I dag hadde ei vennine av meg en forelesning om Schleiermacher. Vi var en gjeng postgraduates som stakk innom som moralsk støtte (og ikke minst for å lære!). Til tross for at det var hennes første forelesning noen sinne, og at vi feiret bursdagen hennes på en pub i går kveld (med … tilstrekkelig menge alkohol), var det en veldig god forelesning. Det var for det meste kontekst, siden det var første forelesning, men en del av dette er nytt for meg også. Det er bra å lære litt mer om Schleiermacher utenom fordommene vi har arvet gjennom Barth.
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Though a thoroughly a modern person, he appropriated the Platonic structure of dialogue and dialectic. As much as he was a man of church, he was also man of the separate state and society, and also an inspiring social reformer.
1. Karl Barth
«Schleiermachers Christ bears a striking resemblance to a cultivated modern Christian who knows how to deal liberally with educated people in any position.» The theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher
«Schleiermacher seems to not have seriously considered at all the meaning of the church’s dogma before replacing it with his own substitute.» Barth
- Schleiermacher was too accommodating. Overemphasizing human reason, to the detriment of revelation.
- Neglected the gospel.
2. Schleiermacher’s Lectures on Hermeneutics
«The goal of hermeneutics is understanding in the highest sense.. One has only understood what one has reconstructed in all its relationships and in its context. – To this also belongs understanding the writer better than he understands himself.» Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings
- The significance of a text cannot be reduced to its content, but must be situated in a context. The texts we read are entangled into a historical web of relationships.
3. Schleiermacher’s Historical Context
(a). French Revolution, and the Napoleonic Wars.
«I exult in war against the tyrant, which I now think is unavoidable». «One determination only I hold fast, and that is, to follow the fortunes of my immediate fatherland, Prussia, as long as it continues to exists … Should it entirely succumb, then I will, as long as it is feasible, seek the German fatherland wherever a Protestand can live, and a German governs»
- In the Napoleonic wars he thus expressed his patriotism
Dilthey: «The philosophy of Kant can be whole understood without a closer engagement with his person and his life; Schleiermacher’s significance, his worldview and his works require a biographical portrayal for their thorough understanding»
(b) Early Experiences of Religion and Community
- Reformed Tradition (Calvinisim)
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- Born into a family in the reformed tradition. His own father was a reformed chaplain in the Prussian army
- Pietism
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- A protestant movement in the Lutheran tradition.
- Moral praxis and focus on Scripture rather than intellectual focus. Anti-hierarchical.
- The individualistic religiosity correlated with the individualism in general culture.
- But the ability to live a good Christian life comes from faith, not from reason.
- His schooling with the Moravian Brethren (Herrnhuter community (Jan Huuss)
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- Roots in the 14th century.
- Universal education, liturgy in the language of the people, married priests.
- In the 17th century, they were persecuted by catholics and made to go under ground. They settled in Prussia in the mid 18th century.
- It was within the Marovian community that Schleiermacher was sent to begin his formal education. In a school for boys entering Christian ministry. They were ‘protected’ from the world outside. Pushed to dedicate themselves to a simple, devoted religious life, in communion with JC.
«Here it was [in the Marovian community] that for the first time I awoke to the consciousness of the relations of man to a higher world … Here it was that that mystic tendency developed itself, which has been of so much importance to me ,and has supported and carried me through all the storms of skepticism. Then it was only germinating, now it has reached its full development, and I may say, that after all that I have passed through, I have become a Herrhuter again, only of a higher order.»
(c) Schleiermacher’s religious doubt, and his disillusioned move from the Moravians, to the University of Halle.
He left the community because of doubt. The primary catalyst for doubt was philosophy. He joined a philosophy club in secret at the Marovian school. He was acquainted with new philosophy, like Kant, Herder and Lessing. Two semester of such philosophical engagement was enough for him to request the seminary, and leave to Halle instead.
So now, his religious feeling was being challenged by Lessing’s rationalistic argument.
His father granted him to leave. In his letters to his Father he wrote:
«I cannot believe that he who called himself the Son of Man was, the true eternal God; I cannot believe that his death was a vicarious atonement because he never expressly said so him self; and I cannot believe it to have been necessary, because God, who evidently did not create men for perfection, but for the pursuit of it, cannot possibly intend to punish them eternally because they have not attained it»
The life of faith and the life of philosophical reason was presented to him as two incompatible paths.
Faith as feeling (Gefül). A feeling of absolute dependence.
- None of the qualities connoted by feeling is worrying for theologians. If we understand faith as feeling, then faith becomes fideism.
- However, becoming familiar with his young crisis of faith may give us nuances.
(d) The Age of Enlightenment (Growth of confidence in human reason)
Later 17th century -> Mid 19th century.
«Englithenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity» – Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment?
– As Friedrich Schiller described it, alongside the Age of Enlightenment, and with rationalization, came a state of disenchantment (Entzauberung)
- The sense that God was active in the world.
- A way of describing the process of secularization.
(e) Kant
Critique of Reason: We are unable to prove the existence through recourse to rational enquiry.
Schleiermacher was obsessed with Kant’s thought. He wrote lots of essays on him. He was sharply critical of Kant. He did not agree with Kant’s focus on morality and the individuals power of judgment.
By the time Schleiermacher had regained his faith, he preached a Christocentric Christianity, focus on God’s love. He found none of these elements in Kant.
Like Kant opposed the trend of theology towards scientific methodology, so Schleiermacher followed.
(f) Romanticism (Erly German Romantic Movement 1797-1802)
(See Richard Crouter’s introduction)
Moved to Berlin in 1796. He met a group of men and women interested in art, poetry, ancient philosophy etc. It was during his period in Berlin and his familiarity with Schleger, that he translated the complete works of Plato.
This group prioritized love for the search for truth. They were not anti-enlightenment, but they provided a corrective of the self-sufficient man. Nature imparts itself to us and shocks us. Opposed the mechanical world picture, whereby it can be cut up, analyzed and used.
Nature is organic, living and impressive. This was also tied to the fact they were metaphysical realists. Spoke of reality as complex wholes whit purposes.
Whilst on the one hand, and individual feels active and self-sufficiency, at the same time the individual feels a passivity, a dependence on the universe.
Romanticism helped pull him through. During this time he published On Religion, a defense of religion.
Fiat verba 