The History Of The Christian Church Volume 1, Philip Shaff 1819-1893

102 CHAPTER III THE APOSTOLIC AGE essary than learning and perception to draw the right positive, the other negative, and history itself must deconclusions from the facts: sound common sense and cide between them. The facts must rule philosophy, not well-balanced judgment. And when we deal with sacred philosophy the facts. If it can be made out that the life of and supernatural facts, we need first and last a reveren- Christ and the apostolic church can be psychologically tial spirit and that faith which is the organ of the super- and historically explained only by the admission of the natural. It is here where the two schools depart, without supernatural element which they claim, while every othdifference of nationality; for faith is not a national but an er explanation only increases the difficulty, of the probindividual gift. lem and substitutes an unnatural miracle for a supernatThe Two Antagonistic Schools. ural one, the historian has gained the case, and it is for The two theories of the apostolic history, introduced the philosopher to adjust his theory to history. The duty

by Neander and Baur, are antagonistic in principle and of the historian is not to make the facts, but to discover aim, and united only by the moral bond of an honest them, and then to construct his theory wide enough to search for truth. The one is conservative and reconstruc- give them all comfortable room. tive, the other radical and destructive. The former acThe Alleged Antagonism in the Apostolic Church. cepts the canonical Gospels and Acts as honest, truthful, The theory of the Tübingen school starts from the and credible memoirs of the life of Christ and the labors assumption of a fundamental antagonism between Jewof the apostles; the latter rejects a great part of their con- ish or primitive Christianity represented by Peter, and tents as unhistorical myths or legends of the post-apos- Gentile or progressive Christianity represented by Paul, tolic age, and on the other hand gives undue credit to and resolves all the writings of the New Testament into wild heretical romances of the second century. The one tendency writings (Tendenzschriften), which give us not draws an essential line of distinction between truth as history pure and simple, but adjust it to a doctrinal and maintained by the orthodox church, and error as held by practical aim in the interest of one or the other party, heretical parties; the other obliterates the lines and puts or of a compromise between the two.239 The Epistles of the heresy into the inner camp of the apostolic church Paul to the Galatians, Romans, First and Second Coritself. The one proceeds on the basis of faith in God and inthians—which are admitted to be genuine beyond Christ, which implies faith in the supernatural and mi- any doubt, exhibit the anti-Jewish and universal Chrisraculous wherever it is well attested; the other proceeds tianity, of which Paul himself must be regarded as the from disbelief in the supernatural and miraculous as a chief founder. The Apocalypse, which was composed by philosophical impossibility, and tries to explain the gos- the apostle John in 69, exhibits the original Jewish and pel history and the apostolic history from purely natural contracted Christianity, in accordance with his position causes like every other history. The one has a moral and as one of the “pillar”-apostles of the circumcision (Gal. spiritual as well is intellectual interest in the New Testa- 2:9), and it is the only authentic document of the older ment, the other a purely intellectual and critical inter- apostles. est. The one approaches the historical investigation with Baur (Gesch. der christl. Kirche, I., 80 sqq.) and Rethe subjective experience of the divine truth in the heart nan (St. Paul, ch. X.) go so far as to assert that this genuand conscience, and knows and feels Christianity to be a ine John excludes Paul from the list of the apostles (Apoc. power of salvation from sin and error; the other views it 21:14, which leaves no room for more than twelve), and simply as the best among the many religions which are indirectly attacks him as a “false Jew” (Apoc. 2:9; 3:9), destined to give way at last to the sovereignty of reason 239 In this respect Baur differs from the standpoint of and philosophy. The controversy turns on the question Strauss, who in his first Leben Jesu(1835) bad represented whether there is a God in History or not; as the con- the gospel history as an innocent and unconscious myth or temporaneous struggle in natural science turns on the poem of the religious imagination of the second generation of question whether there is a God in nature or not. Belief Christians; but in his second Leben Jesu(1864) he somewhat in a personal God almighty and omnipresent in history modified his view, and at last (1873) he gave up the whole problem as a bad job. A tendency writing implies more or and in nature, implies the possibility of supernatural and less conscious fiction and falsification of history. The Tübinmiraculous revelation. Absolute freedom from prepos- gen critics, however, try to relieve this fictitious literature of session (Voraussetzungslosigkeit such as Strauss demand- the odious feature by referring us to the Jewish and Christian ed) is absolutely impossible, “ex nihilo nihil fit.” There is apocryphal literature which was passed off under honored prepossession on either side of the controversy, the one names without giving any special offence on that score.