Wolfhart Pannenberg

             This is the fourth in a series of reflections on Fredrick Schleiermacher. This one will focus upon his Doctrine of Sin.            Schleiermacher continues to affirm that every doctrine must connect with the religious or pious self-consciousness. Christian experience is aware of sin and grace (62-64). He will direct us to dogmatic statements concerning the self and then to the hints they provide of dogmatic statements we can make about God. He will remind us that if a person becomes aware of the divine attributes, as he understands them in the previous section a person is already turning toward God.             He begins with his exploration of sin (65-85). We have awareness of sin only because we have a sense of what is good and best. Thus, our intuition of the Infinite is only in apparent contradiction with our awareness of sin. Sin is our ...