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- [00:00]
Michael Horton
At Sola Media, we're committed to helping Christians deepen their faith through clear, Christ centered teaching rooted in the riches of the Reformation. Every podcast, article and resource we produce is offered free of charge, and it's only possible because of generous monthly supporters. When you become a partner Today, you'll receive two remarkable books as our Rediscovering the Holy Spirit by Dr. Michael Horton and Praying with Jesus by Pastor and Adriel Sanchez. We believe these books can guide you into a clearer understanding of the Spirit's work and a richer prayer life. To become a partner and receive these two books, visit solamedia.org partner.
- [00:48]
Bob
You can't go looking for religious experience. As Martin Luther said, that would mean just every man goes to hell in his own way. You don't climb the ladder of mysticism and experience to find God, because if you do, the devil's at the top because he disguises himself as an angel of light. Yeah, you want religious experience? Well, you'll experience it all right, but it'll more likely be the devil than God. And so the only safe path to God is through his Son, who's come down to us and given us his word.
- [01:34]
Michael Horton
Applying the riches of the Reformation to the modern church. This is White Horse Sin, a weekly roundtable discussion about theology and culture.
- [01:50]
Justin
Who was Frederick Schleiermacher and why do so many people call him the Father? Maybe not so many, but people. People would call him the Father of modern liberal theology. What shift did he make from creeds and catechisms to religious experience in a romantic, post enlightenment world? Does he really believe that salvation is the Redeemer's living communication of his sinless, absolute, potent God consciousness to people, generating a new corporate life of blessedness? And if so, what in the world does that mean for sin atonement in the church? And what about his famous idea, the feeling of absolute dependence? Is that a profound way of describing our creaturely relationship with God? Or does it reduce faith to a kind of universal religious emotion that sits above scripture and confession? To have this conversation of discussing Schleiermacher are Walter, Bob and Mike. And I am Justin. And let's dive in, guys. Let's do the basics on Schleiermacher. The who, what, where, when, why. And then we'll start looking at what he wrote, ministry and all that kind of stuff. But what are some dates? And give me some details on him.
- [02:59]
Walter
So we can start with his birth. 1768 is when he was born. He died in 1834. He was brought up in a doctrinally Reformed church. So he had a, you know, a good upbringing, theologically speaking. He was sent to a Moravian school. There was an emphasis on the spiritual life, a little bit less on the side of doctrine. And so then at that time, you know, throughout his education, he begins to have some intellectual doubts while he's in seminary. I think it's interesting to note that he actually wrote his father, who was a Reformed minister, about those doubts. His father then responded fairly harshly, threatening him with hell and things like that. But at the end of the day, he ends up going the way of really allowing the Christian theology to fit the philosophical forms of that day given to him primarily epistemologically by Kant and then Hegel as well. But that's really some of the biological, biographical, rather sort of details that we can go and talk about the rest of his career later as we discuss more of his theological formulation.
- [04:09]
Adriel Sanchez
Just a point of clarification. He was brought up in a Reformed home or a Moravian home.
- [04:14]
Walter
The school's Moravian.
- [04:15]
Adriel Sanchez
Okay, okay.
- [04:16]
Bob
The Moravian Pietists were basically part of the Reformed network of churches. They considered themselves Bohemian Reformed. They were on the. Definitely the pietist wing of it.
- [04:31]
Adriel Sanchez
Okay. It's just helpful for me because as a Lutheran, we have four denominations in the world. Lutherans, Rome, Reformed and Eastern Orthodox. And so I'm just happy to know when I collect everyone under Reformed. I'm right about that.
- [04:45]
Justin
Right?
- [04:45]
Bob
That's helpful.
- [04:46]
Justin
Exactly.
- [04:46]
Bob
Yeah, yeah. So when we're not talking about Lutherans, we're just talking about other.
- [04:49]
Adriel Sanchez
The Reformed.
- [04:50]
Bob
The Reformed. It was in 1799 that that Schleiermacher wrote his famous speeches on religion to its culture despisers. And in that work, basically. Okay, so to his father. Walter, you mentioned that letter to his father. He said to his dad, I know that there is a divine presence. I know that it fills everything, but I can no longer believe in the act of obedience. He specifically says the act of obedience of Christ and his substitutionary atonement.
- [05:31]
Adriel Sanchez
That's clear.
- [05:32]
Walter
Yeah.
- [05:32]
Bob
I'm having trouble with the Trinity. I'm. You know, so that's. I mean, his dad was basically. You're not a Christian.
- [05:40]
Walter
Yeah.
- [05:41]
Bob
But Schleiermacher called himself to the very end, a Moravian of a higher order. In 1799, he gives this, the speeches on. And it was an immediate sensation, not necessarily among the intelligentsia and the clergy, but to a young generation of students at the University of Berlin who felt exactly the way he did. He was close enough in age to Them that he basically imagined somebody today talking about being an ex evangelical.
- [06:17]
Adriel Sanchez
Okay.
- [06:17]
Bob
And the whole building is filled with university students who are kind of on that same track. They want to keep the piety of Christianity, but they're having trouble believing the actual teachings of Christianity.
- [06:37]
Walter
It might be helpful to even frame it this way. That was very helpful, Mike, to say that he saw himself as an apologist for Christianity, but modernizing it in light of contemporary philosophical developments.
- [06:51]
Bob
That's why he's the father of modern Protestantism.
- [06:55]
Adriel Sanchez
I think a little background would be helpful on his philosophical view too, but I don't understand it at all. Can you talk about Kant and his influence? Because it seems to me Schleiermacher is responding to a Kantian view of religion. So Kant is trying to confine religion into something that can be reasoned, I guess. And Schleiermacher wants to respond and say, no, it's something other than that. Is that right?
- [07:21]
Bob
Not quite. So Immanuel Kant, also reared in pietism. We could tell that whole story. I mean, he had an absolutely horrible Christian school that he was a part of that was pietist. Basically Prussia, eastern Germany was pietist, and the government was even pietist. It was just from the top down. And he went to the College of Frederick the Emperor, and it was just completely alienated from official institutional Christianity. But he still believed that the morality is important.
- [08:06]
Adriel Sanchez
Right? Right.
- [08:07]
Bob
And so he said, we cannot know anything about God theology, but only by presupposing God's existence can we have morality. And so there is no actual knowledge of God, but there is a practical life based on the existence of God. Schleiermacher comes along and says, I agree with you. We can't know anything about God. So they both agree. It's not an intellectual thing. It's not doctrine. We can't really know anything about God. But instead of saying we can just make God a presupposition, necessary presupposition for our morality, Schleiermacher says we can know God through experience because God is all and all is God. You can experience. He was a pantheist. You can experience God or the divine in any religion, in any philosophy, anywhere and everywhere. When I walk through the grass, I hear him pass. I hear him everywhere. That kind of sentimentality. Hegel comes along and he says, that's just enthusiasm. That's pietist enthusiasm. And Hegel knew, because he was raised in it. And he said, Kant and Schleiermacher are wrong. Reason is the unfolding of reality. In history. And Christianity is the consummate realization of religion in history.
- [09:51]
Justin
What Mike's describing here is this is the feeling of absolute dependence that he's famous for. He bases. And put your finger on that one, because you got more to go. Possibly, Mike. But the point, the launching point of theology after the Enlightenment in the Romantic age is not scripture, not external authority, but this feeling of absolute dependence, or also known as God consciousness. I'm on page 17. This is the first place he uses it. And this is the Christian faith, his other book, which we can talk about. The feeling of absolute dependence becomes a clear self consciousness only as this idea comes simultaneously into being. And then he just launches into God consciousness, self consciousness. This becomes foundational because what Christ does is Christ has the perfect God consciousness, and he shares that God consciousness with everyone else. And you're like, okay, this is different from an atonement or even a Christmas victor or anything. This is that famous phrase of is from creed to consciousness. And the feeling of absolute dependence is the prolegomena is explored.
- [10:56]
Bob
You would agree that the first experience Adam had was not self consciousness, but God consciousness.
- [11:03]
Adriel Sanchez
Right? Right.
- [11:05]
Bob
We can affirm that. The problem is Schleiermacher's Christology. It starts with the incarnation. Jesus Christ was in all other respects a man, just as we are not God incarnate, let's say from the moment. But he, in his evolutionary view of God consciousness, he said, you know, other people who anticipated Christ, they had a certain level of God consciousness, but Christ had the consummate God consciousness, so much so that he was adopted as the Son of God. So this is an adoptionist Christology. We all become adopted when we experience that God consciousness. And that's what union with Christ means. And so there is no qualitative distinction between the hypostatic Son of God, the second person of the Trinity incarnate, and our being sons of God. It's a quantitative difference of God consciousness, but not a qualitative one.
- [12:16]
Walter
It's more of a matter of Jesus is different from us as a matter of degree and not kind.
- [12:22]
Bob
Yeah.
- [12:23]
Walter
So because he has that highest God consciousness, which really comes from this sort of Kantian epistemology that drew this hard line between things as they appear to us and things, the things themselves. So we can't know the things themselves. All we can know is the things that appear to us. And so this placed human subjectivity at the center of knowing. And so all we can do is sort of transcend and see Christ's example of us transcending into a greater God.
- [12:52]
Bob
Consciousness, which makes perfect sense to a pietist, somebody raised in pietism a lot more than somebody raised in a confessional background.
- [13:00]
Adriel Sanchez
I'm trying to collect things that I've heard and I've learned about Schleiermacher. Would he have agreed he and Hegel were teachers together? Is that correct? They were there in Berlin at the same time. Yep. Would he have agreed with Hegel's sort of evolutionary view that you described before, that Jesus is kind of like the ultimate expression of a proper God consciousness? Like all the other religions are just kind of building up to this, and Jesus, at least at this point in history, is the ultimate expression, but there could be someone greater moving forward, who knows? But at this point, Jesus is the model for it, so that his whole history of religion doesn't see right or wrong. Everybody's just sort of experiencing this God consciousness in one way or another, and Jesus just happens to be the model of the best way to do it.
- [13:52]
Bob
Yeah. Hegel was a little older than Kant and had been teaching at the University of Berlin for a while. And then when Schelling, another romantic philosopher friend of Schleiermacher.
- [14:04]
Adriel Sanchez
Yeah, yeah.
- [14:05]
Bob
Schleiermacher, who was very influenced by him, had Hegel for a little while, and then they taught together. Hegel greatly disliked Schleiermacher. And the main reason was, again, Hegel thought that he had completely cut reason out of the picture.
- [14:23]
Adriel Sanchez
Interesting.
- [14:24]
Bob
And Hegel was a rationalist, whereas Schleiermacher was an emotivist. And so, for example, everything for Hegel is the male impulse, you know, kind of moving throughout the world, this masculine principle in the universe that is creative and so forth. Schleiermacher lamented that he had been born a man instead of a woman.
- [14:57]
Justin
Great.
- [14:58]
Bob
And so his whole religious experience could talk about this. We probably should. His Christmas story, all of his heroes are women. All of his. It's a kind of feminized Christianity. The hymn of the 19th century, my grandmother's favorite. I come to the garden alone While the dew is still on the roses and he walks with me and talks to me and tells me I am his own and the joy we share as we tarry there none other has ever known. That's an intimate, unique experience that each individual has with the Lord. That comes from Schleiermacher. I mean, that is a Gnostic, if you want to go back further, it's a Gnostic idea, but it's completely removed from the history. You don't have to believe the history that the Gospels report as long as you've had this experience of God consciousness. And yes, Jesus, the reason we're Christians is because we have this sort of. He has a unique relation to God consciousness. And therefore, if we're united to him, then we have. In this community of Jesus, we have his God consciousness. But he says in his speeches to these students, he says, let's not be as arrogant as to say that Christianity is the only way and the Bible. Don't conflate the Bible with religion. Religion, this sense of God consciousness is bigger than historical faiths. And lots of people experience this divine all in all sorts of ways because it pulsates throughout the universe. So we might be holding onto the trunk while someone else is holding on to the leg and someone else is holding onto the tail. But we're all touching a different part of the elephant.
- [17:05]
Justin
So, Mike, I'm reading the Christian Faith about supporting substitutionary atonement, and I'm really confused because it's right here in the Christian.
- [17:19]
Bob
Wow.
- [17:22]
Justin
Can we talk about this? First of all, I love this. When your book came out and it's called the Christian Faith, I was like, bold. I like that. Now, was that intentional? Because it's basically the exact opposite.
- [17:36]
Bob
It was a secondary. Yeah, it was a secondary reason.
- [17:40]
Justin
Yeah, I do like that. I like that.
- [17:44]
Walter
Well, hey, Justin, according to Schlomacher, faith is just reinterpreted and updated. And so Mike has done that.
- [17:50]
Adriel Sanchez
Mike has done.
- [17:52]
Walter
So.
- [17:52]
Justin
There you go.
- [17:53]
Bob
Thank you, Walter. That's a. A comparative religious way of looking at it.
- [17:58]
Walter
Oh, man. So as far as the sort of relativism that you're talking about, even religious. Religious relativism, even though he would say he was a Christian, you know, because doctrines are tied to these religious traditions, and each one interprets doctrines based upon those traditions. Like, doctrines can change over time. And so it's a matter of documenting the experience that you have as you're engaging with these religious texts. And so this is what he said.
- [18:23]
Bob
Yeah.
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Walter
Doctrines are accounts of the Christian's religious affections set forth in speech.
- [18:28]
Adriel Sanchez
Yeah. So it's just self expression.
- [18:30]
Bob
Yeah, self expression. After Kant, if you can't know God, that root is cut off. You don't have special revelation. You don't have any real knowledge of God, even from general revelation. If you can't know God, I mean, know intellectually no truths about God, if you don't have theology, then what happens? Well, you have religion and there are different religions. So now you have even throughout the 19th century, even in universities and colleges that were founded by churches, you have them taking off the signs that say theology department and putting up religion department. Because you can study different religions, what people think, how it seems to them, and what rituals evolve around that and reinforce that in different cultures. You can study what a group of people think about God and how they worship a God or the divine. But it's arrogant to think that you could have theology, the knowledge of God as an actual discipline in the university. So this is what all the people of the Enlightenment emerging enlightenment tend to hold. But the difference with Schleiermacher is again that we can experience God. So now it's not the morality, the ethics department as it was for Kant, the theology department becomes psychology.
- [20:24]
Michael Horton
We often look for God in the spectacular. But Advent reminds us that our extraordinary God came in the ordinary, in flesh and blood to dwell with us. This Advent reflect on the wonder of the Incarnation with Heaven Came Down. A new devotional by Dr. Michael Hort. Published by Sola Media over four weeks, it explores how the Almighty veiled himself in flesh, not to terrify us, but to save us. Your support helps us bring the good news to more people. Consider requesting a copy for your own Advent Reflections or as a gift for someone who needs hope this season. Get your copy with a donation of any amount to support our work@solamedia.org offers.
- [21:18]
Walter
The subject of theology is no longer God, but our experiences with God, because we can't know his nature, we can't know his attributes. So we're not studying Trinity, we're not studying the hypostatic union, we're not putting God in a box. And so because we just cannot describe those realities about God. And this is that hard line that Kant put between the things that we can somewhat perceive and those things that we can't know the reality of, he.
- [21:47]
Justin
Tacks Trinity on at the very end. Well, I guess we got to talk about this Trinity thing.
- [21:55]
Bob
When you should start with the Trinity.
- [21:56]
Justin
Yeah, yeah, I think this is.
- [21:58]
Bob
And he's a modalist. He said, frankly, I guess you'd call me a modalist. In other words, there's one person, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, acting out different Personas on the stage of history.
- [22:12]
Justin
And when he talks about Christology. Let me get the right phrase. Because Jesus has in whom God consciousness is perfectly clear, constant and sinless, that there is a real existence of God in him, a real existence of God in him. And going back to the adoptionism. But after he has achieved this Perfect God consciousness. I think it would be helpful to just kind of look briefly at a few. Just what does this mean doctrinally? What does this mean for different theology pieces? I have a series called Christian Theologies of Scripture, Sacraments and Salvation 3 with NYU Press. And I just have. I have experts. Mike's written a few chapters, experts on specific theologians. And the ones on Schleiermacher are always fascinating because when they get to Schleiermacher, you have a lot of the patristics and. And, you know, doctrine of God, doctrine of Scripture, you know, some basic foundational things that are Nicene Creed, Apostles Creek. You get to Schleiermacher and you start veering off the rails. And every chapter, what happens? Like. So, for instance, like the way he talks about sacraments. This is going back to your. About your point, Walter, that if it's about experience, well, what does that mean about sacraments? Well, sacraments. He places Eucharist, communion, baptism inside of ecclesiology, as he says, the two essential and invariable features through which Christ himself acts to establish and preserve and strengthen the community. It's really about the experience within the community of the life of Christ and the church. Not necessary. It's not really efficacious. Scripture is the same way. He puts Scripture inside of ecclesiology as one of the things that the church is about. You know, it's ministry, you know, some discipline, some prayer. And they have Scripture. It undermines the authority, inspiration of sufficiency of Scripture and then salvation. It's really just this God consciousness applied. It's just pantheism is where it happens. That's why I said that. The summary of the person who wrote the chapter on Schleiermacher and salvation is that salvation is the Redeemer's living communication of his sinless, absolute, potent God consciousness, generating a new corporate life of blessedness, whatever that is.
- [24:36]
Bob
Yeah, I mean, he's an electrical outlet. If you just plug in.
- [24:42]
Justin
That's pantheism. That's why Mike said this is. You weren't doing. You weren't exaggerating?
- [24:47]
Walter
No, he's not at all.
- [24:49]
Bob
No, he acknowledged as much. I mean, pantheism was a term invented during his time to describe Hegel's view. But he was certainly a pantheist. But the thing is, he also was a Marcionite, like the ancient heretic Marcion. He denied the validity of the Old Testament and in fact said that. See, here's the thing. During that time, especially in Germany, but also in England, and other places, there was an antipathy to the God of the Bible, to Yahweh, especially if you're a pantheist. You don't like a God who has wrath and a God who judges and so forth. You only want a God who affirms and is only kind and generous. That is the sentimentality of the Romantic period. That absolutely will have nothing to do with that wrathful God of the Old Testament. So Schleiermacher just gets rid. He said that the Old Testaments should be considered an appendix to the Bible. Wow, that is a gigantic problem right there. But you can see how adoptionism really could attract people who still want to say Jesus Christ. There's something unique about Jesus Christ. He's not just a prophet, he's not just a sage. He's not just this great religious figure. Jesus is different. He is adopted by God. He had attained not because he, you know, from all eternity, because he attained this level of God consciousness. And by reducing theology to psychology, he really anticipates Ludwig Feuerbach, the father of modern atheism, Friedrich Nietzsche, his disciple William James, father of the psychology of religion, who wrote the book Varieties of Religious Experience, in which he advocates a Schleiermachian perspective all the way to the present day. When people think of Jesus not as the eternal son of God who assumed our humanity from the Virgin Mary, but more as a figure we can all look to and maybe even merge with, become a part of who in a very signal way connects us with God.
- [27:33]
Adriel Sanchez
Let me ask this, because I just.
- [27:35]
Bob
Don'T get this at all.
- [27:36]
Walter
Yeah.
- [27:38]
Adriel Sanchez
What is sin for Schleiermacher? Does he have a category of sin? Is it. I think I've heard somewhere it's a lack of God consciousness. Or it's God forgetfulness is the phrase I heard. So what's that?
- [27:54]
Walter
Well, that is true. And I'll throw another one out there too, for Justin and Mike to answer, since Bob and I are asking the questions these days. I understand him being Marcian, but I don't understand how he even dignifies the New Testament more than he does the Old Testament in practice. Yeah, because the reality is the whole canon is treated as a pretext for religious experience anyway. Much like the Quran would be treated as a pretext for a religious experience that is then revelatory. That would spur on God consciousness. And so I don't understand why he would make the distinction between his disaffirmation of the Old Testament, but then not just treating the New Testament in The same way. Perhaps it's because of Christ's revelation there, but I don't.
- [28:45]
Bob
Yeah, you could be forgiven for concluding after reading the Christian Faith that Schleiermacher had a high view of Scripture. He talks about the inspiration, infallibility, the unerring character of the witnesses. Schleiermacher's problem is. He says this. His problem with orthodoxy is not having too high a view of the Bible. His problem with orthodoxy is not having a high enough view of revelation elsewhere that every sage and every musician, every artist, every religious genius, as he calls.
- [29:29]
Justin
Them.
- [29:32]
Bob
Wherever we find it in a Hallmark card, wherever we find connection with the divine, with God consciousness, there we have revelation.
- [29:45]
Walter
Right. That's true.
- [29:45]
Bob
And so the pro. The fault of the orthodox was to limit the scope of revelation, not that they had too high a view of it.
- [29:52]
Adriel Sanchez
So he would. He would confuse special and general revelation by simply saying everything is revealing or everything is revelatory. You can ever. You can find God in pretty much everything. You can find him in Bach and in a Beatles song.
- [30:06]
Bob
Because he is everything.
- [30:08]
Adriel Sanchez
Because he's everything.
- [30:09]
Justin
Yeah. He actually uses, on page 174, this amazing piece. This is where the pantheism piece kicks in. He first uses it and he says, hey, let's talk about God and creation in nature. And he refers to what we call creation as coexisting with God. And I mean, it is fascinating. He actually uses the term pantheism. Not only was it invented while he was writing, he's using this. And that's a foundational. That's the structure of what he's doing is truly. And he says, you might think that this sounds like pantheism. You're basically. Yeah, that's what we're saying here. And then that undergirds everything for revelation. And then who is Christ? And then what does salvation look like? And then when you start talking about sin, this is how pantheism falls apart. We start talking about evil, sin, suffering, is that he qualifies and says, well, God's not the author of sin. But then he basically says it's necessary to understand grace because you only understand grace with sin. So it's actually necessary for the understanding of grace.
- [31:10]
Bob
Well, and in a pantheistic system, evil is a necessary outgrowth of good, and so it exists together with the good. And there's this kind of tug of war within God, the universe itself, between good and evil that is playing itself out in our own hearts and lives and history.
- [31:37]
Adriel Sanchez
Star Wars. It's the dark and the light. The dark side. Yeah.
- [31:40]
Justin
Going back to sin real quick. There's no original sin.
- [31:42]
Bob
No.
- [31:43]
Adriel Sanchez
Right.
- [31:43]
Justin
This is like it's a universal social condition of a lack of God consciousness. It's actually self interest. God consciousness is the goal, self interest is the problem. But it's not an inherited guilt or so it's a social condition that is propagated through communal life in the influence it has. More of a Pelagian feel.
- [32:03]
Bob
Sure, it's totally Pelagian, but why would you. A good question to Ashlautermacher is what would be the problem with selfishness? Being self oriented, being dependent on yourself if you are part of God.
- [32:17]
Walter
Right, yeah, yeah. Schleiermacher is thought. It's anti supernatural. So if we're going to talk about other areas that it sort of nullifies, it basically renders prayer useless. Prayer is an area that. That would require the supernatural intervention into the laws of nature. And he just wants to disallow that in part because he's trying to make the faith relevant to those who are leaning into the science of the day.
- [32:43]
Bob
And who are pantheists. Because everything happens necessarily.
- [32:46]
Walter
Spinoza said so that's just another. In addition to Christology, in addition to his lack of soteriology would sound like a fuzzy moralism kind of. That's another one to throw on top.
- [32:58]
Bob
Of there any motivism. What he really hated about Kant was his moralistic emphasis. Everything is reduced to morality, whereas for Schleiermacher everything is reduced to emotion. And if you really want the best Christian response to this whole lineage trajectory, it's J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 1923. What he's reacting to there among his contemporary mainline Protestants is exactly what Schleiermacher got rolling.
- [33:33]
Justin
I think that's important just for listeners. We did a whole series on Machen, the hundred year anniversary of the book. So apparently a few years ago now, which is unbelievable. Go listen to that because that's exactly. That's really helpful because where do we see this today is, you know, from what Machen was responding to. I do want to bring something up. I think this is going to be important because on infant baptism, Walter, he's uneasy with infant baptism, as he should be, probably as pietists were generally without New Testament warrant. He just justifies it by anticipating future faith and requires confirmation to complete it. And so I just thought you might want to know if you want to just call yourself a Schleiermachih, the enemy.
- [34:15]
Walter
Of my enemies, my friend.
- [34:22]
Justin
Where else Are we seeing. So that was early 1920s. Who was the famous radio Fosdick. Yeah, Fosdick. Yeah.
- [34:35]
Bob
Your way to the victorious Christian life.
- [34:38]
Justin
Yep.
- [34:38]
Bob
Yeah.
- [34:39]
Adriel Sanchez
So I see. I think, if I'm understanding any of this correctly, where we see this now isn't in evangelicalism. It's a pretty strict, subjective way of doing theology. So all of the more contemporary songs are about my experience. I see. Like what I feel about God. We aim at an experience, but everything is aimed at moving the inner. And I think we'll talk more about this in another episode where we talk about revivalism. I don't think this is the same thing at all, but I do think this sort of subjectivizing faith so that people can say, well, I believe what I believe, you believe what you believe. And it's all just kind of an expression of how we express God, but the objectiveness of God is removed. Someone said that Schleiermacher, his apologetic drives his theology and not the other way around. That is his dealing with humanity and the subject of people is driving the way he does theology, and his belief in God is not driving the way he talks to people, which means the subjects and objects are confused. And now God is useful. And I think, Mike, you said that earlier. Like William James, he's directly or indirectly impactful. On William James, everything's about me and my experience of God, and that bleeds through our system in American Christianity.
- [36:03]
Bob
His disciple who became the professor of practical theology at Berlin, August Toluk, told the preachers, our preaching needs to shift from being God centered to being audience centered, and that you get all the way to Charles Finney. So Schleiermacher, in so many ways, is the father both of Protestant liberalism and Protestant fundamentalism.
- [36:33]
Walter
Wow.
- [36:33]
Bob
That's the whole revivalist movement on the left and the right, social gospel and revivalism. Now you gotta tease that out and everything and talk about it. But he really is in many ways the father of that. And think of C.S. lewis in terms of response. C.S. lewis. You never find love by looking for it. You never find an experience by going out there and looking for an experience. You find the experience of love by finding someone, and from knowing that person, you get your experiences and your love and so forth, and you grow in it. That is the way it is with God. You can't go looking for religious experience. As Martin Luther said, that would mean just every man goes to hell in his own way. You don't climb the ladder of mysticism and experience to find God, because if you do the devil's at the top because he disguises himself as an angel of light. Yeah. You want religious experience? Well, you'll experience it all right, but it'll more likely be the devil than God. And so the only safe path to God is through his Son, who's come down to us and given us his word.
- [37:53]
Justin
And that's why this pantheism is so important, because he erases the creator creation distinction of a God who acts, loves, is other than. I mean, all of that just collapses. Everything you just said, that good news is just there's the philosophical undermining, there's the methodological undermining. So you have no creator creation distinction. And then you start with yourself, and then you end up turning the whole thing into a curved inwardness. It's a divine curved inwardness.
- [38:26]
Bob
If everything is God, then everything is revelation, is revelatory. And if everything is revelatory, then everything is miraculous. So again, Schleiermacher could talk about all kinds of things being miraculous, but he didn't actually believe in miracles. He didn't believe that miracles were unique events that happened that transcended natural laws. He believed that the natural laws themselves are miraculous. He believed that turning of the fall leaves is miraculous.
- [39:00]
Adriel Sanchez
If you want a good apologetic against this kind of pantheistic view, I have to recommend a show we did earlier this year with Ashley Landy. She talks in there about how she had this pantheistic view and then having a child and experiencing the reality of the world just completely ripped that away from her. It's one of the great defenses against pantheism I think I've ever heard.
- [39:20]
Justin
Well, Schleiermacher wanted to rescue Christianity from its cultured despisers by translating it into the key of religious feeling and inwardness. We can appreciate the pastoral instinct, if that's what you want to call it. A world of cold rationalism, needed warmth, and dependence on God is no illusion. But the gospel does not arise from our intuition of the infinite or a sense of the infinite. It comes to us as God's public announcement about Jesus Christ, crucified and raised for us. Faith doesn't create that reality. It receives it. And assurance doesn't ride the temperature of my soul. It rests on the objective promise God gives outside of me. In the Scriptures preached the waters of baptism and the bread and wine of the supper. So when Christianity becomes primarily the drama of our inner life, the church turns into a support group for religious experience. In the New Testament, the church is where God speaks and gives absolving sinners, uniting us to Christ and sending us into the world. So Schleiermacher helps us diagnose a temptation to trade proclamation for intuition, to trade confession for expression, to trade Christ's finished work for my felt consciousness. And the cure isn't to deny feelings, but to have them ordered by the truth. Christ for you, outside of you, preached in the Word, poured out in baptism given in the Supper.
- [40:51]
Bob
Amen.
- [41:00]
Michael Horton
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