Chapter XVI: The Struggle Against Eschatology (2)

After His death the disciples “could not, unless something occurred to restore their faith, continue to believe in His Messiahship.” Jesus had taken away with Him in His death the hopes which they had set upon Him, especially as He had not foretold His death, much less His resurrection. “At first, therefore, it would be all in favour of His memory if the disciples remembered that He Himself had never openly and definitely declared Himself to be the Messiah.” They returned to Galilee. “Simon Peter, and perhaps the son of Zebedee, who afterwards ranked along with him as a pillar of the Church, resolved to continue that preparation for their work which had been interrupted by their journey to Jerusalem. It seemed to them that if they were once more on Galilaean soil the days which they had spent in the inhospitable Jerusalem would cease to oppress their spirits with the leaden weight of sorrowful recollection.... One might almost say that they had to make up their minds to give up Jesus the author of the attempt to take Jerusalem by storm; but for Jesus the gracious gentle Galilaean teacher they kept a warm place in their hearts.” So love watched over the dead until hope was rekindled by the Old Testament promises and came to reawaken Him. “The first who, in an enthusiastic vision, saw this wish fulfilled was Simon Peter.” This “resurrection” has nothing to do with the empty grave, which, like the whole narrative of the Jerusalem appearances, only came into the tradition later. The first appearances took place in Galilee. It was there that the Church was founded.

This attempt to grasp the connexion of events in the life of Jesus from a purely historical point of view is one of the most important that have ever been made in this department of study. If it had been put in a purely constructive form, this criticism would have made an impression unequalled by any other Life of Jesus since Renan’s. But in that case it would have lost that free play of ideas which the critical recognition of the unbridged gap admits. The eschatological question is not, it is true, decided by this investigation. It shows the impossibility of the previous attempts to establish a present Messiahship of Jesus, but it shows, too, that the questions, which are really historical questions, concerning the public attitude of Jesus, are far from being solved by asserting the exclusively eschatological character of His preaching, but that new difficulties are always presenting themselves.

It was perhaps not so much through these general ethico‐religious historical discussions as in consequence of certain exegetical problems which unexpectedly came to light that theologians became conscious that the old conception of the teaching of Jesus was not tenable, or was only tenable by violent means. On the assumption of the modified eschatological character of His teaching, Jesus is still a teacher; that is to say, He speaks in order to be understood, in order to explain, and has no secrets. But if His teaching is throughout eschatological, then He is a prophet, who points in mysterious speech to a coming age, whose words conceal secrets and offer enigmas, and are not intended to be understood always and by everybody. Attention was now turned to a number of passages in which the question arises whether Jesus had any secrets to keep or not.

This question presents itself in connexion with the very earliest of the parables. In Mark iv. 11, 12 it is distinctly stated that the parables spoken in the immediate context embody the mystery of the Kingdom of God in an obscure and unintelligible form, in order that those for whom it is not intended may hear without understanding. But this is not borne out by the character of the parables themselves, since _we_ at least find in them the thought of the constant and victorious development of the Kingdom from small beginnings to its perfect development. After the passage had had to suffer many things from constantly renewed attempts to weaken down or explain away the statement, Jülicher, in his work upon the Parables,(176) released it from these tortures, left Jesus the parables in their natural meaning, and put down this unintelligible saying about the purpose of the parabolic form of discourse to the account of the Evangelist. He would rather, to use his own expression, remove a little stone from the masonry of tradition than a diamond from the imperishable crown of honour which belongs to Jesus. Yes, but, for all that, it is an arbitrary assumption which damages the Marcan hypothesis more than will be readily admitted. What was the reason, or what was the mistake which led the earliest Evangelist to form so repellent a theory regarding the purpose of the parables? Is the progressive exaggeration of the contrast between veiled and open speech, to which Jülicher often appeals, sufficient to account for it? How can the Evangelist have invented such a theory, when he immediately proceeds to invalidate it by the rationalising, rather commonplace explanation of the parable of the Sower?

Bernhard Weiss, not being so much under the influence of modern theology as to feel bound to recognise the paedagogic purpose in Jesus, gives the text its due, and admits that Jesus intended to use the parabolic form of discourse as a means of separating receptive from unreceptive hearers. He does not say, however, what kind of secret, intelligible only to the predestined, was concealed in these parables which seem clear as daylight.

That was before Johannes Weiss had stated the eschatological question. Bousset, in his criticism of the eschatological theory,(177) is obliged to fall back upon Jülicher’s method in order to justify the rationalising modern way of explaining these parables as pointing to a Kingdom of God actually present. It is true Jülicher’s explanation of the way in which the theory arose does not satisfy him; he prefers to assume that the basis of this false theory of Mark’s is to be found in the fact that the parables concerning the presence of the Kingdom remained unintelligible to the contemporaries of Jesus. But we may fairly ask that he should point out the connecting link between that failure to understand and the invention of a saying like this, which implies so very much more!

If there are no better grounds than that for calling in question Mark’s theory of the parables, then the parables of Mark iv., the only ones from which it is possible to extract the admission of a present Kingdom of God, remain what they were before, namely, mysteries.

The second volume of Jülicher’s “Parables”(178) found the eschatological question already in possession of the field. And, as a matter of fact, Jülicher does abandon “the heretofore current method of modernising the parables,” which finds in one after another of them only its own favourite conception of the slow and gradual development of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of Heaven is for Jülicher a completely supernatural idea; it is to be realised without human help and independently of the attitude of men, by the sole power of God. The parables of the mustard seed and the leaven are not intended to teach the disciples the necessity and wisdom of a development occupying a considerable time, but are designed to make clear and vivid to them the idea that the period of perfecting and fulfilment will follow with super‐earthly necessity upon that of imperfection.

But in general the new problem plays no very special part in Jülicher’s exposition. He takes up, it might almost be said, in relation to the parables, too independent a position as a religious thinker to care to understand them against the background of a wholly different world‐view, and does not hesitate to exclude from the authentic discourses of Jesus whatever does not suit him. This is the fate, for instance, of the parable of the wicked husbandmen in Mark xii. He finds in it traits which read like _vaticinia ex eventu_, and sees therefore in the whole thing only a prophetically expressed “view of the history as it presented itself to an average man who had been present at the crucifixion of Jesus and nevertheless believed in Him as the Son of God.”

But this absolute method of explanation, independent of any traditional order of time or events, makes it impossible for the author to draw from the parables any general system of teaching. He makes no distinction between the Galilaean mystical parables and the polemical, menacing Jerusalem parables. For instance, he supposes the parable of the Sower, which according to Mark was the very first of Jesus’ parabolic discourses, to have been spoken as the result of a melancholy review of a preceding period of work, and as expressing the conviction, stamped upon His mind by the facts, “that it was in accordance with higher laws that the word of God should have to reckon with defeats as well as victories.” Accordingly he adopts in the main the explanation which the Evangelist gives in Mark iv. 13‐20. The parable of the seed growing secretly is turned to account in favour of the “present” Kingdom of God.

Jülicher has an incomparable power of striking fire out of every one of the parables, but the flame is of a different colour from that which it showed when Jesus pronounced the parables before the enchanted multitude. The problem posed by Johannes Weiss in connexion with the teaching of Jesus is treated by Jülicher only so far as it has a direct interest for the creative independence of his own religious thought.

Alongside of the parabolic discourses of Mark iv. we have now to place, as a newly discovered problem, the discourse at the sending out of the Twelve in Matt. x. Up to the time of Johannes Weiss it had been possible to rest content with transplanting the gloomy sayings regarding persecutions to the last period of Jesus’ life; but now there was the further difficulty to be met that while so hasty a proclamation of the Kingdom of God is quite reconcilable with an exclusively eschatological character of the preaching of the Kingdom, the moment this is at all minimised it becomes unintelligible, not to mention the fact that in this case nothing can be made of the saying about the immediate coming of the Son of Man in Matt. x. 23. As though he felt the stern eye of old Reimarus upon him, Bousset hastens in a footnote to throw overboard the whole report of the mission of the Twelve as an “obscure and unintelligible tradition.” Not content with that, he adds: “Perhaps the whole narrative is merely an expansion of some direction about missionising given by Jesus to the disciples in view of a later time.” Before, it was only the discourse which was unhistorical; now it is the whole account of the mission—at least if we may assume that here, as is usual with theologians of all times, the author’s real opinion is expressed in the footnote, and his most cherished opinion of all introduced with “perhaps.” But how much historical material will remain to modern theologians in the Gospels if they are forced to abandon it wholesale from their objection to pure eschatology? If all the pronouncements of this kind to which the representatives of the Marcan hypothesis have committed themselves were collected together, they would make a book which would be much more damaging even than that book of Wrede’s which dropped a bomb into their midst.

A third problem is offered by the saying in Matt. xi. 12, about “the violent” who, since the time of John the Baptist, “take the Kingdom of Heaven by force,” which raises fresh difficulties for the exegetical art. It is true that if art sufficed, we should not have long to wait for the solution in this case. We should be asked to content ourselves with one or other of the artificial solutions with which exegetes have been accustomed from of old to find a way round this difficulty. Usually the saying is claimed as supporting the “presence” of the Kingdom. This is the line taken by Wendt, Wernle, and Arnold Meyer.(179) According to the last named it means: “From the days of John the Baptist it has been possible to get possession of the Kingdom of God; yea, the righteous are every day earning it for their own.” But no explanation has heretofore succeeded in making it in any degree intelligible how Jesus could date the presence of the Kingdom from the Baptist, whom in the same breath He places outside of the Kingdom, or why, in order to express so simple an idea, He uses such entirely unnatural and inappropriate expressions as “rape” and “wrest to themselves.”

The full difficulties of the passage are first exhibited by Johannes Weiss.(180) He restores it to its natural sense, according to which it means that since that time the Kingdom suffers, or is subjected to, violence, and in order to be able to understand it literally he has to take it in a condemnatory sense. Following Alexander Schweizer,(181) he sums up his interpretation in the following sentence: Jesus describes, and in the form of the description shows His condemnation of, a violent Zealotistic Messianic movement which has been in progress since the days of the Baptist.(182) But this explanation again makes Jesus express a very simple meaning in a very obscure phrase. And what indication is there that the sense is condemnatory? Where do we hear anything more about a Zealotic Messianic movement, of which the Baptist formed the starting‐point? His preaching certainly offered no incentive to such a movement, and Jesus’ attitude towards the Baptist is elsewhere, even in Jerusalem, entirely one of approval. Moreover, a condemnatory saying of this kind would not have been closed with the distinctive formula: “He that hath ears to hear let him hear” (Matt. xi. 15), which elsewhere, cf. Mark iv. 9, indicates a mystery.

We must, therefore, accept the conclusion that we really do not understand the saying, that we “have not ears to hear it,” that we do not know sufficiently well the essential character of the Kingdom of God, to understand why Jesus describes the coming of the Kingdom as a doing‐ violence‐to‐it, which has been in progress since the days of the Baptist, especially as the hearers themselves do not seem to have cared, or been able, to understand what was the connexion of the coming with the violence; nor do we know why He expects them to understand how the Baptist is identical with Elias.

But the problem which became most prominent of all the new problems raised by eschatology, was the question concerning the Son of Man. It had become a dogma of theology that Jesus used the term Son of Man to veil His Messiahship; that is to say, every theologian found in this term whatever meaning he attached to the Messiahship of Jesus, the human, humble, ethical, unpolitical, unapocalyptic, or whatever other character was held to be appropriate to the orthodox “transformed” Messiahship. The Danielic Son of Man entered into the conception only so far as it could do so without endangering the other characteristics. Confronted with the Similitudes of Enoch, theologians fell back upon the expedient of assuming them to be spurious, or at least worked‐over in a Christian sense in the Son of Man passages, just as the older history of dogma got rid of the Ignatian letters, of which it could make nothing, by denying their genuineness. But once the Jewish eschatology was seriously applied to the explanation of the Son of Man conception, all was changed. A new dilemma presented itself; either Jesus used the expression, and used it in a purely Jewish apocalyptic sense, or He did not use it at all.

Although Baldensperger did not state the dilemma in its full trenchancy, Hilgenfeld thought it necessary to defend Jesus against the suspicion of having borrowed His system of thought and His self‐designation from Jewish Apocalypses.(183) Orello Cone, too, will not admit that the expression Son of Man has only apocalyptic suggestion in the mouth of Jesus, but will have it interpreted according to Mark ii. 10 and 28, where His pure humanity is the idea which is emphasised.(184) Oort holds, more logically, that Jesus did not use it, but that the disciples took the expression from “the Gospel” and put it into the mouth of Jesus.(185)

Johannes Weiss formulated the problem clearly, and proposed that, with the exception of the two passages where Son of Man means man in general, only those should be recognised in which the significance attached to the term in Daniel and the Apocalypses is demanded by the context. By so doing he set theology a problem calculated to keep it occupied for many years. Not many indeed at first recognised the problem. Charles, however, meets it in a bold fashion, proposing to regard the Son of Man, in Jesus’ usage of the title, as a conception in which the Messiah of the Book of Enoch and the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah are united into one.(186) Most writers, however, did not free themselves from inconsistencies. They wanted at one and the same time to make the apocalyptic element dominant in the expression, and to hold that Jesus could not have taken the conception over unaltered, but must have transformed it in some way. These inconsistencies necessarily result from the assumption of Weiss’s opponents that Jesus intended to designate Himself as Messiah in the actual present. For since the expression Son of Man has in itself only an apocalyptic sense referring to the future, they had to invent another sense applicable to the present, which Jesus might have inserted into it. In all these learned discussions of the title Son of Man this operation is assumed to have been performed.

According to Bousset, Jesus created, and embodied in this term, a new form of the Messianic ideal which united the super‐earthly with the human and lowly. In any case, he thinks, the term has a meaning applicable in this present world. Jesus uses it at once to conceal and to suggest His Messianic dignity. How conscious Bousset, nevertheless, is of the difficulty is evident from the fact that in discussing the meaning of the title he remarks that the Messianic significance must have been of subordinate importance in the estimation of Jesus, and cannot have formed the basis of His actions, otherwise He would have laid more stress upon it in His preaching. As if the term Son of Man had not meant for His contemporaries all He needed to say!

Bousset’s essay on Jewish Apocalyptic,(187) published in 1903, seeks the solution in a rather different direction, by postponing, namely, to the very last possible moment the adoption of this self‐designation. “In all probability Jesus in a few isolated sayings towards the close of His life hit upon this title Son of Man as a means of expressing, in the face of the thought of defeat and death, which forced itself upon Him, His confidence in the abiding victory of His person and His cause.” If this is so, the emphasis must be principally on the triumphant apocalyptic aspects of the title.

Even this belated adoption of the title Son of Man is more than Brandt is willing to admit, and he holds it to be improbable that Jesus used the expression at all. It would be more natural, he thinks, to suppose that the Evangelist Mark introduced this self‐designation, as he introduced so much else, into the Gospel on the ground of the figurative apocalyptic discourses in the Gospel.

Just when ingenuity appeared to have exhausted itself in attempts to solve the most difficult of the problems raised by the eschatological school, the historical discussion suddenly seemed about to be rendered objectless. Philology entered a _caveat_. In 1896 appeared Lietzmann’s essay upon “The Son of Man,” which consisted of an investigation of the linguistic basis of the enigmatic self‐designation.