Von D. Eberhard Vischer. Tübingen: Verlag von J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). 1912.1
Eberhard Vischer always writes interestingly, and this Address—for it is an Address, delivered at a Conference of Christian students—is no exception to the rule. In substance it is a popular presentation of the argument developed at length and with more scientific stringency in his well-known article on “Historical Certainty and Faith in Jesus Christ,” published in the Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche for 1898 (viii. pp. 195–260). Although, therefore, it declares on its title-page that it is a “Contribution to the Drews- and Jatho-Debates,” it has only the slightest connection with these debates. They are mentioned only that the reader may be counseled to let them alone and go behind them. No doubt Drews and Jatho may be answered point by point. But what then? The real question still remains untouched. For it is Vischer’s “conviction, that by this labor, necessary and meritorious as it is, the difficult questions raised by Drews and his predecessors are by no means answered; that, on the contrary, precisely by this defense the real problem which is in debate, is made a burning one—the question, to wit, of how a historical personality, which, because it belongs to history, shares also the lot of all that is historical and passes more and more into the past—of how such a personality can possess at the same time abiding significance, can be for humanity the guide, who guides them, despite all the changes of times and relations, most surely and most directly to the eternal Ground of all Being and Becoming. It is precisely by a defense which follows the doubts of the historicity of Jesus step by step, which takes up every consideration urged against the sources which come into account and tries its weight, that it first becomes thoroughly clear what it means that Jesus Christ too is a historical object” (pp. 6–7). What is historical belongs to time, nay, rather to a time; and as times succeed times, it fades more and more into the past, to which, indeed, it inherently belongs, bearing its character and meeting perhaps it needs, but certainly not ours upon whom a new heaven and a new earth have dawned. Jesus Christ as a historical object cannot escape this twofold result of His very historicity. He becomes only a shadowy figure in the fading past; and what may be discerned of Him through the mists of time belongs distinctly to the past, separated from our modern world by a deep chasm. “What has this historical Jesus, this figure of a Jewish Rabbi in His indefiniteness and in the limitations of His times, in common with what Christianity has believed and confessed itself to possess in Christ? How can the significance which a great part of mankind has ascribed, and continues to ascribe, to Jesus for its relation to God, be combined with the knowledge that Jesus is a historical object, and all that is historical is transitory? This is the real religious problem which comes into discussion in this controversy over the historical Jesus” (pp. 8–9).
Having thus posited the problem, Vischer addresses himself to solving it. At the outset, he is concerned that we shall adopt the right method. It is usual to begin with an investigation of the oldest tradition concerning Jesus, first of all of the conception of Christ of the earliest Christian community, and to ask, first, how far this is credible, and then how far we can recognize to-day a guide in this Jesus shown to be historical. This, Vischer considers a bad way: we shall scarcely go through with it without subjecting the results of our researches to a certain amount of manipulation to make them fit our needs. He recommends to us, therefore, an opposite way. Let us begin, he says, with the other end—with what Jesus Christ has been and is to men, and proceed backwards from that to what He was as a historical figure. “Let us turn from the investigators who dispute over the trustworthiness of the oldest tradition, to the company of those who from the times of the first disciples until to-day have gathered about Jesus Christ as their Lord. What have they always believed that they found in and through Christ? And whence have they drawn this assurance, confident in which many have gone to their death?” (p. 10). The argument which he proposes, it will be seen, is that from effects to their cause; and the principle on which he proceeds—a principle fully developed, and defended at length, in the earlier article to which we have already adverted (Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 1898)—is that not only a sound, but the only sound, method of reaching absolute certainty as to past things is through observation of their present effects. Of past personalities and events necessarily implied in present conditions we may have true certainty; of all other past things only a greater or less degree of probability may be attained.