Theological Explanation of the Gospels

Die theologische Erklärung der Evangelien

by

Bruno Bauer

1852

Foreword

When I appeared with my critique of evangelical history twelve years ago, two years prior, a fortunate and thorough effort had initiated a turning point in research, placing the question that Christian theology had struggled with in an unattainable manner into a position where it had become possible to give it its final form.

Those two achievements, one bearing the mark of deserved fortune and the other the combined work of fortune and scholarly thoroughness, were my historical starting point.

I could directly build upon them since they were the first instances in which the inherent spirit of the subject matter they dealt with had come to life and found expression.*) I had to build upon them because there could be no further limitations apart from the ones still inherent in them, and their removal was necessary for the enrichment of research.

*) Of course, I would have to call Luther’s views an outstanding exception if it were only a matter of the religious, even artistically formed testimony of the Spirit and if the Reformer’s preference for the Scriptures of the Fourth as the ״only, tender, right main Gospel’ did not prove the illusory and unreliable nature of this religious testimony of the Spirit.

2

The one who first uttered the scientific word on the internal contradiction of evangelical historiography, specifically regarding the contrast between the Johannine and synoptic Jesus, laying the foundation for the correct interpretation of the birth and childhood narratives of Jesus, and who truly brought certain points, cardinal points of evangelical history, to a decision for the first time, is Weisse.

The one who, for the first time, conducted an exact examination of the relationship between the first three Gospels and carried it out so thoroughly, bringing it so close to a solution that it will forever serve as the basis for later research, even if it may deviate in many and essential points from its results, is Wilke.

Regarding Weisse, he opposed the tradition hypothesis, according to which the Gospel authors received their material from the tradition of the community, and which had received its most consistent development from Strauss, with a few fortunate elaborations. Furthermore, he was fortunate enough to make the discovery that the Gospel of Mark is the Gospel that the authors of the first and third Gospels had used.

Thus, it had become certain, or at least accordingly probable—since Weisse had not yet fully validated his discovery in detail—that the historical material of the first and third Gospels was not taken from the tradition of the community but originated as a literary adaptation of the information provided by the Gospel of Mark. However, Weisse still had two questions to answer. He had to deal with the tradition hypothesis when it came to explaining the origin of the Gospel of Mark and also when it concerned the source from which the speeches and sayings of Jesus contained in the first and third Gospels had flowed.

3

Weisse found the answer to both questions in the well-known notes preserved for us by Eusebius from the writing of Papias. Mark composed his Gospel from the occasional narratives of the Apostle Peter, whose companion he had been. As for the sayings and speeches of Jesus, which the first and third evangelists enriched their writings with, they were taken from the collection of sayings compiled by the Apostle Matthew.

Among other difficulties, there was one in particular that posed a danger to Weisse’s viewpoint. The tradition hypothesis sees the miracles reported in the Gospels as one of the strongest pieces of evidence that it could not have been an apostle, an eyewitness of Jesus’ historical activities, from whom the evangelists received the content of their writings. Weisse eliminates this danger by explaining the most striking miracle accounts as parabolic or allegorical representations that Jesus himself created. He often notes that we still possess the literal presentation of Jesus in these accounts.

Both ways of determining the origin of the Gospels and the source of their content are connected to the entire worldview of their authors.

In the lifelessness of Strauss’s work, Hegelian metaphysics demonstrated its incapacity to grasp the essence of a historical phenomenon. Despite the individual fortunate successes he achieved over Strauss, Weisse failed because his positive philosophy, which he had developed in contrast to Hegel’s, could only offer glimpses of light but could not penetrate and illuminate the entire material.

4

In the misfortune of both, the bankruptcy of metaphysics was revealed.

—————–

Strauss.

It must be fully acknowledged by the disciples of Hegel that the philosophy of their master is the most perfect, the ultimate, the absolute. The world of the individual and the real cannot be more thoroughly and comprehensively subjected to an ideal, that is, a chimerical universality, than Hegel has done—the Orientalism that allows reality to dissolve before divine glory, yes, the fetishism that sees the divine and always the same divine in every single thing, cannot be restored more completely and forcefully.

As a devout student of his master, Strauss recognizes in history only one power, one reality, one active force—the Idea, the reproduction of Oriental substance.

What is the tradition from which the Gospel writers derived the content of their writings? What is the legend in which a large part of evangelical history took shape and which traveled elementally across the world sphere, if not the substance in one of its historical manifestations, where it was the power of the Christian community?

5

Why is Strauss’s explanation of the origin of evangelical history, specifically evangelical history in the double sense of the substance of our current Gospels and the fixed form it has acquired in the Gospels, mysterious?

Why? Because at every moment when it attempts to bring forth the process by which evangelical history—the evangelical history in that perplexing double sense—owes its origin, it can only produce the appearance of a process. It is mysterious because it is tautological.

And why tautological? Why meaningless?

Because it cannot step out of the indeterminacy of the relation of substance. The statement that evangelical history has its source and origin in tradition repeats the same thing twice: “tradition” and “evangelical history.” It certainly wants to relate them to each other, but it cannot do so because the substance, being incapable of an internal process, is not creative. The substance “is” its attributes and modes, and the Idea repeats itself in its productions, which are only apparent productions, containing only what it already encompasses—the tradition “is” evangelical history from the outset.

This is also just a specific expression of his orthodox-Hegelian disposition when, for Strauss, the difference between Judaism and paganism on one hand and Christianity on the other almost disappears. He considers the alleged Jewish messianic dogma to be the original of the Christian legend that was fashioned after it. He regards the pagan myths and the Christian ones as equivalent and dismisses as superfluous speculation any research that seeks to uncover the difference. He is right because the idea is everything and remains the same.

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6

The indifference towards historical differences that Hegel, in overcoming it at the expense of the coherence of his system, denied in his grand historical perspectives and elaborations, established the popularity of his disciples, who guarded themselves with true religious piety, so as not to disturb the eternal self-equality of the idea even through a significant view of a period of history. This particularly accounted for the extraordinary popularity of Strauss’s work.

This lack of personal[national?] pride, expressed in the parallelization and equating of Christian views, our ultimate educators, with pagan and Jewish notions, makes Strauss a continuation of the Enlightenment of the previous century and at the same time a philosophical precursor of the later friendship of reason. When, with Bertholdt’s help, he explains the “Christian legend” as a mere reflection of the supposed Jewish messianic dogma, he proceeds as thoroughly as, for example, Voltaire, who believed he had grasped Judaism by deriving it from paganism with the assistance of Spencer and Selby, actually only relying on Bolingbroke, thus with equally powerless assistance.

Even Strauss’s philosophical concluding statement: “If we know the becoming human, dying, and resurrection as the eternal cycle, the endlessly repeating pulse of divine life, what significance can there still be attached to an individual fact that merely sensually represents this process?” The idea in the fact, the genus in the individual—our time in Christology wants to be guided by this.*) Despite its metaphysical formulas, it is so popular and its truth so universally attested that one could almost say the “consensus of nations” stands in favor of it against any doubt and against the assault of research. The fetish worshipper stands and approves of it because they also elevate themselves above the “merely sensual” appearance of nature to the universal world soul that lives and weaves within it. The Jewish enlightenment of Preacher Solomon, with its antipathy towards the presumption of history that imagines itself creating something new, and with its hatred towards individuals who are so proud as to believe they possess the power of a new world within themselves, had long ago come to the realization that everything merely repeats the eternal cycle of emergence, death, and rebirth. As the Christian worldview approached its demise, it was discovered (through enlightenment) that its history was nothing but a series of sensual, crude facts, where it matters little whether one designates the life represented in this sensuality as divine or as the eternal cycle of “trickery and deception,” as in either case the real, inherent life of history remains unknown. However, that statement has found its true era in the present, and its true community in the general friendship of reason of our time, which deals with the fact by allowing it to rest and rely upon itself, content with a thought about it. It understands how to subject the historical figurehead and the self-power of personality to the omnipotence and dead uniformity of the genus.

*) The Life of Jesus, II. 770. Third edition.

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8

Just as enlightenment and the friendship of reason were unable to recognize Christianity and thus relegate it to the past, the same goes for Strauss. But he does not want to do so; he is a philosopher and, as such, seeks to rediscover in Christianity only the “cycle” or the “pulse” or whatever the fetishist may call these manifestations of life in the Idea. Therefore, no matter how much he may differ from the orthodox theologian in his doubt regarding the historical reality of the fact in which the Idea is supposed to be manifested, he stands on the same ground, shares the same presuppositions, and lives in the same categories. The immediacy, so to speak, the swiftness with which the idea is translated into its factual representation is the same enchantment that the orthodox theologian venerates in the wondrous manifestations of his Lord or in the inspiration of the Spirit.

The tradition hypothesis is essentially only the transformation of the earlier orthodox view of the origin of the Gospels into an abstract formula—it is its abstract but more complete reflection. Both views, no matter how opposed they may be, are still just the same view in this opposition. The tradition hypothesis aimed to replace the divine inspiration, under whose influence the church places the Evangelists, with a historical power. However, this power itself remains a mysterious concept. For the question of how evangelical history and its portrayal in the Gospels came into being, it is irrelevant whether one answers that the Evangelists wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit or that tradition provided them with the entire material that had already been shaped and dictated by it. Both are equally transcendent, both reduce the authors of the Gospels to selfless masks, and the only, yet significant and meaningful merit of the tradition hypothesis lies in relieving the critique from immediate engagement with the heavenly chimera and assigning it the sole task of unraveling the historical.

9

Against Hengstenberg, the critic no longer needs to demonstrate the difference between the Old and New Testaments and defend the novelty of the Christian creation. Rather, the critic has done enough, has accomplished everything, by exposing the metaphysical emptiness that is seen to operate in Judaism and Christianity as the same idea.

Against Hengstenberg, the critic no longer needs to elaborate on the shallowness of the historical view that considers the personality of Jesus merely as a tautology, that is, only as the real, sensual manifestation of what the divine promise had foretold to the pious of the Old Testament. Instead, the critic has dissolved the immediate opposition by exposing the metaphysical fantasizing according to which the miraculous content of evangelical history is modeled after the pattern of Jewish messianic dogma. Furthermore, the critic has dispelled the Church’s presupposition by eliminating its metaphysical counterpart and its supposed transformation into a rational historical view through the demonstration of the novelty of the Christian revolution.

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10

Strauss’s metaphysical assumption of the Absolute renders any critical relationship to Christianity impossible for him. The naivety of his assumption that “the content of the highest religion, Christianity, is identical to the highest philosophical truth” prevents him from realizing that this unity of religion and philosophy stems only from the fact that the latter is the artificial restoration of the former from its fallen state, from which it could no longer extricate itself on its own power since the idea of natural law was established.

What is Spinoza’s Substance but the transformation of the natural law discovered by seventeenth-century natural science into a religious, indeed an Oriental God? What else is it but the conversion of positive fact into a universal essence?

What is the systematic unity of the entire universe that modern philosophy sought to create? What is the unity and singularity of the idea, whose establishment and realization were achieved only by the most recent, the completed, the Hegelian philosophy? It is nothing but the final justification of religious monotheism. It is nothing but the reproduction of the ignorant notion that believes it can attain and possess the unity and coherence of the world by deducing everything real from a single being.

What is Hegelian mysticism — this seemingly profound yet only vague and barren statement that religion is God’s self-consciousness in humanity? It is nothing but the forceful assertion of the religious proposition of human sinfulness, which pursues humans even in their theoretical conduct and renders knowledge impossible. What is it other than the religious formula for the unity that humans achieve with themselves in thought?

11

Strauss’s question, whether the content can exist as absolute in the form of religion, is still too limited. The philosophical conception of the Absolute itself remains religious, and philosophy is not destined for decline because it reduces and confines the Absolute within a finite formula. Rather, it is through the formula of the Absolute that the perception and understanding of reality become impossible.

Equally limited is Strauss’s view when he regards the modern collision as merely a Christological dilemma, juxtaposing the church’s Christology of the community with the “speculative” Christology of the spiritual realm, in which the insight has emerged that, instead of an individual, a Idea, the idea of humanity, should be posited as the subject of the predicates attributed to Christ by the church. For research, both Christologies hold equal value, both lie on the same line of historical development, and the “speculative” Christology is merely a modification of the ecclesiastical one. Therefore, it cannot even be said that research is in conflict with that historical development and its current widespread influence. Instead, research begins a new epoch precisely by explaining this development and reducing it to the past. It is free from the old oppositions, and it remains indifferent to the casuistry with which the speculatively educated cleric navigates and arranges his personal “dilemma,” or to the measures by which the church establishment secures itself against him if it fails to subject him once again to ecclesiastical determination.

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12

The only difference between Strauss and Hegel is that while the latter, in the strict unison of his dialectic, allows the Idea to pass through its manifestations and, when he speaks of a difference within it, does not pursue it seriously. In fact, since it is still the same Idea that manifests itself within him, he treats it with equal indifference both in practice and in theory. He would dismiss the question of the practical validity of subordinate manifestations as frivolous curiosity and as a disturbance of theoretical tranquility. On the other hand, Strauss does ask this question and seeks to solve it using the means provided by Hegelian dialectic.

But what arouses in him this “frivolous curiosity,” for example, about the value of individual facts alongside the Idea that manifests itself within them, or about the significance of ecclesiastical Christology alongside the speculative one? Certainly not the Hegelian system, which is in no way a system where the Idea carelessly and self-sufficiently rolls through its determinations and is content with itself in all aspects, as it always only deals with its determinations.

Rather, it is the development of modern theology, which began with the pietistic opposition between the soul and individual positive propositions, continued through the rationalistic distinction between the temporal and local determinations of early Christianity valid only for the primordial era and Palestine, and its eternal truths, and finally, in the apologetic anxiety about the authenticity of individual books of the New Testament and the credibility of specific Gospel accounts, has become hopelessly confused. It is only this development that drove him, in contrast to the original dullness of the system, to those questions whose formulation and unsuccessful answers initiated the crisis that later engulfed both theology and philosophy.

13

He himself, however, remained both theologian and philosopher.

While philosophy made it impossible for him to comprehend historical differences— (I must constantly recall the mechanism of his derivation of evangelical myths from Jewish messianic dogma)—he was unable to untangle the confusion in which theology had ultimately become entangled, and he allowed himself to be driven from one exegetical question to another by the same chance under which the apologists worked.

His apologetic position regarding the evangelical material brought him the benefit in the first edition of his work that alongside the so-called myths, there remained a true treasure of historical facts in the Gospels. In subsequent editions, this treasure enriched him even more, eventually granting him almost complete possession of the facts that Neander and de Wette had acquired for him. However, given the weakness of his method, it was initially indifferent and accidental how far he shifted the boundary between the mythical and the historical backward or forward.

The perception of substance, as it emerged from the perception of natural law, is critical of the unnatural, as Spinoza proves. But since it itself is once again the unnatural hypostasis of natural law, it must, as Spinoza again proves, ultimately succumb to the most unnatural ideas, deny its critical direction, and it becomes entirely irrelevant how far it follows its critical impulse and where the driving force of that impulse eventually perishes. It is inherently only an impulse, thus unclear, insufficient, crossed by other impulses, and must eventually succumb to their counteraction.

14

Thus, Strauss also cannot truly detach the elevation to the Idea from the individual factum—his contemplation of the “endlessly repeating pulse of divine life” cannot render the individual factum completely indifferent. It is impossible—the boredom of that endlessly repeating cycle is too great; continually watching the pure course of divine life is too tiring. Moreover, that cycle of divine life, this “becoming human, dying, and resurrection,” is only a vague, groundless image taken from sacred history—it is a reflection of a religious concept.

Therefore, Strauss must also backtrack, he must return to the religious original!

However, he immediately continues, after leading “our time” to the Idea,*) if indeed scientific Christology has to move beyond Jesus as a person, it will still have to return to him in one aspect.

*) II, 770

Why? He does indeed provide a reason, even claiming to present a historical law as the basis for this return. At the forefront of all actions, including those of world-historical significance, he notes that individuals stand. Particularly in the realm of religion, within the monotheistic domain, all new epochs and distinct formations are invariably linked to prominent personalities—only Christianity should be an exception to this typology? Should the most significant spiritual creation be without a identifiable origin, merely the result of the clash of scattered forces and causes?”

15

But where does history show a great intellectual creation that would have been accomplished by only one individual? Where in history has there been a groundbreaking content that did not take shape within a circle of conflicting personalities and factions? When has a new form of life emerged in history, standing complete and absolute from the beginning of its era, so that the successors of the creator only needed to receive, perhaps develop, but no longer create themselves?

Nowhere! Never!

Strauss appeals to the natural disposition of the monotheistic domain. However, since Islam, given its inferiority, cannot be parallelized with the Judaism of the Old Testament and with Christianity, and since it cannot be considered a genuine creation, it is permissible to set it aside in this matter until historical criticism sheds light on the historical presuppositions of Muhammad. Thus, the only analogy remaining for Christianity would be the Judaism of the Old Testament. But does Strauss truly provide us with the “prominent personality” to whom the “distinct formation” of Judaism is “linked”? Did someone truly create Judaism? Is Judaism “merely the result of the clash of scattered forces and causes” if no exclusive originator can be identified at its helm? Is it the accidental result of random friction if it cannot be attributed solely to one creator, following the monotheistic, i.e., mechanical and lifeless approach? Are the authors of individual psalms, the second part of Isaiah, or the Book of Daniel not creators? Do they cease to be creators simply because no one can provide their names?

16

In short, what leads Strauss from the idea to the personality of Jesus is not a genuine historical law, but rather the weakness of this idea and its penetrating entanglement with the belief-based assumption that one – in the monotheistic sense – must have done everything.

In his philosophical turns, Strauss has remained a theologian, not in spite of their philosophical character, but because of it. His Hegelian orthodoxy has so strengthened the theologian within him, has made him such a complete theologian, that in the following account, I mainly need to describe his perplexity and the confusion of his assumptions in order to portray the aimlessness and confusion in which theology has ultimately found its historical conclusion and deserved end.

Therefore, when in 1838 the two men emerged who, like Weisse, spoke the first intelligent words about the looming question and, like Wilke, provided the first exact elaboration, in short, when the first statements and elaborations on the evangelical question were presented that were no longer theological, Strauss could only retreat into the same passivity and indolence to which theologians were condemned from that point on and forever.

Thus, despite Wilke’s investigation of the Gospel of Mark, in the year 1840, Strauss was still able to summarize his judgment on the origin of this gospel in the words that it was “demonstrably written based on the first and third [gospels], even if only from memory” – yet he punished himself for the sluggishness with which he clings to a thoroughly refuted hypothesis and for the certainty with which he speaks of “demonstrable” by presenting such a baseless possibility as contained in his addition: “even if only from memory.”

17

Weisse had brought forth several cardinal points for consideration – however, Strauss must deny him his acknowledgment and withhold matters that were brought close to complete certainty in the dreadfully tedious vagueness that characterizes his approach.

Weisse and Wilke had already largely refuted the tradition hypothesis regarding the form of the Gospels – yet Strauss continues to speak of tradition as if nothing has happened – but his indolent attitude towards Wilke’s work is rewarded by the scientific nullity that will continue to make his writings appear significant and valuable to theologians.

What have Weisse and Wilke achieved?

—————–

Weisse.

I mentioned earlier that it was a well-deserved fortune that Weisse discovered the original evangelical historical narrative in the Gospel of Mark and in several insightful and vivid observations, providing new vitality to the withered criticism found in Strauss’s work.

18

He earned his fortune in his struggle against the Hegelian system – but it is also inherent in the nature of this fight that he could not pursue his fortunate divinations in the breadth and depth of the domain with which he engaged in his “critical and philosophical treatment of evangelical *) history,” and eventually got lost in a multitude of chimerical assumptions and presuppositions.

*) 1838, in two volumes. 

He was right against Hegelian philosophy when he asserted the reality against its presupposition of the uniqueness of the idea, and experience and perception against its dialectic – but he could not pursue his right and carry it through all instances, as he opposed the system with a different one, opposing Hegel’s monotheism of the idea with his own, the philosophically modified monotheism of Christianity, and Hegelian speculation with his own, that of philosophy which he intended to overthrow.

If he failed to penetrate and gain recognition with the real substance of his opposition, some of his views on evangelical history will justify him against this perceived ill fortune of the time – yet, in any case, it was simply impossible for him to penetrate a system that represented the utmost perfection on the uncertain ground of a priori speculation with a new system or even with the mere demand for such a system. **)

**) He expresses this in Fichte’s Journal for Philosophy and Speculative Theology, Volume 1, Issue 1 (1837), pp. 163, 164, regarding the “demand for a higher standpoint in philosophy.” He considers both going beyond Hegel and attaining a higher standpoint of speculation as equally important and describes this higher standpoint as “the only conceivable one.”

19

“If one wants to escape nationalism in religious matters,” he notes in his “Evangelische Geschichte” against Strauss and Hegel*), “which hollows out every living and spirit-filled entity into empty conceptual universality, it is important to distinguish that kind of knowledge which is based on perception and can only be acquired through perception from that abstract and a priori conceptual knowledge that stands apart from the individual and concrete nature of perception and extends only over those general concepts that cannot be the object of perception as such” – the remedy is good, but only for the beginning – it liberates from a priori conceptual knowledge, but only by replacing it with an a priori derived image.

*) ll, 496.

Weisse’s perception is itself a priori, as it is based on religious demands that are predetermined – it is again abstract perception that overlooks the real – it is not genuine, research-driven and secure perception, but rather intuition and divination that can hit upon the void but also miss the mark – as aesthetic experience, it is hasty and premature, the anticipated perception, the success or failure of which depends on the greater or lesser scope of the subject’s education, its original natural disposition, yet ultimately it depends on chance as it does not stem from a complete mastery of the material.

20

Incidentally, Weisse himself recognises the deficiency and precarious position of his view when he describes *) the fact, ״that there is a God’, as ״the great primordial fact on which all other real philosophical truth is based or into which it dialectically goes back’.

*) E.g. in the cited issue of Fichte’s Zeitschrift, p. 176.

So then the rigid formalism ״of the Hegelian system’ **) would be broken if the One Formula, that there is a God, were to take its place? then would really “life be inflated above death” if that formula were erected above logical formalism? The unity and coherence of the universe would really only be assured when the One who governs the world ״according to one great purpose” is established? ״If philosophy wants to express that living unity, in which it recognises everything to be comprehended, briefly and emphatically in one word”, then it cannot do without ״the name of the Godhead”?

**) As Weisse also already did in his writing: Ueber das Verhältniß des Publicums zur Philosophie in dem Zeitpunkte von Hegels Abschei den (Leipzig 1832) p. 48.

Yes, philosophy cannot do without it – its ignorance, its abstraction from the real content of the world and history drives it into the arms of the hypothesis of a ״highest content” – its inability to grasp the real connection of the universe, its hasty acceptance of this connection before it is really experienced, forces it to the hypothesis of the One, who remains a formula, whether one calls him by the religious name or calls him Idea.

21

Yes, Hegel really completed the proofs of the existence of God and revealed their true meaning when he did not make the transition “from” the being of the finite, not from the thought of man to God, but passed from the non-being of the finite to the general being, from the non-thought of man to the infinite self-consciousness of God. The non-being of the finite, the non-thinking of man are the basis for the idea that offers the philosophers as well as the religious a substitute for their untruthfulness and for the end of their thoughts.

When research takes possession of reality and history, it no longer needs this substitute. When the world and history regain their own inner life, the formula that is supposed to guarantee them life and unity is no longer necessary.

Weisse called his philosophy positive, but it is – (a fine sentence in which the dispute between his religious and the ideal monotheism of his Hegelian opponents finds its solution) – not positive enough – not really positive. If it were indeed positive, then it would no longer be a metaphysical system, but criticism, research – then it would no longer be dialectical, but exact science.

Weisse’s profound look into the evangelical story of the birth of the Messiah, his spiritual explanation of the account of the temptation of Jesus, his successful remark on the presupposition of the Fourth Evangelist that Jesus had baptised, his accurate explanations of the contrast between the Synoptic and Johannine views – these are fully valid testimonies to the positive nature of his aesthetic view, positive enrichments of science, even if they still suffer considerable damage through the presuppositions with which they find themselves entangled or in which they get lost.

22

However, just as what he considers the most positive in his philosophy, his retreat to the great primal fact that underlies all real philosophical truth, is the unpositive and only an expression of the unpositive character of his philosophy as a whole, so within his treatment of the evangelical history, what he regards as the highest and most positive guarantee of historical reality is rather a testimony to the unpositive foundation of his work.

His philosophical Christology, that is, his image of Christ, whose wondrous visual expressions, insofar as they reveal both his agreement and disagreement, determine the historical reliability or inaccuracy of the evangelical accounts, is a hypothesis based on feeling that has nothing to do with research, but rather relies on arbitrary sympathy and antipathy, accepting some traits suitable to the orthodox view while rejecting others.

Weisse believes he has reached something positively given and final, something that one must unquestionably accept, when he encounters works by individuals in the Gospel of Mark and the collection of sayings in Matthew that vouch for the correctness of what is given. Peter told it to Mark, and Peter even recounted some things in Jesus’ own words, which Mark has faithfully recorded for us. Finally, Matthew has preserved for us a whole series of speeches and sayings of Jesus in his collection of sayings, and the first synoptist has faithfully transmitted them to us. Who could provide a more reliable personal guarantee?

23

Doesn’t criticism have to acknowledge the pillars of Hercules in these two positive aspects, which forever set a goal for it?

On the contrary, with these supposedly incontrovertible data it had to begin its work in earnest and prove its power by exposing the unpositive nature of these two magnitudes and by finding a new and more positive expression in the historical development of the Christian spirit, as well as in the creative power of men who have given the elemental spirit of the Christian faith. Christian spirit as well as in the creative power of the men who gave the elementary gain of this development its plastic, only historically significant form.

After I have given this critical account in my previous work, all that remains for me to do is the secondary work, the critique of the so-called testimonies of Papias on the origin of the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew. Only in the following volume, however, in the context of my presentation of the historical development of Christian literature of the second century, will this criticism be in its proper place, will I show the chimerical nature of these supposedly positive data, the worthlessness of these so-called testimonies – here I will only briefly indicate what injustice Weisse himself must do to the Gospel of Mark when he calls up these testimonies in its favour.

How, for example, does it fit together that Mark has his material from Peter and yet ascribes such a short period of time to the activity of Jesus and actually limits it to only a few days of miracles?

“He has, answers *) Weisse, in endeavouring to compile the individual narratives of Peter into the solid whole of a history of the Lord’s life, by the manner of his transitions from one matter to another, produced an appearance of continuity of the incidents, thus also of changes in the setting of the incidents, which a skilful narrator, at least one who was at the same time a critical researcher, would undoubtedly have avoided.”

*) Evangelical History, l, 313. 314.

24

No! Such a one would have avoided such things who had known an eyewitness like Peter and had attended as his companion his supposed treaties about the life of the Lord!

Well! Peter only recited ״individual’ stories – but to his constant companion he never – never said a word about the whole, about the context of the whole, about the real spread of Jesus’ efficacy? The companion was so dull, so indifferent, while he collected all the details literally in his memory, so unconcerned about the overall course of his Lord’s life, that he never once asked the eyewitness about the scope and context of the whole?

And Mark only created “the appearance” of continuity of the events by the way he presented them?

Olshausen, Paulus, Neander, and all the other unhappy workers who have in vain endeavoured to break through the historical transitions of the Gospels with their screwed turns of phrase, and to transform the seriousness of the Gospels into a light appearance with their frivolous assertions – they are no longer alone, even the most zealous champion of positive philosophy joins them and approves the sisyphean work of their unsuccessful turns of phrase!

Weisse seriously assumes that Mark “has meagrely compiled an evangelical account out of the isolated, incoherent narratives of a single Apostle”. *) On the other hand, it is a positive, completely positive fact that the original Gospel, the difference between which and the present Gospel of Mark I do not need to reflect upon here, follows a very definite plan, has through and through a complete symmetry, that its sections close together artistically and that every link within the individual sections serves a strictly pre-drawn plan.

*) I, 31,32.

25

White’s assertion that Mark had “only composed his Gospel with the intention of not letting the content of the apostle’s narratives get lost” beats it back most brilliantly by pointing to its inner reason and purpose, to the power of the soul that reveals its life in his depiction of the collision between the new freedom and the Jewish privilege, in his vividly pulsating account of the struggle and victory of that freedom.

Yes, for the sake of that senseless testimony according to which Mark did not compile his Gospel in an orderly manner **) from Peter’s narratives, White is able to say ***) to Mark, ״that there is something to be said for the order in which he narrates the events, since he did not hear Peter narrate them in order, but, deprived of the assistance of his master, had to devise such an order himself, as best he could” – at least he endeavours with this paraphrase to render the sense, but nevertheless the tenable and probable sense, of that testimony of Papias.

**) ου ταξει

***) l, 43.

But in vain! his treatment of that testimony, which fits nothing less than the Gospel of Mark or the Primal Gospel, helps him nothing – it does not mean to say that the order of Mark’ composition is one of his own devising, but that this Gospel lacks order altogether.

26

Finally, is it really positive when Weisse assumes of several miracle reports that they are “self-invented parables” of Jesus, symbolic representations of the nature of the Son of Man, and that the apostle Matthew, whose writing contained nothing but speeches and sayings of the Lord, “told” them as parables, albeit in the tone of historical reports, “after” Jesus? *)

*) E.g. 1,527. II,53.

This prerequisite of a personal responsibility may be positive – this last point, which sets the limits of the investigation, may be positive in the sense that at such presuppositions and last points the stirring and disturbing research has not yet proven its negative nature.

Such presuppositions and final points may be given and welcome to an individual in the circle of his other presuppositions and hypotheses, which demand just such a settlement and such an arrangement with the real difficulties.

In the field of research, however, they are unpositive, invented, excuses, chimeras. For research, positive can only be that which, after the complete penetration of the found facts – after a penetration that measures the facts by their presuppositions, the presuppositions by the presuppositions, and if both prove contradictory, places the facts again in the circle of their really historical, their really explanatory presuppositions – which, after this process, results as a fact.

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Furthermore, this hypothesis of Weisse’s, like the others that arise from the presumed positive nature of his direction, proves its unpositive character most convincingly by being useless and least able to accomplish what it is supposed to achieve.

For example, Weisse explains the account of Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman, as well as the other accounts concerning the centurion of Capernaum, as Jesus’ parabolic speeches. He does so because only under this assumption does the harshness in Jesus’ initial dismissive response to the woman’s request negate itself through the overall tendency of the narrative. And it is only in this way that one can avoid the “troubling circumstance” contained in the assumption underlying both accounts, namely that “the faith that prompts Jesus to exercise his miracle-working power is not the faith of the afflicted individual, but rather the faith of a third party.”

As if Jesus, whenever he made himself the historical subject of a parable in this manner, did not inevitably evoke in his disciples the conviction that he was capable of such harshness and that the exercise of his miracle-working power, whenever he chose, was independent of any natural point of reference!

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Wilke.

That the current Gospel of Mark is not the original Gospel but a redaction of it, for which the present Gospels of Luke, Matthew, and John were used, I have now proven against Wilke, although originally it was not the main point of contention following the appearance of this researcher.

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Wilke made the correct statement that a collection of sayings, such as the one mentioned by Papias as the composition of Matthew, *) did not exist on its own.**) However, when he argued that the Sermon on the Mount of the first Synoptist is “an expanded version of Luke’s,” I have now demonstrated that Matthew, in this instance as well as others, utilized his own sources, later redactions of the original Gospel, and also had Luke’s text in mind. But even that was not the main point that needed to be resolved according to Wilke.

*) I add, at least according to the opinions of Weitzel and others.

**) The original gospel, p. 691.

My earlier work was not affected when I coincided with Wilke in those mistaken hypotheses, just as Wilke’s proof of the originality he discovered in the Gospel of Mark was not affected when, after removing certain interpolations in the current Gospel of Mark, he believed he possessed the original Gospel. The forward-looking gaze and the ruthlessness that demands far-reaching discoveries seem to be possible only through that limitation of vision that overlooks details lying nearby or to the side. The discovery remains valid, even if later works succeed in reconciling it with the overall mass of details and, indeed, provide it with the highest degree of evidence.

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The great question that was at issue after the appearance of Wilke’s work was independent of the overcoming of the still unnoticed detail, – it advanced further and could leave this overcoming to the future – it had as its object the final decision.

That the Gospel of Mark *) is of literary origin, Wilke has basically proved. Basically: – in so far as he has supplied the first essential materials of proof. After his thorough work, he may say that the work of Mark ״is not a copy of an oral original gospel, but an artificial composition. **) He may call this work a ״work of art” because of its composition and because it carries out a purpose set with consciousness with equally free consciousness ***). He can finally say (although this sentence already acquires an apologetic, cross-eyed character through the category of semblance), ״that his compilations are conditioned less by historical connection than by pre-conceived general propositions, notwithstanding they have assumed the semblance of a historical connection, this is explained by the fact that its author was not one of the immediate companions of Jesus’. †).

*) We want to leave the name of the Original Gospel for a moment.

**) op. cit. p. 684. 

***) S. 671.

†) S. 684.

It remains unclear, however, to what extent, in Wilke’s view, the material should be taken for granted in the certainty that the form is freely created. It also remains unclear that Weisse, when he announced Wilke’s writing in the Berlin Yearbooks, expressed the certainty that now the highest guarantee for the truly historical character of the Gospel accounts had been given.

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And yet Weisse had hit Wilke’s meaning. Wilke says it himself *): ״The guarantors of the message, according to which the creators of the diegesis were guided, were not people who had first inquired of others or who had written out what they had found out in Galilee, but the apostles, and among them those who had been servants of the Word from the beginning, that is, from the time when the report, if it was to become a whole, had to take off”. In Wilke’s view, this original gospel was given in the writing of Mark and with it came Luke and Matthew.

*) p. 657. 658.

In the main, therefore, Wilke still stood on Weisse’s positive standpoint, but in his case, since he had hitherto most evidently proved the authorial origin of the Original Gospel, the contradiction of this standpoint, the unmitigated unification of the critical and the positive **) had reached the point where he demanded its resolution.

**) The positive in the sense of a not yet overpowered presupposition.

In my work, the conclusion of which appeared ten years ago, I had carried out this resolution.

The critique of the fourth Gospel had forced me to recognise the possibility that a Gospel could be of purely literary origin, and had finally convinced me that in that Gospel we possess a Scripture of this origin, while I was still at war with the result of Wilke’s work. But just as this conviction was well founded – just as, in possession of it, I went on to the Synoptic Gospels, in order to test once more by their pragmatism whether they were also of this origin, I had to agree with Wilke, or rather, through the connection of form and content, the question was raised to the height where it was a question of the final decision and the last positive, i.e. the last chimerical presupposition had to fall and the really positive knowledge of the origin of Christianity had to arise.

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If the form is consistently of literary origin and gives the original Gospel the character of a work of art, and if artistic activity not only influences the content but also creates content itself, can criticism still maintain any of the traditional assumptions? Can it remain content with a final positive stance?

It was impossible! The content, too, proved to be a free creation of the writer’s art.

Furthermore, by overthrowing the assumption that the followers of the traditional hypothesis closely associated with defenders of the orthodox tradition, namely the assumption that the Jews already possessed a Christology and were familiar with the concept of “the Messiah” before Christianity, thus implying that Christianity existed before Christianity itself, I restored the original significance to the emergence of the Christian community. I made it possible for the Christian community to be recognized as a new creation, and the uprising of its spirit as a revolutionary act.

What was still lacking in the proof, I have supplied in this new work – the darkness of that positive which could still threaten the proof, I have now fully illuminated and brightened up – by finally placing in the wagons in which I had earlier placed my proof of the historical originality of Christianity and the free creation of Protestant history, I have now also placed my critique of the Pauline epistles, I have completely pushed them down to our earth and into our history, and the other one, with all its hypotheses and ״positive’ presuppositions, has forever vanished into thin air.

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Modern Judaism.

Already at my first appearance with that statement on the independence of the Christian community from a Jewish Christology, I declared that it was neither necessary nor possible that this statement, like the others connected with it, should immediately win general approval.

The course of the last ten years has only confirmed how right I was when I gave myself this isolated position – when I considered this isolated position to be the only one possible for research with its critical overthrow of the prevailing ideas.

Even now, a general approval of the critical explanation of Christianity is neither necessary nor possible – indeed, it has only become even more unnecessary, even more impossible.

Not necessary – because if the personal conviction of the insignificance of a theory is merely an imagination as long as it is not based on the fact that the theory, despite the general opposition it encounters, is the culmination of a historical development and belongs to the existing state of the world as an interpretation and overcoming of the elements that contained its demands – what need does the critical explanation of Christianity already have for explicit approval, when its work, the dissolution of a perspective and science, to whose elaboration and destruction the entire history has contributed – when the dissolution of theological perspective and science testifies to it?

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Can it count on the approval of a circle that it has broken up and dissolved? Is it not enough for it if the theological corporation, having been relieved of its original office and freed from the scientific distress which the explanation of Christianity had hitherto caused it, can no longer produce any decisive work?

Or can it occur to it to expect approval from the meta-physicists, who, through the ghostly beings of their realm of ideas, are bound in solidarity with theology and since the fall of the latter have been condemned for ever to equal barrenness?

Impossible – for the same modern power, whose opposition already irritated me when I argued against Hengstenberg about the difference between the Gospel and the Law and when I found Strauss’s derivation of Christian ״mythology’ from a pre-existing Jewish Christology insufficient, has now attained a dominance that can almost be called autocracy.

This power is Judaism – Judaism in the sense in which I presented it in my work on the history of the apostles as the world power of flattening, as the opponent of definiteness, as the adversary of the original world, as the enemy of all historical differences.

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It is therefore not only the Judaism of the synagogue.

Indeed, national Judaism, as a personal enemy of Christianity, has accompanied all its creations with its curse. It has watched their rise, development, and flourishing with a fervent desire for them to succumb to its envious Jehovah. It is true that in antiquity and the Middle Ages, it forced Christians, through the need for refuting doubts, to become acquainted with doubt itself. Even in the Middle Ages, when the Christian world displayed the splendor of its blossoming, it provided the dangerous example that there could exist human beings within this world who, through their skill and industriousness, could establish their own independent existence and be unaffected by any of the conditions of life in that world. However, it could not bring about the dissolution and downfall it yearned for; it had to leave their realization to the struggles and efforts of members of the Christian world itself.

The Jew has corrosive but not dissolving power. He is unfavourably disposed towards the historical forms, but he cannot attack them. He stands outside the historical struggles, but his sceptical attitude is flabby and powerless; – he wonders how one can toil and kill one another for the interests at stake in the flowering and dissolution of the Christian world, but he wonders about it only because he understands nothing of these interests.

With the exception of the Jews of modern times who oppose the Christian world order with their oriental antitheses and literary sarcasms, the skeptic has always been a stranger in the Christian world. He was and remains a foreign entity to it. Therefore, he directs his weak skepticism against it. However, he cannot successfully attack it; he is even less capable of dissolving it.

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The dissolution of this world can only “proceed from” and be accomplished by a power which understands it and which, in its self-feeling, in the vibrations of its inner being, despite its completed opposition, so purely and surely imitates the soul and the inner rhythm of Christianity that it has a right to reckon the masters of present-day theology and the heads of the political parties, whose express business is the restoration of Christianity, among the representatives of general Judaism *).

*) In this sense I have cancelled my writing against Hengstenberg (published in 1839) on the contrast between the “Law” and the “Gospel” as a Christian against Hengstenberg as a Jew.

Although the religious and theological form of the dissolution neither originated in the synagogue nor was carried out by the national Jews, it may nevertheless be called the work of the general Judaism, because in the power that carried it out, the specific nature of the Jew attained a kind of world domination and general spread.

It was the foreignness into which Christianity, as its dissolution (already in the last centuries of the Middle Ages), began to fall upon itself that rendered both the opponents and defenders of the outdated system insensitive to its original significance. It gave the initial movements of research and criticism the form of either hatred or apathetic indifference and turned the preservation of the historical system into a political measure or a matter of personal speculation. Finally, from this foreignness emerged the Jewish rootlessness of recent times. In it, the position that the Jew had always held towards the Christian world found its justification.

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Those legal scholars who had taken on the role of learned arbiters in the medieval dispute between secular and ecclesiastical power and who regarded the question of the classical existence of Christianity as a formal question in which one could decide for or against at will and without harm to the whole system of life – they were already the forerunners of modern advocates who, for example, believe that they can keep state life going in their dispute over constitutional formulas – were the forerunners of today’s Judaism, which no longer knows any sympathy for a historical form of life and no longer believes that it is possible to decide for or against. They were already the forerunners of modern advocates who, for example, believe that they can keep state life going by arguing about constitutional formulas – the forerunners of today’s Judaism, which no longer knows sympathy for a historical form of life and regards the decision in favour of the pro or con as a business to be regulated according to a supreme formula or according to the rules of its own prudence.

The Christian spirit’s own dullness created those supreme formulas of deism or pantheistic philosophy which subjected the historical formations of Christianity to a monotonous levelling, i.e. to the Judaism.

When the decay of the whole dogmatic system was decided by the overthrow of the dogma of the eternity of the punishments of hell, the Jewish hatred of the aristocracy triumphed and the Jewish principle of equality succeeded in carrying itself through also in heaven and in transforming the Christian organisation, Dante’s world, into a uniform chaos of meaningless zeros.

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No matter how zealously the political businessmen of the present day may pose as knights of the Christian world, when they defend the order and inner gradation of the Christian-Germanic world as the direct work of the Godhead – they are and remain Jews, and even their justification of the historical division of the monarchy speaks of the Jewish hatred of historical design, since with their heartless and unfeeling derivation from God they equate the works of art of history with any insect.

It makes no difference whether, like Strauss or Hengstenberg, one makes Old Testament Judaism the original and creator of Christianity – both are the work of Jewish antipathy to their own originality, the victory of Jewish uniformity over soulful form.

Well, this Judaism, into which the development of the Christian world runs, is the expression and consequence of its own flattening and the slackening of its original contrasts – it is a Christian work, even if it is the work of the Christian, to whom his own world has become alien. But when Judaism is established and has become the general element of life, then the weary Christian is forced to reach out to the national Jew and welcome him as his ally.

When the Christian has lost his historical attitude and his historical privilege has expired, the Jew, who always doubted it, has triumphed and demands his recognition.

When the Christian form has slackened and lapsed into shapelessness, when man no longer dares to assert his place in the bosom of the Godhead, and concedes the honour of the Godhead to the One God of deism alone, then the covenant is made between the enlightened and Moses Mendelssohn.

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When the one of deism has reduced the world to a heap of equal, i.e. equally worthless things, then the Jew demands equality with the Christian, the latter demands freedom for the latter – when both have become so powerless that they demand freedom as a gift – both are worthy of freedom, which remains a distant being and, as a mere demand, delights and torments.

If the Christian form of life has been abandoned by the plastic power of its soul and has ossified into a formula, then the Jew can even render great service to the Conservative interest, he can do his business, since no one knows better than he how to handle the soulless formula and bring it to fruition.

When an art such as music has been perfected and the source of tones has dried up, when the melodious soul has exhausted itself in its “sweeps” and the Christian masters have fought out their battles of the soul in the contrasts and opposites of their creations, then the Jew gives the public what it wants – a purring tangle instead of soulful melody – thoughtless cries instead of the opposites which, in their proud attitude, express the heroic struggle of the inner self.

Wherever the penetrating soul has disappeared, the Jew appears, finds his world – when faith and trust have long since disappeared from the life of the state and the only thing that governments still have to do, the preservation of order, is secured by military power, then the Jew shines and does his business, When even an aristocracy like the English has lost its power to rule, then the Jew as statesman shows off his inadequacy and the world admires him as the striking proof of how little of his own substance and character is needed to keep the political machine going.

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In the field in which I am working with my critique in the present work, Judaism can be called truly complete since theology has lost its counterpart and the confusion that has always been characteristic of its language has dissolved into a babbling slur about it.

This perfected Judaism is the friendship of light – that form of science, theology and religiosity which is only possible after the appearance of criticism.

The friend of light is the Christian who believes himself to be free of the hostile system when he no longer worries about it – his Christianity as well as that which is hostile to him are to him the unspeakable and unthinkable – his and the opposing Christianity offer him so few real and historical predicates any more that he can only distinguish between them by means of their opposition, that he can only describe their opposition by the image of light and darkness or by the mystical formulas of the new spirit and the old evil – he is the servant of an unknowable being and so ignorant of his own religion that, in spite of the great history, he is unable to understand it, that he still wants to realise it despite the great history in which it has attained its realisation and could attain it alone – without the ability to investigate and explain Christianity, he frees himself from the positive forms of it, from its dogmas and sacred history, by leaving them to himself and lying behind his back – he is a stranger in the world that surrounds him, free from it and at the same time its servant, because it is something alien and purely intangible to him – he is a stranger in the world that surrounds him, free from it and at the same time its servant, because it is something alien and purely intangible to him. thing to him –

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In short, he has become what the Jew always was.

But the friend of light is not only that bourgeois friend of freedom who declares himself in protests and popular assemblies against the rule of the symbols and cannot be sufficiently enraptured by the supposed arrogance of the church regime, which all of a sudden speaks of doctrinal regulations that rightly exist – but the church regime itself, as well as the crowd of theologians and the corporations that provide a kind of basis and support for its provisions, they also belong to the world of the friend of light and are only one species of this modern genre.

The believing theologian, too, has an enemy in everything that exact science has created for centuries, against which he saves himself only by apathetic confinement to himself and by flight into thoughtlessness – he, too, takes so little part in the work and development of his world, in a development of which even his paralysis and apathy is a consequence, that he cannot comprehend, how the wicked come to set themselves tasks in their obstinacy and, in their diabolical bias, to involve themselves in researches that do not touch practical life and only disturb the enjoyment and tranquillity of the moment, that he can only describe the opposition of the two as the opposition of light and darkness, or his spirit only as the new spirit that has risen above the diabolical apostasy – he, too, knows his religion so little that he would consider himself called upon to actually realise it – if the liberal friend of light frees himself through thoughtlessness from the dogmas of his religion and from the miraculous view of Holy Scripture, the same thoughtlessness is the power of the believing friend of light that preserves these positive forms of Christianity for him – he can only preserve his world by renouncing its explanation and research – he is, like his liberal opponent, the reflection of a history and development that he knows as little as the latter – he is, like the latter, the Judaised Christian.

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The world domination of which the national Jew dreams would be certain to him, and the victory which the power of slackness gives him over the Christian sculpture could never be snatched away again, if the same source from which his freedom from Christianity springs did not also spring his defeat.

This dangerous source, which produces momentary strength but permanent weakness, is the feeling of alienation.

Yes, Christianity cannot harm the Jew, because it is foreign to him – but he himself is also a foreigner to the Christian world, and this feeling of foreignness outlasts all the illusions of equality and equal rights which the time of dissolution produces, and, after a momentary revolutionary slackening, draws new nourishment from the whole spiritual and natural world of feelings, views and customs into which Christianity has passed and in which it maintains itself against all immature attempts at dissolution.

The liberal and the believing friendship of light would also be victorious and continue their fruitless struggle into infinity, if the same feeling of strangeness did not protect the world from this fate of semi-decay.

The friend of light may believe himself to be master of Christianity when he takes refuge in thoughtlessness in the face of it and calls the theoretical preoccupation with it a servile bias – it remains, remains as a task for research and after a brief triumph of thoughtlessness the friend of light will stand there as a stranger in the world in whose organisation this task still lives.

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Even if the believing friend of light has a historical right to defend the relics of Christianity, which uphold the task of overcoming the whole, against the liberal friend of light, he is nevertheless opposed by an “insurmountable” power which exposes him as a stranger in this world.

No matter how confident the attitude with which the spiritual shepherd behaves as master of the congregation and the theologian relies on Scripture, no matter how confident the political speculator may be of his momentary success, no matter how much the church regime may try to give the appearance of firmness to its language when it refers to the existing ecclesiastical law, no matter how confident the attitude with which the spiritual shepherd behaves as master of the congregation and the theologian relies on Scripture, they may all create for themselves an almost undisputed world dominion, since no one except the protesting light friend considers them worthy of a serious fight any more——-the world, which apparently lies at their feet, nevertheless feels from their confident declamations that they are all fundamentally alien to it, and that it holds their noblest pleasures and dearest treasures in deep resentment. The heart of society remains beyond the reach of their heartless efforts, and their commands, demands, and threats are powerless against the wealth of emotions and perspectives that the positive achievements of art and science have already generated within the fabric of social organization. The ground beneath their influence has been shaken since the arts and exact research of the past centuries have eroded the monotheistic foundation of religious conceptions. While Jewish speculators and devout adherents of enlightenment believe they are ruling society, the position they truly hold is that of foreign adventurers, a mere association.

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Nothing can demonstrate the provisional nature of our time more than this pervasive sense of foreignness that separates those individuals, to whom the active role in the present has primarily fallen, from the task at hand, which encompasses both the remnants of the Christian world and the accumulated treasure of positive and exact perspectives for the future.

The general state of the world, the overall unfinished nature and mutual alienation, demand this rule of adventurers that precedes that universal empire which will witness the crisis of Christianity, just as the Roman Empire witnessed its rise. However, the present is also engaged in the development of means that will serve to remove that sense of foreignness from the world. One of these means is criticism, whose main achievement, whose first work preceding all others, despite being accused of biased self-restraint, is to dissolve the contrast between the still existing Christian world and positive, exact science. This means enlarging and securing the treasure of the latter through the positive explanation of Christianity.

Having laid the foundation for this explanation in the previous work on the Gospels, and before I bring the investigation to its conclusion, I will subsequently address what I intentionally did not touch upon at that time—the opposition to the theological interpretation of the Gospels.

But there is no longer any opposition. In the purity and autonomy of my exposition, I have provided proof that criticism has become master over the subject, and therefore, it is no longer in opposition to theology. I no longer have to fight, but merely present the accomplished fact—that the Gospels are a foreign object to theology and that the latter is excluded from their domain, to which it was previously counted.

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