White Horse Inn: Schleiermacher — The Man Behind Protestant Liberalism
Episode Date: November 9, 2025
Hosts: Michael Horton, Justin Holcomb, Bob Hiller, Walter R. Strickland II
Special Guest: Adriel Sanchez

Episode Overview

This episode of White Horse Inn explores the life, philosophy, and enduring influence of Friedrich Schleiermacher — often called "the Father of Modern Protestant Liberalism." The hosts unpack Schleiermacher's radical move from creeds and confessions toward religious experience as the basis for faith in a post-Enlightenment, Romantic age. They examine his core doctrines, lasting impact on both liberal and evangelical Christianity, and why understanding his thought helps diagnose much of contemporary church life. The episode maintains a lively, critical, yet pastoral tone, interweaving biography, philosophy, and practical theology.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Schleiermacher’s Context and Biography

• Background
  • Born 1768, died 1834. Raised in a doctrinally Reformed home, educated at Moravian schools with an emphasis on personal piety rather than doctrine.
    (02:58) Walter: "He was brought up in a doctrinally Reformed church... sent to a Moravian school... emphasis on the spiritual life, a little bit less on the side of doctrine."
  • Later doubted orthodoxy, especially Christ's substitutionary atonement and the Trinity.
  • Influenced by Kant and Hegel during Germany's intellectual ferment.

2. Schleiermacher’s Shift: From Doctrine to Experience

• Speeches on Religion (1799)
  • Addressed to Berlin students skeptical of traditional Christianity but still attached to its piety. Became an instant sensation among young intellectuals.
    (05:31) Bob: "He said to his dad, I know that there is a divine presence... but I can no longer believe in the act of obedience of Christ and his substitutionary atonement."
• Feeling of Absolute Dependence
  • Theology is grounded not in scripture or doctrine, but in a universal inner experience ("God consciousness").
    (09:50) Justin: "The feeling of absolute dependence, or also known as God consciousness... This becomes foundational because what Christ does is Christ has the perfect God consciousness, and he shares that God consciousness with everyone else."

3. Philosophical Foundations and Christology

• Response to Kant and Hegel
  • Kant: Religion is about morality, not knowledge of God.
  • Schleiermacher: We can't know God conceptually but we can experience the Divine everywhere, which leans into pantheism.
  • Hegel: Critiqued Schleiermacher as being too reliant on emotion and experience.
    (14:24) Bob: "Hegel was a rationalist, whereas Schleiermacher was an emotivist... Everything for Hegel is the male impulse... Schleiermacher lamented that he had been born a man instead of a woman."
• Adoptionist and Pantheistic Christology
  • Jesus is uniquely God-conscious, but only differs from us in degree, not kind — an "adoptionist" view.
    (12:15) Walter: "It's more of a matter of Jesus is different from us as a matter of degree and not kind."

4. Key Doctrinal Shifts

• Doctrine Becomes Self-Expression
  • Doctrine is merely a reflection of personal or communal religious feelings, not of transcendent revealed truth.
    (18:23) Walter: "Doctrines are accounts of the Christian's religious affections set forth in speech."
• Theology as the Study of Human Experience
  • The "theology department" becomes the "religion department." The focus is now on comparative experience (psychology of religion), not revelation. (19:44–20:24)
    Bob: "You can study what a group of people think about God... but it's arrogant to think you could have theology, the knowledge of God, as an actual discipline."
• Sacraments and the Church
  • Sacraments are mere means of communal religious experience, neither efficacious nor tied to objective grace. Scripture is subordinated within experience. (23:53–24:36) Justin: "Sacraments. He places Eucharist... inside of ecclesiology... It's really about the experience within the community, not really efficacious. Scripture is the same way... undermines authority, inspiration, and sufficiency of Scripture."

5. Schleiermacher’s Pantheism and Marcionism

• Pantheistic Understanding
  • God and the universe are coexistent. Pantheism undergirds his doctrine of revelation: divine presence is everywhere and in everything. (29:32–30:09) Bob & Justin:
    Bob: "...wherever we find connection with the divine, with God consciousness, there we have revelation."
    Justin: "On page 174, this amazing piece... he refers to what we call creation as coexisting with God... it's truly, and he says, you might think that this sounds like pantheism. Yeah, that's what we're saying here."
• Dismissal of Old Testament (Marcionism)
  • Rejected the Hebrew scriptures as inferior, viewing them as merely an appendix. Preferred the sentimental, "affirming" God of the New Testament.
    (24:49–25:29) Bob: "He denied the validity of the Old Testament and in fact said that... the Old Testament should be considered an appendix to the Bible. Wow, that is a gigantic problem right there."

6. Schleiermacher on Sin & Salvation

• Definition of Sin
  • Sin is "God forgetfulness": a lack of God consciousness or self-interest, not an inherited or original guilt.
    (27:37–31:39)
    Adriel: "What is sin for Schleiermacher?... is it a lack of God consciousness or God forgetfulness?"
    Justin: "This is like it's a universal social condition of a lack of God consciousness... God consciousness is the goal, self interest is the problem. But it's not an inherited guilt..."
• Salvation
  • Not about atonement but the "Redeemer’s living communication of his God consciousness" — a mystical union, not objective propitiation.
    (24:16–24:36) Justin: "...salvation is the Redeemer's living communication of his sinless, absolute, potent God consciousness, generating a new corporate life of blessedness, whatever that is."
• No Real Place for Miracles or Special Revelation
  • Everything is miraculous because everything is God; miracles lose their uniqueness, and revelation is universal.
    (38:25) Bob: "If everything is God, then everything is revelation... If everything is revelatory, then everything is miraculous. But he didn't actually believe in miracles as unique events."

7. Schleiermacher in Today’s Church Life

• Lasting Influence
  • Influenced both Protestant liberalism and Protestant fundamentalism (revivalism), via the move to subjective experience as the core of religious truth.
    (36:02) Bob: "Schleiermacher, in so many ways, is the father both of Protestant liberalism and Protestant fundamentalism."
  • Modern worship fixates on personal feelings and experiences with God rather than objective truth.
    (34:39–36:02) Adriel: "...where we see this now isn't in evangelicalism. It's a pretty strict, subjective way of doing theology... everything is aimed at moving the inner."
• Response and Critique
  • The risk: the church turns into a support group for inner experience rather than a place where God objectively speaks and gives Christ. (39:19) Justin: "The gospel does not arise from our intuition of the infinite... It comes to us as God's public announcement about Jesus Christ, crucified and raised for us."

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the dangers of seeking religious experience:
  Bob, quoting Luther (00:47; restated 36:33):
  "You can't go looking for religious experience... That would mean just every man goes to hell in his own way... The only safe path to God is through his Son, who's come down to us and given us his word."
• On Schleiermacher’s God-consciousness:
  Justin (09:50):
  "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."
• On Christ’s difference from us:
  Walter (12:15):
  "Jesus is different from us as a matter of degree and not kind."
• On the shift in theology departments:
  Bob (20:24):
  "...taking off the signs that say theology department and putting up religion department... The theology department becomes psychology."
• On modern worship trends:
  Adriel (34:39):
  "All of the more contemporary songs are about my experience... The objectiveness of God is removed."
• On gospel objectivity:
  Justin (39:19):
  "The gospel does not arise from our intuition 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."

Timeline of Key Segments

• [02:58–06:37] Schleiermacher's early life, Moravian influence, separation from orthodoxy
• [07:20–09:50] Foundational influences: Kant, Hegel, and the philosophical context
• [09:50–12:51] God consciousness, Christology, consciousness versus doctrine
• [14:23–17:04] Schleiermacher and Hegel: Rationalism vs. Emotivism, “feminized Christianity”
• [17:04–20:24] Doctrine becomes self-expression, theology as comparative religion
• [21:18–24:36] The place of Trinity and sacraments; ecclesiology and subjectivity
• [24:49–27:53] Pantheism, Marcionism, Scripture, revelation, and the move away from Old Testament
• [27:53–31:39] Sin, evil, salvation, absence of original sin, Pelagian tendencies
• [32:17–36:33] Influence on modern Protestantism, fundamentalism, modern worship experience
• [36:33–39:19] The continuing legacy, critique, and call to scriptural objectivity

Conclusion

The hosts underscore Schleiermacher’s role in moving Christianity toward inwardness, experience, and psychological subjectivity—blur lines that still shape today's churches across the theological spectrum. Their critique is firm: only objective revelation—God's word and sacrament—can secure faith, assurance, and salvation. Schleiermacher modernized Christianity but, in so doing, set it adrift from its historic moorings.

Closing Quote
Justin (39:19):
"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."

For those wishing to understand the roots of modern Christian subjectivism—and its peril—the discussion provides both diagnosis and call to return to the Word outside of us.