The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus' Messiahship and Passion

  • Year 1901
  • Type Treatise
  • Genre christology
  • Tradition Lutheran
  • Original language German

For For readers who want Schweitzer's own picture of Jesus in short form before the Quest; not for those wanting a devotional life of Christ.

Should I read this?

For the general reader
2 of 5 worth a look
For the researcher
5 of 5 essential
Difficulty
4 of 5 hard

Schweitzer's 1901 sketch of the life of Jesus: the ministry, the messianic secret and the passion read from Jesus' expectation of the imminent Kingdom. The thesis of the Quest in brief.

How it proceeds
  • Philosophic 2 of 5
  • Scriptural 4 of 5
  • Experiential 1 of 5
  • Sociological 1 of 5
  • Historical 4 of 5

Independent intensities, 0–5 — what the work is made of, not how good it is.

The second part (Zweites Heft) of Das Abendmahl im Zusammenhang mit dem Leben Jesu und der Geschichte des Urchristentums, published by J. C. B. Mohr in 1901 and subtitled a sketch of the life of Jesus. Here Schweitzer sets out the positive thesis that his history of research had prepared: Jesus' public ministry, his secret consciousness of being the coming Messiah, and his decision to go to his death are all to be explained from his expectation of the imminent Kingdom of God. The book is short and compressed, and it contains in outline the eschatological reading of Jesus that the Quest of the Historical Jesus defended at length five years later. Walter Lowrie's English translation, with his own introduction, was published in New York in 1914 as The Mystery of the Kingdom of God.

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