Von W. Heitmüller, D. u. Professor der Theologie in Marburg. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr. 1913.1
This volume contains a reprint of the Article “Jesus Christ” in the third volume (1912) of the encyclopædia published under the name of “Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart”; together with an Address on “Jesus of Nazareth and the Way to God” delivered on March 11, 1913, at the seventeenth meeting (at Aarau) of the Conference of Swiss Christian Students.
The occasion of the publication of the volume is not without its interest. The Theological Faculty of the University of Marburg has for some time been in controversy with the Prussian Kultusministerium over the appointments made from time to time to its professorships. One fruit of this controversy was a pamphlet—his opponents call it a Brandschrift—by Jülicher bearing the title of “Die Entmündigung einer preussischen theologischen Fakultät.” Notice was taken of this pamphlet in the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, and in the course of some remarks upon it the Freiherr von Schenk of Schweinsberg, who happened to be not only a deputy of the Chamber but also President of the Konsistorialbezirk Kassel, within the bounds of which the University of Marburg is situated, took occasion to comment also, with some sharpness, on Heitmüller’s Article “Jesus Christ” (April 5, 1913). This is what he said:
“I am constrained to show you by means of a scientific work to what such a critical tendency can lead. I will be quite brief and, with the permission of the President, will read from the scientific work, ‘Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart,’ only the following sentences from the Article Jesus Christ, II, Particular Questions in the Life of Jesus. ‘For the Jewish conception there lies immediately comprehensible in the idea of “the Son,” that God stands to Jesus in a special relation of trust and love; as “the Son” Jesus knows Himself as before all other men the object of the special love of God. As we must understand from the context, He knows Himself as the Son precisely because He knows God in a unique fashion and God has made Him the vehicle of Revelation. Vehicle of a unique revelation, the Son absolutely—we are almost appalled (erschrecken) by the loftiness of this consciousness. It is certainly in no way a divine consciousness, but yet a vocational consciousness which almost oversteps the bounds of humanity and evacuates all the human experience which is otherwise manifested—with reference to which we might ask indeed whether it can be made consistent with soundness and clarity of mind.’ (Hear, hear! and for shame! from the Right.) ‘Here is the point at which the figure of Jesus becomes mysterious, almost unearthly to us. But’ … Now comes the But, for were the author to stop at this point and not proceed to this But, I am convinced that he, like any professor who propounds such teaching, must be liable to have a process entered against him for blasphemy (deputy Heckenroth, very true!) or at least for overstepping his professorial privileges. The text being read proceeds: ‘But we have scarcely the right to distrust the essential contents of our passage, Matt. 11:25 to 27, and that the less that the whole manner of conceiving the significance of Jesus (Revealer) which meets us here corresponds very little with the modes of thought of the primitive community.’ Gentlemen, I am constrained to place my finger upon this point, because I say to myself, Here is an absolutely essential point, which must receive attention, for here there comes to an end what is otherwise spoken of as a theological tendency; here there meets us a point of view which is absolutely different from what we otherwise speak of as the Christian point of view (very true! from the Right). We are not dealing here with two tendencies, but with two world-views (very true! from the Right), with two completely diverse religions. They cannot be forced under the shibboleths of ‘positive’ and ‘liberal’ or dealt with from the standpoint of party politics.… Gentlemen, no indulgence can be shown to such things—even under the mantle of freedom of teaching (Lehrfreiheit). I am convinced, if we enter upon such a pathway, that we must ultimately reach the point where it must be said, What is here offered to the people has nothing in common with Christianity except the name, but intrinsically nothing more. The monistic conception of life is making way among ever wider circles of our people, not merely among the professors at the universities, among the educated and learned—no, it is already penetrating into very wide circles of all ranks, and the more deeply our population descends on the downward sloping road of the monistic conception of life, the more firmly and steadily must the Kultusminister, as the first counselor of the throne, take his stand upon the high Christian world-view, and give expression to this his point of view in his decrees and acts.…”