The quest as self-portraiture: does every reconstruction of Jesus reveal its author?

Albert Schweitzer, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

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.12345

Sources

  1. 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.
    The Quest of the Historical Jesus, p. 28
  2. 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 1 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.
    The Quest of the Historical Jesus, pp. 4–5
  3. 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.
    The Quest of the Historical Jesus, pp. 398–399
  4. But the Manhood was so far admitted as to preserve, in appearance, the rights of history. Thus by a deception the formula kept the Life prisoner and prevented the leading spirits of the Reformation from grasping the idea of a return to the historical Jesus.
    The Quest of the Historical Jesus, p. 4
  5. The aim of the work is to retain His significance for a metaphysical and non-ascetic time; and since it is not possible to do this in the case of the historical Jesus, the author denies His existence in favour of an apocryphal Jesus.
    The Quest of the Historical Jesus, pp. 324–325

Where the argument is made

  • Von Reimarus zu Wrede (1906), the survey chapters throughout and the concluding chapter

How the argument was received

Universally quoted and universally applied back to its author.