Friedrich Schleiermacher

Schleiermacher, 1768-1834

Introduction

In this essay I analyze aspects of the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher. He is, by all accounts, the father of liberal theology. In general, liberal theology adopts what I have called the "Ecstatic" approach to God. This theological approach is widespread throughout the Protestant churches, and as such, merits our attention. In this essay, I will contrast his thought with Saint Athanasius.

Schleiermacher's theology is a creative synthesis of many factors, but several are particularly important. As a child, he was a Moravian. The Moravians were a German pietistic group who were devoted to the person of Jesus. As he grew up he entered Germany's highest intellectual circles and encountered other formative elements -- science, the scientific study of the Bible, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism. Even in our brief analysis of Schleiermacher, we will see how these factors fit together.

In certain respects, science was the most significant factor. In field after field, science cleared away the mists of superstition and explained phenomena in terms of antecedent causes. This perception gave rise to the notion that God did not really intervene in the world, and of course, this included the miracles of Scripture. The Scriptures were scientifically studied, and it soon became clear that the Bible was written over a period of centuries by various persons who spoke out of their specific historical and cultural context. Among other things, a number of biblical scholars came to believe that Jesus was not raised from the dead.

Schleiermacher was also influenced by Kant, the Enlightenment philosopher who challenged the world to "dare to know." According to Kant, even if God were to intervene in the world, even if there were some extraordinary miracle as a result of prayer, the mind still could not know it was God. The mind works with finite objects, things located in space and time. God is not a finite object like a tree, a thought, or a rabbit. Therefore, God cannot be known directly by the mind.

Further, as a result of the discoveries, Western civilization was becoming aware of other cultures, other religions, other modes of thought and feeling. Since the scientific mind naturally looks for the universal explanation underlying diverse phenomena, the idea easily arose that there was a universal religious sense or instinct that manifested itself differently in the various religions of the world.

Finally, Schleiermacher was a Romantic. He saw things as individual wholes. In this view, each individual thing, from the person to society, was a unique expression of culture, history, and self, a uniqueness that could not be reduced to the "dead facts" of science.

Given his pietistic upbringing, he had a deep feeling for Jesus, for the church, the mystery of the faith. He could not reduce these things to lesser categories. Therefore, he developed a religious approach that combined religious feeling with the particulars of culture and history, so that religion was the manifestation of a universal feeling incarnate in every culture and time. These are the formative influences that shaped Schleiermacher and gave rise to his unique theological synthesis. We must now investigate that synthesis.

I will begin with a diagram. Consider the following.

____________*______*____________***____**_________*_
___**___________________****__________________******
___*_____**___________***___**__****_____****__*****
_______D**__*****_***A*********__***********__*****
________***_*__*****__**_**___*****_**____****_*****
______________________****___*****___****__*______**
______*______________*______________________________
________________________***___________________*_____
_______****_____________**__******_______________***
______________***______B***_************************
______________**_*_____***_________******____**__***
____________________________*_______________________
_********___________________________*_______________
_____________________**___****____*____***__________
___***_________***_____________________________***__
__C**_____**______****_____**_____*****___*_______*_
___**__*_________*__*_______***___*________***_____*
_____*****_____________****________***_______**____*
____________________________________________________

Imagine that the diagram is the world with time going from left to right, and that each horizontal line represents a different place in the world. Imagine also, that God exists from "beyond" the world. Further, let the asterisks represent moments when the world becomes transparent. At those moments one can see through to the other side. When that happens, one senses that world and time itself are dependent upon some "Whence" which sustains the entire universe. This Whence is God. The word "Whence" is an awkward word, but Schleiermacher uses it, and I have decided to stay with it. It simply refers to the divine reality from Whence all things come. This Whence is the ground of the universe, or the origin of all things.

The experience of this Whence is a feeling. Schleiermacher calls it the "feeling of absolute dependence." One senses that everything depends absolutely on whatever sustains the world. At that moment, the feeling of absolute dependence combines with the mental, emotional, personal, cultural, linguistic, economic, social and historical conditions of the person who senses the Infinite on the other side. This in turn gives rise to speech and action, expressed in terms of the personal, cultural, and historical conditions at the moment of transparency.

For example, in the above diagram, something happened at D. Let us consider that the beginning of the Hebrew religion. The Hebrew religion began with the Exodus. The Hebrew people sensed the presence of God in the Exodus and they immediately expressed their feeling for God in a story, the story of the Exodus. This story was told over and over again. As it was told, it was reformulated according to new moments of transparency and new historical conditions. The telling of the story didn't just describe a past event, it became a moment of transparency itself. Just by listening to the story one could participate in the Exodus and sense the Infinite that lay "beyond" the world. Therefore, to the right of D, the story goes on, ever continuous with the old story, yet reformulated, itself a moment of transparency.

At point A the story broke out of its old mold to assume a radically new shape, yet one that was continuous with its past. That was Jesus. Jesus' feeling of absolute dependency was perfect, continuous, and it combined with his unique personal, social, and historical conditions to give rise to his words and deeds. These became a place of exceptional transparency. People saw through him into the Infinite. In his presence, listening to him, seeing what he did, their own sense of absolute dependence was kindled. It took flame, expressed itself as gospel. They told others who were in turn ignited. They banded together into communities, the church. The first generation died, but the gospel message was handed on, generation after generation, as we make our way left to right across the diagram.

At times, stories lose their power. They are told, but the transparent moment does not come. Or perhaps it occurs only dimly, seen by only a few. This is represented by the horizontal line after A with few or no asterisks. But surely, inevitably, there is renewal. The story comes alive, new conditions give it life. It is now told in fresh ways, modified and shaped by new circumstances. It reaches us. We hear it. We worship. We sense the divine Other as we tell the old, old story once again.(1)

As these things were happening, there were other encounters with the sublime Whence. They occur in clusters, the clusters being the various religions. In the diagram these are represented by B and C. For example, C could be paganism. It is not an historical religion. It can emerge at any moment through encounters with the divine. Or B could be another historical religion, with a continuous history up to the present moment. And of course, scattered across history and the world, there are always moments when the veil is lifted and an individual or a society can see the other side.

This is Schleiermacher's underlying theological vision. I now want to focus on one aspect of that perspective, as that aspect will illuminate the whole in an intelligible fashion. It can be simply stated: the Whence that was felt beyond the world can have no objective properties, not even at the moment of transparency. By "objective properties," I mean properties that objects have, such as being located at a specific place, or time, or being red, of having a definite meaning, this way and not that way. Let us see how Schleiermacher works this out, and why.

The Feeling of Absolute Dependence

We affect objects; objects affect us. When we affect them, we feel free, we have power over them. When they affect us, they have power over us, we feel dependent. Normally, in relation to objects, we feel both free and dependent. We affect objects and they affect us. But Schleiermacher would say that it is also possible to feel absolutely dependent on some Whence without any feeling of freedom on our part. If we felt that way in relation to the Whence, the Whence could not be any kind of object. For if it were, we could affect it since we can affect objects. If we could affect it, we would have freedom in relation to it and our feeling of dependency would not be absolute.

Not only that, the Whence must affect the entire universe equally. Suppose it affected me and not you. Then it would have certain objective properties, closer to me in time and space than to you. Then I could push back on it and you couldn't. If that happened, I would have some freedom in relation to it, and my feeling of dependency would not be absolute. For the feeling to be absolute, I must feel that myself, time, life, the world, the future, everything is dependent upon the Whence that underlies the universe, and further, that all parts of the universe are equally dependent upon the Whence. Or, to put it another way, the Whence must sustain all things equally and affect nothing individually. For if the Whence did affect the universe at a specific point, it would be located at that point, and whatever was there, would push back on it. Then the sense of dependency would not be absolute. Here are Schleiermacher's words.

As regards the feeling of absolute dependence which, on the other hand, our proposition does postulate: for just the same reason, this feeling cannot in any wise arise from the influence of an object which has in some way to be given to us; for such an object there would always be a counter influence, and even a voluntary renunciation of this would always involve a feeling of freedom.(2)

A Poetic Description of the Feeling of Absolute Dependence

It is rather difficult to describe the feeling of absolute dependence, for in the act of description, the thing to which the description points becomes an object and is therefore lost. Therefore Schleiermacher never gives a precise description, but he does describe it poetically in his famous On Religion, Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers.(3) He describes it with these words,

It is as fleeting and transparent as the first scent with which the dew gently caresses the waking flowers, as modest and delicate as a maiden's kiss, as holy and fruitful as a nuptial embrace; indeed not like these but it is itself all of these. A manifestation, an event develops quickly and magically into an image of the universe. Even as the beloved and ever sought for form fashions itself, my soul flees toward it; I embrace it, not as a shadow, but as the holy essence itself. I lie on the bosom of the infinite world. At this moment I am its soul, for I feel all its powers and its infinite life as my own; at that moment it is my body, for I penetrate its muscles and its limbs as my own, and its innermost nerves move according to my sense and my presentiment as my own. With the slightest trembling the holy embrace is dispersed, and now for the first time the intuition stands before me as a separate form; I survey it, and it mirrors itself in my open soul like the image of the vanishing beloved in the awakened eye of a youth; now for the first time the feeling works its way up from inside and diffuses itself like the blush of shame and desire on his cheek. This moment is the highest flowering of religion. If I could create it in you, I would be a god; may holy fate only forgive me that I have had to disclose more than the Eleusinian mysteries.(4)

Schleiermacher's definition of God

Once Schleiermacher has isolated the feeling of absolute dependence within consciousness, he then defines our relation to God as this feeling of absolute dependence. This is a definition. The relation to God is the feeling of absolute dependence. We need to understand this. Normally, when we think of God we think of something "out there" to which we relate. Schleiermacher is not doing that. That would make God an object out there. Schleiermacher is saying that the feeling of absolute dependence is the relation to God. But God is not an object to which we relate. We have only the feeling which "points" to some non-objective Whence. As we "feel" that non-objective Whence, we express it in words and deeds, prayer and praise, witness and action. These are piety.

The common element in all howsoever diverse expressions of piety, by which these are conjointly distinguished from all other feelings, or, in other words, the self identical essence of piety, is this: the consciousness of being absolutely dependent, or, which is the same thing, of being in relation with God.(5)

God is then defined as the "Whence" to which the feeling of absolute dependence "points." I put "points" in quotations because the word "points" normally indicates an object pointed to. God is not an object for Schleiermacher, and therefore the term "Whence" is also in quotations for the definition.

I may need to repeat myself. The definition of God as the "Whence," and of the relation to God as a feeling, are both definitions. They may well contradict your usual notions of God. God, for Schleiermacher, is not something "out there" to which one relates. Rather, your relation to God is a feeling inside of you, the feeling of absolute dependence. It is a feeling like other feelings such as love, hate, or sadness. But it is different from these feelings because they relate us to objects. We love or hate someone, we feel sad about some thing. The feeling of absolute dependence does not relate us to any object, but rather, indicates a non-objective "Whence" which is called God.

That is why the description from Schleiermacher's Speeches describes the "object" of his feeling for God as "fleeting and transparent," "modest and delicate." It is something one senses, not something that affects us directly. Therefore, when thinking of God in Schleiermacher's terms, we must always think of a non-objective Whence. Think of it as the unknown beyond the world as described in the diagram, an unknown which one senses but never directly encounters. This feeling for the unknown on the other side is the relation to God. The feeling does not relate us to God. That would make God an object. The feeling is the relation. Normally a relation relates us to something. Not this relation, it is simply a feeling.

As regards the identification of absolute dependence with "relation to God" in our proposition: this is to be understood in the sense that the Whence of our receptive and active existence, as implied in this self-consciousness, is to be designated by the word "God," and that this is for us the really original signification of that word.(6)

God has no Objective Properties

Schleiermacher now states that God can in no sense be known as an object, not even in the moment of transparency. He also says that if you think that God could be conceived as an object, such as for example, that God acted, said something, changed anything, this would be a corruption.

On the other hand, any possibility of God being in any way given is entirely excluded, because anything that is outwardly given must be given as an object exposed to our counter influence, however slight this may be. The transference of the idea of God to any perceptible object, unless one is all the time conscious that it is a piece of purely arbitrary symbolism, is always a corruption, whether it be a temporary transference, i.e., a theophany, or a constitutive transference, in which God is represented as permanently a particular perceptible existence.(7)

Knowing and Doing Combine With
The Feeling of Absolute Dependence(8)

The feeling of absolute dependence which mystically points to the non-objective Whence combines with knowing and doing and results in speech and action. The extended quotation from the Speeches given above hints at how this might happen. As Schleiermacher's poetic description advanced, he described how with "the slightest trembling the holy embrace is dispersed, and now for the first time the intuition stands before me as a separate form . . . " Here he describes the moment when the feeling for the Whence is transformed into the form of thought. This thought can be expressed in words. From there it "works its way up from inside and diffuses itself like the blush of shame," making its way throughout the whole person and resulting in both thought and action.

From this perspective, piety is the knowing or doing that results when the feeling of absolute dependence is transformed into thought and action. However, the essence of piety is not the thought or action, but something prior, deeper, the religious feeling itself.

Thus both hypotheses lead to the same point: that there are both a Knowing and a Doing which pertain to piety, but neither of these constitutes the essence of piety: they only pertain to it inasmuch as the stirred up Feeling sometimes comes to rest in thinking which fixes it, sometimes discharges itself in an action which expresses it.(9)

When the God-consciousness, or what is the same thing, the feeling of absolute dependence, is strong in a person, the person is known as a pious person. This piety can be communicated to others and can awaken their own latent God-consciousness. "As regards the feeling of absolute dependence in particular, everyone will know that it was first awakened in him in the same way, by the communicative and stimulative power of expression or utterance."(10)

Religious Language Can Be Detached from God

Language can never be used to describe the Whence of the feeling of absolute dependence. Language refers to objects and only to objects. God, however, has no objective properties, and therefore, language cannot describe God. Language can "point" to God, but God cannot be known by the language. Rather, one must go beyond the language to the indescribable feeling that language may arouse. Here Schleiermacher was influenced by Kant. He accepted Kant's claim that finite understanding, the thinking we used for objects in the world, cannot grasp God. Therefore, he appealed to feeling, a feeling for something that wasn't an object.

Nevertheless, when the feeling for God combines with speaking and acting, a person does express religious feelings in language. The language used, however, only refers to the feeling and never to God. In fact, religious language can be separated from "God," since language is objective and God is not.

Meanwhile, religious men know that it is only in speech that they cannot avoid the anthropomorphic: in their immediate consciousness they keep the object separate from its mode of representation ... (11)

The transference of the idea of God to any perceptible object, unless one is all the time conscious that it is a piece of purely arbitrary symbolism, is always a corruption, whether it be a temporary transference, i.e., a theophany, or a constitutive transference, in which God is represented as permanently a particular perceptible existence.(12)

When Schleiermacher uses the term "object" in the first quotation he is not implying that God is objective, but simply that what is designated "God," is separate from the language mystically pointing toward God. When the feeling of absolute dependence is expressed in language, it is "purely arbitrary symbolism," given by the fact that the person who feels it has certain historical and psychological peculiarities which give the feeling its concrete form.

From the foregoing it follows that God does not act or become present to reveal himself at the moment of transparency. That moment is a property of the world process. Earlier, when I first described the diagram and its asterisks, I simply said that "time goes from left to right," and that the "asterisks represent moments when the world becomes transparent." I did not say it was a moment when God appeared. That would be to ascribe to God language appropriate to objects, since only objects appear in space and time. God does not appear, rather, the world simply becomes thin in places. As that happens, one can sense that the world and time are dependent upon God, where God is defined as a non-objective Whence. But God did not appear at the moment of transparency. The claim that God was present at a particular time and place would be a "piece of purely arbitrary symbolism," a "corruption," a "temporary transference" in which we transferred to God something that properly belongs to the world and only to the world.

The Religious Genius

Not all persons experience the feeling of absolute dependence to the same degree. Some persons have an unusual sensitivity to God and are remarkably gifted in converting this feeling into words and deeds. They are the religious geniuses who bring to light the eternal flame. They formulate their piety with such brilliance that all who come in contact with them find their own latent piety enkindled as well. Speaking of the religious geniuses that have awakened the God-consciousness in others, Schleiermacher comments as follows.

Therefore when we designate all these men as heroes, each in his own sphere, and ascribe to them a higher inspiration, this is what is meant: that for the good of the definite circle in which they appear they have been quickened and inspired from the universal fountain of life.(13)

Jesus, an Exceptional God-consciousness

For Christians, Jesus of Nazareth was such a person. His feeling of absolute dependence was unusually potent, and he communicated this feeling to those around him through his words and deeds. As they received these communications, their latent feeling of absolute dependence was aroused, and they banded together to form a community of followers, the church.(14) The church continues to exist in history as subsequent generations have their God-consciousness aroused through the continued proclamation of Jesus' words and deeds through word and sacrament.

Theology Defined

From here, it is but a short step to theology. Just as piety is God-consciousness expressed in words and deeds, "Christian doctrines are accounts of the Christian religious affections set forth in speech."(15) Notice that Christian theology is not about God. Language refers to objects, God is not an object. Rather, theology is a description of Christian consciousness, of piety, of the faith of a community. Of course, Christian piety or religious affections can be "set forth in speech" in various ways such as poetry, narrative, and witness. Theology, however, sets forth the content of religious feelings in a systematic, consistent, and comprehensive fashion.

Theology is Specific to each Community

Further, the various forms of religious affections are distinguished by their various communities since those of similar affections band together in community. Therefore, theological statements or doctrines describe the religious affections of their specific community in a systematic and descriptive fashion. Since each community normally expresses its God-consciousness in the language and piety of its founder as enshrined in the founding events and original documents, these sources provide norms for the piety of the community and therefore for doctrine.(16)

This then, is the essence of Schleiermacher's vision. God is a "Whence" "pointed to" by a feeling, the feeling of absolute dependence. This "Whence" has no objective properties, for if it did, the feeling of absolute dependence would not be absolute.

At this point I would like to analyze Schleiermacher theologically in light of my essay on Athanasius and the Creed.

Schleiermacher's Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ

Athanasius believed that the divine nature was present in Jesus because God did in him what only God could do. Such a concept is utterly alien to Schleiermacher. He cannot have God doing or saying anything anywhere at anytime. This would make God an object and would always be a "corruption." This, however, leaves Schleiermacher with a very serious problem. As a student of classical Christian theology, he knows he has to account for the incarnation, for the presence of the divine nature in Jesus Christ. But that is impossible because Jesus was a man who lived at a specific place and time, and God is never an object like other objects which appear in space and time. Therefore, in the end, Schleiermacher must deny the presence of God in Jesus Christ, and he does so with a vengeance.

He begins by noting that the term "nature" only refers to the world of objects and not to God. It means a "limited existence, standing in opposition to something else, an existence in which active and passive are bound up together ... "(17) An existence of "opposition to something else," of "active and passive," refers to objects as they actively and passively affect each other. Therefore, to use the term "nature" to describe Jesus Christ as having both a divine and human nature, would be to drag the divine down to the level of created objects. Such an idea is pagan, as if God could be considered a created thing, a dog, a cat, or a tree.(18)

Furthermore, Schleiermacher notes that if Christ had only one will, and if this will were the human will, the divine will would be denied. Or, if Christ had only one will and it was divine, then the human will would be denied. The problem of will is theologically difficult, but Schleiermacher does not solve it or shed light on it in the classical sense. He simply uses the difficulty, along with other objections, to undermine the doctrine of God's presence in Jesus Christ, classically formulated by the statement that Christ was fully human and fully divine as one person. He calls this doctrine a "theory," as if it could not convey truth. In his view, "we are compelled to put a very low estimate upon the value of this theory for ecclesiastical use. It cannot give any guidance in the proper preaching of Christ, for it takes a purely negative form; . . . "(19)

What then is the divine nature in Jesus Christ? The way out is rather simple. The divine nature is simply the human feeling of absolute dependency raised to the highest possible pitch. It means that Jesus' feeling of absolute dependence was continuous and uninterrupted. Of course, there is nothing divine about this. The so called divine nature is simply a human feeling, like anger, love, or joy, intensified to the point of perfection.

We hope that above we have laid the foundations for such a revision, which attempts so to define the mutual relations of the divine and the human in the Redeemer, that both the expressions, divine nature and the duality of natures in the same Person (which, to say the least, are exceedingly inconvenient) shall be altogether avoided. For if the distinction between the Redeemer and us others is established in such a way that, instead of being obscured and powerless as in us, the God-consciousness in Him was absolutely clear and determined each moment, to the exclusion of all else, so that it must be regarded as a continual living presence, and withal a real existence of God in Him, then, in virtue of this difference, there is in Him everything that we need, and, in virtue of His likeness to us, limited only by His utter sinlessness, this is all in Him of such a way that we can lay hold of.(20)

When Schleiermacher says that Jesus' "God-consciousness was absolutely clear and determined" so that it can be "a real existence of God in Him," this does not mean that God was "in Jesus" in any way whatsoever. It simply means that the feeling of absolute dependence in him was perfect. This perfect God-consciousness is then "regarded as a continual living presence, and withal a real existence of God in him, ... " In other words, the divine presence is really the human God-consciousness perfectly aroused.

The immediate and inevitable conclusion is that Athanasius' understanding of one person in two natures has now been reduced to only one nature in the one person. A human being with a perfect and continuous feeling of absolute dependence is still a human being with no divine properties whatsoever. The fact that this feeling is "absolutely clear and determined each moment, to the exclusion of all else," does not make it divine. And Schleiermacher really doesn't say it is. He simply says it "must be regarded as a continual living presence, and withal a real existence of God in Him, ..." By "regarded" he means that the human reality of perfect God-consciousness is defined as the presence of God, just as he defined the relation to God as a human feeling. It had to be regarded as such because Schleiermacher had already defined God in such a way as to eliminate any divine effects in the world, so that the divine nature cannot be anywhere doing anything.

Athanasius would consider this senseless. Why, he would ask, would anyone even bother to have a Savior if he isn't also God, doing what God and only God can do?

But then, Schleiermacher states, "in virtue of this difference, there is in Him everything that we need, and, in virtue of His likeness to us, limited only by His utter sinlessness, this is all in Him of such a way that we can lay hold of." For Schleiermacher, salvation is the perfecting of our God-consciousness. We perfect it by hearing the story of Jesus. That is all we need in Jesus, and really all that "we can lay hold of." All we need is to have the feeling of absolute dependence perfected within us. We just need to be there when the story is told and the world becomes transparent. There is no need for anything else. Above all, there is no need for Christ to die for our sins and rise again on the third day. If fact, Schleiermacher found that idea rather embarrassing. Cross and resurrection play no role in his theology. Since Christ's death has no atoning significance, Schleiermacher pleads ignorance in regard to Jesus' words of institution at the Last Supper.(21) Rather, the only thing that really matters to Schleiermacher is Jesus' God-consciousness, and this he communicated to his disciples throughout his earthly ministry. That is all we can "lay hold of."

For Athanasius, the atonement is critical. It is the very center of Christ's redeeming work, the exchange of divine and human properties. Without it, he would be dead. The corruption of creation would rule. Life would end in death. There would be no grace, no forgiveness, no healing, no deliverance, no divine life given as gift. But all this is missing in Schleiermacher, and there is no way to reclaim it because he has denied the presence of God in Jesus Christ. Ultimately, finally, Jesus is no more of a person than the rest of us. His only virtue is an uninterrupted God-consciousness by which he "intuits" God.

This by classical Christian doctrine makes Schleiermacher a heretic, and in more than one way. He is both docetic and an Ebionite. Docetism was the heresy that the divine could not become incarnate in the person of Jesus in all his concreteness. Docetism took several forms, one of them being that Jesus only appeared to suffer, or that, when he did suffer, the divine Word left him. In a more general sense, docetism is the belief that the divine eternal is timeless, outside the flux of the temporal world, and therefore, the Son of God never fully became flesh. The Ebionite heresy was the belief that Jesus Christ was simply a man without a divine nature. All the foregoing discussion points to the fact that Schleiermacher's theology is both docetic and Ebionite. There isn't really a divine nature in the man Jesus (Docetism), simply the perfection of one aspect of the human nature. There is no incarnation of the God the Word; Jesus was simply a person like the rest of us (Ebionite), the only difference being the perfection of his God-consciousness. Schleiermacher knows he could well be considered heretical on both grounds.

And it would be difficult for anyone to prove that there is anything docetic or Ebionite in this description. It could be called Ebionite only by one who feels that he must insist upon an empirical emergence of divine properties if he is to recognize a superhuman element in the Redeemer; and the only thing that could be regarded as docetic is that in the Redeemer the God-consciousness is not imperfect.(22)

By "empirical emergence of divine properties" Schleiermacher implies that the only way his view of God could become Ebionite was if one were to insist upon a "empirical emergence of the divine properties" in the Redeemer. To know God empirically for Schleiermacher is to know God scientifically. It means that God would be an object like other objects, as if one could see or hear God's presence, as if God were an electron or a cat. But that is precisely what Athanasius affirmed. Against those who claimed that the divine nature did not become flesh, truly finite, truly human, he claimed, to quote my Athanasius essay, "that God the Son became fully human, that God was born, talked, ate, forgave, suffered, died, and rose from the dead."

And against those who, like Schleiermacher, claimed that Jesus Christ was only a man and not God, he claimed that Jesus as man did things that only God could do. Again, quoting the previous essay: "Athanasius asserted that the man Jesus assumed the properties of God. Jesus forgave sinners, healed the sick, cast out demons, stilled the storm, raised Lazarus from the dead, and entered into the eternal and incorruptible life by resurrection. For this reason, he was worshipped and called God by his disciples. (Jn. 20:28)"

Of course, knowing God scientifically is not the same as knowing God in Jesus Christ. Knowing God in Jesus Christ requires the Holy Spirit, and Schleiermacher lacks a real doctrine of the Spirit. God the Holy Spirit enables a person to know God as objectively present. This knowledge is not ordinary empirical knowledge, although knowing God as present means knowing that God has objective effects in space and time. Schleiermacher does not consider this alternative, that God can be objectively known but not scientifically known. Rather, he sees only two alternatives: God is either non-objective, or if objective, then God can be known empirically like any created object. Schleiermacher is forced in this direction because he developed no doctrine of the Holy Spirit when he first developed his notion of the feeling of absolute dependence. For him, there are only two forms of knowing, either mystical or scientific, no other. This is fatal.

Finally, we may ask, what does Schleiermacher make of the biblical phrase, "the Word became flesh?"

If this form of expression [his view of Jesus as human and divine] is very different from that of the language of the Schools as used hitherto, yet it rests equally upon the Pauline phrase "God was in Christ" and the Johannine "the Word became flesh;" for "Word" is the activity of God expressed in the form of consciousness, and "flesh" is a general expression for the organic.(23)

Here Schleiermacher equates the term "Word" of God for the "activity of God expressed in the form of consciousness." By this he does not mean that God is active in the person, affecting the person, changing them, or affecting their consciousness. Rather, the phrase simply means that the activity of God is the feeling of absolute dependence in consciousness, just as the relation to God is that same feeling.

This, of course, is to radically alter the entire thrust of the meaning of the term "Word became flesh." The Word is not a human feeling raised to perfection, rather, the Word is God, God himself, as John 1:1, as well as the whole of classical theology has always affirmed. The phrase "the Word became flesh," expresses an astonishing mystery, one that has exercised the mind and the heart of the church for centuries. It led Athanasius and later the church in council at Chalcedon to formulate the doctrine of two natures in one person. But Schleiermacher must deny all that. The so-called "divine" nature for Schleiermacher is simply the human feeling of absolute dependence raised to its highest pitch. To equate the "feeling of absolute dependence" in consciousness with the presence of the Word, is to deny any mystery whatsoever. It says nothing, only the rather trivial and obvious fact that certain people have mystical feelings and that these feelings belong to our human nature, to our flesh. This has nothing to do with the "Word became flesh."

In conclusion, we must say that Schleiermacher has radically altered the classical doctrine of the person of Jesus Christ. His Christ is devoid of a divine nature. From the point of view of Athanasius and the Creed, this is the end of the Christian faith.

Schleiermacher's Doctrine of the Trinity

Let us now consider Schleiermacher's doctrine of the Trinity.(24)

First, Schleiermacher does not believe that the reference to God as Three in One refers to God, but rather to a tripartite division within religious feeling. This is logical since religious language cannot refer to God but only to "religious affections." Within consciousness, there is a peculiar feeling, the feeling of absolute dependence which points beyond itself to a non-objective Whence. This feeling for the Whence corresponds to God the Father "pointed to" by the feeling of absolute dependence. Secondly, within the man Jesus, the feeling of absolute dependence combined perfectly with thinking and action to produce words and deeds. This second element, the words and deeds of Jesus, is God the Word or Son and was derived from the first. Finally, this same feeling was communicated from the man Jesus to others who formed the church. This third aspect corresponds to the Holy Spirit. These three elements, the original intuition of absolute dependence "pointing" to some Whence (God the Father), its combination with words and deeds in the man Jesus (God the Word), and subsequent reflection in the church (God the Spirit) are the realities which give the real meaning of Father, Son, and Spirit. Notice that all three realities, the original feeling of absolute dependence, its expression in words and deeds, and the reception of these words in others, are all three human realities. In short, the doctrine of the Trinity refers to a human reality, and not to "persons" (Father, Son, and Spirit) who are related to one another within God.

As a result, Schleiermacher has nothing to say about God in himself. Nothing can be said. If Schleiermacher were to say something about God in himself, claiming for example that there were three Persons united by two issues, that would imply that one could perceive one aspect of God over against another, and thereby have a sense of freedom in this act of awareness which would imply that the feeling of absolute dependence was not absolute but relative. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can be said about God in himself. All theological statements refer to piety, nothing more. In regard to the language of Trinity Schleiermacher comments, "The result was the familiar dualism unity of Essence and trinity of Persons. But the assumption of an eternal distinction in the Supreme Being is not an utterance concerning the religious consciousness, for there it could never emerge."(25)

What would Athanasius think of this? He would be dumbfounded. He felt that God had revealed himself in creation and in incarnation, and that the two revelations were different. God the Father made, the Son became incarnate, and therefore, within God, Father and Son were distinct since creation and incarnation were distinct. They were related since the Father eternally begets the Son who became incarnate to redeem what the Father had originally made good. If one does not affirm this there is no redemption in Jesus Christ. We are all dead. But all of that is missing in Schleiermacher. There can be no distinction between God's act in creation and that of incarnation. That would make God an object for knowing, visible in creation one way and visible another way in incarnation. That is impossible. That isn't scientific. God relates to all things equally. Schleiermacher's God is simply an omnicausal ground, equally related to all things, redeeming nothing, but sustaining the whole with one grand burst of unmoved moving.

From Athanasius's perspective, Schleiermacher is an Arian through and through. Like Arius, his God does one thing and one thing only, supports all things equally. Athanasius would know this in an instant. Phrases from the Creed such as "eternally begotten," "Light from Light," "begotten not made" "proceeds from the Father and the Son," "The Lord the giver of Life," have no meaning in Schleiermacher's theology. About the only phrase that might have some meaning is "One God." But even that won't work since it is immediately followed by the term "Father."

Schleiermacher and the Life of Jesus

Schleiermacher's understanding of the life of Jesus, presented in his Life of Jesus, is consistent with the picture we have painted above. We may restrict ourselves to only a few comments.

First, just as in the case of his theology, Schleiermacher has a very difficult time understanding how the divine could be present in the life of Jesus. He worries through the matter and essentially arrives at the conclusion given above, the divine is simply the perfect potency of Jesus' God-consciousness.(26)

Secondly, Jesus' miracles cannot be seen as acts of God, but are the result of Jesus' potent personality affecting the souls of others and through this their bodies. Other miracles, the quieting of the storm, for example, are the result of foresight. A very, very few miracles resist explanation, and await further scientific investigation into the relation between the psychic and organic realms. One, the raising of Lazarus, is unusually baffling. Apparently Schleiermacher believes that the event belonged to the general course of world events, but not as a result of a word of divine authority spoken by the man Jesus.(27) In short, Schleiermacher adopted a consistent scientific approach to the life of Christ, where "scientific" means that events need to be accounted for in light of antecedent causes.

On the whole, therefore, as regards the miraculous, the general interests of science, more particularly of natural science, and the interests of religion seem to meet at the same point, i.e. that we should abandon the idea of the absolutely supernatural because no single instance of it can be known by us, and we are nowhere required to recognize it.(28)

Athanasius, of course, believed the miracles literally. They were the saving acts of God, culminating in the resurrection. He did have some sense of historical and social context, and he interpreted Adam and Eve figuratively, but even so, his use of Scripture would be considered primitive by contemporary standards. Nevertheless, he did see a critical point, that God acted in Jesus Christ and this action must be miraculous. I will discuss this in greater detail in the section on Scripture. There I will defend Athanasius with some modification. At this point, however, it must be said that Athanasius had a very clear and convincing point. Without miracle, without God's divine act doing what God and only God can do, the Creed makes absolutely no sense. It is completely unnecessary. All one needs is the diagram given at the beginning of this essay, and that diagram has nothing in common with the diagram given in the Athanasius essay. There is no eluding this.

I may need to restate this. Athanasius and Schleiermacher were both very acute logical thinkers. They began with different assumptions and logically made their way forward to their inevitable conclusions. For Athanasius, God was miraculously present and active in Jesus Christ and this resulted in the orthodox Creed which distinguished yet related creation and incarnation. In incarnation, God did what creation could not do, which means that God did things beyond the power, order, or causality of nature. For Schleiermacher, God was not present and miraculously active in Jesus Christ and this resulted in a radical reformulation that Athanasius would insane.(29) Both were rigorous, their thinking iron clad. Either miracle and classic Creed and faith, or no miracle and something radically different. This conclusion cannot be avoided.

As previously noted, Schleiermacher has no real doctrine of the atonement. Therefore, the cross, resurrection, and ascension play no real part in his understanding of redemption. Jesus became the redeemer through the directing influence of his God-consciousness, and this was communicated by his life, not his cross and resurrection.

The facts of the Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ, and the prediction of His Return to Judgment, cannot be laid down as properly constituent parts of the doctrine of His Person.(30)

The disciples recognized in Him the Son of God without having the faintest premonition of His resurrection and ascension, and we too may say the same of ourselves; moreover neither the spiritual presence which He promised nor all that He said about His enduring influence upon those who remained behind is mediated through either of these two facts.(31)

Nevertheless, although the cross and resurrection are irrelevant for redemption, Schleiermacher does discuss them in his Life of Jesus since they belong to the history of his person. The cross, of course, requires little discussion, the resurrection is more problematical.

It is difficult to discover exactly what Schleiermacher thinks about the resurrection, and his thinking has been interpreted in various ways.(32) Several factors do seem significant. First, he wishes to maintain a strictly scientific approach, noting for example, that a body begins at once to decompose once dead. He also states that one can scarcely claim an absolute miracle such as resurrection since that would require an infinite amount of investigation and that is not available to us. Consistent with the whole of his teaching, the critical matter is that Christ's death occurred when his God-consciousness reached zero.(33) At the same time, he wants to claim that Jesus' life after "death" was essentially the same as his life before death. In fact, Jesus' physical vitality was scarcely diminished by the cross as seen in his ability to walk with the disciples on the road to Emmaeus.(34) At one point Schleiermacher seems to affirm a real death, after which the spiritual vitality of his God-consciousness gave life to his dead body. That would be consistent with his theological perspective. "If nevertheless, we wish to regard even this from the standpoint of the divine decree, then we must concede that it behooved the Perfector of faith to die a death which should be not simply an occurrence, but at the same time a deed in the highest sense of the word, in order that in this too He might proclaim the full dominion of spirit over the flesh."(35) In any event, if the spiritual vitality of Jesus gave life to his body, this does not imply that God acted to raise Jesus from the dead, for such a concept, to use Schleiermacher's language, is not an immediate occurrence of the religious consciousness. Whatever Schleiermacher thinks, the cross and resurrection together have little significance for faith.

Schleiermacher and the Scientific Study of Scripture

By contemporary standards, Schleiermacher's analysis of the gospels is rather primitive, although his presuppositions are shared by many modern exegetes. Since the essence of religion was a non-objective feeling, the real value of the gospel stories was not the events the stories narrate, but rather, the fact that they could awaken and nourish the feeling of absolute dependence in those who heard the stories. The gospel narrative was, to refer to Tillich, a "picture" which mediated the non-objective sense of God. Or, to follow the New Testament scholar Bultmann, the biblical narrative revealed how one should relate existentially to being in the world. In this way, the only thing that matters is the biblical picture or story. It really doesn't matter whether Jesus did or said what Scripture says he did or said, or whether the stories about Jesus were created by the church and subsequently attached to a person named Jesus. If the scientific study of the Bible showed that Jesus did not do certain things the Bible claimed, that didn't matter for faith, since it was the biblical story, the picture of Jesus, which aroused piety rather than the actual events of Jesus' life. For this reason, to really understand a biblical story one must go behind it, to the feeling it arouses, and from there to thought and action. That is the real meaning.

Schleiermacher, a New Synthesis

On the basis of the foregoing it is evident that Schleiermacher has radically reinterpreted the Christian faith. Nothing was left unchanged. He had no real doctrine of God, of incarnation, of atonement, of redemption in Christ. The Whence he feels from "beyond" the world says nothing, does nothing, and hears nothing. From the point of view of Athanasius and the Creed, Schleiermacher is an Arian.

In another essay, I will discuss Karl Barth in relation to Schleiermacher. As we shall see, Karl Barth considered Schleiermacher a heretic, and one of the principle motives for writing his massive Church Dogmatics was to refute this heresy. He thought it insidious. It led to the belief that the non-objective sense of Christian piety could combine with Germany's unique cultural and historical destiny to produce a potent cocktail of German Christian nationalism under Hitler. Then as now, the ecstatic vision cannot avoid acculturation for the simple fact that its ecstatic feeling for God will take form according to time and culture itself.

Schleiermacher's Creed

We may end this section with Schleiermacher's radical reformulation of the Nicene Creed. Schleiermacher wrote no such modified Creed. I wrote it for him, simply applying his reformulations to the creedal phrases. I put a bit of it in brackets since it plays no real part in Schleiermacher's understanding of faith.

We believe there is a God-consciousness. It points to a single Whence. It resonates to the feeling that this Whence underlies all things, creator of the heavens and earth, the visible and invisible. This feeling gives rise to authoritative words, they are the only true words from the feeling, always coming from the feeling, words from feeling, radiant words from radiant feelings, true words from true feeling, the feeling of the words is the same as the feeling. Felt with the Whence underlying all things. The words from the feeling gave us the feeling and came to us as salvation: by the power of the shared feeling the words became a feeling in Mary and is as our feelings. [Crucified under Pontius Pilate, the feeling became dormant. But the potency of the feeling gave him life], that life was first felt in the Old Testament, continues to echo through the ages, and it will have no end. The feeling is shared, the shared feeling is authoritative, that is life, the shared feeling comes from the feeling and its words and deeds. With the feeling and the words it is sublime. It was felt and expressed in words by the prophets. The shared feeling forms the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. It cleanses from sin in baptism, and we look forward to future generations of shared feelings. Amen.

Of course, Schleiermacher would never use this revisionist creed in worship. Not because it isn't true to his understanding of God. It is true, but its formulations are too theological and abstract. They do not arouse feeling. The Old Creed is better. Its grand statements about God, its feeling of mystery, its sublime affirmation of the life of the world to come, cannot help but arouse the deepest emotion in sensitive souls. That is the value of the Creed. It arouses the religious emotion which in turn stimulates thought and action.

Not so for Athanasius. For him the Creed is theological truth, a succinct statement of the faith developed by rigorous theological analysis, telling him something about God rather than feeling.

This leads at once to a critical point. Schleiermacher and his spiritual descendants will worship, pray, read Scripture, recite the Creed, baptize, receive Eucharist along with everyone else in the church. But as they do these things, they ascribe a very, very different meaning to these matters than would a more traditional Christian who believes that God can literally speak and act. Only when one gets to something practical, liturgical language, sexual ethics, ordination, evangelism to those of other religions, the question of healing, does one begin to notice the differences.

How, one wonders, could this radical reinterpretation of the faith gain a foothold in the church? There are many reasons, but part of the reason is the social context which produced this revision in the first place.

Schleiermacher's Cultural Context

Schleiermacher belonged to an cultural elite for whom such matters as the blood of Jesus, miracles, visions, and interventions by the Spirit were considered primitive and superstitious. As a result, he articulated a vision of faith that would avoid these crudities and appeal to the enlightened sensibilities of the class whose esteem he courted. This was his famous Religion, Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, addressed to the cultured elite of his day. In this text, he did not confront them with truth. He flattered them. He acknowledged their obvious superiority, enlisted himself as one of their number, and told them that the essence of religion, its sublime heights and profound depths, could only be grasped by those like themselves. He made it quite clear that they didn't need a deity who practiced child sacrifice on a cross. Nor did they need the sight of blood to feel good about themselves. Nor did they need a God who commanded their absolute obedience, worship, and praise. Rather than confront them with these crudities, Schleiermacher's Speeches flattered, enchanted, and seduced, leaving them smugly possessed by themselves if not by something worse. Consider the following quotations, beginning with Schleiermacher's opening lines.

It may be an unexpected undertaking, and you might rightly be surprised that someone can demand from just those persons who have raised themselves above the herd, and are saturated by the wisdom of the century, a hearing for a subject so completely neglected by them.(36)

From time immemorial faith has not been everyone's affair, for at all times only a few have understood something of religion while millions have variously played with its trappings which it has willingly let itself be draped out of condescension.(37)

It is not blind partiality for my native soil or for my companions in disposition and language that makes me speak thus, but the deep conviction that you are the only ones capable, and thus also worthy, of having the sense for holy and divine things aroused in you.(38)

Statements such as these, taken from the opening pages of Schleiermacher's Speeches, continue throughout the book. Similarly today, Schleiermacher's theological vision appeals to the intellectually sophisticated, the cultured, and the courageous. These are the ones who refuse to duck the real questions raised by Marx, Darwin, and Freud. They are the ones who have come of age. They know that modernity does not demand its negation, but rather, the affirmation of its questions rather than an answer.

Schleiermacher and the Enduring Power of Liberalism

In another sense, the enduring power of Schleiermacher has been his ability to overcome the scientific and Enlightenment challenge to religion. In response to science, he claimed that the essence of religion was feeling, a feeling pointing to a reality beyond scientific scrutiny. Science dealt with objects, and God was not an object. In response to the scientific study of the bible, he claimed that science could not touch the real essence of the Bible. Its real message was not whether certain things were said or done, but the power of its words and deeds to kindle a sense of the Infinite, regardless of their precise origin. Further, accepting Kant, God was never grasped with the understanding that one applies to objects. Rather, God is grasped ecstatically. In regard to Romanticism, with its emphasis on the individual, the organic, the sublime, he offered a form of religion in which the feeling of absolute dependence combined with national and social characteristics to form expressions of Christian piety suitable to each unique individual and culture. In regards to other religions, they, like Christianity, were the expression of the Infinite in its many historical and cultural forms. As a result, they can be acknowledged, respected, and celebrated. Of course, being a child of his time, Schleiermacher believed that the Christian religion was the highest, but not because the one God became incarnate in Jesus Christ and nowhere else as Athanasius thought. Rather, it was the potency of Jesus' God-consciousness that made him unique. Be that as it may, Schleiermacher set the stage for a liberal and inclusive view of all faiths. This then, is the power of the liberal theological tradition, as much then as now.

Final Comments

At the end of my essay, "Objective and Ecstatic," I gave a series of propositions which outlined how the objective and ecstatic views of God differed. The critical difference was found in the first contrast, and the divergence between the objective and ecstatic positions only widened with each logical development of that initial difference.

Schleiermacher begins with the ecstatic starting point: "God in himself or in revelation as Word is never objective. He is always transcendent." As shown in this essay, this starting point leads to a dead God, a God who does and says nothing. This death of God is a fact, a fact of liberal theology. It can be seen in its faith and practice, and it can also be seen theologically. As shown in this essay, it destroys the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation. It reduces the living God of Scripture to a human feeling. It leaves the soul helpless before the "facts" of life, facts that its dead God must affirm as omnicausal ground.

There are many voices in the church. Some of them speak quite persuasively and rather well. Rarely, however, do the ecstatics spell out their underlying assumptions, nor do they carry their premises to their inevitable conclusion. There are, of course, some refreshing exceptions. Bishop Spong is one of them. So was Schleiermacher. He didn't hide behind words, but carried his view to its logical conclusion. Often, however, the ecstatics hide behind words. They go about as wolves in sheep's clothing. As of now, I have written essays on Sedgwick, Johnston, and the Presiding Bishop. On the surface they seen so tolerant, sensible, and intelligent. But their ecstatic vision is fatal. Not simply because it isn't orthodox, it isn't, but because, if followed, it will lead to the death of the church. The sooner we learn this, the better.

Endnotes

1. This is the perspective advanced in Michael Johnston's Engaging the Word and discussed on this website.
2. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith. English Translation of the Second German Edition. Edited by H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928, p. 15.
3. Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion, Speeches to its Cultured Despisers. Introduction, translation, and notes by Richard Crouter. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
4. Schleiermacher, Speeches, p. 112 3.
5. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 12.
6. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 16.
7. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 18.
8. See especially, Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, sections 3-4, pp. 7-11. He sums up his discussion of feeling, knowing, and doing with these words: "Thus both hypotheses lead to the same point: that there are both a Knowing and a Doing which pertain to piety: they only pertain to it inasmuch as the stirred up Feeling sometimes comes to rest in a thinking which fixes it, sometimes discharges itself in an action which expresses it." (pp. 10-11.)
9. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, pp. 10 11.
10. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 27.
11. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 26.
12. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 18.
13. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 63.
14. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, section 6, which is introduced with these words: "The religious self-consciousness, like every essential element in human nature, leads necessarily in its development to fellowship or communion; a communion which, on the one had, is variable and fluid, and, on the other hand, has definite limits, i.e. is a Church." (p. 26.)
15. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 76.
16. This is a logical conclusion of the foregoing. But especially see, Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, section 19, pp. 88f. Its leading statement: "Dogmatic Theology is the science which systematizes the doctrine prevalent in a Christian Church at a given time." (p. 88.)
17. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 393.
18. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, section 96, pp. 391 8.
19. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 396.
20. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 397.

The Redeemer, then, is like all men in virtue of the identity of human nature, but distinguished from them all by the constant potency of His God-consciousness, which was a veritable existence of God in Him. (p. 385.)

21. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. The Life of Jesus. Edited and with an Introduction by Jack C. Verheyden, Translated by S. Maclean Gilmour. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975, p. 392.
22. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, pp. 397 8.
23. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 397.
24. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, pp. 738ff.
25. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 739. According to Schleiermacher, if the difference between Christ and others is so great that others cannot receive a new God-consciousness through Christ, then Christ's participation in human nature is mere appearance and this is Docetic. But if Christ so utterly like us that we have no need to be formed by his God-consciousness, then this is Ebionite or Nazarean. Here Docetic and Ebionite refer to how Jesus' God-consciousness might differ from those of others, and this has nothing to do with the presence of God in him which was the issue in regards to Docetic and Ebionite. (See The Christian Faith, p. 99.)
26. Schleiermacher, The Life of Jesus, Especially lecture 13, pp. 81ff, and lectures 41 and 42, pp. 269f.
27. Schleiermacher, The Life of Jesus, the discussion p. 218.
28. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 183.
29. Athanasius used that very word, and worse, to describe Arius. See Against the Arians, p. 121.
30. The Christian Faith, p. 417.
31. The Christian Faith, p. 418.
32. The Christian Faith, p. 456.
33. Schleiermacher, the discussion, pp. 415 6, Life of Jesus.
34. Schleiermacher, Life of Jesus, p. 445.
35. Schleiermacher, The Christian Life, p. 463,
36. Schleiermacher, Speeches, p. 77.
37. Schleiermacher, Speeches, p. 77.
38. Schleiermacher, Speeches, p. 84.