But how is the Kirchenfürst to conceive his particular church and the interests involved in its government? He must go to the past, study the history of his church, and learn largely from that source what it is and what it needs. He cannot spin an adequate conception of his office from some abstract principles, or from his own private experience and the desire of his heart. Schleiermacher lays great emphasis upon historical study as providing the material with which reason must work if it is to be in effective touch with concrete reality. He shows a full appreciation of Bacon’s famous dictum, so proverbially neglected by theologians: “the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter … worketh according to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh its web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and of work, but of no substance or profit.”⁸ Moreover, Schleiermacher speaks of historical study as if it gave not only material for the mind to work upon, but also in part a direction in which to work. He seems to agree in a measure with Aristotle that things have a proper course of development, implicit in them from their beginnings. Historical science can, therefore, reveal to the Kirchenfürst the lines along which the further progress of his church lies.⁹

In order to do this, however, historical study must be wedded to philosophy. For a purely empirical study of events will not suffice to distinguish the essential from the accidental, and not every event in the history of a church is to be regarded as essential. In fact, some are to be viewed as errors, and the Kirchenfürst must be trained to recognize them as such even in the germ, that is, in their very first beginnings.¹⁰ In the Christian church it is the function of what Schleiermacher calls “philosophical theology,” first to distinguish Christianity from other religions (apologetics), and secondly, to define the true Christianity as distinguished from its excrescences (polemics).¹¹ To accomplish this work of discrimination philosophical theology must bring to bear upon the facts of Christian history a wisdom gained from ethics, a general comprehension of reasonable being, and from the philosophy of religion, a critical survey of religion in its various forms.¹² The generalizations of speculative philosophy and the specific researches of history must supplement and validate each other in fixing the locus of a church.

The chief generalizations from his ethics and from his philosophy of religion, which Schleiermacher brings to bear upon Christian history in order to fix the locus of his own church, are briefly set forth in the introduction to his Der christliche Glaube. First and foremost is the proposition that “the essential basis of a church is piety, a state of feeling rather than of knowledge or of morals.”¹³ This, of course, is the central point in his theory of religion as given in the Speeches on Religion. But in Der christliche Glaube he adds a thesis as to the general character of piety, which helps to identify religious feeling more specifically.

The feelings which accompany our thoughts and deeds are of two kinds, he says, those in which we feel ourselves to be passive, receptive, suffering affectation from without, and those in which we feel ourselves as active or expressive, as effecting changes in something beyond us. There are no feelings, he holds, in which we sense ourselves as purely and completely active without a trace of receptivity, but there are feelings in which we feel that even our own activity is received from something not ourselves. These feelings of absolute dependence (schlechthinniges Abhängigkeitsgefühl) are the religious feelings.¹⁴ This emphasis upon dependence as the criterion of religious feeling is not absent from Schleiermacher’s early writings. The pietistic consciousness of his boyhood was primarily one of repose in God. But in the Speeches, religious feeling is represented not only as a sense of dependence on the Universe, but also as an aspiration toward, as an openness to the Universe.¹⁵ In placing greater emphasis on the feeling of dependence in his later writings Schleiermacher brought his view of religion closer to traditional Christian theology.

This religious sense of absolute dependence, he regards as a natural element in human consciousness, not to be derived from or supplanted by any other. Hence the church, resting on such piety, is a natural group like the family, like the state, permanently rooted in human nature. It is not an association formed to serve a temporary need of certain human societies. A church is a communion of individuals having a similar sense of dependence upon the Universe.¹⁶ Theologies and rituals express various aspects of the life of such communions, but the nucleus of a church is the piety that pervades it. The Kirchenfürst, therefore, must comprehend his church in the light of its piety, understanding its creed and practice by reference to that, and not vice versa. The essential, architectonic wisdom for an ecclesiastic is a knowledge of the religious sense peculiar to his church, for without the leaven of that knowledge all theological and liturgical learning remains heavy and inert.

But how is this animating principle of religion revealed to the soul? Is the inner light of theological wisdom a free gift of God, or is there some discipline by which religious insight can be perfected at its very center? Schleiermacher holds that a comparative study of religions, if carried on in a philosophic spirit, is very helpful.¹⁷ For such study reveals, as it were, the dimensions of piety, its essential factors, and in so doing gives an approach, at least, by way of definitions to the indefinable, religious emotions themselves. If we are to know a specific form of piety, we must know, first of all, the character of its emotional organization. This is its first dimension. The second is the view of the universe with which this emotional organization is fused. And the third is the historic context or tissue of events significantly related to the other two. From his own comparative researches Schleiermacher comes to the conclusion that the most important difference in emotional organization, from the religious point of view, is the difference between an esthetic and a teleological organization of the emotions. In esthetic piety the impulses toward a natural enjoyment of the immediate predominate over the impulses making for moral reform; in teleological piety the reverse is the case. Mohammedanism is mainly esthetic, Judaism and Christianity teleological. The latter are differentiated emotionally from each other in that the first expresses primarily a need for reconciliation, the second for redemption. These three great religions are thus very different in respect to their emotional character, but they all seem to Schleiermacher to be on the same metaphysical level, namely, that of monotheism. He believes there is a progress discernible in man’s knowledge of the universe from a state wherein the idea of a universe or totality of things is entirely absent from human imagination to the state wherein men begin to conceive the whole of things vaguely as an interplay of powers, and finally to a conception of the universe as one great ordered system, the idea of modern science. Religious emotion combined with ideas of the first stage in metaphysical development gives rise to fetichism, in which piety is referred to some specific object rather than to the whole of things. Then come the various stages of polytheism, and finally monotheism. Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism are all on the monotheistic level. Pantheism is treated as a variant of monotheism, arising in the endeavor to minimize anthropomorphism in the conception of the Deity. Thus, Schleiermacher, believing that the metaphysical development of humanity through the progress of science is toward a conception of an Infinite Whole, believes also that there is a progress in religion towards monotheism. But he develops no theory of progress in the religious emotions themselves. Likewise, he has no general theory as to the nature of that tissue of historical events which, according to him, is also part and parcel of every living religion, a third dimension, as it were, of piety. The only generalization which he ventures in this regard is the observation that first beginnings are extremely important in religion. Thus in Christianity everything is referred back to Christ, and the influence of the early Christians is persistent.¹⁸

On the basis of such theories and inquiries Schleiermacher defines Christianity as “a monotheistic religion, in which piety is teleological and focussed upon the redemption wrought by Christ.”¹⁹ Every Kirchenfürst, he holds, must pursue a similar quest for such guiding concepts and definitions, if he would wisely compass the practical end of church government. The quest is historical and philosophic; neither historical learning, nor philosophical speculation alone will suffice, but each must supplement the other in order to yield the kind of theoretic insight which has significance for practice.²⁰

In describing the historical equipment of a Kirchenfürst, Schleiermacher is fully as constructive as in his treatment of the philosophical aspects of ecclesiastical education, for he had both a craftsman’s acquaintance with the tools of research and a well-considered ideal of historical study.²¹ His whole habit of mind was appreciative of the past, and following the impulse of this appreciation he discovered, in a measure unusual for his time, the outlines of cultural history in Europe. He was convinced that a general survey of human history as a whole is indispensable to the Kirchenfürst, since the development of churches and religions can be understood only in connection with the development of all mankind.²² But while advocating this broad perspective, he also laid great emphasis on the importance of exegesis, for his analysis of piety had caused him to believe that an accurate knowledge of a religion in its first beginnings is very helpful to an understanding of its essence.

Exegesis, therefore, being the study of a religion in its original forms and documents, is the most important single department of historical study for the Kirchenfürst. Schleiermacher makes the requirements in this field very stringent, and outlines them thoroughly. “Every specialist in exegesis must be able to construe the text of the canon critically, while every theologian, whether specializing in exegesis or no, must master the principles and methods of historic criticism, and must have a general knowledge of the most important critical sources and their relative worth.”²³ The Christian church must develop an expert knowledge of ancient languages among its own theologians, since the canonical writings are not interesting enough from the purely linguistic point of view to secure adequate critical attention from lay scholars.²⁴ Such attention is a constant requirement of the church, for the work of critically interpreting the canon can never be regarded as completed. Exegesis is a permanent discipline, repeatedly furnished with fresh problems by new discoveries and by the growing intellectual sensibility of mankind.²⁵

Though Schleiermacher’s account of exegetical science in his Brief Exposition of Theological Studies is very full and illuminating, the general spirit and the philosophical presuppositions of his own exegetical work can be appreciated still better by examining his specific contributions to the field. For instance, an examination of his Life of Jesus shows that he treats the Gospels as historical narratives, inaccurate perhaps in certain respects, but valuable, nevertheless, as recording actual events of religious significance. This attitude assumes that the religious significance of the Gospels is lodged in the events they narrate rather than in the narration itself or in the spirit of the writer. If it were primarily in the latter, the historic validity of the Gospels might be a matter of secondary importance. But Schleiermacher does not treat it so; he takes the records, and tries to construct therefrom a narrative, which he regards as both historically valid and religiously significant. For example, in his discussion of the Virgin Birth, he maintains not only that a Virgin Birth would have no religious value, but also that the Gospels do not declare it to have been a fact.²⁶ Similarly, in his treatment of the miracles of Jesus, he tries to show that the Gospels report as facts only such happenings as make the miracles religiously valuable.²⁷

Schleiermacher conceived the divinity of Jesus to consist in his special relation to God, whereby he awakened in other men the Christian consciousness of redemption. Thus, in his treatment of the Gospel narrative he prefers the Johannine emphasis upon Jesus’s message, and the significance of its eternal truth for the human soul.²⁸ But he also accepts as historically correct many of the incidents emphasized in the other Gospel accounts of Jesus’s life. He believes, for example, that Jesus did effect remarkable cures, and he believes also in the resurrection. He insists, however, that these unique acts and powers of Jesus must be regarded as fully compatible with human nature when spiritually perfected by the influence of God.²⁹ Jesus, that is, was fully human, and at the same time so perfected. From these observations it follows that Schleiermacher was a supernaturalist, if it be supernaturalism to believe in the resurrection and in the cures of Jesus. But if supernaturalism means that the world of God is not the natural world, but another world, then Schleiermacher was not a supernaturalist. For he believed that in truth there is but one order of things, the order of God.

That Schleiermacher was so much concerned with the interpretation of the Gospels may suggest a strong strain of traditionalism, if not of authoritarianism, in his thought. But he never abandoned his conception of religion as a free field for individuality, nor his idea of the church as a fluid association. He only emphasized more and more the intellectual responsibility of the individual, and especially of the Kirchenfürst, to conceive correctly the real relations between his religion and that of others. The moral of Schleiermacher’s attention to the past was not conservatism, but individualism through spiritual finesse. Exegesis and church history are not intended to bind the individual, but to help him discover himself through the study of others. At least, this is where the emphasis falls. The Kirchenfürst is intellectually and spiritually obligated to recognize heresy as heresy and schism as schism; such recognition, however, does not imply that what is heretical or schismatic from the point of view of his own church is any less valuable to mankind than his orthodoxy, or any less religious.³⁰

But what is heretical from the point of view of a given church? How is the Kirchenfürst to answer that question? He must put himself on the track of orthodoxy by taking his religious symbols from a source recognized by his church, and he must follow a certain rationale in their interpretation. This method will not lead him to conclusions which all orthodox members of his church accept fully and exactly, for even within orthodoxy there are individual differences, but it will keep him within the field of orthodoxy.³¹ Schleiermacher is no innovator in his conception of the sources from which orthodox religious symbols are to be drawn, for he holds that a religious symbol must have the sanction of tradition or of general recognition within the church for which it is considered orthodox. Thus, in the case of the Evangelical Church all propositions which claim to be dogmas must call to witness either the Evangelical Confessions, or the New Testament, or a general recognition by the church of their dogmatic character.³² But he is most original in his idea of the rationale by which authenticated religious symbols are to be interpreted. This, in fact, is the point at which his general theory of religion is in closest and most fruitful touch with his theology.

The first step in the interpretation of religious symbols is for the Kirchenfürst to discriminate between different kinds of symbols, Schleiermacher distinguishes between three main types: poetic, hortatory, and didactic (dichterische, rednerische, und darstellend belehrende). Didactic symbols which arise in the attempt to teach or instruct, are more stable in meaning than poetic or hortatory symbols, and hence a logic of their interpretation can be more definitely formulated.³³

The cardinal principle in Schleiermacher’s interpretation of didactic symbols or dogmas is to regard them in the light of the religious consciousness from which they spring. Consider, for example, the dogma that God created the world. It would be a mistake, says Schleiermacher, to interpret this doctrine as a scientific proposition about God and the world, to seek empirical verification of it, or to look for some first principles from which it can be logically deduced. Human experience and human reason will not suffice to establish such a proposition in the sense in which the religious man believes it. If that sense is to be preserved, the dogma must be viewed as a confession of faith, that is, as the expression of a certain consciousness in which the man feels the world to be dependent upon God.³⁴ The function of the dogma is to communicate that consciousness. Consider another example. In the Christian tradition theologians have wrestled much with the “problem of evil.” Dogma says that God is omnipotent and all-good. Why then is there evil? Schleiermacher suggests that the difficulty arises from treating these dogmas as verifiable descriptions of fact, which must be rendered consistent with each other. But the Kirchenfürst, the wise man who knows religion well, will take them as a system of symbols appropriate to the expression of Christian religious feeling. The Christian has a double consciousness, a sense of the divine and a sense of that which is not divine. The latter, existing in him together with the former, gives him a conviction of his own imperfection. Yet he also has a faith that the consciousness of the divine can supplant the other consciousness, as in Christ, and that then he would be perfect, lacking nothing.³⁵ Such are the feelings which these Christian dogmas express. “The problem of evil” is not a problem to be solved by the theoretic reconciliation of propositions, but rather a religious problem, involving the triumph of one state of consciousness over another. A system of dogmas is not a logical system, but a system of things felt in the religious mind. The Kirchenfürst will not try, therefore, to deduce one dogma from another, but will trace each back to the original feeling which brought it forth, and which sustains, justifies and explains it.³⁶

In accordance with this fundamental principle Schleiermacher tries to interpret the dogmas of Evangelical Christianity as a system of religious symbols expressing a consciousness of triumph over sin and evil through the redemption wrought by Christ. This is the main idea underlying his chief work on dogmatic theology, Der christliche Glaube, a work of beautiful lucidity in which both the strength and limitations of his thought stand clearly revealed. It was not his achievement to give the great religious concepts of sin and evil and redemption a deeper meaning. His essential accomplishment was to view these concepts as applying to a kind of experience that could be assimilated to other kinds of experience, in particular to modern science and morals. His true originality, like that of his contemporaries in German philosophy, was speculative, and the main trend of his speculation was to mediate between the various kinds of value to which he was sensitive. His work is characterized throughout by the attempt to do justice to divergent interests. He sought to combine the preservation of religious traditions with the fullest development of science and of individualized morality. No mind more perfectly illustrates the mediating character of thought in the early nineteenth century than does Schleiermacher’s in the second half of his life. At the same time, his speculation culminates, as the speculation of a mind tinged with romantic idealism should culminate, in the conception of an infinite task with infinite opportunities of salvation. For the harmonious adjustment of different human interests is an infinite task, and where the interests involved are those of knowledge, personality, and communion with the universe, who can doubt that salvation is near at hand?

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← Appendix I The Development of Schleiermacher’s Philosophical System · Contents · Selected Bibliography →

Footnotes

1. See Werke, III, v. 8 for the materials on politics as edited by Brandis, and v. 9 for those on pedagogy as edited by Platz. ↩

2. See pp. xlvii-l. ↩

3. Werke, I, v. 1, p. 8, §9. The section numbers (§) will serve to identify passages in other editions of this text. See Bibliography, p. 168. ↩

4. During his professorship at Halle (1804-1806) Schleiermacher had worked over the ground of the theological subjects, and had lectured in them as well as in philosophy. ↩

5. Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 6-7, §5. ↩

6. Werke, I, v. 1, p. 7, §5. ↩

7. Werke, I, v. 1, p. 7, §§6-8. ↩

8. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning. ↩

9. Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 14-15, §§26-28; p. 34, §70. Schleiermacher divides the field of theological study into three parts: philosophical, historical, and practical theology, each of which supplements the others so as to form with them an organic whole. ↩

10. Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 12-13, §§21-24, p. 18, §§35-36. ↩

11. Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 18-30, §§35-62. ↩

12. Werke, I, v. 1, p. 18, §35, p. 13, §23. ↩

13. Werke, I, v. 3, p. 6. ↩

14. Werke, I, v. 3, p. 15. ↩

15. See above p. xlviiff. ↩

16. Werke, I, v. 3, p. 32. ↩

17. Werke, I, v. 3, pp. 38-67. Cf. Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 17-18, §§32-33ff. ↩

18. Werke, I, v. 3, pp. 38-67. Cf. this whole analysis of piety, which Schleiermacher called his “philosophy of religion,” with the fifth of the Speeches on Religion. See above pp. li-liii. ↩

19. Werke, I, v. 3, p. 67. ↩

20. Werke, I, v. 1, p. 15-16, §§29-31. ↩

21. Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 34-100, §§69-256. See also above p. 120 and note. ↩

22. Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 40, §§85-86, p. 66, §165. ↩

23. Werke, I, v. 1, p. 53, §§123-124. ↩

24. Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 60-61, §147. ↩

25. Werke, I, v. 1, p. 60, §145, p. 46ff., §103. ↩

26. Werke, I, v. 6, pp. 58-64. This Life of Jesus had considerable influence upon D. F. Strauss’s better known work. ↩

27. Werke, I, v. 6, pp. 206ff. ↩

28. Werke, I, v. 6, pp. 225, 245, 273ff. Cf. this Life of Jesus with the Speeches on Religion, p. 246ff. And see pp. lii-liii. also Schleiermacher’s Weihnachtsfeier, a dialogue on the theme of Christ’s significance. ↩

29. Werke, I, v. 6, pp. 214ff. ↩

30. Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 74-80, §§203-204. ↩

31. Werke, I, v. 1, pp. 76-77, §196. ↩

32. Werke, I, v. 3, p. 144. ↩

33. Werke, I, v. 3, pp. 99-107ff. Schleiermacher was personally interested in poetic and hortatory symbolism as well as in dogmatics. It is scarcely necessary to remark this of so great a preacher. He also participated in editing a Hymnology and in many decisions of the Evangelical Church regarding ritual. ↩

34. Werke, I, v. 3, pp. 182ff. ↩

35. Werke, I, v. 4, pp. 6ff. ↩

36. This is the new principle in Schleiermacher’s interpretation of dogma, but he compromises with tradition in many ways. In Der christliche Glaube he finds it necessary to present the dogmas of the Church in three different aspects: (1) as descriptions of God, (2) as descriptions of God’s relations to the world, (3) as descriptions of human feeling in the presence of God. But he hastens to add that “it is an analysis of religious consciousness which must underlie all three of these presentations as the only scientific basis for the interpretation of dogma.” See Werke, I, v. 3, pp. 160-164. ↩