Whose Kingdom Shall Have No End: Christ and History in Friedrich Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre and Christliche Sittenlehre

Abstract

Whose Kingdom Shall Have No End: Christ and History in Friedrich Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre and Christliche Sittenlehre By: Kevin M. Vander Schel Advisor: Frederick G. Lawrence The present study offers an investigation into the relationship between the influence of Christ and the development of human history in the dogmatic writings of Friedrich Schleiermacher. In contrast to the lingering caricature of Schleiermacher as pioneering a liberal theology of subjective feeling, this study portrays his work as an innovative theological proposal uniting a strong christological emphasis with a unique understanding of historical development. In the face of the dominant opposition between the schools of Rationalism and Supernaturalism in the Protestant theology of his own time, Schleiermacher worked out an alternative historically-conscious theological approach. His dogmatic writings consider the Christian church as a distinctive historical community proceeding from the originative redemptive influence of Christ. This initial appearance of Christ the Redeemer in history he regards as something relatively supernatural, an event irreducible to previous circumstances that introduces a new and higher manner of human living. Yet after this remarkable beginning, he describes Christ's originative influence as entirely mediated by historical and natural means. Schleiermacher thus envisions Christ's influence in human history as a gradual transformation from within. His dogmatic theology describes the emergence of the Reign of God, a development that does not oppose or interrupt natural and historical development but works in and through it to bring the created world to its completion. Schleiermacher indicates this dynamic in his dogmatic theology through the descriptive motif of the supernatural-becoming-natural. This study examines this theme both in Schleiermacher's well-known Christian Faith, or Glaubenslehre, and also in his unfinished and still partially unpublished lectures on Christian Ethics (Christliche Sittenlehre). This study comprises six chapters and is divided into three parts. The first part considers two aspects of the historical context underlying Schleiermacher's dogmatic theology. Chapter one considers the dispute between the theological schools of Rationalism and Supranaturalism in early nineteenth-century Protestant theology and describes Schleiermacher's own approach as offering a distinct alternative to these two options. Chapter two treats Schleiermacher's role in establishing the theological faculty at the newly founded University of Berlin and his conception of theology as a historically-conscious and positive science that borrows from other university disciplines and employs them in service of its Christian conviction. Schleiermacher's presentation of this theological method, in his Brief Outline, informs the later dogmatic work of his Glaubenslehre and Christliche Sittenlehre. Part two considers Schleiermacher's treatment of the influence of Christ in history in his Glaubenslehre. Chapter three presents the formal aspects of this theme in the work's introduction and in the reflections upon the general relationship of God and world in its first part. Writing in conscious distinction from the Rationalist and Supranaturalist schools, Schleiermacher describes the higher influence of Christ through the descriptive strategy of the supernatural-becoming-natural. Chapter four describes the material development of this theme in the work's second part. The higher influence of Christ, which continues in the Spirit, produces the new collective life in the church as a community of grace, set apart from the sinful world and destined to spread over the entire human race. The progression of this new life coincides with the emergence and growth of the Reign of God. Part three treats Schleiermacher's reflections on the historical influence of Christ in his unpublished lectures on Christliche Sittenlehre. Chapter five considers this theme in the formal arrangement of this work, once again operating under the descriptive motif of the supernatural-becoming-natural. The Christliche Sittenlehre treats the distinctively Christian action that results from the higher influence of Christ, which becomes manifest in threefold form: first, as presentational action (darstellendes Handeln) that reflects the enduring blessedness of fellowship with Christ; then, in two modes of effective action, as purifying (reinigendes) and propagative (verbreitendes). Chapter six then considers the material development of these three kinds of Christian action. Schleiermacher's treatment of these three modes of Christian action depicts the increasing permeation and elevation of human historical action through the influence of Christ and the Spirit. In similar fashion to the Glaubenslehre, then, Schleiermacher's Christliche Sittenlehre portrays the new life originating in Christ as the completion and perfection of human action in the emerging reality of the Reign of God.