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‘The Problem of the Lord's Supper’ as Matrix for Albert Schweitzer's ‘Quest of the Historical Jesus’*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

John Reumann
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Extract

It is not always remembered that the important and influential work of Albert Schweitzer on the historical Jesus – both as historian of ‘the quest’ and as proponent of an apocalyptic Jesus who was messiah yet who proved amenable to Schweitzer's own emphasis on ethics – rests within the matrix of another, perhaps even broader topic, that of the origin and development of the Lord's Supper. For Schweitzer's first published work in biblical studies, his dissertation for the licentiate in theology degree in 1900, was a ‘Critical Presentation of Various Recent Historical Concepts of the Lord's Supper’, and his initial ‘Sketch of the Life of Jesus’, published 1901 and destined to be reiterated and expanded in his books on Jesus of 1906 and 1913, was Part II of a wider study on ‘The Lord's Supper in connection with the Life of Jesus and the History of Primitive Christianity’.

Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , July 1981 , pp. 475 - 487
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

Notes

[1] Kritische Darstellung unterschiedlicher neuerer historischer Abendmahlsauffassungen (Freiburg i. Br. 1901).Google ScholarDas Abendmahl im Zusammenhang mit dem Leben Jesu und der Geschichte des Urchristentums (2 vols., Tübingen, 2 1929):Google Scholar1. Das Abendmahlsproblem auf Grund der wissen-schaftlichen Forschung des 19. Jahrhunderts und der historischen Berichte. 2. Das Messianitäts- und Leidensgeheimnis: Eine Skizzed des Lebens Jesu (3 1956);Google Scholar Eng. trans. with an introduction by Walter, Lowrie, The Mystery of the kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus' Messiahship and Passion (London, 1914, 2 1925; reprinted New York, 1950, 1964). Von Reimarus zu Wrede.Google ScholarEine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (Tübingen, 1906);Google Scholar Eng. trans. by Montgomery, W., The Quest of the Historical Jesus. A Critical Study of its progress from Reimarus to Wrede (London, 1910). Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (Tübingen, 1913).Google Scholar

[2] Helmut, Groos, Albert Schweitzer, Grösse und Grenzen: Eine kritische Würdigung des Forschers und Denkers (Munich and Basel, 1974).Google ScholarErich, Grässer, Albert Schweitzer als Theologe (BHTh 60, Tübingen, 1979).Google Scholar

[3] Mystery, p. 1.Google Scholar

[4] Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus (Tübingen, 1930);Google Scholar Eng. trans. by Montgomery, W., The Mysticims of Paul the Apostle (London, 1931).Google Scholar

[5] Die Religionsphilosophie Kants (Freiburg i. Br., 1899).Google Scholar

[6] see note 1.

[7] Cf., Grässer, Schweitzer, p. 272. (The series seems to have begun in 1902, not 1901.)Google Scholar

[8] Mystik, pp. 231–42; Mysticism, pp. 237–48.Google Scholar Lectures as dozent, cf., Grässer, p. 64, n. 2.Google Scholar

[9] Abendmahlsproblem, p. viii;Google Scholarcf., Grässer, pp. 39 f.Google Scholar

[10] Brillioth, Y., Eucharistic Faith and Practice: Evangelical & Catholic, trans. by Hebert, A. G. (London, 1930), p. 3.Google Scholar

[11] Abendmahlsproblem, pp. 11–13, 19.Google Scholar

[12] Zur Geschichte und Litteratur des Urchristentums, I, Die urchristlichen Traditionen über Ursprung und Sinn des Abendmahls (Göttingen, 1893), especially pp. 207–337.Google Scholar This was the same Spitta, the name of whose father (Karl Johann Philipp, the hymn writer) Schweitzer had dismissed as ‘too insignificant … to notice’, in the son's presence during his second examination on 15 July 1900, and whose presentations at Strassburg on the life of Jesus moved Schweitzer to begin lecturing on Leben-Jesu-Forschung because students ‘had learnt practically nothing about previous investigations’ in the course; cf., A. Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought (New York, 1933), pp. 37 f. and 55 f.Google Scholar

[13] Abendmahlsproblem, p. 14; cf., Brillioth, p. 4.Google Scholar

[14] Abendmahlsproblem, p. 31;Google Scholarcf., Quest, p. 313.Google Scholar

[15] ‘Gospels’, in Encyclopaedia Biblica (London, 1901), vol. 2, cols. 1881 f.Google Scholar

[16] Life and Thought, p. 43;Google Scholarcf., Abendmahlsproblem, pp. 41 f. It is ludicrous to think of twelve men poised with morsels of bread in their hands, waiting for a Gleichniswort!Google Scholar

[17] Abendmahlsproblem, p. 50.Google Scholar

[18] Ibid., p. 61

[19] Grasser's, summary (pp. 45–53)Google Scholar also draws evidence from Schweitzer's, 1930 Mystik; while Schweitzer says his ideas were all formed as he wrote his Geschichte der Paulinischen Forschung (Tubingen, 1911), can one be sure they existed in 1901?Google Scholar

[20] Abendmahlsproblem, p. 62.Google Scholar

[21] Grässer, , p. 62.Google Scholar

[22] Ibid., pp. 62 f. Cf. the similar reactions of reviewers for the 1901 and 1906 books collected by Kümmel, W. G., in ‘Die “konsequente Eschatologie” Albert Schweitzers im Urteil der Zeitgenossenrsquo;, in Kümmel's Gesammelte Aufsätze, Heilsgeschehen und Geschichte (Marburg, 1964), pp. 328–39.Google Scholar For English reception of The Quest, Seaver, cf. G, Albert Schweitzer: The Man and His Mind (New York, 1947), pp. 197–205.Google Scholar

[23] Life and Thought, pp. 17–20.Google Scholar

[24] Ibid., pp. 24 f. Abendmahlsproblem, pp. v–xi.Google Scholar

[25] Grässer, , p. 45, speaks of ‘Problemgeschichte’ and ‘Problemlösung’.Google Scholar

[26] Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien (Göttingen, 1901, 2 1913, 3 1963);Google Scholar Eng. trans. by Greig, J. C. G., The Messianic Secret (Cambridge and London, 1971).Google Scholar

[27] See notes 19 and 4.

[28] Life and Thought, pp. 142 f.Google Scholar

[29] Abendmahlsproblem, p. viii.Google Scholar

[30] Cf., J. M. Robinson, new introduction to The Quest (New York, 1968), pp. xii–xviii;Google Scholar German trans. in reprint of Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (Hamburg, 2 1972), pp. 8–14.Google Scholar

[31] Quest, p. 336;Google ScholarAbendmahlsproblem, p. 50.Google Scholar

[32] Abendmahlsproblem, p. viii.Google Scholar

[33] Ibid., p. 12.

[34] Life and Thought, pp. 46 f.;Google ScholarGrässer, , p. 64,Google Scholar n. 3. M. Gustave Woytt, of Strasbourg, has suggested to me that such papers may have been destroyed when Schweitzer closed the house at Königsfeld after his wife Helene died in 1957.

[35] Abendmahlsproblem, p. xi. Cf., Grässer, p. 45.Google Scholar

[36] So Grässer, , p. 38 n. 2,Google Scholar with reference to Abendmahlsproblem, p. 21.Google Scholar

[37] Abendmahlsproblem, p. 5. We question the rather neat sequence of development which Schweitzer achieves and the thoroughness with which he has assembled his examples.Google Scholar

[38] Schweitzer als Theologe, p. 54.Google Scholar

[39] Life and Thought, p. 47.Google Scholar

[40] Ibid.

[41] Grässer, , p. 39,Google ScholarCf., W. Picht, The Life and Thought of Albert Schweitzer (New York, 1964) pp. 46 f.; Groos, simialrly.Google Scholar

[42] Life and Thought, p. 47.Google Scholar

[43] Ibid., pp. 18 f.

[44] Abendmahlsproblem, p. 62.Google Scholar

[45] Ibid., p. ix, stressed by Grässer, , p. 38.Google Scholar

[46] Cf., Groos, pp. 466 ff.;Google ScholarGrässer, , pp. 61 f.Google Scholar

[47] Aus meiner Kindheit und Jugendzeit (Munich, 1924), p. 20;Google ScholarGroos, , p. 773.Google Scholar

[48] Life and Thought, p. 20.Google Scholar

[49] Abendmahlsproblem, p. vii.Google Scholar

[50] Ibid., p. viii. On the Aristotelian research model, cf., Life and Thought, p. 142,Google Scholar and Picht, , p. 80.Google Scholar

[51] Groos, , p. 25.Google Scholar

[52] Grässer, , pp. 62–4, quotation from p. 63.Google Scholar

[53] Ibid., n. 7, with special reference to Lessig, H., Die Abendmahlsprobleme im Lichte der neutestamentlichen Forschung seit 1900 (Bonn, 1953).Google ScholarCf., further Richardson, A., An Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament (London, 1958), p. 101.Google Scholar

[54] Les origines de l'eucharistie, messe, sainte céne (Paris, 1908),Google Scholar and L'eucharistie des origines à Justin Martyr (Paris, 1910), respectivelyGoogle Scholar

[55] Pp. 2–5.

[56] (London, 1925). Neither, H. Lietzmann'sMesse und Herrenmahl (Bonn, 1926)Google Scholar nor Richardson's, R. D. accompanying essay in the Eng. trans. Mass and Lord' Supper (Leiden, 1953), deals with Schweitzer.Google Scholar

[57] (Stuttgart, 1972). Noted in Grässer, , p. 57, n. 18.Google Scholar

[58] Der Aspekt der Freude im urchristlichen Abendmahl (Winterthur, 1965), pp. 3 f., 10.Google Scholar

[59] Der Opfercharakter des Abendmahls in der neueren evangelischen Theologie (Konfessions-kundliche und kontroverstheologische Studien 19, Paderborn, 1967), especially, among his references, pp. 78, 83–5, 300, 482 f., 497, 591 f., 596, 604 f., 609 and 625.Google Scholar See further Stählin, R., ‘Herrenmahl und Heilsgeschichte’, ELKZ 2 (1948), 152–4,Google Scholar reprinted in EvJbr 12 (1947–48), 109–16;Google Scholar and ‘Die Geschichte des christlichen Gottesdienstes von der Urkirche bis zur Gegenwart’, Leiturgia 1 (1954), 14, n. 41Google Scholar (cf., p. 152, n. 82, for P. Brunner's judgment that the position of consistent eschatology with regard ot Jesus' ministry has been overcome by later research).Google Scholar

[60] (Erträge, der Forschung, 50; Darmstadt, 1976), pp. 4 ff.Google Scholar

[61] Action in the Liturgy (New York, 1953), pp. 3 ff. especially 8 f.Google ScholarJesus according to St. Mark: An Interpretation of St. Mark's Gospel (London, 1929).Google ScholarThe Story of Jesus (New York, 1943).Google Scholar

[62] P. 38.

[63] P. 58.

[64] Ibid.

[65] Das Abendmahl als christologisches Problem (Gütersloh, 1963);Google Scholar Eng. trans. by Nieting, L., The Lord's Supper as a Christological Problem (FBBS, 25; Philadelphia, 1970),Google Scholar reprinted in The Beginnings of Christology (Philadelphia, 1979), pp. 87–122.Google Scholar