now is whether it will assert itself as such in its purity and nakedness.
[Notes for 693 here]
694
[Notes for 694 here]
695 The Rev. says that to carry critique to the extreme it has now reached seems to have been reserved for the north German spirit. We reply: to represent theology in that sublimated thinness and emptiness and to defend it against free science, in which it has become reduced to the minimum of content and only to the play of theological consciousness with itself, seems not only to be the task of the spirit in whose interest the Rev. speaks, but is already — if all signs do not deceive — so much grown together with this spirit as this task, so much grown together with it from opposition to the further development of science, that in future a great shock will be needed to free this shamefully captive spirit from its fetters. The Swabian circle, for whose interests the Rev. appears, believed in the last time to have got so splendidly far that it thought one could now rest and have enough: since the development, however, goes further, it becomes malcontent and directs its consciousness as the sublimated theological consciousness, for which it was from the outset already suited and predestined, against the advanced science.
[Notes for 695 here]
⬅ VI. The christian appearance of critique VIII. Mockery and derision of theology and religion ➡