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Not to return to the old … can be the task of our time, but to clothe the spirit of Christianity, its religious-ethical principle, which lay as a compelling force at the basis of all preceding developments, in the fitting and intelligible form for our age.

— Otto Pfleiderer Evolution and Theology (1900)

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Paul abstracted this universal principle from the concrete phenomenon in the man Jesus, in whom it was interlaced with Jewish presuppositions and strivings, which as such would have been a hindrance to the universal and abiding effectiveness of that principle.

Evolution and Theology (1900)

Here is the basis of the modern critical biblical science, which treats the documents of Christianity and Judaism according to the same principles of historical investigation which are valid in all other historical domains, particularly in that of the history of the ethnic religions.

Evolution and Theology (1900)

The religious principle of Jesus was thus certainly freed by Paul from its original Jewish and national husk, but only to be immediately clothed again in a new supernaturalistic envelope, the origin of which likewise lay in the historically given ideas of Hellenism and Pharisaism. Therefore the Pauline Christ can just as little be for us a binding object of faith as the Jesus of history.

Evolution and Theology (1900)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Otto Pfleiderer (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.