Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FAITH AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS §5.1
5.1. The Historical-Critical Method
Two people are usually given credit for stating and defining most clearly the
principles on which critical historical study is postulated and the sobering consequences
which follow. 1
The first is Gotthold Lessing (1729-81). 2 As the publisher of Reimarus's
Fragments, Lessing was vulnerable to criticism, 3 and though he was no less a
rationalist himself, he attempted to meet the challenge posed by Reimarus at a
more profound level. He did so in one of his most famous pamphlets, On the
Proof of the Spirit and of Power (1777), 4 by distinguishing between the reports
of miraculous events and the events themselves, and thus in effect drove a
wedge between faith and history. In brief, Lessing offers his own version of
what was then a widely perceived distinction between two kinds of truth: 5 religious
truths which no rational man would dispute, including the existence of
God and the immortality of the soul (this was the rationalist creed), and historical
truths, subject to historical inquiry, and capable of providing no basis for religious
faith. The former are innate, self-evident, necessary; the latter are contingent,
accidental, always uncertain, since the historian can deal only in the
probabilities of reconstruction out of human testimonies. Hence Lessing's
much-quoted dictum: 'accidental truths of history can never become the proof
of necessary truths of reason'. And consequently there comes into focus what
Lessing calls 'the ugly, broad ditch', between historical (un)certainty and the
certainty of the necessary truths of reason, 'which I cannot get across, however
often and however earnestly I have tried to make the leap'. 6 In other words, to
1. A fuller treatment would have to take account of the pioneer work of Richard Simon
(1638-1712), often regarded as the founder of modern biblical criticism (Kümmel, New Testament
41-47; Baird, History 17-25), and particularly of Spinoza (surprisingly ignored by
Kümmel and mentioned only briefly by Baird; but see Dungan, History ch. 16, particularly
212-16, 227-42 — Dungan's own estimate of Spinoza's importance [6-7]; the key chapter from
Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus [1670], on the interpretation of Scripture, is reproduced
by Dawes, Historical Jesus Quest 5-26).
2. For analysis and evaluation of Lessing see Chadwick, Lessing's Theological Writings
30-49; Brown, Jesus 16-29; Baird, History 165-69; O'Neill, Authority 13-27.
3. Schweitzer, e.g., cites Semler's attempt to ridicule Reimarus's editor (Quest 1 15-16;
Quest 2 16).
4. ET in Chadwick, Lessing's Theological Writings 51-56. The pamphlet was thus published
between Lessing's publication of Reimarus's Fragment 'On the Resurrection Narrative'
(1777) and that of the Fragment 'On the Intentions of Jesus and His Disciples' (1778). See also
Talbert's Introduction to Reimarus 29-34.
5. Chadwick notes Lessing's debt to Leibniz and the English Deists (Lessing's Theological
Writings 30-36).
6. Chadwick, Lessing's Theological Writings 53, 55. See further Barth, Rousseau to
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