STRAUSS, DAVID FRIEDRICH. – Protestant theologian, faithful to the principles and presuppositions of the “rational-mythical” school (“mythisch-rationale Schule”). Born on 27 January 1808 in Ludwigsburg (Württemberg), where, after a turbulent life, he died on 8 February 1873.
At the “minor seminary” of Blaubeuren (1821–25), his principal teachers were Kern and F. G. Baur, who was also his professor later, when S. pursued his theological studies at the Wilhelmstift (1826–39) Tübingen (v.). In addition to the lectures, he was fascinated by the Protestant “mystic” Jacob Böhme (1575–1624), Schleiermacher (v.), Schelling (v.), the visionary Pietist Justinus Kerner, whose spiritist séances he attended during the holidays, but Hegel (v.). After completing his studies, he became a vicar and then a teacher in the small seminary at Maulbronn. In the winter of 1831–32 he went to Berlin. Disappointed by Schleiermacher’s lectures, he joined the Left Hegelians (“Linkshegelianer”) and attended the lectures of W. Vatke (1806–82); the following year he returned to Tübingen as a “repetitor” in theology at the Wilhelmstift, a position that entitled him to lecture on philosophy at the University. The first interpreter of Hegel in Tübingen, his lectures, imbued with enthusiasm for his master, met with immense success. The professors of philosophy, however, immediately re-
acted, disputing his right to lecture on that subject. He therefore resigned himself to abandoning it and devoted himself to studying almost the entire exegetical scholarship of his time. There were then three schools of Protestant exegesis: a) the “supernatural” school (later also called “positive”), which still continued Lutheran and Calvinist orthodoxy, but was increasingly forced to make greater concessions under the pressure of the rampant rationalism; b) the school called “rational,” headed by H. E. G. Paulos (1761–1851), then highly fashionable, which devised ingenious expedients, such as that of intermediate causes not mentioned in the sacred text, in order to eliminate the supernatural and miraculous element from the Bible; c) the “rational-mythical” school (already in existence for about 50 years), directed toward providing a more effective apology for the Bible in the face of the prevailing impiety, by explaining it as a complex of myths necessary to the age of immature humanity.
The mythical school, first in the exegesis of the ancient classics and later of the biblical books, is owed above all to C. G. Heyne (1729–1812), the celebrated professor of Göttingen, who created a systematic hermeneutics, Hesiod (v.), Homer, and other ancient authors. According to him, owing to the psychic and genetic necessity of the human race, there exists a universal and necessary mythical age, to which primitive man in all regions of the earth is subject: a man of rudimentary intelligence, yet joined to vivid sensory impressions, who does not perceive the true causes of things, does not know how to reflect and meditate, and uses a language incredibly poor in concepts but supremely expressive. Faced with unusual and wondrous events, that rough man of the mythical age does not perceive their true and causal connections, and imagines himself to be confronted by a supreme being who always acts immediately in the things of that world; in everything he sees God acting, and for him the course of daily life is a continuous series of miracles. He also perceives historical facts—for example, that A is the cause of B—but for him this simple fact necessarily becomes a brilliant, passionate story according to which A fell in love with a contrivance and, amid the various events of that love, B was generated by A as his beloved son; in his own way he also perceives the opposition between concepts, but translates that perception into beautiful mythical language, as the story of a fierce struggle between two personified primordial powers, creating a series of theogonic or cosmogonic deeds. This theory was made to fascinate the Romantic period (v. ROMANTICISM), which places such emphasis on the “irrational”; accordingly, those mythical narratives become the mysterious and profound origin not only of all poetry, but also of all historiography, philosophy, and the science of religion. The “popular tradition” too has a highly irrational origin: the rough mythical man continually increases the “miraculous” in his popular narratives, giving form to the simple original reality. Such traditions would be found in all the sources of the most ancient ages: in Livy and Herodotus, in China and India, and also in the Bible. Everything proceeds from these traditions, and they express in their own way the deepest truths of the human soul: thus one arrives at a “panmythism,” enthusiastically upheld, of which the later pan-Babylonianism will be merely an application. The “mythical movement,” which enjoyed immense popularity—also anything but rational—exalts ancient and even modern myths, which, like art and especially poetry, express in their own way even the deepest realities of the human being. Once doubts arise, the human intellect often explains myth as an allegory of some other reality, or else undertakes the work of “demythicization,” for which C. G. Heyne had already found an appropriate hermeneutic, in order to unravel the threads of a fabric and restore them to their original appearance. This results in the division of myths (v. MYTH AND MYTHOLOGY). Historical myths must not be taken as true history, but only as “apparent” history (v. SPIRITUS PARACLITUS), endowed with relative or economic truth, which must be reduced to the primitive real fact. Philosophical (and religious) myths, according to this school, are not based on any historical fact; rather, one must seek out the inner fact of the mind that lies at the foundation of the “mythologizing” imagination. The disciples of C. G. Heyne applied his “rational-mythical hermeneutics” to biblical texts, believing that Romantic irrationalism, through myths, could rekindle the faith that had rationalism (v.); they maintained that those biblical myths, like those of Greece, Rome, and the Vedanta, were not to be despised, but contained ancient facts and profound human truths, even though they were not literally true, and taught many truths, such as the existence and Providence of God, in a much more poetic and attractive manner. It is not surprising that some of those exegetes, such as J. G. Eichhorn (1752–1827) and J. Ph. Gabler (1753–1826), saw in the rational-mythical explanation the sole hope of salvation for the Christian faith. In 1799, G. L. Bauer wrote at Leipzig a manual of rational-mythical method for the study of the Bible, and followed it with a veritable encyclopedia of “Sacred Mythology” of the Old and New Testaments (Leipzig 1902, 2 vols.). The mythical-exegetical school also fascinated idealism (v.). Schelling devoted his first books to elucidating its foundations philosophically; the most influential figure in the school became the Kantian philosopher J. F. Fries (v.), who elevated myth to being “the category of religion,” thus making it anthropological, that is, universal for every generation of human beings; he also held myth to be inevitable and necessary for all human thought. With Hegel the matter is somewhat different: myth belongs to “Anschauung,” rather than to the “concept,” Hegel’s supreme category, a notion exploited by S. In applying the ideas of German idealism to the Bible, S. had as a predecessor Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette (1780–1840), who gave a rational-mythical explanation of the Old Testament. As early as the days of Eichhorn, attempts had been made to explain certain pericopes of the New Testament mythically, and G. L. Bauer had collected all the relevant materials.
S. applied that hermeneutic on a grand scale to the New Testament, that is, to the Life of Jesus (v.), and did so more radically: admitting no historical myth, but only philosophical myths, so that all the Gospels say merely that there is a divine element in Christ’s humanity, understood not as concrete and singular, but rather as a general idea. Such is the meaning of the Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet, which appeared in Tübingen in 1835 and made S. the most celebrated theologian in Germany, but deprived him forever of the possibility of holding a theological chair. Well constructed and written in a marvelous style, the book presented the individual pericopes through: a) the “supernatural” explanation, drawing on a profound and extensive knowledge of the “positive” authors themselves; b) the rationalistic explanation, making particular use of the works of N. Paulus, both set forth with such skill that they destroyed one another; and finally c) the rationalistic explanation, which triumphed by eliminating all historicity and every truth beyond the general idea of the divine in the human. There was very little positive in a study that was supremely destructive and subversive. The book was seen as marking the collapse of Christian theology, and the scandal was immense. Refutations poured forth by the hundreds. S. appears disconcerted in Streitschriften (Tübingen 1837), and not moved by noble motives: with his terrible pen he attacked the less noteworthy authors, neglected the greatest, and inveighed against the teacher who had denounced him to the government. Indeed, as punishment he was transferred to the gymnasium of his native city, but as early as 1836 he left the state service to become an independent writer.
“Radical” (unbelieving) friends secured him a chair of theology in Zurich, which he accepted. The criticisms seem to have shaken him somewhat, and in the 3rd ed. of the Leben Jesu he softened his doubts concerning the Gospel of S. Giovanni, while maintaining that its genuineness was only “possible”; he also wrote Zwei friedliche Blätter (Tübingen 1839). But as soon as the news spread in Zurich, the believing population of the entire Canton of Zurich rose up violently; and the cantonal government had to dismiss him before he began teaching, granting him a lifetime pension. Yet not even this expedient saved the “radical” government, which six months later was overthrown by the “Züriputsch.” S. reacted, and in the preface to the 4th ed. of the Leben Jesu declared that the concessions of the 3rd ed. had been due to weakness of spirit; he published Die kirchliche Glaubenslehre in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung und im Kampfe mit der modernen Wissenschaft dargestellt, 2 vols. (Tübingen 1840–41), in which he treats the history of dogma according to the same rationalistic method and proclaims the failure of the entire history of theology, always inclined to oppress reason and freedom. Although better documented and better conducted than the Leben Jesu in its attack on Christian positions, this new work by S. did not arouse as much scandal and had only one edition. After the 1848 revolution, S. tried his hand at politics; the believing people caused his candidacy for the Frankfurt Parliament to fail, but he was elected a deputy to the Württemberg Diet. He did not succeed as a politician either; although elected by the revolutionaries, he defended aristocrats and conservatives, and when called to order he did not apologize but resigned his mandate. Resuming his literary activity, he wrote biographies, especially of anticlericals, such as Reimarus (Leipzig 1861, 2nd ed. 1892), Ulrich von Hutten (3 vols., ibid. 1858–60, 6th ed. 1865), and later Voltaire (Mannheim 1870, 2nd ed. 1907). Yet he was not a master of the biographical art; all his characters live and think like S., as happens with poets, as S. moreover shows himself to be in vol. XII of Gesammelte Schriften. In 1866, the success in France of E. Renan’s new life of Jesus (v.) led S. to attempt a similar life of Jesus for the general public: Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk bearbeitet (Leipzig 1864, 12th ed. 1902), more moderate and more positive than the “great” life, but no less dangerous. He resumed his polemic against theologians, condemning the “semi-rationalists,” or “Vermittlungstheologen,” more harshly than the orthodox themselves, as in Die Halben und die Ganzen (1865); he expressed a harsh judgment on Schleiermacher’s posthumous book in Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus der Geschichte (Berlin 1865). The war of 1870 aroused his patriotic sentiments, as it did those of E. Renan, and thus both subversive authors of “Lives of Jesus” wrote open letters concerning responsibility for that war and the fate of Alsace and Lorraine. Once the war was over, S. produced another book, which marked the sad epilogue of his theological evolution: materialism and Darwinism, a “cultural” enthusiasm characteristic of the bourgeois of that period: Der alte u. der neue Glaube (Leipzig 1872). The book, however, is imbued with much sincerity; it poses the pressing question: are we still Christians? And it answers decisively: no. We, who have abandoned the Christian faith and seek another, more scientific one; we, who bury Christianity’s most sacred documents in the museums of myths, are no longer Christians. The book elicited many refutations, but also went through numerous editions (16th, 1904); with it the antisocialist S. helped spread materialism among the proletariat as well.
Much still survives of his supremely negating theology; within Protestant neo-orthodoxy, mythicism is beginning to re-emerge, not only because of the “demythologization” promoted by R. Bultmann, who follows S.’s path more or less, though basing himself not on an anthropological mythicism of a “Friesian” existentialism (v.) according to the ideas of M. Heidegger, but also because of the ideas of Karl Barth, prince of the Reformed neo-orthodox. In his booklet on S., K. Barth asserts that he agrees with S. on no fewer than five points concerning fundamental principles: 1) if the Christian faith is conceived as an immanent relationship and is made historical, this is equivalent to abolishing faith; 2) the documents of the New Testament cannot be sources for a pragmatic life of the man Jesus Christ: they are mere testimonies to some superhuman being according to the prophecies of the Old Testament and beyond every historical reconstruction; 3) a “historical Jesus” can be reached behind those sources, but only by sacrificing Jesus’ most essential predicates—messianic consciousness, consciousness of being the Son of God, preaching of the Kingdom, hope of the parousia, resurrection from the dead—and such a “historical Jesus” would be a product of “sentimental characterology” that would have nothing to do with the faith of the Apostles; 4) yet the person of Jesus, insofar as he appears in the Gospels, is strictly bound to those predicates: a historian who wished to write a life of Jesus would therefore have either to erase those predicates, interpret them “morally,” or consider Jesus “a noble spiritual agitator,” unless he preferred to regard the primitive community as the last attainable historical datum and everything preceding it as myth; 5) the Christ of “historical research” would be nothing other than a “relative” revealer of God, a beautiful symbol of the true Christ: the Word of God made flesh, who exercises God’s decision over us and also commits us to that decision.
The “rational-mysticism” or “mythical movement,” which reached the highest peaks of non-Catholic theology, from Heyne to Bultmann and Barth, is pervaded by skepticism and pessimism concerning the primitive psychology of man, in conformity with the ideology of Luther and Calvin, without proving this by natural or supernatural arguments. Certainly, man has a poetic and also “mythical” inclination, but he also possesses intellectual faculties capable of controlling II. Enslavement to myths can be explained by admitting that men of all times have more or less equal intellectual and sensitive capacities, without denying the differences of traditions and character. Many myths can be explained phenomenologically, without this entailing the fatality attributed to them by panmythism; pan-Babylonism, too, failed as knowledge of Babylonian civilization developed. It is above all erroneous to regard the Jewish people as primitive and subject to the enslavement of myths. The same, even more so, must be said of the primitive Christian community. But rational arguments alone will never convince panmythists, swept along by sentimental tendencies that are anything but intellectual; it is necessary to bear witness to them to faith in the living God, in the absolute truth of Sacred Scripture, excluding every doubt even concerning the intellectual light of which all peoples have been and are capable, even if they are less developed than modern peoples.
Other works by S.: Gesammelte Schriften, ed. E. Zeller (12 vols., Bonn 1876–78), though this collection is very incomplete. Collections of letters followed: Ausgewählte Briefe, ed. E. Zeller (Bonn 1895, 5 vols.); A. Rapp, Briefwechsel zwischen S. und Vischer, 2 vols. (Stuttgart 1952–53). In Italian, G. Oddo translated the “great” Vita di Gesù or esame critico della sua storia per il dr. D.F.S., Milan 1863–65; the text of that version, made from the fourth [Tübingen 1840, unmitigated] German edition, served for a vile falsification (Rome 1886) which, on the title page, strives to make it appear that it is S.’s Vita di Gesù “refused and completed” by Fr. C. M. Curci (v.), already reconciled with the Church. S.’s Vita di Gesù, translated by S. Gatti (Turin 1865) and incomplete, seems to be based on the 2nd edition of the “little” Vita di Gesù dello S. or Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk bearbeitete. From “S.O.E.” S.’s last book, together with the Nachschrift (1873), was translated: D. F. Strauss, La antica e la nuova fede (Milan 1876).