Category Archives: Friedrich Schleiermacher

Stephen Holmes’ Trinity back to the classics and away from the Moderns

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Here is a post I began to write back in April of this year as I finished Stephen Holmes’ excellent book The Quest For The Trinity. I never trinity-iconfinished the post, and it has been sitting as a draft ever since then. I am still not going to finish this post, but I am going to post it as is, and where I left off with it. It might still be interesting, who knows?! Here it is:

Just finished Stephen Holmes excellent newish book on the Trinity The Quest For The Trinity. I don’t want anyone to think that I dislike or am not appreciative of this book, in fact I would say it is one of the best (concise) books on the Trinity I have ever read; and I have read legion. That said, for purposes of future (if I ever have the right kind of time) critical and hopefully constructive engagement I would like to ‘bookmark’ one key area of critique that I might have in regard to an apparent characterization that Steve Holmes makes of a trajectory of ‘modern’ Trinitarian theology that Holmes says is a ‘departure from … the unified witness of the entire theological tradition” (p. 195). What he is referring to is the modern deployment of the language of ‘person’ relative to discussing the eternal relations inherent between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One of Holmes’ contentions throughout the book is that a technical and patristic pedigree has been established relative to the construction of a theological grammar adequate to the task of articulating an orthodox conception of the Trinity; an integral part of that is ‘how’ “person” came to be used by the patrisitcs, and the subsequent 14 centuries (from the 4th century) following, until we reach the 19th century where Trinitarian theology begins and attempts to re-construct a new lexicon that is capable of communicating the Trinity in a way that modern man and woman might be able to understand it (and Holmes’ argues that this precedent for re-conceptualizing and re-languagfying is provided for by Schleiermacher). Holmes contends that this shift in Trinitarian thought and language actually emptied key terms within the ancient and Orthodox grammar in a way that makes considering the two periodically conceive Trinitarianisms as an equivocal endeavor; and the modern Schleiermacherian project ending up as a still-birthed endeavor mal-nourished by its intentionally abortive mode of cutting the umbilical cord between themselves and mother-church which lived, again, in the patristic and ecumenical period.

Let me post the pertinent quote, and then I might, if I have time quote something from Thomas Torrance that will illustrate where I will want to take this forthcoming critique of mine. Here is Stephen Holmes:

The practice of speaking of three ‘persons’ in this sense in the divine life, of asserting a ‘social doctrine of the Trinity’, a ‘divine community’ or an ‘ontology of persons in relationship’ can only ever be, as far as I can see, a simple departure from (what I have attempted to show is) the unified witness of the entire theological tradition. Why, then,  has it become so popular? In part at least, I think, because of a fundamental sense of dislocation. Dorner suggests that Schleiermacher pointed out a fundamental weakness in the inherited doctrine of God which then needed correcting; Forsyth and Barth followed him in this belief, although in neither case showing any explicit awareness that it came from Schleiermacher. More generally, the harvest of nineteenth-century theology includes a broad sense that the discipline stood in need of fundamental reformulation, as Schleiermacher had said it did. If we try to analyze this logically, it tends to reduce to a series of claims about the broad narrative of the theological tradition – such as the claim that it became profoundly infected by Greek metaphysics in the patristic period – which were based on ninteenth-century historical work; …

Christian Theology is only For Christians, That’s What My Homey Schleiermacher Says

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There seems to be an ascendancy, once again, of philosophical theology [and I apologize, this post, or at least this point of this schleiermacher (1)post is going to have to remain rather general and abstract without any concrete examples at the moment]. The way I understand philosophical theology is pretty close to home; it is a form (it might be THE form) of evangelical theology that I sat under while in undergrad at Bible College (things changed a bit for me in my seminary experience because of two profs in particular). Philosophical theology, as I understand it, and have experienced it, in a nutshell, is what has come to be called: analytical theology. Analytical theology, in a nutshell, is theology, like scholastic theology from the post-Reformed era that feels free to drink freely from the analytical philosophical tradition (like from Aristotle, Plato, the Stoics, et al), and use the categories discovered by these philosophers as they reflected upon creation as the categories through which the Christian God was synthesized and casted.

So even with the scant sketch above of how I understand philosophical or analytical theology what should begin to emerge is how there is no necessary connection between Christian theology, and its revealed categories, and the categories “discovered” by the analytic philosophers. And yet what happens in the analytical theology tradition is that a foundation, of sorts, is constructed so that these two disparate approaches of thinking about metaphysical things can be brought into mutually supporting beams such that God’s life ends up being founded upon our capacity to think God (from reflecting upon creation) instead of being confronted by God Self-revealed and interpreted in Jesus Christ. This is how I see analytical theology functioning, and it is because of this that I must reject it, and search for an approach (and I believe that I have found one years ago now) that does not depend upon my ability as a philosopher and theologian to conceive of God, categorically, apart from his Self-revelation.

Friedrich Schleiermacher, a German theologian from the 18th and 19th centuries, who became known as the ‘Father of Theological Liberalism’ (wrongly!) offers an alternative to the analytical tradition–when critically received–that I believe is quite refreshing; and that I believe moves us away from attempting to work out correlationist theologies that seek to synthesize Christian theology with classical philosophical categories (Thomas Aquinas is one of the most famous for attempting to do this … I should say though, that I can learn a lot from Aquinas, still, just not uncritically).

I believe, along with Schleiermacher, and Karl Barth (and Thomas Torrance, et al) that Christian theology cannot and must not depend upon any attempted correlations between natural reflection upon nature (the analytical philosophers), and then syntheses of these reflections with Christian theology.[1] I do not believe, along with someone as Scottish as Thomas Torrance, that there are any natural analogies for God become man (i.e. the Incarnation); do you? Schleiermacher writes it this way:

Our dogmatic theology will not, however, stand on its own proper ground and soil with the same assurance with which philosophy has long stood on its own, until the separation of the two types of proposition is so complete that, e.g., so extraordinary a question as whether the same proposition can be true in philosophy and false in Christian theology, and *vice versa*, will no longer be asked, for the simple reason that a proposition cannot appear in the one context precisely as it appears in the other; however similar it sounds, a difference must always be assumed.[2]

And this in regard to the audience of Christian theology:

It is obvious that an adherent of some other faith might perhaps be completely convinced by the above account that what we have set forth is really the peculiar essence of Christianty, without being thereby so convinced that Christianity is actually the truth, as to be compelled to accept it. Everything we say in this place is relative to Dogmatics, and Dogmatics is only for Christians; and so this account is only for those who live within the pale of Christianity, and is intended only to give guidance, in the interests of Dogmatics, for determining whether the expressions of any religious consciousness are Christian or not, and whether the Christian quality is strongly expressed in them, or rather doubtfully. We entirely renounce all attempt to prove the truth or necessity of Christianity; and we presuppose, on the contrary, that every Christian, before he enters at all upon inquiries of this kind, has already the inward certainty that his religion cannot take any higher form than this.[3]

For Schleiermacher, then, and many others after him (like Barth, Torrance, and a whole host of more ‘liberal’ theologians), Christian Theology is for Christians! It is exclusive to those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear; as the Revelator has written: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”[4]

The ascendancy of philosophical or analytical theology that I referred to to open this brief piece up continues to make new in-roads into the evangelical heart-land. I think we ought to repent of that, and engage in theological endeavor that ironically comes from someone like Schleiermacher. We want to really be able to hear from the Lord, and attempt to repeat what we hear in a genuine way as Christians. We want to genuinely walk in the way that comes after we come to recognize that Deus dixit, that ‘God has spoken;’ and only after that and from that speech can we truly theologize and in a way that contradicts our words, and our lives instead of flowing from them (which I contend analytical theology does at its base in the methodological form that it flows from).

The end.

[1] If you have not spotted the undercurrent of what I am getting at yet let me help: What this cuts against, what I am about to write about, is natural theology. Natural theology believes that there are analogies in creation (because of an interconnected chain of being between creation and Creator) that can be used as foundation stones for us to build our knowledge of God upon (i.e. analogia entis, ‘analogy of being’). So this is part of the critique, and part of what is going on here. But the deeper concern I have is the impact that analytical theology can possibly have upon a Christian’s spirituality. I believe Christian theology, by definition, is for Christian eyes and ears, and so from this touchstone, of sorts, we proceed onward with Schleiermacher and Barth.

[2] Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, §16 postscript in Bruce L. McCormack, Orthodox And Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic Publishing, 2008), 72.

[3] Ibid.

[4] New American Standard Bible, Revelation 3.22.

On Being a Christian Theological Exegete: B.B. Warfield V. Friedrich Schleiermacher

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There is a certain methodology a theologian or exegete should follow if they want to be considered a Christian Theologian or Exegete. The methodology a Christian Theologian or Exegete should follow is one that principally starts with Jesus as the goal (telos) of their theological and exegetical work; one that sees Jesus as the inner-coherence and unity of meaning inherent to the Christian’s formal source of witness, the Bible. Insofar as the theologian and/or exegete proximates their work to this standard; then what they produce can be considered, Christian.

schleiermacherIn thinking about this post I wanted to provide a counter-voice to the voice I want to feature as the featured voice for this post. I used to have an excellent quote on hand that would have done a great job in providing the foil I am looking for to at least illustrate my thesis statement above. The quote I once had (but has since been deleted from one of my multitudinous blogs) was from that stalwart Fundamentalist theologian B. B. Warfield of pre-Westminster Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary fame. In summary, what his quote stated was axiomatic for what provided the general shape of the ‘Christian’ Fundamentalist Faith; and that is that Christian Fundamentalism, according to one of her best (Warfield), was an Apologetic Faith. Meaning that contrary to the Liberal Theological tradition that was seeping into places like Warfield’s Princeton; that Warfield’s (Fundamentalist) Christianity was one that sought to meet Liberal Theology’s claims upon their grounds. In other words, if the ground of ‘Liberal Theology’ was primarily one that found purchase from rationalistic and so called ‘man-centered’ ground (like positivism, historicism, pietism, etc.); then Fundamentalist Christianity was eager to meet this ‘problem’ by doing so on the same grounds. In brief (and this nut-shells that quote from Warfield I once had): the one who could out-think and out-argue the other (Liberal versus Fundy), wins! Warfield (and Fundamentalist, and even American Evangelicalism) attempted to defeat Liberal Christianity by adopting their principles of proof; by using positivistic logic; by seeking to establish the veracity of the Bible, and the miracles therein, thus providing ‘something’ upon which Christians could indubitably stand and believe. Warfield & co. were not alone in trying to preserve the integrity of “Conservative-Classical-Christianity;” the yester-year preceding someone like Warfield had seen an apologetic Christianity thrive and take shape as well. A Christianity wherein we could have something like a systematic theology entitled Enlectic Theology (Turretin’s — meaning apologetic or defensive theology). This ground swell provided a tradition that Warfield could appeal to, and in this tradition he was given a methodology that sought to provide proof of God’s existence through philosophical reasoning (in the Medieval era this was called the via negativa or negative theology).

The above serves as a brief sketch (longer than I wanted — and very oversimplified) of maybe an organic relationship that inhered between the 17th and late 19th early 20th centuries Anglo-European/American theological development. In this vein, and for this post, I thought I would take a look at an old Systematic Theology text-books we used during one of my under-grad experiences; Charles Ryrie’s Basic Theology. I was not let down by the method and order that Ryrie appropriated for his “Theology.” It is one that he inherited from many in the Medieval-scholastic era; one that has pedigree with someone like Francis Turretin’s Enlectic Theology (and I mean in mode); and one that fulfills the on-going trajectory set by the Fundamentalist Warrior, B. B. Warfield. Starting in Ryrie’s Chapter 5, entitled Revelation of God, he starts his discussion out, on General Revelation, by providing the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God (a classical argument that argues for the existence of finite creation by positing the need for an infinite cause); then he gives us the Teleological Argument, the Moral Argument, and the infamous Ontological Argument — all classic philosophical proofs seeking to provide rational proof for the existence of God.

I sketch all of the above in order to provide a salient quote that throws the above approach into relief. Christian Theology does not start where Warfield or Ryrie started; it does not feel the need to prove the material content of what it seeks to provide grammar for. Christian Theology should assume (as the Scripture’s do) the triune God whom she worships, and this supposition should present us with the categories and theological furniture necessary to carry out the vocation of what it means to be a Christian Theologian or Exegete. In short, Apologetics should not provide the methodological ground for how we proceed in our Dogmatic reflection as Christians. If we are Christians we don’t need to prove to ourselves the belief that God is triune; our self-identity already presupposes said belief (and this is evidenced in the way that someone like the Apostle Paul wrote his epistles; he didn’t argue for the Trinity or the existence of God prior to penning his letters, he presupposes this as the reality that shapes his identity and thus the material that he exhorts his brothers and sisters through in the various churches he wrote to). With this is mind I have come across a great quote, and with this quote I will close:

[I]t is obvious that an adherent of some other faith might perhaps be completely convinced by the above account that what we have set forth is really the peculiar essence of Christianity, without being thereby so convinced that Christianity is actually the truth, as to be compelled to accept it. Everything we say in this place is relative to Dogmatics, and Dogmatics is only for Christians; and so this account is only for those who live within the pale of Christianity, and is intended only to give guidance, in the interests of Dogmatics, for determining whether the expressions of any religious consciousness are Christian or not, and whether the Christian quality is strongly expressed in them, or rather doubtfully. We entirely renounce all attempt to prove the truth or necessity of Christianity; and we presuppose, on the contrary, that every Christian, before he enters at all upon inquires of this kind, has already the inward certainty that his religion cannot taken any higher form than this. [Friedrich Schleirmacher cited by Bruce L. McCormack, Orthodox And Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth, 72]

Evangelical Calvinist theological-exegetical methodology operates from this posture. It seeks to follow a Christian methodology, like, for example, the Apostle Paul assumed in his writings. It is not our intention to prove God’s existence, the veracity of the Scriptures, etc. before we feel that we can then do theology or exegesis. Instead, as Christians, we recognize that our self-identity necessitates that we move and breathe as such; and this self-conscious reality has a dramatic impact (or should) upon how we proceed as theologians and exegetes. It is this movement that I believe allows someone to say, in general, that they are operating as a genuine Christian theologian or exegete. What do you think?

*repost, a good one ;-)!

Cornelius Van Til on Karl Barth: Grace and Nature, Worship Creation or Creator

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I think Cornelius Van Til offers a good sketch of Barth’s understanding of grace as personified personally in Jesus Christ (instead of grace as a principle or quality). You will notice in Van Til’s sketch how he accentuates Barth’s disdain for the natural theology and analogy of being of both Roman Catholic theology and later post-Reformed orthodoxy (or Westminster Calvinism, simpliciter). I totally appreciate this emphasis, from Barth, as you know; and I think Van Til presents Barth accurately in this way; note Van Til,

[B]arth’s answer to both charges is that speaking Christologically of grace is not to speak speculatively in any direction. One may freely use the language of any school of philosophy. But one must, as a theologian, be free from the control of all philosophy.

Thinking Christologically of grace enables us, says Barth, to speak along the lines of Reformational theology. Thinking Christologically of grace enables us to escape the Romanist approach to grace and the free will of man. Romanism thinks along the lines of the analogy of being (italics mine), and in doing so, is largely controlled by philosophical speculation. It is this philosophical speculation that accounts for its use of natural theology. In Romanist theology Christ comes into the picture too late; he comes in afterwards, and a Christ coming in afterwards is, in effect, Christ not coming in at all.

Against this the Reformers, thinking Christologically, gave God the true priority over man, and grace the true priority over man’s participation in it.

But the Reformers did not consistently work out the relation of grace to sin along Christological lines. They were unable to fathom the full implication of their own idea of the sovereignty of grace. They did not realize that the full freedom and glory of God’s grace to man in Christ is expressed in the very idea of his being the one who suffers the wrath of God for man.

Again, the Reformers, and notably Calvin, had no full appreciation for the biblical universalism involved in the true idea of grace. We must therefore go beyond the Reformers in stressing both the full sovereignty and the full universality of the nature of grace. Instead of thus going beyond the Reformers, later orthodox theologians all too often fell back on natural theology and on the idea of direct revelation in history. Thus they tended once more to make the consciousness of man think of itself as autonomous. And thus they became, all too often, the forerunners of the consciousness theology of Schleiermacher and his followers.

This in turn prepared the way for a theology which was, in effect, as Feuerbauch maintained, nothing more than an undercover anthropology.

If then we are to work out the true Reformation principle of theology, and therewith escape the synergistic views of Romanism, we must think of grace Christologically. And if we are to escape the narrowness of an evil orthodoxy and the subjectivism of the consciousness theologians, we must think of grace Christologically. And finally if we are really to enjoy the full certainty of the gift of the grace of God in Christ for all men, and in doing so laugh in Feuerbach’s face, then we must think of grace Christologically. [Cornelius Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism, 31-32]

Why Does This Matter Again?

There are a lot of threads in Van Til’s sketch of Barth; let me focus on one thread, the primary thread running throughout this account. That is that Grace is Personal in Christ, and any other account—as evinced in those noted (the Romanists, post-Reformed orthodox, Schleiermacher, et. al.)—collapses grace into creation such that creation dominates our thinking about God. If we follow this method—natural theology—we take God captive by our creations and constructs, and God is no longer capable to speak Lordly words over and against us (so he ceases to be Lord in this scenario). The Apostle Paul warns of such madness when he writes:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Romans 1:18-23

This is why this discussion matters; the gravity of this weights on whether we can say that we are worshipping God as revealed in Jesus Christ, or are we worshipping God created in our image? This oversimplifies things quite a bit, but this is the nub of it for me.

Barth’s Critique of the LGH and Schleiermacher, with Some ‘EC’

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Friedrich Schleiermacher is known as the Father of Theological Liberalism. Karl Barth grew up in the shadow of, and under the stature of men who drank freely from the fountain waters that Schleiermacher’s theologizing represented. Barth left his ‘Liberal Theology’ studies, for the small country parish in his homeland of Switzerland. He tried to preach and teach the Schleiermacherean theology that he had learned to his “flock,” but in light of World War I and the reality that the ground of Schleiermacher’s theology was actually the source of the War, Man; Barth had a crisis of faith, and reformulated his theological views, primarily by going back to the strange new world of the Bible — starting with Paul’s Romans. His commentary on Romans thrust him back into the realm of academia, once again; this time he would start a tsunami shift for modern theology that is still being felt today (in many ways we are just getting started). One of the lectures that he provided for his students (of the many over the years), an early lecture, was on the theology of his old teacher (mediated through his personal teachers like Hermann), Schleiermacher. Here is what he had to say in criticism of Schleiermacher’s rather ”creative” theological approach:

[T]he first difficulty to be noted obviously arises for Schleiermacher from the fact that linking proclamation to the figure of the Savior unavoidably means linking it to the Bible. It was clear that even Schleiermacher could not self-evidently find his Christ, the Christ of synthesis, in the Bible. He was happy to find John’s Gospel in the Bible, which he found to be congenial to his message. He gave homilies on it for four years from 1823 to 1826, and afterward as well as before he turned again and again to Johannine texts. But no matter how he might interpret John, he could not preach only on this gospel. The whole of the Old Testament lay before him like a rock. The solution that Schleiermacher found here is radical as it possibly could be. In all the years that concern us he never preached on an Old Testament text, and a glance at his lectures on practical theology . . . the printed version of which is from the same period, shows us that this was no accident but by principle and design: “If I take a text from the Old Testament, I place myself and my hearers in a historical situation and give them an alien consciousness and evoke a train of thought that is not related to what I ought to derive from the text if I am to speak as a Christian. . . . We must treat our hearers as Christians and not as people who have still to become such and who have to be led through the torment of the law.” I cannot recall ever having come across a passage in these sermons in which Schleiermacher speaks of Old Testament man and his relation to God except as something abhorrent. It is obvious, however, that even the New Testament does not fit smoothly into the schematism of his teaching. Much in the attitude of Jesus and the apostles and in the wording of the biblical text seems to point in other directions than he would like and to breathe a very different spirit from his. The total impression of the relation of the preacher to his texts is that of violent wrestling in which one hardly knows which to admire most: the incontestable seriousness with which he exerts himself really to let the text speak for itself (in this regard he does not like to leave any term in the text unexplained); the exegetical thoroughness with which he often tests the patience of his readers for many pages with perspicacious historical explanations leading up to what he wishes to convey, or finally the dialectical skill with which he is able to exploit the situation happily created by exegesis in favor of his own lessons and admonitions.) [Karl Barth, The Theology Of Schleiermacher, 15-16]

A lesson here, and one that many actually charge Barth with ironically (i.e. the one that Barth is critiquing Schleiermacher of), is to avoid what Barth calls “perspicacious historical explanations leading up to what he wishes to convey, or finally the dialectical skill with which he is able to exploit the situation happily created by exegesis in favor of his own lessons and admonitions. . . .” This provides a critique (one that Barth and T. F. Torrance would make) of what we (and when I say “we” I mean modern “Evangelicals” alongside “Liberals” “Higher Critics” et al.) call the Literal, Grammatical, Historical (LGH) method of interpretation. This is the approach that engages in historical reconstruction of the text (as well as historical, evidentiary apologetics of the ‘events’ in the text), as the mode for providing the ground from which we can then finally engage in the actual interpretation (exegesis, through “Literal/Grammatical” means) of the reconstructed text.

To bring this back to Evangelical Calvinism, and to piggy-back on Barth’s critique of Schleiermacher, we, instead of following an un-critical application of the LGH (wherein we can mould the wax-nose of Scripture through our historicist man-handling . . . like Scheliermacher); seek to engage the text of Scripture from what T. F. Torrance would call its depth-dimension (Adam Nigh in our forthcoming book has a chapter on this very topic). So that instead of having a reconstructed history (from our fertile minds) as the control and super-structure of the text (or the inner-coherence and logic); the reality (res) of the text, instead, becomes the one that Jesus (in the text) proclaims as its center and depth — Himself! (John 5:39). This is something that has moved me away from a strict LGH hermeneutic, viz. what is voiced in Barth’s critique of Schleiermacher (making the text conform to my inner-feelings projected out upon the text as the history that purportedly supports and shapes it).

'EC' Depth Dimension Hermeneutics: Barth's Critique of Schleiermacher

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Friedrich Schleiermacher is known as the Father of Theological Liberalism. Karl Barth grew up in the shadow of, and under the stature of men who drank freely from the fountain waters that Schleiermacher’s theologizing represented. Barth left his ‘Liberal Theology’ studies, for the small country parish in his homeland of Switzerland. He tried to preach and teach the Schleiermacherean theology that he had learned to his “flock,” but in light of World War I and the reality that the ground of Schleiermacher’s theology was actually the source of the War, Man; Barth had a crisis of faith, and reformulated his theological views, primarily by going back to the strange new world of the Bible — starting with Paul’s Romans. His commentary on Romans thrust him back into the realm of academia, once again; this time he would start a tsunami shift for modern theology that is still being felt today (in many ways we are just getting started). One of the lectures that he provided for his students (of the many over the years), an early lecture, was on the theology of his old teacher (mediated through his personal teachers like Hermann), Schleiermacher. Here is what he had to say in criticism of Schleiermacher’s rather “creative” theological approach:

[T]he first difficulty to be noted obviously arises for Schleiermacher from the fact that linking proclamation to the figure of the Savior unavoidably means linking it to the Bible. It was clear that even Schleiermacher could not self-evidently find his Christ, the Christ of synthesis, in the Bible. He was happy to find John’s Gospel in the Bible, which he found to be congenial to his message. He gave homilies on it for four years from 1823 to 1826, and afterward as well as before he turned again and again to Johannine texts. But no matter how he might interpret John, he could not preach only on this gospel. The whole of the Old Testament lay before him like a rock. The solution that Schleiermacher found here is radical as it possibly could be. In all the years that concern us he never preached on an Old Testament text, and a glance at his lectures on practical theology . . . the printed version of which is from the same period, shows us that this was no accident but by principle and design: “If I take a text from the Old Testament, I place myself and my hearers in a historical situation and give them an alien consciousness and evoke a train of thought that is not related to what I ought to derive from the text if I am to speak as a Christian. . . . We must treat our hearers as Christians and not as people who have still to become such and who have to be led through the torment of the law.” I cannot recall ever having come across a passage in these sermons in which Schleiermacher speaks of Old Testament man and his relation to God except as something abhorrent. It is obvious, however, that even the New Testament does not fit smoothly into the schematism of his teaching. Much in the attitude of Jesus and the apostles and in the wording of the biblical text seems to point in other directions than he would like and to breathe a very different spirit from his. The total impression of the relation of the preacher to his texts is that of violent wrestling in which one hardly knows which to admire most: the incontestable seriousness with which he exerts himself really to let the text speak for itself (in this regard he does not like to leave any term in the text unexplained); the exegetical thoroughness with which he often tests the patience of his readers for many pages with perspicacious historical explanations leading up to what he wishes to convey, or finally the dialectical skill with which he is able to exploit the situation happily created by exegesis in favor of his own lessons and admonitions.) [Karl Barth, The Theology Of Schleiermacher, 15-16]

A lesson here, and one that many actually charge Barth with ironically (i.e. the one that Barth is critiquing Schleiermacher of), is to avoid what Barth calls “perspicacious historical explanations leading up to what he wishes to convey, or finally the dialectical skill with which he is able to exploit the situation happily created by exegesis in favor of his own lessons and admonitions. . . .” This provides a critique (one that Barth and T. F. Torrance would make) of what we (and when I say “we” I mean modern “Evangelicals” alongside “Liberals” “Higher Critics” et al.) call the Literal, Grammatical, Historical (LGH) method of interpretation. This is the approach that engages in historical reconstruction of the text (as well as historical, evidentiary apologetics of the ‘events’ in the text), as the mode for providing the ground from which we can then finally engage in the actual interpretation (exegesis, through “Literal/Grammatical” means) of the reconstructed text.

To bring this back to Evangelical Calvinism, and to piggy-back on Barth’s critique of Schleiermacher, we, instead of following an un-critical application of the LGH (wherein we can mould the wax-nose of Scripture through our historicist man-handling . . . like Scheliermacher); seek to engage the text of Scripture from what T. F. Torrance would call its depth-dimension (Adam Nigh in our forthcoming book has a chapter on this very topic). So that instead of having a reconstructed history (from our fertile minds) as the control and super-structure of the text (or the inner-coherence and logic); the reality (res) of the text, instead, becomes the one that Jesus (in the text) proclaims as its center and depth — Himself! (John 5:39). This is something that has moved me away from a strict LGH hermeneutic, viz. what is voiced in Barth’s critique of Schleiermacher (making the text conform to my inner-feelings projected out upon the text as the history that purportedly supports and shapes it).

American Evangelicals and Schleiermacher

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Karl Barth opines on the power of impact that Friedrich Schleiermacher, so called Father of Theological Liberalism, has on all of the readers of theology and the Bible in his early 20th century German/continental context. I think what Barth says here is just as applicable for many in my own “Evangelical” Free Church context. My own upbringing resonates more with the von Zizendorf, Jacob Phillip Spener pietistic (and thus realized Schlieremacherean pietism) spirituality than that of some sort of hybrided Reformed spirituality in mood. I’m not really going to get into that, but I think what Barth says about Schleiermacher has relevance for many “Evangelicals” in America today (even if “Evangelical” meant something different in the German context than it does in the American — I see plenty of over-lap). Here’s Barth:

[L]ittle need be said about the importance of the subject and the legitimacy of devoting a whole semester to it. Scheiermacher merits detailed historical consideration and study even if only because he was the one in whom the great struggle of Christianity with the strivings and achievements of the German spirit in 1750–1830, in whose light or shadow we still stand today, took place in a way which would still be memorable even if he were dead and his theological work had been transcended. None of his contemporaries with the possible exception of Hegel took up that struggle so comprehensively or with such concern, and none of the theologians of his age has anything like the same representative siginificance for what took place at that time. But Schleiermacher is not dead for us and his theological work has not been transcended. If anyone still speaks today in Protestant theology as though he were still among us, it is Schleiermacher. We study Paul and the reformers, but we see with the eyes of Schleiermacher and think along the same lines as he did. This is true even when we criticize or reject the most important of his thelogoumena or even all of them. Wittingly and willingly or not, Schleiermacher’s method and presuppositions are the typical ferment in almost all theological work; I need only mention the basic principle, which is so much taken for granted that it is seldom stated, that the primary theme of his work, both historically and systematically, is religion, piety, Christian self-consciousness. Who is not at one with Schleiermacher in this regard? In 1859 the Bremen preacher F. L. Mallet wrote concerning Schleiermacher: “It once seemed [even then!] as though his day was over, as though he had done his work. . . . But it is not the same with Schleiermacher as with the discovering of thinking faith [Paulus in Heidelberg]: he has a tenacious life, and to the surprise of his detractors and despisers he is suddenly remembered in a way and from an angle which cannot be overlooked or missed” (“Biographie,” 16). (Karl Barth, “The Theology Of Schleiermacher,” xiii)

This was written back in 1923/24 during Barth’s Lectures at Gottingen; so clearly this is removed both from our era, and then region (me writing as an American in the early 21st century). Nevertheless, I think there is something very ironic and parallel about all of this. Much of American “Evangelicalism” finds its rootage in the pietist background, in ethos (and of course pietism is not monolith, so I generalize). There is a certain mood wherein personal fulfillment and spiritual experience are at the center of even American Evangelical Christian spirituality. It is this mood that I think would feel very comfortable with much of Scheliermacher’s own method and spirituality (his being more thoughtful and articulated, in most cases). I think this makes for an interesting thought-experiment; viz. to try and see some analogous relationship between then in Germany, and now in America. I think many American Evangelicals today are going full circle right back to a Schleiermacherean pietistic spirituality wherein “my feeling” is the norm for “my theological existence;” one that is shaped by a “me and my Jesus,” “me and my Bible,” “holy huddle” mode. It seems to me that Karl Barth, for many American Evangelicals, could be the perfect antidote for such an ailment. We’ll see, I’ll keep reading and let you know ;-).

PS. I don’t really think The Gospel Coalition is the answer. (You know . . . Evangelical Calvinism is able to fit into the mood that could very much so be part of the antidote that Karl Barth also helps to provide . . . in fact maybe even better 😉