The Methodist Quarterly Review 1869

ART. III.-SCHLEIERMACHER; HIS THEOLOGY AND INFLUENCE. A CENTURY ago the twenty-first ,of November last was born in Breslau, Prussia, Frederick Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher; perhaps, with a single exception, the greatest theological genius of the Protestant world.

Schleiermacher was the son of a German Reformed minister, then chaplain of a Prussian regiment in Silesia; his mother was the daughter of Rev. Air. Stubenrauch, likewise Reformed. As his father was often absent from home on official duties, his early training devolved almost entirely upon his mother, who used her great influence very skillfully and successfully, so as to secure her son's lasting gratitude. His father removed afterward to the country, and young Schleiermacher stayed under the paternal roof up to his fourteenth year, being instructed by his parents and by a private teacher, who inspired him with enthusiasm for classical literature. At this early period he was assailed by a "strange skepticism," which made him doubt the genuineness of all the ancient authors. In 1783 he was sent to Niesky, where the Moravians had an excellent school, and two years later, to the Moravian college at Barby. A spirit of child-like piety pervaded these schools, instruction and amusement were happily blended, and these influences impressed him most happily and lastingly. Even at this early period he had painful doubts as to the nature of the atonement and the eternity of the punishment of the wicked; and lie went to work so independently, that a rupture, not only with his be-loved teachers, but also, temporarily, with his father, was the consequence. In 1787 he entered the University at Halle, where he attended the lectures of Semler and of Wolf, the great philologist, mastered the modern languages and mathematics, and read the works of Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, and Jacobi. Although his mind was very impressible, yet he was too independent to follow any one master. After two years he left the university without any fixed system of religious opinions, yet with the hope of" attaining by earnest research and a patient examination of all the witnesses, to a reasonable degree of certainty, and to a knowledge of the boundaries of human science and learning." In 1790 he passed his examination for licensure, and became private tutor in the family of Count Dohna, where he stayed three years, and received his first polish in intercourse with refined and noble-minded women. In 1794 he took holy orders, and became assistant of his uncle at Landsberg; in 1796 he was appointed chaplain of a hospital in Berlin, where he stayed till 1802. During these six years he moved mostly in cultivated and literary circles, and identified himself with the so-called romantic school of poetry, as represented by Frederick and August Wilh. Schlegel, Ticck, and Novalis. This connection tended to elevate his taste and to stimulate his mind, but was rather unfavorable to a high-toned spirituality and moral earnestness. In 1802 he went as court preacher to Stolpe in Pomerania. Here he commenced his translation of Plato, completed in six volumes from 1804 to 1826. In 1804 he was elected extraordinary professor of theology and philosophy in Halle. When this university was suspended in 1806 by Napoleon be went first to Rugen, and then to Berlin as minister of Trinity Church. In 1809 he married the widow of his friend Willich, and, although he was much older-than she, yet it proved a union of lasting happiness. He took a great part in the establishment of the Berlin University in 1810, became its first professor of theology, and spent the remainder of his life there as academical teacher and pastor of Trinity Church. He lectured two hours daily on almost every branch of theology and philosophy, and was, with his former pupil, Neander, for over twenty years the great theological luminary and point of attraction of Berlin. As a preacher he gathered around him every Sunday, in Trinity Church, the most intelligent audiences,' students, professors, officers, and persons of the higher ranks of society. Wilhelm von Humboldt says, that Schleiermacher's speaking far exceeded his power in writing, and that his strength consisted in the "deeply penetrative character of his words, which were free from art, and the persuasive effusion of feeling, moving in perfect unison with one of the rarest of intellects." He never wrote his sermons, except the text, theme, and a few heads, but they were taken down by friends, reviewed by him, and published. Besides his regular duties as preacher, professor, and member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, he took an active part in the most important movements of his country and age. During the most critical and depressed period in the history of Prussia he exerted a powerful influence in the pulpit, in the chair, and through the press, to stir up in all classes that pride of nationality and love of independence which resulted in the war of liberation and the final emancipation of Germany from French usurpation. He adhered to the end of his life to his liberal principles, and exposed himself to the danger of being exiled, like his friends De Wette and E. M. Arndt. He retained, however, his position, received even the order of the Red Eagle, which, however, he never wore, and never enjoyed nor sought the personal friendship of Frederick William III. He assisted in the work of the union of the Lutheran and Reformed Confessions in 1817, and strongly favored the introduction of the Presbyterian and synodical form of government. He assisted in compiling the Berlin hymn book in 1829, which, with all its defects, opened the way for a hymnological reform, which has since been going on in all parts of Germany.

Notwithstanding this extraordinary activity, he mingled freely in society. and was the center of attraction in a large circle of friends at his fireside. He was small of stature, and somewhat humpbacked; but his face was noble, earnest, sharply defined, and highly expressive of intellect and kindly sympathy; his eye was piercing, keen, and full of fire; all his movements were quick and animated. He had a perfect command over his temper, and never lost his even composure. In the beginning of February 1834 he contracted a cold, which settled on his lungs and terminated his life in a few days. His death filled all Germ any with gloom; it was universally felt that a representative man, and a great luminary of the age, bad fallen. A complete collection of his works has been in the course of publication ever since 1835. . His productions embrace classical philology, philosophical ethics, dialectics, psychology, politics, pedagogics, Church history, hermeneutics, Christian ethics, dogmatics, practical theology, sermons, and a large number of philosophical, exegetical, and critical essays. These are a few meager outlines as to the man Schleiermacher. We must next review Schleiermacher the [FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXI.—14] theologian, the regenerator of German theology, of German religious thinking, the father of modern orthodox theology. In sketching him in this capacity we shall mainly follow Dorner in his admirable recent work, History of Protestant Theology, not yet translated into English, and noticed in a rather unsatisfactory manner in several of our Reviews.

In order to understand Schleiermacher himself, the development of his theological consciousness, and the unbounded influence which he has heretofore exerted, it is necessary to take into account not only the state of religious thinking in Germany in the days of Schleiermacher's first appearance in public, but also that feature of the German mind which is so reluctant to receive any thing on mere authority, but which prefers rather to investigate it fundamentally, to study both its nature and beginning, before forming a lasting opinion; a peculiarity which, of course, is liable to abuse, and exposes the German mind to the charge of skepticism by other nations, but which we, notwithstanding, look upon as the conditio sine qua non of all thoroughness and real science. Hence the attempts at Ontology, the very being and nature of God, of the Spirit, and Theogonies, etc.; subjects which many good people take on trust., but on which they have, perhaps, for this very reason, no idea whatever-God, Spirit, being to them mere terms or abstractions.

In theology Supernaturalism had, after a protracted struggle, yielded to Rationalism, as it had partially yielded in England to Deism. A cold, lifeless preaching of morality bad emptied the churches, Kant's stern imperative, Thou shalt, had, after a temporary effect, been superseded by Schelling's physical and Hegel's logical Pantheism, and the people bad lost all interest not only in Christianity, but in all religion as such. In this state of things Schleiermacher appeared on the stage himself; as a matter of course, affected and shaped by the spirit of the times. In 1799 lie published his "Discourses on Religion, addressed to the Educated Men among its Despisers." In these discourses he does not appear as a specifically Christian preacher, but as an eloquent priest of Natural Religion in the outer courts of Christian Revelation, to. convince educated unbelievers that religion, so far from being incompatible with intellectual culture, as they thought, is the deepest and most universal want of man, being different from knowledge and from practice, a sacred feeling of relation to the Infinite, which purifies and ennobles all the faculties. Beyond this he did not go at that time. But, says Dorner, in order to understand the man, we must examine his theological stand-point. Here his principal merit and his real importance for the history of theology lie. Schleiermacher overcame the antagonism between Supernaturalism and Rationalism, which prevailed up to 1820, in principle; a deed of science, which was performed, not by uniting electically the elements of truth peculiar to each of the two systems, but by uniting the truths contained in both by a principle higher than both systems into a new system.

This principle is Schleiermacher's idea of religion as a quickening principle; whereas religion is, as is well known, according to the two systems, merely a function of the will and the intellect, a modus cognoscendi et colendi Deum, (the manner of. knowing and worshiping God,) an essentially Deistical notion of God prevailing. In Rationalism inheres a longing for personal persuasion and mental appropriation of truth instead of a blind submission to mere outward authority, for which reason it keeps its look steadily fixed upon an indissoluble connection between the natural and the ethical world. This is the truth in Rationalism. Supernaturalism takes it for granted that man is insufficient to himself, in his highest relations, and in want of divine assistance; or, that Christianity is not a product of nature, Christ not the natural offspring of the race, but a supernatural phenomenon. This is the truth in Supernaturalism. These two elements of partial truth inhering in the two systems-liberty and authority, personal appropriation and tradition, the ideal and the historical-Schleiermacher unites by falling back upon the fundamental idea of the Reformation-upon religion or faith in the evangelical sense of the term. Of this faith, the quickening material principle of the evangelical Church, he vindicates the rights-its independence and inward certainty-in distinction from a mere historical belief, as from mere convictions resting on thinking and conclusions. This faith is to Schleiermacher what it was to the divines of the Reformation-a fides divina, something essentially divine; a restoration of a common life between God and man, produced by the spiritual contemplation of the historical image of Christ and its power of attraction. This faith, giving itself up to the Redeemer, partakes thereby of his spirit and life, and secures to its possessor both the consciousness of being redeemed and of the power inhering in Jesus to redeem. This process, viewed from the stand-point of natural and redeemable life, is supernatural, a miracle; but viewed from the stand-point of the Church, which was founded by Christ and necessarily partakes of his spirit, it is merely a continuation of that which has become normal in history, has been intended for mankind from all eternity, and belongs to the idea of humanity, since it completes its creation. As to the beginning of the Church and of the person of Christ, therefore, the superrational or supernatural is at the same time rational and natural when viewed from the stand-point of God and his eternal decree, which comprehends all things and pre-arranged man's redemption according to his wants. For the spiritual element in man, the nouV (in Scripture language it is the heart,) although it forms, as the logikon, his center-of which every thing else is the periphery-is in his natural state so powerless, and by the sensual element, the yuch and the swma, so completely controlled, that the Scripture correctly calls the nouV, in this condition, flesh. But on the other hand it is, nevertheless, the nouV with which the divine spirit, pneuma unites, in order to bring from this center the whole psychical and bodily organism under its influence and control. It must, therefore, be taught that the appropriation of Christianity presupposes an antecedent relation to Christ ;that is, an inward longing of human nature for Christ, which is developed into a live reciprocity, and satisfied by the actual presentation of Christ's image. On the one hand, the human nouV is not. the Christian pneuma, being unable, without Christ, to raise its reciprocity to spontaneity, and the Christian spirit is not even potentially included in the human spirit. This is the truth in Supernaturalism over against Pelagianism. But on the other hand 'we must say, because of the world's unity and the continuity of the ethical process, the unity of the human and of the Christian spirit is involved in the longing of the first for the second, which longing can, indeed, not be satisfied by its own strength, but only through the appearance of Christ. Rationalism is wrong in saying that the spirit of Christ was nothing but the human spirit in a higher state of development, since the human spirit could by no process be developed into that of Christ, with which it was, however, in so far one as it had an everlasting longing for it.

What we call the spirit of Christ or the Christian spirit, and the human spirit, are complements of each other, and we must allow a certain original identity of both. Reason is intelligible only as a transition from the other intellectual functions of man to the divine principle manifested in Christ, while the pneuma is only a higher development of what we call reason, which development is, however, not the outgrowth of reason. Christianity, however different from limited human reason, is supremely rational; a manifestation of divine wisdom, which is reason, and it is, therefore, no contradiction to say that Christianity is superrational, since it can absolutely not be the pro-duct of human reason, and that it is, at the same time, for the reason which it raises from the condition of longing to that of possession. As the antagonism of the rational and supernatural, so is also that of nature and grace.

By nature is meant what the human spirit can be developed into, considered both by itself and in connection with the other functions of the mind; the appearance of Christ, and the communication of the pneuma based on it, is grace. If this is so, there is no absolute antagonism between nature and grace, since both are adapted to and exist for each other. Naturalism says, indeed, the development of man through grace and his natural development are one and the same process; Super-naturalism says, man's natural development through his reason is essentially different from his development through grace. But this contradiction appears only as a relative one when viewed from a higher stand-point. Supernaturalism is right in its position when the subject is considered from the stand-point of what a man can do and actually does; for considered in this light, that which is contained in Christianity goes far beyond nature, and is supernatural; and by no development of reason could that which is in Christ and is imparted to human nature through faith, have been produced without the workings of the divine principle manifested in Christ. But Supernaturalism is wrong in saying that Christ's appearance is absolutely supernatural, that is, in relation to God and God's idea of man; and Rationalism is right in saying that, considered from the unity of the divine decree, the supernaturalness of the appearance of Christ becomes natural, since things that appear to our final conception as different are necessarily one in the divine mind. Viewed in this light, the decree of creation cannot be separated from that of redemption and final completion. Both decrees are for the Divine Being equally natural and coexistent, and there can be no decree of redemption and final completion apart from that of creation, which can be completed only by the decree that includes Christ, and must, therefore, be considered as susceptible of Christ's redeeming and completing power from the beginning.

Schleiermacher's view is, indeed, not free from determinism, including, as it does, also moral evil in God's decree; but the point under consideration here cannot be affected thereby, because the absolute oneness of the divine decree, the indissolubility of these two elements-creation and redemption-cannot be annulled by the fact that the fall is the free act of man, because the idea that God had not foreseen sin, that sin had, as it were, taken him by surprise, is simply absurd. Schleiermacher is correct in saying that nature is merely the accomplishment or realization of the divine decrees in time and space; but by this very position a higher view of nature is absolutely demanded than an that held by Pelagianism and Rationalism-that is, a view in which there is involved the appearance of Christ itself in such a manner that it cannot be traced from human reason nor from the intrinsic power of the race, but must be ascribed to an extraordinary interference of God to a divine act, which act, however, becomes a unity with the decree of creation in the divine decree, whose expression is the universe.

By faith in Jesus Christ we partake of his sinlessness and blessedness, are saved from our condition of sin and guilt, and that in such a manner that we are conscious of it. We are reconciled unto God, who beholds us in him as animated by his spirit, and as parts of him; he having implanted, at least, the principle of divine life into the Church, the portion of mankind in union with him which in turn, by means of the true image of Christ impressed into itself, propagates this life until the Church and mankind shall have become coextensive and identical. All religions, that is, forms of religion, must finally be merged in Christianity. The essence of the Christian religion, however, consists iii the redemption through Jesus of Nazareth, which is destined to he the all-pervading power of the Christian's life, and is the highest and purest form of attainable God-consciousness. In this definition of Christianity, containing two ideas, namely, that of human redemption and that of the person of Christ, the Church is carefully distinguished from every thing not Christian. The idea of human redemption would be nothing if humanity could save itself without Christ; or if' on the other hand, humanity was irredeemable. The first would be Pelagian, the second Manichean, heresy, and redemption would either be superfluous or impossible. The Christian idea of the person of the Redeemer absolutely requires the recognition of the presence of full redeeming powers in him. But if even his unique character is recognized, but his humanity proper denied, as is done by Doketism, it is impossible for him to affect humanity organically, and be cannot be its Redeemer. Again, if his humanity proper is recognized, but that absolutely perfect indwelling of God in him denied, from which his all-sufficient power to redeem proceeds,-if he is taken to be ah extraordinary man without a specific dignity, as is done by Ebionitism,-he cannot be the Redeemer. But all Christological views that keep within these two extremes are, according to Schleiermacher, Christian; and if they need any correction, the very recognition of these limits furnishes it. In the Redeemer, who is to Schleiermacher the center of every thing Christian, he sees the idea of humanity realized, the ideal man actualized; the God-consciousness has acquired in him absolute strength, has become a personal indwelling of God in him, as far as human nature is capable of such an indwelling. In Jesus God has revealed himself not only as the Omnipotent, Holy, and Just, but also as Love and Wisdom, and a higher revelation is not necessary nor to be looked for; because the believer in. Jesus knows that be partakes of a principle that is sufficient for his final completion, because every thing that hinders or disturbs this process is not based on this principle, but is opposed to it. If it be said that the realization of ideal perfection in Christ must be problematical, or that it is impossible that the idea of perfection, even if apprehended, should be a guarantee of its realization, or, on the other hand, that the actualized idea as beheld in Christ does not prove total purity and perfection, Schleiermacher answers: The impossibility of realizing absolute perfection is the impossibility of realizing our moral destination, and would be a combination of Manicheism and Ebionitism. If it must be admitted, therefore, that the ideal humanity has been realized in Christ, tile reply to the assertion that the actual realization of the ideal cannot be known to a certainty is this: Whoever surrenders himself in a feeling of his need of redemption wholly to the influence of Christ, becomes infallibly certain of his redeeming character and specific dignity.

A real appreciation of Christ's image is possible only through true faith, which secures also a participation in his supreme blessedness and sinless perfection. Christ secures these blessings to us in his threefold office of King, Prophet, and High Priest. Schleiermacher lays special stress on Christ's high priestly office, on his active and passive obedience, and represents him as full of high priestly sympathy, taking our place in order to raise us to himself and to make us his own. God looks upon those that are in this life-communion with the Saviour in and through Christ as redeemed, and as parts of Christ himself' since they are partakers of his spirit. From this stand-point the supernaturalistic evidences of the divinity of Christ, miracles, prophecies, and inspiration appear to him as weak, and the fear of criticism as weakly and unevangelical. cal, proceeding, as it does, from a want of confidence in the peculiar power of Christianity to prove its divinity to the human spirit by its own essence, and relying, as it does, on intellectual proof which can never afford perfect certainty. From this central position, which Schleiermacher assigns to faith, standing on the real basis of the Reformation, he is obliged to, and does, distinguish between faith and dogma, which are so often taken for each other, especially by the intellectualism, even the supernatural one, according to which faith is the receiving of the supernaturally revealed doctrine, that' is, of the mysteries of Christianity. But doctrine is neither redemption nor power of redemption; we are destined to a real communion with God through Christ, and only where this life-communion is, there is real piety; this involves more than a change of views pr maxims of life. Doctrine, as evangelical preaching, without which there can originate no faith, is, according to Schleiermacher, indeed also independent of faith; but this doctrine is different from' the dogma, is very simple, and has its power in the preaching of Christ, in the truthful and quickening presentation of his image. Genetically considered, the dogma is the result of faith, is the scientific expression of the kind of appropriation of the Gospel story by the Church for the time being, and has its origin in the reflection upon the conditions of the Christian mind. Being dependent upon these it is not unchangeable, like the preaching of the Gospel; has not the consistency and uniformity of the writings of the New Testament, which possess normative authority as the depository of the pure primitive Christian tradition, or as the authentic record of revelation. From this it appears that Schleiermacher assigns to the Church and to tradition a higher place than was done before him in the evangelical Church. He draws, indeed, this distinction between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Church, namely: In the Catholic Church the relation of the individual believer to Christ is dependent upon his relation to the Church; while in the Protestant Church the individual believer's relation to the Church is dependent upon his relation to Christ. But it is not his intention to deny, by this distinction, that the individual attains to faith only through the Church and her offices; yea, he even says that the Church communicates the Holy Spirit to the individual, denying every operation of the Spirit not mediated by the Church. Necessary ingredients and constituent elements of the Church, however, are, according to Schleiermacher, the Holy Scriptures, which she preserves, and the sacraments, which she administers, and the Holy Spirit, attending her efforts. That the Holy Spirit is confined to the Church, or even to certain institutions, that what the actual Church does, is also the work of the Holy Spirit, Schleiermacher unqualifiedly denies. But in order to conceive of Christianity as a historic power he has assigned an important place to tradition ; not to tradition, however, in its common acceptation, as the summary of a well-defined number of views and doctrines, but as a living power, proceeding from Christ and ever present in the Church from her very origin; and his ideas have not failed to impress the Catholic Church and some of her most eminent theologians, as Drey, Mohler, Klee, Staudenmaier, and others, powerfully. The Church, as the work of Christ upon earth, was to Schleiermacher, in her laws of life, sufferings, and failings a unity; and for this reason he worked incessantly for the healing of schisms in the evangelical Church, for the union of the Lutherans and Reformed, and especially also in his Dogmatics, published in 1821, three centuries after the publication of Melancthon's "Loci Communes," which he intended to be the statement of the common faith of Protestants, as "Melanchthon's Loci" had been for the as-yet-undivided Protestant Church. Also, toward the Roman Catholic Church his position is very irenical; although he was fully satisfied that the antagonism between the two Churches had not yet reached its acme. This, his irenical position, had its basis in his conviction that the Catholic Church was divided from the Protestant Church not only through unevangelical elements, but also through a peculiar Christian individuality, namely, her strong leaning toward symbolism.

Through his whole architectonic method, especially through his definition of Christianity and its limits, Schleiermacher introduced a more correct estimate of the individual doctrines in theology. Every doctrine must now be estimated by its nearer or more distant relation to the central point; and the distinction between the foundation, upon which every thing in the Church rests, and between what is built thereon, (1 Cor. iii' 10-15,) which had, indeed, never been entirely forgotten, but greatly obscured, has become prominent again. Here is the basis of Schleiermacher's stand-point over against the different theological schools, and of his position in the Church. His love of union is not based upon a desire to shake off the symbolical books of the Church, nor on dogmatical indifferentism, since he devoted most of his time and strength to dogmatics, and saw a vital function of the Church in her progress in developing dogmas; and still less did he work for the union from personal considerations. No, his love of union was based upon his firm conviction that there is no radical difference in the doctrine of the two Churches; that, therefore, the differences of individual doctrines growing out of the common basis are not of vital importance, from which it follows that the split of the two Churches cannot be morally justified. By this act of uniting, the Evangelical Church harmonizes her conduct with her theological knowledge of the necessity of distinguishing between the foundation and between what is built thereon; between religion and dogma; and she throws out those sickly elements that have been at all times a necessary outgrowth from the confounding of these differences; namely, the intellectualism of a negative and positive, of a churchly or subjective character, that derives its strength from its mistaking dogma for religion, and the darkening of the principle whereby its healthful development is not only impeded, but of which it is also a very natural consequence, that upon one or another of the doctrines of the Church undue stress is laid. The result of such a decomposition of evangelical doctrine, through the weakening of the influence of its central principle, is, for example, the peculiar stress laid for the Evangelical Church upon her tradition, as her sacraments, or the clerical office, or upon the authority of the canon without any regard to criticism or the settling of the material principle. If the principle of the Reformation, justification by faith, is obscured in its central position, the other doctrines assume, to say the least, a coordinate position; but the necessary consequence of the loss of its hegemonical position is, that the king becomes a subject. For as there must necessarily be a power confirming all dogmas, this power, after it has been taken away from the evangelical principle, is transferred to something else, be it the authority of the Church, or of the canon, or of human reason; and the whole evangelical basis is jeopardized by obscuring this principle or abandoning its central position. Here it appears, at the same time, that the higher importance which Schleiermacher attaches to tradition, correctly understood, for the Evangelical Church, is of essential service in preserving her pure character and principle. For tradition is, according to Schleiermacher, the power of the Christian testimony constantly renewed by the Holy Ghost; which testimony has, through the Holy Spirit, its absolute certainty in itself' and is produced through the preaching of the Gospel, and has the Scriptures for its basis and norm. The evangelical Christian draws thus his proofs for the divinity of the Scriptures, not from rational and historical arguments, nor from the authority of the Church, but from - the testimony of the Spirit as to his actual redemption through Christ; believing, indeed, in Christ, not through the mediation of the Scriptures or the preaching based upon it, but in the Divine authority of the Scriptures through and for the sake of Christ; from which it appears that tradition, correctly understood, consists in the progressive. production of real believers by the operations of the Holy Ghost through the preached word; which believers occupy a relatively independent position toward the sacred Scriptures, which owe their highest confirmation, and the recognition of their authority, to the authority of Christ, who reveals himself to faith through the Holy Ghost as the Redeemer.

While Schleiermacher has clearly drawn the line between Christianity and fundamental errors, it may be a cause of regret that he has pointed out only anthropological and Christological, and not also theological errors, as the antagonism of Theism and Pantheism. But Schleiermacher looked upon both Theism and Pantheism as philosophical views of God, and he wished by all means to keep Christian theology strictly distinct from all merely philosophical views of God, such as a so-called natural theology holds. Moreover, it must be admitted that his theology was not free from great errors, which only his sincere love of the Redeemer prevented from exerting their legitimate pernicious influence. By this love he was constrained to admit self-consciousness, personality in God, however inadequate to his philosophical nature this idea appeared for a designation of the Infinite.

Moreover, one peculiarity of Schleiermacher must not be overlooked; it was his constant endeavor and great object to show religion to be independent of philosophical systems, and in order to do this effectually he went so far as to recognize in the Christian self-consciousness, primarily and peculiarly, only a personal feeling in motion, but not a concrete, objective knowledge of God Certain forms of Theism are, indeed, in-consistent with, and, therefore, excluded by, the consciousness of absolute dependence; which is perennial, as taught by Schleiermacher; as well as a false independence of the world over against God,: making God a limited being. By the same absolute dependence, the pantheistic view is also excluded, according to which the world is God, and man possesses absolute knowledge.

Proofreading, HTML conversion, and other modifications by Brandon Boyd.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley Center at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the webmaster for permission or to report errors.

Proofreading, HTML conversion, and other modifications by Brandon Boyd.

Copyright 1999 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. Text may be freely used for personal or scholarly purposes or mirrored on other web sites, provided this notice is left intact. Any use of this material for commercial purposes of any kind is strictly forbidden without the express permission of the Wesley Center at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, ID 83686. Contact the webmaster for permission or to report errors.