Von Ernst Troeltsch, Dr. phil. et theol. Tübingen: Verlag von J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). 1911.1
Troeltsch’s chief merit as a writer on theological themes lies in his straightforward downrightness. Among the sentimentally in consistent naturalists which crowd the ranks of “modern” theologians, he shines forth as the consistent naturalist, who will have nothing to do with half-measures. In the Lecture which at present lies before us there is, however, a greater appearance of “halfness” than is customary with him. He is clear that religion is a natural phenomenon; and that Christianity as truly as any other religion is a natural phenomenon. He sees no reason why in the natural development of human life and culture Christianity may not be transcended, and a different religion take its place. He, therefore, will not affirm the “eternity” of Christianity. But he sees no immediate prospect of the replacement of Christianity by a new religion. He is sure that Christianity is so related to the culture of the Mediterranean basin that so long as that culture endures, so long will Christianity endure. And he writes to show that the historicity of Jesus is essential to Christianity. Thus the thesis of his Lecture is the indispensableness of the historicity of Jesus for faith. And yet, he will not admit that this indispensableness is absolute. What is indispensable for faith now may cease to be indispensable hereafter. Who knows whether the culture of the Mediterranean basin is the ultimate culture? Who, then, can know whether the religion which is bound up with the culture of the Mediterranean basin is the ultimate religion? Meanwhile we know that for the culture of the Mediterranean basin Christianity is the only possible religion; and that for Christianity the historicity of Jesus is indispensable. This is the ground on which Troeltsch stands.
The Christianity which, in Troeltsch’s view, is the only possible religious expression of the culture which has been developed in the Mediterranean basin, and to which he wishes to show that the historicity of Jesus is indispensable is, of course, not historical, or, as it is more willingly called in some quarters, “traditional” Christianity. For any Christianity the object of whose faith is a divine Christ, and the center of whose gospel is the saving work of this divine Christ “propitiating God and thus freeing men from the consequences of their infection by original sin,” to raise question of the historicity of Jesus by whom this redemption has been wrought, were nonsense. “From this standpoint the raising of this question would be nothing else than to display the death-certificate of the whole of Christianity” (p. 5). The same is true of those “mixed forms” which “share the fundamental change which the Christianity of the modern world has suffered,—the transmutation of the real miracle of redemption wrought out in a historical act, into an ever new redemption through the knowledge of God”—but who “connect this redeeming faith-knowledge with the knowledge and recollection of the historical personality of Jesus, which here comes into consideration, however, with respect to neither its miracles, nor its separate declarations, but the total effect of the religious personality” (p. 11). “This,” continues Troeltsch, “is the view, founded by the later, ecclesiastical Schleiermacher, which has been presented with most emphasis by Ritschl and Herrmann. For Schleiermacher it is the suggestive power of the personality, which, working on through the mediation of His community, and conspicuous in the portrait of the Gospels, conquers the religious inefficacy, unconquerable everywhere outside the sphere of Jesus’ influence, and creates the might, certitude, joy and permanence of the knowledge of God. What apart from the faith-creating influence of Christ remains mere idea and presentiment, becomes by means of this personal influence continued in the community victorious and effective force. With Ritschl the same idea is referred less to the suggestive power of the personality than to the authority of Jesus, producing assurance of the forgiveness of sins. Christ by this authority makes Himself Lord and King of the Kingdom of God, or of the Kingdom of God-trusting capacity of life, and it is by the knowledge of Him mediated by the community that there comes the assurance without which sinful man dared not, and may not dare, to believe in God’s sin-pardoning grace. With Herrmann the humiliating and exalting fact of the personality of Christ is a historical reality which only the evil and impenitent will can deny, just as it is only the believing will, yearning after God and convicted of its sin, that sees it. It is this fact alone that gives the courage to believe in God as sin-pardoning grace, and with it, the bright delight in and power to all the goods conformable to conscience, while he who cannot become sure of this fact of God falls into doubt, or soothes himself in scepticism and loses the habit of religious needs. It is clear that in all these cases, Christianity is a thought of God, an idea, a faith-knowledge of the true nature of things. All notion of a historical redemptive miracle happening once, and of the foundation of an institute of grace carrying it on, is lacking. But the idea is still, in its efficiency, bound to the historical personality of Christ, by which alone power or certitude is lent it, and the idea so strengthened made the property of a community united in the recollection of Christ. The presupposition for such a mode of thought, besides the silent assumption of the knowableness of the religious personality of Jesus and its effectiveness by means of the mediation of the tradition and the abiding community, is the essential incapacity of men who do not know Christ for hearty faith in God. ‘Without Christ I should be an atheist’—that is the express or silent necessity which is here assumed for men who do not know Christ. The consequence corresponds to the presupposition which places Christianity in sharp contrast with extra-Christian humanity. The Kingdom of God, or the Christian community, or the Church as the object of faith, or the redemption-connection proceeding from Christ—that is the sole region of redemption, and the necessary, eternally abiding collection of the redeemed in the Kingdom of Christ. It will last till the end of humanity, and will extend unto eternity as the collection of humanity in the religious communion of absolute salvation and of absolute truth made possible by Christ” (pp. 11–13). Evidently those who think thus cannot raise a question of the historicity of this Christ without self-stulification.