The Quest of the Historical Jesus

- By Albert Schweitzer
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French-German theologian and philosopher (1875–1965) For the film, see Albert Schweitzer (film). For the American artist, see Albert Schweitzer (artist). The ReverendAlbert SchweitzerOMSchweitzer in 1955Born(1875-01-14)14 January 1875Kaysersberg, Alsace–Lorraine, German EmpireDied4 September 1965(1965-09-04) (aged 90)Lambaréné, GabonCitizenshipGermany (until 1919)France (from 1919)Alma materUniversity of StrasbourgKnown forQuest for the historical JesusReverence for LifeConsistent "thorough-going" eschatology (posthumously)Spouse Helene Bresslau ​ ​(m. 1912; died 1957)​Awards Goethe Prize (1928) Nobel Peace Prize (1952) James Cook Medal (1959) Scientific careerFieldsMedicinemusicologyphilosophytheologyDoctoral advisorTheobald ZieglerHeinrich Julius HoltzmannRobert Wollenberg [de] Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer OM (German: [ˈalbɛʁt ˈʃvaɪ̯t͡sɐ] ⓘ; 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian polymath. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. A Lutheran minister, Schweitzer challenged both the secular view of the historical Jesus as depicted by the historical-critical method current at this time, as well as the traditional Christian view. His contributions to the interpretation of Pauline Christianity concern the role of Paul's mysticism of "being in Christ" as primary and the doctrine of justification by faith as secondary. He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his philosophy of "Reverence for Life",[1] becoming the eighth Frenchman to be awarded that prize. His philosophy was expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer in Lambaréné, French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon). As a music scholar and organist, he studied the music of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach and influenced the Organ Reform Movement (Orgelbewegung). Early years[edit] Statue of Albert Schweitzer in Strasbourg Albert Schweitzer's birthplace in Kaysersberg, now in Alsace in France Schweitzer in 1912. Oil on canvas painting by Émile Schneider (Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art) Schweitzer was born 14 January 1875 in Kaysersberg in Alsace, in what had less than four years previously become the Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine in the German Empire after being French for more than two centuries; he later became a citizen of France after World War I, when Alsace became French territory again. He was the son of Adèle (née Schillinger) and Louis Théophile Schweitzer.[2][3] He spent his childhood in Gunsbach, also in Alsace, where his father, the local Lutheran-Evangelical pastor of the EPCAAL, taught him how to play music.[4] The tiny village would become home to the Association Internationale Albert Schweitzer (AIAS).[5] The medieval parish church of Gunsbach was shared by the Protestant and Catholic congregations, which held their prayers in different areas at different times on Sundays. This compromise arose after the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years' War. Schweitzer, the pastor's son, grew up in this exceptional environment of religious tolerance, and developed the belief that true Christianity should always work towards a unity of faith and purpose.[6] Schweitzer's first language was the Alsatian dialect of German. At the Mulhouse gymnasium he received his "Abitur" (the certificate at the end of secondary education) in 1893. He studied organ in Mulhouse from 1885 to 1893 with Eugène Munch, organist at the Protestant cathedral, who inspired Schweitzer with his enthusiasm for the music of German composer Richard Wagner.[7] In 1893, he played for the French organist Charles-Marie Widor (at Saint-Sulpice, Paris), for whom Johann Sebastian Bach's organ music contained a mystic sense of the eternal. Widor, deeply impressed, agreed to teach Schweitzer without fee, and a great and influential friendship thus began.[8] From 1893 Schweitzer studied Protestant theology at the Kaiser Wilhelm University in Strasbourg. There he also received instruction in piano and counterpoint from professor Gustav Jacobsthal, and associated closely with Ernest Munch, the brother of his former teacher, organist of St William church, who was also a passionate admirer of J. S. Bach's music.[9] Schweitzer served his one-year compulsory military service in 1894. Schweitzer saw many operas of Richard Wagner in Strasbourg (under Otto Lohse) and in 1896 he managed to afford a visit to the Bayreuth Festival to see Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal, both of which impressed him. In 1898, he returned to Paris to write a PhD dissertation on The Religious Philosophy of Kant at the Sorbonne, and to study in earnest with Widor. Here he often met with the elderly Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. He also studied piano at that time with Marie Jaëll.[10] In 1899, Schweitzer spent the summer semester at the University of Berlin and eventually obtained his theology degree at the University of Strasbourg.[11][12][13][14] He published his PhD thesis at the University of Tübingen in 1899.[15] In 1905, Schweitzer began his study of medicine at the University of Strasbourg, culminating in the degree of M.D. in 1913.[11][14] Music[edit] Schweitzer rapidly gained prominence as a musical scholar and organist, dedicated also to the rescue, restoration and study of historic pipe organs. With theological insight, he interpreted the use of pictorial and symbolical representation in J. S. Bach's religious music. In 1899, he astonished Widor by explaining figures and motifs in Bach's Chorale Preludes as painter-like tonal and rhythmic imagery illustrating themes from the words of the hymns on which they were based. They were works of devotional contemplation in which the musical design corresponded to literary ideas, conceived visually. Widor had not grown up with knowledge of the old Lutheran hymns.[16] The exposition of these ideas, encouraged by Widor and Munch, became Schweitzer's last task, and appeared in the masterly study J. S. Bach: Le Musicien-Poète, written in French and published in 1905. There was great demand for a German edition, but, instead of translating it, he decided to rewrite it.[17] The result was two volumes (J. S. Bach), which were published in 1908 and translated into English by Ernest Newman in 1911.[18] Ernst Cassirer, a contemporaneous German philosopher, called it "one of the best interpretations" of Bach.[19] During its preparation Schweitzer became a friend of Cosima Wagner, then resident in Strasbourg, with whom he had many theological and musical conversations, exploring his view of Bach's descriptive music, and playing the major Chorale Preludes for her at the Temple Neuf.[20] Schweitzer's interpretative approach greatly influenced the modern understanding of Bach's music. He became a welcome guest at the Wagners' home, Wahnfried.[21] He also corresponded with composer Clara Faisst, who became a good friend.[22] The Choir Organ at St Thomas' Church, Strasbourg, designed in 1905 on principles defined by Schweitzer His pamphlet "The Art of Organ Building and Organ Playing in Germany and France" (1906,[23] republished with an appendix on the state of the organ-building industry in 1927) effectively launched the 20th-century Orgelbewegung, which turned away from romantic extremes and rediscovered baroque principles—although this sweeping reform movement in organ building eventually went further than Schweitzer had intended. In 1909, he addressed the Third Congress of the International Society of Music at Vienna on the subject. Having circulated a questionnaire among players and organ-builders in several European countries, he produced a very considered report.[24] This provided the basis for the International Regulations for Organ Building. He envisaged instruments in which the French late-romantic full-organ sound should work integrally with the English and German romantic reed pipes, and with the classical Alsace Silbermann organ resources and baroque flue pipes, all in registers regulated (by stops) to access distinct voices in fugue or counterpoint capable of combination without loss of distinctness: different voices singing the same music together. Schweitzer also studied piano under Isidor Philipp, head of the piano department at the Paris Conservatory. In 1905, Widor and Schweitzer were among the six musicians who founded the Paris Bach Society, a choir dedicated to performing J. S. Bach's music, for whose concerts Schweitzer took the organ part regularly until 1913. He was also appointed organist for the Bach Concerts of the Orféo Català at Barcelona, Spain, and often travelled there for that purpose.[16] He and Widor collaborated on a new edition of Bach's organ works, with detailed analysis of each work in three languages (English, French, German). Schweitzer, who insisted that the score should show Bach's notation with no additional markings, wrote the commentaries for the Preludes and Fugues, and Widor those for the Sonatas and Concertos: six volumes were published in 1912–14. Three more, to contain the Chorale Preludes with Schweitzer's analyses, were to be worked on in Africa, but these were never completed, perhaps because for him they were inseparable from his evolving theological thought.[25] On departure for Lambaréné in 1913, he was presented with a pedal piano, a piano with pedal attachments to operate like an organ pedal-keyboard.[26] Built especially for the tropics, it was delivered by river in a huge dug-out canoe to Lambaréné, packed in a zinc-lined case. At first, he regarded his new life as a renunciation of his art, and fell out of practice, but after some time he resolved to study and learn by heart the works of Bach, Mendelssohn, Widor, César Franck, and Max Reger systematically.[27] It became his custom to play during the lunch hour and on Sunday afternoons. Schweitzer's pedal piano was still in use at Lambaréné in 1946.[28] According to a visitor, Dr. Gaine Cannon, of Balsam Grove, N.C., the old, dilapidated piano-organ was still being played by Dr. Schweitzer in 1962, and stories told that "his fingers were still lively" on the old instrument at 88 years of age. Sir Donald Tovey dedicated his conjectural completion of Bach's The Art of Fugue to Schweitzer. Schweitzer's recordings of organ-music, and his innovative recording technique, are described below. One of his pupils was conductor and composer Hans Münch. Theology[edit] Saint-Nicolas, Strasbourg In 1899, Schweitzer became a deacon at the church of Saint Nicholas in Strasbourg. In 1900, with the completion of his licentiate in theology, he was ordained as curate, and that year he witnessed the Oberammergau Passion Play. In the following year he became provisional Principal of the Theological College of Saint Thomas, from which he had just graduated, and in 1903 his appointment was made permanent.[note 1] In 1906, he published Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung [History of Life-of-Jesus research]. This book, which established his reputation, was first published in English in 1910 as The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Under this title the book became famous in the English-speaking world. A second German edition was published in 1913, containing theologically significant revisions and expansions: this revised edition did not appear in English until 2001. In 1931, he published Mystik des Apostels Paulus (The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle);[34] a second edition was published in 1953. The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906)[edit] Main article: The Quest of the Historical Jesus In The Quest, Schweitzer criticised the liberal view put forward by liberal and romantic scholars during the first quest for the historical Jesus. Schweitzer maintained that the life of Jesus must be interpreted in the light of Jesus' own convictions, which reflected late Jewish eschatology and apocalypticism. Schweitzer writes: The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth and died to give his work its final consecration never existed. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in a historical garb. This image has not been destroyed from outside; it has fallen to pieces...[35] Instead of these liberal and romantic views, Schweitzer wrote that Jesus and his followers expected the imminent end of the world.[36] Schweitzer cross-referenced the many New Testament verses declaring imminent fulfilment of the promise of the World's ending within the lifetime of Jesus's original followers.[37][failed verification] He wrote that in his view, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus speaks of a "tribulation", with his "coming in the clouds with great power and glory" (St. Mark), and states that it will happen but it has not: "This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled" (St. Matthew, 24:34) or, "have taken place" (Luke 21:32). Similarly, in 1st Peter 1:20, "Christ, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world but was manifest in these last times for you", as well as "But the end of all things is at hand" (1 Peter 4:7) and "Surely, I come quickly." (Revelation 22:20).The cover of Albert Schweitzer's The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle Schweitzer concluded his treatment of Jesus with what has been called the most famous words of twentieth-century theology: "He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word: 'Follow thou me' and sets us to the task which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is."[38] The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (1931)[edit] In The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, Schweitzer first distinguishes between two categories of mysticism: primitive and developed.[39] Primitive mysticism "has not yet risen to a conception of the universal, and is still confined to naive views of earthly and super-earthly, temporal and eternal". Additionally, he argues that this view of a "union with the divinity, brought about by efficacious ceremonies, is found even in quite primitive religions".[39] On the other hand, a more developed form of mysticism can be found in the Greek mystery-cults that were popular in first-century A.D. society. These included the cults of Attis, Osiris, and Mithras. A developed form of mysticism is attained when the "conception of the universal is reached and a man reflects upon his relation to the totality of being and to Being in itself". Schweitzer claims that this form of mysticism is more intellectual and can be found "among the Brahmans and in the Buddha, in Platonism, in Stoicism, in Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and Hegel".[40] Next, Schweitzer poses the question: "Of what precise kind then is the mysticism of Paul?" He locates Paul between the two extremes of primitive mysticism and developed mysticism. Paul stands high above primitive mysticism, due to his intellectual writings, but never speaks of being one with God or being in God. Instead, he conceives of sonship to God as "mediated and effected by means of the mystical union with Christ".[41] He summarizes Pauline mysticism as "being in Christ" rather than "being in God". Paul's imminent eschatology (from his background in Jewish eschatology) causes him to believe that the kingdom of God has not yet come and that Christians are now living in the time of Christ. Christ-mysticism holds the field until God-mysticism becomes possible, which is in the near future.[42] Therefore, Schweitzer argues that Paul is the only theologian who does not claim that Christians can have an experience of "being-in-God". Rather, Paul uses the phrase "being-in-Christ" to illustrate how Jesus is a mediator between the Christian community and God. Additionally, Schweitzer explains how the experience of "being-in-Christ" is not a "static partaking in the spiritual being of Christ, but as the real co-experiencing of His dying and rising again". The "realistic" partaking in the mystery of Jesus is only possible within the solidarity of the Christian community.[42] One of Schweitzer's major arguments in The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle is that Paul's mysticism, marked by his phrase "being in Christ", gives the clue to the whole of Pauline theology. Rather than reading justification by faith as the main topic of Pauline thought, which has been the most popular argument set forward by Martin Luther, Schweitzer argues that Paul's emphasis was on the mystical union with God by "being in Christ". Jaroslav Pelikan, in his foreword to The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, points out that: the relation between the two doctrines was quite the other way around: 'The doctrine of the redemption, which is mentally appropriated through faith, is only a fragment from the more comprehensive mystical redemption-doctrine, which Paul has broken off and polished to give him the particular refraction which he requires.[43] Paul's "realism" versus Hellenistic "symbolism"[edit] Schweitzer contrasts Paul's "realistic" dying and rising with Christ to the "symbolism" of Hellenism. Although Paul is widely influenced by Hellenistic thought, he is not controlled by it. Schweitzer explains that Paul focused on the idea of fellowship with the divine being through the "realistic" dying and rising with Christ rather than the "symbolic" Hellenistic act of becoming like Christ through deification.[44] After baptism, Christians are continually renewed throughout their lifetimes due to participation in the dying and rising with Christ (most notably through the Sacraments). On the other hand, the Hellenist "lives on the store of experience which he acquired in the initiation" and is not continually affected by a shared communal experience.[45] Another major difference between Paul's "realism" and Hellenistic "symbolism" is the exclusive nature of the former and the inclusive nature of the latter. Schweitzer unabashedly emphasizes the fact that "Paul's thought follows predestinarian lines".[46] He explains, "only the man who is elected thereto can enter into relation with God".[47] Although every human being is invited to become a Christian, only those who have undergone the initiation into the Christian community through baptism can share in the "realistic" dying and rising with Christ. Medicine[edit] At the age of 30, in 1905, Schweitzer answered the call of The Society of the Evangelist Missions of Paris, which was looking for a physician. The committee of this missionary society was not ready to accept his offer, considering his Lutheran theology to be "incorrect".[48] He could easily have obtained a place in a German evangelical mission, but wished to follow the original call despite the doctrinal difficulties. Amid a hail of protests from his friends, family and colleagues, he resigned his post and re-entered the university as a student in a three-year course towards the degree of Doctorate in Medicine, a subject in which he had little knowledge or previous aptitude. He planned to spread the Gospel by the example of his Christian labour of healing, rather than through the verbal process of preaching, and believed that this service should be acceptable within any branch of Christian teaching. Even in his study of medicine, and through his clinical course, Schweitzer pursued the ideal of the philosopher-scientist. By extreme application and hard work, he completed his studies successfully at the end of 1911. His medical degree dissertation was another work on the historical Jesus, Die psychiatrische Beurteilung Jesu. Darstellung und Kritik[49] [The psychiatric evaluation of Jesus. Description and criticism] (published in English in 1948 as The Psychiatric Study of Jesus. Exposition and Criticism[50]). He defended Jesus' mental health in it.[51] In June 1912, he married Helene Bresslau, municipal inspector for orphans and daughter of the Jewish pan-Germanist historian Harry Bresslau.[52] In 1912, now armed with a medical degree, Schweitzer made a definite proposal to go as a physician to work at his own expense in the Paris Missionary Society's mission at Lambaréné on the Ogooué river, in what is now Gabon, in Africa (then a French colony). He refused to attend a committee to inquire into his doctrine, but met each committee member personally and was at last accepted. Through concerts and other fund-raising, he was ready to equip a small hospital.[53] In early 1913, he and his wife set off to establish a hospital (the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer) near an existing mission post. The site was nearly 200 miles (14 days by raft[54]) upstream from the mouth of the Ogooué at Port Gentil (Cape Lopez) (and so accessible to external communications), but downstream of most tributaries, so that internal communications within Gabon converged towards Lambaréné. The catchment area of the Ogooué River occupies most of Gabon. Lambaréné is marked centre left. In the first nine months, he and his wife had about 2,000 patients to examine, some travelling many days and hundreds of kilometres to reach him. In addition to injuries, he was often treating severe sandflea and crawcraw infections, yaws, tropical eating sores, heart disease, tropical dysentery, tropical malaria, sleeping sickness, leprosy, fevers, strangulated hernias, necrosis, abdominal tumours and chronic constipation and nicotine poisoning, while also attempting to deal with deliberate poisonings, fetishism and fear of cannibalism among the Mbahouin. Schweitzer's wife, Helene Schweitzer, served as an anaesthetist for surgical operations. After briefly occupying a shed formerly used as a chicken hut, in late 1913 they built their first hospital of corrugated iron, with a consulting room and operating theatre and with a dispensary and sterilising room. The waiting room and dormitory were built, like native huts, of unhewn logs along a path leading to the boat landing. The Schweitzers had their own bungalow and employed as their assistant Joseph, a French-speaking Mpongwe, who first came to Lambaréné as a patient.[55][56] After World War I broke out in July 1914, Schweitzer and his wife, German citizens in a French colony when the countries were at war, were put under supervision by the French military at Lambaréné, where Schweitzer continued his work.[57] In 1917, exhausted by over four years' work and by tropical anaemia, they were taken to Bordeaux and interned first in Garaison and then from March 1918 in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. In July 1918, after being transferred to his home in Alsace, he was a free man again. At this time Schweitzer, born a German citizen, had his parents' former (pre-1871) French citizenship reinstated and became a French citizen. Then, working as medical assistant and assistant-pastor in Strasbourg, he advanced his project on the philosophy of civilization, which had occupied his mind since 1900. By 1920, his health recovering, he was giving organ recitals and doing other fund-raising work to repay borrowings and raise funds for returning to Gabon. In 1922, he delivered the Dale Memorial Lectures in the University of Oxford, and from these in the following year appeared Volumes I and II of his great work, The Decay and Restoration of Civilization and Civilization and Ethics. The two remaining volumes, on The World-View of Reverence for Life and a fourth on the Civilized State, were never completed. In 1924, Schweitzer returned to Africa without his wife, but with an Oxford undergraduate, Noel Gillespie, as his assistant. Everything was heavily decayed, and building and doctoring progressed together for months. He now had salvarsan for treating syphilitic ulcers and framboesia. Additional medical staff, nurse (Miss) Kottmann and Dr. Victor Nessmann,[58] joined him in 1924, and Dr. Mark Lauterberg in 1925; the growing hospital was staffed by native orderlies. Later Dr. Trensz replaced Nessmann, and Martha Lauterberg and Hans Muggenstorm joined them. Joseph also returned. In 1925–6, new hospital buildings were constructed, and also a ward for white patients, so that the site became like a village. The onset of famine and a dysentery epidemic created fresh problems. Much of the building work was carried out with the help of local people and patients. Drug advances for sleeping sickness included Germanin and tryparsamide [de; fi; it]. Trensz conducted experiments showing that the non-amoebic strain of dysentery was caused by a paracholera vibrion (facultative anaerobic bacteria). With the new hospital built and the medical team established, Schweitzer returned to Europe in 1927, this time leaving a functioning hospital at work. He was there again from 1929 to 1932. Gradually his opinions and concepts became acknowledged, not only in Europe, but worldwide. There was a further period of work in 1935. In January 1937, he returned again to Lambaréné and continued working there throughout World War II. Hospital conditions[edit] The journalist James Cameron visited Lambaréné in 1953 (when Schweitzer was 78) and found significant flaws in the practices and attitudes of Schweitzer and his staff. The hospital suffered from squalor and was without modern amenities, and Schweitzer had little contact with the local people.[59] Cameron did not make public what he had seen at the time: according to a BBC dramatisation, he made the unusual journalistic decision to withhold the story, and resisted the expressed wish of his employers to publish an exposé.[60] The poor conditions of the hospital in Lambaréné were also famously criticized by Nigerian professor and novelist Chinua Achebe in his essay on Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness: "In a comment which has often been quoted Schweitzer says: 'The African is indeed my brother but my junior brother.' And so he proceeded to build a hospital appropriate to the needs of junior brothers with standards of hygiene reminiscent of medical practice in the days before the germ theory of disease came into being."[61] Schweitzer's biographer Edgar Berman, who was a volunteer surgeon at Lambarene for several months and had extended conversations with Schweitzer, has a different perspective.[62] Schweitzer felt that patients were better off, and the hospital functioned better given the severe lack of funding, if patients' families lived on the hospital grounds during treatment. Surgical survival rates were, Berman asserts, as high as in many fully-equipped western hospitals. The volume of patients needing care, the difficulty of obtaining materials and supplies, and the scarcity of trained medical staff willing to work long hours in the remote setting for almost no pay all argued for a spartan setting with an emphasis on high medical standards nevertheless. Schweitzer's views[edit] Colonialism[edit] Schweitzer considered his work as a medical missionary in Africa to be his response to Jesus' call to become "fishers of men". Who can describe the injustice and cruelties that in the course of centuries they [the coloured peoples] have suffered at the hands of Europeans?... If a record could be compiled of all that has happened between the white and the coloured races, it would make a book containing numbers of pages which the reader would have to turn over unread because their contents would be too horrible. Schweitzer was one of colonialism's harshest critics. In a sermon that he preached on 6 January 1905, before he had told anyone of his plans to dedicate the rest of his life to work as a physician in Africa, he said:[63] Our culture divides people into two classes: civilized men, a title bestowed on the persons who do the classifying; and others, who have only the human form, who may perish or go to the dogs for all the 'civilized men' care. Oh, this 'noble' culture of ours! It speaks so piously of human dignity and human rights and then disregards this dignity and these rights of countless millions and treads them underfoot, only because they live overseas or because their skins are of different colour or because they cannot help themselves. This culture does not know how hollow and miserable and full of glib talk it is, how common it looks to those who follow it across the seas and see what it has done there, and this culture has no right to speak of personal dignity and human rights... I will not enumerate all the crimes that have been committed under the pretext of justice. People robbed native inhabitants of their land, made slaves of them, let loose the scum of mankind upon them. Think of the atrocities that were perpetrated upon people made subservient to us, how systematically we have ruined them with our alcoholic 'gifts', and everything else we have done... We decimate them, and then, by the stroke of a pen, we take their land so they have nothing left at all... If all this oppression and all this sin and shame are perpetrated under the eye of the German God, or the American God, or the British God, and if our states do not feel obliged first to lay aside their claim to be 'Christian'—then the name of Jesus is blasphemed and made a mockery. And the Christianity of our states is blasphemed and made a mockery before those poor people. The name of Jesus has become a curse, and our Christianity—yours and mine—has become a falsehood and a disgrace, if the crimes are not atoned for in the very place where they were instigated. For every person who committed an atrocity in Jesus' name, someone must step in to help in Jesus' name; for every person who robbed, someone must bring a replacement; for everyone who cursed, someone must bless. And now, when you speak about missions, let this be your message: We must make atonement for all the terrible crimes we read of in the newspapers. We must make atonement for the still worse ones, which we do not read about in the papers, crimes that are shrouded in the silence of the jungle night ... Paternalism[edit] Schweitzer was nonetheless still sometimes accused of being paternalistic in his attitude towards Africans.[64] For instance, he thought that Gabonese independence came too early, without adequate education or accommodation to local circumstances. Edgar Berman quotes Schweitzer as having said in 1960, "No society can go from the primeval directly to an industrial state without losing the leavening that time and an agricultural period allow."[65] Schweitzer believed dignity and respect must be extended to blacks, while also sometimes characterizing them as children.[66] He summarized his views on European-African relations by saying "With regard to the negroes, then, I have coined the formula: 'I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother.'"[66] Chinua Achebe has criticized him for this characterization, though Achebe acknowledges that Schweitzer's use of the word "brother" at all was, for a European of the early 20th century, an unusual expression of human solidarity between Europeans and Africans.[61] Schweitzer eventually emended and complicated this notion with his later statement that "The time for speaking of older and younger brothers has passed".[67] American journalist John Gunther visited Lambaréné in the 1950s and reported Schweitzer's patronizing attitude towards Africans. He also noted the lack of Africans trained to be skilled workers.[68] By comparison, his English contemporary Albert Ruskin Cook in Uganda had been training nurses and midwives since the 1910s, and had published a manual of midwifery in the local language of Luganda.[69] After three decades in Africa, Schweitzer still depended on Europe for nurses.[70] Reverence for life[edit] Main article: Reverence for Life Schweitzer in 1955 The keynote of Schweitzer's personal philosophy (which he considered to be his greatest contribution to mankind) was the idea of Reverence for Life (Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben). He thought that Western civilization was decaying because it had abandoned affirmation of life as its ethical foundation. In the Preface to Civilization and Ethics (1923) he argued that Western philosophy from Descartes to Kant had set out to explain the objective world expecting that humanity would be found to have a special meaning within it. But no such meaning was found, and the rational, life-affirming optimism of the Age of Enlightenment began to evaporate. A rift opened between this world-view, as material knowledge, and the life-view, understood as Will, expressed in the pessimist philosophies from Schopenhauer onward. Scientific materialism (advanced by Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin) portrayed an objective world process devoid of ethics, entirely an expression of the will-to-live. Schweitzer wrote, "True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness, and this may be formulated as follows: 'I am life which wills to live, and I exist in the midst of life which wills to live.'"[71] In nature one form of life must always prey upon another. However, human consciousness holds an awareness of, and sympathy for, the will of other beings to live. An ethical human strives to escape from this contradiction so far as possible. Though we cannot perfect the endeavour we should strive for it: the will-to-live constantly renews itself, for it is both an evolutionary necessity and a spiritual phenomenon. Life and love are rooted in this same principle, in a personal spiritual relationship to the universe. Ethics themselves proceed from the need to respect the wish of other beings to exist as one does towards oneself. Even so, Schweitzer found many instances in world religions and philosophies in which the principle was denied, not least in the European Middle Ages, and in the Indian Brahminic philosophy. For Schweitzer, mankind had to accept that objective reality is ethically neutral. It could then affirm a new Enlightenment through spiritual rationalism, by giving priority to volition or ethical will as the primary meaning of life. Mankind had to choose to create the moral structures of civilization: the world-view must derive from the life-view, not vice versa. Respect for life, overcoming coarser impulses and hollow doctrines, leads the individual to live in the service of other people and of every living creature. In contemplation of the will-to-life, respect for the life of others becomes the highest principle and the defining purpose of humanity.[72] Such was the theory which Schweitzer sought to put into practice in his own life. According to some authors, Schweitzer's thought, and specifically his development of reverence for life, was influenced by Indian religious thought and in particular the Jain principle of ahimsa, or non-violence.[73] Albert Schweitzer noted the contribution of Indian influence in his book Indian Thought and Its Development:[74] The laying down of the commandment to not kill and to not damage is one of the greatest events in the spiritual history of mankind. Starting from its principle, founded on world and life denial, of abstention from action, ancient Indian thought – and this is a period when in other respects ethics have not progressed very far – reaches the tremendous discovery that ethics know no bounds. So far as we know, this is for the first time clearly expressed by Jainism. Further on ahimsa and the reverence for life in the same book, he elaborates on the ancient Indian didactic work of the Tirukkural, which he observed that, like the Buddha and the Bhagavad Gita, "stands for the commandment not to kill and not to damage".[75][76] Translating several couplets from the work, he remarked that the Kural insists on the idea that "good must be done for its own sake" and said, "There hardly exists in the literature of the world a collection of maxims in which we find so much lofty wisdom."[75][76] Later life[edit] The Schweitzer house and Museum at Königsfeld in the Black Forest After the birth of their daughter (Rhena Schweitzer Miller), Albert's wife, Helene Schweitzer was no longer able to live in Lambaréné due to her health. In 1923, the family moved to Königsfeld im Schwarzwald, Baden-Württemberg, where he was building a house for the family. This house is now maintained as a Schweitzer museum.[77] Albert Schweitzer's house at Gunsbach, now a museum and archive Albert Schweitzer Memorial and Museum in Weimar (1984) From 1939 to 1948, he stayed in Lambaréné, unable to go back to Europe because of the war. Three years after the end of World War II, in 1948, he returned for the first time to Europe and kept travelling back and forth (and once to the US) as long as he was able. During his return visits to his home village of Gunsbach, Schweitzer continued to make use of the family house, which after his death became an archive and museum to his life and work. His life was portrayed in the 1952 movie Il est minuit, Docteur Schweitzer, starring Pierre Fresnay as Albert Schweitzer and Jeanne Moreau as his nurse Marie. Schweitzer inspired actor Hugh O'Brian when O'Brian visited in Africa. O'Brian returned to the United States and founded the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Foundation (HOBY). Albert Schweitzer Monument in Wagga Wagga, Australia Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 1952,[78] accepting the prize with the speech, "The Problem of Peace".[79] With the $33,000 prize money, he started the leprosarium at Lambaréné.[14] From 1952 until his death he worked against nuclear tests and nuclear weapons with Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn and Bertrand Russell. In 1957 and 1958, he broadcast four speeches over Radio Oslo which were published in Peace or Atomic War. In 1957, Schweitzer was one of the founders of The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. On 23 April 1957, Schweitzer made his "Declaration of Conscience" speech; it was broadcast to the world over Radio Oslo, pleading for the abolition of nuclear weapons. His speech ended, "The end of further experiments with atom bombs would be like the early sunrays of hope which suffering humanity is longing for."[80] Weeks prior to his death, an American film crew was allowed to visit Schweitzer and Drs. Muntz and Friedman, both Holocaust survivors, to record his work and daily life at the hospital. The film The Legacy of Albert Schweitzer, narrated by Henry Fonda, was produced by Warner Brothers and aired once. It resides in their vault today in deteriorating condition. Although several attempts have been made to restore and re-air the film, all access has been denied.[81] In 1955, he was made an honorary member of the Order of Merit (OM) by Queen Elizabeth II.[82] He was also a chevalier of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem. Schweitzer's grave in Lambaréné, marked by a cross he made himself. Schweitzer died on 4 September 1965 at his beloved hospital in Lambaréné, now in independent Gabon. His grave, on the banks of the Ogooué River, is marked by a cross he made himself. His cousin Anne-Marie Schweitzer Sartre was the mother of Jean-Paul Sartre. Her father, Charles Schweitzer, was the older brother of Albert Schweitzer's father, Louis Théophile.[83][better source needed] Schweitzer is often cited in vegetarian literature as being an advocate of vegetarianism in his later years.[84][85][86] Schweitzer was not a vegetarian in his earlier life. For example, in 1950, biographer Magnus C. Ratter commented that Schweitzer never "commit[ted] himself to the anti-vivisection, vegetarian, or pacifist positions, though his thought leads in this direction".[87] Biographer James Bentley has written that Schweitzer became a vegetarian after his wife's death in 1957 and he was "living almost entirely on lentil soup".[88] In contrast to this, historian David N. Stamos has written that Schweitzer was not a vegetarian in his personal life nor imposed it on his missionary hospital but he did help animals and was opposed to hunting.[89] Stamos noted that Schweitzer held the view that evolution ingrained humans with an instinct for meat so it was useless in trying to deny it.[89] The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship was founded in 1940 by Schweitzer to unite US supporters in filling the gap in support for his Hospital when his European supply lines were cut off by war, and continues to support the Lambaréné Hospital today. Schweitzer considered his ethic of Reverence for Life, not his hospital, his most important legacy, saying that his Lambaréné Hospital was just "my own improvisation on the theme of Reverence for Life. Everyone can have their own Lambaréné". Today ASF helps large numbers of young Americans in health-related professional fields find or create "their own Lambaréné" in the US or internationally. ASF selects and supports nearly 250 new US and Africa Schweitzer Fellows each year from over 100 of the leading US schools of medicine, nursing, public health, and every other field with some relation to health (including music, law, and divinity). The peer-supporting lifelong network of "Schweitzer Fellows for Life" numbered over 2,000 members in 2008, and is growing by nearly 1,000 every four years. Nearly 150 of these Schweitzer Fellows have served at the Hospital in Lambaréné, for three-month periods during their last year of medical school.[90] Schweitzer eponyms Schweitzer's writings and life are often quoted,[91] resulting in a number of eponyms, such as the 'Schweitzer technique' (discussed below), and the 'Schweitzer effect'. The 'Schweitzer effect' refers to his statement that 'Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing'.[91] This eponym is used in medical education to highlight the relationship between lived experience/example and medical students' opinions on professional behaviours.[92] International Albert Schweitzer Prize[edit] The prize was first awarded on 29 May 2011 to Eugen Drewermann and the physician couple Rolf and Raphaela Maibach in Königsfeld im Schwarzwald, where Schweitzer's former residence now houses the Albert Schweitzer Museum.[93] Sound recordings[edit] Recordings of Schweitzer playing the music of Bach are available on CD. During 1934 and 1935 he resided in Britain, delivering the Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh University, and those on Religion in Modern Civilization at Oxford and London. He had originally conducted trials for recordings for HMV on the organ of the old Queen's Hall in London. These records did not satisfy him, the instrument being too harsh. In mid-December 1935 he began to record for Columbia Records on the organ of All Hallows, Barking-by-the-Tower, London.[94] Then at his suggestion the sessions were transferred to the church of Ste Aurélie in Strasbourg, on a mid-18th-century organ by Johann Andreas Silbermann (brother of Gottfried), an organ-builder greatly revered by Bach, which had been restored by the Lorraine organ-builder Frédéric Härpfer shortly before the First World War. These recordings were made in the course of a fortnight in October 1936.[95] Schweitzer Technique[edit] This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Schweitzer developed a technique for recording the performances of Bach's music. Known as the "Schweitzer Technique", it is a slight improvement on what is commonly known as mid-side. The mid-side sees a figure-8 microphone pointed off-axis, perpendicular to the sound source. Then a single cardioid microphone is placed on axis, bisecting the figure-8 pattern. The signal from the figure-8 is muted, panned hard left and right, one of the signals being flipped out of polarity. In the Schweitzer method, the figure-8 is replaced by two small diaphragm condenser microphones pointed directly away from each other. The information that each capsule collects is unique, unlike the identical out-of-polarity information generated from the figure-8 in a regular mid-side. The on-axis microphone is often a large diaphragm condenser. The technique has since been used to record many modern instruments. Columbia recordings[edit] Altogether his early Columbia discs included 25 records of Bach and eight of César Franck. The Bach titles were mainly distributed as follows: Queen's Hall: Organ Prelude and Fugue in E minor (Edition Peters[note 2] Vol 3, 10); Herzlich thut mich verlangen (BWV 727); Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein (Vol 7, 58 (Leipzig 18)).[96] All Hallows: Prelude and Fugue in C major; Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (the Great); Prelude and Fugue in G major; Prelude and Fugue in F minor; Little Fugue in G minor; Toccata and Fugue in D minor.[97] Ste Aurélie: Prelude and Fugue in C minor; Prelude and Fugue in E minor; Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Chorale Preludes: Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele (Peters Vol 7, 49 (Leipzig 4)); O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß (Vol 5, 45); O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig (Vol 7, 48 (Leipzig 6)); Christus, der uns selig macht (Vol 5, 8); Da Jesus an dem Kreuze stand (Vol 5, 9); An Wasserflüssen Babylon (Vol 6, 12b); Christum wir wollen loben schon (Vol 5, 6); Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier (Vol 5, app 5); Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin (Vol 5, 4); Sei gegrüßet, Jesu gütig (Var 11, Vol 5, app. 3); Jesus Christus, unser Heiland (Vol 6, 31 (Leipzig 15)); Christ lag in Todesbanden (Vol 5, 5); Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag (Vol 5, 15).[98][99] Gunsbach parish church, where the later recordings were made Later recordings were made at Parish church, Günsbach: These recordings were made by C. Robert Fine during the time Dr. Schweitzer was being filmed in Günsbach for the documentary "Albert Schweitzer". Fine originally self-released the recordings but later licensed the masters to Columbia. Fugue in A minor (Peters, Vol 2, 8); Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (Great) (Vol 2, 4); Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major (Vol 3, 8).[100] Prelude in C major (Vol 4, 1); Prelude in D major (Vol 4, 3); Canzona in D minor (Vol 4, 10) (with Mendelssohn, Sonata in D minor op 65.6).[101] Chorale-Preludes: O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß (1st and 2nd versions, Peters Vol 5, 45); Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein (Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit) (vol 7, 58 (Leipzig 18)); Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (Vol 5, 30); Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ (Vol 5, 17); Herzlich tut mich verlangen (Vol 5, 27); Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (vol 7, 45 (BWV 659a)).[102] The above were released in the United States as Columbia Masterworks boxed set SL-175. Philips recordings[edit] J. S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue in A major, BWV 536; Prelude and Fugue in F minor, BWV 534; Prelude and Fugue in B minor, BWV 544; Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 538.[103] J. S. Bach: Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582; Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 533; Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543; Prelude and Fugue in G major, BWV 541; Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.[104] César Franck: Organ Chorales, no. 1 in E major; no. 2 in B minor; no. 3 in A minor.[105] Portrayals[edit] Dramatisations of Schweitzer's life include: The 1952 biographical film Il est minuit, Docteur Schweitzer, with Pierre Fresnay as Schweitzer. The 1957 biographical film Albert Schweitzer in which Schweitzer appears as himself and Phillip Eckert portrays him. The 1962 TV remake of Il est minuit, Docteur Schweitzer, with Jean-Pierre Marielle as Schweitzer. The 1990 biographical film The Light in the Jungle, with Malcolm McDowell as Schweitzer. Two 1992 episodes of the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles ("German East Africa, December 1916" and "Congo, January 1917"), with Friedrich von Thun as Schweitzer. The episodes were later combined to create Oganga, Giver and Taker of Life. The 1995 biographical film Le Grand blanc de Lambaréné, with André Wilms as Schweitzer. The 2006 TV biographical film Albert Schweitzer: Called to Africa, with Jeff McCarthy as Schweitzer. The 2009 biographical film Albert Schweitzer [de], with Jeroen Krabbé as Schweitzer. Bibliography[edit] — (2001) [German, 1906. English edition, A. & C. Black, London 1910, 1911], The Quest of the Historical Jesus; A Critical Study of Its Progress From Reimarus To Wrede, translated by Montgomery, William, Augsburg Fortress Publishers, ISBN 978-0-8006-3288-5 — (1905), J. S. Bach, Le Musicien-Poète [JS Bach, the Poet Musician] (in French), introduction by C. M. Widor, Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel with P. Costellot — (1908), J. S. Bach (in German) (enlarged ed.), Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel. English translation by Ernest Newman, with author's alterations and additions, London 1911. Fulltext scans (English): Vol. 1, Vol. 2. — (1906). Deutsche und französische Orgelbaukunst und Orgelkunst [German and French organbuilding and organ art] (in German). Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel. (first printed in Musik, vols 13 and 14 (5th year)). — (1948) [1911]. The Psychiatric Study of Jesus: Exposition and Criticism. Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith Publisher. ISBN 978-0-8446-2894-3. — (1912). Paul and His Interpreters, A Critical History. Translated by Montgomery, W. London: Adam & Charles Black. — (1985) [1914]. The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus' Messiahship and Passion. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-0-87975-294-1. — (1924) [1922]. On the Edge of the Primeval Forest. Translated by Campion, Ch. Th. (reprint ed.). London: A. & C. Black. (translation of Zwischen Wasser und Urwald, 1921) The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization and Civilization and Ethics (The Philosophy of Civilization, Vols I & II of the projected but not completed four-volume work), A. & C. Black, London 1923. Material from these volumes is rearranged in a modern compilation, The Philosophy of Civilization (Prometheus Books, 1987), ISBN 0-87975-403-6 — (1998) [1930, 1931], The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 978-0-8018-6098-0 — (1931). Aus Meinem Leben und Denken. Leipzig: Felix Meiner Verlag. translated as — (1933). Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography. Henry Holt and Company.; — (1998). Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-6097-3. — (1935). Indian Thought and Its Development. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press. OCLC 8003381. Afrikanische Geschichten (Felix Meiner, Leipzig and Hamburg 1938): tr. Mrs C. E. B. Russell as From My African Notebook (George Allen and Unwin, London 1938/Henry Holt, New York 1939). Modern edition with foreword by L. Forrow (Syracuse University Press, 2002). — (4 November 1954). "The Problem of Peace". The Nobel Foundation. — (1958). Peace or Atomic War?. New York: Henry Holt. ISBN 978-0-8046-1551-8. — (1968). Neuenschwander, Ulrich [in German] (ed.). The Kingdom of God and Primitive Christianity. New York: Seabury Press. OCLC 321874. — (2005). Brabazon, James (ed.). Albert Schweitzer: Essential Writings. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. ISBN 978-1-57075-602-3. See also[edit] List of peace activists Cultural depictions of Albert Schweitzer Helene Bresslau Schweitzer Notes[edit] ^ He officiated at the wedding of Theodor Heuss (later the first President of West Germany) in 1908.[29][30][31][32][33] ^ Schweitzer's Bach recordings are usually identified with reference to the Peters Edition of the Organ-works in 9 volumes, edited by Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl and Ferdinand August Roitzsch, in the form revised by Hermann Keller. References[edit] Citations[edit] ^ Schweitzer, Albert (10 December 1953), "Award Ceremony Speech", The Nobel Peace Prize 1952, The Nobel prize. ^ Oermann 2016, p. 43. ^ Free 1988, p. 74. ^ Stammbaum – Genealogic tree Arbre généalogique de la famille Schweitze, Schweitzer, archived from the original on 26 April 2006. ^ Association Internationale Albert Schweitzer, archived from the original on 9 December 2010, retrieved 1 August 2012. ^ Seaver 1951, p. 3–9. ^ A. Schweitzer, Eugene Munch (J. Brinkmann, Mulhouse 1898). ^ Joy 1953, p. 23–24. ^ Joy 1953, p. 24. ^ George N. Marshall, David Poling, Schweitzer, JHU Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8018-6455-0 ^ a b Cicovacki, Predrag (2 February 2009). Albert Schweitzer's Ethical Vision A Sourcebook. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199703326. ^ Schweitzer, Albert; Bresslau, Helene; Stewart, Nancy (2003). Albert Schweitzer-helene Bresslau: the Years Prior to Lambarene. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815629948. ^ Brabazon 2000, p. 84. ^ a b c "Albert Schweitzer – Biographical". nobelprize.org. Retrieved 10 March 2018. ^ Joy 1953, p. 24–25. ^ a b Seaver 1951, p. 20. ^ Schweitzer, My Life and Thought, pp. 80–81; cf. Seaver 1951, pp. 231–232 ^ Joy 1953, p. 58–62. ^ Cassirer, Ernst (1979). Verene, Donald Phillip (ed.). Symbol, Myth, and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer 1935–1945. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. p. 230. ISBN 978-0-300-02666-5. ^ Schweitzer, in Joy 1953, pp. 53–57 ^ Joy 1953, pp. 53–57, quoting from and translating A. Schweitzer, 'Mes Souvenirs sur Cosima Wagner', in L'Alsace Française, XXXV no. 7 (12 February 1933), p. 124ff. ^ Wedel, Gudrun (2010), Autobiographien von Frauen: ein Lexikon ^ Reproduced in Joy 1953, pp. 127–129, 129–165: cf. also Seaver 1951, pp. 29–36 ^ Joy 1953, pp. 165–166: Text of 1909 Questionnaire and Report, pp. 235–269. ^ Seaver 1951, p. 44. ^ Given by the Paris Bach Society, Seaver 1951, p. 63; but Joy 1953, p. 177, says it was given by the Paris Missionary Society. ^ Seaver 1951, p. 63–64. ^ Joy 1953 plate facing p. 177. ^ Oermann 2016, p. 101-102. ^ Brabazon 2000, p. 422. ^ Pierhal 1956, p. 63. ^ Pierhal 1957, p. 63f. ^ "The Bulletin". Bulletin des Presse- und Informationsamtes der Bundesregierung [...] [Englische Ausgabe] = the Bulletin. Bonn, West Germany: Press and Information Office. 9–10: 36. 1962. ISSN 0032-7794. ^ Avey, Albert E. (1934). "Review of The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle". The Philosophical Review. 43 (1): 84–86. doi:10.2307/2179960. JSTOR 2179960. ^ Schweitzer, Albert (2001). The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Fortress Press. p. 478. ISBN 9781451403541. ^ Ehrman, Bart D. (20 March 2012). Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. HarperCollins. pp. 11–. ISBN 978-0-06-208994-6. I agree with Schweitzer's overarching view, that Jesus is best understood as a Jewish prophet who anticipated a cataclysmic break in history in the very near future, when God would destroy the forces of evil to bring in his own kingdom here on earth. ^ "Review of "The Mystery of the Kingdom of God"". Pcisys. ^ The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Macmillan. 1910. p. 403. ^ a b Schweitzer 1931, p. 1. ^ Schweitzer 1931, p. 2. ^ Schweitzer 1931, p. 3. ^ a b Schweitzer 1931, p. 13. ^ Schweitzer 1931, p. xvi. ^ Schweitzer 1931, p. 16. ^ Schweitzer 1931, p. 17. ^ Schweitzer 1931, p. 103. ^ Schweitzer 1931, p. 9. ^ Seaver 1951, p. 40. ^ Schweitzer, Albert (1913). Die psychiatrische Beurteilung Jesu: Darstellung und Kritik (in German). Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). LCCN 13021072. OCLC 5903262. OL 20952265W. ^ Schweitzer, Albert (1948). The Psychiatric Study of Jesus: Exposition and Criticism. Translated by Joy, Charles R. Boston: Beacon Press. LCCN 48006488. OCLC 614572512. OL 6030284M. ^ Seidel, Michael (January 2009). "Albert Schweitzer's MD thesis on Criticism of the medical pathographies on Jesus". Würzburger medizinhistorische Mitteilungen. Königshausen & Neumann. 28 (1): 276–300. ISSN 0177-5227. PMID 20509445. ^ Marxsen, Patti M. Helene Schweitzer: A Life of Her Own. First edition. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2015. ^ From the Primeval Forest, Chapter 1. ^ From the Primeval Forest, Chapter 6. ^ Monfried, Walter (10 February 1947). "Admirers Call Dr. Schweitzer "Greatest Man in the World"". Milwaukee, Wisconsin. pp. 1, 3. ^ From the Primeval Forest, Chapters 3–5. ^ Albert Schweitzer 1875–1965 Archived 14 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine. schweitzer.org (in German) ^ Nessmann worked with the French Resistance during the Second World War, was captured and executed by the Gestapo in Limoges in 1944. cf Guy Penaud, Dictionnaire Biographique de Périgord, p. 713. ISBN 978-2-86577-214-8 ^ Cameron, James (1966) [1978]. Point of Departure. Law Book Co of Australasia. pp. 154–174. ISBN 9780853621751. ^ On Monday 7 April 2008 ("The Walrus and the Terrier" – programme outline) BBC Radio 4 broadcast an Afternoon Play "The Walrus and the Terrier" by Christopher Ralling concerning Cameron's visit. ^ a b Chinua Achebe. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" Archived 18 January 2006 at the Wayback Machine – the Massachusetts Review. 1977. (c/o North Carolina State University) ^ Berman, Edgar (1986). In Africa with Schweitzer. Far Hills, New Jersey, U.S.: New Horizon Press. ISBN 0-88282-025-7. ^ Schweitzer 2005, p. 76–80. ^ Brabazon 2000, p. 253-256. ^ Berman, Edgar (1986), In Africa With Schweitzer, Far Hills, New Jersey: New Horizon Press, p. 139, ISBN 978-0-88282-025-5. ^ a b Schweitzer 1924, p. 130 ^ Quoted by Forrow, Lachlan (2002). "Foreword". In Russell, C.E.B. (ed.). African Notebook. Albert Schweitzer library. Syracuse University Press. p. xiii. ISBN 978-0-8156-0743-4. ^ Inside Africa. New York: Harper. 1955. ^ Amagezi Agokuzalisa. London: Sheldon Press. ^ Paget, James Carleton (2012). "Albert Schweitzer and Africa". Journal of Religion in Africa. 24 (3): 277–316. doi:10.1163/15700666-12341230. JSTOR 41725476. ^ Civilization and Ethics, Chapter 21, p. 253: reprinted as A. Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization (Prometheus Books, Buffalo 1987), Chapter 26. ^ Civilization and Ethics, Preface and Chapter II, "The Problem of the Optimistic World-View". ^ Ara Paul Barsam (2002) "Albert Schweitzer, Jainism and reverence for life", in: Reverence for life: the ethics of Albert Schweitzer for the twenty-first century, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, ISBN 978-0-8156-2977-1 pp. 207–208 ^ Albert Schweitzer and Charles Rhind Joy (1947) Albert Schweitzer: an anthology Beacon Press ^ a b S. Maharajan (2017). Tiruvalluvar (2 ed.). New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. pp. 100–102. ISBN 978-81-260-5321-6. ^ a b Schweitzer, Albert (2013). Indian Thoughts and Its Development. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: Read Books. pp. 200–205. ISBN 978-14-7338-900-7. ^ Schweitzer museum ^ "The Nobel Peace Prize 1952". The Nobel Foundation. 21 May 2014. Retrieved 18 August 2017. ^ Schweitzer 1954. ^ Declaration of Conscience speech Archived 16 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine – at Tennessee Players ^ "Albert Schweitzer and Henry Fonda's Lost Special". Culturedarm. 20 January 2015. ^ "List of Members of the Order of Merit, past and present". British Monarchy. Retrieved 2 December 2008. ^ "Louis Théophile Schweitzer". Roglo.eu. Retrieved 18 October 2011.[self-published source] ^ Barkas, Janet L. (1975). The Vegetable Passion. Scribner. p. 131. ISBN 9780684139258 ^ Gregerson, Jon. (1994). Vegetarianism: A History. Jain Publishing Company. p. 104. ISBN 9780875730301 ^ "History of Vegetarianism – Dr Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965)". Ivu.org. 4 September 1965. Archived from the original on 21 May 2011. ^ Ratter, Magnus C. (1950). Albert Schweitzer: Life and Message. Beacon Press. p. 179 ^ Brentley, James. (1992). Albert Schweitzer: The Enigma. HarperCollins. p. 200. ISBN 9780060163648 ^ a b Stamos, David N. (2008). Evolution and the Big Questions: Sex, Race, Religion, and Other Matters. Wiley. p. 175. ISBN 9781405149020 ^ "The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship". Schweitzerfellowship.org. 23 June 2011. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. ^ a b See quotations. Byers, J.Q., 1996. Brothers in Spirit: the Correspondence of Albert Schweitzer and William Larimer Mellon, Jr. (New York, Syracuse University Press). ^ McGurgan, Paul; Calvert, Katrina; Celenza, Antonio; Nathan, Elizabeth A.; Jorm, Christine (2023). "The Schweitzer effect: The fundamental relationship between experience and medical students' opinions on professional behaviours". Medical Teacher: 1–10. doi:10.1080/0142159X.2023.2284660. ^ "Königsfeld feiert ?Schweitzer-Erben? | Südkurier Online". Südkurier. 30 May 2011. ^ This 1909 Harrison and Harrison organ was destroyed in the war (cf W. Kent, The Lost Treasures of London (Phoenix House 1947), 94–95) and rebuilt in 1957, see "Harrison & Harrison organ catalogue by name London". Archived from the original on 5 July 2008. Retrieved 6 May 2008.. ^ Seaver 1951, p. 139–152. ^ (78 rpm HMV C 1532 and C 1543), cf. R.D. Darrell, The Gramophone Shop Encyclopedia of Recorded Music (New York 1936). ^ (78 rpm Columbia ROX 146–152), cf. Darrell 1936. ^ Joy 1953, pp. 226–230. The 78s were issued in albums, with a specially designed record label (Columbia ROX 8020–8023, 8032–8035, etc.). Ste Aurélie recordings appeared also on LP as Columbia 33CX1249 ^ E.M.I., A Complete List of EMI, Columbia, Parlophone and MGM Long Playing Records issued up to and including June 1955 (London 1955) for this and discographical details following. ^ Columbia LP 33CX1074 ^ Columbia LP 33CX1084 ^ Columbia LP 33CX1081 ^ E.M.G., The Art of Record Buying (London 1960), pp. 12–13. Philips ABL 3092, issued March 1956. ^ E.M.G., op. cit., Philips ABL 3134, issued September 1956. Other selections are on Philips GBL 5509. ^ Philips ABL 3221. Sources[edit] Schweitzer, Albert (1924) [1922]. On the Edge of the Primeval Forest. Translated by Campion, Ch. Th. (reprint ed.). London: A. & C. Black. (translation of Zwischen Wasser und Urwald, 1921) Schweitzer, Albert (1931). The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. Johns Hopkins University Press. Brabazon, J. (2000). Albert Schweitzer: A Biography. Albert Schweitzer library. Syracuse University Press. p. 84. ISBN 978-0-8156-0675-8. Free, A.C. (1988). Animals, Nature and Albert Schweitzer. Flying Fox Press. ISBN 978-0-9617225-4-8. Retrieved 2 July 2017. Joy, Charles R., ed. (1953). Music in the Life of Albert Schweitzer. London: A. & C. Black. Oermann, N. O. (2016). Albert Schweitzer: A Biography. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-108704-2. Retrieved 2 July 2017. Pierhal, J. (1956). Albert Schweitzer: The Life of a Great Man. Lutterworth. Retrieved 2 July 2017. Pierhal, J. (1957). Albert Schweitzer: the story of his life. Philosophical Library. ISBN 9780802219756. Seaver, G. (1951). Albert Schweitzer: The Man and His Mind. London: A. & C. Black. Further reading[edit] Anderson, Erica; Exman, Eugene (1955). The World of Albert Schweitzer. New York: Harper & Brothers. Anderson, Erica (1965). The Schweitzer Album. New York: Harper & Row. Bartolf, Christian; Gericke, Marion; Miething, Dominique (2020): Dr. Albert Schweitzer: "My Address to the People" – Commitment against Nuclear War. Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin, Gandhi-Informations-Zentrum. doi:10.17169/refubium-27573 ISBN 978-3-96110-357-7. Brabazon, J. (1975). Albert Schweitzer: A Biography. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 978-0-399-11421-2. Cousins, Norman (1985). Albert Schweitzer's Mission Healing and Peace. W. W. Norton. Rud, A. G. (2011). Albert Schweitzer's Legacy for Education: Reverence for Life. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 173ff. Smiley, Xan (February 2023). "Ahead of his time, behind ours". Commonweal. 150 (2): 26–33.[a] ——————— Notes ^ Online version is titled "The legacy of Albert Schweitzer : can we still admire him?". External links[edit] Albert Schweitzer at Wikipedia's sister projects Media from CommonsQuotations from WikiquoteTexts from WikisourceData from Wikidata Award-winning documentary about him Albert Schweitzer info at Internet Archive Works by Albert Schweitzer at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Albert Schweitzer at Internet Archive Works by Albert Schweitzer at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Albert Schweitzer Papers at Syracuse University John D. Regester Collection on Albert Schweitzer The Helfferich Collection, collected by Reginald H. Helfferich on Albert Schweitzer, is at the Harvard Divinity School Library at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What Jesus was thinking Archived 29 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine An interpretation and restatement of Schweitzer's last book, The Kingdom of God and Primitive Christianity Newspaper clippings about Albert Schweitzer in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW Albert Schweitzer on Nobelprize.org vte1952 Nobel Prize laureatesChemistry Archer John Porter Martin (United Kingdom) Richard Laurence Millington Synge (United Kingdom) Literature (1952) François Mauriac (France) Peace Albert Schweitzer (France) Physics Felix Bloch (United States) Edward Mills Purcell (United States) Physiology or Medicine Selman Waksman (United States) Nobel Prize recipients 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 vteLaureates of the Nobel Peace Prize1901–1925 1901: Henry Dunant / Frédéric Passy 1902: Élie Ducommun / Charles Gobat 1903: Randal Cremer 1904: Institut de Droit International 1905: Bertha von Suttner 1906: Theodore Roosevelt 1907: Ernesto Moneta / Louis Renault 1908: Klas Arnoldson / Fredrik Bajer 1909: A. M. F. Beernaert / Paul Estournelles de Constant 1910: International Peace Bureau 1911: Tobias Asser / Alfred Fried 1912: Elihu Root 1913: Henri La Fontaine 1914 1915 1916 1917: International Committee of the Red Cross 1918 1919: Woodrow Wilson 1920: Léon Bourgeois 1921: Hjalmar Branting / Christian Lange 1922: Fridtjof Nansen 1923 1924 1925: Austen Chamberlain / Charles Dawes 1926–1950 1926: Aristide Briand / Gustav Stresemann 1927: Ferdinand Buisson / Ludwig Quidde 1928 1929: Frank B. 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Pearson 1958: Georges Pire 1959: Philip Noel-Baker 1960: Albert Luthuli 1961: Dag Hammarskjöld 1962: Linus Pauling 1963: International Committee of the Red Cross / League of Red Cross Societies 1964: Martin Luther King Jr. 1965: UNICEF 1966 1967 1968: René Cassin 1969: International Labour Organization 1970: Norman Borlaug 1971: Willy Brandt 1972 1973: Lê Đức Thọ (declined award) / Henry Kissinger 1974: Seán MacBride / Eisaku Satō 1975: Andrei Sakharov 1976–2000 1976: Betty Williams / Mairead Corrigan 1977: Amnesty International 1978: Anwar Sadat / Menachem Begin 1979: Mother Teresa 1980: Adolfo Pérez Esquivel 1981: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 1982: Alva Myrdal / Alfonso García Robles 1983: Lech Wałęsa 1984: Desmond Tutu 1985: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War 1986: Elie Wiesel 1987: Óscar Arias 1988: UN Peacekeeping Forces 1989: Tenzin Gyatso (14th Dalai Lama) 1990: Mikhail Gorbachev 1991: Aung San Suu Kyi 1992: Rigoberta Menchú 1993: Nelson Mandela / F. W. de Klerk 1994: Shimon Peres / Yitzhak Rabin / Yasser Arafat 1995: Pugwash Conferences / Joseph Rotblat 1996: Carlos Belo / José Ramos-Horta 1997: International Campaign to Ban Landmines / Jody Williams 1998: John Hume / David Trimble 1999: Médecins Sans Frontières 2000: Kim Dae-jung 2001–present 2001: United Nations / Kofi Annan 2002: Jimmy Carter 2003: Shirin Ebadi 2004: Wangari Maathai 2005: International Atomic Energy Agency / Mohamed ElBaradei 2006: Grameen Bank / Muhammad Yunus 2007: Al Gore / Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2008: Martti Ahtisaari 2009: Barack Obama 2010: Liu Xiaobo 2011: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf / Leymah Gbowee / Tawakkol Karman 2012: European Union 2013: Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons 2014: Kailash Satyarthi / Malala Yousafzai 2015: Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet 2016: Juan Manuel Santos 2017: International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons 2018: Denis Mukwege / Nadia Murad 2019: Abiy Ahmed 2020: World Food Programme 2021: Maria Ressa / Dmitry Muratov 2022: Ales Bialiatski / Memorial / Center for Civil Liberties 2023: Narges Mohammadi 2024: to be announced vteAnti-nuclear movementProtests and groups Anti-nuclear organizations Anti-nuclear power groups Anti-nuclear protests Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Greenpeace International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons International Day against Nuclear Tests International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Mayors for Peace Nuclear Information and Resource Service Nevada Desert Experience Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign Peace Action and SANE Physicians for Social Responsibility Pembina Institute Sortir du nucléaire World Uranium Hearing By country Australia Austria Canada France Germany India Japan Kazakhstan New Zealand Philippines Poland Russia South Africa South Korea Spain Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Turkey United Kingdom United States People Tadatoshi Akiba Daniel Berrigan Albert Bigelow Helen Caldicott Norman Cousins Gordon Edwards Albert Einstein Randall Forsberg John Gofman Jim Green Paul Gunter Otto Hahn Nobuto Hosaka Jackie Hudson Kate Hudson Ole Kopreitan David Lange Amory Lovins Bernard Lown Caroline Lucas Freda Meissner-Blau Gregory Minor Hermann Joseph Muller Kenzaburō Ōe Linus Pauling Mike Pentz C. 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I. The Problem
When, at some future day, our period of civilisation shall lie, closed and completed, before the eyes of later generations, German theology will stand out as a great, a unique phenomenon in the mental and spiritual life of our time. For nowhere save in the German temperament can there be found in the same perfection the living complex of conditions and factors-of philosophic thought, critical acumen, historical insight, and religious feeling-without which no deep theology is possible.
And the greatest achievement of German theology is the critical investigation of the life of Jesus. What it has accomplished here has laid down the conditions and determined the course of the religious thinking of the future. In the history of doctrine its work has been negative; it has, so to speak, cleared the site for a new edifice of religious thought. In describing how the ideas of Jesus were taken possession of by the Greek spirit, it was tracing the growth of that which must necessarily become strange to us, and, as a matter of fact, has become strange to us.
Of its efforts to create a new dogmatic we scarcely need to have the history written; it is alive within us. It is no doubt interesting to trace how modern thoughts have found their way into the ancient dogmatic system, there to combine with eternal ideas to form new constructions; it is interesting to penetrate into the mind of the thinker in which this process is at work; but the real truth of that which here meets us as history we experience within ourselves. As in the monad of Leibnitz the whole universe is reflected, so we intuitively experience within us, even apart from any clear historical knowledge, the successive stages of the progress of modern dogma, from rationalism to Ritschl. This experience is true knowledge, all the truer because we are conscious of the whole [pg 002] as something indefinite, a slow and difficult movement towards a goal which is still shrouded in obscurity. We have not yet arrived at any reconciliation between history and modern thought-only between half-way history and half-way thought. What the ultimate goal towards which we are moving will be, what this something is which shall bring new life and new regulative principles to coming centuries, we do not know. We can only dimly divine that it will be the mighty deed of some mighty original genius, whose truth and rightness will be proved by the fact that we, working at our poor half thing, will oppose him might and main-we who imagine we long for nothing more eagerly than a genius powerful enough to open up with authority a new path for the world, seeing that we cannot succeed in moving it forward along the track which we have so laboriously prepared.
For this reason the history of the critical study of the life of Jesus is of higher intrinsic value than the history of the study of ancient dogma or of the attempts to create a new one. It has to describe the most tremendous thing which the religious consciousness has ever dared and done. In the study of the history of dogma German theology settled its account with the past; in its attempt to create a new dogmatic, it was endeavouring to keep a place for the religious life in the thought of the present; in the study of the life of Jesus it was working for the future-in pure faith in the truth, not seeing whereunto it wrought.
Moreover, we are here dealing with the most vital thing in the world's history. There came a Man to rule over the world; He ruled it for good and for ill, as history testifies; He destroyed the world into which He was born; the spiritual life of our own time seems like to perish at His hands, for He leads to battle against our thought a host of dead ideas, a ghostly army upon which death has no power, and Himself destroys again the truth and goodness which His Spirit creates in us, so that it cannot rule the world. That He continues, notwithstanding, to reign as the alone Great and alone True in a world of which He denied the continuance, is the prime example of that antithesis between spiritual and natural truth which underlies all life and all events, and in Him emerges into the field of history.
It is only at first sight that the absolute indifference of early Christianity towards the life of the historical Jesus is disconcerting. When Paul, representing those who recognise the signs of the times, did not desire to know Christ after the flesh, that was the first expression of the impulse of self-preservation by which Christianity continued to be guided for centuries. It felt that with the introduction of the historic Jesus into its faith, there would arise something new, something which had not been foreseen in the thoughts of the Master Himself, and that thereby a contradiction [pg 003] would be brought to light, the solution of which would constitute one of the great problems of the world.
Primitive Christianity was therefore right to live wholly in the future with the Christ who was to come, and to preserve of the historic Jesus only detached sayings, a few miracles, His death and resurrection. By abolishing both the world and the historical Jesus it escaped the inner division described above, and remained consistent in its point of view. We, on our part, have reason to be grateful to the early Christians that, in consequence of this attitude they have handed down to us, not biographies of Jesus but only Gospels, and that therefore we possess the Idea and the Person with the minimum of historical and contemporary limitations.
But the world continued to exist, and its continuance brought this one-sided view to an end. The supra-mundane Christ and the historical Jesus of Nazareth had to be brought together into a single personality at once historical and raised above time. That was accomplished by Gnosticism and the Logos Christology. Both, from opposite standpoints, because they were seeking the same goal, agreed in sublimating the historical Jesus into the supra-mundane Idea. The result of this development, which followed on the discrediting of eschatology, was that the historical Jesus was again introduced into the field of view of Christianity, but in such a way that all justification for, and interest in, the investigation of His life and historical personality were done away with.
Greek theology was as indifferent in regard to the historical Jesus who lives concealed in the Gospels as was the early eschatological theology. More than that, it was dangerous to Him; for it created a new supernatural-historical Gospel, and we may consider it fortunate that the Synoptics were already so firmly established that the Fourth Gospel could not oust them; instead, the Church, as though from the inner necessity of the antitheses which now began to be a constructive element in her thought, was obliged to set up two antithetic Gospels alongside of one another.
When at Chalcedon the West overcame the East, its doctrine of the two natures dissolved the unity of the Person, and thereby cut off the last possibility of a return to the historical Jesus. The self-contradiction was elevated into a law. But the Manhood was so far admitted as to preserve, in appearance, the rights of history. Thus by a deception the formula kept the Life prisoner and prevented the leading spirits of the Reformation from grasping the idea of a return to the historical Jesus.
This dogma had first to be shattered before men could once more go out in quest of the historical Jesus, before they could even grasp the thought of His existence. That the historic Jesus is something [pg 004] different from the Jesus Christ of the doctrine of the Two Natures seems to us now self-evident. We can, at the present day, scarcely imagine the long agony in which the historical view of the life of Jesus came to birth. And even when He was once more recalled to life, He was still, like Lazarus of old, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes-the grave-clothes of the dogma of the Dual Nature. Hase relates, in the preface to his first Life of Jesus (1829), that a worthy old gentleman, hearing of his project, advised him to treat in the first part of the human, in the second of the divine Nature. There was a fine simplicity about that. But does not the simplicity cover a presentiment of the revolution of thought for which the historical method of study was preparing the way-a presentiment which those who were engaged in the work did not share in the same measure? It was fortunate that they did not; for otherwise how could they have had the courage to go on?
The historical investigation of the life of Jesus did not take its rise from a purely historical interest; it turned to the Jesus of history as an ally in the struggle against the tyranny of dogma. Afterwards when it was freed from this ????? it sought to present the historic Jesus in a form intelligible to its own time. For Bahrdt and Venturini He was the tool of a secret order. They wrote under the impression of the immense influence exercised by the Order of the Illuminati3 at the end of the eighteenth century. For Reinhard, Hess, Paulus, and the rest of the rationalistic writers He is the admirable revealer of true virtue, which is coincident with right reason. Thus each successive epoch of theology found its own thoughts in Jesus; that was, indeed, the only way in which it could make Him live.
But it was not only each epoch that found its reflection in Jesus; each individual created Him in accordance with his own character. There is no historical task which so reveals a man's true self as the writing of a Life of Jesus. No vital force comes into the figure unless a man breathes into it all the hate or all the love of which he is capable. The stronger the love, or the stronger the hate, the more life-like is the figure which is produced. For hate as well as love can write a Life of Jesus, and the greatest of them are written with hate: that of Reimarus, the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist, and that of David Friedrich Strauss. It was not so much hate of the Person of Jesus as of the supernatural nimbus with which it was so easy to surround Him, and with which He had in fact been surrounded. They were eager to picture Him as truly and purely human, to strip from Him the robes of splendour with which He [pg 005] had been apparelled, and clothe Him once more with the coarse garments in which He had walked in Galilee.
And their hate sharpened their historical insight. They advanced the study of the subject more than all the others put together. But for the offence which they gave, the science of historical theology would not have stood where it does to-day. "It must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh." Reimarus evaded that woe by keeping the offence to himself and preserving silence during his lifetime-his work, "The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples," was only published after his death, by Lessing. But in the case of Strauss, who, as a young man of twenty-seven, cast the offence openly in the face of the world, the woe fulfilled itself. His "Life of Jesus" was his ruin. But he did not cease to be proud of it in spite of all the misfortune that it brought him. "I might well bear a grudge against my book," he writes twenty-five years later in the preface to the "Conversations of Ulrich von Hutten,"4 "for it has done me much evil ('And rightly so!' the pious will exclaim). It has excluded me from public teaching in which I took pleasure and for which I had perhaps some talent; it has torn me from natural relationships and driven me into unnatural ones; it has made my life a lonely one. And yet when I consider what it would have meant if I had refused to utter the word which lay upon my soul, if I had suppressed the doubts which were at work in my mind-then I bless the book which has doubtless done me grievous harm outwardly, but which preserved the inward health of my mind and heart, and, I doubt not, has done the same for many others also."
Before him, Bahrdt had his career broken in consequence of revealing his beliefs concerning the Life of Jesus; and after him, Bruno Bauer. It was easy for them, resolved as they were to open the way even with seeming blasphemy. But the others, those who tried to bring Jesus to life at the call of love, found it a cruel task to be honest. The critical study of the life of Jesus has been for theology a school of honesty. The world had never seen before, and will never see again, a struggle for truth so full of pain and renunciation as that of which the Lives of Jesus of the last hundred years contain the cryptic record. One must read the successive Lives of Jesus with which Hase followed the course of the study from the 'twenties to the 'seventies of the nineteenth century to get an inkling of what it must have cost the men who lived through that decisive period really to maintain that "courageous freedom of investigation" which the great Jena professor, in the preface to his first Life of Jesus, claims for his researches. One sees in him the marks of the struggle with which he gives up, bit by bit, things [pg 006] which, when he wrote that preface, he never dreamed he would have to surrender. It was fortunate for these men that their sympathies sometimes obscured their critical vision, so that, without becoming insincere, they were able to take white clouds for distant mountains. That was the kindly fate of Hase and Beyschlag.
The personal character of the study is not only due, however, to the fact that a personality can only be awakened to life by the touch of a personality; it lies in the essential nature of the problem itself. For the problem of the life of Jesus has no analogue in the field of history. No historical school has ever laid down canons for the investigation of this problem, no professional historian has ever lent his aid to theology in dealing with it. Every ordinary method of historical investigation proves inadequate to the complexity of the conditions. The standards of ordinary historical science are here inadequate, its methods not immediately applicable. The historical study of the life of Jesus has had to create its own methods for itself. In the constant succession of unsuccessful attempts, five or six problems have emerged side by side which together constitute the fundamental problem. There is, however, no direct method of solving the problem in its complexity; all that can be done is to experiment continuously, starting from definite assumptions; and in this experimentation the guiding principle must ultimately rest upon historical intuition.
The cause of this lies in the nature of the sources of the life of Jesus, and in the character of our knowledge of the contemporary religious world of thought. It is not that the sources are in themselves bad. When we have once made up our minds that we have not the materials for a complete Life of Jesus, but only for a picture of His public ministry, it must be admitted that there are few characters of antiquity about whom we possess so much indubitably historical information, of whom we have so many authentic discourses. The position is much more favourable, for instance, than in the case of Socrates; for he is pictured to us by literary men who exercised their creative ability upon the portrait. Jesus stands much more immediately before us, because He was depicted by simple Christians without literary gift.
But at this point there arises a twofold difficulty. There is first the fact that what has just been said applies only to the first three Gospels, while the fourth, as regards its character, historical data, and discourse material, forms a world of its own. It is written from the Greek standpoint, while the first three are written from the Jewish. And even if one could get over this, and regard, as has often been done, the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel as standing in something of the same relation to one another as Xenophon does to Plato as sources for the life of Socrates, yet the complete irreconcilability of the historical data would compel the critical [pg 007] investigator to decide from the first in favour of one source or the other. Once more it is found true that "No man can serve two masters." This stringent dilemma was not recognised from the beginning; its emergence is one of the results of the whole course of experiment.
The second difficulty regarding the sources is the want of any thread of connexion in the material which they offer us. While the Synoptics are only collections of anecdotes (in the best, historical sense of the word), the Gospel of John-as stands on record in its closing words-only professes to give a selection of the events and discourses. From these materials we can only get a Life of Jesus with yawning gaps. How are these gaps to be filled? At the worst with phrases, at the best with historical imagination. There is really no other means of arriving at the order and inner connexion of the facts of the life of Jesus than the making and testing of hypotheses. If the tradition preserved by the Synoptists really includes all that happened during the time that Jesus was with His disciples, the attempt to discover the connexion must succeed sooner or later. It becomes more and more clear that this presupposition is indispensable to the investigation. If it is merely a fortuitous series of episodes that the Evangelists have handed down to us, we may give up the attempt to arrive at a critical reconstruction of the life of Jesus as hopeless.
But it is not only the events which lack historical connexion; we are without any indication of a thread of connexion in the actions and discourses of Jesus, because the sources give no hint of the character of His self-consciousness. They confine themselves to outward facts. We only begin to understand these historically when we can mentally place them in an intelligible connexion and conceive them as the acts of a clearly defined personality. All that we know of the development of Jesus and of His Messianic self-consciousness has been arrived at by a series of working hypotheses. Our conclusions can only be considered valid so long as they are not found incompatible with the recorded facts as a whole.
It may be maintained by the aid of arguments drawn from the sources that the self-consciousness of Jesus underwent a development during the course of His public ministry; it may, with equally good grounds, be denied. For in both cases the arguments are based upon little details in the narrative in regard to which we do not know whether they are purely accidental, or whether they belong to the essence of the facts. In each case, moreover, the experimental working out of the hypothesis leads to a conclusion which compels the rejection of some of the actual data of the sources. Each view equally involves a violent treatment of the text.
Furthermore, the sources exhibit, each within itself, a striking [pg 008] contradiction. They assert that Jesus felt Himself to be the Messiah; and yet from their presentation of His life it does not appear that He ever publicly claimed to be so. They attribute to Him, that is, an attitude which has absolutely no connexion with the consciousness which they assume that He possessed. But once admit that the outward acts are not the natural expression of the self-consciousness and all exact historical knowledge is at an end; we have to do with an isolated fact which is not referable to any law.
This being so, the only way of arriving at a conclusion of any value is to experiment, to test, by working them out, the two hypotheses-that Jesus felt Himself to be the Messiah, as the sources assert, or that He did not feel Himself to be so, as His conduct implies; or else to try to conjecture what kind of Messianic consciousness His must have been, if it left His conduct and His discourses unaffected. For one thing is certain: the whole account of the last days at Jerusalem would be unintelligible, if we had to suppose that the mass of the people had a shadow of a suspicion that Jesus held Himself to be the Messiah.
Again, whereas in general a personality is to some extent defined by the world of thought which it shares with its contemporaries, in the case of Jesus this source of information is as unsatisfactory as the documents. What was the nature of the contemporary Jewish world of thought? To that question no clear answer can be given. We do not know whether the expectation of the Messiah was generally current or whether it was the faith of a mere sect. With the Mosaic religion as such it had nothing to do. There was no organic connexion between the religion of legal observance and the future hope. Further, if the eschatological hope was generally current, was it the prophetic or the apocalyptic form of that hope? We know the Messianic expectations of the prophets; we know the apocalyptic picture as drawn by Daniel, and, following him, by Enoch and the Psalms of Solomon before the coming of Jesus, and by the Apocalypses of Ezra and Baruch about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. But we do not know which was the popular form; nor, supposing that both were combined into one picture, what this picture really looked like. We know only the form of eschatology which meets us in the Gospels and in the Pauline epistles; that is to say, the form which it took in the Christian community in consequence of the coming of Jesus. And to combine these three-the prophetic, the Late-Jewish apocalyptic, and the Christian-has not proved possible.
Even supposing we could obtain more exact information regarding the popular Messianic expectations at the time of Jesus, we should still not know what form they assumed in the self-consciousness [pg 009] of One who knew Himself to be the Messiah but held that the time was not yet come for Him to reveal Himself as such. We only know their aspect from without, as a waiting for the Messiah and the Messianic Age; we have no clue to their aspect from within as factors in the Messianic self-consciousness. We possess no psychology of the Messiah. The Evangelists have nothing to tell us about it, because Jesus told them nothing about it; the sources for the contemporary spiritual life inform us only concerning the eschatological expectation. For the form of the Messianic self-consciousness of Jesus we have to fall back upon conjecture.
Such is the character of the problem, and, as a consequence, historical experiment must here take the place of historical research. That being so, it is easy to understand that to take a survey of the study of the life of Jesus is to be confronted, at first sight, with a scene of the most boundless confusion. A series of experiments are repeated with constantly varying modifications suggested by the results furnished by the subsidiary sciences. Most of the writers, however, have no suspicion that they are merely repeating an experiment which has often been made before. Some of them discover this in the course of their work to their own great astonishment-it is so, for instance, with Wrede, who recognises that he is working out, though doubtless with a clearer consciousness of his aim, an idea of Bruno Bauer's.5 If old Reimarus were to come back again, he might confidently give himself out to be the latest of the moderns, for his work rests upon a recognition of the exclusive importance of eschatology, such as only recurs again in Johannes Weiss.
Progress, too, is curiously fitful, with long intervals of marking time between the advances. From Strauss down to the 'nineties there was no real progress, if one takes into consideration only the complete Lives of Jesus which appeared. But a number of separate problems took a more clearly defined form, so that in the end the general problem suddenly moved forward, as it seemed, with a jerk. There is really no common standard by which to judge the works with which we have to do. It is not the most orderly narratives, those which weave in conscientiously every detail of the text, which have advanced the study of the subject, but precisely the eccentric ones, those that take the greatest liberties with the text. It is not by the mass of facts that a writer sets down alongside of one another as possible-because he writes easily and there is no one there to contradict him, and because facts on paper do not come into collision so sharply as they do in reality-it is not in that way that he shows his power of reconstructing history, but by that which he recognises as impossible. The constructions [pg 010] of Reimarus and Bruno Bauer have no solidity; they are mere products of the imagination. But there is much more historical power in their clear grasp of a single definite problem, which has blinded them to all else, than there is in the circumstantial works of Beyschlag and Bernard Weiss.
But once one has accustomed oneself to look for certain definite landmarks amid this apparent welter of confusion one begins at last to discover in vague outline the course followed, and the progress made, by the critical study of the life of Jesus. It falls, immediately, into two periods, that before Strauss and that after Strauss. The dominant interest in the first is the question of miracle. What terms are possible between a historical treatment and the acceptance of supernatural events? With the advent of Strauss this problem found a solution, viz., that these events have no rightful place in the history, but are simply mythical elements in the sources. The way was thus thrown open. Meanwhile, alongside of the problem of the supernatural, other problems had been dimly apprehended. Reimarus had drawn attention to the contemporary eschatological views; Hase, in his first Life of Jesus (1829), had sought to trace a development in the self-consciousness of Jesus.
But on this point a clear view was impossible, because all the students of the subject were still basing their operations upon the harmony of the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel; which means that they had not so far felt the need of a historically intelligible outline of the life of Jesus. Here, too, Strauss was the light-bringer. But the transient illumination was destined to be obscured by the Marcan hypothesis,6 which now came to the front. The necessity of choosing between John and the Synoptists was first fully established by the Tübingen school; and the right relation of this question to the Marcan hypothesis was subsequently shown by Holtzmann.
While these discussions of the preliminary literary questions were in progress the main historical problem of the life of Jesus was slowly rising into view. The question began to be mooted: what was the significance of eschatology for the mind of Jesus? With this problem was associated, in virtue of an inner connexion which was not at first suspected, the problem of the self-consciousness of Jesus. At the beginning of the 'nineties it was generally felt that, in the solution given to this dual problem, an in some measure assured knowledge of the outward and inward course of the life of Jesus had been reached. At this point Johannes Weiss revived the comprehensive claim of Reimarus on behalf of [pg 011] eschatology; and scarcely had criticism adjusted its attitude to this question when Wrede renewed the attempt of Bauer and Volkmar to eliminate altogether the Messianic element from the life of Jesus.
We are now once more in the midst of a period of great activity in the study of the subject. On the one side we are offered a historical solution, on the other a literary. The question at issue is: Is it possible to explain the contradiction between the Messianic consciousness of Jesus and His non-Messianic discourses and actions by means of a conception of His Messianic consciousness which will make it appear that He could not have acted otherwise than as the Evangelists describe; or must we endeavour to explain the contradiction by taking the non-Messianic discourses and actions as our fixed point, denying the reality of His Messianic self-consciousness and regarding it as a later interpolation of the beliefs of the Christian community into the life of Jesus? In the latter case the Evangelists are supposed to have attributed these Messianic claims to Jesus because the early Church held Him to be the Messiah, but to have contradicted themselves by describing His life as it actually was, viz., as the life of a prophet, not of one who held Himself to be the Messiah. To put it briefly: Does the difficulty of explaining the historical personality of Jesus lie in the history itself, or only in the way in which it is represented in the sources?
This alternative will be discussed in all the critical studies of the next few years. Once clearly posed it compels a decision. But no one can really understand the problem who has not a clear notion of the way in which it has shaped itself in the course of the investigation; no one can justly criticise, or appraise the value of, new contributions to the study of this subject unless he knows in what forms they have been presented before.
The history of the study of the life of Jesus has hitherto received surprisingly little attention. Hase, in his Life of Jesus of 1829, briefly records the previous attempts to deal with the subject. Friedrich von Ammon, himself one of the most distinguished students in this department, in his "Progress of Christianity,"7 gives some information "regarding the most notable biographies of Jesus of the last fifty years." In the year 1865 Uhlhorn treated together the Lives of Jesus of Renan, Schenkel, and Strauss; in 1876 Hase, in his "History of Jesus," gave the only complete literary history of the subject;8 in 1892 Uhlhorn extended his former lecture to include the works of Keim, Delff, Beyschlag, and Weiss;9 in 1898 [pg 012] Frantzen described, in a short essay, the progress of the study since Strauss;10 in 1899 and 1900 Baldensperger gave, in the Theologische Rundschau, a survey of the most recent publications;11 Weinel's book, "Jesus in the Nineteenth Century," naturally only gives an analysis of a few classical works; Otto Schmiedel's lecture on the "Main Problems of the Critical Study of the Life of Jesus" (1902) merely sketches the history of the subject in broad outline.12
Apart from scattered notices in histories of theology this is practically all the literature of the subject. There is room for an attempt to bring order into the chaos of the Lives of Jesus. Hase made ingenious comparisons between them, but he was unable to group them according to inner principles, or to judge them justly. Weisse is for him a feebler descendant of Strauss, Bruno Bauer is the victim of a fantastic imagination. It would indeed have been difficult for Hase to discover in the works of his time any principle of division. But now, when the literary and eschatological methods of solution have led to complementary results, when the post-Straussian period of investigation seems to have reached a provisional close, and the goal to which it has been tending has become clear, the time seems ripe for the attempt to trace genetically in the successive works the shaping of the problem as it now confronts us, and to give a systematic historical account of the critical study of the life of Jesus. Our endeavour will be to furnish a graphic description of all the attempts to deal with the subject; and not to dismiss them with stock phrases or traditional labels, but to show clearly what they really did to advance the formulation of the problem, whether their contemporaries recognised it or not. In accordance with this principle many famous Lives of Jesus which have prolonged an honoured existence through many successive editions, will make but a poor figure, while others, which have received scant notice, will appear great. Behind Success comes Truth, and her reward is with her.

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Word Lists:

Text : a book or other written or printed work, regarded in terms of its content rather than its physical form

Eschatology : the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind

Historical : of or concerning history; concerning past events

Self-conscious : feeling undue awareness of oneself, one's appearance, or one's actions

Apocalyptic : describing or prophesying the complete destruction of the world

Presupposition : a thing tacitly assumed beforehand at the beginning of a line of argument or course of action

Dogmatic : inclined to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true

Theology : the study of the nature of God and religious belief

Dogma : a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true

Indubitably :

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Rating: Words in the Passage: 5574 Unique Words: 1,324 Sentences: 194
Noun: 1440 Conjunction: 465 Adverb: 324 Interjection: 1
Adjective: 441 Pronoun: 383 Verb: 785 Preposition: 872
Letter Count: 25,658 Sentiment: Positive / Positive / Positive Tone: Formal Difficult Words: 921
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