Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§4.5 The Flight from Dogma
is memorably summed up in a much quoted summary paragraph from the first
edition: 101
There is silence all around. The Baptist appears, and cries: 'Repent, for the
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand'. Soon after that comes Jesus, and in the
knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man lays hold of the wheel of the
world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary
history to a close. It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself upon it. Then it
does turn; and crushes Him. Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions
He has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body
of the one immeasurably great Man, who was strong enough to think of Himself
as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend history to His purpose, is
hanging upon it still. That is His victory and His reign.
Whether the (re)discovery of the eschatological Jesus should be regarded
as quite such a stunning blow to the Liberal quest is very much open to question.
Schweitzer's own reconstruction was very much in the Liberal mode, at least so
far as his critical use of the Gospel sources and his willingness to speak of Jesus'
messianic self-consciousness were concerned. But the findings of Weiss and
Schweitzer certainly posed a huge problem for the quest. How could such a Jesus
be expected to appeal to nineteenth-century sensibilities? The Liberal Jesus had
almost been designed to effect such an appeal. But who would wish to follow or
take as an example a failed eschatological prophet or apocalyptic fanatic? Weiss
and Schweitzer themselves offered no answer to the problem they thus posed. On
the contrary, the concluding section of Weiss's book rather disappointingly retreats
into Liberal pieties. 102 Schweitzer, not dissimilarly, in his closing paragraph,
resorts to a kind of mysticism, 103 and he evidently found the inspiration
101. Schweitzer, Quest 1 368-69. In his subsequent editions Schweitzer omitted (Quest 2
333) a lengthy section including this famous passage (Quest 1 364-69). It is regrettable that English
readers of the 1910 translation remained unaware of Schweitzer's second thoughts regarding
the passage (1913). I include the passage here partly because of its influence on Englishspeaking
scholarship and partly to draw attention to the fact that it did not reflect Schweitzer's
maturer thought.
102. 'That which is universally valid in Jesus' preaching, which should form the kernel
of our systematic theology, is not his idea of the Kingdom of God, but that of the religious and
ethical fellowship of the children of God' (Jesus'Proclamation 135). See also the Introduction
to Weiss's Jesus' Proclamation by Hiers and Holland (16-24).
103. 'He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, he
came to those men who did not know who he was. He says the same words, "Follow me!" and
sets us to those tasks which he must fulfil in our time. He commands. And to those who hearken
to him, whether wise or unwise, he will reveal himself in the peace, the labours, the conflicts
and the sufferings that they may experience in his fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery they
47