Biographical sketch - Theopedia
Born in Breslaw, Germany in 1768, Schleiermacher was the son of a Prussain army chaplain. At age nine his father came into contact with Pietism and entered into a devotional lifestyle. Friedrich was sent at age 15 to a boarding school run by the Moravian Brethren, a pious evangelical group that traced its roots back to Jan Huss. ^[2]^. While at boarding school Schleiermacher began to question his faith to which the Moravians did not care to give an answer.
As time went on Schleiermacher left to study at the University of Halle. Upon his fathers advice he studied Immanuel Kant who at this point in time was "causing a storm throughout the intellectual world." In 1790 he became a Reformed minister and later moved to Berlin in 1796 to be a hospital chaplain. While there he met Friedrich Schlegel with whom it was decided to attempt a translation of the works of Plato in the German language. ^[3]^
In 1799 Schleiermacher published On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. "It defended religion against its Enlightenment critics. Religion, he argued, was not a philosophy, nor abstract metaphysical thought, nor natural science, nor adherence to dogmatic formulae, but the "sense and taste for the infinite" consisting primarily in feeling; belief and action are secondary. Knowledge of the soul and knowledge of God are inseparable—a concept that had been presented more than 1000 years earlier by St. Augustine. His thought thus has a subjective focus, but it should not on that account be deemed sheer "subjectivism." Schleiermacher's careful analysis of religious feelings always has in view, at least by implication, the infinite and eternal reality to which these feelings are responses. The Speeches are sometimes held to be pantheist in tone, but he did not identify the world with the "infinite and eternal." Rather, he held that it is always in and through one's experience of the whole interconnecting realm of the finite that there comes a sense of dependence upon the infinite ground of all things." ^ [4]^
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| Huckster-in-Chief - Luther's 500th? Let's publish Gerhard. |
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| CPH shot glass |
GJ - I used to regret the many hours spent studying hundreds of modern theology books at Notre Dame. But now I recognize their crafts and assaults, their heroes and villains, their opaque and deceptive words.
Halle University - like Pietism - began with noble intentions, but quickly turned Biblical piety into Scriptural rationalism. Halle is not alone but certainly is the most significant source of anti-Biblical and anti-Christian scholarship. And yet, the school and center were so holy in the eyes of Protestants that nothing from Halle could be criticized.
The American Lutheran groups were founded by Halle veterans - General Synod, LCMS, and WELS. The other groups, like the Swedes and Norwegians, were also Pietists.
Modern theology books skip over the Reformation's direct connection to the Scriptures and begin with rationalistic Pietism. Their stuffy academic language gives them away. From the new LCMS disaster -
"Dogmatics presents the truth of God's saving self-disclosure as it has been apprehended, reflected upon, and expressed by the faith (fides quae creditur - GJ gratuitous Latin) of the Christian church." (Promotional material for the CPH Titanic.)
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| The Concordia was driven recklessly onto the shoals, just like the Synodical Conference today. |
