Some Quotes from a Book I Like — Almost

NoteThis post is built around several quotations that the original embedded as images (the Acts 13 passage and passages from the editor’s introduction to Strauss). They didn’t carry over as text and are marked below — restore each from the WordPress original before publishing.

Often, when I’m reading, I so long to share particular quotes with friends. I sometimes do, in the form of a Facebook status update, but since the current of the News Feed carries along our little shares faster than storm debris sweeping through the Mississippi, I’d like to share some quotes here of a book I am particularly fond of. To say “a book I am particularly fond of” is a slight exaggeration. It’s a very dense tome, and I’ve only read ~100 pages of the ~700 pages. Nonetheless, the lengthy introduction I am particularly fond of, and it introduced me to ideas I had never been exposed to, challenged me with what I believe to be necessarily dense sentences, and inspired me to seek truth and admire those diligent stalwarts of the post-faith who’ve come before me. In short, it made a lasting impact on me.

This book is called “The Life of Jesus: Critically Examined”, and it is by David Friedrich Strauss. It was originally published in Germany in 1835.

From the introduction

These quotes are not from Strauss, but from an editor of the fourth edition of this work.

I find it interesting that so many Christians say “doubt is good”, “doubt is healthy”, and “doubt makes your faith stronger”, but isn’t concluding that the faith of your youth is false just a progression of doubt? It’s as if a professor encourages questioning his own reasoning, for the sake of intellectual growth, but when one student, after thorough, logical, honest, and humble questioning, comes to conclude that his professor is dead wrong on one point, he has suddenly been instantly transmogrified from the star student to the naughty imp.

Even still, many Christians I know are more than sympathetic when it comes to my heretical conclusions. They are quite gentle with me when they try to pull me back into the fold, and even excited for me in my latest leg of my faith journey, wherein I am trying to found a community of “likeminded unbelievers”. For instance, a Christian girl who I had become quite close to came to one of my “church services”. Her Christian friend was shocked and appalled that she was coming: “You’re not going to support that, are you!?” My friend replied, lovingly, “I’m going to support people trying to find meaningful community.” While I greatly appreciate the lovingkindness and the ethical spirit of friends like her, I find the contrast between their assessment of my faith journey with what an author of the Bible might say to be amusing on a good day, upsetting on a bad day. For instance, check out this passage from Acts 13:

Quotation to restoreActs 13 passage (Paul and Bar-Jesus / Elymas the sorcerer) — embedded as an image in the original.

I can’t see how what I’m doing is any less deplorable than what Bar-Jesus was doing, in Paul’s eyes, but I’ll be damned if I’ve ever heard a Christian speak to me with such forceful disdain. The way in which the culture of the Church has changed–its language, its rules for how and when to proselytize, how and when to rebuke a disobedient believer, a heretic, or an unbeliever–it’s a wonder they still call it “church” (oh wait, that is avoided in some circles). My biggest pet peeve is when a slick looking pastor of a supposedly Bible-believing church mocks a well-meaning Evangelical for expressing his Christian faith in a way that is highly distasteful to secular culture, when I can think of several New Testament verses that encourage such a believer to do exactly that which he is doing (e.g., being direct and not sugarcoating what the Bible has to say about homosexuality, or about moving in with your boyfriend, or where unbelievers are going to go when they die).

Anyways, I’ve gotten off on a little tangent. Back to Leben Jesu (German for Life of Jesus).

Quotation to restoreA passage from the editor’s introduction (on the roots of the skeptical Leben Jesu) — embedded as an image in the original, immediately before the paragraph below.

Isn’t it interesting how this author attributes the intellectual and spiritual roots of the skeptical Leben Jesu not to the Enlightenment, but to the Reformation! As someone raised in a conservative, Reformed, Protestant church, I was always taught that The Reformation was what brought Christendom back to the Bible–back to God. But according to this author, the Reformation itself set the trend toward radical criticism of Christianity. I would guess that a number of Catholic and Orthodox commentators would not beg to differ.

The next quote concerns the contrast between the full-sail derisive attacks on the Bible partaken by the English Freethinkers/Deists versus the critical but respectful reinterpretations undertaken by the German Rationalist theologians.

Quotation to restorePassage contrasting the English Freethinkers/Deists with the German Rationalist theologians — embedded as an image in the original.

This next quote makes me want to say, “Amen, brother!”

Quotation to restoreFinal quoted passage from the introduction — embedded as an image in the original.

#pwnd