Order of David Friedrich Strauss

Westar scholars inducted into the Order of David Friedrich Strauss hold a history of commitment to Westar, a consistent track record of seminar involvement, or a publication background exhibiting daring, imaginative, and cutting-edge scholarship in the spirit of Strauss. Westar scholars inducted into the Order have rigorously applied the historical critical method to the study of the Gospels and creeds that Strauss pioneered.

D. F. Strauss recognized that the basic problem facing Christianity is the relationship of the historical Jesus to the belief in a supernatural Christ. He was convinced that these two Jesuses had become mixed together. As a consequence, he laid out a two-stage project for his own scholarly work: first, he wrote his Life of Jesus (1835) in order to separate historical information about Jesus from mythical beliefs about him that were generated in rising Christian communities.

Strauss formulated two criteria for separating historical data from mythical beliefs in the Gospels: seams in the narratives and dissimilarity. He called his historical method “mythical interpretation” and applied it to all the Gospels, beginning with the infancy narratives and ending with the post-resurrection reports. His Life of Jesus stands as the first thorough application of the historical critical method to the Gospels.

After completing his study of the historical Jesus, Strauss went on to the second stage of his project: applying the historical critical method to Christian dogma. In a series of essays entitled the Christliche Glaubenslehre (1840-41), Strauss argued that theology is a continuous mixing of ancient belief with contemporary philosophical and scientific understandings. As the study of the Gospels must separate the historical Jesus from the Christ of faith, so too must the historical method separate dogmatic beliefs from established scientific and philosophical views.

Such a two-stage project marks David Friedrich Strauss as a precursor of Westar’s Jesus Seminar and one who, with courage and honesty, pursued both the quest for the historical Jesus and his significance for Christian faith in the modern world.

David Friedrich Strauss: Miracle and Myth (Marcus J. Borg)

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Inductees into the Order of David Friedrich Strauss

Marcus J. Borg (d. 2015), Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture, Oregon State University

John Dominic Crossan, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, DePaul University

Joanna Dewey, Harvey H. Guthrie, Jr., Professor Emerita, Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge

Lloyd Geering, Professor Emeritus, Victoria University

Roy W. Hoover, Weyerhaeuser Professor of Biblical Literature and Professor of Religion Emeritus

Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington

Karen King, Hollis Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School

Gerd Lüdemann (d. 2021), Professor of New Testament, University of Göttingen, Germany

Burton Mack (d. 2022), John Wesley Professor Emeritus, Claremont School of Theology

Elaine Pagels, Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion, Princeton University

Judith Perkins, Professor of Classics and Humanities (Emerita) Saint Joseph College, Connecticut

Daryl D. Schmidt (d. 2006), John F. Weatherly Professor of New Testament, Texas Christian University

Thomas Sheehan, Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University

John Shelby Spong (d. 2021), Episcopal Bishop of Newark

Joseph B. Tyson, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, Southern Methodist University

James A. Veitch, Victoria University of Wellington, retired

Walter Wink (d. 2012), Professor Emeritus of Biblical Interpretation, Auburn Theological Seminary