Schleiermacher: The Christian Faith, 86-156


          
This is the fourth in a series on Frederick Schleiermacher.
           
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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