Faithfully Seeking Understanding: Selected Writings of Johannes Kuhn

Is History Mythic? A Biblical Response to D. F. Strauss

212 Is History My thic? A Biblical Response to D. F. Strauss Jahrbuch für Theologie und Christliche Philosophie 6 (1836): 33–91 This selection outlines Kuhn’s critique of David Friedrich Strauss’s life of Jesus Critically examined, which had arrived on the German academic scene as a bombshell in the previous year. Although the article could not be rendered here in its totality, the spirit and the majority of the text demonstrates Kuhn’s profound concern with Strauss’s method. Kuhn was a young professor of New Testament when he penned this article , which would also provide the basis for his book-length response to Strauss in 1838. Instead of lapsing into an argument from authority, Kuhn confronted Strauss on his own terms by employing a sophisticated scriptural hermeneutics . We should not restrict the importance of Kuhn’s response, however, to its timeliness. No less a luminary than Albert Schweitzer would later praise Kuhn’s work as the only serious Catholic response to Strauss. Yet we should also lament how short-lived this attempted at sophisticated Catholic biblical criticism was. After nearly landing on the Index due to his engagement with Strauss, Kuhn quickly shifted away from exegetical work and toward dogmatic theology. Catholic theology would have to wait for the indefatigable efforts of Marie-Joseph Lagrange (d. 1938) and the pronouncement of divino afflante Spiritu (1943) and dei Verbum (1965) before re-entering the world of modern scriptural interpretation. Is History Mythic? C 213 C in or der to e x p l a in the gospels, it is of decisive importance, most especially concerning the critique of the kerygmatic [evangelischen ] history, to properly determine the viewpoint from which the gospel accounts depart. did the authors of the gospel accounts want to write or not? and if they intended to write, for what reason and purpose did they write their history? Was the purpose historical or dogmatic? and if the purpose was both historical and dogmatic, how are these two combined ? in what manner did their books conceive how one purpose took precedence over another? The answers to these questions have decisive consequences. The questions themselves imply this, but a recent attempt has brought to light, in a striking and palpable manner, that the history of the founder of our religion is connected integrally with the religion itself.1 Such a serious objection demands a deliberate and sober examination . While there are branches of human understanding in which it brings honor to chance a clever attempt and to demonstrate the buoyancy of the mind through bold hypotheses and grim conclusions, we remain on an entirely different plane. it would be flippant and insolent to transgress the limits of this plane as a mere experiment. The progress of science consists in an ongoing expansion of earlier boundaries of knowledge. This is laudable and inexorable. This progress, however, does not exclude a certain wonder concerning the plainly experimental, which is about more than mere knowledge, indeed which can deal with the religious conviction of a given time period. This conviction is and remains an object of science, but its very nature forbids that it yield to the chicanery of scientific [szientifischen ] hankering.2 1 This essay was co-translated with Jonathan king. See david Friedrich Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet, 2 vols. (tübingen, 1835; [repr. darmstadt, 1969]). kuhn is obviously working from the first edition. Strauss would issue several revisions of the work. The famous translation, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, trans. george eliot, is available but does not provide any means of cross-checking to Strauss’s original. Therefore only the german bibliographic information is given in footnotes here and below. (tr.) 2 [Wilhelm] de Wette remarks quite aptly in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken [Theological Studies and Criticism] (1834): 138, “Certain orthodox [altgläubige] theologians may think in their hearts and even act as though the historical critique of theology can and should proceed otherwise than according to the most rigorous laws of truth. But certainly none of them venture to 214 C Is History Mythic? it is a historically stated fact that our gospels came into being roughly thirty years after Christ’s ascension. in consequence of the spread of Christianity through the verbal proclamation of the apostles and their followers, there arose an actively awakened need for a more sufficient and reliable knowledge of Jesus’ life. The gospels are based...