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Birch, Jonathan C.P. (2012) Enlightenment Messiah, 1627-1778: Jesus in History, Morality and Political Theology. Phd Thesis

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Birch, Jonathan C.P. (2012) Enlightenment Messiah, 1627-1778: Jesus in History, Morality and Political Theology. Phd Thesis Birch, Jonathan C.P. (2012) Enlightenment Messiah, 1627-1778: Jesus in history, morality and political theology. PhD thesis http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4240/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] ENLIGHTENMENT MESSIAH, 1627 – 1778: Jesus in History, Morality and Political Theology Jonathan C P Birch (BA Hons, MA, PGCE) Submitted in Requirement of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Glasgow College of Arts School of Critical Studies July 2012 © Jonathan C P Birch 2012 ABSTRACT This is a study of intellectual encounters with the figure of Christ during the European Enlightenment. In the first instance, it contributes to a body of research which has sought to revise the customary view in New Testament studies, that the historical study of Jesus began with the posthumous publication of Herman Samuel Reimarus's Von dem Zwecke Jesu 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 relatively late entry, by the German intellectual establishment, into arguments about Jesus and Christian origins which had been raging across Europe for more than a century: arguments concerning history, morality and political theology. In my Introduction I explain the rationale for this study within the context of contemporary scholarship and contemporary culture, giving a brief outline of my methodology. In Part I of the thesis I outline my project, its themes and methods. In Chapter One I introduce the ‘quest for the historical Jesus’ as a major concern in modern New Testament studies, and a persistent source of interest in wider intellectual discourse. I then take the reader back into the eighteenth century, placing Reimarus’s seminal contribution to the discipline within the context of the wider publishing controversy in which it featured (the Fragmentenstreit). In Chapter Two I explain the historical, moral and political theological dimensions of my analysis; in particular, I define the relationship between my history of scholarship 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 Chapter Three 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 on the origins of historical Jesus studies, discussing the advances made since Schweitzer, and sketching the contours of a new, more comprehensive interpretation. In Chapters Five and Six I supplement that sketch with my own account of the emergence of the modern historical-critical conscience within European intellectual culture during the Enlightenment, and its application to the Bible. I profile some of the scholars who blazed the trail for Reimarus, showing where, and by whom, he was anticipated in some of his critical stances regarding Jesus and Christian origins. 2 Part III of the thesis addresses morality. In Chapters Seven and Eight I consider why for so many thinkers in the Enlightenment, including Reimarus, morality came to be seen as central to Jesus' historical mission and his most important theological legacy. I locate this ethical turn within a long history of Western philosophical and theological disputation, with origins in antiquity, culminating in early modernity with the reassertion of moral-theological rationalism which was buttressed by an early modern Thomist revival. I also argue for the influence of a particular vision of Christian reform which prioritised freedom over predestination, and the moral example of Jesus and primitive Christian piety. Part IV of the thesis concerns political theology. In Chapter Nine I consider this generally neglected dimension of Reimarus’ work, placing him in a tradition of Enlightenment intellectuals who drew upon Jesus and primitive Christianity, in conjunction with theological metaphysics, to give weight to their own particular arguments for religious toleration. In my Conclusion, as throughout this thesis, I argue that some of the writers who paved the way of Reimarus’s writings on Jesus and Christian origins have their roots in much older, theological preoccupations, and often in heretical versions of Christianity. While these perspectives on Jesus and Christian origins constituted some of the most radical challenges to mainstream religious thought during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they do not submit to a vision of Enlightenment characterised by a straightforward process of overcoming theological worldviews through the emergence of a new secular critique. For the most part, this tradition of scholarship is best understood as a radicalisation of existing tendencies within the history of classical and Christian thought, which continued to understand Jesus, or at least his teachings, as either a path to personal salvation, or as a theologically authoritative court of appeal in the Enlightenment’s protest against religio-political tyranny. 3 Contents Acknowledgements and Dedication 9 Author’s Declaration 13 Note on References 14 Introduction 17 Part I: Overture Chapter One: Jesus in Critical Scholarship 1. The Quest for the Historical Jesus 31 2. The Fragmentenstreit: Contours of a Scandal 34 3. Reimarus Remembered 39 4. Jesus, the Fragmentenstreit and the European Enlightenment 42 Chapter Two: Jesus in History, Morality and Political Theology 1. History 44 (i) Jesus as a Figure of History 44 (ii) The Historical Study of Jesus as a Research Tradition: Footnotes to Schweitzer? 45 2. Morality 48 (i) Jesus as Moralist 48 (ii) A Problem as Old as the Creation (of Western Philosophy) 50 (iii) The ‘Triumph’ of Moral-Theological Rationalism 51 (iv) The Enlightened Face of Christ in the Well of Modernity 56 3. Political Theology 57 (i) Religion ‘Back’ in the Public Sphere 57 (ii) Defining Political Theology 59 (iii) Jesus, Political Theology and the Enlightenment 60 4 Chapter Three: Jesus in Enlightenment Perspective 1. What is (the) Enlightenment? 62 2. Kant, the ‘Holy One’ and the French Revolution: Taking Leave of the High Enlightenment 65 3. Radical Religious Enlightenment 68 4. 1627 – 1778 74 Part II: History Chapter Four: Narrating the Origins of the Quest: From Albert Schweitzer to N.T Wright 1. Schweitzer’s Quest 77 (i) Schweitzer’s ‘Lone Gunman’ Theory: The Making of a Creation Myth 77 (ii) The Scope of Reimarus’s Achievement According to Schweitzer 79 (iii) The Survival of the ‘Lone Gunman’ Theory 80 2. The Quest as the Outcome of the ‘Great Reversal’ 84 (i) The Scientific Revolution 85 (ii) The Hegemony of the Single Sense of Scripture 91 3. The Quest and Religious Authority 93 (i) A Challenge to Religious Authority 93 (ii) An Exercise in Religious Reform 97 4. Theological and Philosophical Conflict 101 (i) Rationalism 101 (ii) Lockean and Wolffian Epistemology: The Challenge to Miracle and Prophecy 103 (iii) Socinianism and Skepticism 109 (iv) Deism 112 5. Conclusion 114 Chapter Five: Historical-Critical Trailblazers: Christian Erudition in the Early Enlightenment 1. Historiography during the Enlightenment 118 (i) Albert Schweitzer’s Blind Spot 118 (ii) The Dangerous Fruits of Christian Learning 121 2. The Scholarship and Apologetics of Richard Simon and Hugo Grotius 122 (i) Simon 122 (ii) Grotius 127 (iii) Simon and Grotius Against the Skeptics 129 5 3. Jean LeClerc, Pierre Bayle and the Critical Analysis of Biblical Narrative 132 (i) Bayle 132 (ii) LeClerc 136 (iii) LeClerc’s Life of Jesus 140 Chapter Six: Reimarus Revisited: The Historical Jesus and Christian Origins 1. The Teachings of Jesus and the Invention of Christian Dogma 147 (i) Distinguishing the Aims of Jesus from the Aims of and his Disciples: Reimarus and Thomas Chubb 147 (ii) Eschatology: Ethical, Political, or Apocalyptic? 152 (iii) Thomas Chubb: The Real Instigator of the Quest? 156 2. Reconstructing Christian Origins 162 (i) Imposture Theory 163 (ii) Reimagining Primitive Christianity 169 3. Conclusion 174 (i) Postscript to Schweitzer’s Account: A Tale of Two Messiahs 176 Part III: Morality Chapter Seven: Reimarus and the Ethical Christ: Some Theological and Philosophical Contexts 1. Moral Perspectives on Jesus 180 (i) Liberalism as Ethical Religion 181 (ii) The Ethical Christ: From Schweitzer to Reimarus 182 (iii) Reimarus on the Religious Significance of Jesus: What is He Good for? 185 (iv) Reimarus and the Pedagogical Bible 187 2. Reimarus in (and out) of his Lutheran Context 190 (i) The ‘Poverty’ of Judaism 190 (ii) Faith and Love in the Economy of Salvation 193 (iii) Law in the Economy of Salvation 194 3. Reimarus and Moral-Theology 198 (i) The Sources of Virtue 198 6 (ii) The Rewards of Virtue 203 Chapter Eight: God, Goodness and the Rise of Modern Pelagianism 1. The Goodness of God Contested 209 (i) Background to the Problem: Athens and Jerusalem 209 (ii) Marcion: A Radical Christian Response 212 (iii) A Thomist Response: Rationalism, Divine Simplicity and Natural Law 214 (iv) Voluntarism in Scholastic Thought 221 (v) Voluntarism in Reformation Thought 222 2. The Goodness of God in the Enlightenment 224 (i) The Attack on Voluntarism 224 (ii) Natural Law: British Perspectives 227 (iii) Natural Law: Continental Perspectives 228 (iv) Natural Law and Radical Biblical Criticism 230 3. The Rise of Modern Pelagianism 232 (i) Erasmus Contra Luther; Augustine Contra Pelagius; and Back Again 232 (ii) Salvific Virtue: Spinoza’s Ethical Christ 236 (iii) Ethical Providence and Christian Origins: From Spinoza to the Anglophone ‘Deists’ 243 4.
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