Gospels Criticism-1

I. Introduction
Please see figure one for a pictorial summary of the historical periods this study overlaps. Gospels criticism is the same largely cerebral estimation of Scripture as is biblical criticism per se (“Biblical Criticism”), except that the subject is the New Testament; specifically, the subject is the gospels ( Mat 1:1ff, Mar 1:1ff, Luk 1:1ff, Jhn 1:1ff). Beginning in the period called the Enlightenment, or, Age of Reason (“Age of Enlightenment”; note the precursor “Renaissance”), through the post-Enlightenment Bultmannian era (the Bultmannian era coincides with the “NQ” period in our figure one), to contemporary Nihilism, Pluralism, and Relativism (all of which coincide with the “NA” period in our figure one; “Nihilism,” “Pluralism,” “Relativisim”), there has appeared a consistent rejection of the divinity of Jesus Christ in gospels criticism [1]. In turn this rejection-conclusion finds its way into a gullible, theologically Christ-naive, and largely conditioned/predisposed-to-concur society (so it is in the early twenty-first-century). One of the purposes of this study is to prayerfully shine a little light on this theological Christ-naivety in the specific area of gospels criticism—which criticism of course ultimately focuses on Jesus. Our main purpose is to come to understand what lies behind this rejection of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Toward that end, two epistemological methodologies will necessarily be in view throughout the study: Empiricism and Rationalism (“Empiricism”, “Rationalism”).
This study will explore the interrelation of the major movements in gospels criticism concurrent with and since the Enlightenment (Fig. 1) with an eye to the philosophical environment of the time and its influence on the major, that is, trend-setting gospels critics. The study should make clear the profound effect that Empiricism and Rationalism has had on gospels criticism to the extent that gospels criticism has stripped the gospels of their supernatural element, an element that is summed up perfectly in the divinity of Jesus Christ.
II. Empiricism and the Old Quest for the Historical Jesus
With a heretofore authoritarian Church weakened by the Reformation in the West (“Protestant Reformation”), and Islam in the East (“Islam”, “Fall of Constantinople”), and in no little way with impressive advances in mathematics and science suggesting the possibility for far-reaching human self-sufficiency (“Mathematics,” “Science”), the spirit of Empiricism swept across western Europe and north America from the seventeenth to the nineteenth-century unthrottled (Fig. 1). Many people from different walks of life were influenced, but of interest here is that the theologian also fell under its spell. The movement ascribed a primary role to observation-based reason as arbiter of truth (“Reason”). As a product of the Enlightenment [2], this movement delineated most profoundly the dualism in Immanuel Kant’s metaphysics (“Immanuel Kant,” “Metaphysics,” “Philosophy”; Kant was influenced by G. Leibnitz, C. Wolff, and M. Knutzen), wherein lies the movement’s connection to gospels criticism. Significantly, Kant had separated noumenal reality from phenomenal reality: to Kant, noumenal reality is that reality which exists independent of intellectual or sensory perception of it, while phenomenal reality is that reality constructed by the mind as a consequence of the experience of sensory perception/s (“Mind,” “Sense”). Kant’s metaphysics (specifically we are referring to the bold text just above) unambiguously (overtly) entered gospels criticism by way of Ernst Toeltsch (“Troeltsch”), who provided three principles that greatly impacted gospels criticism [3]. The Kantian basis of these principles, that guide (according to Troeltsch) what may or may not be assessed as real (true) about historical events is evident—all three principles discount noumenal reality in favor of phenomenal reality. In short, that which the human mind can perceive to be real through its consistent correlation to human experience is real, and none other. This is an empiricist mindset, and such thinking came to guide gospels criticism with the consequence that the supernatural element became the object of Reason so as to bring it in line with empiricist observable norms (such is the liberal manifestation, which constructs enterprising this-worldly interpretations of the gospels to do just that), or it became the object of a discrediting rationale of elimination (such is the radical manifestation, which basically discounts the supernatural element altogether). So, in keeping with the empiricist thinking of the times, itself a thoroughly confirmatory type of observation-rooted thinking, the gospels criticism considered here followed in like manner, and thus pursued two manners of gospels-text interpretation, whose character we call: (1) liberal-enterprising rationalization of the supernatural element (Liberalism has an another flavor which we point out in the text), and (2) radical-altogether eliminating the possibility of the supernatural. Please compare (3) Fundamentalism (“Fundamentalism”), and for thoroughness consider note seven.
A. The Liberal Manifestation
The Liberalism that began in the late eighteenth-century (updated 06/10/2015, A.s.) and continued until the time of Albert Schweitzer’s Quest for the Historical Jesus (1906; “Albert Schweitzer”; Fig. 1) is a consequence the Empiricism that preceded it. Seeking a plausible this-worldly explanation for the supernatural element in the gospels, the liberals, of whom the thought of H.E.G. Paulus and F.C. Baur is prototypical, either downplayed the miracles and focused on Jesus’ “extraordinary” human qualities as the cause [4], or devised exhaustive mundane cause and effect arguments consistent with the observable natural order of things in this world. It follows that the “Life of Jesus” movement( [5, “Jesus”]), that gave us many varied portraits of the historical Jesus, runs concurrent with this Liberalism, because it is not possible to rationalize the divine aspect of Jesus without completely redrawing him (thus many “portraits” of Him ensued) [6].
Liberalism has another leg wherein the doctrines of Christianity are transformed into an ethical and social Gospel, to the exclusion of its salient salvific, eschatological emphasis. Here we see a shift in emphasis and focus from the divine work of Redemption, singularly to the efficacy and import and value of the (observable) teachings of Jesus in guiding human social behavior and ethics, themselves an observable. Please notice that here is a wicked shift that undermines redemption | Salvation. (1) Why wicked? And (2) why does it undermine Redemption | Salvation? (1) it is a red herring—it is wicked because in all respects it is a very noble emphasis that plays on the human good works quota as the means for Redemption | Salvation; but (2) practically (via works), the realization of this shift cannot redeem one, seeing that even excellent human social behavior and ethics (works) do not satisfy the holiness requirement for Salvation; noble though these works certainly are, and are to be pursued, they are worthless as concerns Redemption | Salvation. Only the work of the Divine, the Perfect, the work of Jesus Christ at Calvary, effects Redemption | Salvation (“A Letter of Invitation,” both as an invitation here and as a Bible-based outline of Redemption | Salvation). In this particular liberalism the theology of Albrecht Ritschl is prototypical. “In Ritschl’s estimation, religious affirmations—regarding God, for example—are strictly ‘value judgments.’ […] A person can come to a sense of his or her own dignity and worth through the idea of a God who is his or her Creator, Savior, and Sustainer. But remember, Ritschl emphasized that this doctrine of a divine being is strictly a value judgment. And the only concept of God that can pass the test of being a value(able) judgment is one in which God is exclusively love—and not holiness, not justice, not judgment.” (Strimple 50; cf. Green 35, “Social Gospel,” “Ethics,” “the Beatitudes,” Mat 5-7, esp. Mat 5:48). The influence of Empiricism is not lost in this other leg because these empiricist-liberals too reason that the human aspect of Jesus: His character, charisma, personality, particularly the force of His teachings, and so on, is the observable dynamic behind the supernatural element: a transformed life, or a healing, for example. Liberals take this one step further, in that they see the dynamic humanity (dynamic personhood) of Jesus as the observable dynamic behind Christianity on the whole (and thus the Church is not the divine work of the Holy Spirit [=DUNAMAI-power] in that regard, “Early Christendom”, Immanence). So what of the nature miracles then in this context? How can Jesus’ personhood explain these miracles? Please notice that for the liberal, the nature miracles feed more in the explanatory-badlands of Troeltsch’s principles (for example the “Swoon Theory” of Jesus’ resurrection [“Swoon Theory”]), than in the explanatory-badlands of the dynamic (“volcanic” as one critic puts it) personhood of Jesus.
B. The Radical Manifestation
Whereas the empiricist-liberal explains Jesus’ divinity and the miraculous in such a way as to satisfy Troeltsch’s principles [3], the empiricist-radical flat rejects these as implausible and accordingly interprets the texts in some discrediting manner. Here H.S. Reimarus, D. F. Strauss, and W. Wrede are prototypical (Rudolf Bultmann, considered later, belongs here). Reimarus was a Deist (typical of empiricists); he considered the gospels to be entirely fraudulent [8]. Strauss introduced the concept of myth (“Arianism,” “Myth”) into gospels criticism (Bultmann greatly widened its application, and the popularity of the idea; more on that below). Wrede thought that the gospel of Mark was a production by the Marcan community, that the messianic texts therein were never uttered by Jesus. One can still see here consideration of Troeltsch’s principles, but they are assimilated quite differently than by the liberals: the this-worldly explanation of the divinity of Jesus (the liberal approach) is as much an assault on the radical’s empiricism as is accepting it—he must flat reject it in favor of Kantian phenomenological reality.
III. Empiricism and the New Quest for the Historical Jesus
First there enters here a definitive icon-subtlety by way of Martin Kahler that probably set the course for the New Quest (Strimple 89-101). A little over a decade before before Albert Schweitzer’s published conclusion stating the same (1906-1892), it is apparent that Kahler had already recognized that the Old Quest gospels historical and literary critical methodology was constructing an inaccurate portrait of Jesus (not least, owing to subjectivity). The very title to Kahler’s 1892 essay reveals the subtlety and said course well—when appreciated in the title’s German language:
Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus (highlighting added),
We would translate it into English so:
‘The so-called historical Jesus [literally-and the, figuratively-over against the] storied [=recorded and/or celebrated in Story-enter Strauss | Bultmann, Myth], biblical Messiah’,
where the yellow highlighting references the Jesus constructed by Old Quest gospels criticism (inaccurate, thus “so-called” is utilized in the essay’s title), and the cyan highlighting references Messiah Jesus of the kerygma (“Kerygma” in the pejorative, propagandizing sense we suspect). Kahler’s icon-subtlety—circumventing the quintessential Jesus of history (the real Jesus of history, supposedly unattainable in the estimation of prevailing critical scholarship)—in favor of the Messianic, notwithstanding, only-celebrated-in-story, icon Jesus, whose Story (death, burial and resurrection) attests to His Messiahship, went viral in its application after Rudolf Bultmann gave Kahler’s icon-subtlety a not so subtle existential twist in the context of a new literary critical method dubbed Form Criticism (“Form Criticism”). The New Quest was inaugurated in 1953 (Fig. 1)—some forty-seven years after Albert Schweitzer sounded the doom of the Old Quest—by Ernst Kasemann, who was a a student of Bultmann [Strimple 136], [9]. So, while the Old Quest sought to apprehend the real Jesus of history by way of its peculiar, empiricist-based gospels criticism, the New Quest, with its own peculiar, empiricist-based gospels criticism, sought to apprehend the real Jesus of history by apprehending Jesus’ existential self-understanding ( as defined by Martin Heidegger’s “authentic” existence—the observable; “Existentialism,” “Heidegger,” cf. “Tillich”), and avoid (so goes the thinking) remaking the real Jesus of history in the dress of the critic (per Schweitzer’s critique of the Old Quest in 1906) [10].
A. Rudolf Bultmann
Though Kasemann is credited with launching the New Quest, Rudolf Bultmann provided its methodology and momentum; the New Quest players were all in some form (to the left, center, or right) adherents of the thought of Rudolf Bultmann (Strimple 135). In Bultmann intersects the gospels-critic rationale of D.F. Strauss (Gospel mythology), W. Wrede (radical skepticism), Wilhelm Bousset (History of Religions interpretation with Hellenistic Church as Gospels source, [“History of Religions,” “History of Religions School”]), the philosophical rationale of Martin Heidegger, and the historical | literary criticism of Hermann Gunkel (Form Criticism) [11]. These men and others like them provided for Bultmann (and his disciples) both the backdrop from which sprang a hyper-liberal (see above) theological concept (apprehend the existential self-understanding of Jesus) and the framework for a peculiar literary criticism “science” which came to full bloom in Form Criticism [12]. Bultmann’s form criticism as applied to the gospels, in its goal to discover the oral tradition and in turn the true, wider Tradition behind the gospels, reflects an empiricism not unlike the modern scientific method [13]. And here is where the application led him: “As Bultmann saw it, there is very little in the Gospels that is not either secondary accretion or editorial addition by the Evangelist. The accounts of Jesus’ birth, his temptation in the desert, his transfiguration, his miracles, his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, most of the story of his passion, his resurrection, his ascension—all are pure myth. Indeed, although Bultmann rejected out of hand Bruno Bauer’s denial of the historicity of Jesus, so little was Bultmann concerned about ‘Christ after the flesh’ (2Cr 5:16 KJV) that he could say that he would not mind if some preferred ‘to put the name of “Jesus” in quotation marks and let it stand as an abbreviation for the historical phenomenon with which we are concerned [enter Kahler’s icon-subtlety].’” (Strimple 117). Stymied by the observer effect—his own and others’, Bultmann pivoted and radically retooled his methodology: “As we have seen, Bultmann was willing to concede to the historical Jesus of Nazareth virtually no significance for our Christian faith. Affirming the post-Enlightenment principle that historical scholarship can at best produce tentative judgments of probability, Bultmann concluded that Christian faith cannot rest upon the never certain judgments of the historian. He leaped Lessing’s ‘big ditch’ by means of the existential decision of a believing response to the Christian kerygma. He turned the Lutheran (Pauline) affirmation of justification by faith alone in Christ alone—the incarnate Christ who redemptively died and rose again in history—into the affirmation of justification by faith alone in the call to an existential decision alone—the positive continually-to-be-repeated decision to live an authentic existence of openness to the future. Bultmann insisted that ‘our ultimate concern is not with historical actuality [not observable] but with kerygmatic efficacy [observable] and existential significance [observable].’ Therefore, Bultmann professed no ultimate interest (as contrasted with the merely curious interest of the historian) in das Was of Jesus (‘what’ he said) or das Wie of Jesus (‘how’ he acted). Nevertheless he continued (for reasons unclear to many) to profess the need to affirm das Das of Jesus (‘that’ he once lived). It is at this point that some of Bultmann’s admirers have criticized him for being too conservative, too orthodox, in his theology—a criticism that may seem amazing to evangelical Christians!” (Strimple 128, red font added). See also “Gospels Criticism (Part Two)”.
IV. Rationalism and the New Age
The end of the twentieth-century (roughly the 1980s) heralded a major paradigm shift in gospels criticism (Fig. 1), one in which the Empiricism that heretofore guided it shifted to Rationalism (“Empiricism,” “Rationalism”–see also “Humanism”, updated 07/27/2018, A.s.). The sciences have remained and no doubt will always be fundamentally empirical disciplines (“Science”). This gospels criticism shift is evidenced by Relativism, particularly the relativization of Observation, which by default disqualifies Empiricism. The biblical texts (the God-given observables) are no longer apprehended from the vantage point of their literal content, historical context, and much less so from their authors’ intended meaning (“in the text” phenomenons or “behind the text” neumenons), but from the vantage point of the enterprising reader (“in front of the text” ‘krisisons’ [‘judgmentons’ if you will] if we may coin an apropos descriptor). This unbridled “reader-oriented” biblical criticism [14] is part of a plurality of modern biblical criticism that includes genres like Liberation Hermeneutics ( Strimple 152, Green 329 ff), Feminist Hermeneutics ([part of the Liberation Hermeneutics genre] Strimple 152, Green 349ff), and Canonical Criticism ( Strimple 153, Green 370ff, “Biblical Criticism”), among others (“Hermeneutics”, “Pluralism”). Contemporary pluralism marks a near complete abandonment of centuries of critical scholarly effort, largely value-questionable though it be.
V. Concluding Comments
This study explored the fabric of the major movements in gospels criticism concurrent with and since the Enlightenment (Fig. 1). We wanted to understand what motivated some of the gospels critics of this period to reject the divinity of Jesus Christ and generally to reject the miraculous, the supernatural, related by the Gospel record. To reject, or to accept for that matter, anything, presupposes decision-making, and decision-making presupposes knowledge, appropriate knowledge by which to decide. Thus the study was intimately bound up with epistemology—which is the study of knowledge (what it is, how it is acquired, how it is utilized, and so forth). Toward that end we looked at two epistemological methodologies—empiricism (external to self, evidential, experiential knowledge, “Empiricism”), and rationalism (innate, deductive, purely intellectual knowledge “Rationalism”).
Within the period under consideration (Enlightenment to twenty-first-century), gospels criticism unfolded in three broad phases, of which the first two may be characterized by a certain “quest” to discover the focal point of the Gospel, its main Character, namely the real Jesus who ministered in the first-century AD, and these two are what are called an “old quest” and a “new quest.” The third, ushered in by a near abandonment of the critical scholarship particular to the first two, is hard to pin down, but Pluralism, an untethered (from the Focal Point) sort of criticism characterizes it rather well.
The old quest began in the late eighteenth-century (dated to the work of Reimarus; updated 06/10/2015, A.s.) and continued until the time of Albert Schweitzer’s Quest for the Historical Jesus in 1906, which sounded its doom owing to Schweitzer exposing not least subjectivity (Fig. 1). We understand the old quest as an empiricist type of quest, one that ascribed a primary role to observation-based reason as arbiter of truth. It was a product of the Enlightenment, and delineated quite profoundly the dualism in Immanuel Kant’s metaphysics. The important thing about Kant in our context is that he separated noumenal reality from phenomenal reality, where to Kant noumenal reality is that reality which exists independent of intellectual or sensory perception of it (sort of that reality which lies “behind” the object), and phenomenal reality is that reality constructed by the mind as a consequence of the experience of sensory perception, quite tangible. Significantly, Kant’s metaphysics overtly entered gospels criticism by way of Ernst Toeltsch, who proposed three Kantian-based principles [3]—in short the principles say that which the human mind can perceive to be real through its consistent correlation to human experience is real, and none other. This reflects an empiricist mindset, and this manner of thinking guided gospels criticism in the old quest, with the consequence that interpretation of the gospels found ways to satisfy these empiricist principles—basically in two variations, a liberal variation, which leaned/leans hard on the extraordinary personhood of Jesus to explain the miraculous, or leaned/leans hard on His teachings (from which arose a largely social and ethical Gospel). Whereas the empiricist-liberal explains Jesus’ divinity and the miraculous in such a way as to satisfy Troeltsch’s principles, the other variation here—the empiricist-radical—flat rejects these as implausible and accordingly interprets the texts in some discrediting manner. It is through the radical, for example, that the notion of Myth entered gospels criticism. These critics are hard-core empiricists, embracing as truth nothing but phenomenal reality.
The new quest was inaugurated by Ernst Kasemann, a student of Rudolf Bultmann, in 1953 (Fig. 1). Martin Kahler probably anticipated the new quest in an essay written in 1892 entitled
The so-called historical Jesus and the storied, biblical Messiah.
Recognizing that the old quest gospels historical and literary critical methodology was constructing an inaccurate portrait of Jesus, not least owing to subjectivity, long before Albert Schweitzer’s published conclusion of the same, Kahler heralded what would be the mainstay of the new quest: circumventing the real Jesus of history in favor of the Messianic, notwithstanding, only-celebrated-in-story, icon Jesus, whose Story (death, burial and resurrection) attests to His Messiahship (Messiah Jesus but of the Kerygma). We referred to this as “Kahler’s icon-subtlety” in the main text. Rudolf Bultmann saw in this icon-subtlety the vehicle for an existential Gospel, and it is in that application that the New Quest came to full bloom. So, while the old quest sought to apprehend the real Jesus of history by way of its empiricist-based gospels criticism, the new quest, with its own, but different, empiricist-based gospels criticism sought to apprehend the real Jesus of history by apprehending Jesus’ existential self-understanding ( as defined by Martin Heidegger’s “authentic” existence—the observable), and avoid (so was the thinking) remaking the real Jesus of history in the dress of the critic, per Schweitzer’s critique of the Old Quest in 1906.
The 1980s heralded a major paradigm shift in gospels criticism (Fig. 1), one in which the empiricism that heretofore guided it shifted to rationalism. We see this gospels criticism shift evidenced by relativism, particularly the relativization of observation, which of necessity disqualifies empiricism. The biblical texts (God-given observables as we understand them) are no longer appreciated from the vantage point of their literal content, historical context, and much less so from their authors’ intended meaning (“in the text” phenomenons or “behind the text” neumenons), but from the vantage point of the enterprising reader (“in front of the text” ‘krisisons’). This “reader-oriented” biblical criticism is but part of a plurality of modern biblical criticism that includes genres like Liberation Hermeneutics, Feminist Hermeneutics, and Canonical Criticism, among others.
Contemporary pluralism marks a near complete abandonment of centuries of critical scholarly effort. Is this shift retreat on the heels of defeat? No way!, it is stubborn nonsubmission on the heels of rebellion. This abrupt change was occasioned because generally speaking the spirit of gospels criticism (not just in the scholarly ranks is meant) shows itself to be stubbornly sympathetic to the human spirit to resist authority, which spirit exploits the guiding principle of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy, namely, the autonomy of human reason. New Age Rationalism is perhaps more Kantian in that regard than ever before. ‘…The autonomy of human reason…’?! God have mercy on us and forgive this egregious affront toward Him, for one might as well be saying here ‘…the autonomy of humankind…’—which, hands down, is a repudiation of the authority (indeed, sovereignty), of Jehovah God as related by His Word, even the Christian Bible. It follows that Jehovah God, and His Word, are the salient hindrances to the autonomy of human reason (“Revelation Chapter Seventeen Commentary”). Specifically, why? It is not hard to appreciate that there can only be one Sovereign (this needs no proof!); either it is God, or it is humankind, and if it is God (amen!), then humankind is not autonomous. Taking this to another level, these things Satan knows well, for it is precisely his nature, this stubborn autonomous spirit, that is (still) at work in the world in the twenty-first century going forward (Gen 3:1-5, Eph 6:12). Does he presume to exalt himself above the throne of Jehovah God by utilizing self-deified, autonomous-rationalist humankind, whom nevertheless he hates, as steppingstone-stooges by which to elevate himself (Isa 14:12-14, Eze 28:17, “Revelation Chapter Thirteen Commentary:Perched for a Kill”)?
Praised be your Name great Jehovah God, even you, who reigns in my heart, and graciously speaks to my mind…