William Wrede
Encyclopedia
Georg Friedrich Eduard William Wrede (10 May 1859 – 23 November 1906) was a German Lutheran theologian.

Wrede was born at Bücken
Bücken
Bücken is a municipality in the district of Nienburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany.-History:An Abbey was established here in Bücken in the year 882 by Rimbert, Archbishop of Bremen...

 in Hannover. He became an associate professor at Breslau in 1893, and full professor in 1896. He died in office in 1906.

He became famous for his investigation of the Messianic Secret
Messianic Secret
In Biblical criticism, the Messianic Secret refers to a proposed motif primarily in the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus is portrayed as commanding his followers to silence about his Messianic mission...

 theme in the Gospel of Mark
Gospel of Mark
The Gospel According to Mark , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Mark or simply Mark, is the second book of the New Testament. This canonical account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the three synoptic gospels. It was thought to be an epitome, which accounts for its place as the second...

. He suggested that this was a literary and apologetic device by which early Christians could explain away the absence of any clear claim to be the Messiah. According to Wrede, the solution devised by the author of the Mark Gospel was to imply that Jesus kept his messiahship secret to his inner group of supporters. He also wrote a crucial study of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians
Second Epistle to the Thessalonians
The Second Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, often referred to as Second Thessalonians and written 2 Thessalonians, is a book from the New Testament of the Christian Bible...

, which argued for its inauthenticity.

In his work on Paul, Paulus, he argued that without Paul, Christianity would have basically become just another backwater Jewish sect that would have had little influence in later religious development. As a result, he concluded that Paul was "the second founder of Christianity."

Wrede's Location/Significance Within The Tradition of Critical Protestant Pauline Research

It is often assumed that Wrede, while distancing Paul from Jesus, also went so far as to distance Paul from his native Jewish background of ideas. In fact, given the tangent of Wrede's thought within the historical context of Pauline Studies, the reverse is actually the case.

Up until Wrede, the trajectory of this tradition of critical Pauline research had (especially since H. Ludemann) underscored both the Jewish and Hellenistic “sides” (F. C. Baur's term [as per English translation]) of Paul's thought—with the latter typically receiving a more paradigmatic place with the result that the former was usually made subordinate (an exception to this being found in the work of O. Pfleiderer—who maintained the equality of the Jewish and Hellenistic “sides” in Paul). What is common to virtually all of Wrede's predecessors in this tradition of critical research is the thesis that the Jewish “side” was characterized as “juridical-subjective” (or “forensic-subjective”) while the Hellenistic “side” was characterized as “ethical-objective” (or “mystical-objective”). What is significant about Wrede's work is that he radically reconfigures these categories: he takes emphatic note of the “objective” element constituted by Jewish Apocalyptico-Eschatology which places emphasis upon the “redemptive facts” (i.e., their historical objectivity) and, in doing so, Wrede demonstrates the relation between the Jewish element in Paul and the "objective" (Wrede piles up “objective” terms: “real,” “actually,” and, even, “literal” [p. 103]). Thus, although the Hellenistic (anthropological) ethico-dualistic vestige (with its construal of matter as inherently corrupt) remains to some extent in Paul's thought (for Wrede), it is nearly wholly eclipsed by Wrede's emphasis upon the (now) Jewish-Objective nature of Paul's thought—which is in direct continuity with Paul's Jewish heritage (for Wrede, it is Paul's doctrine of justification by faith which is "opposed" to Judaism and is relegated to being merely a later "polemical doctrine" [p. 123; cf. p. 84]). This direct link between Paul and his Jewish theological heritage is written large all through Wrede's chapter on Paul's theology (Chapter 3) but is made explicit under the heading “The Heritage from Judaism” (p. 138): “It can definitely be shown that a great Jewish heritage remains in the Pauline thought-world. It is indeed by no means unintelligible [that Paul] . . . this opponent of Judaism . . . [was] called . . . the most Jewish of all the apostles. As an educated theologian he possessed an especial wealth of clearly stamped Jewish ideas” (p. 138-139).

Schweitzer, following the lead of Wrede (and R. Kabisch), will exploit this eschato-objective insight by making it the (presupposed) basis of his own “mystical doctrine of Redemption;” this mystical doctrine, for Schweitzer, constitutes the centerpiece of Paul's thought (or, to employ a Schweitzerism, the “main crater”). This emphasis upon the objective-eschatological, in Wrede, in tandem with the participationist dimensions of the "mystical-being-in-Christ" doctrine of redemption (with its concomitant notion of redemption as transfer from the present evil aeon to the transcendent-eschatological aeon), in Schweitzer, will come to issuance in the Paulinism of E. P. Sanders (as nearly a fixiation with the Christo-eschatological--so that the juridical is eclipsed) and will, eventually, co-facilitate the emergence of the New Perspective on (first century Palestinian Judaism and) Paul. See the New Perspective on Paul
New Perspective on Paul
The "New Perspective on Paul" is a significant shift in the way some scholars, especially Protestant scholars, interpret the writings of the Apostle Paul.-Description:Since the Protestant Reformation The "New Perspective on Paul" is a significant shift in the way some scholars, especially...

.

The Emergence of the (Critical) Redemptive Historical Paradigm

Although the term “Redemptive History/ical” has come to mean many things (and is now a deeply conflicted technical term for theology); and although it is certain that the Protestant Reformers laid emphasis upon the (“objective”) historical redemptive work of Christ (in distinction from its “subjective” appropriation); and, finally, although Wrede was not the first to notice the historical dimensions to Paul's theology, it is Wrede who appears to be the first within the critical modern period of Pauline research to lay special emphasis upon the thesis that Paul's thinking and method bore a historical stamp through and through; for Wrede, the objective-historical was not, (as it was for F. C. Baur and H. Holtzmann) merely the objective theoretical (or theological) articulation of Paul's deeper “real” religious experience; thus, Wrede opens his chapter on Paul's theology by firing his cannon across the bow of Liberal Protestant Pauline Theology: “[Paul's'] theology is his religion” (p.76; italics Wrede). This point dovetails with the one made in the preceding section (above) and is made explicit in Wrede's treatment of the terms "Flesh" and "Spirit" which, for (Wrede's) Paul, exhibited a decidedly (Jewish) salvation-historical nuance (in distinction from the Greek onto-dualistic nuance): "Flesh and Spirit form an antithesis not only in their nature but in the periods to which they belong . . . and Christ stands as the turning-point between an old and a new age" (p. 115). Indeed, this is "one of the most essential features of Paul's type of thought . . . the history of salvation is the content of [Paul's] faith" (p. 115; italics added).

The Quest for the Historical Jesus

His work, and that of Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer OM was a German theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. He was born in Kaysersberg in the province of Alsace-Lorraine, at that time part of the German Empire...

 himself mark the end of the First Quest or Old Quest into the historical Jesus. Schweitzer's 1906 book was called "The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede". See the Quest for the historical Jesus
Quest for the Historical Jesus
The quest for the historical Jesus is the attempt to use historical rather than religious methods to construct a verifiable biography of Jesus. As originally defined by Albert Schweitzer, the quest began in the 18th century with Hermann Samuel Reimarus, up to William Wrede in the 19th century...

.

Works (Selection)

  • Ueber Aufgabe und Methode der sogenannten Neutestamentlichen Theologie, Göttingen 1897. (Published in English as "The Task and Methods of New Testament Theology", in Studies in Biblical Theology, 1973.)
  • Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien, Göttingen 1901. (Published in English as The Messianic Secret, London 1971)
  • Paulus, Halle 1904 / Tübingen 1907 (Published in English as Paul, London 1907)
  • Die Echtheit des zweiten Thessalonicherbriefes untersucht (The Authenticity of the Second Letter to the Thessalonians investigated), Leipzig 1903.

External links

  • Works by William Wrede at the Internet Archive
    Internet Archive
    The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...

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