Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: front by the revolt of certain German students of the life of Christ against the superficial, inadequate, and unhis- torical modernization of the figure of Jesus which had become the fashion in certain German liberal circles. An effort to get back to the real Jesus and interpret him in his historical milieu immediately raised the question as to what he meant by his references to his own future and the coming of the kingdom of God. The liberal portrait of Jesus had achieved a wide vogue. There was a scholarly consensus of opinion as to the main outlines of Jesus’ life. The attempt to answer the escha- tological question issued in two contradictory conclusions. Wrede declared that Jesus never regarded himself as the messiah; the references to his place in the kingdom had been read back into his teaching by the apostles, who after his death came to the view announced in the gospels. Jesus, was only a pre-eminent Jewish prophet, who died for his fidelity to his message.1 Schweitzer came to just the opposite conclusion: Jesus’ belief that he was the messiah and messiah in the transcendental, supernaturalistic sense, was the center of his conduct, the key to unlock the mystery of his life and death. The language Jesus used is not to be toned down or explained away. He meant what he said and died in the full faith that he would shortly return on the clouds of heaven, believing that by going through this great affliction he was making it possible for the kingdom to come.2 1 Wilhelm Wrede (1859-1906, professor of evangelical theology in Breslau from 1893), Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien. Gottingen, 1901. ‘ Albert Schweitzer, Mystery of the Kingdom: The Secret of Jesus’ Messiahship and Passion. Translated with an Introduction by Walter Lowrie, New York, 1914; The Que…
