... He has not yet come again; therefore he still continues to be the abased one who, it is believed, will come again in glory ... He abased himself and was wrapped in rags ... He is mentioned century after century as the great and noble one; the matter of his abasement is as good as forgotten ... Christ himself willed to be the abased and lowly one ... The inviter, the one who says these words, that is, the one whose words these are .. is the abased Jesus Christ, the lowly man, born of a despised virgin, his father a carpenter, in kinship with a few other common folk of the lowest class, this lowly man who moreover claimed to be God (which literally amounts to pouring oil on fire) ... So it is the lowly destitute man with twelve poor disciples from the commonest class of people, for a long time an object of curiosity but later in the company only of sinners, tax collectors, lepers, and madmen, because merely to let oneself be helped by him meant to risk one's honor, life, and goods ... It would be human (and this is human nature) if you thought something like this: No, thanks, I would still rather go on being deaf and blind than to be helped in this way ...
-- Practice in Christianity, I
Perhaps it is somewhat of a scandal, to hold such a view, that The Word -- that is, The Word that has from the Beginning, where there seems only a formless dark abyss, called Light into existence -- became flesh and came to live among us -- to repeat, not as a mighty epic hero or terrible and glorious conqueror, but in the form of weak human flesh, subject to human suffering and death, living among very ordinary people, even among social outcasts
It is certainly a view that cannot be supported by any normal logic or by any careful historical investigation. And here I might let Schweitzer speak:
... The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma ... Jesus means something to our world because a mighty spiritual force streams forth from Him and flows through our time also. This fact can neither be shaken nor confirmed by any historical discovery. It is the solid foundation of Christianity. The mistake was to suppose that Jesus could come to mean more to our time by entering into it as a man like ourselves. That is not possible ... History can destroy the present; it can reconcile the present with the past; can even to a certain extent transport the present into the past; but to contribute to the making of the present is not given unto it ... But the truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as spiritually arisen within men, who is significant for our time and can help it ... The names in which men expressed their recognition of Him as such, Messiah, Son of Man, Son of God, have become for us historical parables. We can find no designation which expresses what He is for us. He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time ...
-- The Quest of the Historic Jesus
But I will give the final word to John: And the Light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never understood it
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