Modernism and the Teaching of Schleiermacher

by John L. Murphy

II

In his later writings, Schleiermacher built upon the philosophical positions discussed in the first part of this article.¹ His application of these teachings to Christianity appears with greater clarity in his chief dogmatic work. The Christian Faith (Der christliche Glaube). It is a Dogmatik, covering the entire field of doctrine to which Protestant theology can point. It has something of the appearance of a theological manual, being frequently a commentary on sections of the Augsburg Confession and other such doctrinal statements.

The entire work is pervaded by Schleiermacher's own approach to religion and thus almost everything receives a somewhat new interpretation. There is a special emphasis upon the community, on the social concept of the Christian Church (as understood, of course, by Schleiermacher). Hence, Schleiermacher notes at the start that, "a Church is nothing but a communion or association relating to religion or piety."² The piety of such a communion may seek expression in various manners, but there is always a basic and common element present, i.e. the self-identical essence of piety which is "the consciousness of being absolutely dependent, or, which is the same thing, of being in relation with God."³

This Christian feeling, which represents the highest activity of the Holy Spirit in man is, for Schleiermacher, the source of the Christian religion. As such, it also represents for him the highest grade of human self-consciousness.⁴ It is this common Christian consciousness that leads necessarily to living fellowship or communion: to a Church.⁵

We can note in this the fact that it is the piety or religious feeling which forms the Church, and not the opposite. In Schleiermacher's system, the Church is not accepted as a teacher, speaking on the authority of God. Religion knows one basic contact with God, and that is within the depths of the individual being. This experience or feeling (das Gefuhl) is the essence of all religion, even of Christianity. In assuming this position, Schleiermacher separates himself not only from Catholic doctrine but from the theological position of sixteenth and seventeenth century Protestantism as well. Though his words may sound the same, everything in his theological system takes on a new meaning since everything is colored by this completely different approach.

Borrowing from those propositions formulated earlier in his general philosophy of religion, Schleiermacher goes on to discuss the diversities of religious communions in general. His solution to this problem is unique. He does not consider the division of religions an indication of break with authority or failure to perceive God's objective revelation; he rejects no religion and is careful to point out that all religious communions--from idol worship and polytheism, on the lower plane, to monotheism on the higher--reflect this basic feeling of absolute dependence. For this reason they are all perfectly acceptable. He does grant, however, that there is a hierarchy among these various beliefs, since some represent a more profound and intimate experience of the divine; monotheism is the highest plane of all, and history exhibits only three great monotheistic communions: the Jewish, the Christian, and the Mohammedan.⁶

In this we can note Schleiermacher's evolutionary concerns. The religious experience of mankind has undergone a purifying process through the centuries. Thus in his opinion both the Jewish and the Mohammedan form of monotheistic belief involve obvious imperfections:

Judaism, by its limitation of the love of Jehovah to the race of Abraham, betrays a lingering affinity with Fetichism; and the numerous vacillations towards idol-worship prove that during the political heyday of the nation the monotheistic faith had not yet taken fast root, and was not fully and purely developed until after the Babylonian Exile. Islam, on the other hand, with its passionate character, and the strongly sensuous content of its ideas, betrays, in spite of its strict Monotheism, a large measure of that influence of the sensible upon the character of the religious emotions which elsewhere keeps men on the level of Polytheism.⁷

Christianity alone among the Monotheistic communions "remains free from both these weaknesses," and therefore it "stands higher than either of those other two forms, and takes its place as the purest form of Monotheism which has appeared in history."⁸ On the basis of this comparison of Christianity with other similar religions, Schleiermacher concludes that, "Christianity is, in fact, the most perfect of the most highly developed forms of religion."⁹

This line of argumentation brings out more clearly than any others the close relationship between the philosophy and the theology of Schleiermacher. While he does not reduce Christianity to a purely natural instinct or to mere philosophy, there is nevertheless an element within it that is common to all religious experience and to all forms of religion. Christianity is distinguished from all other faiths simply "by the fact that in it everything is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth."¹⁰ The root of this corporate union is faith in Christ the Redeemer; apart from that, Schleiermacher insists, there can be no participation in the Christian communion.¹¹

In Schleiermacher's approach to Christianity, we can also perceive the element of religious Indifferentism. As his basic principle, he holds that "the only pertinent way of discovering the peculiar essence of any particular faith and reducing it as far as possible to a formula is by showing the element which remains constant throughout the most diverse religious affections within this same communion, while it is absent from analogous affections within other communions."¹² Religious differences within the sects must, in other words, be boiled down to a common denominator. This search for the essential of a particular form of religious belief encounters unique problems in regard to Christianity, according to Schleiermacher:

Christianity presents special difficulties, even in this fact alone, that it takes a greater variety of form than other faiths and is split up into a multiplicity of smaller communions or churches; and thus there arises a twofold task, first, to find the peculiar essence, common to all these communions, of Christianity as such, and secondly, to find the peculiar essence of the particular communion whose right is to be authenticated or whose system of doctrine is to be established.¹³

For Schleiermacher, the secondary elements of belief contained within the Creeds of the various Christian sects must be looked upon as non-essential; the core remains the common and all pervading notion of redemption through Christ. Any Christian religion, therefore, which adheres to this essential concept, is to be accepted as truly Christian, despite further differences on other matters of doctrine. Such a religious experience is truly Christian, and thus distinct from all other forms of Monotheistic belief, provided it is rooted in this notion of Christ the Redeemer.

Apart from this essential core, when Schleiermacher comes to discuss the essence of Christian dogma, he follows this same general pattern: the essence of religion is that inner, personal experience, Creeds and dogmas can be nothing but an outward expression of this personal experience; churches are formed by the association of those who have shared a similar experience.

Radical Departure

It is in these further applications of his basic position that we can perceive even more clearly the far-flung effects of Schleiermacher's theorizing, and the result of his philosophical starting-points. It is in these applications, moreover, that the Catholic theologian recognizes the philosophico-theological relativism imbedded in his overall approach.

"Christian doctrines." according to Schleiermacher, "are accounts of the Christian religious affections set forth in speech."¹⁴ The root of doctrinal statement in credal or dogmatic form is, always was and always must be, nothing more than these "religious affections." These lead the way and determine the belief of the Christian community at any given time.

As Fluckiger notes, it is rather astounding that Schleiermacher failed to realize the vast difference between his approach and the position of the sixteenth century Reformers. In this, Schleiermacher was undoubtedly a product of his own age and philosophical development, and presupposed that his dogmatic views were a significant and logical outgrowth of the Reformation principles. His grasp of the historical truth must have been deficient, for in actual fact Schleiermacher transferred the center of religious experience to a completely different point, as Fluckiger indicates:

The Church, as he presents it, does not live by the Word of God, as subject to its sovereignty, but entirely and without reservation from its own revealing power. Its own Christian, devout self-consciousness is itself the divine "Word" which it proclaims, and at any given time it possesses, in that present state of development of this consciousness, the highest expression of Christian truth then available.¹⁵

In adopting this approach, Schleiermacher necessarily abandoned the Reformation attempt to formulate Creeds or Confessions as norms of belief. For him this was equivalent to stopping the wheels of historical progression within religion, and latching on to former stages of doctrinal development, freezing them for future use, as it were, when actually they ought to retain their fluid state and give way to new expressions of faith and new Creeds more fittingly adapted to the religious experience of the present moment.

Since Schleiermacher was writing a Dogmatik, this view of religious Creeds naturally raised a further question: What is the role of the dogmatic theologian within the Church? He himself was writing a theological work, and had to justify that task somehow. His answer is that to dogmatic theologians must be assigned the task of "describing" more than anything else: "Dogmatic Theology is the science which systematizes the doctrine prevalent in a Christian Church at a given time."¹⁶ Thus the task of theology is never ended. As new religious experiences replace old ones, new doctrines will replace old ones in similar fashion; and the dogmatic theologian must look upon it as his essential task to set forth the doctrines prevalent during his lifetime rather than those taught a century ago, a thousand years ago, or in the era of primitive and apostolic Christianity. All of these former beliefs pertain to history rather than a living belief, and the theologian betrays his particular vocation if he attempts to present these records of the past as norms for current belief.

This approach has many ramifications. It means ultimately that any such Dogmatik, just as the Confessions and the doctrines, which it describes, can be valid only for a time; it cannot be looked upon as a universal and unchanging statement of Christian belief. Schleiermacher recognizes that such a position is not to be found in the writings of most theologians, but this fails to perplex him; he feels that others have simply taken it for granted:

That each [dogmatic] presentation confines itself to the doctrine existing at a certain time, is indeed seldom expressly avowed, but it nevertheless seems to be a matter of course; and this seems, for the most part, to be the only possible explanation of the large number of dogmatic presentations which follow upon each other. It is obvious that the text-books of the seventeenth century can no longer serve the same purpose as they did then, but now in large measure belong merely to the realm of historical presentation; and that in the present day it is only a different set of dogmatic presentations that can have the ecclesiastical value which these had then; and the same fate will one day befall the present ones too.¹⁷

Schleiermacher admits the vast difference between Protestant and Catholic Creeds; for him, each of these represent the religious experience of the individual communities so that "a presentation suitable for Protestantism cannot possibly be suitable for Catholics, there being no systematic connexion between the doctrines of the one and those of the other."¹⁸ Because of this, Schleiermacher could not be accused of wishing to fuse various beliefs in the interests of ecumenism; his system left no place for such effort and he notes accordingly that "a dogmatic presentation which aimed at avoiding contradiction from either of these two parties would lack ecclesiastical value for both in almost every proposition."¹⁹

From Schleiermacher's point of view, the inner religious life of each separate community was its sole guide, but this guide had to be followed. Apart from this there can be no personal conviction; the individual must enter into a convinced presentation of his own particular belief. Thus "a dogmatic presentation which takes no sides but is purely historical will always be sufficiently distinct from a presentation which is also apologetic--the only kind now in view."²⁰

This reworking of dogmatic presentations is not to be understood as something, which touches merely the manner of presentation-- a work of revision in regard to style, as it were, or a new ordering of dogmatic textbooks in line with further insights into the meaning of the old doctrine. In the teaching of Schleiermacher, the changes are far more radical; they involve changes in doctrine itself, based upon the changes in the manner in which the Christians grasp and understand revelation. At any given time, the Church will understand revelation only partially and imperfectly, he insists; hence there is ever-present a necessary work of perfecting and correcting. This does not imply, for Schleiermacher, either a homogeneous development of doctrine, to use Marin-Sola's phrase, or a doctrine of pure subjectivism; he is most careful to insist on some kind of objective reality, the result of the working of the Holy Spirit. The various Churches do not create doctrine and Creeds by dint of their own reasoning powers; they are always "receiving" this from the Spirit in this profound Christian experience. Only then can they formulate this experience in Confessions and Creeds, and describe it in dogmatic presentations. But it may always be an essentially different doctrine that is so received.

Role Of The Community

The influence of the Spirit is generally observed more clearly in the whole Christian community than in only one individual. Schleiermacher stresses quite strongly the social element in belief and the role of the Christian community in recognizing a true religious experience. Without some stamp of approval given by the Church, we have only personal opinions:

In the first place, everyone will admit that a system, however coherent, of purely and entirely individual opinions and views, which, even if really Christian, did not link themselves at all to the expressions used in the Church for the communication of religion, would always be regarded as simply a private confession and not as dogmatic presentation, until there came to be attached to it a like minded society, and there thus arose a public preaching and communication of religion which found its norm in that doctrine.²¹

Thus the concept of religious belief as it appears in The Christian Faith must be understood in relationship to Schleiermacher's notion of what the Christian Church itself really is. Obviously, he does not require any definite and essential organizational aspect for a "Church." He points out that "according to Christ's original intention there was not to be any such visible Church. . ."²² It is only the Invisible Church that is the true, perfect, undivided and infallible Church. The Visible Church is but a faint reflection of this; it is, accordingly, something divided, imperfect, subject to error and ever changing. The outward expression of belief on the part of the Visible Church implies these very imperfections. The doctrinal expression of the prevailing "Christian feeling" represents truth for the moment, but it is never the total and accurate account of the faith of the Invisible Church:

When this innermost consciousness comes to be particularized in definite ideas, it no longer has the same full truth. . . Hence the outward expression of the inner truth becomes more or less distorted, and of its organized form the Spirit takes possession only gradually.²³

Out of this basic approach there necessarily arises a universal truth that lies in the center of Schleiermacher's thought: namely, the relativity of all externalized formulas of belief. This relativity is extended not only to the earlier Confessions of sixteenth century Protestantism, but to all the ancient Creeds as well. The Nicean Creed is essentially no different, in this system, from the Augsburg Confession: they both represent valid, but temporary and imperfect formulations of faith corresponding to the particular religious feeling of the Christian communities in each era. All Creeds known to history represent the "prevalent doctrine" of the Christian community at the time and in the circumstances in which they were composed, but they must not be looked upon as irreformable statements of belief for all time. They are only partial and imperfect expressions of Christian truth:

No definition of doctrine, then, even when arrived at with the most perfect community of feeling, can be regarded as irreformable and valid for all time. This is pre-eminently true of definitions, which arose after controversy as presentations put forth by a larger or smaller majority, for controversy more than anything else rouses all those impulses that lead to error. Hence no one can be bound to acknowledge the contents of such presentations as Christian truth except in so far as they are the expressions of his own religious consciousness, or commend themselves to him by their scriptural character.²⁴

There is, accordingly, a never-ending task of revision of the Church's public doctrine to which everyone, according to his own ability, must contribute. In this lies the second task proper to the theologian. Like all others he may--through his speculations-- contribute to the progressive understanding of revealed truth. His own individuality may "have an influence upon the form and manner of treatment, and even assert itself at particular points by intentional correction of the usual position."²⁵ The ultimate norm for the prevalent doctrine, however, remains the Christian community which either accepts or rejects any insights proposed. Schleiermacher insists that there is room for controversy, debates, analyses within the Church, but generally such "improvements and new developments of Christian doctrine . . . hardly ever proceed directly from the dogmatic discussions themselves, but are for the most part occasioned, in one way or another, by the proceedings of public worship or by popular literature for the dissemination of religion."²⁶ In this entire process, as he notes elsewhere, there runs a natural agreement concerning the basic principles by which error is to be counteracted, but even in regard to these, "this agreement is a thing of gradual formation in each Church, and can only arise when the Church has come to self-consciousness."²⁷

Following this basic approach, Schleiermacher proceeds to praise the sixteenth century Reformers for their refusal to submit to the decisions of a General Council; only the Christian community could solve the controversies of that era. At the same time, he criticizes these Reformers for accepting the Creeds of the ancient Church. In doing this, they were most inconsistent "for these Creeds are but the product of similar Councils, which besides were due to divisions within the Church, and hence were not preeminently fitted for the ascertainment of truth."²⁸

In this fashion, Schleiermacher rejects not only all Creeds, but all Councils; there is no room for an authoritative teaching body in this notion of the Church. For this reason he finds another inconsistency in the actions of sixteenth and seventeenth century Protestants. They eventually came to formulate various Protestant Creeds, such as the Augsburg Confession or the Westminster Confession, and made the acceptance of these a requisite for membership in Protestant Churches. Schleiermacher grants that under the historical circumstances in which the Reformers found themselves it was only natural and good that they should have set forth the "prevalent doctrine" (that is, the convictions they then held) by means of these Confessions. He considers it a grave mistake, however, and a matter of deep regret, that these same Confessions were later imposed in authoritarian fashion as the norm of Protestant belief "as if they had been irreformable."²⁹

In Schleiermacher's system, all such practices were an attempt to freeze the expression of religious experience at one stage of its development. He feels that neither the ancient Councils (such as Nicea or Chalcedon) nor the Protestant Confessions had the right to do that. None of them have anything more than temporary value. Each generation has the right to express in its own formulas the religious experience that is proper to it, but any attempt to permanentize particular Confessions will simply "hinder the performance of the very task to which [these Creeds] owed their birth."³⁰

Importance Of Scripture

Not even Scripture is exempt from this universal approach of Schleiermacher. It must also take its position in the long line of temporarily valid expressions of religious experience; it ranks first in the line, but apart from that it is in no way different. Schleiermacher is careful to point out, therefore, that one ought not give the impression "that a doctrine must belong to Christianity because it is contained in Scripture, whereas in point of fact it is only contained in Scripture because it belongs to Christianity."³¹ The New Testament is the product of the Christian conscience of the primitive Church, and as an expression of some primitive element in the Christian experience it may influence present-day faith, "but in no sense conditionally on the acceptance of a special doctrine about these writings, as having had their origin in special divine revelation or inspiration."³²

In Schleiermacher's system, the Holy Scriptures are "the first member in the series, ever since continued, of presentations of the Christian faith."³³ They may be considered a "norm" for all succeeding generations, but only in a very limited sense. Insofar as the early Church was a unity, a Christian community of the apostolic period, whose faith is reflected in Scripture, it possessed a valid expression of the Christian revelation. It could not, however, set forth its perception of that truth as a norm, pure and simple, to be used to determine the faith of later ages. There was much imperfection, much that was conditioned and temporal in their grasp of the truth of revelation, and it was this imperfect grasp that is set forth in the Scriptures. The very idea of revelation "signifies the originality of the fact which lies at the foundation of a religious communion) in the sense that this fact, as conditioning the individual content of the religious emotions which are found in the communion, cannot itself in turn be explained by the historical chain which precedes it."³⁴ Revelation happens at every moment, in each century, in every new community; it is not something of the past.

As a result, the various Churches must, with the passing of time, restate the essential and true message and only that element of Scripture, which corresponds to the present experience can be said to persist. There is an historic link to this first expression of faith in Scripture, since we can note that de facto "all that has approved itself in the way of oral presentation of Christian piety in later ages of the Church has kept within the lines of these original forms, or is attached to them as an explanatory accompaniment."³⁵ But the ultimate norm remains the present community alone. Even in regard to Scripture, "the general rule is first of all to be applied that in every kind of fellowship the individual clement approves itself only in so far as it gives expression to the common spirit. Here too, accordingly, everything of the kind which persists in influence alongside of Holy Scripture we must regard as homogeneous with Scripture; while nothing that does not persist can be given a place in the series."³⁶

In this fashion the Churches of later centuries will restate that which has persisted through time because it is present now as an element of their personal religious experience, but they will also set aside those less perfect, confused or erroneous statements which the Apostolic Church had at the same time incorporated into its profession of faith in the Scriptures of the New Testament. These later Churches, however, differ from the apostolic Church in one respect. The canonical Scriptures could be fashioned only in that primitive Christian community; it alone was able to set forth a relatively pure expression of Christianity. The Church in later centuries could not reproduce these canonical Scriptures "for the living intuition of Christ was never again able to ward off all debasing influences in the same direct fashion, but only derivatively through the Scriptures and hence in dependence on them."³⁷

This still does not mean that Scripture becomes an ultimate norm; Schleiermacher places great limits on the authority of Scripture. Whatever authority he grants he does "not ascribe uniformly to every part of our Holy Scriptures . . . so that casual expressions and what are merely side-thoughts do not possess the same degree of normativeness as belongs to whatever may at each point be the main subject."³⁸ Moreover, the content of Christianity is not limited to the apostolic period, much less to Scripture:

Nor is it meant that every later presentation must be uniformly derived from the Canon or be terminally contained in it from the first. For since the Spirit was poured out on all flesh, no age can be without its own originality in Christian thinking.³⁹

In the final analysis, it must be the Church of the present hour, which determines what is in harmony with the scriptural message: this Church alone can serve as the final norm for determining religious truth. The present consciousness of the Christian community is all-important, and as Fluckiger notes, Schleiermacher consistently assigns to Scripture only a secondary role:

Here Scripture no longer has the last word. In the course of the ecclesiastical development of doctrine, certain immanent principles evolve of themselves, which make it possible for the Church to distinguish between truth and error. . . It is obvious that here the Scriptural Principle is replaced by an evolutionary Principle of Tradition. The principles, which, as guiding principles, crystallize through time in the development of a dogmatic comprehension, the more the Church "learns to know itself" are also determinative for the ecclesiastical conviction concerning the truth of her dogma. And what are decisive for their further development are the immanent evolutionary tendencies of the ecclesiastical tradition itself.⁴⁰

Protestant Liberalism

In all of this we see the starting-point of what has come to be known as Protestant Liberalism, and it is this, which justifies calling Schleiermacher the father of modern liberal theology. This liberal movement reached its climax in the last decade of the nineteenth century; the final stage of development is frequently associated with the famous work of Adolph Harnack, The Essence of Christianity (Das Wesen des Christentums), which is a transcript of extemporaneous lectures delivered at the University of Berlin in the winter of 1899-1900. By that time a good deal of liberal water had flowed under the bridge and what appeared in 1900 was not entirely identical with what Schleiermacher produced eighty or ninety years earlier. The philosophical basis, however, remained basically the same.

The later liberal theology placed great importance on Schleiermacher's insistence on the authority of Christian experience. As Dillenberger-Welch note in their work, Protestant Christianity, there were three principal movements in the nineteenth century which contributed to the eventual formation of liberal theology, and the first of these was the notion of religious experience as worked out by Schleiermacher:

Enough has now been said to enable us to see the crucial place of Schleiermacher in the development of Protestant thought. Though Kant had anticipated the turn to a realm of subjective experience as the beginning-point for theology, Schleiermacher first made explicit the understanding that the teachings of the church are really explanations or explications of Christian experience. . . The affirmations of faith are not dependent upon the constructions of natural theology or ethics, nor are they simply deduced from an infallible scripture or creed. The Bible and the creeds are important, but as records and interpretations of the experience of Christ.⁴¹

In addition to the teaching of Schleiermacher mention might also be made of the influence of Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889), whose theology of moral values was also incorporated into much of liberalism. Ritschl accepted the position of Schleiermacher, as well as the teachings of the higher critics, but went on to lay special emphasis upon the ethical goals of Christianity. He looked upon God as love alone and, in rejecting the notion of original sin, presented an optimistic view of the kingdom of God on earth as an organization of humanity through action inspired by love. For a Protestantism fast stripping itself of dogmatic truths, this ethical notion was ripe for acceptance as the true meaning of Christianity. Ritschl greatly influenced the formation of the "social gospel" in modern Protestantism.

Biblical Studies

To the immanentist and subjectivist teaching of Schleiermacher and the moralism of Ritschl, there was then added a second element, namely, the approach of biblical (or historical) criticism, which was being developed at about the same time. It is important to remember that in nineteenth century Protestantism, the religious philosophy of Schleiermacher and the findings of biblical criticism were actually two elements of one reality; the conclusions of the biblical critics were evaluated and interpreted against the backdrop of Schleiermacher's philosophy. It was a concern not for textual criticism, which was quite old by the nineteenth century, but for "higher criticism." Treated in union with Schleiermacher's position (shared, of course, by many another and expressed in slightly different language), biblical criticism in the developing liberal theology of the last century meant treating the Scriptures as purely human creations, as expressions of the religious experience of the primitive Christian Church alone. The Bible was not considered either as an inspired book or as the Word of God in the sense of sixteenth century Protestantism (much less in the Catholic sense). As a result, the legitimate findings of scriptural study all took on a new meaning through this philosophic system with which they were associated.

We might note in passing that this may continue to be the cause of serious misunderstanding between scriptural scholars and dogmatic theologians within the Catholic Church today. Unfortunately, scriptural study has had to labor under the cloud of liberal theology --above all, under the cloud of Schleiermacher's philosophical basis. One of the principal tasks of the Catholic exegete is to relate objective findings to the philosophical and theological basis proper to Catholicism. He can no more deal simply with objective facts apart from some philosophical context in which they are to be interpreted than could the liberal scholars of the last century.

Upon occasion the Catholic scriptural scholar will state a legitimate finding of his own research that coincides closely with the findings of liberal scholars working under the influence of the philosophical approach of Schleiermacher and similar-minded men. It is this basis that makes all the difference, but occasionally the Catholic scholar neglects to point this out expressly. An answer to the question of the dogmatic theologian that goes no further than stating that "Of course, I am not involved in such a philosophical approach," will not help matters too much. Granting the state of affairs during the last century, all concerned with these matters need to spell out more distinctly the philosophical or theological basis upon which we are working. This will separate the scriptural position of Catholic scholars today from the context of liberal theology, and will keep the dogmatic theologian from assuming that a similar conclusion automatically indicates a philosophical basis akin to that of Schleiermacher.

It is in this light that we find an answer to the supposed opposition between Pius X and Pius XII. Dillenberger-Welch, for example, seems to have misunderstood the Catholic position on this point. They state that "Pius X specifically forbade Roman Catholic scholars to use the methods of 'secular' historical analysis on the Bible," but conclude that, "the effect of the proscription against the use of such critical methods has been moderated in recent years. . . "⁴² This is not quite the situation; Leo XIII and Pius XII were necessarily as much opposed to what Pius X condemned, as this sainted Pontiff was himself. It is the philosophical basis coloring all of the interpretations offered both by the Protestant Liberals and the Modernists within the Catholic Church, which makes the difference. In the days of Pius X it was well nigh impossible to disentangle the complicated web of Schleiermachian thought and the biblical criticism then offered. What was condemned was the common acceptance by Catholics of both systems--the philosophical and the critical--as evidenced in the teachings of the Modernists. A problem such as that can only be faced in the total complex of human activity in which it appears. The objective data concerning authorship of the Bible, literary forms, the relationship between the various books, and so forth, were then receiving an interpretation in accord with such philosophy as that of Schleiermacher. What was condemned by Rome then is condemned today.

On the other hand, it is considerably easier for the scriptural scholar to advance his findings today quite independent of the philosophical matrix into which similar findings were inserted by Liberals and Modernists at the turn of the century. Thus the Roman Pontiffs have given frequent encouragement to such scriptural studies, but only, of course, on the condition that the data would be related to the philosophical and theological basis proper to Catholicism. When this is neglected in any way, difficulties recur. The student of Scripture may ask that all give to him that charitable understanding urged by Pius XII, but at the same time, it would possibly be more prudent and would help matters no end if he himself would state in as clear a manner as possible the relationship of his data to Catholic theology. The exegete has a responsibility, certainly, to the whole of Catholic doctrine, and cannot, on the pretext of specialization, absolve himself from this further duty. To do so will only cause misunderstanding on the part of the dogmatic theologian, and may possibly be the occasion of others inadvertently interpreting the data for themselves in the context of something like that of Schleiermacher's philosophy.

All of this is in part a matter of human relations, and a thorough understanding of precisely what did happen in the Modernist crisis can help point the way to more adequate solutions today. Much the same must be said, in regard to the use by Catholics, of the exegetical conclusions of non-Catholic scriptural scholars. Apart from the more simple determination of texts, the meaning of words, and the like, it is obvious that any exegete must labor within the framework of his own philosophical or theological background. Hence the Catholic, when referring to these findings, could help clarify matters greatly by indicating precisely how his use of the same scientific data will differ from that of another scholar working on the basis of an entirely distinct philosophical and theological viewpoint.

Third Element

In addition to the philosophy of Schleiermacher and other immanentists, and the concerns of biblical criticism, a third cause contributed to the rise of liberal theology: this was the emphasis on science and the scientific method in the nineteenth century. Darwin's general notion of evolution extended far beyond the realm of natural science and pervaded the thinking of all men; and the scientific method of the nineteenth century historian came to be looked upon as the answer to all doubt and insecurity. Science would now establish the belief of Christianity, and it would appear--in conjunction with these other two elements--as a progressively evolving and changing expression of the religious experience of Christians in successive centuries. History in this sense appeared as that "historicism" so opposed by Pius XII as irreconcilable with Catholicism insofar as it designates a philosophical system limited to the temporal, to change and evolution, and which accordingly rejects the spiritual, the permanent and eternal.⁴³

It was the most famous Protestant historian of the last century, Adolph Harnack, who finally brought all of these varied tendencies together and set forth a purely natural explanation of the essence of Christianity in these terms. It was a Christianity approached from the point of view of science and the scientific method, accompanied by a good deal of scepticism and an emphasis upon inner religious experience. It absorbed the spirit of evolution and constant improvement, and gave expression to its unbounded confidence in man and his future. This general spirit flowed over into all of Christian doctrine, and brought forth new "liberal interpretations" of every doctrine known to Christianity.⁴⁴

Modernism

Within the Catholic Church there were those who were not untouched by these trends within Protestantism. Throughout the eighteenth century there had been repeated efforts on the part of Catholic theologians to incorporate Kantian philosophy into an explanation of Catholic doctrine. Many of the Traditionalists and Fideists used the Kantian doctrine as the starting-point for their own efforts to find God by some other natural means (since Kant had presumably destroyed the proofs from reason for God's existence). There were also those who had become acquainted with the philosophy of Schleiermacher and others of similar mentality; some had turned to the problems of biblical criticism, and encountered the philosophic basis associated with it in Protestant Liberalism. It might only be expected that there would be those who would conclude to something very much like the synthesis of Protestant liberal theology.

All of these tendencies came to light in the Pascendi of Pope St. Pius X. The Church had recognized the errors that were developing on some sides, and moved to stamp them out. The Pascendi, far more than the Lamentabili, points out the inter-relationship between the various trends of thought being pursued at that time. The Lamentabili makes no attempt to analyze; it is simply a series of sixty-five statements to be condemned since they pertain to this entire mentality. Included among them are such typical positions as these: the scientific method is supreme, and even the Church must submit to the judgment of exegetes;⁴⁵ God is not the author of Scripture, and inspiration is very limited;⁴⁶ The Bible must be interpreted as a merely human document;⁴⁷ revelation is nothing except the consciousness that man has of his relationship to God;⁴⁸ revelation did not end with the death of the last Apostle;⁴⁹ the divinity of Christ is something derived from the gradual evolution of the Christian conscience;⁵⁰ dogmas are only interpretations and evolutions of the Christian intelligence;⁵¹ the chief articles of the Apostles' Creed did not have the same sense for the early Church as they have today;⁵² modern Catholicism can be reconciled with true science only "if it is transformed into a non-dogmatic Christianity; that is to say, into a broad and liberal Protestantism."⁵³

The roots of these statements lie in the field of Liberal Protestantism. This is the key to a proper understanding of Modernism within the Catholic Church. These isolated statements which were condemned, however, were set forth in the far more synthetic outline of Modernist thought presented by Pius X two months later in the Pascendi, in which the Pontiff explained the general Modernist teaching, its causes and its remedies.⁵⁴ The opening paragraphs of this encyclical read in large measure like a summary of the teaching of Schleiermacher. It is, in its own way) no less than amazing that the Catholic theologians involved in this debate were able, in the heat of controversy, to go to the very root of the problem. They saw at that time what appears so clear to us today, that is, that anyone wishing to understand the origins and development of Modernism within the Catholic Church must assuredly turn to a study of the writings of Schleiermacher and the manner in which they were interpreted by nineteenth century Liberal Protestantism.

There is an important difference between Modernism and Liberal Protestantism, of course. The Modernist attempted to bring into harmony both the traditional Catholic faith and these principles of Liberalism; this would naturally result in a rather distinct system. Obviously, because of the opposite directions taken by the underlying philosophical principles of both systems, this attempt could not possibly have succeeded. It was in reality an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable, and it could only have ended by the abandonment of one or the other element: either accept the condemnation of Pius X or forsake the Catholic Church. This last was the choice of some. Alfred Loisy, for example, rose to defend the Church against Harnack's The Essence of Christianity, but his L'evangile et l'Eglise showed that he too had absorbed a good deal of the liberal position, even though he now aligned himself with those in the eschatological school of thought who reacted against much of Harnack's teaching. The same is true of the Tyrrell and the other leaders of the Modernist movement within the Church. Their defense of Catholicism indicated time and again that they had made more concessions to Protestant Liberalism that orthodox Catholic doctrine could endure.

Schleiermacher And Liberalism Today

At the present time, the Liberalism of the last century is genererally looked upon with disfavor among Protestant theologians. In a comparatively short time, a reaction set in against the extremes of liberal thought. Perhaps the best-known rejection of this position is Karl Barth's commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans in 1918; this marked a violent rejection of liberal theology and a desire to return to more orthodox Protestant belief. Involved in this was the concern of the present century in the philosophy of Existentialism; this is perhaps the most noteworthy element in present-day Protestant developments. Apart from the Fundamentalist Churches, Protestant theology today is largely dominated by this type of thought, although the influence of Schleiermacher is far from dead. Any attempt to understand present-day Protestant thought, however, must necessarily involve an approach by way of Kantian principles, of Schleiermacher's application of these, and of the existentialist restatement of the concept of religious experience. Kierkegaard spoke out against the absolute deification of human reason in the philosophy of Hegel; he desired a more personalist approach to God. This is reflected in much of Protestant thought today which is concerned not so much with man's discovery of God, but with God's self-manifestation to man by which the personal confrontation of faith is accomplished:

So far, the emphasis of recent thought is not unlike that of the liberal stress on religious experience. . . But the connotation of this view is quite different from that of liberalism. . . God reveals himself to faith. His Word to man stands in judgment on all human words and conceptions. The final court of appeal is not rational norms, or conscience or experience, but the self-revelation of God, and there is a "given-ness" in revelation which makes it always "over-against" man.⁵⁵

In line with this new concern for existentialistic philosophy, however, there has arisen a question as to whether the nineteenth century Liberals actually grasped the real import of what Schleiermacher was trying to say. There is an undeniable existentialist and personalist facet to his complicated thought, and for this reason Schleiermacher continues to exert an influence on modern religious thought. This explains in part the interest of such an existentially motivated theologian as Karl Barth in the thought of Schleiermacher; it is not purely historical. Schleiermacher would probably have rejected the extremes of liberal thought in the era following his. Despite his immanentist concerns, he did not want to reduce Christianity to a purely natural and historical level. It is, therefore, the opinion of Fluckiger that Barth has perceived the key to Schleiermacher's true thought, and "for the first time" has brought to light the originality and the exact meaning of Schleiermacher's scientific method.⁵⁶ As Barth views Schleiermacher, he is not to be studied either from a philosophical or a dogmatic point of view alone, but from a combination of the two. All of these elements must be used so that, through contrast and synthesis, the complete picture may be drawn. For Barth, therefore, religious truth in the teaching of Schleiermacher is "life." This is the key to his thought. It is, however, a life couched in existentialist terms--a life which is realized only in the endless breach between being and existence.⁵⁷

Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was only twenty-one when Schleiermacher died, but the intellectual climate that produced Kierkegaard may already have influenced Schleiermacher. In many respects Kierkegaard was not any more anti-rational than Schleiermacher; neither of them would agree to any attempt to reduce religion to reason, and both refused to grant reason any special power in the realm of natural theology. While Schleiermacher admits that Christian dogmas can be presented rationally, in logical and intelligible phrases, he insists that they can be known or perceived only by a unique experience on the part of the Christian and not by reason:

In one respect all Christian dogmas are supra-rational, in another they are all rational. They are supra-rational in the respect in which everything experiential is supra-rational. For there is an inner experience to which they may all be traced: they rest upon a given; and apart from this they could not have arisen, by deduction or synthesis, from universally recognized and communicable propositions. If the reverse were true, it would mean that you could instruct and demonstrate any man into being a Christian, without his happening to have had any experience.⁵⁸

No less than Kierkegaard, Schleiermacher would oppose any attempt to freeze this vital experience into a closed, complete, static, dead system. He insists that the presentation of Christian dogmas in any rational form is only temporary; it describes the "prevalent doctrine," but nothing more. Life does not stand still in this system, and it is for this reason that Barth would single out the concept of "life" in Schleiermacher's thought: Kierkegaard, on the other hand, while stressing life and personal encounter, made explicit the notion of the "Moment" in which all Christians encounter Christ, something not noted in Schleiermacher.

It may possibly be that this more existentialistic outlook would account for the sharp division between the thought of Hegel and Schleiermacher, which eventually even reached the point of personal antipathy. Hegel felt that an approach such as Schleiermacher's would in the end frustrate religion by disparaging the rational side of life.⁵⁹ On the other hand, it was largely by way of opposition to the totalitarian claims of Hegelian reason that Kierkegaard set forth his position, which would also suggest the possibility of further investigation into relationship of Schleiermacher's thought to present-day Existentialism.

Be that as it may, the fact remains that the religious philosophy of Friedrich Schleiermacher did exercise a great influence on the development of Protestant liberal theology. Despite the influence of Barth and other existentialist theologians, it is illuminating to note a continued interest in basic liberal viewpoints. Even with tags of Neo-Orthodoxy and Neo-Liberalism, there has been for a long time a feeling that present-day Protestant theology has not really approached too closely to orthodoxy nor bid too final a farewell to Liberalism. As Fr. Gustave Weigel has remarked, "Seemingly, therefore, the Neo-Orthodox are a Center theology, but a closer examination of their thought has led many critics to believe that they are basically liberals in a strange guise."⁶⁰ Neo-Liberalism is even more obviously attached to its nineteenth century predecessors.⁶¹

This has been brought out most strikingly, however, by the remarks of H. Richard Niebuhr in 1960. He himself was originally a product of the liberal theology of Protestantism in the last century. From this he passed over into the concerns of Karl Barth, generally referred to as Neo-Orthodoxy. But at present, he has tended to reject Earth in turn, and return to a theological position more in line with that which he had adopted originally--a liberal point of view. Speaking of the post-liberal theologians in Protestantism he has this to say:

So many of them seem to me to have gone back to orthodoxy as right teaching, right doctrine, and to faith as fides, an assent; they tend, it seems to me, toward the definition of Christian life in terms of right believing, of Christianity as the true religion, and otherwise toward the assertion of the primacy of ideas over personal relations. When I think about this I have to say to myself that important as theological formulations are for me, they are not the basis of faith but only one of its expressions, and that not the primary one. I discover further a greater kinship with all theologians of Christian experience than with the theologians of Christian doctrine. So I find myself, though with many hesitations, closer to Edwards and Schleiermacher, to Coleridge, Bushnell and Maurice than to Barth and the dogmatic biblical theology current today in wide circles. . . To state my understanding of our theological situation briefly, I believe that the Barthian correction of the line of march, begun in Schleiermacher's day was absolutely essential, but that it has become an overcorrection and that Protestant theology can minister to the church's life more effectively if it resumes the general line of march represented by the evangelical, empirical and critical movement.⁶²

In this we see striking evidence that the spirit of Liberalism and Modernism is far from dead; these approaches to Christianity are not yet ready for the historical junk pile. Obvious traces of liberal thought have continued to influence present-day Protestant thought and scriptural study, despite such newly hewn names as Neo-Orthodoxy, Neo-Liberalism, or Existentialistic Theology. While Bultmann and Tillich have reacted against the liberal tradition, there may yet remain some question as to whether they have not simply out-liberalized the Liberals in their wave of antisupernaturalism.⁶³

In any event, the movement influenced so forcefully by the teaching of Schleiermacher is still very much with us, and Catholic theologians have a great need of understanding this historical background. Without such a knowledge we can only too easily misinterpret the past and misunderstand the present.

John L. Murphy
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

Endnotes

1 Cf. AER, CXLIV (1961), 377 ff.

2 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, trans, by H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. dark, 1928), p. 5 (No. 3, 1).

3 Ibid., p. 12 (No. 4).

4 Ibid., p. 18 (No. 5).

5 Ibid., p. 26 (No. 6).

6 Ibid., p. 37 (No. 8, 4).

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid., p. 38.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., p. 52 (No. 11).

11 Ibid., p. 68 (No. 14).

12 Ibid., p. 52 (No. 11, 1). Italics ours.

13 Ibid., p. 53.

14 Ibid., p. 76 (No.15). Italics ours.

15 Felix Fluckiger, Philosophie und Theologie bie Schleiermacher (Zollikon-Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1947), p. 128.

16 Schleiermacher, op. cit., p. 88 (No. 19).

17 Ibid., p. 89 (No. 19, 2).

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., p. 89 (No. 19, 1).

21 Ibid., p. 90 (No. 19, 3).

22 Ibid., p. 677 (No. 148, 2).

23 Ibid., p. 678 (No. 149, 1).

24 Ibid., p. 690 (No, 154,2).

25 Ibid., p. 90 (No. 19, 3).

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid., p. 690 (No. 154, 2).

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., p. 691.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid., p. 593 (No. 128, 3).

32 Ibid., p. 593 (No. 128, 2).

33 Ibid., p. 594 (No. 129).

34 Ibid., p. 50 (No. 10, postscript).

35 Ibid., p. 594 (No. 129, 1).

36 Ibid., p. 595.

37 Ibid., p. 596 (No. 129, 2).

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Fluckiger, op. cit., p. 98.

41 John Dillenberger-Claude Welch, Protestant Christianity (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1954), p. 188.

42 Ibid., p. 196.

43 Cf. Pius XII, Address to the Tenth International Congress of Historians (September 7, 1955).

44 Cf. Dillenberger-Welch, op. cit., pp. 217 ff.

45 Denz. 2001 f. (Cf. Yzermans. All Things in Christ, pp. 223-228, No. 1 ff.)

46 Denz. 2009, 2011. (Yzermans, No. 9, 11.)

47 Denz. 2012. (Yzermans, No. 12.)

48 Denz. 2020. (Yzermans, No. 12.)

49 Denz. 2021. (Yzermans, No. 20.)

50 Denz. 2027. (Yzermans, No. 21.)

51 Denz. 2054. (Yzermans, No. 54.)

52 Denz. 2062. (Yzermans, No. 62.)

53 Denz. 2065. (Yzermans, No. 65.)

54 Cf. Part I of this article: AER, CXLIV (1961), 377 ff.

55 Dillenberger-Welch, op. cit., p. 274. Cf. also pp. 255 ff.

56 Cf. Karl Barth, "Schleiermacher," in Die Theologie und die Kirche: Gesammelte Vortrage (Zollikon, 1930), II; Die protestantische Theologie in 19. Jahrhundert (Zollikon-Zurich, 1947).

57 Cf. Fluckiger, op. cit., p. 185.

58 Schleiermacher, op. cit., p. 67 (No. 13, postscript).

59 Cf. Richard B. Brandt, The Philosophy of Schleiermacher (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), Appendix II: "Schleiermacher and Hegel," pp. 322-326.

60 Gustave Weigel, SJ., "A Survey of Protestant Theology in Our Day," Proceedings: The Catholic Theological Society of America, 1953 (Dunwoodie, Yonkers, N.Y.: St. Joseph's Seminary, 1953), p. 59.

61 Ibid., p. 52.

62 H. Richard Niebuhr, "Reformation: Continuing Imperative," in The Christian Century, 77 (March 2, 1960) 249, 250.

63 Cf. Nels F. S. Ferre, Searchlights on Contemporary Theology (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), pp. 89-91.

Part I, Modernism And The Teaching Of Schleiermacher

This item 3016 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org