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Albert Schweitzer's view of Jesus

Quotations and comments (remarks) removed from the Web page "Socrates - Care of the Soul".

... and the power of reason and mythology to change man's life.

Outline of this page ...

Care of the soul, the religious way

There are various ways or methods by which to care for the soul, some philosophical, others religious. First a religious example. "Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven." (Matthew 18.21-22) -- "But if this be so, who can be saved?" -- "For man it is impossible, but for God all things are possible." (ibid. 19.25-26)

Jesus calls God "the Father who loves his child", namely mankind. What does he mean by that? Albert Schweitzer says that it is a thought of God's [Isaiah 55.9] which man can no more understand than a goat can understand man's thoughts.

(Animals do not have eternal questions.)

Goats, man, and God. What can be done with this analogy? Jesus spoke in the context of religion, and religious ways of looking at things are sometimes incomprehensible, for faith believes even despite what man sees with his eyes ("the appearances"), and that God is the Father is taken on Jesus' authority. -- (If there were no concept 'mysteries of faith', there would be no category of thought titled 'religion'.)

From which it appears to follow that man, in the midst of his wrong-doing [sinfulness], must pray for God's grace to amend his life. Prayer is the Christian way or method, because even if it is revealed to man what the will of God is, he will not do it (Paul: "I am a mystery to myself: I do the very things I hate").

For Albert Schweitzer, love -- that is, reverence for truth and reverence for life and a particular picture of the kingdom of God -- was the way of looking at things that was serviceable to him. But that may not be the way for everyone: the same tree may to different individuals yield good fruit or no fruit or even be poisonous.

Jesus, an imperious ruler

[By its study of the life of Jesus, historical theology hoped to free him from centuries of ecclesiastical doctrine and bring him "as a Teacher and Savior" straight into our own time, but] it could not keep Him in our time, but had to let Him go.... He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His own. (p. 399) [Jesus] was not a teacher, not a casuist; He was an imperious ruler. [The historically conditioned titles which men have given him] have become for us [only] historical parables. We can find no designation which expresses what He is for us. (The Quest of the Historical Jesus, tr. Montgomery (1910), p. 403)

[Jesus] has no answer for the question, "Tell us Thy name in our speech and for our day!" (ibid. p. 312)

With the idea "reverence for life", as Jesus had done, Schweitzer does not make fine moral distinctions, but instead draws a general picture.

"Jesus remains what he was"

And now we are confronted by the fact that he shared the outlook of an age long past, which is to us mistaken and unacceptable.

Both Johannes Weiss and I have suffered severely through the compulsion which truth laid upon us to put forward something which was bound to offend Christian faith.

To me, however, Jesus remains what he was. Not for a single moment have I had to struggle for my conviction that in him is the supreme spiritual and religious authority, though his expectation of the speedy advent of a supernatural Kingdom of God was not fulfilled, and we cannot make it our own. ("The Conception of the Kingdom of God in the Transformation of Eschatology, an Epilogue by Albert Schweitzer" (tr. J.R. Coates) in E.N. Mozley's The Theology of Albert Schweitzer for Christian Inquirers (1950), p. 104)

"Once freed from history" (one possible view of this)

But -- in my view -- what Schweitzer calls here an "offense to Christian faith" is only offensive to dogma, to an ancient and Medieval world-picture and to the theology of Catholic and conservative Reformed Christianity, a world-picture which no longer belongs to us. It is not offensive to the good for man, for by returning Jesus to the historical age to which he belongs, Jesus is freed to emerge as a help toward the good for man (for Schweitzer, even as a companion in our work). Seen within his historical context, his life is mere history and dead to us, for we cannot share the apocalyptical (messianic) eschatology of the Jewish prophets, nor John the baptizer's announcement of the imminent coming of the kingdom of God.

But Jesus' description of the ethical kingdom of God, a kingdom founded not on nationalist power but on universal love -- (The kingdom of God does not belong to the members of a nation (race, tribe, clan) or religion, but instead to all those, and only to those, who do the will of God, which is to love God, who is everything good and true, with one's whole heart, and to love one's neighbor as one loves oneself, regardless of which nation or religion one's neighbor belongs to) -- for which Jesus lived and died, once freed from eschatology, can still be alive for men and women, as it was for Albert Schweitzer.

What a great grace it is to be able to seal with our own life our ideals. (Maximilian Kolbe, in A Man for Others (1982), xi, p. 116)

That is, I would say, of course what the Lord did on the Cross.

Nor can we share Epictetus' pantheism, no more than we can share Jesus' theism (in a rational way, of course, because Jesus' world-picture belongs to faith) -- Their pictures of a benevolent Father are both incomprehensible to us, given our full experience of this world. But nonetheless Epictetus' words and vision of a life of bearing and forbearance based on devotion only to the good can still be a light in the darkness for us.

Subject to natural reason alone

My own first thought, despite the fact that I am a Catholic even if not in senso stretto, was that it was Catholic Christianity that took the teaching of Jesus away from me by turning Jesus into the Incarnation of God and replacing his kingdom of God with a Heaven to which "souls" go at death; it was Schweitzer's reverence for reason and his historical-critical theology that gave Jesus back to me. But not, of course, as an object of faith -- for who is the Jesus of the historical-critical theology, a theology that has no place for the supernatural, and, further, as to the historical Jesus, if one pericope may be myth, then so may all the others, and "the historical Jesus" become nothing more than hypotheses?

But so it must be if all things are to be subject to natural reason alone, even the very historicity of Jesus must be questioned. But Schweitzer quotes Paul's "For we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth" and places those words in the context of the Reverence for Truth, which must be the foremost motto of all who search in philosophy or religion.

In the case of the Lord there is something akin to question and answer, as when he say, "Give ear and try to understand": Think about what I say to you and what is therefore the good for mankind. In Socrates' life there are examples, patterns to follow.

The Bible was made for man, not man for the Bible. And this is related to "Go and learn the meaning of, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repent" (Matthew 9.13).

Note.--I came, not you came. And this I think is the meaning to "go and learn" -- (because Jesus' words always require thinking to be understood) -- that as to us, our judgments must be guided by the words of Augustine: "Whatever is not done as an act of love is not done as it should be done." Those are not words of judgment, but of mercy.

In Christianity there is a contrast between the spirit of this world and the Spirit of the Lord. The Socratic philosophy's contrast between knowledge of the good (moral virtue) and ignorance of the good (moral vice) is not equivalent to this, because the difference between the kingdom of God and "this world and all it loves" is eminently clear to us, whereas what the good is for man, the exact limits of moral virtue and vice, is often only too unclear: not everything this world loves is evil; some may be innocent.

"As we have forgiven those who have wronged us"

It should be noted that the usual translation (the one ordinarily used when the Lord's Prayer is recited in worship) makes it sound milder than it really is. In the text of Matthew it runs not "as we forgive them that trespass against us" but "as we have forgiven" (Matthew 6.12). What is required [by God for the forgiveness of our sins] is [for us] to have forgiven [those who need our forgiveness], not just the sentiment of being willing to forgive. (The Kingdom of God and Primitive Christianity [1950-51] (1968), ed. Neuenschwander, tr. Garrard, p. 126)

"The silent saints"

If Christian is as Christian does, that is, if we use the word 'Christian' as an adjective, then there are many, many saints whose names we will never know, whose pictures we will never see in the newspaper, to whom regardless of their religion or nationality, the kingdom of God belongs, because as the Lord taught, the kingdom of God belongs to all those who do God's will to love what is good and true and to love one's neighbor as oneself in a neighborhood without boundaries.

"... God has His secret saints; and as we can never read what goes on in the hearts of those we meet, it is our duty to treat them as holier than ourselves, whose faults we know." (Marshall, A Thread of Scarlet (1959), or, Satan and Cardinal Campbell, xxv, 2)

Know thy own wrong-doing

Well, we imagine we know our own faults, but I doubt I know the half of it. "It seems that some men have nothing to offer God except their hatred of their fellow men" (I have forgotten who said this). Why would this be? -- I think because it is so difficult to see oneself, to as it were physically stand outside oneself to look at oneself. Here is a sound rule: for every criticism you make of someone else, make two of yourself. That may quench the hatred in you that takes the form of judging-against rather than forgiving others.

Because it is not as easy to find things to be critical of in oneself as it is to find them in others. Because in the words of Plutarch: "... and, possibly, if it were a thing obvious and easy for every man to know himself, the precept had not passed for an oracle". Plato has Socrates say in Phaedrus 230a "I study myself to know what manner of being I am". What manner of man am I? Is that a question I myself can answer? don't all men think the worst of themselves -- and yet not the worst enough? (The words 'spoiled brat' come to mind.) "It seems some men have nothing to offer their fellow man but their self-righteousness." Indeed, we are living in The Age of the Self-righteous Non-entity, tearing down, tearing down whatever is incomprehensible to himself.

Christianity and Stoicism

The sheltering of Republic 496a-d is Christian in its pessimism towards this world, but unchristian in its withdraw from an ethic of active love; so was the early Stoa. But Augustine said of later Stoicism that Marcus Aurelius was a model for Christians (Seaver, Albert Schweitzer: Christian Revolutionary (1944), p. 39-40), detached in his attitude towards this world, but his life dedicated to the public good. (Remember that is was the Roman Stoics who brought to fulfillment the Greek Sophists' notion of "common humanity"; indeed, these Stoics invented the word 'humanity' = 'all human beings, regardless of race or nationality', a word which had no equivalent in the Greek language. It is equivalent to Jesus' teaching that the kingdom of God belongs to all men who do God's will, regardless of their class or race (Luke 4.16-30, 10.25-37): "In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek" (Galatians 3.28). But these two lines of thought did not converge, because in the eyes of the Stoics the Christians were superstitious and in the eyes of the Christians the Stoics were pagans.)

As, not more than

Ethics is practical. Dostoyevsky: "even suffering requires enlightenment", if the sufferer is to benefit from it. Love is active, love is self-sacrifice, but not every self-sacrifice is wise: you must understand what you are doing and the consequences it will have for the condition of your own soul (In this context, the teaching must be remembered: Love thy neighbor as thyself, not more than thyself). For example, Wittgenstein failed as a schoolteacher to poor village children, and as his letters to Russell show, what he tried to do was harmful to him, making him a worse rather than a better human being, or he would not have written in the compassionless way that he did about the villagers.

The Mind of Job

The Lord called me into existence out of nothingness, and keeps me in existence. I came into this world with nothing, and I will leave this world with nothing. The Lord has given, and the Lord will take back (Job 1.21). If we are unable to say, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away" about every part of our strange existence, I think many things will be unbearable.

And while peace of mind can be a blessing (Philippians 4.7), where it is complacency towards wrong-doing it is a curse.

"... and we are both sinful men walking before the Lord, among the sins and dangers of this life. It is by our evil that God leads us into good; we sin ... and to any but the brutish man his sins are the beginning of wisdom. God has warned you by this crime ... and if there shall follow no repentance, no improvement, no return to Him ..." (R.L. Stevenson, The Merry Men (1882), Chapter 5)

"... are the beginning of wisdom" (Can we say: from one's sins one learns, or should learn, humility = self-knowledge?) -- Is that equivalent to saying that "Virtue is knowledge"? In this case it would be self-knowledge gained in "the school of life". But which part of "Know thyself" would this be -- to know thyself as man or to know thyself as an individual man, or both? But the only question for ethics is: does that view of man, that "There is evil in his very nature that causes man to sin, but yet by that very sin he learns to amend his life, i.e. to set his life on the path of what is good." Is that view serviceable -- i.e. can it help man to become an ethical human being?

Or is it rather only an example of descriptive ethics (here as much theological as scientific)? By reflecting on your wrong-doing (as in "your own actions have made you shudder with disgust"), you must see that you must repent of your wrong-doing, i.e. resolve to amend your life toward good-doing rather than evil-doing .... Yes, but does that tell one how, i.e. by what method, to bring about the end of "improvement, return to godliness"?

"... it was for the sake of sinners that I was handed over to death, that they might return to the truth and sin no more ..." (Mark, following 16.14, known to St. Jerome)

What do we mean by the word 'forgive'?

What must be done to 'forgive'? Must we invite the one who has wronged us to visit us at home? Must we be willing to hold discourse with him? When Pope John Paul II visited his would-have-been assassin in prison he said after the visit that he had forgiven that man. But he did not call for that man's immediate release from prison. Do I doubt the sincerity of the pope? No, I don't doubt that. But I am looking for some other criterion of 'forgiveness', something other than words or sentiments.

It's hard to know what forgiving someone who has cruelly wronged us would be. What must we do to forgive such a one, but yet we dare to ask God to forgive us for our own wrong-doing.

What do we expect from someone we have wronged -- what are we calling 'being forgiven'? If we ask for others' forgiveness, need their forgiveness take the form of a reciprocal act?

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