Prof. _Julicher_ thinks that, "While we cannot go prior to the beginning of the second century, because of external testimony, we cannot on the other hand maintain a later date. The most probable time for our Gospel is the one shortly before the year 100...."
Why? "Because the ill-fitting feature in the parable of the wedding feast, that the king in his wrath, because his invitation had been made light of, sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned up their city, could hardly have been invented before the conflagration of Jerusalem"-a prophecy, namely, of the coming destruction of Jerusalem cannot be admitted.
"But to my mind, the decisive point is found in the religious position of _Matthew_. Despite his conservative treatment of tradition, he already stands quite removed from its spirit; he has written a Catholic Gospel.... To _Matthew_ the congregation, the Church, forms the highest court of discipline, being the administrator of all heavenly goods of salvation; his Gospel determines who is to rule, who to give laws: in its essential features the early Catholicism is completed."
_Julicher_ arrives at a similar conclusion in his research on _St.
Luke"s_ Gospel: "That _Luke"s_ Gospel was written sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., is proven beyond any doubt, by xxi. 22-24, where the terrible events of the Jewish war are "foretold."... All arguments in favor of a later date of writing concerning _Matthew_ hold good also of _Luke_." Even more unreserved is _O. Pfleiderer_, until recently a prominent representative of liberal-Protestant theology at Berlin: "In this Gospel we find the elements of dogma, morals, the const.i.tution of the developing Catholic Church. Catholic is its trinitarian formula of christening, this embryo of the Creed and of the apostolic symbol. Catholic is its teaching of Christ ... Catholic, the doctrine of Salvation ... Catholic are the morals ...
Catholic, finally, is the importance attached to _Peter_ as the foundation of the Church and as the bearer of the power of the key." In regard to this latter point _Pfleiderer_ remarks expressly: "In spite of all attempts of Protestants to mitigate this pa.s.sage (Matt. xvi. 17-20) there is no doubt that it contains the solemn proclamation of _Peter"s_ Primacy." The unsophisticated reader thereupon would be likely to deduct: If the oldest Gospel is already Catholic, then it must be admitted that earliest Christianity was already Catholic. In so reasoning he might have rightly concluded, but he would have shown himself little acquainted with the method of liberal science. This infers contrariwise: early Christianity must not be Catholic, hence the Catholic Gospel cannot be so old, it must be the fraudulent concoction of a later time; "hence the origin of the Gospel of _Matthew_ is to be put down not before the time of _Hadrian_; in the fourth century rather than in the third."
_A. Harnack_ fixes the date of the Gospel at shortly after 70, because "_Matthew_, as well as _Luke_, are presupposing the destruction of Jerusalem. This follows with the greatest probability from Matt. xxii. 7 (the parable of the marriage feast)." This is to be held also of _Luke"s_ Gospel. "This much can be concluded without hesitation: that, as now admitted by almost all critics, _Luke"s_ Gospel presupposes the destruction of Jerusalem."
Remarkable is _Harnack"s_ latest att.i.tude towards the Acts; it shows again that the results of modern biblical criticism are less the results of historical research than of philosophical presumptions. In his "Acts of the Apostles" _Harnack_ admits: "Very weighty observations indicate that the Acts (hence also the Gospels) were already written at the beginning of the sixties." In substantiation he cites not less than six reasons which evidently prove it: they are based upon the principles of sound historical criticism. "These are opposed solely by the observation that the prophecy about the catastrophe of Jerusalem in some striking points comes near to the actual event, and that the reports about the Apparition and the legend of the Ascension would be hard to understand prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. It is hard to decide.... But it is not difficult to judge on which side the weightier arguments are" (viz., on the part of the contention for an earlier date). Yet _Harnack_ is loath to accept the better scientific reasons: they must suffer correction by presumptions.
He formulates his final decision in the following way: "_Luke_ wrote at the time of _t.i.tus_, or during the earlier time of _Domitian_ (?), but perhaps (only _perhaps_, in spite of decisive arguments) already at the beginning of the sixties." (Recently _Harnack_ recedes to the time before the destruction of Jerusalem without, however, acknowledging a divine prophecy of this catastrophe.) Similar is this theologian"s proof that the fourth Gospel could not have been written by _John_, the son of _Zebedee_; because xxi. 20-23 (I will that he tarry till I come) cannot be a prophecy, but must have been written down after the death of the favourite disciple. "The section xx. 20-23 obviously presupposes the death of the beloved disciple; on the other hand he cannot be left out of the 21st Chapter. This 21st Chapter, however, shows no other pen than that which had written Chapters 1-20. This proves that the author of Chapter 21, hence the author of Chapters 1-20, could not have been the son of _Zebedee_, whose death is there presupposed." The whole argument again rests upon the refusal to hold possible a prophecy from the lips of Jesus.
The main reason, however, for disputing the genuineness of the fourth Gospel, although external tradition and internal criterions testify to it as the writing of _St. John_, is, because it teaches so clearly the _divinity of Christ_: and this must be denied.
Significant are, for instance, the words in which _Weizsacker_ sums up his objections to this gospel: "That the Apostle, the favorite disciple according to the Gospel, who sat at the table beside Christ, should have looked upon and represented everything that he once experienced, as the living together with the incarnate divine Logos, is rather a puzzle. No power of faith and no philosophy can be imagined big enough to extinguish the memory of real life and to replace it by this miraculous image of a divine being ... of one of the original Apostles, it is unthinkable. Upon this the decision of this point will always hinge. Anything else that may be added from the contents of the Gospel is subordinate." This means, Christ cannot be admitted to be a Divine Being-impossible. An eye-witness could not take Him for it: therefore, this "miraculous picture of a Divine Being"
cannot have been the work of an eye-witness.
Like the _genuineness_ of the Gospels, so is also their _credibility_ beyond a doubt. Two of them are written by Apostles, the two others by Disciples of the Apostles: they also have all the marks peculiar to writings of eye or ear witnesses, or of persons who have heard the narratives directly from the lips of eye-witnesses. Nor would any one doubt their credibility if they did not report supernatural facts. But, this being the case, infidel research is bound to arrive at the opposite result.
The writers were frauds-this was long ago the hypothesis of the superficial Hamburg Professor, _Samuel Reimarus_, whose "Fragments" were published by _Lessing_. But even to a _D. F. Strauss_ "such a suspicion was repulsive." The Heidelberg Professor, _H. E. Paulus_, sought his salvation in trying to reduce the reports of miracles to a natural sense, by doing painful violence to the text: for instance, the Lord did not walk _upon_ the sea, but only _along_ the sea; the miracle of the wine at Cana was only a wedding joke. Then came _D. F. Strauss_ (died 1874), and he tried it in a different way. "If the Gospels are really historical doc.u.ments, then the miracle cannot be removed from the life of Jesus."
Hence, it is to remain? Indeed not! The Gospels must not be accepted as historical sources. They are products of purposeless poetic legends, the miracles are garlands of religious myths, gradually twined around the picture of Jesus. Myths, however, need time for their formation, hence _Strauss_ fixes the date of the Gospels within the second century. He openly admits that his hypothesis would fall to the ground if but a single Gospel has been written in the first century. As a fact, more recent rationalistic criticism has found itself constrained to drop this hypothesis. _F. Ch. Baur_ (died 1860) fell back upon the fraud-hypothesis of a _Reimarus_. It, too, has been laid among the dead. Thus they have exhausted themselves in the attempt to shake off the burdensome yoke of truth.
Influenced by _Strauss_, _Baur_, and other German critics, _E. Renan_ (died 1892) wrote his "Life of Jesus," a frivolous romance. Quite frank are the words he wrote down in the preface to the thirteenth edition of his "Vie de Jesus" (1883): "If miracle has any reality, then my book is nothing but a tissue of errors.... If the miracle and the inspiration of certain books are real things, then our method is abominable." But he silences all doubts by the phrase: "To admit the supernatural is alone sufficient to place one"s self outside of science."
The newer "historical-critical" school, while having disposed of many contentions of the old schools, is nevertheless in its research bound just as energetically by the postulate of conformity to natural laws. The fourth Gospel is pushed aside: in the others all miraculous occurrences are expounded away, till the "historically credible core" is reached.
The books of the Old Testament fare even worse, if possible.
"Does Genesis relate history or a legend?" asks Prof. _Gunkel_, and continues: "this is no longer a question to the historian."
Well, a legend, then. But how does the historian know this? From his own pantheistic philosophy, which recognizes no G.o.d differing from this world: "The narratives of Genesis being mostly of a religious nature, they continuously speak of G.o.d. The way, however, in which narratives speak of G.o.d is one of the most reliable standards to judge whether they are meant historically or poetically. Here, too, the historian cannot do without a world philosophy. We believe that G.o.d acts in the world as the latent, hidden motive of all things ... but He never appears to us as an acting factor _jointly with others_ (the italics are the author"s), but always as the ultimate cause of all things. Quite different in many narratives of Genesis. We are able to understand these narratives of miracles and apparitions as the artlessness of primitive people, but we refuse to believe them."
a.n.a.logous to Bible-criticism is the research in other branches of theology. The _origin of Christianity_, this wonderful power which so suddenly made its appearance in history and speedily vanquished a whole world, must of course not be a work of Heaven. Hence its origin must be explained at any cost in a natural way, or "historically," as they put it.
The religious notions of Christianity must not be conceded a supernatural certainty over all other religions; and "to understand an event historically means: to conceive it by its causal connection with the conditions of a given place and at a certain time of the human life. Hence science cannot consider such a thing as the appearance of a supernatural being upon the earth" (_Pfleiderer_).
And then they proceed to show that Christianity is a natural, evolutionary product of the Israelite religion, of Greek philosophy, of Oriental myths, and Roman customs. That it is far superior to all these, and that it is the opposite to them in various ways, is carefully hushed up. The inadequacy and impossibility of such an explanation is adroitly concealed.
Nor could the Israelite religion of the Old Covenant, according to the naturalistic principle of liberal theology, have had its origin in revelation and the prophets; hence it comes from Babylon, as the product of natural evolution from Oriental myths and customs. Any old and new a.n.a.logies, hypotheses, and fancies are good enough then to demonstrate this as "historical."
The Truth is not in Them.
We pause here. We might thus continue for a long time; but it is enough.
The patient reader, who has accompanied us on the tedious way to this point, may begin to feel tired. May he excuse the detailed recital for the reason that we had to do some extensive reconnoitring, through the precincts of modern philosophical-religious research, to avoid the reproach that we were making accusations without furnishing proofs. Our contention was, that liberal science is trying to shake off the yoke of religious truth, and to explain it away by its self-made presumptions. We believe that we have proved our contention.
We are confronted by a science that boasts of monopolizing the spirit of truthfulness; as a matter of fact, we see that it uses all scientific devices to shirk the truth and to disguise its effort. In loquacious protests it rejects the "rigid dogmatism," the "fixed views," of the Christian faith, and it proclaims experience and reason as the sole criterions of scientific cognition; yet it always stands upon the platform of rigid presumptions, that are derived from no experience, and which no reason can prove. It clamours for research free from presumption, and, without winking an eye, subst.i.tutes its own presumption, secretly or openly. It is _dishonest_.
It promises to preserve for man the highest ideals and blessings for which his mind is yearning, yet it has no religion and no G.o.d. It recalls to mind the words spoken by _St. Augustine_ of the philosophers whom he had followed in the false ways of his youth: "They said: truth, and always truth, and talked much of truth, but it was not in them.... Oh, truth, truth, how deeply my inmost spirit sighed after thee, while they filled my ears incessantly with thy bare name and with the palaver of their bulky volumes." Free it wants to be, this science. One of its disciples boasted: "It has taught its disciples to look down without dizziness from the airy heights of sovereign scepticism. How easy and free one breathes up there!"
Aye, it has made itself free,-from the yoke of unpalatable truth. So much more firmly is it fettered, not with the holy bonds of belief in G.o.d, but by the more burdensome mental yoke of a disbelief that weakens and blinds the eyes against the cognition of the higher truth:-and bound by the chains of public opinion, which threatens anathema to every one who fails to stop at the border of the natural. Truly free is only the science that enjoys a clear and free perception for the truth. Unfree is a science that restrains the mental eye with the blinkers of theophoby. Our age seeks for the lost happiness of the soul, it seeks longingly G.o.d and the supernatural that have been removed from its sight. But science, so often its leader, loathingly dodges G.o.d, and refuses to fold the hands and pray.
As long as our age does not break with a science that refuses to know a G.o.d and a Saviour, so long will it hopelessly grope about without result, and look in vain for an escape from the wretched labyrinth of doubt.
Chapter II. The Unscientific Method.
The efforts of liberal science, to remove more and more from its scope the supernatural powers, show clearly that man may feel the truth to be a yoke, and that he may attempt to free himself from this yoke by opposing the truth and by subst.i.tuting postulates for knowledge. Sceptical, autonomous subjectivism, the philosophy of liberal free thought, has changed the nature of human reasoning, and its relation to truth, and perverted it to its very opposite. No longer is the human mind the va.s.sal of Queen Truth, as _Plutarch_ put it, but the autocratic ruler who degrades truth to the position of a servant. Thus liberal freedom of thought becomes the principle of an unscientific method, because it loses, by false reasoning and false truth, the first condition of solid and scientific research; furthermore, by treating the highest questions with consequent levity, it betrays a lack of earnestness which again renders it unfit for scientific research in serious matters.
False Reasoning.
"The philosophical thinkers of to-day," says an admirer of _Kant_, _A.
Sabatier_, "may be divided into two cla.s.ses, the pre-Kantian and those who have received their initiation and their philosophical baptism from _Kant"s_ Critic."
The Christian philosophy of a _St. Thomas_, which is, as even representatives of modern philosophy are constrained to admit, "a system carried out with clear perception and great sagacity" (_Paulsen_), contains many a principle, the intrinsic merit of which will be fully appreciated only when contrasted with the experiments of modern philosophy. An instance is the principle of the old school, that cognition is the likeness of that which is cognized. Apart from the cognition by sense, we are given here the only correct principle, coinciding with the general conviction that reasoning is the mental reproduction of an objective order of existence, independent of us, even in our conception of the metaphysical world. Thinking does not create its object, but is a reproduction of it; it is not a producer, but a painter, who copies the world with his mental brush within himself, sometimes only in the indistinct outlines of indefinite conception, often, however, in the sharp lines of clear cognition.
If, according to its nature, thinking is subject to standards and laws given it by an objective world, then subjective arbitrariness, a method of thought which, while pretending to be a free producer of truth, yet determines it according to necessity or desire; and, even more so, a method of thought which feels itself justified to hold an opinion upon the same question in one way to-day, and another and entirely opposite one to-morrow, is wholly incomprehensible: just as incomprehensible as if a draughtsman, attempting to draw a true picture of St. Peter"s Church, would not follow the reality but prefer to draw the picture at random, according to his fancy and mood.
We have stated these fundamental principles already at the beginning of our book, we have also set forth how greatly liberal freedom of thought is lacking the first presumption of any proper science, namely, the clear perception that there is an objective truth in philosophical-religious questions, to which we must submit, there, in fact, most of all.
No! We also want autonomy of thought, especially in questions of metaphysics, where, anyway, there can only be postulates! so shouted _Kant_ to the modern world on the threshold of the nineteenth century.
There are no stable truths, everything is relative and changing, adds the modern theory of evolution. At last there is freedom for thought and research, freedom from the yoke of absolute truth! Behold the aberrations of an unbridled rush for freedom which moves the world of to-day. This unruly hankering for a freer existence than allowed by their nature and position, makes unbearable to many modern children of man the idea of iron laws of truth and marked boundaries of thought. Revelling in the consciousness of their sovereign personality, they want to measure all things by their individuality, even religion, philosophy, truth, and ethics. Only that what is created and experienced by them within the sanctuary of their personality, only what is made important and legitimate by their sentiment, is truth and of value to them. _Autonomism_ thus changes unnoticeably into _individualism_; the own individuality, in its peculiar inclinations, moods, and humours, its exigencies and egotistical aims, its infirmities and diseases-they have, under the name of _individual reason_, become the law of thinking and reasoning.
Without Knowledge of the Human Nature.
"Varied, according to character, are the demands made by heart and mind,"
a.s.sures us a representative of modern philosophy, "corresponding to them is the image of the world to which the individual turns by inner necessity. He may waver hither and thither, uncertain as to himself; at last, however, his innermost tendency of life will prevail and press him into the view of the world corresponding to his individuality. Upon its further development worldly and local influences will play a very important part. But the deciding factor in giving the direction is personality." "And," continues Prof. _Ad.i.c.kes_, "the sharper and more one-sided a character type is brought to expression, the more it will be urged into a certain metaphysical or religious tendency, and this man will find no rest, nor feel himself at home in the world, until he has found the view of life that fits him. Nor does man a.s.semble his metaphysics with discrimination on the grounds of logical necessity, choosing here, rejecting there, but it grows within himself by that inner compulsion identical with true freedom." Hence, not unselfish yielding to truth, no, the inclinations of heart and mind, the "personality" must form the view of the world. Let every type of character therefore develop itself sharply and one-sidedly, let every one get the view of the world corresponding to himself, without regard to objective truth and logical necessity. This precisely is the "true freedom." "For when is a man more free, than when he chooses and does-without any compulsion, even resisting compulsion-what his innermost soul is urging him to choose and do? How could he be more true to himself, more like himself?" With such a freedom "the outer compulsion" of an absolute truth, to say nothing of the duty to believe, will not agree. "The core of one"s very being," so _Harnack_ informs us, "should be grasped in its depths, and the soul should only know its own needs and the way indicated by it to gratify them." "According to my character," says _Ad.i.c.kes_ again, "is the world reflected within myself by intrinsic necessity just as my creed represents it, and no opponent is able to shake my position by arguments of reason or by empirical facts."
Hence it is not only true, as has been known from the beginning, that the inclinations of the heart are trying to prevail upon reason to urge their desires, and to oppose what displeases them, and that reason must beware of the heart-no, inclination and character are now directly called upon to shape our religion and view of the world. Every type of man, every period, may construct its own philosophical system, or, if this is beyond it, at least its own ideas; it may also shape its own Christianity, according to its experience. As the individual chooses his clothes, and puts his individuality into them, in like manner may the individual put on the view of life that fits him.
These principles represent the apostasy from objective truth, and, at the same time, the apostasy from the _principles of true science_: their first demand, the proper understanding of truth, is perverted into its very opposite. A necessary quality of scientific research is exactness; exactness, however, demands most conscientious cleaving to truth; scale and measure are its instruments. The reverse of exactness is to cast away scale and measure, to turn eye and ear, not toward reality, but toward one"s self, so as to observe personal wishes and inclinations, and then shape the results of the "research" accordingly. This may be a method of freedom, but it cannot be the method of science. The very thing that true research would eliminate in the first place, viz., to have the decision influenced by hobbies and moods, is most important in the method of individualism; objectiveness, deemed by true science the highest requirement, is to that method the least one: what true science first of all insists on, namely, to prove that which is claimed, this method knows but little of. It recalls the method of the gourmet who selects that which gratifies his taste: it may be likened to the dandy picking frock-coat and trousers that suit his whim. True research, with a firm hand at the helm, aims to direct its craft so as to discover new coasts, or at least a new island; the exploring done by liberal research is like casting off the rudder to be tossed by the waves, for its task is only to hold to the course which the waving billows of individual life give to it. True science, finally, seeks for serious results, able to withstand criticism: the research by individualism produces results which, as individualism itself confesses, must not be taken seriously. They are the subjective achievements of amateurs, creations of fashion, cut to the pattern of the ruling principle: _nihil nisi quod modernum est_. A science that professes such a method is beyond a doubt unfit to play a beneficial part in the endeavour of mankind.
Do not say: but it is not claimed that religion and view of life are matters of scientific research: on the contrary, they are always distinguished from science. It is true, this is not infrequently claimed.
But it is also known how energetically just these matters are appropriated by science. Is it not exactly this sphere in which free research is to be active? Is it not its aim to construct a "scientific view of the world,"
as opposed to the Christian belief? Is there not the conviction that science has already carried much light and enlightenment into this very sphere, that it has upset the old tenets of faith?
And what an amount of _ignorance of human nature_ underlies these principles! It is the same complete misconception that has always characterized liberalism, and which it has also manifested in economical matters. There, too, it demanded boundless freedom for all economic sources, ignoring man"s disordered inclinations that will work disorder and destruction if not restrained by laws. In a similar manner they dream that man, if left to the unrestrained influence of his personality, will soar without fail to the heights of the pure truth. They know no longer the maxim once engraved by the wisdom of the ancient world upon Delphi"s sanctuary: "Know thyself"! They no longer know the beguiling and benumbing influence exerted upon reason by inclination, how it fetters the mind.
_Amor premit oculos_, says Quintilian. The thing we like, we desire to establish as true; favourable arguments are decisive, counter arguments are ignored or belittled, inclinations guide the observation, determine the books and sources drawn from. If we meet with something unsympathetic, something that interferes with the liberties we have grown fond of, it takes a rare degree of unselfishness to love the painful truth more than one"s self. It is easy to leave cool reason in control in mathematical speculations: they seldom affect the heart; quite different, however, in questions of philosophy and religion that often have vexatious consequences.