Schl - secondary reading

Question 1

Barth

Answer 1

• Karl Barth, The Theology of Schleiermacher (Dietrich Ritschl, ed., Geoffrey W. Bromiley, trans.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982) 275
  o Is S concerned with a Xian theology focused on worship or rather a philosophy indifferent to Xianity, cloaked in Xian ideas?
  o Key to S = his role as preacher
  o Ended up rejecting his theology based on idea that S is a ‘philosopher posing as a theologian’ (60)

Question 2

vial - 2fold purpose in expressing religious affections

Answer 2

o personal feeling and taste of infinite

o social purpose – ‘it is religious expression that creates religious communities’ (62)

Question 3

marina - problems with pluralism

Answer 3

o how can differing traditions make competing truth-claims?

o What is the ultimate reality?

Question 4

marina - comparison of Schl and Hick

Answer 4

o feeling of absolute dependence = unmediated and immediate
♣ ‘Schleiermacher avoids one of the principle difficulties faced by John Hick in his attempt to link diverse religious traditions to the experience of a single ultimate. According to Hick, all religious experience is interpreted and the Real in itself is unknown and unknowable in our present state. As pointed out by many of Hick’s critics, however, on this view there is a problem in linking the phenomenal manifestations of religion to the Real in itself.’ (131)

Question 5

marina - difference in degree

Answer 5

o ‘Differences in religions amount to the extent to which they can adequately convey the experience of absolute dependence upon this ground; they are differences in degree, not in kind. It is because there is a single, fundamental experience to which all the world’s religions are related that there can be meaningful and significant dialogue among them’ (138-9)

Question 6

marina - criteria of authenticity

Answer 6

o ‘Schleiermacher’s transcendental analysis of consciousness allows him to provide criteria of adequacy for religious traditions: it is insofar as they adequately reflect human transcendence and freedom that they can also thereby adequately point to the ground of all that is’ (140)

Question 7

marina - how absolute is experienced

Answer 7

• ‘Schleiermacher’s theology allows us to understand how different historically situated religious traditions can provide access to the Absolute. Moreover, because God cannot be an object of our experience, the idea that we can simply have propositional knowledge of God and God’s relation to the world is beset with difficulties. Schleiermacher’s philosophical theology provides a coherent account of how it is that the Absolute can be experienced and talked about if this is the case. Hence while it may be the case that it is impossible to achieve a universal theology, we may yet come to a consensus regarding a universal practice and the experience that attends it. Working from there, we may be enabled to measure the adequacy of religious traditions in reflecting upon this experience.’ (141)

Question 8

Nassar - main parts to Spinozan doctrine

Answer 8

♣ Monism – infinite substance = necessary condition for existence
♣ Inherency – things cannot be separate from the infinite as they form part of the whole
♣ Harmony of the universe – particulars are functioning members of the universe

Question 9

Nassar - how schleiermacher departs from Spinoza

Answer 9

o ‘Schleiermacher departs from Spinoza in one significant way: he depicts the infinite universe as a unity of continually active forces through which the infinite reveals itself in the finite at every moment. As such, Schleiermacher emphasizes the reality of change and the reality of the finite particular, as distinct from the infinite substance.’ (813)

o ‘Though he agrees with Spinoza that finite things can be understood only in their relations to the infinite, he does not consider this relation one-sided. That is, the infinite not only affects the finite, but also is affected by the finite. In essence, the relation between infinite and finite in Schleiermacher is one of continuous reciprocity.’ (817)

Question 10

Nassar - intuition

Answer 10

• Analysis of intuition and passive element for mediation – to intuit the universe is to also become a mediator
  o Religion = feeling and intuition
  o Wants to eliminate metaphysics from religion
  o Intuition is individual
  o Passive receptor of revelation from universe

Question 11

Nassar - steps to gaining intuition

Answer 11

♣ specific point of contact
♣ intuiter possesses place in universe
♣ through intuition, the individual undertakes ‘spatial exchange’ with the infinite
♣ individual body extends beyond itself into universe, infinite enters into body

Question 12

Nassar - intuition and mediation

Answer 12

o ‘At the moment of intuition, the intuiter expands to encompass the infinite, and, at the same time, the infinite enters the individual and itself becomes individualized, that is, specifically determined in one place. Through such an exchange, the intuiter is transformed and becomes not merely an intuiter but also a mediator.’ (827)
o ‘the mediator, as a point of equilibrium and high intensity within the human bond of consciousness, reflects more completely the infinite in his action of self-reflection’ (828)
o ‘the mediator functions as a mirror for the universe’ (828)
o the infinite reveals itself in humans

Question 13

nassar - role of human history

Answer 13

o Intuition is only possible in the world of humanity – gives us a world within which to intuit
♣ Link to Gen 2 story and role of love

o ‘What is remarkable is that this world in which the divine reveals itself - the world which is meant to reflect the divine - is also the world which human beings actively create.’ (831)
o ‘it would seem that in finding humanity with oneself, one also finds the infinite’ (831)
o ‘To say that in humanity one finds the infinite is not to anthropomorphize the infinite, but to provide one example in which the infinite manifests itself.’ (832)

Question 14

Nassar - mediation as passively received but actively mediated

Answer 14

o ‘ To mediate the universe, to bring it into the world, and thus to create a world that mediates reflects the universe, is also a means by which the individual finds a point of contact with and in turn approaches the universe’ (838)
o ‘Thus, while through intuition one comes to recognize one’s place in the universe and to reveal it in a passive way, through mediation, one communicates and in turn creates one’s place in the world, and thus one makes possible future revelations of the in finite and communication of one’s intuitions.’ (839)

Question 15

Barth

Answer 15

• Emphasis on revealed theology
• Wholly transcendent and unknowable
• Implications for S
  o Too much emphasis on feeling – reduces God to material world
  ♣ Schleiermacher may, however, object to Barth’s focus on divine revelation on the grounds that it removes the Romantic notions of individuality, subjectivity and the self
  ♣ B makes Xianity too exclusive

Question 16

holly reed on later works

Answer 16

• Themes in OR seen in later works e.g. ‘The Christian Faith’
  o Quotes Anselm, “I do not seek to understand so that I may believe, but believe so that I may understand…For anyone who has not believed will not experience, and anyone who has not experienced will not understand.”
  o Not so much addressed to non-believers as to the church
  o Religion = piety, absolute dependence, Christianity, the need for Christ, doctrine and dogmatics

Question 17

reed on polarities

Answer 17

• ‘Throughout his writing Schleiermacher continuously holds in tension the polarities that characterized Christianity in his time…the tensions between knowing/doing, emotion/reason, individualism/communalism, dependence/freedom, experience/tradition, speculation/empiricism, diversity/unity. Trying to stop the reduction of religion to a set of cold facts or to a quaint historic reliquary, Schleiermacher faithfully seeks to contextualize the faith in order to serve the community of faith right where it is at the present moment. It is a task he would encourage even now, for as he said, “Dogmatic Theology is the science which systematizes the doctrine prevalent in a Christian Church at a given time.”’

Question 18

tamilio on religion

Answer 18

• ‘In the “Second Speech” (of five), Schleiermacher maintains that religion is a mingling of the theoretical and the practical’
  o religion = third part of being human alongside knowing and doing

Question 19

Peter heltzel on religion

Answer 19

• ‘For him religion is primarily neither morality (contraKant) nor belief or knowledge (contraHegel) but an immediate self-consciousness or feeling of absolute dependence on God. The roots of faith are pre-moral and pre-cognitive, and this religious consciousness is common to all people, though very variously recognized and expressed.’

Question 20

heltzel on difference between S and reformed theology

Answer 20

• ‘One major methodological difference from traditional reformed theology was Schleiermacher’s starting point. Schleiermacher started with religious experience, with religious feeling, and then worked his way up to God. Part of the reason for his anthropological starting point was his apologetic posture inOn Religion. To his sophisticated, skeptical friends, Schleiermacher posed the question, what if it could be shown that religion in general and Christianity in particular are not inimical to humanity but essential to its true fulfillment?’

Question 21

charles demm on dogma

Answer 21

o ‘Schleiermacher echoed the disgust felt by the cultured at those who blindly followed ecclesiastical dogma and creeds. He agreed with them that dogma had been a source of unnecessary suffering and harm, but Schleiermacher had a radically different view of dogma and the role doctrine should play in a community. He wrote that religion did not begin with theological systems, but with an internal feeling he labeled ‘religion’.’
o Religion is necessary part of being human

Question 22

Forster on Spinoza

Answer 22

• Spinozan belief in monistic principles that encompasses everything
  o But ‘whereas Spinoza had conceived his monistic principle as a substance, Schleiermacher follows Herder in thinking of it rather as an original force and the unifying source of a multiplicity of more mundane forces.’
  o Denied that he was a Spinozan

Question 23

Forster on religious toleration

Answer 23

• ‘He recognises a potentially endless multiplicity of valid religions, and strongly advocates religious toleration. However, he also arranges the various types of religion in a hierarchy, with animism at the bottom, polytheism in the middle, and monotheistic or otherwise monistic religions at the top. This hierarchy is understandable given his fundamental neo-Spinozism.’
  o But problematic – criticises Judaism in particularly. Xianity has the higher meditation of JC

Question 24

Reynolds on dialectic

Answer 24

o ‘Here is precisely where the dialectical nature of the argument in the Speeches emerges. Contrary to what is commonly assumed about his theory of religion, Schleiermacher asserts that no one can be religious in general, and more, that no one can have an unmediated religious experience. Particular religious experiences are neither universally the same nor simply derivatives of some inviolable core experience’ (156)

Question 25

tillich and s/o distinction

Answer 25

o faith needs to be directed towards something
o ultimate/unconditional etc. overcome subject/object distinction – act of faith and ultimate meant in the act of faith are the same
o source of act of faith is beyond subject/object distinction
o ‘the more idolatrous a faith the less it is able to overcome the cleavage between subject and object. In true faith the ultimate concern is a concern about the truly ultimate; whilst in idolatrous faith preliminary, finite realities are elevated to the rank of ultimacy’ (13)

Question 26

tillich and seeking the infinite

Answer 26

o faith = awareness of holiness
o ‘the human heart seeks the infinite because that is where the finite wants to rest’ (15)
o holy = creative and justice

Question 27

Tillich on religion as not emotion

Answer 27

o Some interpret faith as emotion – this is wrong to Tillich
o Schleiermacher – religion = feeling of unconditional dependence
o However…this does not grasp all elements of the person
o ‘certainly faith as an act of the whole personality has strong emotional elements within it…but emotion is not the source of faith. Faith is definite in its direction and concrete in its content…it is directed toward the unconditional’ (46)