Hello All,
I am re-reading Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus and am running into statements that I don’t understand. Here is one.
“That He continues, notwithstanding, to reign as the alone Great and alone True in a world of which He denied the continuance, is the prime example of that antithesis between spiritual and natural truth which underlies all life and all events, and in Him emerges into the field of history.” – Pg. 16-17 of the Philosophical Library, Apple Books, edition.
There are several elements I don’t quite understand here. Can anyone elaborate?
Robert said
I think Schweitzer is here trying to speak of the enduring spiritual importance of Jesus in the natural world despite the contradictory fact that the historical apocalyptic Jesus did not believe the world would continue to exist.Daß er fort und fort als der einzig Große und einzig Wahre in einer Welt herrscht, deren Fortbestehen er verneint hat, ist das Urphänomen des Gegensatzes von geistiger und natürlicher Wahrheit, welcher allem Leben und Geschehen zu Grunde liegt und in ihm Geschichte geworden ist.
That helps, thank you. So, Schweitzer held to a view that somehow something could be “spiritually true” (e.g., Jesus is Lord over the existing world) even though it was contradicted by a “natural truth” (e.g., Jesus predicted that the world would end in his generation and yet the world remains these many generations later)?
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
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Robert
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