Arthur Drews

“ Those who believe in an historical Jesus tell us that personalities, not ideas, make history. Apart, however, from the fact that this is no proof of the historicity of Jesus, as, of course, the idea of the Christian Saviour had to be made the centre of the new religion by personalities, until three generations ago the personality was not prominent at all in the historical conception of Christianity, but was used merely as an “illustration” in explaining the unfolding of the divine idea, without having any independent significance as the leading and shaping factor in history. ”

“ A certain nervousness and insecurity spread among theologians, and took the form of furious bitterness and hatred when the author of that work endeavoured, by means of lectures, to interest the general public in his denial of the historicity of Jesus. Now the whole Press is engaged against the disturber of the peace; it is the easier as the word “liberal” confuses the liberal in the theological and the political sense, in spite of enormous differences, and the “orthodox” Press is readily gained. ”

“ Liberal theology is an offspring of the time which chose science for a leader after the collapse of speculative philosophy about the middle of the last century, and, under the banner of modern empiricism and positivism, branded the belief in ideas as a superstition. It was the time when the emphasis of personality, which had begun with Erasmus, and increased in the pietism of the eighteenth century, in Schleiermacher, Humboldt, Neander, and others, at length became generally popular. ”

“ It was not noticed that to do away with the belief in the objective idea was to destroy the foundation of the belief in providence and a divine control of human events; and with this belief all religion disappears. People talked themselves into an ecstatic reverence for the “unique” personality of Jesus, although the advancing criticism of the new figure of Jesus left less and less positive historical facts in support of it, and it became increasingly difficult to maintain this reverence. ”

“ The ideal Christ, not the historical Jesus of modern liberal theology, was the founder of the Christian movement, and made it victorious over its opponents. It is more probable that Jesus and Isaiah are one and the same person than that the Jesus of liberal theology brought Christianity into existence ”

“ In his work, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Christ is to him nothing but “the ideal of human perfection,” and he says that it contains its reality “in itself” for practical purposes: “We need no example from experience to serve as a model to us of the idea of a man morally pleasing to God ”

“ What they really appreciate in Kant is his hostility to metaphysics, which enables them to refrain from positive statements on transcendental things, and continue to use Biblical expressions because no more correct expressions are yet available. ”