Strauss, David: Life of Jesus – The mythical layer

Moving on from the historical kernel to the mythical layer of the life of Jesus, Strauss notes that we could go through each gospel separately, or because the synoptic gospels share so many similarities, treat them as a unity and then add considerations on the gospel of John. Instead, Strauss thinks that the accounts of the gospels are so closely connected to one another that it is simpler just to go through various parts of the legendary life of Jesus, dealing all at once with what each gospel has to say about each part.

Strauss begins from the mythical origins of Jesus. He recollects that the only historical certainties of the background of Jesus are that he was from Nazareth, that his parents were probably called Joseph and Mary and that he was baptised by John the Baptist. Since Jesus was considered to be the Messiah, Strauss explains, it was necessary to add to these known facts the assumption that he hailed from the line of David. Now, the Old Testament recounted David’s family line, starting from Adam, the supposed progenitor of all human race, all the way down to David’s descendant Serubabel. It was then down to the gospel writers to invent the line connecting Serubabel to Jesus. Strauss notes that while Matthew proceeded to do exactly this, probably because it was important to him as the writer closest to the Jewish interests, to show that Jesus was part of the royal line, Luke is content to use the biblical family line only down to Rehabeam, probably because later kings of Israel were told to worship false divinities.

Now, Strauss notes, the introduction of these two genealogies of Jesus created some problems. Firstly, because both Matthew and Luke were interested in the numerology of their genealogies, they had to do some creative editing with them: Matthew wanted to divide the family line into three segments with equal number of people and was therefore forced to drop out a few links in the already determined chain of the Old Testament to do this, while Luke repeats a few names, in order to get to a sufficiently round number. Another problem lies in the fact that genealogies in both Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels are based on Joseph, which suggests that they hailed from a time when Mary, the mother of Jesus, was not yet thought to be a virgin. Finally, there’s the obvious problem that Matthew and Luke give two completely different persons as the father of Joseph: a problem that Augustine tried later to solve by suggesting that the other one was an adoptive father.

Jesus was not just supposed to come from the line of David, but his life should have reflected that of David. Thus, Strauss notes, the gospel writers wanted to show something reminiscent of David being anointed by the prophet Samuel. Because there was no indication that Jesus was so anointed, the probable historical baptism of Jesus was repurposed for this task. In order to make his baptism stand out from those of other people baptised by John, the gospel writers introduced a divine voice proclaiming Jesus as the new Messiah. Strauss points out that the less human the notion of Jesus became, especially in the gospel of John, the less he was supposed to be in need of any purification. Thus, with John, the baptism of Jesus became just a sign of his divine origin.

An important part of the legend of Messiah was that he was supposed to be born in Bethlehem, where David had also been born. The problem was, Strauss indicates, that Jesus was known to come from Nazareth. This dilemma was solved by two gospel writers, Matthew and Luke, but, as Strauss points out, in completely opposite ways. Thus, Matthew suggested that the family of Jesus had originally lived in Bethlehem, but had to move to Nazareth due to avoiding the wrath of Herod. Then again, Luke made the opposite assumption that his family had always lived in Nazareth, but had to travel to Bethlehem due to a census (Strauss notes that this story goes particularly against known historical facts, since the known dates of the officials mentioned by Luke do not match the known dates of years when a census was made, and furthermore, even if a census had been arranged at the time, there was no need for Mary to accompany Joseph).

A further addition to the legend of Jesus was the idea of Jesus as the son of God. Strauss points out that originally Jews had used this epithet to simply describe any holy person and that probably the Greco-Roman part of early Christianity interpreted it more literally, being more accustomed to say, for instance, that the emperors were of divine origin. Strauss surmises that the Judaist part of the new faith could accept this reinterpretation because of biblical tales of God helping old women to conceive. Furthermore, the account in the book of Isaiah of a young woman giving birth to a boy could also be repurposed as a prophecy about such a miraculous event, where God uses the forces of nature to make Mary carry a child. Luke particularly added the story of the foretold birth of John the Baptist and a familial link to Jesus, just like in the Old Testament the birth of Samuel preceded that of David.

This divine birth was not enough for John, Strauss says, and this gospel writer supposed that Jesus had lived as a divine entity even before his time on earth. This idea was not completely novel, Strauss thinks. One precursor was the notion that God had planned the coming of the Messiah at the very moment of creation. Another precursor was Philo’s idea of interpreting the dual creation of human beings in Genesis as describing first the creation of a heavenly human that worked as a model for the earthly Adam. Strauss notes that Paul similarly spoke of Christ as the second Adam, but meaning him to be second only by his earthly life and existing in heaven even before Adam’s creation.

Another clear predecessor of John’s gospel, Strauss thinks, was Philo’s idea of divine Logos, which is a combination of the personified Wisdom of the Old Testament proverbs and the world spirit of Stoic and Platonic philosophy. John took the step of identifying the Judaist Messiah with this divine Logos and he hinted at Logos taking on a human body, perhaps already at the time of birth, although the details were left murky. Thus, while the natality stories of Matthew and Luke saw Jesus as a combination of divine spirit and a female bred body, with John, Jesus was a direct embodiment of Logos.

Strauss also points out that the gospel writers admonished the origin story of Jesus with tropes familiar from legends of both pagan and Jewish heroes, singling especially Moses out as a person Jesus was supposed to resemble. Thus, Strauss begins, many ancient heroes were believed to be born at a time of astronomical spectacles, for instance, the birth of Caesar was supposedly marked by a comet. Furthermore, Balaam in the book of Numbers was said to have prophesied about a rising star that was connected with the Messiah. Matthew appears to link this passage with Isaiah’s mention of kings bearing gifts to Messiah, further connection being that the kings in Matthew were said to come from orient, that is, from the lands where Balaam was supposed to live.

It was also a common trope, Strauss says, that the heroes faced in their childhood a death threat by old rulers, who had learned from seers that the babies would later defeat their rule. While Romulus is an obvious pagan example, Strauss also notes a Jewish folktale describing how pharaoh was set out to kill the baby boys of the Hebrew, because he had heard a prophecy describing the birth of Moses. Strauss suggests that this folktale lies behind Matthew’s account of Herod killing babies in Bethlehem and the family of Jesus running away, not from, but to Egypt. Strauss also points out that Matthew’s story contradicts Luke's story: while Matthew told that Joseph and Mary moved to Galilee and avoided the Israel proper, due to the rule of the son of Herod, Luke showed Jesus visiting a temple in Jerusalem in his childhood.

Luke’s tale of young Jesus in the temple, Strauss adds, is also a familiar trope of a precocious hero showing wisdom beyond their years. Strauss particularly mentions the Old Testament story of Joseph, and just like Joseph’s father, Jacob, was said to have enclosed the words of Jacob in his heart, so is Mary, the mother of Jesus, said to have enclosed the various indications of the superhuman nature of his son to her heart. Strauss points out that later apocryphal gospels even added to the legend of the child Jesus, showing him performing miracles at an early age.

Great heroes of old faced trials, often at the beginning of their career, whether it be Hercules having to choose between life of virtue and vice or Abraham facing the command of God to sacrifice his son. Strauss especially points out the failed trial of Israelites following Moses, who started worshipping idols in the wilderness. The tale of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, Strauss suggests, adds to the tale of the Israelites the Persian notion of the evil principle tempting humans to sin, but the three temptations still reflect the temptations of Jewish people: the Hebrews complained about the food, while Jesus said that he could come by with the word of God, they demanded miracles from God, while Jesus refused to throw himself off a cliff and be rescued by angels, and they served false gods, while Jesus did not bow down to the devil in order to gain earthly power.

While the origin stories of Jesus are completely mythical, there is more historical in the story of the public life of Jesus, Strauss thinks, like his baptism by John the Baptist. Still, there are clear mythical additions to this story, Strauss admits, like the supposed recognition of Jesus as Messiah by the Baptist, due to a miraculous event of God proclaiming Jesus as his son. Strauss points out that this mythical addition creates an internal contradiction, when the Baptist later sends his disciples to ask whether Jesus is the Messiah. Strauss notes that the gospel of John developed the tale further away from historical truth by letting Baptist himself declare that Jesus is a heavenly being and the disciples of Baptist turning straightaway into disciples of Jesus.

Strauss considers it a historical fact that Jesus had at least a fisher and a tax collector as his disciples (although gospels do not agree upon the name of the tax collector) and thinks it probable that Jesus compared his disciples to fisher of men. What Strauss already finds improbable is the suggestion of gospels that the disciples just left what they were doing when Jesus commanded them to follow him. Furthermore, the gospels also introduced some of the disciples with an unhistorical tale of fishing miracle, most likely as an analogy to the idea of disciples as fisher of men. John’s gospel differed again radically from the synoptic gospels, Strauss points out, since John did not mention any fishermen or tax collectors among disciples of Jesus, but did mention a relative of the high priest, probably because of a need of later times to make Christianity more palatable to higher circles of the society.

As to the names of the disciples, Paul had already mentioned Kephas (more familiarly known as Peter), John and Jacob, the brother of Jesus, as the leaders of the early Christians. It is then no wonder, Strauss indicates, that the synoptic gospels used these three as names of the disciples, although they refrained from taking Jacob as a brother of Jesus, but interpreted him to be a brother of John. Now, Paul had described the three leaders as very Judaistic and opposed to Paul’s idea of proselytising to pagans. In an attempt to break the connection to the early Judaistic Christianity, Strauss suggests, John’s gospel belittled especially the role of Peter and emphasised an unnamed favourite disciple of Jesus, who supposedly wrote the gospel and was probably meant to be identified with John.

The evident mythical aspect of the gospels appears in the miracles of Jesus. Jews expected Messiah to heal sick people, Strauss suggests, because of a passage from Isaiah – originally a parable written during Babylonian captivity, describing the awaited paradisiacal state of Jews returning to their homeland, where blind, deaf and lame would be cured – was taken literally as a prophecy and because the Old Testament prophets like Elijah and Elisha had been told to do similar miracles.

It is no wonder then that stories of miraculous healing were also told of Jesus, although in difference from the Old Testament tales, the various afflictions Jesus heals are not divine punishments. Strauss suggests that if these tales had any historical origin, like use of charisma and folk medicine to ease the symptoms of people, by the time of gospels this historical kernel had been wrapped in a layer of mythology. For instance, while the original Jesus might have thought he opened up people’s eyes figuratively, in gospels he did this quite literally, and in the case of John’s gospel, Jesus was said to heal even people blind from their birth.

Despite the rather crude physicality of the healing miracles, Strauss admits, gospels did try to add also more subtle issues to their wondrous tales. Thus, the aforementioned John also used the figurative meaning of blindness to indicate that the non-repenting Jews were unable to see the truth in front of them. Furthermore, gospels considered the doctrinal issue of whether healing is allowed on Sabbath and John argued on this point that God and the divine Logos never truly rest. Finally, Luke used a story of lepers to show the ingratitude of Jews in comparison to a Samaritan, linking this miracle to his fable of a Good Samaritan (interestingly, of all gospel writers John alone never spoke of any lepers, which makes Strauss surmise that the so-called John came from the upper echelons of the society and had thus never really met any lepers).

Among the conditions healed by Jesus, deafness and muteness, Strauss says, were often explained to be caused by a demonic possession, although Jesus also healed other possessed persons. The notion of healing possessed people in general is interesting, Strauss adds, because there is no equivalent to it in the Old Testament. Furthermore, Strauss thinks, if any healings were real, driving away demons must have been, because these were clearly psychological phenomena. Still, he concludes, even these healing stories cannot be always explained naturalistically: in Luke and Mark people possessed by demons recognised Jesus as Messiah, and Jesus also transmitted demons into pigs, making the animals drown themselves (Strauss notes here analogies with Hellenistic tales of demon possession). Strauss concludes his discussion of possessions by noting that John spoke only of figurative possessions, probably because they were not in fashion at his time anymore.

Strauss notes that some tales of miraculous healing add further mythical layers. Thus, both Matthew and Luke told that even mere touching of garments of Jesus, without any voluntary act on the part of Jesus, was enough for curing a woman: while in Matthew, this might just have been understood as the woman feeling psychologically better because of her own faith in the power of Jesus, Luke suggested a literal energy flowing from Jesus to the sick person, which Strauss likens to movement of electric fluid or to cases of the so-called animal magnetism. On the contrary, Jesus was also said to be able to heal people from distance, requiring no physical medium, but only his own will.

It was not enough for the Messiah to just heal sick people, since Elyah and Elisha had already told to have awakened dead, and it seemed reasonable, Strauss surmises, that Jesus, whose death and resurrection was supposed to be precursor of a general resurrection, would have awakened dead in his own lifetime. Thus, we see synoptic gospels telling the story of the daughter of Jairus (the name of the father was mentioned only by Luke, thus, Strauss considers it to be probably unhistorical). In Matthew, the father was said to come straightaway to ask Jesus to raise her from the dead: Strauss points out the problem that the father could not yet have known that Jesus was able to do such miracles. Hence, he argues, Mark and Luke felt the need to add the further point that the father asked Jesus to heal his daughter, but she died while they were on the way to meet her. In addition to this story, Luke added a tale of Jesus raising an only son of a widow, which Strauss sees as meaning to provide more emotional resonance with the harrowing details.

The more time from the death of Jesus went by, the more urgent the question became whether even people long dead would be resurrected. Hence, Strauss thinks, the gospel of John felt the need to tell the story of Lazarus, with even more emotional details than in the tales of synoptic gospels, Lazarus coming from a family of friends of Jesus. John’s tale is, according to Strauss, an even more outrageous miracle, since Lazarus had been dead for a few days and was said to be already smelling, and furthermore, the divine Jesus of John was said to know beforehand that Lazarus was dead and was able to just order Lazarus to rise.

Even if the outrageous nature of the miracle and the lack of any similar story in the synoptic gospels would not already prove enough that the story of resurrected Lazarus was fabrication, Strauss argues, further evidence would be that John had combined in it completely disparate details from Luke’s gospel (Martha and Mary, sisters of Lazarus, appear in a story of their own, while Lazarus is seen only in an allegorical fable about death). Strauss also rejects all attempts to explain the story naturalistically, for instance, Lazarus going through a mere false death and Jesus just trying his luck calling him, or the three siblings trying to make a joke on Jesus, because they do not seem psychologically convincing.

Not all miracles of Jesus centred on human beings. Jesus lived by the Sea of Galilee (despite its name, more like a lake), thus, Strauss states, it was natural to tell tales involving the lake. We have already mentioned the story of Jesus helping the fishermen and then asking them to be his disciples, and another example is the tale of Jesus asking Peter to find a coin in a fish for paying the temple tax. Strauss points out that this tale is intrinsically connected with the question of whether future Christians were supposed to pay for the maintenance of Jewish priesthood, and since later Mark and Luke felt no need to ponder such issues, they dropped the tale.

Other tales about the Sea of Galilee involve boats. In one tale, Jesus was said to calm a raging storm, when sailing on the lake. Strauss suggests that this tale refers back to Psalms, where God was said to calm the raging storm, which symbolised Israel during time of trials: similarly Jesus was seen as the symbolic saviour of early Christians in trying times. Another tale involved Jesus coming in a miraculous manner to save the disciples, who were stuck in a boat. Strauss explains the method Jesus took for his miracle in this tale (walking on water) by noting that while Moses had crossed sea by parting the waters, Jesus wasn’t going to cross the Sea of Galilee (his destination was a boat on the sea), so the only possible reference to the Old Testament the gospel writers could have used was that of God moving on waters in Genesis.

The Israelites were told to have been provided manna and occasionally even meat in the desert. Thus, Strauss makes the comparison, Jesus was naturally rumored to have provided ample food for hungry people, with manna and meat being replaced by bread and fish, as more familiar to the local conditions. Strauss also suggests that the tale also reflects the custom of the early Christians to share their evening meals.

In addition to manna, Moses also found water in the desert. While there is no exactly similar tale in the gospels, Strauss finds a natural analogy in John’s tale of Jesus turning water into wine, just like Jesus replaced mere baptism of water with a baptism of spirit. Strauss also surmises that the tale might hearken back to the tale of Moses turning water into blood, thus already pointing to the link of seeing wine as the blood of Jesus.

Strauss singles out the story of Jesus making a fig tree without any fruits wither as the only tale of a destructive miracle in the gospels. He points out that the tale has obvious connotations about the sterility of Judaistic faith (many of the Old Testament prophets had compared Jews to a fruitless figtree), and while Matthew and Mark presented the story as a straightforward miracle, Luke made it into a parable.

The face of Moses was said to be alighted by his constant communion with God, thus, Strauss explains, it was natural that the early Christians would assume that the face of Jesus had to be similarly lighted. The outcome of this expectation was the tale of the transfiguration of Jesus on a mountain, where he had taken only his closest disciples, just like only a select group of priests followed Moses to the mountain. To top Moses, not just the face, but also the clothes of Jesus brightened, and Moses was also told to be there to greet Jesus, showing how Christianity stood higher than Jewish law. Strauss notes that the story mentions also the presence of the prophet Elijah, probably because Elijah was prophesied to come before Messiah (Strauss notes that the gospels also tried to explain this prophecy by Jesus identifying John the Baptist with Elijah, when the disciples asked about it, but at the same time this second explanation created a contradiction – why should the disciples ask about the prophecy of Elijah, if they had already met him on the mountain?). John dropped the tale of transfiguration in its current form, Strauss conjectures, because he was not that interested of the Jewish background of Jesus.

Moving on to the final moments of the story of Jesus, Strauss notes that his arrival to Jerusalem on a donkey was clearly suggested by a prophecy of Zachariah. Strauss is not completely against the historicity of the tale – Jesus might have done this as an obvious publicity stunt – but he notes that Matthew already embellished the tale by having Jesus ride unbelievably on two donkeys, just because Zachariah appeared to suggest it. Another Old Testament passage suggested that the Messiah should miraculously know where to find a steed, thus, Strauss continues, the gospel writers made Jesus send two boys to fetch the donkey from a place he hadn’t visited before.

Connected to the story of Jesus in Jerusalem is a story of him being anointed by a woman while he was having a meal in the house of a person called Simon. Strauss points out that this story went through considerable changes in the different gospels. The original story, according to him, was the one in Matthew and Mark, where the disciples spoke against the anointing of the head of Jesus, because this wasted money that could have been given to the poor. Luke, Strauss continued, moved this story away from Bethany, into a house of a Pharisee called Simon, where a sinful woman anointed the head of the Jesus (Strauss suggests that Luke derived some of the details from a lost Hebrew gospel, which according to later sources included a story of a sinful woman anointing Jesus). Finally, John combined to Luke’s story from the same gospel the Bethanian sisters Martha and Mary, who washed the feet of Jesus with her hair – with John, it was Mary of Bethany who anointed the feet (and not the head) of Jesus, and the only local man mentioned is the resurrected brother Lazarus.

While the story of the meal in Bethany was important for the early Christians as indicating the anointment of Jesus, the story of the last meal of Jesus was also important as a precursor of Eucharist. Strauss points out that while the synoptic gospels added a miracle to the proceedings by Jesus setting out the disciples to find a place to stay without previously knowing where they would discover it, just like in the earlier case of the donkey, John’s account was lacking of any miracles in both accounts. A further difference is that while the synoptic gospels identified the last meal as the Jewish passah meal, John placed it on a day before passah, probably because John wanted Jesus to play the role of the sacrificial lamb. Again in difference from synoptic gospels, John added a passage of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples, and while all gospels agreed that Jesus miraculously knew that someone was to betray him, only John made Jesus even spur the betrayer to action. Strauss also points out that John again used the opportunity to raise the beloved disciple over others.

From the last meal, the action turns to the Mount of Olives, where Strauss finds the tale of Jesus knowing beforehand that he would suffer completely unhistorical. He points out that in Matthew and Mark Jesus was tempted three times to escape his fate – just like he had faced three temptations in the wilderness – while Luke contracted this to a single moment of weakness, but added the detail of an angel comforting Jesus. Strauss notes that John was not pleased with the idea of divine Logos being anguished and so replaced the story with another one, where Jesus was transfigured by God.

The next bit of the familiar tale is that of the imprisonment of Jesus. Strauss notes that all the gospels disagree on the details. Most original is again John, who suggested that it was the devil imprisoning Jesus. The role of betrayer was also reduced by John, who made Jesus proclaim himself saying three times “I am”: Strauss suggests this is a reference to the name of God in the Old Testament – Jehovah or “I am” – and thus again a hint of the supposed divinity of Jesus.

Strauss finds further reasons to assume that the gospel writers were trying to accommodate their tale to agree with the Old Testament passages: the traitor dies by suicide, as told in the Book of Samuel, thirty silver coins come from the book of Zacharias and their final use to buy the Field of Blood derives from Psalms. The few historical details, like the name of the Field of Blood or the names of high priests questioning Jesus, seem to be mere embellishments to make the whole more convincing, Strauss adds.

A clear tendency of all the gospels is, Strauss says, to try to exonerate Jesus as being accused by false evidence and to place all the blame of his death on the Jews, de-emphasising the role of Pontius Pilate. Of course, the means to do it vary: Matthew made Pilate wash his hands and added the story of the wife of Pilate asking him to release Jesus, Luke added the unhistorical questioning by Herod, probably just to show that even Jewish authorities found no fault in Jesus, and John made Pilate even beg the Jewish crowd that they would find the flogging of Jesus an acceptable punishment.

The synoptic gospels made a man help Jesus carry his cross, but John again emphasised the divinity of Jesus by making him carry it all by himself: still, Strauss adds, the story as told in the synoptic gospels was probably also not a historical truth, since its obvious point was to spur Christians to emulate Jesus in carrying their burdens. Other remarkable differences between gospels arise in the last words of Jesus: Matthew and Mark emphasised his human suffering, while Luke and John did not want Jesus to show any weakness in face of death, Luke making him show mercy toward his condemners and John emphasising again the importance of the favourite disciple by making Jesus entrust his mother to that disciple.

Strauss points out a common trope that deaths of heroes are accompanied by cataclysmic events, when even nature mourns for their loss. Thus, the synoptic gospels spoke of an eclipse and an earthquake and temple veil breaking. Matthew was even willing to say that the death of Jesus made dead people rise from their graves, foreboding the general resurrection awaited by the early Christians. John’s gospels did not include any such obvious fabulations, but instead told that when the side of Jesus was pierced, blood and water flew out: Strauss explains that the movement of the blood was meant to show that the body of Jesus still worked after his death, while the water was a symbol of divine spirit.

It was told from early on that Jesus had been buried – even Paul mentioned it in his letters – but the gospel writers added the detail that the burial was done by a rich disciple, probably, Strauss suggests, because it fit in with a passage from Isaiah. Jews had suggested that the story of finding the tomb of Jesus empty was just a sign of his disciples stealing the body, thus, Strauss explains, Matthew added a story, where the Jewish priests ask Pilate to send soldiers to guard the grave, so that the disciples would not try to do this. Strauss thinks this addition is unhistorical, because it is unconvincing that the priests would have remembered that Jesus promised to arise on the third death after his death, when the disciples apparently had not heard of this promise and were thus struck by grief because of his death. Indeed, later gospels dropped this story, because they were not anymore interested in arguing such things with Jews.

The final moments of gospels all told very different tales. Matthew recounted that two women, both called Mary, visited the grave, where an angel had scared the guards and lifted the stone from the grave. The angel told them to go to Galilee, where the disciples had returned, and when going there, the ladies met on the road Jesus, who told them he would be with them to the end of days. Matthew mentioned nothing of ascension, Strauss suggests, because people were still having mental visions of Jesus resurrected, just like Paul said in his letters.

By the time of Mark and Luke, Strauss continues, the memory of these visions had faded away and so a story of Jesus returning to heaven was needed. Mark’s story of resurrection followed Matthew closely, but stopped with the story of the women going to Galilee, adding only a short and undetailed mention of ascension, which might not have even been a physically observable event. In Luke’s account, the disciples hadn’t yet returned to Galilee, making it possible that Peter also visited the empty grave, and while there was no meeting of Jesus with the two Maries, he did meet two disciples on their way to Emmaus and showed them his wounds. Finally, Luke added the most detailed and very visual story of Jesus ascending to heaven with two angels.

John’s ending followed first Luke’s, but reworked some details, for instance, by adding two meetings with disciples, allowing the famous line about doubting Thomas asking for physical proof of the resurrection – Strauss notes that this is a perfect example of John’s gospel combining the most crude materialism (wounds of Jesus) with the most immaterial spiritualism (the power of faith without seeing). Just like John felt no need to tell how divine Logos became human, he felt no need to add how Jesus returned to his heavenly abode, merely emphasising again in the end that true faith requires no observable proof.

Having gone through all the mythical additions to the historical kernel, Strauss points out that we know as little about the historical Jesus as we know about such semi-legendary figures as Pythagoras. In comparison, Strauss notes, we know a lot more about Socrates, who lived four hundred years before Jesus, mainly because Socrates lived in a more literary culture and had the advantage of two immediate followers, Plato and Xenophon, writing about him, so that we can corroborate the writings of one against the writings of another, and agreeing in enough details about the major aspects of his life and teaching. On the contrary, Strauss points out, the authors of Matthew and John were no immediate disciples of Jesus and had very conflicting ideas about the nature of Jesus. Strauss adds that our knowledge of the life of Jesus has often been compared to our knowledge of the life of Shakespeare, but in the latter case we have his works to read, while we are not really certain what in the gospels derives originally from Jesus. Strauss is certain that there are some sayings we can truly credit to Jesus, but we cannot say with utmost certainty what they are, while gospels do include much that we know cannot be true, like all the miracles.

Strauss is still not willing to throw the gospels completely away. It is not the historical person that is important for him, but the ideal of Jesus as an image of a perfect human being. Strauss suggests Jesus wasn’t the first of such human paradigms and he won’t be the last. True, even such paradigms do reflect the developmental phase of their time, and Strauss indicates few shortcomings of Jesus: his cultural surroundings were not yet suitable for showing how to live as a citizen of a good community and he was not civilised enough to appreciate higher culture and art. Despite these shortcomings, Strauss is happy to accept the ideal of Jesus as a stepping stone toward more perfect humanity.

Life of Jesus (1835–1836/1864)

1808–1874

David Strauss’s Das Leben Jesu was a seminal work in Bible scholarship, yet, as Strauss himself says, theologians of the time reacted negatively to it – whether for the reason Strauss himself surmises, that is, a fear of losing their own halo of holiness, is unclear. The negative reception of professionals made Strauss finally publish a more condensed and less scholarly version of his work for the wider audience. Strauss considered himself to be continuing the work of Luther in removing the final crude superstitious elements, which he attributed to Jewish influence, from the purely spiritual Christianity that Strauss envisioned was the mission of German people to endorse.

Strauss notes in his work that the very idea of studying the life of Jesus is rather modern. Sure, Church Fathers did try to e.g. weave a consistent story of the wondering of Jesus, as presented in the gospels, but it was not the human life of Jesus so much as his supposed divinity and his role in the overall salvation of human race that really mattered to them. In fact, Strauss states, the very idea of the life of Jesus is somewhat contradictory, when life is something essentially human, but Jesus is understood as divine. No wonder then, he points out in going through works of his predecessors, that there has been a growing tendency to a demystification of the life of Jesus, for instance, by interpreting the supposed miracles of Jesus as natural events.

When it comes to the sources of the life of Jesus – that is, the four gospels – Strauss notes that they are mentioned rather late, all four no earlier than in Irenaeus (from the latter half of the second century). The remaining passages of the works of Papias (from the first half second century) do mention gospels written by Matthew and Mark, but it is unclear whether they are the same gospels we know of. Before these references, Strauss continues, we really have nothing certain. Apostolic fathers use sayings similar to those found in gospels, but these could be part of an oral tradition, while Justin the Martyr does acknowledge the existence of writings on Jesus and quotes some saying and parts of the life of Jesus, but his quotes do not often line up with the gospels we know of, suggesting that the four we know might not have been the only ones in circulation.

Strauss notes that for a long time it has been clear that the first three gospels – the so-called synoptic gospels – form a distinct group with obvious similarities. They are not identical, and some differences could be explained by the different perspectives of their authors, but Strauss points out that factual differences, for instance, in the geographical details of the journeys of Jesus were more difficult to account for.

After a careful consideration of the theological traditions, Strauss comes to the conclusion that the gospel of Matthew must be the earliest of the synoptic gospels. Even Matthew was still not written by Matthew or by any true eyewitness – this is proven by, for instance, duplication of tales with similar motifs, suggesting that the author had heard two different accounts and inserted both of them to his writing, just to be sure. Strauss thinks that Matthew has the most faithful account of the speeches and works of Jesus, although it does have its share of unbelievable miracles, like corpses arising from their graves after the death of Jesus. The main evidence for the early state of Matthew is, Strauss says, that the attitude of the gospel is still very close to Jewish traditions, although there are some clear later additions, like the reference to trinitarian divinity.

Although Matthew is the earliest, Strauss argues, it is still far from reliable and authors of other synoptic gospels might have had contact with historical sources that were not available to the author of Matthew. This is evident, he continues, in Luke, which clearly uses Matthew as a source, but also contains much of its own material. Strauss notes that the author of Luke (and of the Acts of the Apostles) was clearly a learned Greek who wanted to make his gospel an artistic whole, for instance, by dividing Matthew’s sermon of mount into more manageable pieces and by replacing Matthew’s story of the childhood of Jesus with his own. What belies the later date of Luke, Strauss thinks, is the more universalist attitude of the gospel and the tendency evident especially in the Acts to try to reconcile the Jewish and the Greek branches of early Christianity.

Modern hermeneutics usually sees Mark as the earliest synoptic gospel, but Strauss has a widely different opinion. For him, Mark is just a more prosaic summary of Matthew, adding also some passages summarising Luke. Strauss envisions the gospel of Mark having been written for liturgic purposes as a succinct retelling of the major events in the life of Jesus. Mark’s attitude is, Strauss suggests, universalist like Luke’s, but Mark shows this tendency more in omissions, for instance, by removing Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus, which connected Jesus with David’s family line (a consideration more important for Christians with Jewish heritage).

This leaves out only the gospel of John, and Strauss notes that many modern readers, like Schleiermacher, had wanted to see it as the original gospel with an eyewitness as its author. Yet, Strauss makes it clear, the gospel must be considerably late, because it shows Gnostic tendencies, especially in its divinisation of Jesus as a pre-existent Logos. Thus, he concludes, John contains very little that is historically reliable and not found in other gospels, but he also understands why it has been regarded as so central by the modern readers: the gospel of John emphasised the subjective element of faith, so important for the German romantics.

Since gospels are clearly not fully historical documents, Strauss underlines, we can assume that there is a lot of mythical in them. This is especially true of miracles, that is, events inexplicable by finite causes, which thus appear to be immediate effects of the highest cause or God, done for the purpose of effecting God’s will in the world and for making people believe in God. Strauss is adamant: a historian cannot accept miracles, or if they accept biblical miracles, they should accept also miracles in all religions. He thinks that no proper philosophy can accept miracles. This is clearly true of materialism, which does not accept even the existence of God. Furthermore, a pantheist, identifying the world with God, cannot believe that God could act against laws of the world, which by consequence are then laws of God. Even consequent theism, Strauss thinks, admits that it would be against the wisdom of God to use miracles instead of ordinary natural laws for divine purposes. Even if the stories of miracles in Bible were told by eyewitnesses, Strauss, thinks, they would still be unbelievable, or at least we wouldn’t believe anyone who would nowadays state they had seen miracles.

Tales of miracles by Jesus are then best understood as myths, Strauss concludes. People were waiting for the Messiah, he explains, some believed Jesus was this Messiah, more and more people started believing it, then people started thinking that Jesus had made the same sort of miracles as earlier prophets had: similar process has happened in all religions. In addition to such unconscious myth making, Strauss suggests, gospels might contain even conscious fabrications, and this is especially true of the final one attributed to John. Strauss aims at first to unravel the original kernel of historical Jesus behind all the myths and then show how the myths have been applied like layers on top of this kernel. We shall return to the latter task of Strauss in the next post and now concentrate on the first one.

Strauss begins by describing the Judaist and Greco-Roman cultures that formed the context for the activities of Jesus. Starting with the Jews, Strauss noted that they had for a long time identified themselves as the people who knew the only true God and who were chosen by this God, but also punished for worshiping other gods. The Jews did retain the practice of animal sacrifice, common to their neighbours, but the prophets already noticed a basic contradiction that an unseen God should not care for sacrifices. They did not abandon the practice completely, but they did speak for a more spiritual behaviour as a path toward the former glory of the Israel nation – thus began the wait for the Messiah.

After the Maccabee rebellion, Strauss continues, three sects arose among the Jews. Firstly, there were the puristically Judaist Pharisees, reacting against Greco-Roman conquerors, like German romantics had reacted against the Napoleonic forces. Secondly, there was the enlightened upper class of Sadducees, with a Stoic tendency for doing good for good’s sake and an Epicurean tendency of renouncing the afterlife. Finally, there were the ascetic Essenes, resembling the later Ebionite sect of early Christianity, who Strauss considers might have been influenced by the Neo-Pythagorean school in Egypt. Besides these three schools, Strauss also mentions the Alexandrian Jews, like Philo, who married Judaism with Platonist doctrine of ideas and spoke of Logos as the divine reason.

One might think that the Greco-Roman mythology was far removed from the Judaist notion of one God, but Strauss argues that Greek gods were still more universal than Asian, since they had a human and not animal form. This idea seems something Strauss borrowed from the Hegelian school, and the same is probably true of what he says about the development of Greek philosophy. Thus, Strauss mentions Socrates, whom he considers being similar to Jesus in his emphasis on morality, endorsement of monotheism and tragic end. Plato, Strauss continues, made Greek culture even more compliant with Judaism by his idea of good, which he identified with God, emphasis on a world beyond what is perceived and identification of virtue with true happiness. Aristotle, Strauss thinks, followed Plato in essentials, just concentrating more on the experience, while Stoics emphasised the independence of virtue and were also the first philosophical school with the whole humanity as a universal object. Epicureans seemed to oppose Stoics, but agreed on identifying virtue as means to true happiness. Skepticism reacted against the multiplicity of philosophical schools and also destroyed the native polytheistic faith, which opened the way for Neo-Pythagoreans and Neoplatonism. Strauss concludes his account by noting that Rome united the known world and made Greek philosophy practical.

Another important figure for the context of the life of Jesus, Strauss thinks, is John the Baptist, who resembled Essenes in forming a sort of middle state between Judaism and Christianity. John the Baptist was waiting for Messiah, but Strauss thinks he probably didn’t believe that Jesus was him, since his sect continued even after Jesus began his own mission.

Strauss is convinced that all tales of the birth and youth of Jesus in the gospels are unhistorical. Then again, Strauss adds, we can consider it highly probable that Jesus was from Nazareth in Galilee, that his father was a carpenter called Joseph and his mother was called Mary and that he had brothers and sisters, some of whom were also among his disciples. Furthermore, Strauss notes, there is no indication that Jesus was a descendant of David. Strauss also finds in gospels no reliable information on the upbringing and education of Jesus. Strauss surmises that Jesus might have been self-educated on theological matters and that he might have had some inkling of the Greco-Roman culture, since Galilee was a more cosmopolitan environment than Judea. Strauss takes it to be very probable that Jesus was a pupil of John the Baptist, since his teachings do bear a striking similarity with that of John’s.

Jesus did not at first set himself out as the Messiah, Strauss argues, but merely as a preacher. The religious ideas of Jesus, Strauss thinks, are best expressed in the Sermon on Mount: it is not the earthly goods that make people satisfied, but spiritual awakening, which Jesus interprets according to his time as afterlife. In other words, while Moses had given laws for external actions, Jesus stated laws for internal attitudes, endorsing the notion of universal love shown to everyone. Similarly, Strauss emphasises, the God of Jesus was not the judge of the Old Testament, but a loving father, while humans were his children and siblings of one another. These convictions gave Jesus a carefree attitude toward the external side of life, expressed well in his statement that birds in the sky do not care for tomorrow. Strauss notices an interesting tension between this naturalness of the way Jesus lived, compared with the spiritual struggles of later famous Christians, like Paul, Augustine and Luther.

Strauss thinks of Jesus as a reformator of Judaism. Jesus was, he says, against the rules Pharisees had introduced on top of what had been clearly written in Torah. Then again, the attitude of Jesus toward the very law within Torah was more ambiguous. Jesus did say, Strauss notes, that he did not want to reject the law, but he did want to make it more internal (for instance, it is not just the act of adultery that should be rejected, but even the very desire for adultery). Then again, Strauss points out, Jesus was clearly careless about the ritual offerings and ceremonies, probably because they were mere external covering for the true good. Gospels seem even more inconsistent about the attitudes of Jesus toward non-Jews, but Strauss surmises that as a resident of Galilee he would have encountered at least Samaritans and thus would have had more positive ideas about them than an average person from Judaea.

Strauss points out that Jesus never declared himself to be David’s descendant in the gospels and reacted even ironically to the notion, since the Messiah should be more important than David was. Jesus also never directly called himself the son of God, which at that time meant nothing more than a holy man sent by God. Then again, Strauss admits, Jesus did not reject the epithet, if someone described him thus. Still, what Jesus mostly described himself to be was a son of man. Originally, Strauss states, this title referred to an ordinary human being, but at least in the book of Daniel it was used of a Messiah-like figure. Yet, Strauss surmises, even if Jesus was thus implying that he was the Messiah, his disciples seem not to have picked the latter reference

In any case, Strauss thinks, Jesus was never interested in the political and national side of the notion of Messiah. This was not completely unprecedented, Strauss states, because some prophets spoke of a Messiah-like figure that was more of a teacher than a warrior, for instance, Isaiah, when introducing the servant of God. An important element in Isaiah’s notion was that the servant of God was to suffer: usually he was interpreted to speak of the whole nation of Israel, but the servant could be seen as a single, Messianic person. Strauss surmises that the more Jesus encountered resistance from his fellow Jews, the more he saw his role to be sacrificing himself for others

Strauss notes that Jesus apparently spoke of rising from death, and although he sometimes clearly meant a spiritual afterlife and not physical resurrection, he did occasionally refer to his return on Earth. This is problematic for Strauss, since if Jesus meant such things literally, he would have been either a fraud or a religious fanatic. Strauss explains some of these statements as later additions, since they show Jesus prophesying about things happening after his life. Furthermore, Strauss notes, when Jesus spoke of his coming back in the kingdom of heaven, he most likely thought that the world around us would eventually change into a new, heavenly form, due to his own teachings, and that he would return to the world in this altered state, ruling it with his followers.

Strauss likens the method of teaching Jesus used to that of Socrates, as both moved from house to house and spoke to anyone who would listen to them. Jesus apparently restricted his wanderings for a long time to Galilee, at least according to the synoptic gospels, and although it might seem odd that such a pious person would not have visited Jerusalem regularly, Strauss ponders, he might have wanted at first to distance himself from the Pharisee-led Judea and travelled there only when he had gathered enough followers. His style was that of a common person and he liked using parables, which Strauss thinks is a clear sign of the inauthenticity of John’s gospel, which prefers allegories, lacking the narrative element of the parables.

Strauss thinks it was just natural the Jews would expect Jesus to prove that he was sent by God through performing miracles similar to those made by prophets of old. At times Jesus appeared to ridicule this expectation, especially when talking to Pharisees, by referring to obstinate folk who required proof to believe. Still, Strauss notes, he was eventually rumored to have miraculous powers, making people try to touch his clothes to gain healing – such belief was not uncommon in ancient times, when famous people were in question. Strauss surmises that Jesus might have even performed faith healings, especially of those who were thought to be possessed, who suffered most likely from psychological illnesses. Still, Strauss is convinced that Jesus could not have broken the laws of nature.

Like John the Baptist, Jesus gathered around himself some disciples. Strauss finds it convincing that Jesus picked himself twelve disciples, corresponding to twelve tribes of Israel. Then again, Strauss thinks that Jesus surely did not yet order his disciples to spread his teachings. Strauss finds it uncertain whether there was any betrayer among disciples, as indeed, Paul does not yet know of such a person among the twelve. Furthermore, Strauss thinks it is doubtful whether the disciples really understood Jesus. Strauss is also convinced that Jesus wasn’t divinised by the disciples, which seems to have been the idea of Paul.

Strauss can find no certain information about what Jesus hoped to accomplish in visiting Jerusalem. It could have been that at this point Jesus was convinced that he was surrounded by enemies, that he would be killed and that this killing was a sacrifice necessary for the coming of the kingdom of God. Perhaps he then might have felt the need to ask his disciples to commemorate his last day on earth with bread and wine, but it could also be that the disciples just started to commemorate the death of Jesus with this tradition. Still, Strauss notes, it is quite believable that his coming to Jerusalem was so tumultuous that it gained the attention of the Jewish and Roman authorities, leading to a capture and crucifixion of Jesus.

While some writers had suggested that Jesus might have experienced just a false death, making the supposed resurrection a natural event, Strauss dismisses this suggestion, because in such a weak state Jesus would not have awakened enough awe to make disciples consider him the Messiah – besides, what would have happened to Jesus afterwards? Strauss is also not satisfied in merely saying that it is only the belief in resurrection by disciples that is important for a historian.

Instead, Strauss argues on the basis of contradictions in the gospels that the most reliable account of how the disciples must have experienced the resurrection comes from Paul, who certainly believed he had seen and heard Jesus, but in a way that is clearly interpretable as a subjective vision. It is likely, Strauss continues, that the immediate disciples of Jesus had similar experiences, after returning to Galilee where they were used to seeing Jesus. Such visions were a natural effect of the stress of their experiences and even more probable because of the fact that some of the disciples most likely had psychical afflictions that made them susceptible to them (for instance, Mary Magdalene, who was supposedly cured from being possessed).

Ludwig Feuerbach: Critique of “Anti-Hegel’s” for introduction in the study of philosophy (1835)

Reading the works of early Feuerbach incites a cozy feeling in a Hegel-connoisseur: it’s that instant recognition that you are talking with a person who really knows and understands his Hegel – a very rare experience when reading books on Hegel. The occasion of Feuerbach’s article I am now reading is the book Anti-Hegel by Carl Friedrich Bachmann, a former student and a later critic of Hegel’s. Feuerbach is not intrinsically against the idea of criticising Hegel – or indeed any philosophy – as long as the criticism is intrinsic to the kernel of that philosophy, just like, Feuerbach thinks, Plato was able to criticise Parmenides and Spinoza Descartes. What such intrinsic criticism achieves, according to Feuerbach, is to reveal the limitations of the criticised philosophy.

Bachmann’s criticism, Feuerbach insists, is not intrinsic in this sense, but based on mere misunderstandings. Such a negative criticism does not turn against the limitations, but the very philosophical core, replacing it with one’s own ideas. Thus, Feuerbach gives an example, Bachmann confuses the Hegelian notion of identity as unity between two seemingly different things with mere sameness involving no difference, so that when Hegel is e.g. speaking of the identity of logic and metaphysics, meaning that our knowledge is intrinsically connected with the world around it, Bachmann sees nothing but mere confusion of two separate disciplines.

The main target of Bachmann’s criticism, according to Feuerbach, is Hegel’s notion of idea, which Bachmann regards as meaning nothing but a universal concept or genus, although Hegel’s own examples of idea are topics like life, knowledge and will – organic and mental processes. Armed with his own reading, Bachmann goes on to insist that Hegel is inconsistent in saying that nature in its idea is divine, but still does not correspond to its concept. What Hegel means, Feuerbach explains, is simply that nature is a mere determined modification of this divine idea – an organic outgrowth, one might say – and as such a modification not the most perfect form in which this divine idea appears.

More generally, Feuerbach explains, every determined idea – say, that of family – comes with its own criteria for the perfection of its exemplifications, making it hence understandable how there can be e.g. bad families, which still are in a sense families. Adding another example, Feuerbach notes that we do not deny that the essence of humanity lies in reason, just because there happen to exist stupid people. Thus, unlike Bachmann insists, we need not first empirically study what all concrete families are like, in order to describe the idea of a family, but instead, the idea of family is something we use to evaluate individual families – of course, this idea is also embodied in concrete examples, but not in bad, but in good families. Despite the idea being embodied, Feuerbach adds, this sensuous embodiment is not really of interest in comparison with the idea: for instance, when looking at a true work of art, the most important thing in it is the idea of art shining through in this painting, statue or whatever.

In addition to the notion of idea, Bachmann criticises Hegel’s notion that the history of philosophy would form a development, where the latest specimen contained all its predecessors: instead, Bachmann insists, history of philosophy has been just a random appearance of opinions contradicting one another. Feuerbach notes that Bachmann has simply misunderstood the manner in which the earlier philosophies are contained in the later ones, because integration into a more intricate system requires modification of the details of the original. Taking as an example Kant, whom Bachmann considered as evidence for his own position, since Kant famously rejected all previous metaphysics, Feuerbach argues that you can instead find traces of several predecessors in Kant’s philosophy, including skepticism of David Hume and apriorism of Leibniz. Indeed, Feuerbach sees Bachmann’s misunderstanding as a further proof that the latter cannot remove himself from the realm of mere sensuousness, where e.g. water of Thales clearly differs from air of Anaximenes.

Bachmann uses the familiar phenomena of sleeping, diseases affecting our capacity to think etc. as a proof that what Hegel called spirit is actually of material nature. Feuerbach notes that Bachmann’s examples reveal more the difference between individual human beings, who do have their material side, and the spirit as the universally on-going process of thinking, which individual human beings struggle to come in contact with. True, human beings sleep without being conscious or thinking, Feuerbach admits, but never do they all sleep at the same time. Furthermore, he adds, what awakens consciousness in us is the stimulus provided by our fellow human beings, connecting us to the on-going flow of spirit or humanity. In the best cases, we as individuals are guided by this spirit or one of its ideas, such as the idea of art and beauty are guiding true artists.

Connected to this idea of humans being guided by ideas is Hegel’s (according to Feuerbach) metaphoric statement that his own Logic as the construction of such ideas or categories describes the thinking of God before creation of the concrete world. Bachmann makes fun of this notion by identifying God with various categories of Hegelian Logic. Feuerbach insists that Bachmann is simply confused: Hegel noted that only some categories could be predicated of God and he never drew the ridiculous conclusion that the physical copy of his Logic is the very God. Instead, Feuerbach notes, Hegel’s Logic is a mere reconstruction of divine self-consciousness for  the sake of individual human beings.

Louis Eugène Marie Bautain: Philosophy of Christianity – Second volume

Bautain begins the second volume of his book by continuing with his account of the history of philosophy. He had ended the first volume with the mention of Aristotle, and next he jumps over most of the Hellenistic period to Neoplatonism, which he takes to be nothing but an eclectic conglomeration of Jewish traditions, Greek philosophical doctrines and oriental superstitions and suggests it to be a providential example of what errors human reason is capable by itself. Bautain contrasts Neoplatonism with New Testament and the Church Fathers, who, he claims, founded the true science by investigating especially the trinitarian nature of the divinity.

Bautain’s view of medieval philosophy is highly critical. He understands the aim of the scholastics, who were keen to defend philosophy against heresies invented by human reason. Yet, Bautain thinks that the weapons they used, that is, the syllogistic and the whole Aristotelian philosophy, were incompatible with the living nature of Christian faith. He does admit that philosophers like Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas found great truths by their faith, but regrets that they had to mutilate their ideas by presenting these in the rigid scholastic form.

The most regrettable result of scholastic philosophy, according to Bautain, was that human reason once again thought itself capable of knowing the truth by itself, without the help of faith. This led, Bautain thinks, straight to the idea of Cartesian doubt, which ultimately remained vague in its very principles, since it never could explain what even this thinking thing was in its nature. A similar cry for beginning from tabula rasa regarding the external nature, Bautain suggests, was heralded by the Baconian philosophy, which, in addition to Cartesianism, Bautain sees as a principle of all modern philosophy. The effect of Descartes and Bacon, Bautain insists, was making philosophy again a pagan affair, which he considers to be especially embodied in the contemporary German philosophy or Schellingian pantheism, which he sees as a resurrection of Neoplatonism.

Bautain moves to consider specifically the current French schools of philosophy. He starts with the Enlightenment philosophers, all of whom he deems as mere materialists and as responsible for the anarchy of the French revolution. Bautain especially emphasises the role of Condillac as the instigator of the later ideological school of Destutt de Tracy, which in Bautain’s eyes made humans into mere thinking machines and especially led to a complete indifference to religion.

After the restoration of French monarchy, Bautain continues, the ideological school was replaced by the followers of the Scottish common sense school. He finds the whole premise of this school suspect, since it tries to determine the nature of human mind through self-consciousness, although even Kant had shown this to be a flawed attempt. Furthermore, Bautain continues, the common sense school is interested merely in the worldly side of human experience, ignoring the question of his future fate. Thus, he concludes, common sense philosophers are at best just deists, who do not know the living God.

The final contemporary French school Bautain mentions is that of eclecticism, founded by Victor Cousin. Bautain is reluctant to criticise Cousin, having been his student and still considering him a friend. Still, Bautain cannot really endorse Cousin’s eclecticism. Much of it, he says, is essentially just a repetition of the common sense philosophy, with all the same faults, and what Cousin adds to it is just a view that all historical schools of thought have had some grain of truth in them, which Bautain finds repugnant, as it lowers Christianity on the same level as all the non-Christian philosophies. Bautain is especially distrustful of Cousin’s affinity with the contemporary German philosophy, which pantheistically reduces spirit and matter, God and human, and indeed everything into a featureless absolute.

Bautain turns his critical eye next to contemporary theologians. Apparently his views had aroused some controversy, since he attaches to the letters published in the book an explanation that when criticising scholasticism, he does not criticise Catholicism. In fact, he says, scholasticism is just a method, that is, application of Aristotelian logic and philosophy to Christianity. There’s nothing particularly Christian in Aristotle, Bautain argues, and indeed, his logic is good mostly for disputation. In fact, he emphasises, Church Fathers did not use Aristotle in their works, but tried to positively make sense of the things they had faith in. Bautain admits also that the scholastic method still has its uses, for instance, in making our reason more precise, but the point is that reason by itself cannot reach the essential truths.

In the original correspondence, Bautain does not even pay this lip service to scholasticism, but begins an all out attack against the contemporary scholastics, who tried to base things of faith on reason. Theology, he insists, hasn’t really progressed in the last few centuries, and theologians seem completely unaware of the developments in other sciences. Although Bautain speaks of scholasticism, the theology he investigates is actually based on Cartesianism, even if the methods used are otherwise Aristotelian. 

The current theologians, Bautain starts, begin with a Cartesian doubt, imagining that reason could set up metaphysics without any recourse to faith. Indeed, he adds, they restrict the whole nature of human soul to this one faculty of reason or thinking, ignoring the wealth of richness hidden within the human mind. No wonder they then proceed directly to logic, by which they understand mere study of reasoning and especially syllogisms, without any comprehension of the limits of reasoning shown by Kant, Bautain underlines and emphasises that syllogisms by themselves can merely show that some statements are consistent with one another, but cannot provide their own premisses.

Armed with the methods of logic, Bautain states, the modern theologians continue to apply them to abstract ontological notions like being as such that don’t have any proper content in themselves: we do not feel what this being is like, unlike when the very source of being or God touches us. When they then divide being into material and spiritual beings, he insists, they seem to imply that the two share the same nature, forming one monistic whole with two poles, and when they then further divide the spiritual being into finite and infinite spiritual beings, they seem to add that this whole is even pantheistic, whole of existence forming a mere gradual continuum from matter to God.

Theologians try to prove, in a manner reminiscent of Descartes, the existence of God from their notion of being, but relying on both Kant and Paul, Bautain thinks their attempt is doomed to fail. All demonstrations happen through equation, deduction or induction, he suggests, but none of these work with the topic of God: equation is ruled out, because there is nothing equal to God, if one tried to deduce the existence of God from the existence of being in general, this would essentially make God pantheistically into a mere aspect of the whole existence, and induction fails, because we cannot understand infinity from our merely finite experiences. In fact, Bautain insists, the only way to reach a true faith in God is to accept the divine Logos speaking to our very minds, and if someone refuses to do that, no manner of argument can really persuade them.

Equally fruitless in Bautain’s eyes are the rest of the branches of modern scholasticism. He especially focuses on the study of human nature, which he deems equally entangled with dead abstractions and ignoring the true living unity of individual humans. Thus, Bautain reproaches, these neo-scholastics do not consider such important questions as what the future fate of humanity is like, being satisfied with such dry notions as the simplicity of spiritual substance. This dryness is especially felt, he thinks, in morality, which instead of concrete situations requiring moral consideration investigate mere abstract notions pertaining to morality.

Bautain does not suggest a complete abandonment of a philosophical study of Christianity, but more its reworking: less listing of historical heresies and their refutations, more edification of heart. Instead of ontology of being in general, he suggests founding theology on faith in the divine trinity. This should be supplemented, Bautain continues, with analytical psychology, investigating the facts of consciousness and their genesis in the history of an individual and the whole human species. Only after these fundamental disciplines should follow logic, the main task of which would be to determine the limits of the use of reason, on the basis of its place among all faculties, and to recognise, not truth as such, but only truth in certain contexts and especially faults in reasoning. The final apex of this study would be morality, based on the dual nature of humanity and its relation to the divine.

Bautain introduced a further supplement to the correspondence, concerning what he considers an increasing threat of pantheism, inspired by the German idealism of Fichte, Schelling and now also Hegel. Bautain considers it especially dangerous that French Catholic priests do not have the means to deal with this new enemy, since they are still engaged in age-old heresies not relevant in the current situation. Pantheism in itself, he suggests, is a perennial enemy of Christianity, and indeed, all other philosophies eventually become just pantheism, whether we are dealing with Gnosticism, Platonism or Cartesianism. The current pantheism, Bautain suggests, is a reaction to sensualist philosophy, reverting from the everyday common sense to vaguely idealistic speculations.

The main thrust of this new form of pantheism, Bautain suggests, is to again synthesise all the developments of science into a unity incorporating God as well as nature and humans. All its proponents, he continues, divide it into two parts, first of which provides an insight into this unity in its purity, independently of all appearances, while the second part applies the first into the realms of nature and humanity. Thus, Bautain concludes, the new pantheists see individual disciplines as mere reflections of the whole of science, describing the unity incorporating everything.

What makes this form of pantheism especially dangerous, Bautain thinks, is that for the first time it is a pantheistic doctrine that has found footstep in the society at large. It sees all religions as mere development of our understanding of the all-encompassing unity, he explains, hence degrading the status of Christianity to a mere temporary quirk that will be replaced by a more refined religion. Because of its popularity, this attempted replacement has its effects in the practical affairs, Bautain argues and suggests that young people are already dismissing the notion of Christian charity and speaking instead of philanthropy and harmony, which still are too sterile concepts to actually incite anyone to action. He sees the effects of pantheism also in sciences, where the place of the analysis has been taken by an almost poetic urge to synthesise, and in arts, the task of which is not anymore to imitate the beauty of nature, but to manifest the divine unity in complete independence of anything outside art.

In the realm of politics, Bautain states, principles like justice have been replaced by a fatalistic following of the supposed necessity of events, crushing individual happiness under the banner of common good. Then again, he adds, a pantheistic individual has no reason to consider the good of others, since anything they do will always be a manifestation of the divine, no matter how immoral it may seem.

Bautain returns from this detour back to the original series of letters, where the three converts have a new worry. They wonder about the doctrine of the original sin, which appears to contradict the evident glory of humanity that holds the veritable crown among all the creatures of Earth and has a capacity for infinite perfectibility: how could all this be reconciled with the supposed depravity of human nature? And supposing this depravity of original sin is true, how can it have affected the whole humanity, when it is essentially the fault of one human being?

Bautain insists that despite all their marvelous achievements, humans still are in a state of deprivation: just look at the fact that none of those achievements appears to satisfy us, but we always yearn for more. Furthermore, when we speak of the glory of humans, we refer to humans at the height of their development, but forget that their first state is one of weakness, where the power of reason is still dormant. And when a child grows, they do not automatically become purely good and virtuous, but more of a melange of brightest generosity and deepest egoism. A human is an animal with mere animal desires, one might say as an excuse, but why are they then given a reason that is not satisfied with its animal condition?

For Bautain, God's condemnation of the original sin is just a proof of divine justice. God has set up a law, Bautain explains, in order to make humans happy and thus wants them to follow it, but if they don't, God must act as a judge. How come then has the original sin transferred from one person to the rest of humanity? Bautain suggests that the first sinner being the progenitor of all human race has causally affected the whole humanity, which forms a genetic unity due to its common ancestors.

The Jews admit all that Bautain has taught them, but raise another problem: where has all the evil, such as sin and death, come from? Is it ascribable to God, as Paul seems to imply, when he says that everything is from, by and in God? Does this mean that evil is eternal and what this implies for the accountability of humans? What is the law that humans are supposed to follow and how come the first human could have known it, when even philosophers don't agree on this matter?

Bautain's answer begins with another warning against pantheism: although it may sound so, Paul's statement does not equate everything with God. Instead, Bautain explains, what Paul meant was that all that is, in a primary sense of the word, comes from God. This still leaves the possibility of something not deriving from God, namely, evil, as long as it is not being in the proper sense of the word.

God did not necessarily develop or emanate into the world, Bautain underlines, but freely created it, that is, willed into existence, what they had thought in their wisdom (from God), through their Logos or Word (by God), in an act incomprehensible to mere humans. What God created, he continues, was two substances – heaven and earth – or spiritual and corporeal nature, both sustained by divine life (in God), without which both would return to non-existence. With this life, on the other hand, both are immortal, Bautain assures us, so that not just our soul, but also our body can live forever. In summary, the world in its possibility depends on divine wisdom, but in its reality on divine will.

The world created by God, Bautain insists, cannot be nothing but good. Where do evil, sin and death then come? In an Augustinian manner, Bautain suggests they are mere negations: evil is just the lack of good in our actions or an abuse of our freedom, sin is the effect of this evil, as a breaking of law, and death is just the necessary consequence of sin as a removal of life. This explanation does not fully satisfy his correspondents, who ask Bautain how come even the possibility of choosing wrongly exists, before the appearance of sin, and indeed, what this mysterious freedom or liberty actually is: it is supposed to be the highest glory of human beings, yet, it enables their lowest deprivation. Furthermore, they add, couldn’t God wisely have foreseen that humans will abuse their freedom and why were humans created so weak as to err?

Bautain reaffirms that evil is nothing in itself and especially not derived from God, but a consequence of a free choice by an intelligent creature. This possibility of free choice, he continues, is something inherent in all creatures, even if they are merely physical, since they can react spontaneously and in an individual manner to their environment. With moral creatures or humans, Bautain suggests, this freedom occurs as a possibility to live either a mere natural or a spiritual life, in answer to speech awakening us to this possibility. Finally, he concludes, with metaphysical creatures or pure intelligences, freedom means capacity to receive or refuse divine light.

Whatever the form of freedom in creatures, Bautain analyses, it presupposes objective life giving an impulse to the free subject, capacity of the subject to receive and retain life, and the capacity to react positively or negatively to life. This is completely different from divine freedom, he explains, since God has life in themselves, while the freedom of other beings is spontaneous only on the condition of reacting to something else: creation merely sets out this capacity to react, which then must still be activated by the vivifying power of things around us. In the case of humans, Bautain states, this vivifying power comes from both the physical things sustaining our bodies and the speech sustaining our spirits.

Due to their dependence, Bautain insists, human beings should turn themselves toward the source of their life, in other words, God. Indeed, he underlines, this harmony of the divine and human or love toward God is the very law that humans should follow – you are dependent on the life given by God, thus, you should acknowledge it. Breaking this law, Bautain explains, means simply that the human being pretends to be autonomous and independent of God, breaking the connection to that very source, without which they cannot even exist.

The three Jews are still perplexed, why God provided humans even with the possibility of turning away from God, since this seems a peculiarly cruel trick. Bautain assures them that the only motive God does anything is love, because as completely free God is in need of nothing. The temptation for humans to do evil must then originate from somewhere else, namely, Bautain states, in purely metaphysical, non-corporeal entities (biblical angles), vivified directly by the divine idea and with the capacity to decide their very mode of existence by choice: this differs, he explains, from humans, who are determined by their belonging to their common genus, linked together by their line of ancestry.

All creatures, Bautain affirms, exist indefinitely after their creation, because they are sustained by the unending divine love, and this is true also of angels. Now, he continues, the first act of angels is to instinctively and spontaneously react to the vivifying power of God: they feel the action of life, they are conscious of this feeling and freely act on the basis of this consciousness. Their action may be one of accepting this divine gift, but it can also be the opposite one of rejection. Why would an angel do that? Bautain’s explanation is its very power: an angel feeling itself self-sufficient might well choose to let go of the divine life. While the choice of self-abnegation and surrender to the divine life would make an angel bright and good, he continues, the opposite act would not destroy it – the divine love still sustains its existence that much – but would make it a creature of shadow and chaos, aiming to lure all the other creatures to the same condition of disharmony.

What comes from God, Bautain summarises, are the power of free choice of all creatures and the occasion to use it for harmony with the source of all life, but God does not determine, in which way the creatures will act: that would mean that the choice would not be free. The egoistic choice of the fallen angels, Bautain concludes, is therefore not the responsibility of God, because God has not wanted this choice, but merely out of pure love gave them the opportunity to forge the fate they wanted. God has known the possibility of a bad choice, Bautain admits, but insists that as pure goodness they could not have known in advance that the choice would be bad. God would immediately take the fallen angels back to the harmonious state, if they so wanted, Bautain underlines, but after their first choice, they continue making the same bad choice again and again.

Bautain attaches to this metaphysical tale a familiar sort of reading of the first few chapters of Genesis. After creating the spiritual and the physical world, he begins, God created humankind as mediating the two realms, with supernatural spirits incorporated in terrestrial bodies and thus different from purely spiritual angels. Because of their semi-terrestrial nature, humans were not directly connected to the divine, Bautain explains, but could only hear the divine speech or Logos and believe this to be divine. In addition, he points out, humans were connected to the physical world that threatened to lure them away from the link to the divine. The fallen angels, Bautain notes, encouraged the humans to succumb to this temptation.

Due to the unity of humankind, this original sin of the first human beings, Bautain insists, became a disposition for personal sin in each individual human being. The sin, he explains, consists of a contradiction of two elements: objective will of God manifested to a creature and subjective will of this creature to act against the first. The contradiction, Bautain adds, is proportional to the intelligence of the creature, so that the sin of an angel is greater than the sin of a human being. Still, he states, the result of both of them is the same, namely, the disruption of the rapport between God and the creature, when the creatures turn themselves away from the divine. Yet, Bautain notes, the consequences of the result still differ: the angel has turned away from God with all their will, because of the simplicity of their nature, while for the human being as a combination of animal and spiritual substances, this turning means a disruption of the hierarchy of the two substances, the body being not anymore in full control of the soul.

The human soul is still immortal, Bautain notes, but it is deprived of its full satisfaction, available only from interaction with the divine, and thus feels an ever rekindling desire that gnaws its mind. The soul is also free and susceptible to the power of God, if it just heard the divine speech, but due to the break, it hears only the whispers of the fallen angels and becomes more and more ruled by the animal nature of the body. Finally, Bautain concludes, without properly controlling the body, the soul experiences the natural transformation of this body as its destruction or death.

Couldn’t God just restore the lost connection to humans and other fallen creatures? Yes, Bautain admits, but adds at once that this would go against respecting their liberty: if people want to stay away from the divine, God does not force themselves on them. Humans by themselves do not even recognise that they have distanced themselves from God through their sin, thus, Bautain argues, they must at first have to be told by their conscience that they are living in a sinful state. This consciousness of sin is not enough for restituting the lost harmony, he continues, but a punishment is required to balance the scales of justice. The problem is, Bautain explains, that no human is anymore innocent, so that the only possible solution has been the Christian one: sacrificing an incarnation of the very speech of God.

Why did God wait for so long before committing this salvational act? Because it was necessary to let humans themselves develop into a state where they freely desired redemption, Bautain explains: the evil of the fall had to be diminished to a degree where it was again possible for the souls of humans to search for God and for the bodies become pure enough to serve as a vessel for the divine.

Returning again to his account of the history of philosophy, Bautain states that from the very beginning, humans have had two foundational ideas on which to base knowledge: that of God and that of themselves in their separation from the divine. These ideas and the consequent true monotheism, Bautain adds, were retained in their pure form by the Jews, while with the rest of the world, monotheism degraded into pantheism, and even more, into animalistic polytheism. It is only at the point when the contradiction between the two was grown into its highest prominence, Bautain concludes, that the time for the liberator or redeemer had come.

This liberator, Bautain underlines again, had to be a real human being and not a mere fictional symbol, like Homeric heroes. Furthermore, he adds, he was not just a wise person, like Confucius, Zarathustra or Socrates, but a divine person. Bautain admits that he cannot really explain how the two sides of the saviour are connected, but then again, he retorts, we cannot even explain how natural generation of humans and animals happens and we are not rejecting their actuality. Besides, he notes, humans are similarly a synthesis of two different kinds of substances, which is something equally incomprehensible to us, although we can say that the divine life has something to do with this union, and just like by the word “I” we refer both to our body and to our spirit, so should the liberator act in some ways as human and in other ways as God.

Bautain advertises the Catholic Church as the place where the work of the redeemer continues: the redeemer has established a change in the spiritual nature of human beings, but this change must be affected through sensuous means or sacraments, such as the devouring of the body of redeemer taking the form of bread. This does not mean, he explains, that all the members of the Church or even all its priests are holy, because the affairs of the world might still tempt them. Still, Bautain assures the three friends, as members of the Church and as its priests, they do complete their task of transmitting the redemption to future generations. Thus, Bautain concludes his correspondence by asking the three friends to leave the ways of the world and set their faith in the Church – not just as members in name only, but as true, believing Christians.

Louis Eugène Marie Bautain: Philosophy of Christianity (1835)

(1796–1867)

Bautain is again not one of those names you are likely to hear in a course on 19th century philosophy: Catholic conservatives do not fit well in the tale of progression toward modernity. His Philosophie du Christianisme adds an interesting layer to a typical dialogue between philosophy and Christianity, as it represents also a dialogue between Catholicism and Judaism. The historical context of the book is a surge of Jewish converts in France, a number of which act as characters in the book, structured as a series of letters between these converts and Bautain. In fact, these characters apparently were real historical personages, who begin the book by telling the story of their conversion.

The context raises the inevitable question of the reasons for the conversion. Certainly the conversion must have been a step toward better inclusion in the French society, and indeed, one of the converts makes the remark that Christianity was already familiar to him from his social circles. Yet, since all three of the converts eventually became priests, they in great probability must have felt a genuine change in their hearts. Indeed, the separation from the Jewish community seems to have been one of great personal anguish to some of the converts, leading even to being ostracised by their former friends and relatives.

Despite these strong personal experiences presented in the book, as a reader I shall try to be impartial and not make any judgement about the respective status of the two religions. Still, since I am expounding the dialogue from the viewpoint of Bautain, it is inevitable that the argument of the Catholic side will have a more prominent role in the discussion.

The book begins from a time when the three future converts are still Jewish youth, but already skeptical about their religion, at least in its current state, which they interpret as putting more emphasis on ritualistic traditions than on true moral improvement. They have also been affected by the deistic arguments, but still feel that deism leaves certain of their needs unsatisfied. Furthermore, they are curious about Christianity, but do not understand the reasoning behind some of its mysteries, like the doctrine of the trinitarian nature of God.

Bautain, on his part, commends the three Jews for their spiritual search – indeed, he suggests that this is something brought about by the very hand of God. He at once warns them not to trust deism, because, he thinks, deism misreads God as being a mere force of nature, with no true personality. Indeed, Bautain is certain that Judaism is a much truer belief system than deism, seeing God as a living entity. Bautain is still convinced that Judaism is not the final truth, having been a mere stepping stone toward the true religion or Christianity. Still, it has been a necessary stepping stone, and Christianity without Judaism, he compares, would be like a statue without a pedestal.

What makes Christianity the ultimate truth, Bautain argues, is the simple fact that it is based on divine revelation given to humanity through words of Moses, prophets, Jesus and apostles and retained and fulfilled by the community of the Catholic church: what more justification would it need? Of course, if one sees in the Church nothing more than a human institution, he admits, this justification falls flat. Yet, Bautain is eager to point to moral development of humankind after the founding of the Church as an indirect proof of the truth of Christianity.

Bautain’s correspondents find flaws in this argument. They find it unsettling that they should just believe that the Church knows the right way to interpret the holy writings, suffocating the freedom of their own thought. Furthermore, they point out, the Church seems far from a consistently good organisation, as many of its members and even priests have been corrupt. Finally, it even seems doubtful to them whether one can speak of a unified Church, when it has national factions, often contradicting one another in various issues.

Bautain is ready to defend the Church. He emphasises the essential freedom of human nature and insists that Christianity does not contradict it. Instead, Bautain states, Christianity is something that is freely chosen by humans, and it is not forced upon them, but at most argued for. He admits that this ideal might not have been always fulfilled, but he thinks this is just indicative of the fact that the heavenly ideal of the Church does not always correspond to the human realisation of this ideal. Thus, Bautain admits, there have been immoral Christians and even priests, and they are to be morally condemned even more forcefully than others, since we should expect more of them. Even so, he thinks, something of that heavenly ideal affects even its worldly image: the core doctrine of Christianity has remained intact through the ages, being ready to be taught to any curious soul.

The Jews become even more perplexed, when they hear what other supposed Christians have to say about their religion: they paint the Old Testament at best as an assortment of legends and metaphors, and they regard Jesus as a philosopher or a magician, but certainly not as a son of God. Bautain notes that all such talk is the fruit of putting reason above faith, although reason is just a capacity for drawing consequences from given principles – but incapable of finding principles for itself. Thus, he insists, while reason can help us in mundane affairs, where it can base its deductions on experience, in questions of supernatural matter, by itself it will just end up with situations like Kantian antinomies, where different opinions seems equally probable and the best is can do is to sceptically believe none of them.

Faith, on the contrary, Bautain explains, is not really a doctrine and nothing to do with truth in the common sense of the word, but an act of becoming connected with the divine – trying to argue about it with the tools of reason is beside the point, and for this reason it is often the less educated who understand the faith better. Then again, he adds, this connection with divine – truth in the higher sense of the word – makes a higher sort of knowledge possible, by giving reason a proper basis in metaphysics.

Bautain begins his introduction to this metaphysics from the question of divinity: is Christian God a unity? At first, Bautain’s answer is affirmative – if asked, a Christian would affirm that God is one and would definitely not place their trust in any other divinity. Yet, from a deeper perspective, the question is not so simple, Bautain suggests. God, he says, is something we simply cannot know at all, thus, we cannot really understand the divine unity. This is, Bautain underlines, true of all things in general, since we, for instance, see the images of physical things, but never really understand their essence or what makes them tick. Humans cannot even know themselves, he insists, as we experience ourselves as in a mirror, through the reflection of a light outside us – no wonder we cannot know the divine light, except throught the revelation of the light itself.

Bautain contrasts the authority of revelation with the supposed faculty of common sense that some of his contemporaries suggested as a criterion of truth. Yet, Bautain notes, common sense is characterised not by being a certain criterion of truth but only by being common to all human beings. What lies behind this common sense, he suggests, is the speech of other human beings, awakening us to our capacity of reason. Yet, he at once adds, the first human being had to be awakened by a speech beyond human being, that is, by the divine word or light.

There are then three forms of light, Bautain suggests: the physical light revealing the natural objects, the rational light of speech revealing the human language and thinking, and the metaphysical light revealing religious truths. Concentrating on this third form, inherent in the teachings of the Christian Church, he insists that this is our only possible guarantee for the existence of God. If we instead try to make rational arguments about the existence of God, Bautain suggests, we essentially swap God with an idol: not with a natural being, like a stone, as in what is commonly understood by idolatry, but with a figment of our imagination, that is, with our personal representation of what it means to be God.

The Jews admit that the divine unity is ineffable, but return to the question they had suggested at the beginning of their correspondence – how can we then say that God is trinity and even make any sense of this statement? Instead of answering, Bautain returns to the theory of threefold light he had just discussed. He connects this discussion to a theory of three faculties of human cognition: imagination, dealing with images of physical objects, understanding, dealing with concepts or notions of relations between images, and intelligence, dealing with ideas of metaphysical prototypes. All these faculties require for their activities – formation of images, distinction of notions and generation of ideas – three conditions: the regard of subject toward its object, object distinct from and still in correspondence with the subject, and the light harmonising the subject and the object.

Now, when using these three faculties, the human mind appears passive, Bautain notes: physical light strikes our eyes and connects us to our external environment, or speech strikes our understanding and intelligence, making us form some concepts. Yet, he at once adds, these are mere materials of our thinking, while thinking still does something to them, combining them into various systems of knowledge. Of course, all these systems depend also on the materials that cannot be created by the mind. Still, Bautain underlines, these materials need not be only those seen by the physical eye, but they can be something seen by the intellectual eye, such as ideas of beauty and goodness.

Where do such pure ideas arise? They are ingrained in our very soul, Bautain suggests, and are just awakened by suitable experiences: for instance, we have an idea of a mathematical point or of a force, principles respectively of geometry and physics, which we then just become conscious of, once certain experiences awaken these ideas. Bautain connects this Platonic idea of ingrained ideas with the Augustinian notion that the ideas are awakened by the divine light of truth. In a rather predictable manner, he then identifies this pure light with the Logos of John’s Gospel, which should have then embodied itself in the body of the human being called Jesus.

Although Bautain’s correspondents are not yet enamoured by the biblical overtones of his theory, they do acknowledge that it is far more convincing than Condillac’s idea of a completely passive human soul that develops thinking through mere sensations. They find even Locke more unconvincing than Bautain, since although this philosopher did admit the power of reflection as another source of knowledge beyond sensation, he did not convincingly explain where such pure ideas like that of being came from.

Bautain’s next line of thought is again Augustinian: all the pure ideas we have exhibit a trinitarian structure, for instance, the geometric idea of a circle has the centre as the origin of the circle (being, in the sense of the kernel from which all the else is derived), the circumference as it form (existence, in the sense of what is derived from being) and the radius as the means for determining the circumference from the centre (life, in the sense of a process mediating between being and existence). Bautain goes through various examples, such as a proposition, where subject is connected to its predicate through copula, but the main point is just to argue that analogically the divinity must also have this same trinitarian nature, where the being of God is connected to the divine existence in its speech or Logos (“I am”) through the living activity of spirit.

Bautain states that the idea of trinity lies behind all true metaphysics. In order to justify this statement, he begins by dividing all objects of science into three groups: eternal and all creating God, created, but free and intelligent humans, and unfree and unintelligent physical world. Humans, Bautain contends, are acquainted with all these three objects: God through the idea of being, themselves through their self-conscience and the physical world through the abstract notion of space.

All three objects, Bautain thinks, are in a sense investigated in the same manner, through a loving embrace of the object by the subject, but through different means: God by admission of divine light or word, ourselves and our moral state through self-consciousness, and physical things through physical light and organic vision. Yet, Bautain insists, all three presuppose the activity inherent in the notion of trinity: physical space is constituted by the movement of a single point in a line, we ourselves are constituted by our soul becoming active intelligences and God is constituted by an eternal movement of the absolute source of being into its appearance as Logos.

Bautain compares this Christian philosophy with other philosophies, finding them all insufficient in comparison. Materialists are quickly dismissed as knowing nothing about the divine light or at least as interested in nothing else, but the animal side of life. Empirical scientists try in vain to find truth in the physical world around us, where it cannot be discovered. Deists do admit that the world around us must be based on a divinity beyond it, but this deistic divinity is a lifeless lawgiver, which cannot explain why the world is what it is and which also cannot base morality on nothing more than formal justice and self-preservation. And while Stoics admit the world to be ruled wisely, they cannot explain why this world appears to be a battlefield between life and death, except by endorsing Manichean dualism.

Moving on to more recent philosophers, Bautain considers Kant to be the epitome of protestant Christianity, attacking all the remnants of scholasticism in philosophy and ending up with speculative atheism that denies all knowledge of the divine. On the side of practical philosophy, according to Bautain, Kant emphasises the imperative of moral conscience as the only basis of human behaviour, but since every individual has their own conscience, the result is Fichtean practical atheism, where humans have absolute freedom to make their decisions by spontaneous choices.

To account for the existence of the world around them, Bautain thinks, the idealistic philosophy of nature turns on to internal vision (he does not mention any particular figure, but there are definite Schellingian vibes here). This vision suggests that everything is based on an absolute unity that as living source opens up to itself as an object or as a dualistic existence or universe that tries to return to the original unity: this is essentially pantheism, because all the universe is seen as a mere development of God. What is missing even from this latest philosophical invention, Bautain suggests, is the trinitarian mystery of divine being generating Logos that creates everything else and divine life flowing from both of them as a light revealing everything to humans.

At this point, the Jews feel that they are sufficiently convinced of the truth of the trinity. Yet, they feel that their conviction is still just philosophical and not the faith that a true Christian would have. Bautain assures them that they already have Catholic faith, but they have just been confused by their philosophical learning. To make the matter clearer, Bautain suggests investigating what it means to believe or have faith in something. Belief in the most general sense, he says, is just adhering to a truth, and in order to be able to believe in the existence of something real, this real thing must have acted upon us in some manner and we must have observed this action in some manner. This action could have been by natural things, leading to natural belief, by human speech, leading to moral belief, or by divine intervention, leading to supernatural faith.

In each of the three cases, Bautain thinks, the belief or faith is generated through three steps: firstly, we feel the action of the object on us, secondly, we attend to and reflect on this experience, and finally, we have reflected consciousness of the effect of the object on us. Taking the belief or faith as this whole process, he argues, we see that knowledge arises from belief or faith, not the other way around. Indeed, Bautain insists, the certainty of all our knowledge can ultimately be based only on belief and faith, which is based on the innermost interaction with the object of belief of faith. Of course, he admits, we often feel hesitant about the things we have beliefs of or faith in, but this is just due to our reason hesitating, because we have wandered away from the light that originally generated the belief or faith in us.

Just like there are three kinds of belief, Bautain argues, there are three kinds of certainty. Physical certainty, he begins, is based on sensation, through which we are convinced that fire burns etc., but it tells at most what things are for us, not what they are in themselves. Moral certainty, Bautain continues, is based on reason, acquired through interaction with other people, but it is far from infallible, because of the possibility of human error. This leaves as the profoundest kind the metaphysical certainty, Bautain says, based on the most intimate interaction with the divine.

The converts-to-become are also perplexed how people who have not even heard the biblical tales would be able to become part of this faith. Bautain suggests that God has still inscribed some essential truths, like moral law, to the minds of all human beings. Thus, he insists, all human beings have the possibility of feeling the connection to the divine through their own conscience. This means, firstly, that all humans know in their innermost self what is the right way to act and they need just to be reminded about it by external instruction about the moral law. Similarly, Bautain suggests, the metaphysical truths about the nature of the divine have already been inscribed in our mind and the revelation merely awakens us to recognise them, if we are just ready to hear what it has to say.

The three youth raise another question: if all the examples of philosophy presented thus far have veered off from the Catholic doctrine, are philosophy and religion, and especially theology, necessarily in contradiction with one another? Bautain denies this and insists that philosophy or science in general need not be antagonistic toward Christianity, and although they often seem endeavours fairly independent of one another, science can be used to confirm religion. True philosophy, he says, should not be just a description of natural phenomena, but a science of human condition and its relation to the divine, thus, it already presupposes faith in the existence of God, just like true theology should not ignore nature and humanity.

Science in general, Bautain explains, especially in its most exact form in mathematics, is based, firstly, on the analytically precise use of language, and secondly, on the necessity of the laws governing its objects: a line must have a beginning and an end, a figure must be enclosed by angles, number presupposes a unit etc. If the same exactness should be extended to philosophy as the study of human beings, he continues, we should remember that humans are not just physical, but also moral creatures. Thus, Bautain concludes, philosophy cannot be as precise as mathematics, if it has not revealed, in addition to Kantian forms of space and time, also an architectonic of its own spiritual nature. This means, firstly, knowing the genetic development of the various faculties of the human mind – how is e.g. memory related to imagination – but also knowing the source of the whole human mind or God.

Bautain notes that while a true philosopher or lover of wisdom is inevitably led to search for this wisdom beyond human beings, in the divine, a sophist instead searches for the wisdom within humanity, confusing it with mere universal reason. Thus, he suggests, sophists are lured by rationalistic pantheism, which is nothing but an aggrandised form of human self-love.

Bautain proceeds to recount the phases of true philosophy and sophism – an account which is from the perspective of current times sorely lacking in historical accuracy, especially when it comes the early eras of humankind, since at Bautain's time historical research hadn’t yet developed much further beyond using Bible as a source for everything. Thus, Bautain begins from Adam and his third son Seth, Noah and his first son Sem, Abraham and especially Moses as the founders of the true philosophy, inscribed in the Pentateuch and the other books of the Old Testament. The more mundane part of philosophy, he continues, began with the descendants of Noah’s second son, Ham, that is, the Egyptians, who also retained some knowledge of the more divine affairs.

The Egyptian tradition of philosophy, Bautain believes, was brought to Greece by Pythagoras, who was still also a religious figure, teaching rituals in addition to the more speculative philosophy. The work of Pythagoras was continued by Socrates, Bautain states, but on a more superficial level, since Socrates was not interested in the ritualistic side of Pythagoreanism, and indeed, was more of a destroyer of beliefs than an upholder of positive doctrines, questioning youth and encouraging them to speak their opinions, when Pythagoras had commanded them just to listen silently what was taught to them. Still, Bautain concedes, Socrates was ultimately aiming to make divine truths accessible to humankind, and this trend continued with Plato, who was enamoured by the spiritual teachings of Pythagoras, but unfortunately lacked the necessary practical component and succumbed eventually to pantheism. On the other hand, Bautain contrasts, Aristotle upheld the more rationalistic side of Socrates, taking Platonic ideas as mere abstractions of thought and reducing philosophy into a lifeless system of axioms and syllogisms, the content of which amounted to nothing but pantheism, with universal reason replacing the part of true divinity.

The discussion of the history of philosophy is stopped for now, with the first volume of Bautain’s work ending. We shall see where the second volume will take us in the next post.