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Biblical and Historical Sources

Steve Bruce

in The Family in Christian Social and Political Thought

This chapter surveys a wide range of historic works on marriage and family. The first two sections place Jesus' teaching against the family, Paul's indifference toward marriage and family, and the ... More

This chapter surveys a wide range of historic works on marriage and family. The first two sections place Jesus' teaching against the family, Paul's indifference toward marriage and family, and the New Testament's household codes against the backdrop of the Greco-Roman emphasis on the family as the fundamental social cell. The following sections assess Augustine's affirmation of marriage in light of ambiguous patristic teaching, and medieval attempts to institutionalize marriage as a vocation roughly on a par with singleness. The final sections examine Reformation and Puritan themes, and three attempts by 19th-century theologians — Friedrich Schleiermacher, Horace Bushnell, and F. D. Maurice — to bolster the family in response to the rise of modern liberal social and political thought.Less

Berlin

Mike Higton

in A Theology of Higher Education

This chapter, on the University of Berlin, argues that the Wissenschaftsideologie that surrounded the new university’s creation was, in part, an attempted repair of the broken and disputatious world ... More

This chapter, on the University of Berlin, argues that the Wissenschaftsideologie that surrounded the new university’s creation was, in part, an attempted repair of the broken and disputatious world of Christian learning. That is, the Romantic theorists Wissenschaft appropriated a tradition-specific Christian vision of free, peaceable exchange (the economy of gift and reception in the Body of Christ) and sought to remake the whole world of learning on the basis of that vision. That remaking required, however, that they revise or abandon anything that could not be made to fit with the proper freedom of such peaceable exchange, including the heteronomous commitment of learners to particular traditions of religious thought and practice. The account they provided of the university – indeed, the account they provided of reason itself – was therefore inescapably both theological and anti-theological.Less

The St. Matthew Passion Revival

Jeffrey S. Sposato

in The Price of Assimilation: Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth-Century Anti-Semitic Tradition

This chapter explores Felix Mendelssohn's 1829 revival of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion (Matthaus-Passion). Musicologist Michael Marissen has argued that in preparing for the revival, ... More

This chapter explores Felix Mendelssohn's 1829 revival of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion (Matthaus-Passion). Musicologist Michael Marissen has argued that in preparing for the revival, Mendelssohn cut Bach's work to remove anti-Semitic references. It is shown instead that Mendelssohn's cuts were intended to make the work more accessible to a 19th-century audience that was largely unfamiliar with Bach's works. Mendelssohn's cuts were also similar to those of other Christian conductors who performed the work later, suggesting that he did not make his changes out of any lingering affinity for Judaism, or to lessen the work's anti-Semitism. Mendelssohn, in fact, was a close disciple of prominent Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, who viewed Judaism as an outdated religion.Less

Renewing Protestantism? Schleiermacher and University Theology

Zachary Purvis

in Theology and the University in Nineteenth-Century Germany

This chapter scrutinizes Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums (Brief Outline of the Study of Theology, 1811; 2nd edn, 1830). With the University of Berlin’s ... More

This chapter scrutinizes Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums (Brief Outline of the Study of Theology, 1811; 2nd edn, 1830). With the University of Berlin’s establishment in 1810, Schleiermacher produced this watershed volume for the study of theology; it represented his programmatic statement on religion and pedagogical manifesto on academic theology’s future in the highly transitional, post-Enlightenment, post-revolutionary world. More than any other text, Schleiermacher’s idiosyncratic theological encyclopedia proved monumental in setting the trajectory for the theological enterprise in the modern university—attempting to renew Protestantism, pursue Wissenschaft, and claim the spirit of modernity, proposing a novel union of ecclesial and scientific interests. The chapter investigates its institutional locus, salient features of its publication history, and the historically focused programme of theology it advanced. The legacy of Schleiermacher’s programme, and ‘cultural Protestantism’ (Kulturprotestantismus), across Europe is explored. In short, with the Kurze Darstellung, Schleiermacher launched the project of modern theology.Less

Jung's Engagement with Christian Theology

Charlene P. E. Burns

in Teaching Jung

The author of this chapter teaches Jung's analysis of Christianity in her undergraduate religious studies courses at the University of Wisconsin, Eau-Claire. Many of the students come from ... More

The author of this chapter teaches Jung's analysis of Christianity in her undergraduate religious studies courses at the University of Wisconsin, Eau-Claire. Many of the students come from conservative Christian backgrounds, so their encounter with Jung's ideas regularly elicits strong responses and sometimes surprising transformations. As her chapter explains, the author has discovered that Jung's own methodological commitments provide the necessary tools for effective teaching in religious studies and other disciplines. In her classes, the students examine the epistemological, philosophical, and theological underpinnings of Jung's ideas, particularly in relation to Immanuel Kant's philosophy and Friedrich Schleiermacher's theology. This gives students a broader context in which to understand Jungian theory and their reactions to it. The chapter draws attention to possible problems and pitfalls generated by the arousal of cognitive dissonance in educational experience, such as when a lifelong Christian first encounters a psychological analysis of religious belief, and shares methods for avoiding those problems and transforming the students’ personal reactions into a positive force in religious studies pedagogy.Less

Harmonizing Dependence

Kevin W. Hector

in The Theological Project of Modernism: Faith and the Conditions of Mineness

This chapter examines Schleiermacher’s claims (a) that one can identify with one’s life only if one can establish a self-expressive harmony between one’s freedom and that upon which one depends; (b) ... More

This chapter examines Schleiermacher’s claims (a) that one can identify with one’s life only if one can establish a self-expressive harmony between one’s freedom and that upon which one depends; (b) that freedom and dependence appear to stand in antithetical relation insofar as one fails to see that both are utterly dependent upon an antecedent factor, which Schleiermacher terms the Whence of such dependence; (c) that this Whence is a wise and loving God, such that one who lives in absolute dependence upon God may experience freedom and dependence as finally harmonious; (d) that the antithesis between freedom and dependence is first overcome in Jesus’s life of absolute dependence; and (e) that Jesus founds a community in order to convey his absolute dependence to others, who will in turn be able to experience freedom and dependence as harmonious, and, indeed, as bearing their characteristic stamp.Less

On Religion: To Schleiermacher’s Theoretical Despisers

Theodore Vial

in Modern Religion, Modern Race

Friedrich Schleiermacher is commonly taken as the founder of a bad trajectory in the study of religion—bad because it imports Protestant theological assumptions into comparative religions, and ... More

Friedrich Schleiermacher is commonly taken as the founder of a bad trajectory in the study of religion—bad because it imports Protestant theological assumptions into comparative religions, and because it makes religion internal, private, and ineffable. Schleiermacher is taken to remove religion from the intersections of social, historical, and linguistic factors. At the root of this criticism is the argument that Schleiermacher tries to do an end run around the epistemological limits set by Kant. This chapter argues that this is not the best reading of Schleiermacher. Comparing Schleiermacher and Kant on epistemology, and reading several key terms in Schleiermacher’s theory of religion with close attention to his own texts (intuition, feeling, infinite, immediate self-consciousness), shows that Schleiermacher holds religion to be essentially historical, social, and linguistic.Less

Schleiermacher

Gunter Scholtz

in Music in German Philosophy: An Introduction

This chapter offers a short biography of Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher and addresses his particular thoughts on musical philosophy. Schleiermacher was born on November 21, 1768. He married ... More

This chapter offers a short biography of Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher and addresses his particular thoughts on musical philosophy. Schleiermacher was born on November 21, 1768. He married Henriette von Willich in 1809 and died in Berlin on February 2, 1834. Schleiermacher dealt with the first complex of questions of philosophy in his Dialectic, or the Art of Doing Philosophy and with the second in his Ethics and Outlines of a Critique of the Existing Theory of Morals. He was concerned with individuality and the individual. His central concept was feeling. He made poetry the high point of his system of art. He also expressly recognized free instrumental music as a great art. His thought was especially significant for the musical culture of his own time; it formulated opinions that also determined compositional practice.Less

Marriage and Mediation: The Product among the Idealists

in Uncivil Unions: The Metaphysics of Marriage in German Idealism and Romanticism

This chapter concentrates on Friedrich Schleiermacher. It illustrates how G. W. F. Hegel gradually came to abandon the central premises of the early Idealist metaphysics of marriage and instead ... More

This chapter concentrates on Friedrich Schleiermacher. It illustrates how G. W. F. Hegel gradually came to abandon the central premises of the early Idealist metaphysics of marriage and instead empowered the product that had haunted his early Idealist colleagues. Schleiermacher viewed the existence of a tertium comparationis with suspicion, as it reminds him of the atomism of civil society. In the period immediately following Schleiermacher's works on love and community, Hegel appeared to turn away from questions of love and community altogether. It is noted, while Hegel's philosophy as a whole shifted away from the erotic philosophy of his Frankfurt years, questions of love and family remained. His account of love in the Philosophy of Right barely differed at all from that provided in his early writings. Alongside the distinction between love and marriage, language reentered the picture in Hegel's discussion of the family.Less

Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Theology of Salvation

James R. Gordon (ed.)

in Christian Theologies of Salvation: A Comparative Introduction

This chapter traces Friedrich Schleiermacher’s theology of salvation. Schleiermacher’s theology was unique in that it directly confronted the challenges posed by modernity, positing that the solution ... More

This chapter traces Friedrich Schleiermacher’s theology of salvation. Schleiermacher’s theology was unique in that it directly confronted the challenges posed by modernity, positing that the solution to the sin problem in man is found in the reality in the removal of sin and the incorporation of the believer into the corporate life of “blessedness” in Jesus Christ.Less

Logos and Its Others: Feeling, the Abyss, Willing, and Kritik (Schleiermacher, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach)

John H. Smith

in Dialogues between Faith and Reason: The Death and Return of God in Modern German Thought

This chapter examines the responses and alternatives of four philosophers to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's conception of God as spirit or Geist: Friedrich Schleiermacher, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph ... More

This chapter examines the responses and alternatives of four philosophers to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's conception of God as spirit or Geist: Friedrich Schleiermacher, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Ludwig Feuerbach. More specifically, it considers the four philosophers' argument that the truly religious can be understood and, perhaps salvaged, only by attacking the dominance and apparent self-sufficiency of rationality. It explains how these four thinkers worked through the ratio that would embrace God, world, and man in a totalizing system and saw the need to open up logos toward a radical conception of Otherness that is more closely aligned with a genuine Christianity.Less

Friedrich Schleiermacher

Paul T. Nimmo

in Christian Theologies of the Sacraments: A Comparative Introduction

This chapter recounts the theology of the sacraments of the post-Enlightenment Reformed theologian, philosopher, and pastor Friedrich Schleiermacher, who is often considered the father of modern ... More

This chapter recounts the theology of the sacraments of the post-Enlightenment Reformed theologian, philosopher, and pastor Friedrich Schleiermacher, who is often considered the father of modern liberal theology. He was unique in that rather than rooting his theologies of the sacraments in a “magical” or “empirical” approach, Schleiermacher advocated a “mystical” approach, grounded in “the religious affections of the Christian community” united in its redemption through Jesus Christ. Baptism and Eucharist are therefore “actions which establish and preserve communion of life with Christ in the present day.” His approach to the theology of the sacraments was quite ecumenical, for while disagreeing with Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli he accepted their views as equally valid, rather than reasons for division in the church.Less

Liberal Theology in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

John Allan Knight

in Liberalism versus Postliberalism: The Great Divide in Twentieth-Century Theology

The first chapter provides background for the later discussion (in chapters three and four) of liberal theology in the twentieth century. By describing three central concerns of liberal theological ... More

The first chapter provides background for the later discussion (in chapters three and four) of liberal theology in the twentieth century. By describing three central concerns of liberal theological method in the nineteenth century, it provides evidence that the theologians described in later chapters as representative of the liberal tradition truly are representative. The first of these three concerns is a turn to the subject, exemplified by Schleiermacher. The chapter describes briefly his two major works, the Speeches and The Christian Faith. Ritschl exemplifies the second concern, the search for historical corroboration of claims about Jesus. Finally, the search for the essence of Christianity can be seen clearly in Harnack’s What is Christianity? These three characteristic themes of nineteenth-century liberal theology will carry forward into the twentieth century and identify the theologians discussed in chapter four (especially Bultmann and Ogden) as standing squarely in the liberal tradition in theology.Less

Theology and Wissenschaft in the ‘Quiet War’

Zachary Purvis

in Theology and the University in Nineteenth-Century Germany

In the early 1800s, Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854) and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) found themselves embroiled in an acrimonious exchange stemming from Schelling’s famous lectures on the ... More

In the early 1800s, Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854) and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) found themselves embroiled in an acrimonious exchange stemming from Schelling’s famous lectures on the method of academic study and Schleiermacher’s reaction. With suggestive imagery given the tumult of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, they understood the affair as a momentous ‘quiet war’, turning on questions over the methodological coherence of academic disciplines, the status of philosophical speculation and historical criticism in theology, and how both fit together in contested Romantic and idealist models of higher education. This chapter examines the ‘quiet war’ alongside accounts of the university faculties by Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller, and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. The result was a powerful synthesis that transformed fundamentally the German university model and German Protestant and Catholic university theology. Disagreements between Schelling and Schleiermacher masked deeper commonalities, which together reconfigured the essence and direction of modern academic theology.Less

Schleiermacher from Halle to Berlin

Zachary Purvis

in Theology and the University in Nineteenth-Century Germany

This chapter zooms in on the context of Schleiermacher’s brief tenure at the University of Halle and the eventual founding of the University of Berlin in the wake of Halle’s closure and as part of ... More

This chapter zooms in on the context of Schleiermacher’s brief tenure at the University of Halle and the eventual founding of the University of Berlin in the wake of Halle’s closure and as part of the Prussian reform era. It highlights Schleiermacher’s early theological lectures and the uneven development of his thought on theology as a university discipline. It examines an important and formative series of disputes over the future of the theological curriculum, revolving around Halle but holding profound ramifications for the direction of nineteenth-century German university theology as a whole. Finally, it considers the extraordinary political initiative to establish a new Prussian university: the University of Berlin (1810). Theology’s right to a seat in the new institution was fiercely contested. Landmark proposals for the new university, the so-called ‘positive sciences’, and the structure and content of theology in the modern world are explored in detail.Less

Chips from Another German Workshop: Friedrich Max Müller and Friedrich Schleiermacher on Language and Religion

Theodore Vial

in Modern Religion, Modern Race

Friedrich Max Müller is often cited as the founder of a good trajectory in the history of the study of religion—good because it is scientific, nontheological, and comparative. This chapter’s ... More

Friedrich Max Müller is often cited as the founder of a good trajectory in the history of the study of religion—good because it is scientific, nontheological, and comparative. This chapter’s comparison of Schleiermacher and Müller accomplishes four important things: (1) it shows that the category of religion has shifted radically over time; (2) it shows that if we stop our genealogies in the Enlightenment, as most scholars do, we miss the links between language, social group, and religious identity in the modern world; (3) it shows that Müller violates Kant’s epistemology in ways Schleiermacher does not; (4) it shows that linguists influenced by Müller create hierarchical taxonomies of language groups—based on grammatical structure, some languages are more expressive and creative than others. Though Müller rejects attempts to use linguistics in racial classification, these linguistic hierarchies map exactly onto Kant’s hierarchy of races.Less

The Philosophical Composer: The Influence of Moses Mendelssohn and Friedrich Schleiermacher on Felix Mendelssohn

Leon Botstein

in Rethinking Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn’s philosophical convictions regarding faith and human reason not only hold a clue to his intentions as a mature composer but also set him apart from many contemporaries. His ... More

Felix Mendelssohn’s philosophical convictions regarding faith and human reason not only hold a clue to his intentions as a mature composer but also set him apart from many contemporaries. His philosophical inclinations influenced his ambitions as a composer and helped him formulate and justify his aesthetic, particularly during the last decade of his life. This chapter examines the influence of his grandfather Moses Mendelssohn and the Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, whom Mendelssohn knew from his youth in Berlin. Such philosophical affinities turn out to be illuminating and provocative, suggesting a way of recapturing a sense of the distinct character, beauty, and power of Mendelssohn’s music.Less

Modern Communities, National and Religious

Theodore Vial

in Modern Religion, Modern Race

Chapter 4 shows why we must extend our genealogies of religion and race past the Enlightenment by comparing Johann Gottfried Herder and Schleiermacher on language and on the formation of groups. Both ... More

Chapter 4 shows why we must extend our genealogies of religion and race past the Enlightenment by comparing Johann Gottfried Herder and Schleiermacher on language and on the formation of groups. Both men are seminal figures in the linguistic turn in the humanities. Both argue that we think by applying concepts (as Kant had argued), but that these concepts are not innate but linguistic. Both follow the logic of this insight to its conclusion—people who have different mother tongues think and experience differently. Religious and national groups are formed by culture and language. Though Herder explicitly rejects Kant’s theories of race, this cultural turn ironically supplies a link missing from Kant’s race theories. Kant cannot say why individuals who belong to certain groups share the mental and moral characteristics of those groups. Herder and Schleiermacher open the possibility that this link is cultural and linguistic rather than biological.Less

Revelation: Correlative Concept

Paul M. Collins

in Trinitarian Theology: West and East: Karl Barth, the Cappadocian Fathers, and John Zizioulas

In the Church Dogmatics, ‘revelation’ plays a central role owing to Karl Barth's endeavour to provide answers to the epistemological problematic arising from the Enlightenment and from the ... More

In the Church Dogmatics, ‘revelation’ plays a central role owing to Karl Barth's endeavour to provide answers to the epistemological problematic arising from the Enlightenment and from the discrediting of Kulturprotestantismus. Before discussing revelation as a correlative concept, this chapter first looks at the functions that the category performs in the Church Dogmatics and then examines why revelation has these functions. Two issues are considered: What form and content does the category of revelation bestow on and receive from the two other categories of event and Trinity? Does the expression of the category of revelation lead us to think of God as one person or three persons? First, the influence of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Ernst Troeltsch in relation to which Barth's endeavour is to be understood is analysed. Secondly, those who perceive that the concept of revelation emerges from the Scriptures and those who reject such a perception are addressed. The correlative and hermeneutical functions of the category of revelation as God's self-interpretation are also discussed.Less

The Awakening and Theology

Andrew Kloes

in The German Awakening: Protestant Renewal after the Enlightenment, 1815-1848

This chapter analyzes how new developments within early nineteenth-century, university-based, academic theology were expressions of religious awakenings that had occurred in Protestant communities in ... More

This chapter analyzes how new developments within early nineteenth-century, university-based, academic theology were expressions of religious awakenings that had occurred in Protestant communities in Germany. The respective schools of thought reflected many university theologians’ own personal religious experiences of awakening. These considerably shaped the aims and methods of their scholarship. Recognizing how university professors were influential leaders in the Awakening movement through their lecturing, writing, and roles in new religious voluntary societies underscores an important point about the social composition of the movement. It was not simply a phenomenon of popular religious culture. Rather, different theological varieties of awakened Protestantism were fostered by some of the most learned members of the Protestant churches of Germany. They used their status and authority to promote such beliefs and assumed doing so was a responsibility of the academic and ecclesiastical offices that they held.Less