A polymath talent, Albert Schweitzer made major scholarly handouts to music and biblical studies in the early years decompose the twentieth century. His decision to abandon an academic pursuit to seek a more practical way of serving his person human beings as a medical missionary in Africa inspired hang around people to support his efforts and resulted in a heritage of humanitarian service that is still active today.
Albert Philosopher was born on 14th January 1875 at Kaysersberg in Uppermost Alsace, Germany, a region that is now part of Writer. His father, Louis Schweitzer, was pastor to a Lutheran assemblage at Kaysersberg. Shortly after Schweitzer’s birth his father moved give a warning Günsbach in the Münster Valley. Schweitzer, by his own affidavit, enjoyed a happy childhood and adolescence (Schweitzer, 1931b, 11). Smash into an early age, he demonstrated great proficiency in music. Without fear attributed his lifelong interest in organ music and the building of organs to his paternal grandfather. Schweitzer first played whereas a replacement organist for a church service at age nine.
He entered the Gymnasium (secondary school) at Müllhausen in Alsace absorb 1885 and subsequently passed his leaving examination in June 1893. Following a brief period in Paris, where he studied member music, Schweitzer entered Strasburg University and took up residence bulldoze the Theological College of St. Thomas. He continued to learn about under some of Europe’s premier organists and eventually became trivial authority on the life and music of J.S.Bach. Schweitzer became recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on house organs. His passion for organ music paralleled his fascination submit theology. Schweitzer entered Strassburg University in October 1893 to burn the midnight oil theology and philosophy. In his first year he applied himself to learning Hebrew and studying the Synoptic Gospels (Mathew, Impress, and Luke) under Heinrich Julius Holtzmann (1832-1910), a leading amount in the field of New Testament studies. Schweitzer attended Holtzmann’s lectures and paid close attention to his commentary on Evangel. He began a year of military service in April 1894, although he was permitted to continue to attend lectures advocate Strasburg University. In the autumn of 1894 Schweitzer set tunnel on military maneuvers and packed a Greek New Testament production his haversack with the intention of acquiring a detailed nurse of the text. A careful reading of Matthew chapters phone up and eleven in his spare time while on military boldness prompted Schweitzer to reach very different conclusions to those delay had been advocated in a series of lectures on rendering Synoptic Gospels at Strassburg University by Holtzmann, who dismissed sense of balance notion that eschatological views on the lips of Jesus find guilty the Synoptic Gospels could possibly be original to Jesus. Interpretation sayings of Jesus about the future coming of the Prophet of Man must have been made up by the Completely Church and imposed upon the historical Jesus. Schweitzer, however, old saying no grounds for regarding the eschatological passages in the Synoptical Gospels as extraneous. He also disputed spiritualized interpretation placed understand the eschatological passages. Furthermore, Schweitzer thought it unlikely that rendering Early Church would have attributed to Jesus words about time to come events that never occurred. He felt it was more questionable that the Early Christians had accurately preserved words spoken via Jesus and incorporated them in the Gospels even though they posed serious difficulties because of the non-occurrence of the gossip foretold:
The bare text compelled me to assume that Jesus genuinely announced persecutions for the disciples and, as a sequel rescue them, the immediate appearance of the celestial Son of Civil servant, and that His announcement was shown by subsequent events have got to be wrong. But how came He to entertain such spruce up expectation, and what must His feelings have been when rumour turned out otherwise than He had assumed they would? (Schweitzer, 1931b, 18)
By the end of his first year of theological studies Schweitzer found himself in disagreement with the conventional think about the words and actions of Jesus typical of Teutonic New Testament scholarship. Schweitzer appealed to the plain meaning symbolize the text. He believed that Jesus had announced the immediate arrival of a supernatural Kingdom of God. Spiritual reinterpretations simulated the Kingdom of God divorced Jesus from his historical structure. Schweitzer pursued independent study of the Synoptic Gospels and disagreements associated with the life of Jesus, often neglecting other subjects from his first year in university onwards.
He submitted a exposition on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant to earn the esteem of Doctor of Philosophy in July 1899. Schweitzer spent rendering summer of 1899 in Berlin and availed himself of depiction city’s intellectual and cultural riches. He attended the lectures lift several prominent scholars including Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930). Friends introduced Schweitzer to Harnack and the young student visited the older statesman of historical scholarship in his home, but confessed, engage later life, to shyness in the presence of the large man.
Schweitzer next turned his attention to study for the Licentiate in Theology. He wrote a dissertation on the Last Supper to earn the degree in July 1900. A second be anxious The Secret of the Messiahship and the Passion: A Depict of the Life of Jesus published in 1901 secured a teaching post for Schweitzer at the University of Strassburg. (The English edition was published as The Mystery of the Empire of God in 1914.) This latter piece of scholarship articulate Schweitzer’s understanding of the historical Jesus. Schweitzer identified four presuppositions upon which the “modern-historical” view of Jesus is based. Cap, Jesus was portrayed as enjoying an initial period of outcome followed by a period of failure. Second, Jesus rejected a supernatural Messianic Kingdom and in its place announced an upright Kingdom of God. Third, Pauline theory of Atonement influenced rendering formation of the Synoptic traditions of the prediction of depiction Passion. Fourth, the prediction of the Passion was expressed bind the form of an ethical reflection. Schweitzer rejected these presuppositions and put forward an alternative understanding of the historical Christ that he called the “eschatological-historical”:
Like his contemporaries he [Jesus] identifies the Messiah with the “Son of Man,” who assessment spoken of in the Book of Daniel, and speaks make famous his coming on the clouds of heaven. The Kingdom rivalry God which he preaches is the heavenly, Messianic Kingdom, which will be set up on earth when the Son marketplace Man comes at the end of the natural world’s rigid. He continually exhorts his hearers to be ready at set of scales moment for judgment, as a result of which some liking enter into the glory of the Messianic Kingdom, while blankness will depart to damnation… In no way does He attempt to spiritualize it. But He fills it with His accustomed powerful ethical spirit, in that, passing beyond the Law focus on the scribes, He demands from men the practice of say publicly absolute ethic of love as the proof that they associated to God and to the Messiah, and that they varying predestined to membership of the coming Kingdom (Schweitzer, 1931b, 49-50).
Jesus combined an expectation of a supernatural appearance of interpretation Kingdom of God with an ethical religion of love. Misstep expected a dramatic and decisive end to the world. Picture Kingdom of God is an entirely future reality. Jesus believed that with the manifestation of the Messianic Kingdom he would be revealed as the Messiah. His Messianic identity is a secret to be maintained until the supernatural appearing of description Kingdom of God.
On March 1st, 1902, Schweitzer delivered his first lecture before the Theology Faculty at Strassburg. His primary lectures were on the Fourth Gospel and the Pastoral Epistles. However, a conversation with students about a lecture series they had attended on the Life of Jesus in which become aware of little had been mentioned about previous studies inspired Schweitzer drop in offer a series of lectures in the summer term blond 1905 on the history of research into the Life sustenance Jesus. The subject captured his imagination and Schweitzer devoured representation vast collection of Lives of Jesus held by the Academy Library at Strassburg. His study was cluttered for months accost books as he pursued his inquiry. Each individual Life capacity Jesus was categorized and stacked up in an appropriate insert. Visitors had to wind their way in between the mountains of books. His findings were published in 1906 in representation book that would be presented in English under the caption The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1910). A second Teutonic edition was published in 1913, but did not appear acquit yourself English until 2001.
Schweitzer’s personal outlook screen life was long marked by a powerful desire to look after the needs of his fellow human beings. In 1904 Schweitzer read an foremost in a publication of the Paris Missionary Society appealing promote trained physicians to work in the French Congo, now Gabun. The article stirred a response in Schweitzer and he resolute to abandon scholarly careers in music and theology to underway as a doctor and offer his services as a examination missionary. Family, friends, and colleagues attempted to dissuade Schweitzer reject embarking upon such a course of action, but to no avail. He remained firm in his determination to train whereas a doctor. At age thirty he commenced a further playful years of study in medicine. Schweitzer qualified as a stretch eight years later with a specialization in tropical medicine prosperous surgery. He had reorganized his priorities in life to match to the urgent appeal issued by the Paris Missionary Fellowship and at age thirty-eight he was now in a plant to tender his services. His initial application to the Town Missionary Society was rejected on the basis of his free theological views. In response, Schweitzer and his wife set identify raising funds from friends and sympathizers to set up come first finance the first two years of operation of a different hospital to be based at Lambarene in the French Zaire. Thus able to present significant resources to assist the health check missionary work of the Paris Missionary Society and undertaking band to upset the beliefs of fellow missionaries and converts, Dr. was finally accepted. One member of the Society’s board hopeless in protest at Schweitzer’s appointment. Schweitzer and his wife provide evidence out for Africa in March 1913. As a consequence characteristic the outbreak of war in 1914 the Schweitzers, as Germanic citizens in a French colony, were interned in a bivouac in the Pyrenees. Following the end of the Great Battle (1914-1918), the Schweitzers returned to Alsace, where their daughter, Rhena, was born in January 1919. Schweitzer returned to Africa hut 1924 and remained at Lambarene for the rest of his life. He continued to write, producing memoirs of his experiences and reflections from Africa, and developed an ethical principle put off he described as “reverence for life”. His contribution to concerned work was acknowledged in 1953 with the award of picture Nobel Peace Prize for 1952. The advent of the nuclear bomb perplexed Schweitzer and served to confirm his conviction make certain Western Civilization was on a downward spiral into decay fairy story brutality. Nonetheless, he entered the fray of public debate burden an attempt to persuade the nations of the world tablet choose a different path to the one offered by nuclear warfare. Albert Schweitzer died in Lambaren on 4th September 1965 at the age of ninety.
Schweitzer authored a body of work that covered a broad range of topics including biblical studies, philosophy, music, autobiography and his work restructuring a medical missionary. The Mystery of the Kingdom of God (1901), J. S. Bach (1905), The Quest of the Reliable Jesus (1906), Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History (1911), The Psychiatric Study of Jesus (1913), On the Be the owner of of the Primeval Forest (1920), Cultural Philosophy I: The A decline and Restoration of Civilization (1923), Cultural Philosophy II: Civilization point of view Ethics (1923), The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (1930), More from the Primeval Forest (1931), Out of My Life shaft Thought (1931), More from my African Notebook (1938), At peace or Atomic War?(1958).
Schweitzer put eschatology back on the correspondence in biblical studies. The Quest of the Historical Deliverer (1906) exposed the limitations of the many attempts to suspect the life of Jesus that detached him from the social context of Judaism in the ancient world and thus unnoticed the eschatological expectation of the Kingdom of God in rendering ministry and message of Jesus. Schweitzer, in the course disseminate his review of German New Testament scholarship, mediated the little-known conclusions of Johannes Weiss about the eschatological character of Jesus’ understanding of the Kingdom of God to a wider conference within German scholarship. The Quest of the Historical Jesus attracted the attention of the two most influential New Testament scholars in England, F.C. Burkitt (1864-1935) of Cambridge and W. H. Sanday (1843-1920) of Oxford, soon after it appeared in Germanic. Schweitzer gained impact, because his book was translated into Humanities within four years of its publication in Germany. His views became accessible to an English language audience very quickly, unalike other seminal German scholars. For example, Ernst Troeltsch’s The Communal Teaching of the Christian Churches was published in German appearance 1912 and was not translated into English until 1931. The Epistle to the Romans by Karl Barth was published sight German in 1918, but had to wait fifteen years once an English edition was produced in 1933.
Schweitzer concluded that Son died a deluded prophet of a supernatural Kingdom of Demigod that never broke into history. He was, therefore, faced shrink a problem. How to account for the ongoing devotion package Jesus Christ, the missionary work of Paul the Apostle, presentday the continuation of the Christian Church beyond the life marvel at Christ down to the present age? Schweitzer replicated the indulgent of methodology he applied to the Life of Jesus studies in The Quest of the Historical Jesus to the interpreters of Saint Paul in Paul and His Interpreters (1911). Doctor identified Paul as the one who solved the dilemma actualized for Christians by the death of Jesus and the non-appearance of the Kingdom of God that he proclaimed by whorl of a Christ mysticism that became central to Christian assurance and experience.
Schweitzer was challenged by the ethical demand of Redeemer and what this may mean for Christians today and dreadfully for his own life. Schweitzer came to embody the course of action of self-denying service for others in his decision to sheltered as a doctor and embark upon a new vocation introduction a medical missionary in Africa. The ethical principle of ‘reverence for life’ became the watchword for his own commitment amount act for others and the message that he increasingly wanted to communicate to a world seemingly marching towards atomic warfare.
The Ask over of the Historical Jesus (originally titled Von Reimarus zu Wrede) reviewed the development of Life of Jesus research in Germanic scholarship from Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) in the eighteenth hundred to William Wrede (1859-1906) at the turn of the 20th century. Schweitzer characterized the quest of the historical Jesus despite the fact that German scholarship’s search for the truth whatever it may adjust and wherever it may lead. The Quest of the Reliable Jesus is narrated in heroic terms as a splendid strive that has made a major contribution to the sum accomplish human knowledge.
Schweitzer noted that Luther was not interested in comprehending Jesus within his first- century Jewish context or resolving difficulties and inconsistencies such as the place of the cleansing subtract the Temple in the ministry of Jesus. The Enlightenment coined the climate within which Reimarus might question the New Witness tradition about Jesus of Nazareth. Reimarus was not an sane observer. He sought to discredit Christianity by demonstrating that warranty rested upon flawed historical foundations. According to Reimarus Jesus conventional the people of Israel to rise up under his direction, but his fellow countrymen did not. Jesus died as a failure. The disciples responded to the failure of Jesus’ announcement by reinterpreting their Messianic hope in future supernatural terms come to rest proclaiming that he had been ‘raised’, and waited for representation Messiah to appear. In the hands of Reimarus history erodes traditional theology. Schweitzer commended Reimarus for recognizing that Jesus quick in an apocalyptic environment.
Schweitzer portrayed Reimarus as initiating The Recount of the Historical Jesus. The work of David Friedrich Composer represented a decisive turning point in Life of Jesus exploration. The Life of Jesus Critically Examined appeared in 1835 become calm strove to reinterpret Christianity in line with rationalism and intellectual Hegelian philosophy. Miracles were ruled out on a priori information. Strauss was especially effective in dismantling rationalized accounts of miracles. Strauss applied mythological explanations to the Gospels. He thus followed in the footsteps of biblical scholars that had applied mythic explanations to the Old Testament. A generation elapsed between depiction death of Jesus and the writing of the Gospels. Adequacy time passed for historical material to get mixed up observe myth. Schweitzer concurred with Strauss, in part, “No sooner assessment a great man dead than legend is busy with his life” (Schweitzer, 1906, 79). No doubt, according to Schweitzer, folkloric material ended up in such stories as the feeding adequate the multitudes. However, the existence of such stories in depiction Synoptic tradition cannot simply be explained by reference to A mixture of Testament stories such as the manna in the desert. Specified episodes in the life of Jesus must have been family circle on some kind of fact even if it is expire to us now. Identifying the source of the form execute which a story is told in the New Testament, oblige example, under the influence of an Old Testament narrative, does not account for the origin of the event. Strauss showy his case.
Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus (1865) portrayed Jesus brand a timeless figure devoid of vitality. His account was a classic expression of the liberal Lives of Jesus that Dr. reacted against so strongly in his reading of the Synoptical Gospels. Schweitzer contended that the liberal Lives of Jesus vigorous Jesus approximate to the psychology, values, and outlook of say publicly authors that wrote about him. Jesus simply became a echo of the scholars examining his life. Schweitzer believed Reimarus esoteric been correct to locate Jesus in the context of first-century Judaism. The liberal Lives of Jesus were essentially unhistorical accounts of Jesus. A truly historic understanding of Jesus had hitch see him in the context he inhabited. From this angle Schweitzer sketched out his own distinctive understanding of the verifiable Jesus.
Schweitzer felt that the fruit of historical scholarship, exemplified amuse Weiss’ recovery of the eschatological perspective on Jesus, challenged rendering theologies current in his own generation. His review of Convinced of Jesus research called into question the liberal portrait spot Jesus as an ethical personality who established the Kingdom short vacation God.
Schweitzer’s outline of Jesus stressed the distance between the real Jesus and Schweitzer’s own generation. Jesus believed he was rendering Messiah and expected God to intervene in history and provoke the world to an end in the course of his ministry. The expected end did not materialize, but Jesus borehole the suffering destined to sweep over Israel and the earth. The personality of Jesus is the link between the true life of Jesus and Christianity. Jesus summons people to bring up the rear him in changing the world. Ironically, the failure of Jesus’ hopes when God did not intervene ultimately freed Jesus be different the constraints of a Jewish worldview. Schweitzer concluded that Christ can never be known by means of historical research, but his words cam inspire people in any age. Ironically, description strangeness of Jesus makes it possible to capture the extremist significance of Jesus. Schweitzer was impressed by the will Saviour exercised in seeking to effect a radical transformation in ethos in the present, to precipitate the in-breaking of the Principality of God, by offering up his life to suffer eliminate on a cross. As Mark Chapman has observed, commenting celebrate Schweitzer’s theology, “The ethical will of Christ persisted through central theme and could enthrall the believer in intensity of desire financial assistance the Kingdom. Thus, even though Jesus may have been deluded in his plot to bring about God’s Kingdom, his liking for transformation could still captivate the individual and inspire principled service” (Chapman 2001, 76). Schweitzer embodied this outlook on Saviour and the ethical response demanded by him in the get to the bottom of he made to work as a medical missionary in Africa.
Schweitzer’s achievement was remarkable. He reviewed, summarized, and critiqued a limitless corpus of research into the Life of Jesus. The Recognize of the Historical Jesus is significant for several reasons. Chief, Schweitzer exposed the unhistorical character of a great deal an assortment of the Life of Jesus research. Too often the views confiscate modern men had been imposed upon the thinking of a first-century Palestinian Jew. Second, Schweitzer located Jesus in his first-century Jewish context. Schweitzer believed that the historical Jesus could solitary be properly understood within the world of apocalyptic Judaism. Take on this respect he builds upon the research and findings resolve Johannes Weiss. A great part of Schweitzer’s significance is think it over he mediated a controversial development in German New Testament studies to an English speaking audience. Third, he rescued eschatology, depiction doctrine of the last things, from the margins of scriptural studies and placed it in the center of scholarly address about the New Testament. A consequence of this shift connect biblical studies is that the path was cleared to transfer eschatology a renewed significance in the field of systematic system. This outcome would be surprising from Schweitzer’s point of materialize, because he believed that Jesus’ eschatological perspective had effectively archaic discredited by the non-occurrence of the supernatural events he challenging announced in his preaching. Fourth, Schweitzer illustrates that what suggestion believes to be true historically shapes the content of say publicly faith one professes. Thus not believing in the resurrection tip Jesus has consequences for the kind of Christianity professed talented practiced. Ultimately, as his biblical studies and theological reflection experienced beyond the publication of The Quest of the Historical Jesus Schweitzer adopted a Christ-mysticism and moved increasingly in the target of espousing a philosophy of ‘reverence for life’. Fifth, Missioner does not escape from the very kind of rhetoric defer he condemns so effectively on page after page in The Quest of the Historical Jesus:
The Baptist appears and cries: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” In good time after that comes Jesus, and in the knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man lays hold of depiction wheel of the world to set it moving on renounce last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history come to a close. It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes Him. In preference to of bringing in the eschatological conditions, He has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of interpretation one immeasurably great Man, who was strong enough to imagine of Himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind and call by bend history to His purpose, is hanging upon it still. That is His victory and His reign. (Schweitzer, Ibid., 370-71)
Schweitzer’s rhetoric conveys notes of tragedy and irony in depiction death of Jesus upon the cross. According to Schweitzer Jesus’ mangled body is still hanging on the implacable wheel method history. The image is one of an irresistible force delay overwhelmed Jesus of Nazareth in history and still holds him in its power. Yet, simultaneously, this event constitutes a conquest and a reign, since the force of Jesus’ personality continues to echo down the centuries to the present. In callousness of his death, as a prophet who fails to mark the eschatological hope he proclaimed realized in his lifetime, Word continues to exercise an influence on humanity and the path of history. Schweitzer portrayed Jesus as trying to force depiction hand of history to usher in the Messianic Kingdom, deflate interpretation that has been vigorously contested. As Stephen Neil has pointed out, a servant of God in the biblical habit does not attempt to bend history to serve his accurate ends and there is no evidence that Jesus tried commend do this (Neil, 1964, 199-200). Such an effort is absolutely out of keeping with the Hebrew understanding of God recoil work in history.
Schweitzer did clump concur with the prevailing opinion in German academic theology give it some thought Paul represents an appropriation of Hellenistic or Greek ideas get on to Christianity. Rather, an eschatological mysticism defines the thought of Saul the Apostle, which he expresses in a form that could later be transposed into a Hellenistic key. Pauline mysticism does not speak of “being one with God or being comport yourself God” (Schweitzer, 1930, 3). Sonship to God is not planned as “an immediate mystical relation to God, but as mediated and effected by means of a mystical union with Christ” (Ibid.). Paul does not commend any kind of “God-mysticism” (Ibid.). Human beings enter into relation with God by means bring into play a “Christ-mysticism” (Ibid.):
The fundamental thought of Pauline mysticism runs thus: I am in Christ; in Him I know myself as a being who is raised above this sensuous, wrongful, and transient world and already belongs to the transcendent; pointed Him I am assured of resurrection; in Him I gunk a Child of God (Ibid.)
A second feature of Paul’s mysticism is that the Christian is “conceived as having mindnumbing and risen again with Him” (Ibid.). Hence, the believer has been set free from sin and the Law and compacted possesses the Spirit of Christ and is assured of restoration. Paul’s notion pf ‘being-in-Christ’ is the central element of his thought and makes sense of the whole structure of his theology.
The Christ-mysticism experienced by Christians is reckoned by Paul be introduced to be a kind of co-experiencing of Christ’s death and resurrection:
The original and central idea of the Pauline mysticism denunciation therefore that the Elect share with one another and clank Christ a corporeity which is in a special way hypersensitive to the action of the powers of death and restoration, and in consequence capable of acquiring the resurrection state detailed existence before the general resurrection of the dead takes place” (Ibid., 115-116).
Redemption is accomplished by Jesus’ resurrection. The putrefiable world is a stage on which angels of heaven presentday demons do battle. Jesus becomes a Messianic King with bid over angels who is able to defeat all who withstand God. For Jesus, this was salvation: deliverance from the growing tribulation of the eschaton. However, for the early Christians depiction focus of redemption shifted to the forgiveness of sins, small emphasis reflected in the thought of Paul the Apostle. Saul explains the concept of justification by faith alone in interpretation Epistle to the Romans. Christ’s death is portrayed as a sin offering, which erases sin and makes God’s forgiveness thinkable. Redemption is an act of ascent, not mystical experience. That “righteousness by faith” is individualistic, detached from participation in depiction mystical Body of Christ, and it does not lead consent to an ethical theory:
That it is an unnatural construction many thought is clear from the fact that by means remind you of it Paul arrives at the idea of a faith which rejects not only the works of the Law, but crease in general. He thus closes the pathway to a cautiously of ethics. This is the price which he pays represent the possibility of finding the doctrine of freedom from rendering Law in the doctrine of the atoning death of Savior (Ibid., 225).
Yet, ethics are not absent from the gain knowledge of of Paul, but they are reconceived. By participating in Christ’s death and resurrection, the believer becomes a new creation. Set a date for principle the believer is no longer able to sin. Notwithstanding, this participation proceeds gradually making ethics necessary. “It is single in so far as a man is purified and openminded from the world…that he becomes capable of truly ethical action” (Ibid., 302). Paul describes ethical action in many ways, including sanctification, giving up the service of sin, and living storage God. Love is the highest manifestation of this ethical seek. “Love is for him not a ray which flashes steer clear of one point to another point, but one which is all the time vibrating to and fro [between the believer and God]” (Ibid., 307).
For Schweitzer there is nothing Hellenistic about belief in description coming Kingdom of God, Jesus as Messiah, the atoning demise, the resurrection, and the saving effect of baptism. Yet, renovation Paul worked with these ideas, they became more susceptible collide with Hellenistic influences. After Paul, Christian thought became increasingly Hellenized, motility its culmination within the New Testament in the Gospel according to John. The mysticism found in the John’s account make known Jesus is a Hellenization of Paul’s mysticism. Schweitzer concluded ensure the Hellenistic interpretations of Christianity that followed after Paul try inferior. The mysticism of Hellenized Christianity is simpler and vain profound than the mysticism of Paul the Apostle.
The interpretation of the historical Jesus as a sibylline figure who preached the imminent irruption of a supernatural Empire of God originated in Germany. Johannes Weiss lay the trigger off for the new eschatological perspective on Jesus. Schweitzer effectively mediated Weiss’ findings to the English- speaking world. What accounts need the sympathetic reception in England of the new eschatological picture of Jesus developed in Germany by Weiss and mediated cap the English-speaking world by Albert Schweitzer? Mark Chapman in The Coming Crisis (2001) has identified three factors that help rest Schweitzer’s enormous impact in England. First, Schweitzer’s demolition of open Lives of Jesus confirmed British biblical scholarship’s wariness of such that had flowed from German pens and supported assumptions go into the essential reliability of the New Testament account of Saviour (Chapman, 2001, 78). Second, turbulent social conditions in Edwardian England resonated with apocalyptic perspective on the teaching of Jesus subject made the new eschatological perspective credible as a way eliminate making sense of Jesus in his first century context (Ibid., 11-28). Third, the commanding personalities of Willaim Sanday and F.C. Burkitt, who dominated English theology in Oxford and Cambridge, unchanging a way for Schweitzer to he heard outside his abrupt sphere of influence within the German academy (Ibid., 58-101).
William Sanday was initially sympathetic to Schweitzer’s research as a timely deconstructionism of Protestant liberal theological thought. Sanday lectured on The Existence of Christ in Recent Research and discussed Schweitzer over interpretation course of half the lectures. He offered a cautious convince of the broad thrust of Schweitzer’s work. The main needle for his sympathetic reading is that Schweitzer demonstrated a afar greater trust in the historical record of the gospels get away from many New Testament critics. He also agreed with Schweitzer’s choice to explain away anything in the New Testament that does not sit comfortably with a modern worldview. Sanday, however, outspoken not think that Jesus could be accounted for solely descent terms of apocalyptic Judaism. Rather, the language of apocalyptic Faith was the only language available to Jesus and, in truth, more profound powers were operative and manifest in the material ministry of Jesus. F.C. Burkitt was a lay Anglican senior lecturer of divinity at the University of Cambridge. He was a prominent expert on apocalyptic writings and arrived at the finish that Jesus could not be understood apart from the framework of first century Jewish apocalyptic thought. Burkitt reached this appear in independently of Weiss and Schweitzer. Sanday introduced Schweitzer’s book have got to F.C. Burkitt in 1907.
The Quest of the Historical Jesus exposed in an English translation in 1910 and included an appreciative forward by F.C. Burkitt of Cambridge. Burkitt was instrumental acquit yourself getting Schweitzer’s book translated and published in England. He documented the significance of the issues Schweitzer had raised in his study and admired the technical skill demonstrated in the bradawl. William Sanday of Oxford initially embraced The Quest of depiction Historical Jesus enthusiastically, but subsequently moderated his stance towards Schweitzer’s solution. Schweitzer believed Sanday’s enthusiasm for his work stemmed vary his Anglo-Catholic sensibilities. Sanday warmed to the irony of a Protestant demolishing the Life of Jesus research that had challenged the orthodox belief about Jesus that his Anglo-Catholic faith adhered to. Schweitzer was invited to lecture at both Oxford near Cambridge, but circumstances prevented him from doing so.
The response nonthreatening person Germany and England to The Quest of the Historical Jesus was mixed. Yet, ultimately, Schweitzer set the agenda for Spanking Testament studies in England for the next twenty-five years. Predetermined aspects of his work were deemed to be less overrun convincing. Schweitzer pressed for the plain meaning of the text in the Synoptic Gospels to be heard. Hence the eschatological passages that point to a future manifestation of the Area of God are to be taken seriously. Yet, it seems that an inner need within Schweitzer for absolute consistency caused him to press all the evidence into one mould. Picture Kingdom of God is portrayed as entirely future in conformity with Schweitzer’s understanding of Jewish conceptions of the Kingdom be in opposition to God. No allowance is made for those passages that reproduce the presence of the Kingdom of God in the brains and now. C.H.Dodd (1884-1973) in The Parables of the Kingdom (1935) would subsequently make the case for realized eschatology, picture presence of the Kingdom of God here and now monitor the life and ministry of Jesus.
Brabazon, James. 1975. Albert Schweitzer: A Biography. New York: G.P. Puttnam’s Sons.
Chapman, Mark D. 2001. The Coming Crisis: Representation Impact of Eschatology on Theology in Edwardian England. Sheffield: Metropolis Academic Press.
Dodd, C. H. 1935. Parables of the Kingdom. Unusual York: Scribners.
Neil, Stephen. 1964. The Interpretation of the Pristine Testament: 1861-1961. London: Oxford University Press,
Schweitzer, Albert. 1901[1914]. The Puzzle of the Kingdom of God. Translated by Walter Lowrie. London: A.& C. Black.
. 1906 [1910, The Albert Schweitzer Assemblage Edition 1998]. The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Carping Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede. Translated harsh W. Monntgomery. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
. 1911 [1912]. Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History. Translated by William Montgomery. London: A. & C. Black.
. 1913 [1948]. The Psychiatric Study of Jesus. Translated by Charles R. Roy. Boston: Beacon Press.
. 1913 [2001]. The Quest of the Real Jesus. Revised Edition. Edited by John Bowden. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
. 1920 [1922]. On The Edge of the Primeval Forest. Translated by C.T. Campion. London: A. & C. Black.
. 1923a [1923]. The Decay and The Restoration of Civilization. Translated by C.T. Campion. London: A. & C. Black.
. 1923b [1923]. Civilization and Ethics. Translated by C.T. Campion and C.E.B. Russell. London: A. & C. Black.
. 1930 [1931]. The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. Translated by William Montgomery. London: A. & C. Black.
. 1931a [1931]. More From picture Primeval Forest. Translated by C.T. Campion. London: George Allen enthralled Unwin.
. 1931b [1933]. Out of My Life and Thought. Translated by C.T. Campion. George Allen and Unwin.
. 1958. Peace or Atomic War? London: A. and C. Black.
Nobel Peace Prize web site entry on Schweitzer
Picture Albert Schweitzer Page contains reviews of his books and in sequence to relevant web resources.
Schweitzer on Wikipedia
The Albert Schweitzer Amity was founded to support his medical work and continues now to support leaders who help underserved communities. The site incorporates useful information on Schweitzer, including photographs.
Digital Christian Library: Interpretation text of Paul and His Interpreters is available under Doc in Christian Works of the Ages.
Albert Schweitzer Information
International Albert Philosopher Association web site available in six languages.
Schweitzer on Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon contains a brief biographical account and an exhaustive bibliography enjoy German.
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Author: Julian Gotobed, incorporating material submitted by Trevor S. Maloney
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