Theology Today - Vol 22, No. 4 - January 1966 - BOOK REVIEW - Schleiermacher On Christ and Religion; A New Introduction

550 - Schleiermacher On Christ and Religion; A New Introduction

Schleiermacher On Christ and Religion;
A New Introduction
By Richard R. Niebuhr
267 pp. New York, Charles Scribners' Sons, 1964. $5.95.

In view of the much-quoted dictum that Schleiermacher did not found a school but inaugurated an era, the history of Schleiermacher scholarship in English is a curious one. Apart from a study of Luke (tr. 1825), the long essay on the Trinity (translated by Moses Stuart in The Biblical Repository and Quarterly Observer, 1835-and, incidentally, of much influence on Horace Bushnell), and a brief article on Socrates (tr. 1840), the first of Schleiermacher's works to be translated into English was the Brief Outline of the Study of Theology (1850). Then followed the Christmas Eve in 1890 (a translation hardly known in this country), Selected Sermons in the same year, the speeches On Religion in 1893, the Soliloquies in 1926-and finally in 1928, a century after its publication, the culminating and greatest theological work, The Christian Faith (though one should note that George Cross, The Theology of Schleiermacher, 1911, was essentially a condensed translation and paraphrase of the Glaubenslehre).

As far as I can determine, not for over fifty years, since William Selbie, Schleiermacher, a Critical and Historical Study, 1913, has there been a book in English on Schleiermacher's theology. The only other full-length study (Richard Brandt, The Philosophy of Schleiermacher, 1941), is considerably less than an adequate guide to Schleiermacher's endeavors and intentions as theologian, just as Selbie's book helps little with Schleiermacher's philosophy. (J. A. Chapman wrote a brief and simple introduction in 1932, and Osborn wrote on Schleiermacher and Religious

551 - Schleiermacher On Christ and Religion; A New Introduction

Education in 1934.) By contrast, one may note the continuing extensive tradition of Schleiermacher scholarship in Germany and the more recent revival of study springing from Karl Barth's wrestling with Schleiermacher.

Doubtless the record just sketched can suggest much about the development of theology (especially liberal theology) in the English-speaking world, for we certainly cannot assume that this "father" of liberal theology was being adequately studied in the original and through the German commentaries. More important at the moment, however, it indicates that Richard R. Niebuhr's book is really a new beginning; this is the book from which students of the literature in English will now have to start.

But Schleiermacher on Christ and Religion is a new start in more than that formal sense. It is a brilliant and sound start toward a more adequate understanding of Schleiermacher.

We might call it a "post-Barthian" interpretation, for Niebuhr is particularly concerned to free our views of Schleiermacher from what lie terms the "Barthian captivity of the history of modern Christian thought" (p. 11), thus from a reading which, especially out of distaste for fraternization with philosophy, has led both to cavalier rejections of Schleiermacher and to egregious errors of interpretation (most notably, perhaps, in Brunner's Die Mystik und das Wort). The polemic against that line of exegesis runs through the book and adds spice to the argument. But it is not only the Barthian assimilation of Schleiermacher to Feuerbach that needs to be corrected. Niebuhr also warns us, for example, against a Tillichian assimilation to Schelling; he acutely distinguishes Schleiermacher's conception of the religious consciousness from that of Otto in The Idea of the Holy and along the way he exposes all sorts of common misunderstandings of Schleiermacher's ideas.

What Niebuhr has attempted is what he charges so few of Schleiermacher's critics have done, viz. "before drawing up a list of his errors, to try on his manner of thinking ..." (pp. 11 f.). In this I believe Niebuhr to have been admirably successful. Writing in the fullest awareness of the recent Schleiermacher scholarship and with appreciation for the light which it has shed, yet with fresh perspective and interests of his own, Niebuhr has laid open the sources with Tare sensitivity and perception.

The pattern for the study is the selection of crucial "moments" in Schleiermacher's work, which will reveal the most important and characteristic features of his theological style and which will exhibit his thinking "in motion." No attempt has been made at a comprehensive analysis of Schleiermacher's works or life or ideas. Rather, this is "a new intro-

552 - Schleiermacher On Christ and Religion; A New Introduction

duction" to his thinking (though one should add that the result is a nicely balanced indication of the wholeness of the man's thinking). For this purpose, Niebuhr has concentrated on five chief works, though of course illuminating them by reference to all the other writings. The Christmas dialogue, the lectures on hermeneutics and on ethics, and the Dialektik form the basis for half the discussion, under the heading "The Elements of Schleiermacher's Style." The second half of the volume concentrates on critical aspects of The Christian Faith: the task of theology, the nature of religion, and the role of Jesus Christ in religion and theology.

Any such selective treatment naturally allows for complaints of omission-and I would quibble chiefly about Niebuhr's decision not to use the Brief Outline as one of the main documents for analysis (though he is quite aware of its significance and refers to it frequently). Even apart from the enormous influence of the Brief Outline on subsequent theological curricula, its place in the development of Schleiermacher's thought surely makes it an important though often unappreciated "moment" needing full examination. One might also wish for fuller elucidation of Schleiermacher's role as biblical critic or as ecclesiastical statesman. But thus to complain is really to cavil, for it is asking Niebuhr to do what he did not intend-and certainly one must appreciate the great value of choosing the Weihnachtsfeier and the Dialektik (as well as the hermeneutics and the ethics), rather than the Reden (too often taken as the all-sufficient key to Schleiermacher's thought) to set alongside the Glaubenslehre.

Among the more striking fruits of Niebuhr's procedure, and the consequences of his care and precision in interpretation, 1 note first the exhibition of the subtle interrelations of the philosophical and the theological, and at the same time Schleiermacher's firm stance as theologian within and in responsibility to the Christian community. Nowhere do we find a more delicate and balanced account of Schleiermacher the theologian and philosopher. Likewise, the treatment of Schleiermacher's notion of theological method is simply superb-including particularly the sections on "ecclesiastical" and "scientific" criticism (and the analysis in the latter of Schleiermacher's view of nature and supernature).

Probably the most distinctive (and pervasive) theme of the book is the account of what Schleiermacher means by speaking of religion as "feeling"-i.e., in one of Niebuhr's happy formulations, of religion as "fundamentally man's affective response to the relationships into which the whole of human nature is bound" (p. 181). To this interpretation Niebuhr brings his own interest and reflection on the affective and

553 - Schleiermacher On Christ and Religion; A New Introduction

offers intriguing suggestions of affinity between Schleiermacher and Jonathan Edwards. Incidentally, Niebuhr is also particularly helpful in setting Schleiermacher in relation to Augustine and Calvin, and to Spinoza. How and why "feeling" is neither a "faculty" nor mere sentiment, e.g., and just how it is related to the cognitive and the ethical, are effectively shown by a careful interpretation of the "feeling of absolute dependence" against the background (particularly) of the Dialektik and the lectures on ethics (cf. esp. pp. 121 ff., 142 ff., 181 ff. and Ch. IV passim).

The last chapter is a fine elucidation of Schleiermacher's Christocentrism, which Niebuhr proposes to call a "Christomorphism," to distinguish it from those conceptions that would derive all other doctrines from the doctrine of Christ. "Christomorphism" means that "the redeemer is only one among a plurality of objects of theological knowledge, but at the same time he is paramount and central as the agent who reforms and shapes anew [all] the Christian's relations to God, the world and himself" (p. 212). Further, it becomes clear how Schleiermacher conceives the relation of Christianity to other religions.

In sum, Niebuhr has taken us a major step forward in understanding Schleiermacher, on the basis of which we can also begin to ask anew about the fruitfulness of his ideas for us, and from which aspects of our own theological situation may be illumined.

Claude Welch
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania