Jesus' Life in Dying

Friedrich Schleiermacher's Pre-Easter Reflections to the Community of the Redeemer

Friedrich Schleiermacher, Iain G. Nicol, Allen G. Jorgenson, Terrence N. Tice

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725254022
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Schleiermacher's preaching constituted a substantive part of his academic and pastoral life, and provides a foray into his thought that is both accessible and inspiring. In the form of the sermon, we discover Schleiermacher's theology at work in the context of the worship life of the community--especially important for this progenitor of liberal theology. Schleiermacher's Passion sermons are especially interesting, given that contemporary interpreters of his thought generally assume that his interest in the cross is attenuated, at best. Yet, in these sermons we discover him thinking through his theology of community, atonement, history, creation, and Scripture in the face of the death of the Redeemer. The sermon, in sum, is the principal means by which the God-consciousness of the Redeemer is communicated to the community to the end that we come to believe in the One who died for the sake of the world.Jesus' Life in Dying contains nine sermons preached on the topic of the cross and suffering of Jesus, as well as an extended introduction by the editors, locating these pastoral labors within Schleiermacher's larger theological project.

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On the First Sunday of Lent

Invocavit, March 11, 1832

Hymns 187, 16686

Text: Luke: 24:25, 26

O, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart, to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?

My devout friends, every time we begin afresh this season of our Christian Year, which is devoted above all to the contemplation of the suffering Redeemer, we must ever again immerse ourselves in this depth of the divine wisdom, in this mystery of the divine guidance of our species that the Redeemer of the world had to endure the dissent of sinners and die at the hand of sinners, a decree that to the hearts and minds of Christians seems unfathomable. Yet, with this in mind, what better kind of guidance can we have than such words as these, teaching us how on the first day of his resurrection the Redeemer himself after his suffering was behind him, looks back on it. Here, when he asks. “Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer all such things and enter into his glory?” there is expressed in these words the consciousness of a necessity. It was clear to him that it could not have been otherwise than it was. Yet neither for us nor for him is there any necessity other than the divine decree. Everything is as it is because the Eternal One has decreed that it be so. Nothing can be other than it is nor thought of as other than it is, because nothing can come to be other than only by his counsel and will. It is for this reason that in his words the Redeemer leads us back to this necessity that is grounded in the divine decree. This is the viewpoint from which we too should reflect on his suffering and his death, for this is the perspective that he himself specifies here for his disheartened disciples.

To be sure, the words of the Redeemer seem to contain something else. In that he says to his disciples: “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared”; and after he speaks these words of our text, the text adds further that he began to interpret the Scriptures to them “beginning with Moses and all the prophets.” Of course, we can very easily arrive at the thought that the necessity of the Redeemer’s suffering and death has its foundation in the foretelling of the prophets. However, my good friends, suppose that all prophecies having to do with the Redeemer of the world prove themselves to us to be of divine origin, and suppose for this reason we were to believe that no such prophecy has occurred in accordance with the will of human beings. Then, the surer we would be of this factor, the surer it would be precisely that the One from whom the prophecy comes is the same One from whom its fulfillment comes. Thus, suppose that we were to say that Christ therefore also had to suffer because this was what was foretold by the prophets of the Old Testament, and suppose that we also wanted to grant instantly that their words and portrayals were actually to have corresponded completely to what ensued, and suppose that in the suffering of the Redeemer we were to discover that everything was precisely as had been foretold. For all this, we would then be led no farther than to ask, “Why would they then have to prophesy regarding the Lord in this way?”

In this regard, the answer must be, first, that both prophecy and fulfillment have only one and the same foundation. Thus, because both prophecy’s and fulfillment’s one foundation was decided in the divine decree and because this was thus in accordance with eternal divine wisdom, this is the reason why it all had to happen in the way it did. That the prophecy preceded the event was simply a preliminary activity of divine love for the benefit of those who had to do with these prophecies, although the reason why it happened in this particular way and not otherwise cannot be contained in the prophecy itself.

This is why, my good friends, we must surely keep to the other words of the Lord. That is, when he says, “Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer such things and then enter into his glory?” he certainly did not wish that these two things should merely be set in juxtaposition, but rather he sought to establish an exact connection between suffering and glory in the same way as if he had said, “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things in order to enter into his glory?” Could Christ in some other way have entered into his glory other than after he had suffered? This, then, is the way in which he reveals the divine decree to us concerning his suffering and his death in its interconnection with his glory.

Now, this is what we want to make the subject of our devout reflections. To this end, my devout friends, we shall surely have to answer the question as to what this glory of the Redeemer then actually consists in, and only then the second question, that is, as to how then his suffering has led to his glory.

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Accordingly, we first ask, “What kind of glory, then, is this of which the Redeemer speaks saying that he has entered into it, and that in order to enter into this glory he has had to suffer and die?” To be sure, this question, my devout friends, seems to place us far removed from that to which we are closest, namely, above all from this arena of human affairs; because this is the usual way we portray to ourselves the existence of the Redeemer, his life here and his works, his suffering and death as a state of humiliation, his being taken up into heaven, and his departure from this earth and from this transitory world viewed as his exaltation and glory. Still, my good friends, when we consider the matter more closely and simply dismiss all those things that are derived from a completely different domain of our thinking and ask ourselves, “What sort of glory was this that the Lord had then gained and into which he first entered by again departing the arena of this earthly domain after his suffering and his death? How can this be? Is there some other and greater glory than that of an immediate union with God, the consciousness of which, to the extent that we are able to accompany him in his earthly life, he indeed never lost for one single moment?” Can anything greater be said of any human being than that one is at one with the Creator, with the eternal Father of all things and with all spirits as the Redeemer says of himself? Can there be a greater glory than the consciousness that so completely permeated him that he never did anything other nor sought to accomplish anything other than the will of his Father in heaven, but that he also truly and fully accomplished it and in this fulfillment of the divine will enjoyed an unclouded blessedness that nothing could disturb?

Surely, when we consider the matter in such a way we will then have to say that this glory of the Lord was everlasting, a glory that he did not lose throughout his life on earth; no human power could deprive him of it even for a single instant, nor did he experience its diminishment on account of either inward states or outward circumstances. His glory was always the same and remained the same so that he could not have entered into this glory for the first time after his suffering and death.

Even the disciples, to whom he spoke these words, may have been uncertain and doubtful like us, but they could not have remained so for more than a few hours until the later part of the evening of the same day. This is the case, for as they now returned to Jerusalem to tell his other disciples that the Lord had indeed risen and had just now even walked with them, the Lord then stood in the midst of them and then, when they saw him, spoke similar words to the disciples, who did not want to believe it but were still doubtful. Here he now says, “Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer and die and rise, and let repentance and forgiveness of sins be proclaimed in his name?”87 Can we really say otherwise than what he says here, namely, “Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer and die and enter into his glory?” and place this alongside what he says there, namely, “Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer, die, and rise, and let repentance and forgiveness of sins be proclaimed in his name?”

However, my good friends, to which one of these two should we commit ourselves: to rising from the dead or to preaching about repentance and forgiveness of sin? Was the resurrection his glory? Was his ...