66. Data For the Pure Spirituality of the Messianic Plan of Jesus (Chapter 4. Jesus As The Messiah.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Strauss, David Friedrich)

NOWHERE in our Gospel narratives is there a trace of Jesus having sought to form a political party. On the contrary, he withdraws from the eagerness of the people to make him a king (John vi. 15.); he declares that the Messianic kingdom comes not with observation, but is to be sought for in the recesses of the soul (Luke xvii. 20 f.); it is his principle to unite obedience to God with obedience to temporal authority, even when heathen (Matt. xxii. 21.); on his solemn entry into the capital, he chooses to ride the animal of peace, and afterwards escapes from the multitude, instead of using their excitement for the purposes of his ambition; lastly, he maintains before his judge, that his kingdom is not from hence;"is not of this world"(John xvi. 36), and we have no reason in this instance to question either his or the evangelist's veracity.

Thus we have a series of indications to counterbalance those detailed in the preceding section. The adversaries of Christianity have held exclusively to the arguments for a political, or rather a revolutionary, project, on the part of Jesus, while the orthodox theologians adhere to those only which tell for the pure spirituality of his plan; and cadi partv has laboured to invalidate by hermencutical skill the passages unfavourable to its theory. It has of late been acknowledged that buih are equally partial, and that there is nerd of arbitration between them.

This has been attempted chiefly by supposing an earlier and a later form of the plan of Jesus. Although, it has been said, the moral improvement and religious elevation of his people were froin the first the primary object of Jesus, he nevertheless, in the beginning of his public life, cherished the hopc of reviving, by means of this internal regeneration, the external glories of the theocracy, when he should be acknowledged by his nation as the Messiah, and thereby be constituted the supreme authority in the state. But in the disappointment of this hopc, he recognized the Divine rejection of every political clement in his plan, and thenceforth refined it into pure spirituality. It is held to be a presumption in favour of such a change in the plan of Jesus, that there is a gladness diffused over his first appearance, which gives place to melancholy in the latter period of his ministry; that instead of the acceptable year of the Lord, announced in his initiative address at Nazareth, sorrow is the burden of his later discourses, and he explicitly says of Jerusalem, that he had attempted to save it, but that now its fall, both religious ^{P.311} and political, was inevitable. As, however, the evangelists do not keep the events and discourses proper to these distinct periods within their respective limits, but happen to give the two most important data for the imputation of a political design to Jesus (namely the promise of the twelve thrones and the public entrance into the capital,) near the close of his life; we must attribute to these writers a chronological confusion, as in the case of the relation which the views of Jesus bore to the Messianic idea in general: unless as an alternative it be conceivable, that Jesus uttered during the same period, the declarations which seem to indicate, and those which disclaim, a political design.

This, in our apprehension, is not inconceivable; for Jesus might, anticipate a Kingdom and thrones for himself and his disciples, not regarding the means of its attainment as a political revolution, but as a revolution to be effected by the immediate interposition of God.

That such was his view may be inferred from his placing that judiciary appearance of his disciples in the age to come; for this was not a political revolution, any more than a spiritual regeneration, it was a resurrection of the dead, which God was to effect through the agency of the Messiah, and which was to usher in the Messianic times. Jesus certainly expected to restore the throne of David, and with his disciples to govern a liberated people; in no degree, however, did he rest. his hopes on the sword of human adherents (Luke xxii. 38. Matt. xxvi. 52), but on the legions of angels, which his heavenly Father could send him (Matt. xxvi. 53).

Wherever he speaks of coming in his Messianic glory, he depicts himself surrounded by angels and heavenly powers (Matt. xvi. 27, xxiv. 30 f. xxv. 31; John i. 52.); before the majesty of the Son of Man, coming in the clouds of heaven, all nations are to bow without the coercion of the sword, and at the sound of the angel's trumpet, are to present themselves, with the awakened dead, before the judgment-seat of the Messiah and his twelve apostles. All this Jesus would not bring to pass of his own will, but he waited for a signal from his heavenly Father, who alone knew the appropriate time for this catastrophe (Mark xiii. 32), and he apparently was not disconcerted when his end approached without his having received the expected intimation. They who shrink from this view, merely because they conceive that it makes Jesus an enthusiast, will do well to reflect how closely such hopes corresponded with the long cherished Messianic idea of the Jews, and how easily, in that day of supernaturalism, and in a nation segregated by the peculiarities of its faith, an idea, in itself extravagant, if only it were consistent, and had, in some of its aspects, truth and dignity, might allure even a reasonable man beneath its influence.

With respect to that which awaits the righteous after judgment, everlasting life in the kingdom of the Father, it is true ^{P.312} that Jesus, in accordance with Jewish notions, compares it to a feast (Matt. viii. 11; xxii.2ff.), at which he hopes himself to taste the fruit of the vine (Matt. xxvi. 29), and to celebrate the Passover (Luke xxii. 16); but his declaration that in the age to come the organic relation between the sexes will cease, and men will be like the angels (Luke xx.35ff.), seems more or less to reduce the above discourses to a merely symbolical significance.

Thus we conclude that the Messianic hope of Jesus was not political, nor even merely earthly, for he referred its fulfilment to supernatural means, and to a supermundane theatre (the regenerated earth): as little was it a purely spiritual hope, in the modern sense of the term, for it included important and unprecedented changes in the external condition of things: but it was the national, theocratic hope, spiritualized and ennobled by his own peculiar moral and religious views.