Talk:David Strauss

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I haven't read any of Strauss' works, and I'm just wondering exactly what it was he thought about religion on the whole. He obviously rejected the biblical account of the life of Jesus, but apart from that, was he specifically anti-theistic, anti-religious, atheistic, jewish, or what?

Here are some excerpts from the editor's introduction to "The Life of Jesus Critically Examined" -

"...Strauss set out to write a destructive critique of the biblical and doctrinal views of Christ, which would enable him to abstract the true essence of Christian faith from the religious imagery with which it had been entangled..."

"Strauss was, to use Van Harvey's image, a straggler at the edge of the camp of Israel. He no longer could enter the camp of faith and affirm its rites and practices, but neither could he leave it, for he continued to draw spiritual sustenance from it..."

"Strauss was...a very religious man engaged in an intensely religious quest and struggle...he considered himself a defender of religion against its real enemies, the naturalists and atheists who cut the nerve center of divine

"...he became a free-lance theologian who dabbled in biography, in poetry, in philosophy - knowing that he was neither a historian, nor an artist, nor a philosopher. The theologian who cannot abandon theology, yet cannot practice it, is truly the alienated theologian. It was the lack of a viable vocation that turned Strauss into a bitter antagonist of the Christian faith..." (this last quote describes the latter years of Strauss' life, after all his major scholarly works were produced)

Hope that answers your question. Dshin 01:21, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

So, Deist would be a good general descriptor, then? The Gonz 06:00, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I do not think that would be a good descriptor. I think the word deism typically entails a worldview that rejects a priori the notion of God's interaction with the universe. Strauss, in his scholarly works, is always open to the possibility of the miraculous - he happens to reject each individual instance based on historical/exegetical analysis, not because of some a priori worldview bias. Dshin 06:34, 11 February 2007 (UTC)