The Father of Modern Theology

Fridrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834) is often cited as the leading 19-Century theologian of the protestant church, and as the father of modern theology.  I am currently in the thick of reading and studying all things relating to Schleiermacher in a course called "The Modern Mind."  Dr. Michael Horton began covering Schleiermacher early on in this class, since then, guest lecturer Ryan Glomsrud (alumni from WSC, currently doing doctoral work at Oxford and Harvard on Karl Barth) has been taking us through Schleiermacher's thought.

It has been most fascinating to see all the connections between what Schleiermacher was doing in 19th Century Germany and what is going on in contemporary "emergent" theology.  Basically, Schleiermacher boiled down religion to a, "feeling of absolute divine dependence."  Religion is primarily a feeling while belief and action are at best, secondary.  Scripture is not objective revelation then, it is only a conduit to nurture our inner feeling of dependence on God, other things can do this as well, Scripture is just the one of the best methods for Schleiermacher.  

Most of his religious thought can be found in his first published work titled "On Religion:  Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers."  I must say, I was very fascinated by this read if for no other reason in that I sympathized with Schleiermacher trying to hold on to his religion in the midst of all his cultured friends who didn't know why he wouldn't "lose his religion."  In a sense, Schleiermacher was just wanting to make religion reasonable to his very erudite and artistic friends (he was quite the social butterfly, much more at home at German 'high-brow' cocktail parties on Saturday nights than the humble protestant pulpit on Sunday mornings).  I can see the same thing going on in our day with writers such as Rob Bell and Brian McLaren.  As I am sure with many of us, these guys woke up one morning and realized the great disconnect between post-modern culture and Christendom, and saw Christendom as failing to reach out to the post-moderns.  However, as with Schleiermacher, I believe Christianity is compromised in the pursuit of being culturally relevant.  

Don't get me wrong, I believe that Christianity has to take the culture into account when going about its mission of reaching the lost and feeding the reached.  One of the main cultural considerations is language, we must speak in the language of the culture or people will not understand what we are saying.  If a church finds itself in a spanish speaking country, the church must bring the gospel to them in Spanish, if German, than the church must worship and preach in German, etc.  Another consideration is audience analysis.  This is what I believe Paul practiced in Acts 13 and Acts 17.  In Acts 13 Paul is talking to the covenant community (biblically literate) and allows the historic Christian content of the faith to be presented appropriately to them, in Acts 17 Paul is speaking to those outside the covenant community in Athens (biblically illiterate), and brings the historic Christian faith to bare on their worldview.  In Acts 17 Paul engages in worldview evangelism, whereby he (1) prioritizes his contextual realities, (2) Presents theological framework, (3) Preaches the un-negotiable gospel.  Notice that the content remains the same but the methods are different for the apostle Paul.  Paul can assume things in Acts 13 when speaking to Israel that he does not assume in Acts 17 when preaching to Athens, yet the content is the same.

However, McLaren and Schleiermacher go to far into an unbiblical syncretism.  They collapse natural revelation (nature) and supernatural revelation (scripture) and allow the former to norm the latter, instead of the latter norming the former.  The culture, for them, plays a part in shaping the actual content of the Christian message, rather than simply the method in which it is delievered.

So I continue to be amazed at the parallels between Schleiermacher and today.  There really is nothing new under the sun.  Much of the emergent mysticism and focus on inward experience can to some degree be traced back to Schleiermacher, who really set the theological agenda for the modern age, doing away with doctrine and focusing on experience.  I am currently under way on a paper which studies Schleiermachian hermeneutics and how it anticipated the death of the author movement, and much of post-modern hermeneutics in general.  For Schleiermacher, interpretation becomes an exercise in not in determining what the author inscribed in language, but how the language can promote the readers own individual intuition and feeling of divine dependence.  Thus, without saying it, authorial intent doesn't play that much of a role for Schleiermacher when it comes to reading, just the pre-critical emotion & nostalgia that any given work promotes.

For now, I must get back to my paper on Judges and Ehud.  This story continues to befuddle me, it is quite a spicy narrative in the Hebrew with scatological references, sexual overtones, and political satire to boot.  And this is in the word of God.  We have redemptive-history told literarily, with dramatic interest.  How great and awesome is God's word, accomadated to our weakness and frailty, and by the power of the Holy spirit able to change of hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, it is able to spur us on into greater affections for Christ, and sanctify us faithfully till the end, when faith will be sight, and those who are in Christ will be raised victoriously and mortality will put on immortality, and we will have unhindered fellowship with the living God, which will take an eternity to enjoy.

In Christ,

Austin