Chapter IX. The Revival of Abelard's Type of Doctrine by Schleiermacher and His Followers
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By those who see in the nineteenth century a peculiar theological development of decisive value, Schleiermacher is esteemed to be its epoch-making founder. Having to state what his contribution to the doctrines of redemption, reconciliation, and justification really was, I cannot avoid taking at the outset a definite position in relation to this view. The question is purely a historical one; but I think I ought at the same time to add that, so far as I am concerned, it touches no personal or party interest. For that very reason, however, I am not able simply to assent to the above assertion. Rather do I feel no small degree of doubt on the question whether Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre, his chief theological work, and that which is principally looked to, has exercised on subsequent theology an influence at once decisive and undoubtedly wholesome. If we were to consider that Schleiermacher, by means of this work, was influential as a law-giver as well as a model, he would then have to be recognised in the strictest sense as a founder of a school. But this is exactly what he did not propose to do by his Glaubenslehre, as he himself declares in the preface to the second edition, and as the event itself confirms. Rather when such a man as Dorner1 speaks of the school of Schleiermacher, he only means by that expression to say, that “of the more distinguished systematic theologians of recent times there is no one that is not indebted to him for essential aid;“—while they “who most loudly declare that they are Schleiermacher’s heirs often display but little of the truly progressive, fertile, and constructive genius of their predecessor,” other men, on the contrary, “notwithstanding their independence, are to be regarded as genuine maintainers or promoters of the spirit of Schleiermacher, having carried forward a regeneration of theology in the most diverse fields.” These declarations of Dorner are all the more important, because, from the place which is assigned to Schleiermacher by the historian of Protestant theology, one is rather led to expect that the strictest solidarity between him and his “school” is about to be made out. For Dorner is pleased to give his first notice of Schleiermacher immediately after a criticism of D. F. Strauss as author of the Leben Jesu. His point of transition is that the influence of Schleiermacher, and of the “theology which he led,” proved to be the most effective check to the effects of that work.2 I submit that the boldness of this historical grouping would avoid the appearance of violence only if really everything which the opponents of Strauss have produced could be attributed to Schleiermacher, and if everything of a special character which he originated had been taken up by those successors. That would have been possible only in a closely united school; but such a school, as I willingly concede to Dorner, never arose. Hence I would now, in the first place, question whether the “genuine conservation of the spirit of Schleiermacher” can be really traced in the theologians whom Dorner in his book is pleased to enumerate, or whether this predicate be not applied to them simply in order that the dialectical or providential course of the history of theology may not appear as resultless. For, if we take Dorner’s own view of the significance of Schleiermacher, as expressed in a number of characteristic features of his Glaubenslehre, which undoubtedly have a truly fundamental importance, I believe that I can prove that subsequent theologians either did not desire to take him as their model, or at all events have not succeeded in doing so. For his idea of religion has not been adopted by any of his successors without amendment or substantial alteration; or then they have, by the name of feeling, understood something quite different from what was meant by Schleiermacher; the reconciliation of the antithesis of supranaturalism and rationalism in the Glaubenslehre rested upon Schleiermacher’s own incommunicable individuality, so that his followers have again reverted to one or the other side of this antithesis; the idea of the Church which Schleiermacher not merely “was the first to reassert with power and enthusiasm,”3 but also in particular has applied in the Glaubenslehre for the purpose of fixing the doctrine of redemption, has not in this respect been appreciated by those who came after him. This appears nowhere more clearly than in Dorner’s exhibition of the principle of the Reformation already examined (p. 158). If Schleiermacher’s epoch-making position required to be proved by the fact that this, or even other doctrinal points taken up in the Glaubenslehre, have been followed as patterns with great results, it had been wiser altogether to cease from asserting it. But if scientific method and art have to be looked upon as the standard of Schleiermacher’s influence as a leader, then in the systematic theology of the following age, there betrays itself a general failure to reach that measure of strength of thought and constructive power, which, in spite of all errors and lurking inequalities, is clearly to be seen in the Glaubenslehre.