Schleiermacher: The Christian Faith, 86-156
Schleiermacher
will now have a much longer exploration of grace (86-169) as the experience of
vital fellowship that brings moral transformation. The present sense of the Christian
fellowship consists of the need humanity has for redemption. This awareness is
the basis for his concept of Jesus as the Redeemer. Tillich will admit that
much of his discussion of Jesus as the New Being is similar to what
Schleiermacher says here, although he cautions that they are not identical
presentations.[1]
Schleiermacher
begins with Christian consciousness and asks how it posits the redeemer.[2]
He is trying to derive the contents of the Christian faith from the Christian
consciousness. The Lutheran School of Erlangen sought to do something similar.
Such an attempt is an illusion. The event on which Christianity has its basis
is not the regenerated Christian, but the event given to the community in
history. Experience is not the source from which the contents of systematic
theology come. Rather, experience is the medium through which we receive the
contents of the faith.[3]
The theologian needs to hold both the revelatory event in Jesus of Nazareth and
the event nature of the act of faith. Schleiermacher has a loose grip on the
event of the past or the event nature of the present act of faith. In a fine
phrase,[4]
Christ is human nature complete for the first time.[5]
He recaptured the insight of Irenaeus at this point.[6]
His primary interest is in the God-consciousness Jesus possessed. He has
interest in the event of Jesus Christ to this extent. He founded a community
defined by the rule of God among them. Such a community is separate from the
State in that this community has the purpose of deepening the God-consciousness
of each other. Yet, this means he has less interest in the story of Jesus as
related in the Gospels.[7]
Among the challenges in reading Schleiermacher is at this point. The fellowship
of the redeemer must have a historical starting point. Yet, this did not lead
him to the historicity of details in the story of Jesus, the passion or the
resurrection of Jesus. His teaching actually led to the revivalist notion that
found in faith consciousness a guarantee of the historical reality of the biblical
Christ. Thus, one accepts by faith a fundamentalist reading of the Bible. “The
Bible said it; I believe it; that settles it,” I have heard some people say. However,
the thinking of Schleiermacher also led others in another direction in which
the historical contents of the biblical traditions are not important for faith.[8]
He will assume, along with much of the tradition of his time, the unity of the
person and work of Christ.[9]
As
redeemer, Christ (93-99) is the fulfillment of a human nature that already existed
in provisional form in every human being. Our lives are anticipations of the
fulfillment we find in Christ. Christ is the completion of humanity.[10]
He will again affirm that the Redeemer is original in relation to the common
life he founded.[11]
The constant force of his God-consciousness was the true being of God in him.[12]
Thus, our feeling for absolute dependence, our openness to the Infinite, finds
its fullness in Jesus. Here again, we find the strength and weakness of
Schleiermacher. As much as he wants to see Jesus as Redeemer related to the whole
human race, he failed to see that the title “Christ” had this link because of
the cross and resurrection. Paul showed that Jesus became Messiah through his
vicarious suffering for human sins, thereby changing the Jewish hope. He opened
it up with a view to the reconciliation of the Gentile world with Israel and
its God.[13] In
spite of this weakness, we can also express some gratitude that Schleiermacher
offered effective criticism of the notion that the divine and human nature
stand ontologically on the same level. In this theory, the two natures would
have nothing to do with each other apart from their union in the person of the
God-man. Two complete and independently existing essences cannot form a union.[14]
For Schleiermacher, to round out this discussion, the virgin birth is a sign of
a new beginning rather than a condition of that beginning.[15]
The
work of Christ (100-105) consists in his prophetic, priestly, and kingly roles.
He will treat reconciliation and redemption as parallel. Together, they
constitute the work of Christ. The point of reconciliation was to communicate
the God-consciousness of Christ to us. The work of the Redeemer is at the
forefront of the presentation it consists of his taking us up into the dynamic
of his God-consciousness. Reconciliation is simply a special element in the
general work of redemption, namely, the vanishing of the old person and the
sense of guilt that accompanies adoption into living fellowship with Christ.
The reconciling work of Christ confers a sense of the forgiveness of sins. He
breaks with the “magical” satisfaction theory and with the idea of penal
suffering. He is closer to the Pauline idea of an act of reconciliation that
originates in God and through Christ as the world as its target. In historical
theology, this puts him with Abelard and against Anselm. Yet, we must admit
that his presentation carries no reference to the fundamental significance of
the death of Christ that reconciles us to God. However, he does have a place
for the passion of Christ. He understands the suffering of Christ with
reference to the resistance of sin that the work of the Redeemer encounters.
The work of Christ, oriented to the rule of God among us, gave ground to no
opposition, not even to that which resulted in his death. He does, then, link
reconciliation to the obedience of the Son (Romans 5:19). He finds a place in
the form of the faithfulness of Christ to his vocational duty as the Redeemer.
Yet, we will look in vain for anything that corresponds to the statement of
Paul that God reconciles us by the death of the Son (Romans 5:10). He directly
admits that the cross is a secondary element to his notion of the work of
Christ as Redeemer.[16]
He proposes a subjective theory of the atonement. As such, he focused upon the
effects of his death in us. The action of God in the cross is to reconcile us
to God. The death of Christ can truly be for us only within the unity of the
church. We cannot understand atonement without explicit reference to this new
community. Christ suffered the evil of sin for others, facing history of sin in
humanity in order to establish a new community. Atonement is from beginning to
end a description of the human action of Christ, which as such is divine
action. Atonement is the redeeming effect of the entire life of Christ in that
he communicates his unbroken God-relationship to us through the church.
Redemption and reconciliation are identical. Christ dies as a duty of this
calling, as that to which the selfless love with which he pursued his mission
led him. The uniqueness of the cross is that he suffered in especially gripping
fashion. The difficulty of such a
subjective theory is that he will find it difficult to say how the human
situation is different because of the cross.[17]
He concludes this section by saying that the rise of the community is the
result of the perfection and blessedness of the person of Jesus.[18]
The
fellowship of the redeemer (106-112) must express itself in the individual,
which will occur in regeneration (conversion and justification) and
sanctification. He will unite the negative of forgiveness in justification with
the positive side of adoption as a child of God, a notion with which Barth will
agree.[19]
He will also be instrumental in beginning the notion of linking justification
and ethical renewal.[20]
Such a fellowship will lead to a changed life.
Such
a fellowship of the redeemer also leads us into the church (113-163) as mutual
interaction and cooperation. In this section, his dogmatic statements will
relate to the world and to the attributes of God. He will slowly unveil his
basis for a discussion of the Spirit. This discussion occurs through his
valuable insights concerning election and predestination, where God foresees
the faith of individuals. He continues the tradition of discussing individual
appropriation of salvation before he discussed the concept of the church. He
treated the fellowship of individuals with Christ in close relation to
Christology. The doctrine of the church receives treatment only from the angle
of the disposition of the world for redemption.[21]
He also suggests that the fellowship arises out of the innate human inclination
toward fellowship and the related need for sharing. The question is whether
this is enough to justify the presence of the church.[22]
Due to his religious view of the rule of God, linking it to the effects
deriving from Christ as Redeemer, he equated the church with the rule of God
that Christ founded. In light of later theological developments, his position
has obvious weakness in ignoring the apocalyptic nature of the rule of God. Yet,
such an ethical understanding of the concept of the rule of God had the lasting
merit of breaking through the lengthy dominance of a false ecclesiology center
in handling the theme, showing that the rule of God transcends the church. He
showed that the church must relate to the rule of God for its existence.[23]
Among
the most important lasting achievements of Schleiermacher is that he recaptured
a historical reference to human history for the thought election. In this
framework, he related historical calling, or justification, to eternal
election. He therefore transcended the classical form of the doctrine of
predestination in its abstraction and direct relating of election to isolated
individuals. In doing this, he shattered the individualism in the doctrine of
election we may trace back to Augustine and developed in its awful fullness in
Calvin. Instead, he related election as God aiming at the consummation of our
creation and therefore to the totality of the new creation. For reasons unknown
to me, but incredibly suspicious, Barth will not mention that his rejection of
the classical position on election was the same path down which Schleiermacher
walked before him.[24]
He linked the coming of Christ to the new common life of the church that
results from it. Christ and the common life of the church complete human
nature. For him, election and foreordination describes the order in which
redemption finds actualization in each person. For him, the order is the
sequence and relationships of various points in time for incorporation into the
redemptive nexus emanating from Christ. The integration of each person at the
right time into the fellowship of Christ is simply a result of the fact that in
the manifestation the divine work of justifying, its determination is by the
universal world order and is a part of this order. Those not elect at any given
phase of history God simply passed over for this particular point in time but
God has not finally rejected them. Divine providence directs history while he
thus presents the divine election that manifests itself in the justification of
individuals as a process in human history. He will see the incarnation of
Christ as the beginning of the regeneration of the human race. He saw election
as the way to achieve this goal by the divine world government.[25]
Pannenberg will follow Schleiermacher in this view of election and
predestination.
Through
the church, one receives the communication of the Holy Spirit. The leading of
the Spirit is nothing other than the virtue of Christ. Schleiermacher will
stress the common nature of endowment by the Spirit that thus links individual
Christians to the fellowship of the church.[26]
He can emphasize that the unity of the common spirit of the church rests on the
fact that it all comes from the one, namely, from Jesus Christ. Yet, it would
seem that the Spirit is more than simply the common spirit of the church. Thus,
a weakness here is that he does not make the required distinction of the
presence of the divine Spirit from analogous experiences of spirit, such as the
spirit of a nation.[27] At the same time, Schleiermacher is one who,
along with Hegel, presents the idea of the church as a spiritual community.[28]
The
church in its relation to the world has several invariable factors, such as
scripture, ministry, the Lord’s Supper, baptism, the power of the keys, and
prayers. He will say that the divine Word is simply the spirit in all persons.
The ministry of the Word of God is the act of the community and the relation of
the active toward the receptive and the influence of the stronger on the
weaker. The ministry of the Word embraces the whole of Christian life. It only
needs special management for the sake of good order and preservation of the
common consciousness.[29]
I should note that Schleiermacher rightly places his discussion of Scripture
after his discussion of reconciliation. The point here is that our faith in the
reconciliation offered by God in Christ comes prior to our acceptance of the
role of Scripture in the formation of Christian life. Thus, contrary to Barth,
then, consideration of the role of Scripture does not belong in the Prolegomena
of Church Dogmatics. It does not
belong within the doctrine of the church. Rather, scripture remains the primary
witness to the revelation of the reconciling work of God in Christ.[30]
Pannenberg will go with Schleiermacher and turn from Barth at this point. Regarding
Baptism, Barth commends Schleiermacher for being one of the few to see the
problem with infant baptism when he stresses that infant baptism needs its
completion in a personal confession of faith.[31]
Prayer is petition in the name of Jesus. Prayer is the inner link between
wishes oriented to supreme success and the God consciousness. He will
distinguish such prayer from surrender or thanksgiving.[32]
The church in its relation to the world has several mutable elements, such as
the plurality of the churches and the fallibility of the church. He stresses
that the inner unity of the churches consists in taking sides with Jesus and
the life-giving Spirit that thirsts for unity.
[1] Tillich,
Systematic Theology Volume II, 153.
[2]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
II, 280.
[3] Tillich,
Systematic Theology Volume I, 42.
[4]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Vol
2, 41.
[5] Barth,
CD I.2, 134.
[6]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
II, 212.
[7]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
II, 306-310.
[8]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology III,
149.
[9]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume
II, 444.
[10] Barth,
CD I.2, 180.
[11]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
II, 280.
[12]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume
II, 280.
[13]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
II, 315.
[14]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume
II, 385; Jesus-God and Man, 285.
[15] Barth,
CD I.2, 189.
[16]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
II, 408-9.
[17] Robert
W. Jenson, Systematic Theology Volume
I, 186-7.
[18]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
III, 459.
[19]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
III, 212; Barth, IV.1, 594.
[20]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
III, 230-31.
[21]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
III, 24.
[22]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
III, 110.
[23]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
III, 34-35.
[24]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
III, 458-9.
[25]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
III, 450-1, 452.
[26]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology,
Volume III, 3.
[27]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
III, 19, 132.
[28] Peter
Hodgson, Winds of the Spirit, 296.
[29] Barth,
CD, I.2, 62.
[30]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
II, 464.
[31] Barth,
CD IV.4, 188.
[32]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume
III, 207.
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