Albert
Schweitzer, theologian, philosopher, organist, authority on Bach, physician, and missionary, was born in 1875, son
of a Lutheran pastor, in Alsace, then German but now French. (Alsace and
Lorraine are two provinces lying between France and Germany, and for centuries
they have belonged to whoever won the last war.) He studied at Strasbourg and
at Paris, and around 1900 he became a doctor of philosophy and a doctor of
theology, and was ordained to the Lutheran ministry and became a preacher and a
lecturer in philosophy. He became an outstanding organist, and in 1905 published
a study of Johann Sebastian Bach.
He simultaneously wrote a book called The
Quest of The Historical Jesus, in which he argued that, of all the sayings
attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, the ones that are most certainly His are
the ones that give the impression that the end of the world is at hand.
(Interestingly, the well-known group called the Jesus Seminar, which likewise sets out to rate the sayings
attributed to Jesus with different degrees of certainty, has drawn the opposite
conclusion, and rejects all the so-called apocalyptic sayings of Jesus as
unauthentic.) Schweitzer himself drew the conclusion that Jesus believed in the
imminent end of the world, that he was wrong, and that therefore he was not
infallible or inspired or divine. In 1905 he announced his intention of
becoming a missionary doctor, and resigned his positions, giving up a brilliant
career, to go to medical school. In 1913 he and his wife set out for Lambarene
in Gabon (then part of French Equatorial Africa), where they built a hospital.
His work there was interrupted by World War I. Since he was a German citizen,
he was interned by the French as an enemy alien, and spent his prison time
writing. He published his Philosophy of Civilization, in which he
urged "reverence for life," a philosophy of compassion for all living
things. (A visitor to Lambarene saw a mosquito on his arm and was about to swat
it. Schweitzer saw it and said: "Think twice. Remember that you are a
guest in its country.") After the war, Schweitzer returned to Lambarene
and rebuilt his hospital, adding a leper colony. His autobiography, Out
Of My Life And Thought, was published in 1933. In 1952 he received
the Nobel Peace Prize. He died 4 September 1965.
A student of
Schweitzer's thought has written:
We typically
use 'optimism' or 'pessimism' to describe our intellectual predispositions in
how we view the world. For Schweitzer, however, those words relate not to the
intellect only, but also to the will and to the positive actions which we may
take: "True optimism has nothing to do with any sort of lenient judgment.
It consists in comtemplating and willing the ideal in the light of a deep and
self-consistent affirmation of life and the world. ... Optimism and pessimism,
therefore, do not consist in counting with more or less confidence on a future
for the existing state of things, but in what the will desires the future to be.
They are qualities not of the judgment, but of the will."
Schweitzer also
distinguished between how individuals and societies approach their ethical
roles: "The ethic of ethical personality is personal, incapable of
regulation, and absolute; the system established by society for its prosperous
existence is supra-personal, regulated, and relative. Hence the ethical
personality cannot surrender to it, but lives always in continuous conflict
with it, obliged again and again to oppose it because it finds its focus too
short." Schweitzer also holds that "even a society whose ethical
standard is relatively high, is dangerous to the ethics of its members",
because the individual spiritual ethic may be corrupted and overwhelmed by the
more practical ethic of the society.
I think the
challenge for the Christian is to try to develop a reflective, compassionate
understanding of life which will lead to devotion to others. As Greg Singleton
said, "Schweitzer was looking for method, not answers." We need to
find methods by which we can become "optimistic" actors in the world.
Society will
not resolve the world's problems. I guess that leaves it up to us as
individuals to try, however futile the goal my be. But I think that Schweitzer
would say that the ethical person must not consider whether the goal is
reasonable, but rather, must act according to the necessity of his own inner
compulsion to do good in the world.
Schweitzer was
not without his critics.
Some of them
were shocked by his hospital, which they found primitive. Instead of hospital
wards, there were rows of huts. When a patient came to stay there, his family
came along and moved in with him, bringing a few chickens and a goat and some
pots and pans, and they cooked their own meals, which the patient shared. His
critics said that this was no way to run a hospital. He replied that if the
patients were isolated from their families and fed from the hospital kitchen,
most of them would not come to the hospital at all. Life on a 20th century
European-style hospital ward would have been unfamiliar and terrifying. He
admitted that his hospital was practicing nineteenth-century medicine, but said
that this was better than the alternative, and that until his critics were
prepared to finance and maintain a better hospital themselves, they ought to
shut up.
Some of them
were shocked by his racism. In an age when everyone was denouncing colonialism
as an unmixed evil, he said bluntly that the European rulers were managing
African affairs better than the Africans had managed them when left to
themselves, and that it was in the interests of the Africans that the Europeans
should continue to be in charge. He said that the European ought to say to the
African, "I am your brother, but your elder brother."
Some of them
were shocked by his personal autocracy. He ran his hospital as he saw fit, and
expected others, black and white alike, to fall in line. It was, perhaps, a
natural attitude for a man who was in fact considerably more intelligent than
almost anyone else he met, black or white.
Some were
shocked by his religious beliefs, his forsaking of traditional Christianity;
for although he continued to regard himself as in some sense a Christian, his
views on the deity of Jesus Christ were at best shaky.
The fact
remains that he was a dedicated humanitarian, one who had the world at his
feet, and gave up everything to serve Christ in the person of the least of His
brethren. He prodded the conscience of the world. Without believing in the
deity of Christ, he did more in the service of Christ than most of those who
do; and without believing in the right of all peoples to instant
self-government, he did more to improve the lives of Africans than most of
those who do.
