Enlightenment Messiah, 1627-1778: Jesus in history, morality and political theology

BR Christianity

Birch, Jonathan C.P. ; Ridgeon, Lloyd

University:University of Glasgow

Department:School of Critical Studies

关键词: BR Christianity;   

Others  :  http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4240/1/2012BirchPhD.pdf

来源: University of Glasgow

【 摘 要 】

This is a study of intellectual encounters with the figure of Christ during the EuropeanEnlightenment. In the first instance, it contributes to a body of research which has soughtto revise the customary view in New Testament studies, that the historical study of Jesusbegan with the posthumous publication of Herman Samuel Reimarus's Von dem ZweckeJesu und seiner Jünger (1778), the last in a series of Fragments published by G. E. Lessing.The thesis proposed here is that Reimarus’s writings on Jesus are a notable but relativelylate entry, by the German intellectual establishment, into arguments about Jesus andChristian origins which had been raging across Europe for more than a century: argumentsconcerning history, morality and political theology.In my Introduction I explain the rationale for this study within the context ofcontemporary scholarship and contemporary culture, giving a brief outline of mymethodology.In Part I of the thesis I outline my project, its themes and methods. In Chapter One Iintroduce the ‘quest for the historical Jesus’ as a major concern in modern New Testamentstudies, and a persistent source of interest in wider intellectual discourse. I then take thereader back into the eighteenth century, placing Reimarus’s seminal contribution to thediscipline within the context of the wider publishing controversy in which it featured (theFragmentenstreit). In Chapter Two I explain the historical, moral and political theologicaldimensions of my analysis; in particular, I define the relationship between my history ofscholarship on Jesus, and the one offered by Albert Schweitzer in Von Reimarus zu Wrede(1906), the single most influential work on the rise of historical Jesus studies. In ChapterThree I outline my periodisation and interpretive stance on the main context for my study:the European Enlightenment.Part II of the thesis concerns history. In Chapter Four I review a range of literature onthe origins of historical Jesus studies, discussing the advances made since Schweitzer, andsketching the contours of a new, more comprehensive interpretation. In Chapters Five andSix I supplement that sketch with my own account of the emergence of the modernhistorical-critical conscience within European intellectual culture during theEnlightenment, and its application to the Bible. I profile some of the scholars who blazedthe trail for Reimarus, showing where, and by whom, he was anticipated in some of hiscritical stances regarding Jesus and Christian origins.Part III of the thesis addresses morality. In Chapters Seven and Eight I consider whyfor so many thinkers in the Enlightenment, including Reimarus, morality came to be seenas central to Jesus' historical mission and his most important theological legacy. I locatethis ethical turn within a long history of Western philosophical and theologicaldisputation, with origins in antiquity, culminating in early modernity with the reassertionof moral-theological rationalism which was buttressed by an early modern Thomistrevival. I also argue for the influence of a particular vision of Christian reform whichprioritised freedom over predestination, and the moral example of Jesus and primitiveChristian piety.Part IV of the thesis concerns political theology. In Chapter Nine I consider thisgenerally neglected dimension of Reimarus’ work, placing him in a tradition ofEnlightenment intellectuals who drew upon Jesus and primitive Christianity, inconjunction with theological metaphysics, to give weight to their own particulararguments for religious toleration.In my Conclusion, as throughout this thesis, I argue that some of the writers whopaved the way of Reimarus’s writings on Jesus and Christian origins have their roots inmuch older, theological preoccupations, and often in heretical versions of Christianity.While these perspectives on Jesus and Christian origins constituted some of the mostradical challenges to mainstream religious thought during the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies, they do not submit to a vision of Enlightenment characterised by astraightforward process of overcoming theological worldviews through the emergence ofa new secular critique. For the most part, this tradition of scholarship is best understoodas a radicalisation of existing tendencies within the history of classical and Christianthought, which continued to understand Jesus, or at least his teachings, as either a path topersonal salvation, or as a theologically authoritative court of appeal in theEnlightenment’s protest against religio-political tyranny.