61. Otto Pfleiderer: “The Development of Christianity”

A work entitled The Origin of Christianity, by the Berlin university professor D. Otto Pfleiderer, is causing quite a stir in a wide variety of circles (Munich, J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1905). Pfleiderer wants to strip the origin of Christianity of the miracle that “the second person of the Godhead descended from heaven to earth, became human in the womb of a Jewish virgin, resurrected bodily after dying on the cross, and ascended to heaven”. He believes that in doing so he is making Christianity accessible to historical explanation. “For to understand an historical phenomenon is to understand it in terms of its causal connection with the conditions of human life at a particular place and time. The entry of a superhuman being into the earthly world would be an absolute new beginning, which would have no causal connection with what had gone before, and thus could not be understood in terms of any analogy to other human experience; in short, it would defy all historical explanation.” It must be said that we can never apply the standard of what we understand at a particular point in time to everything in the world and describe as “superhuman” and “causeless” what cannot be measured by that standard. On the contrary, we must ourselves extend our standard in the face of certain phenomena. It is indeed comprehensible that someone should say: This I understand, therefore I hold it to be real; another I do not understand, therefore it is unreal to me. But this is no different from someone who understands nothing of the power of electricity and considers the telephone impossible. What Pfleiderer retains of Christianity after deducting what he considers “supernatural” is a mere rationalistic construct; within such a construct one can no longer speak of a “divinity of Christ”. But the task is precisely to understand what divinity is, what secrets are hidden behind the “virgin birth”, “resurrection” and so on.

This is where the theosophical point of view comes in; and all those who do not want to go along with it fall back on rationalizing Christianity, which is the same as de-Christianizing it. For those who penetrate into the deep secrets of Christian truths, “Pfleiderer's Christianity” is no longer Christianity, but a completely arbitrary construct created by modern thinking. And from this point of view, the explanation of the origin of this religion from the myths and mysteries of the preceding period becomes quite worthless. For only when one penetrates into the true life of the Adonis resurrection celebration, the initiation of the priests of the great mystery cult, and so on, and does not rationalistically reduce them to mere fantastic cultic actions, only then does one you penetrate into the prophetic significance of these ancient forerunners of Christianity and recognize how they have found their fulfillment in the great mystery of the crucified and risen Son of God. — Pfleiderer says: “Therefore, we would do well to become more and more familiar with the idea that the real object of our pious belief is not the past, but the eternal! 'What has never happened anywhere will never become obsolete.'” But this ‘eternal’ is interpreted by each according to his understanding. There is nothing to be said against this; and if someone wants to establish as religious content what ‘has never happened anywhere’, that is everyone's business. But Christianity can never be based on what never was, but on the “living Christ,” who worked in Palestine 1900 years ago and is proclaimed by the Gospels. Those who want to base it on something else can just as well call white black.

Of course, none of this is directed against Pfleiderer personally, who has done what he believes to be right in a perfectly scholarly manner, according to the precepts of his science. But it should be pointed out where this science must lead. And how a renewal of spiritual science in the theosophical sense is necessary. I know that it must seem an outrage when it is said that the official representative of theological-Christian science at a university teaches something unchristian. But the confusion is great today, and not to call such things by their right name would mean a breach of duty at the present time. In Pfleiderer's circles, however, a theosophical attempt to fathom Christian truths is considered complete dilettantism. It cannot be otherwise. Because all the preconditions are lacking to understand such an attempt. The theosophist understands Pfleiderer; but Pfleiderer will not want to understand the theosophist.