Karl Barth, The Theology of Schleiermacher

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1982, 287 pgs.

Summary: A careful consideration and critique of Schleiermacher’s canon and theological system by Karl Barth (1886-1968), delivered as lectures in 1924.

The lectures are divided into two chapters: the first discussing the theology of Schleiermacher as a preacher, working particularly with his early sermons, Easter and Christmas sermons, and household sermons. The second chapter considers the content of Schleiermacher’s Encyclopedia, Hermeneutics, The Christian Faith, and The Speeches on Religion (cf. my review).

Schleiermacher’s basic goal and failure are described in this way by Barth: “The task that he set himself . . . was to demonstrate that heresy and heterodoxy are not the same thing and to indicate how much friendly agreement is possible within the space inhabited in common by the orthodox and the heterodox” (204). (Heresy is essentially defined by Schleiermacher as rejecting the feeling of absolute dependence on the infinite as germinated by Christ.)

Schleiermacher believed that he had made the following contributions to theology: “For faith the consciousness of God arises out of Christian experience. For scholarship it is grounded in our universal nature. Orthodoxy finds the various heads of the church’s doctrine of God more or less complete and with the further guarantee—something that older Protestant dogmatics failed to give—that these doctrines could not be presented apart from Christ. Rationalism finds its beloved minimum of universal religion and it can also rejoice in the promise that precisely on the basis of this minimum it, too, can be a full-fledged member of the Christian church. The eternal compact which was the goal of the Reformation, though without meeting the needs of our time, has been sealed. Christianity need not accompany barbarism nor scholarship unbelief. Natural science and biblical criticism can come. Empiricism and speculation have become superfluous and can go. The little ship of the church in which we are all voyaging is protected against overturning. No war will be declared and no one will be shut out.” And then Barth concludes his description of Schleiermacher’s thought with: “There are only two mourners, the Bible and the Reformation, inasmuch as their goal was a different one from that assigned to them by Schleiermacher” (205).

Barth finds Schleiermacher’s theological conclusions untenable within Christianity and without. “His Christology is the incurable wound in his system. . .” (107).  “[I]f the Bible and classical Christian dogma are right to see in Christ this final word, then it must be said at least that in Schleiermacher’s Christology with its great quid pro quo, executed with so much intelligence and piety, we have a heresy of gigantic proportions. But then the 19th century which adopted this Christology wholesale—which is almost worse—without noting the consequences, must have displayed an almost incredible theological dilettantism” (104). “. . . I believe that the intolerable humanizing of Christ that triumphed under the aegis of Schleiermacher in the 19th Century was very closely related to pietism, especially in the form that it had been given by Zinzendorf” (106).

And Barth offers this theological summary: “there was for him no bondage of the will in the sense of the reformers, no sin that meant real and effective lostness, no word of truth that was more than one of many possible expressions of subjective experience, no justification that was not viewed as an infusion of righteousness after the manner of the Roman Catholics or Osiander, no repentance that meant a conversion in principle, no church that was not secretly identical with civilized society in general, no eschaton that was not already in the soul, that we have literally to wait for” (102).

Schleiermacher defines redemption “as an increasing fusion of the sensory self-consciousness with the God-consciousness.” The finite being recognizes his dependence on the infinite as an emotional response. All religions have “redemption” at the core, but Christianity’s uniqueness is found in that Christ did not need redemption prior to creating his fellowship (the primitive church), and therefore Christ becomes the focus of “redemption.”

Schleiermacher’s  definition of “God is ‘the source of the feeling of absolute dependent” (272). And his view of the Old Testament was to reject “the patristic principle that there is one revelation in the two testaments. There can only be a continuity of the history of religion within which Christianity and Judaism both have a place, but the same may logically be said of Christianity and paganism” (239).

Yet, Bart finds Schleiermacher a “clever” Christian desperately trying to bring in as many people into the church within the current cultural horizons while never “cutting the rope that binds him to Christ or venturing a balloon ride into the absolute” (105).

Benefits/Detriments:

Barth exhibits what is the only academically valuable and Christian method of doing historical theology: “But I will remain true to our previous method of not only letting Schleiermacher speak for himself but also letting him explain and criticize himself, for I believe that here, too, this is best suited to the material and best adapted to give us an understanding of the man. . .” (184).

As far as I am able to ascertain, Barth’s view of Schleiermacher’s system is correct.  And I agree strongly with Barth’s statement that, “we are appalled by the fact that Schleiermacher seems to not have seriously considered at all the meaning of the church’s dogma before replacing it with his own substitute” (240). It would be a great blessing if the reformers of the church would first begin by understanding what they are rejecting.

However, I find Barth’s response to Schleiermacher suspect, that we must now create a “positive counterachievement. . .what is needed is the ability to do it at least as well as he did his” (260).

The attitude in theology that “our generation” must save Christianity from the unprecedented crisis should always be approached with skepticism—even among those who cling to historical dogma. The crisis of disbelief is a historical constant and to be expected in every age. The Bible’s revelation of redemption is of a restoration of a relationship that is founded and culminates in Christ as presented in the Old and New Testament. The foundation is always Christ as preached by Paul and Moses, and Abraham and Noah, and Enoch and Abel. The framework must never be Adam’s speculation as to the character of God within the horizons of the evil one or some theological synergy between the first Adam and Christ. It must always be Christ.

This is only the second book by Barth I have read, and neither book addresses his positive theological teaching in anymore than an incidental way. And so I am not competent to critique Barth’s neo-orthodoxy or his relationship to this movement.