Defenders of Christianity as well as Gospel Critics
who believe Strauß’ Life of Jesus Critically Examined of 1835 was an attack on Christian doctrine will be confronted, on the contrary, with Strauß’ attempt to ‘restore’ Christian doctrine – illuminated by Plato’s Simile of the Line (Republic 509c-511e), which he shared in common with Traditional Theism. Whereas Traditional Theism’s Logos theology of Personal Theism beyond history is illuminated by a vertical reading of the line, Strauß’ Hegelian immanent theism of 1835 is illuminated by a reclining version of the line of Hegel’s meta-narrative of Absolute Spirit. As well, the Gospel critic who believes that Strauß is to be venerated as a ‘biblical martyr’ but has been left on the trash heap of history in light of the developments in source, form, redaction, and sociological criticism will encounter versions of the 20th C exegetical criteria (dissimilarity, coherence, and multiple attestation) as well as physical lawfulness already in Strauß’ 1835 Life of Jesus Critically Examined . S/he will find, as well, in Strauß’ genetic mythical principle, Norman Perrin’s literary criticism that views the Gospel writers as ‘authors,’ not historians. Strauß ignored the implication that gospel criticism is anchored in theology, not history, whereas Perrin acknowledged that his literary criticism was only the beginning and not the end of the hermeneutical task. Although Strauß tried his best with his ‘second’ Life of Jesus in 1864 to anchor religious understanding in what remained historically after textual criticism, by 1872 in The Old and the New Faith he recognized that the gospels do not have sufficient historical evidence either to write a biography even of Jesus’ teaching year(s) or to determine just what it was that he taught, much less view him as a lone, unsurpassable exception as a religious teacher. Strauß’ writings witness to religion undergoing a shift from a religion of Jesus, to a religion of reason (Scholastic Intellectualism), to a religion of humanity, in the end, a religion of nature.
The Viewer of Science as the Demolisher of Myth in the Gospels
will find not only that Strauß, in fact, enables the reading of ‘three levels’ of the mythic in the gospels. He rejects the first, literal reading of the mythic but also that he defends myth on the basis of the second, de-mythologized level of myth that distinguishes between the perceptible ‘husk’ and the imperceptible ‘kernel’ of the narratives. The ‘true’ ‘kernel’ of the Gospels for Strauß in 1835 is the Incarnation of Absolute Spirit becoming aware of Itself in finite consciousness. When it came to the miracle stories, though, Strauß followed the Göttingen Mythic School’s hermeneutical strategy of identifying the historical fact, the philosophical/theological idea, or the particular religious symbol at the core of the miracles. Although acknowledging these two ‘level’s of the mythic that sought to avoid the conflict between religion and science, Strauß did not pursue the implications of his conclusion that the gospel authors were not historians but theologians. Having never escaped the distorted reading of Kant by his mentors, he did not appreciate the ‘third level’ of the mythic: the turn to the religious, transcendental conditions of possibility of theoretical and practical reason as well as aesthetic judgment that make possible the genetic or creative process that the gospel authors employed to produce their narratives. Kant calls reflecting/reflektierende judgment the activity of discerning the necessarily a priori imperceptible relationalities in a confusing set of phenomena in order to understand (not create) the conceptual order in the set. Kant calls ascribing/bestimmende judgment the application of a concept that previously was acquired by reflecting judgment to a set of phenomena. The first two levels of the mythic in the gospels, the literal reading and the de-mythologized reading, are both matters of ascribing judgment with the value of the second ‘level’ that its ‘kernels’ of meaning are preserved and past on even by the narrator unaware of their significance. However, the generation of the mythic narrative in order to portray an understanding of who Jesus of Nazareth was is an example of reflecting judgment. To be sure, the gospel author employs her/his and or the community’s theologically, doctrinal ascribing judgments as the intent of the narrative, but the process of generating the new narrative requires the application of creative, autonomous freedom, an intentional capacity possessed, as far as we have ever experienced, only by humanity.
The Social Historian
encounters a political revolution on 5/6 September 1839 that has all the classic elements of a culture war: a long history of social uproar between conservatives and liberals, xenophobia, complete ignoring of the ‘facts’ and ad hominem attacks based on superficial opinions, stirring up of general hatred against the opposition, use of social media to flame emotions with no check on limits to the public expression of hatred, ‘woke’ education, employment of the crowd to further personal interests, exploiting the situation for business aims, fake news, mis-reading of a situations and leaders acting impulsively. Zurich experienced the death of a political leader and 14 of the economically disadvantaged opposition as well as serious wounding of 14 others, the destruction of careers, and the fall of the Canton government of Zurich. There’s something all-too familiar about this picture after 185 years.
The Christian Church Historian
who takes Strauß to be an example of the philosopher seeking to place humanity on the throne of God will encounter a Strauß and his professor, F.C. Baur, who demonstrate that the criticism of Christianity requires no ‘external philosophy’ but only its historical investigation to expose the contradictions, inconsistencies, and irreconcilable antitheses of its own dogmatics. Furthermore, along the way one will discover that, even before the Apostle Paul claims that God’s revelation is intended to confuse the worldly wise (especially the philosophers), humanity had already placed itself on the throne of God. There is no conception of God (Animism, Polytheism, Henotheism, Monotheism, Pantheism, Panlogism, Immanentism, Gnosticism, the Personal Theism of Christian Platonism (‘Intellectualism’) and Aristotelianism, ‘Occasionalism’/‘Voluntarism,’ Mysticism, Hegel’s meta-narrative of Absolute Spirit, Schleiermacher’s perfect God-consciousness, 20th C Process Theology of Dipolar Theism with its Pan-en-theism, etc.) that is not an anthropomorphic projection. All theology is worldly wisdom! However, not all ‘worldly wisdom’ is anti-religion.
Those interested in Schleiermacher
will find an analysis of Strauß’ take on Schleiermacher in the 1835 LJ, in the 1839 essay on Schleiermacher and C. Daub, in Strauß’ 1841 Glaubenslehre, and in the 1865 Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith. Themes covered are Strauß’ evaluation of Schleiermacher’s methodology; Strauß’ attempt at reconciliation with the Schleiermachians in the third edition of the Life of Jesus Critically Examined; 7 problematic elements to Schleiermacher’s ‘feeling of absolute dependence;’ a criticism of Schleiermacher’s attempt at reconciling science and faith; Schleiermacher’s ‘subjectivity’ in contrast to Hegel’s ‘objectivity;’ Schleiermacher’s Sabellian, Modalistic Monarchian Christology; Strauß’ embracing of Schleiermacher’s notion of immortality as the ‘eternal’ in the ‘present’ from Schleiermacher’s early work, Speeches on Religion; Schleiermacher’s rejection of any grounding role for philosophy in theology; Strauß’ identification of 8 themes in Schleiermacher that one finds already and ‘more adequately articulated’ in Spinoza; and the problems that confront Schleiermacher’s insistence that the Gospel of John is from a single author who was the only eyewitness gospel writer; as well as the contradictions between Schleiermacher’s and John’s theologies.
The Student
who seeks a segue into the German anti-Kantian, anti-Enlightenment, and ‘speculative’ metaphysics of the first half of the century encounters a Strauß who is the neck of the hour glass of 19th C German reflection. Although Kant was the elephant in the room already with the Life of Jesus Critically Examined in 1835 and was half-heartedly embraced with his Life of Jesus Examined for the Germa People of 1864, Strauß never escaped the anti-Kantians of his earliest mentors, which left him with no viable option to Hegelian Idealism than reductionist materialism in The Old and the New Faith of 1872. With his rigor and with his errors, Strauß offers a unique opportunity to sort out the entangled threads of major intellectual currents that shaped the century, as well as a concrete example of the establishment of reductionist materialism by the end of the era.
The Natural Scientist
who expects to find in Strauß the 19th C champion of the empirical sciences over against the mythic fantasies of the Christian gospels will be confronted in Strauß with Hegelian ‘science,’ not the scientific, hypothetico-deductive method. The paradigmatic defender of the latter is neither Hegel nor Strauß but the maligned Immanuel Kant. Kant’s account of reason (pursuit of understanding of phenomena, not ultimate, causal explanations) starts with the limitations that are required to experience a world of appearances (no direct access to things-in-themselves) that turns to consciousness to identify the imperceptible conditions, capacities and lawfulness (which today would include statistical significance and algorithms) of reflecting judgment, which seeks imperceptible relationalities in perceptible phenomena, to develop mental, category schemes of ever-greater coherence to account for and explain phenomena to the best of our finite abilities – whose task is complete only when it returns to the phenomena for its confirmation.
The Post-Metaphysician
who rejects all meta-narratives that take humanity out of the world either ‘religiously’ or ‘philosophically’ and who rejects philosophies of ‘presence’ to embrace ‘traces’ upon ‘traces’ all-the-way-down that eliminates anything remotely like truth except the one truth that there is no truth, will be presented, thanks to Strauß’ career-long, incomplete wrestling with Immanuel Kant, a ‘metaphysics’ not of objective truth claims or of causal explanation of reality either of Idealism (Hegel) or Materialism (Strauß in 1872) but the Kantian ‘necessity’ claims of the imperceptible conditions and capacities that make it possible for consciousness to experience, understand, and exercise responsible agency in the world. Where traditional metaphysics start and post-metaphysics stumbles, Kant already has completed his task of illuminating ‘metaphysics’ as a product of critique (extending/erweiternde a priori synthesis), which establishes what is necessary for experience, understanding, and responsible agency rather than ‘truths’ of mere criticism (elucidating/erläuternde analysis).
The Pluralist
who celebrates diversity to the point that all external or internal criticism is taken to be dogmatism and imperialistic colonialization of the mind as well as the traditionalist who embraces the intolerance of intolerance to defend her/his convictions from any and all ccritivism (and, by the way, as justification to ignore the other) will encounter a ‘pure’ religion that has nothing to do with superiority and condescension but is grounded in the imperceptible elements, conditions, and capacities that make possible the creative ‘culture of skills’ of theoretical reason (not merely instrumental reason) as well as the ‘culture that promotes the moral will’ of practical reason. This ‘pure’ religion does not consist of an external finger-wagging moralism and privileging of the adherents of one, so-called exceptional and single, religious, Grand Narrative in this or the next life but as the religion of the ordinary that affirms the internal dignity of all (regardless of external identities) and grounds success and meaning not exclusively in the ambiguities and deceptions that are external accomplishments and applause in this or the next life. Rather, success and meaning consist in internal satisfaction that can arise only through creativity and the assumption of personal responsibility for one’s agency and that can only come about by the larger horizon of mutual support and encouragement of a community (an imperceptible, Commonweal of ‘God’) that understands the significance of the imperceptible, causal orders of nature and consciousness.
The Student of Aesthetics
who takes aesthetics to only refer to the beauty of objects (and overlooks the sublime: Plato) and/or treats beauty and the sublime as synonyms (Hegel); and/or, to the extent aware of Kant’s Critique of the Capacity of Judgment, takes it to be an indicator that he colored outside the lines of instrumental reason in an attempt to ‘find a place’ not only for beauty but also for the sublime as well as having capriciously tacked on a tangent about teleological judgment in nature (almost half of the third Critiqued), will encounter a Kant who does not treat aesthetics as an emotional, frosting on the cake that supplements rationality but, rather, an aesthetics at the very core of rationality. Kant analyzes aesthetic judgment as a capacity of judgment (Urteilskraft) not of aesthetic predicates applied to external or internal ‘objects.’ It is precisely as internally, transcendental capacities of reflecting judgment that Kant establishes the connection among beauty, the sublime, and teleological judgment as a necessary (but not causally necessary) set of transcendental principles that unite autonomous freedom and nature, with the issue of ‘jumping a gap’ between freedom and nature having been misunderstood (especially by Hegel) to be the indicator that Kant is trapped in a metaphysical dualism.
Anti-Metaphysicians and Opponents of Enlightenment
Those 1) who view Kant as a mere perpetrator of metaphysics and reduce him to a ‘talking head’ of cold, calculating, instrumental reason and who take him as having collapsed everything into merely subjectivity; and/or those 2) who take Kant’s notion of autonomy to mean rejection of all traditions and institutions; and/or those 3) who take Enlightenment to mean the setting loose of freedom’s random spontaneity in the pursuit of merely subjective self-interest; and/or those 4) who view Kant’s notion of ‘reason’ to be ‘weak’ and ‘barbarous’ because it demeans ‘knowledge’ and ‘science’ will encounter: Re. 1) a ‘metaphysics’ of the imperceptible capacities of transcendental consciousness that make possible (not causally explain) any and all finite experience, understanding, and responsible agency in the world as well as a Kant who stands in awe in the face of the universe and places feeling (not as merely random, vague, and amorphous irrational feeling) at the core of both ‘theoretical’ (understanding) and ‘practical’ reason (agency) as attraction to lawfulness and repulsion to unlawfulness (under the logic of ‘as if,’ not causal, Absolute Knowledge) but nonetheless, universal, and surely, not merely civic law and relative, social norms; Re. 2) a Kant whose notion of autonomy is of a finite, eminent, causal capacity of autonomous freedom (as a causality governed by the lawful system of morality just as nature is governed by physical lawfulness) that consists of both ‘freedom-from’ nature but an open-endedness in nature as a capacity of ‘freedom-for’ that allows it to create things that nature on its own cannot and that alone makes moral responsibility possible (but, obviously, not necessary) because it has the power to reign in self-interest on the basis of moral principles; Re. 3) a Kant for whom Enlightenment means to free oneself from one’s own self-inflicted immaturity to develop one’s own capacities and to assume responsibility for one’s own creative agency; and Re. 4) a Kant whose transcendental reason, possible precisely because of the capacity of aesthetic judgment, is by no means weak but, rather, possesses the capacity to destroy the world as well as a Kant for whom reason is by no means barbaric because, although it denies Absolute Knowledge, it champions culture (to be sure, not merely the culture of skills but a culture that promotes the moral will). In short, one encounters here a Kant who is a champion of the natural sciences’ ‘theoretical’ reason (again, not limited to instrumental reason) but who subordinates it to ‘practical’ reason – precisely what is so absent in today’s ‘pragmatic’ social order that measures everything in terms of consequences, not accountability.
