IT IS 60 years since the death of Albert Schweitzer (4 September 1965), the much admired missionary doctor, whose clinic in Lambaréné pioneered treatment and research into tropical diseases in what was then French Equatorial Africa. When I was at school, Schweitzer was often referred to as a perfect example of Christian service, as Mother Teresa was for the following generation.
Before his departure for Africa, Schweitzer had enjoyed an extraordinary academic and musical career. Ordained as a Lutheran pastor, he held doctorates in theology and philosophy. He was also a brilliant organist and musicologist, and a respected interpreter of the music of J. S. Bach. He later studied medicine to qualify for a post as an overseas doctor, and obtained a third doctorate before his departure for Africa in 1913.
His early research produced a turning point in theology. In The Quest for the Historical Jesus (1906), he critically examined the contribution of earlier scholars on the life of Jesus, abandoning the then popular view that Jesus should be seen as a universal sage whose message could be summed up as “The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man”.
Instead, Schweitzer insisted, Jesus must be understood as an apocalyptic prophet, who believed that God was about to bring in the end time. To enable this, as Schweitzer put it, Jesus “threw himself upon the wheel of history”. The wheel, though, continued to turn, and it crushed him. Nevertheless, Schweitzer claimed, the mangled body of Jesus still hangs upon the wheel of time, and, paradoxically, “this is his victory and his reign.” In academic terms, Schweitzer’s thesis was so convincing that it virtually ended the quest for the historical Jesus, until a new “quest” began in the early 1960s.
The theology of the Quest is deeply uncomfortable, but Schweitzer was prepared to live it out, which he did by abandoning his glittering career to serve the poorest of the poor. His only luxury was a pedal piano delivered to the hospital of Lambaréné after a long journey by boat. The closing words of The Quest sum up Schweitzer’s challenge to us:
“He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside.
“He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same words: ‘Follow thou me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.”
Such words are haunting enough at any time, but perhaps especially in our world, in which pride and self-fulfilment are often considered more virtuous than humility and service.