Schleiermacher and Sustainability

A Theology for Ecological Living

Shelli M. Poe

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780664263577
• eBook ISBN: 9781611648928
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Since the 1960s, theologians have been involved in efforts to guide Christians to reflection and action in light of planetary peril. The contributors to this volume illustrate how Friedrich Schleiermacher's theological work could fulfill that need. Schleiermacher's theology, they contend, finds its culmination in Christian social action and is remarkably conducive to ecological thinking in the modern world.

Each chapter deals with a particular locus in Schleiermacher's systematic theology, focusing on its implications for sustainable living. In so doing, Schleiermacher and Sustainability offers a sophisticated account of Schleiermacher's thought that will upend many estimations of his value for current constructive theology and provide a potent resource for those seeking to integrate ecological living into the marrow of their daily existence.

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SCHLEIERMACHER ON CHURCH
AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS

James M. Brandt

The purpose of this volume is to engage Schleiermacher’s thought, understand it in some depth, and ask how it might speak in our early-twenty-first-century situation, particularly to matters of planetary crisis and the need to develop ecological living. This chapter explores elements of Schleiermacher’s vision—his understanding of the church and of Christian ethics—that are of great importance to his theological program. Here we introduce Schleiermacher’s life and thought, and analyze the nature and calling of the Christian community as envisioned by Schleiermacher. We consider the nature of the church as laid out in Christian Faith and then give particular attention to Schleiermacher’s lectures in Christian Ethics. The Ethics are of great significance, for it is there that Schleiermacher develops his view of the life and action of the church, how it is to live out its calling or mission. We argue that Schleiermacher provides a theological vision of church with great ethical purchase that can speak to our current situation. This is so because his theological system culminates in ethics with a call to live out faith in church and world.

INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT

Schleiermacher lived in a period of enormous intellectual ferment, and his theology was shaped by and responded to the important currents of the day. It engaged the modern worldview forged by the Enlightenment with its new understandings of philosophy, science, and politics. The Enlightenment valued reason, experience, and utility. It exhibited great confidence in the powers of human reason, faith that a mathematical model of deduction can deliver certainty and universal truth in all realms of human endeavor: scientific, political, religious, and moral. The Enlightenment spirit is a spirit of critical inquiry, and critique is brought to bear against traditional ideas and institutions in church and state.

Enlightenment religion is the natural religion of the deists. Deism’s creed includes belief in the existence of a supreme being, moral living as the only true worship, and belief that good will be rewarded and evil punished, in this life or the next. This credo can be summarized as belief in God, morality, and immortality. Such rationalist theology reaches its pinnacle in Immanuel Kant, particularly his thinking in his Critique of Practical Reason.¹ The second of his great critiques represents a heightening of the moralization of religion such that “rationally permissible belief structure now explicitly rests on the self-certifying moral experience.”² The moral sense then leads Kant to postulate human freedom, the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul for, he argues, moral experience can only make sense with the acceptance of these postulates. Deism, and its rationalistic rejection of the supernatural, represents a crucial element of the intellectual context that Schleiermacher engages deeply.

In response to Deism’s understanding of religion in terms of reason and morality, Schleiermacher proposes a view of religion based on feeling (Gefühl), immediate self-consciousness, an intuitive sense of relation to God and the universe, and the positive religions, particularly Christianity. In this way, he moves away from the Enlightenment. However, he appropriates its spirit of critique, particularly Kant’s first critique with its clear sense of reason’s limits and its rejection of reason’s ability to make metaphysical claims. After Kant, metaphysical claims based on reason are bankrupt and another approach to theology is required. Schleiermacher’s genius is to turn to feeling and develop theology that adheres to careful limits about the kinds of claims theology can make. In this way, the critical, discerning spirit of the Enlightenment lives on in Schleiermacher’s theological and philosophical project even as he transcends it to something new and distinctive.³

Opposed to Deism’s rationalism is the supernaturalism of pietism and Protestant orthodoxy, the other main religious options of the day.⁴ Schleiermacher was deeply influenced by Moravian pietism. His father, Gottlieb Schleiermacher, experienced a pietist awakening under the influence of the Moravians in 1778, and Friedrich was subsequently schooled by the Moravians for four formative years from 1783 to 1787. Lasting influences of pietism on Schleiermacher include stress on personal conviction, a deep sense of communion with Christ, and formation in faith by means of pious practices. Schleiermacher refers to himself as a “Moravian of a higher order” after his critical turn, his rejection of the supernaturalism that marks both pietism and Protestant orthodoxy. Although Schleiermacher was not as deeply influenced by Protestant orthodoxy as by pietism, he knew the systematic theologies of Protestant orthodox thinkers with their commitment to traditional theology. Schleiermacher’s theology remains connected to Protestant orthodoxy in that redemption in Christ remains central and he cites many symbols and creeds, even as he develops his own distinctive understanding of Christ and redemption.

The above sketch of the intellectual currents of the day, particularly the opposition between rationalism and supernaturalism, allows us to identify why Schleiermacher is routinely identified as the founder of modern Protestant theology. His achievement was to provide a new basis and method for doing theology that overcomes the opposition between rationalism and supernaturalism. Schleiermacher’s theology can be characterized as a “theology from below,” that is, a theology whose touchstone is the present experience of faith. Theology is a descriptive enterprise with a focus on what can be experienced and known in human historical life. Theology is rendered in this-worldly terms, grounded in the experience of faith and attendant to the historical manifestations of the faith. Schleiermacher reconceives the claims of theology in a way that moves beyond the impasse between the supernaturalism of Protestant orthodoxy and pietism and the flat naturalism of Enlightenment theology. The way he transcends previous approaches is evident in his understandings of Christ and the church, doctrinal areas that stand at the very heart of his theology.⁵

KEY DOCTRINES: CHRISTOLOGY AND ECCLESIOLOGY

Schleiermacher’s Christology begins not with traditional dogma nor with the New Testament picture of Jesus by itself, but with the contemporary Christian’s experience of redemption. Starting with the new form of life that the believer receives in and through the Christian community, Schleiermacher works backward to discern the origin of this new reality. The immediately apparent source of the experience of redemption is the Christian community. The community has a particular history that can be traced back to Pentecost, when the spirit of its founder, Jesus of Nazareth, enlivens people and brings the community into existence. Jesus, made real through his Spirit that lives on in the community, is the crucial historical source of the new life experienced by the believer.

Schleiermacher’s method, then, is to consider who Jesus must have been in order to communicate this new and higher life to believers through the medium of the church. He concludes that Jesus must be the possessor of a unique and unblemished consciousness of God. Schleiermacher cannot arrive at an understanding of Christ as the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity as traditionally understood, nor as the Chalcedonian formula has it—“two natures in one person.” Such claims are beyond what persons can legitimately know and are fraught with logical difficulties. But as the ultimate source of believers’ experience of participation in something beyond themselves, something divine and perfect, Jesus must be perfect in his God-consciousness. He is the completion of the creation of humanity in terms of God-consciousness or relation to God, and the culmination of God’s intention for humanity. Jesus is the one remaining “supernatural” element in Schleiermacher’s otherwise seamlessly “naturalistic” system. Jesus, the new Adam, is inexplicable in terms of his historical context because he was born into a world of sin. He transcends his context in the sinless perfection of his God-consciousness. However, Christ is not absolutely supernatural because he incarnates what God had intended for humanity from the beginning (and what in theory is possible for any human being—a perfect consciousness of God), but he is relatively supernatural in that he cannot be fully explained by the world that shaped and formed him. Christ the unique and perfect Redeemer remains as theology’s foundation. This is theology that moves beyond previous frameworks and yet retains a distinctively Christian identity.

Schleiermacher similarly reconceptualizes the church. The Christian community is neither Protestant orthodoxy’s “divinely instituted custodian of infallible truths”⁶ nor rationalism’s voluntary association of like-minded individuals. Instead the church is a living organism, inspired by God to be sure, but caught up in the flux of social and historical life like every other human movement or institution. This conception of the church as a living organism resonates with New Testament images like the branches of the one true vine or the body of Christ. The church is a true community of persons united by a common spirit that is more than the individuals who make up the community. The church is then the medium through which redemption is made known. The spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, enlivens the community and people are drawn through historical influences into its life and the new sense of communion with God through Christ. On the one hand, this community can be comprehended and analyzed as a human historical reality like any other community; on the other hand, the community bears significance for believers as the place they experience this new life. Even Karl Barth, no friend of Schleiermacher’s theology, recognized it as a theology “predominantly and decisively of the Holy Spirit.”⁷

The understanding of Christ and church that we have sketched shows how Schleiermacher’s thought provides a significant turning point in the history of Protestant theology.

SCHLEIERMACHER’S PRACTICE

In our day, Schleiermacher is widely recognized as the founder of modern theology, as we have indicated above. Before we explore Schleiermacher’s vision of the church and Christian ethics, we will also note that there is much to be gained by considering not only his theology but also his actual practice as a pastor, professor, and participant in the movement for social reform. His actual practice goes toward my argument that for Schleier-macher, Christian thought culminates in Christian ethics.

In his own day, Schleiermacher was renowned and revered as a pastor and public figure who made enormous contributions to ecclesial and social life in Berlin, where he served Trinity Church from 1809 until his death in 1834. Evidence of the esteem in which he was held includes the enormous turnout for his funeral procession. Conservative estimates indicate some twenty thousand to thirty thousand people lined the streets to mourn and honor the pastor, professor, and social reformer. Another striking indication of Schleiermacher’s popularity is that on four occasions when he was in danger of losing his position or even being banished from Prussia altogether because of his reformist political activity, the orders were not carried out, most likely because of his support from the people. The king and his ministers were reluctant to stir up the masses by publicly punishing a prominent pastor and public figure.

Schleiermacher’s time was not only an age of great intellectual ferment; it was also a period of enormous social and political upheaval. This period included the American and French Revolutions and much agitation across the Western world for human rights (especially freedom of assembly and freedom of the press); a turn toward democracy or, in the case of Prussia, at least constitutional monarchy; abolition of the feudal system; and expansion of educational opportunities for commoners. When Prussia suffered humiliating defeat at the hands of Napoléon’s armies, Schleier-macher roused the people—both burghers and peasants—to participate in efforts of liberation. This was at the same time an expression of nationalism and of a democratic spirit that the king, Friedrich Wilhelm III, feared. Schleiermacher was a leader in the reform movement in Prussia that flourished from 1807 to 1819 and left an indelible mark on Prussian and German social and political history. The reform movement freed the peasants, reorganized the government in order that locales and common people might have more say in governing, and made public education available to commoners, not only the nobility.⁸

Among Schleiermacher’s contributions during this period were serving in the Ministry of the Interior under the reformist prime minister Baron Freiherr vom Stein—contributing to reform of the educational system, playing a leading role in the establishment of the new University of Berlin, editing a reform-minded newspaper, and supporting university student groups advocating for liberal and democratic reforms. Not surprisingly, Schleiermacher was also a leader in church issues with the government, acting against the imposition of a new liturgy on the church by the king. This resistance to the government went both to Schleiermacher’s concerns about the content of the liturgy and to his conviction that the church be autonomous in relation to the state.

Perhaps Schleiermacher’s most signal contribution to the reform movement came by means of his role as a leading pastor in Berlin. Prussian clergy of the day were under the ecclesiastic section of the Ministry of the Interior and were expected to follow the dictates of the government and otherwise remain politically quiet. Schleiermacher moved beyond the traditional restraints on members of the clergy and came to a new political consciousness. Robert Bigler credits Schleiermacher with inspiring other clerics to political activity: “As both a stimulator and a prototype, Schleiermacher was primarily responsible for the emergence of the most politically oriented elements of the clergy in the period 1815–1848.”...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Schleiermacher and Sustainability
• 1.  Schleiermacher on Church and Christian Ethics
• 2.  An Ecological Oikos: Economics, Election, and Ecumenism
• 3.  Schleiermacher’s Theological Naturalism: Critical Resources from His Views about Creation for Contemporary Ecotheologies
• 4.  Divine Providence and Human Freedom in the Quest for Ecological Living
• 5.  Social Sin and the Cultivation of Nature
• Conclusion: Schleiermacher and Ecotheology
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Names