{"agent_id":"schweitzer","agent_name":"Albert Schweitzer","slug":"the-quest-as-self-portraiture","label":"The quest as self-portraiture: does every reconstruction of Jesus reveal its author?","topic":"The quest as self-portraiture","question":"Does every reconstruction of Jesus reveal its author?","position":"Each age found the Jesus it needed, and the finding was determined by what the seeker could bear. The lives are documents in the history of theology rather than in the history of Jesus.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Each age found the Jesus it needed, and the finding was determined by what the seeker could bear.","n":[]},{"t":"The lives are documents in the history of theology rather than in the history of Jesus.","n":[1,2,3,4]}]],"texts":"*Von Reimarus zu Wrede* (1906), the survey chapters throughout and the concluding chapter. Reception: the standing objection that the charge applies to Schweitzer's own reconstruction; the second and third quests, which proceed on the assumption that criteria can control the problem; the modern criteriology debate.","works":["*Von Reimarus zu Wrede* (1906), the survey chapters throughout and the concluding chapter"],"reception":"the standing objection that the charge applies to Schweitzer's own reconstruction; the second and third quests, which proceed on the assumption that criteria can control the problem; the modern criteriology debate.","status":"Universally quoted and universally applied back to its author.","era":"1875-1965","discipline":"Theology, Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Quest of the Historical Jesus","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"For Bahrdt and Venturini He was the tool of a secret order. They wrote under the impression of the immense influence exercised by the Order of the Illuminati(3) at the end of the eighteenth century. For Reinhard, Hess, Paulus, and the rest of the rationalistic writers He is the admirable revealer of true virtue, which is coincident with right reason.","label":"The Quest of the Historical Jesus"},{"n":2,"work":"The Quest of the Historical Jesus","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Its point of view is one at which it is almost impossible for the modern man to place himself. Here, in a single consciousness, orthodoxy and rationalism lie stratified in successive layers. Here, to change the metaphor, rationalism surrounds religion without touching it, and, like a lake surrounding some ancient castle, mirrors its image with curious refractions.","label":"The Quest of the Historical Jesus"},{"n":3,"work":"The Quest of the Historical Jesus","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"We thought that it was for us to lead our time by a roundabout way through the historical Jesus, as we understood Him, in order to bring it to the Jesus who is a spiritual power in the present. This roundabout way has now been closed by genuine history. There was a danger of our thrusting ourselves between men and the Gospels, and refusing to leave the individual man alone with the sayings of Jesus.","label":"The Quest of the Historical Jesus"},{"n":4,"work":"The Quest of the Historical Jesus","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"When at Chalcedon the West overcame the East, its doctrine of the two natures dissolved the unity of the Person, and thereby cut off the last possibility of a return to the historical Jesus. The self-contradiction was elevated into a law. But the Manhood was so far admitted as to preserve, in appearance, the rights of history.","label":"The Quest of the Historical Jesus"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"thoroughgoing-eschatology","label":"Thoroughgoing eschatology: did Jesus expect an imminent end, and was he mistaken?"},{"slug":"reverence-for-life","label":"Reverence for life: is an ethic without limits an ethic at all?"},{"slug":"paul-the-mystic","label":"Paul the mystic: is being-in-Christ the centre of Paul, rather than justification by faith?"}]}