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243 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA schieiermacher
apologetics the essence of Christianity, while, the Church is defined as a community azth respect to
piety. Interpretation of the Christian q. Intro- faith is, therefore, dependent on the def-
duction inition of piety, which is the feeling ofto the general dependence, since man becomes Glaubens- aware that the whole world and his
lehre. own freedom depend on God. Having this definition of the Church, Schleier macher proceeds to determine what is peculiar to the Christian Church. In the lower grades of re ligion, such as Fetishism and Polytheism (qq.v.), there is but an approximation to the feeling of de pendence, this being realized only at the mono theistic stage. Even here there are two tendencies: the esthetic, in which piety is predominantly emo tional; and the teleological, in which it is primarily active. The purest realization of teleological mono theism is Christianity, which is the highest religion, though not the only true one. Revelation can not be claimed exclusively for Christianity, for revela tion is only the sum total of the individual concept of God. Essential to the essence of Christianity is the fact that redemption has the central place, and that its realization is dependent on Jesus, who was specifically different from his followers in that he needed no redemption. The coming of the Redeemer is the eternal act of God, and his actual appearance was neither a new revelation nor the development of a factor originally given; the supernatural and the natural interpretations are two equally justi fied and equally necessary sides of the same fact. Union with Christ is possible only through religious faith, in other words, by trusting him with the sat isfying of the need of redemption; and proofs based on miracles, prophecy, and inspired writings are un necessary and devoid of cogency. The articles of Christian belief serve not as proofs, but as expres sions furthering piety; they describe the functions of personal faith, not the objects of belief. The dif ference between Roman Catholicism and Protestant ism is that the former makes the relation of the in dividual to Christ depend on his relation to the Church, while the latter makes the individual's re lation to the Church depend on his relation to Christ. The differences between Lutheran and Reformed Protestantism are merely technical. In his division of dogmatic Schleiermacher discusses first religious consciousness without regard to sin and redemption, and then this consciousness as modified by these two factors. He distinguished three types of dog matic affirmations: descriptions of human condi tions of life, concepts of divine qualities, and state ments regarding the world. Each of these expresses the whole content of Christian consciousness, but the first is basal, since it represents most immedi ately the life of the religious man, and by it must be measured whatever is purely religious in the other two types.In the Glavbenslehre itself, it is maintained that there is no need of a formal proof of the existence of the deity; and since the universal consciousness of God is connected with a perception of the general coherence of nature, the concepts of the divine creation and preservation of the world are gained. Of these the latter is by far the most important, since
it alone corresponds to experience; but preservation must be so construed as to cover both dependence on God and the coherence of nature.
& Doctrine Since the latter must not be excluded of God, the in favor of the former, the idea of mirWorld, Sin, acles is ignored. The doctrine of and Grace. angels and the devil forms an appendix to the theory of creation, and they are abandoned to poetic and liturgical language. By reference of the absolute feeling of dependence to-God are derived the divine attributes of omnipotence, eternity, omnipresence, and omniscience, the fundamental attribute being that first named. Schleiermacher taught that both the world and man were originally perfect; the organization of the world is adapted to awaken and sustain piety, while human nature permits a constant development of this feeling, especially by evolution of consciousness of self into consciousness of race. The second part of the Glaubenslehre is devoted to the relations between the antitheses of sin and grace. Sin is set forth as the struggle of the flesh against the spirit, and as a defect of human nature incapable of good except through redemption, and all evil is the punishment of sin; nevertheless Schleiermacher regarded sin as an unavoidable inequality of development and transformed it, as presupposing the need of redemption, into a stage of evolution toward goodness. Yet Schleiermacher gave the doctrine of original sin a better Biblical basis, and postulated the common deeds and guilt of the whole human race. The divine qualities which bear relation to human sin are holiness, which causes conscience to arise in man, and justice, which causes him to recognize the counterpart of his own imperfection in the world as evil.
The central position in the Glaubenslehre is formed by the development of the consciousness of grace. To Schleiermacher redemption was the transit from restricted to unrestricted conscious-
g. Christol- ness of God, this being realized in a ogy. new social life considered by the community to be divinely founded and based on the deeds of Christ. But in view of the eternity of God, this redemption is the realization of the creation, and the Redeemer is, therefore, the primal pattern of man as revealed in history. In Christ mankind became religiously perfect, and as the pattern he was perfect historically, though subject to the influences of time and nationality. Only in his inmost nature was he free from limitations of time, and for this reason Christ is the organ for the indwelling of God in all humanity, since he possesses the power of reproducing, in those like to himself, his own life filled with God in the same way as man influences man. The sole factor in the redemptive work of Christ, in the opinion of Schleiermacher, was his person; his supernatural birth, resurrection, ascension, and second advent were regarded as of little moment. The office of Christ was, accordingly, the extension of the being of God in him to its being in all mankind, so that his passion and death serve but to keep his mind and spirit in remembrance. There can be no idea of the effect of Christ on God, but in the working of Christ on man there are two sides: redemption, or the com-