EIGHTH LECTURE.

THE MODERN CRITICAL THEORY OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.

N the preceding Lecture we adduced the origin of the Christian Church, and the moral regeneration of the world which sprang therefrom, as a principal argument for the reality of our Lord's resurrection. But what if the formation of Christianity, its life and its doctrines, should prove to be merely the natural historical result of a necessary process of development? Clearly, if this, the greatest phenomenon in the world's history, can be shown to be a merely natural link in the chain of events, then the miraculous and all supernatural revelations from God are absolutely eliminated from the history of mankind. The Tübingen critical school has led the van in this last and most comprehensive attempt, made under an inward compulsion by modern criticism, to exclude God from history. For as long as men could not help regarding Christianity, at least in respect of its doctrine, as lying beyond all analogies of human wisdom, it was in itself, in the uniqueness of its spiritual purport, an actual proof for the truth of supernatural revelation,—an immediate attestation of its Founder's divinity. Nor was it then of much use to quarrel about the external history and its miraculous or natural origin. Only if the fundamental and essential ideas of Christianity can be fully connected with natural and human factors already extant, and shown to be their intrinsically necessary development, would the battle be thoroughly and once for all decided in favour of the modern anti-miraculous view of history. For this reason the chiet efforts of the critical school have been directed towards the elucidation of primitive Christianity and its internal formation, towards the proof of a connection between its doctrines and the elements of spiritual culture which were already extant, and especially towards the investigation of its records.

Our entire research into the existence of the supernatural and of the miraculous can, therefore, only be completed by an examination of the modern critical theory as to primitive Christianity. We have gained a firm foothold for this undertaking by our discussion of the resurrection,-as being the most decisive epoch in the history of Christianity, the cornerstone on which the entire edifice of Christian teaching was erected, and also by our consideration of St. Paul's conversion. If our opponents should, nevertheless, succeed in eliminating the supernatural element from the growth of doctrine in the apostolic age, we should find it difficult to retain this factor even in the Person of Christ. If, on the contrary, we can prove to them that it is absolutely impossible to explain the origin and growth of Christianity from merely natural and historical sources, without acknowledging the interference of a supernatural factor, then they can have no rational ground for denying the miraculous in general, but will be compelled to acknowledge the interposition of supernatural divine, powers in all periods of the world's history.

But there is another reason yet why the discussion of this question should form the conclusion of our investigations. Of all modern opponents of our old faith, we now stand before the greatest, whom hitherto we have only mentioned cursorily. Writing as he did, only for the learned world, his name is less known to the public at large than those of Strauss, Renan, and others, but it will remain inscribed in the history of modern theology when that of many others, now known to every one, will have long since been effaced. Dr. Ferdinand Christian von Baur, professor of theology at Tübingen (died 2d December 1860), was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, theological scholar of this century; after the death of Neander, the most notable historian of the Church and her doctrines, not only in Germany, but in the world; the most indefatigable of investigators, especially as regards the history of primitive Christianity, in the elucidation of which he has deserved well of theology. He stands a head and shoulders above all other modern opponents of the miraculous. From him they all learn and draw their supplies; they are fain to appropriate the fruits of his enormous diligence if they wish

not merely to beat the air, but methodically to storm the citadel of our Christian faith. Strauss himself, in the presence of this man, confesses his backwardness: "I expected," says he, "with the presumption of youth, to storm the fortress by a single assault; but it remained for my greater master to undertake a scientific siege, before which its walls must fall."

And, in truth, if human power, human diligence and acuteness, could ever bring about the overthrow of our faith, this man would have accomplished it. But our present theology is daily becoming more convinced that he was incompetent to this task, and that, in spite of all his unutterable exertions, he did not succeed in proving the merely natural origin of Christianity. This is one of the surest signs that the rock upon which our faith is founded is absolutely indestructible. To impress you with this conviction is the last aim of these lectures.

For this purpose, we will first make ourselves acquainted with the principles of Baur and his school, and their representation of primitive Christianity thereupon founded; and second, we will endeavour to give a critique of their theory.

1. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE TUEBINGEN SCHOOL.

Baur once blamed Strauss for venturing to write a critique of the gospel history without a preceding critical investigation of the Gospels; and we ourselves have seen that Strauss passes over this point too lightly, even in his new edition of the Life of Christ. It is this gap which the Tübingen School endeavours to fill up. The weak point of Strauss is the strong point with these critics, or at least that to which they devote their chief attention. Their maxim is, that we must recur from the criticism of history to that of the historical writings. No certain conclusions as to the history of the life of Christ, or the origin of the Christian Church, can be arrived at until we have discovered by whom, under what influences, and with what tendency the different books of the New Testament were written. Thus the chief importance of the Tübingen School-i.e. of Baur and his followers, Schwegler, R. Köstlin, Zeller, Hilgenfeld, Holsten, etc.-lies in the critical investiga

tion into the origin of the New Testament, and the history of the apostolic and post-apostolic age, with its peculiarly constituted parties.

In order to comprehend the motive principle of these investigations, we must remember that the zenith of this school's development coincides with that of the Hegelian philosophy at Tübingen. The whole of Baur's conception of history is accordingly pervaded by the Hegelian philosophy. Though he may gradually have overcome much of its onesidedness, he was to the last governed by its fundamental idea, viz. the immanence of God and the world, according to which the relation. of the divine and human spirit must be conceived as essential anity, not as personal distinction and intercourse. God does not live and reign above the world and its changes; He is only realized in and with it, and the history of the world is the process of absolute Being, which developes with an iron necessity according to natural laws. All that appears in nature and history is a revelation of the eternal Idea. But the latter is never fully realized in a single individual, only in the general development taken as a whole. The individual, as such, always stands in a certain contradictory relation to the universal Idea, negatives it, and must therefore itself be negatived. This eternally restless and aimless process is the continuous negation of a negation in which one phenomenon always calls forth the next, so that each can be connected with the preceding one and explained from it. In this monotonous path the world's history, and likewise the history of the Church, as of all religious development, is ever marching on.

With this fundamental view, Baur could not but consider the doctrines" of an eternally self-perfected personality of God, of a spontaneous creation of the world, of sin and moral perversion originating from the freedom of man, of man's personal immortality, as imperfect notions of religious belief. But above all he must, if consistent, reject the doctrines of a truly supernatural revelation, and of a miraculous, unique union

1 Not until later, when Baur's historical principles had been long since settled, did he appear to recognise the personality of God somewhat more fully; when, e.g., he says: "If God be truly conceived as a Spirit, then either He must be as such immediately personal, or else it is not evident what the attribute of personality can contribute to the conception of God as the absolute Being."

of God and man in Christ, and of sinless perfection in the historical Christ as the Redeemer and Saviour of the world. These he must transmute into the idea of the essential unity of the divine and human spirit, and of a continuous, necessary reconciliation and union of both, which must be principally accomplished by the moral self-development of man." 1

From this it is evident that, on the standpoint of Baur, the miraculous is impossible. Everything takes place in a necessary natural development, in which one phenomenon begets another, and in which, therefore, nothing can form an absolutely new beginning (which is the nature of a miracle, vide p. 293), but all is only the result of germs and causes already extant. Not even Christianity may form any exception to this absolutely valid law. It must therefore allow of being included as a historical phenomenon in the universal development of the world, by being considered as a period in the general development of religious consciousness. It had no miraculous beginning, nor has there appeared in Christ any absolutely new principle which could have been the sudden and unmediated commencement of a new development. Christianity is only the natural unity of all pre-Christian schools of thought, "the ripe fruit of all the higher longings that had hitherto stirred amongst all branches of the great human family." "2 Baur will not acknowledge any other view of history as entirely unbiassed, or "free from presuppositions" as he likes to call it. For him a strictly scientific research is only that which excludes all supernatural interference of God in history, and seeks to derive every phenomenon from purely natural causes. Hence to this day the peculiar fashion, prevalent amongst the opponents of all positive belief, of acknowledging as “scientific” only those theories which tend to deny the supernatural, and of accusing all others of being "biassed by dogmatic presuppositions" and "unscientific :" as if a belief in the supernatural must exclude strict logic, and did not rather improve it; as if it darkened our rational knowledge, and did not rather enlighten and extend it.

Baur maintained these anti-miraculous principles to the last. Cf. this pam.

1 Landerer, Worte der Erinnerung an F. C. v. Baur, p. 38. phlet also for the following pages.

2 Strauss, Leben Jesu, p. 167.