Friedrich Schleiermacher lives up to his name

Friedrich Schleiermacher

So we were at our regional UCCF team day over the past two days and found out we were going to spend today looking at the “The Father of Modern Theology”.  A few names spring to mind when I heard the topic - Edwards, Luther, Calvin (and my list is a small one because I don’t know very many theologians yet).  But no - we were going to look at the works of Friedrich Schleiermacher. 

Names are often give a good insight into people, so I set about trying to work out what his name meant.  I did a bit of German at GCSE level so I knew that “macher” meant maker.  I thought I’d search Google on my iPhone to find out what “schleier” meant.  It means Veil, so Schleiermacher means Veil Maker.  (You’ll see where I’m going with this later).

In order to cut a long story short, I think you should read “On Giants’ Shoulders - introducing great theologians from Luther to Barth” by Mike Reeves.  This will give you a full idea of what Schleiermacher’s theology was.  Let’s just say it’s a bit crazy - but has impacted so much of our modern theology it’s scary!

Schleiermacher’s root and origin of thought is from his description of the essence of piety which he said was “the consciousness of being absolutely depended”.  So from Year 0 mankind has been dependent on something.  That something has varied over time in a gradual way - from a weak form of dependence in the likes of primitive polytheism to our now civilised form of evolutionary dependence in the Christian religion.  With further reading you’ll begin to see a number of HUGE flaws in his thought for example: he believed the historical fall of man was mere fantasy, he said that evil was a punishment for sin (sin is described as “God forgetfulness”) therefore if someone was murdered but no-one forgot God in the process then it was not evil, he claimed that God was not a personal God, that Jesus was simply a man with perfect ‘God-consciousness’ and that doctrine was only an expression of our affections.  Essentially he believed that the only way to know God was through experience and if that experience contradicted the Bible you were to trust the experience.

I realise that none of this will make sense unless you know something about Schleiermacher but my concern is this:  Although Schleiermacher’s views can be seen as ridiculous I believe that some of what he taught had permeated into our theology.  I forgot to mention earlier that he calls the Trinity “the coping-stone of Christian doctrine”, that is an unnecessary add-on, and he found that the Old Testament was not relevant to this higher form of dependence found in Christianity.

If we look to churches in our day and age, moreover if we look at ourselves how often do we think “It’s just the old testament, it’s not that important, all the good stuff is in the New Testament”, or how often do we put the Trinity somewhere in the background - we know it’s there but it’s not essential to our faith.  How often do we find people who call themselves Christian’s but don’t have all that much time for sanctification and even Jesus.  This has all been passed down to us from the theology of Schleiermacher.  We’ve realised some of his notions were totally wrong but yet still he has managed to veil the truth of the Bible, the truth of God’s character and sometimes the truth of Christ’s atonement for our sins amongst other things.

I think therefore that Schleiermacher has indeed lived up to his name by veiling the truth of the Gospel and has done a good job at it as it is still prevalent almost 200 years later.

The application I personally took from this session on Schleiermacher was:

1. I must watch the foundation of my faith - in that I will look to Scripture to shape my affections and my faith and not my feelings shape what I read into scripture.
2. I should view the Old Testament as a constant pointer to Jesus as Lord - I’m looking forward to reading some of Jonathan Edwards sermons on the Old Testament as well as checking out a bit more Tim Keeler for this.
3. Remember that God is a intimately loving and personal Trinitarian God

“Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,”made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.  But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”

                       2 Corinthians 4:1-7