Analysis
Estimates of Reimarus may be found in the works of B. Pünjer, Otto Pfleiderer and Harald Høffding. Pünjer states the position of Reimarus as follows: “God is the Creator of the world, and His wisdom and goodness are conspicuous in it. Immortality is founded upon the essential nature of man and upon the purpose of God in creation. Religion is conducive to our happiness and alone brings satisfaction. Miracles are at variance with the divine purpose; without miracles there could be no revelation.”
Pfleiderer says the errors of Reimarus were that he ignored historical and literary criticism, sources, date, origin, etc., of documents, and the narratives were said to be either purely divine or purely human. He had no conception of an immanent reason.
Høffding also has a brief section on the Apologie, stating its main position as follows:
- “Natural religion suffices; a revelation is therefore superfluous. Moreover, such a thing is both physically and morally impossible. God cannot interrupt His own work by miracles; nor can He favour some men above others by revelations which are not granted to all, and with which it is not even possible for all to become acquainted. But of all doctrines that of eternal punishment is most contrary, Reimarus thinks, to true ideas of God; and it was this point which first caused him to stumble.”
The work of Reimarus is highly praised in Albert Schweitzer. While calling the views expressed in the Fragments mistaken in some respects and one-sided, Schweitzer describes the essay on “The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples” as not only “one of the greatest events in the history of criticism” but also “a masterpiece of general literature”. Lessing's third excerpt in Fragments, “On the Passing of the Israelites Through the Red Sea,” is said to be “one of the ablest, wittiest and most acute which has ever been written.”
Richard N. Soulen points out that Reimarus “is treated as the initiator of ‘Lives of Jesus Research’ by Schweitzer and accorded special honor by him for recognizing that Jesus' thought-world was essentially eschatological, a fact overlooked until the end of the 19th century.”
Werner Georg Kümmel argues that Reimarus saw the need to distinguish between the proclamation of the historical Jesus and the proclamation of the Early Church and to ask to what extent Jesus himself is the origin of his followers' break with Judaism.
Read more about this topic: Hermann Samuel Reimarus
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