Schleiermacher and the Hebrew Bible (1)

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

The theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) is not just of antiquarian interest. Paul Capetz of the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities published an article on the topic, "Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Old Testament" in the Harvard Theological Review 102:3 (July 2009).

Schleiermacher's German translations of Plato's works were highly regarded and count as a major scholarly achievement of his. His close study of ancient Greek religions informed his observations about the influence of the ideas of other religions on Christianity, though regrettably he adhered to traditional Christian practice of denigrating the significance of the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament for Christians. Schleiermacher argued that non-Christian religions contained important religious truths. However, Hans Küng notes with regret that he knew very little about Islam or other religious traditions outside the ancient Greek.

Christian theology until fairly recent times generally assumed what is known as the "substitutionist" theory of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, the idea that Christianity replaced Judaism because Jesus was the Messiah the Jews had been expecting and Christianity represented the fulfillment of the Jewish religion. The traditional Christian reading of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament is to read it in terms of New Testament Christian theology. Every prophecy referring to the Jewish Messiah is taken to refer to Jesus. Even the famous Isaiah 53 description of the Suffering Servant, an image very much open to varying interpretations - even as a reference to Moses, as Ernst Sellin suggested - is taken to be a prophecy of Jesus and his sufferings.

The Christian Bible contains the same books as the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). But Christian theological preferences change their order, placing the books of the Prophets last, ending with Malachi's prophecy that the Lord will send Elijah "before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes". The next book in the Christian Bible is the Gospel of Matthew and its story of the birth of Jesus. The Tanakh's last four book as Ezra and Nehemiah, which recount the return of the Jews from Babylonian exile, and the two books of Chronicles, recounting the history of Israel in a more pious fashion than the rawer history recorded in the books of Samuel and Kings.

Protestant theology adopted this traditional Christian attitude from its beginnings, as well, in both the Luthern and Reformed tradition, the latter being Schleirmacher's tradition. The Old Testament, despite comprising considerably more than half of the Christian Bible, was seen as explicitly or implicitly secondary to the New Testament, though important in providing background information and witness to the Gospel of Jesus.

Jesuit theologian Frans Jozef van Beeck in his Loving the Torah More Than God? Towards a Catholic Appreciation of Judaism (1989) wrote of one of the results of this traditional approach:

Christians, including Christian theologians, tend to be unaware of, and ignorant about, Judaism as a separate, independent, living religious tradition. This is not a merely personal or incidental problem, but an historic, institutional one. Ever since the first century, our religious traditions have de facto gone their separate ways. The separation was reinforced very early on by the large number of Gentiles who responded to the Christian mission, so that the original Jewish-Christian communities became increasingly marginal and died out at an early stage. However, the separation was no less reinforced by antagonism and controversy. Polemics promoted a growing tradition of anti-Judaism in the Christian Church; traces of it can already be found in the New Testament. And since polemics tend to be mutual, polemics also fed the anti-Christian animus evident, in places, in rabbinical Judaism at an early stage. Not infrequently, pagan authorities availed themselves of the friction between Jews and Christians to play off the two against one another for their own political ends. [my emphasis in bold]

In the traditional Christian view, post-Jesus Judaism was effectively a dead religion, a sad shell of the true religion, practiced by people who failed to realize that Jesus was their own Messiah.

Capetz analyzes "its double-sided character" of Schleiermacher's view of the Hebrew Bible, providing a more nuanced view than the one I initially got from reading Schleiermacher's Der christliche Glaube (1830-31). On the biographical side, I would note that on the question of the Emancipation (removing of legal disabilities) of the Jews in his native Prussia, Schleiermacher favored granting Jews full citizenship, a position on the radical-republican side of the spectrum at the time. Schleiermacher in his role as a university educator also viewed the scholarly teaching of the Old Testament and the knowledge of Hebrew for divinity students as very important. As a philologist, he certainly understood that a knowledge of the Jewish concepts and stories drawn upon by the New Testament authors was important for a full understanding of the New Testament itself.

Capetz notes that Schleiermacher shared the common assumption among European Christians of the time that monotheism was the highest form of religious development. So he saw Judaism as a superior stage of religious development than polytheistic religions:

Still, the contrast between Judaism and paganism with respect to stage and type of religion did not lead Schleiermacher to conclude that Christianity is related to Judaism in more than a merely external historical manner. He detected in Judaism an affinity with a less developed stage of religion (“fetishism”) since its monotheism is corrupted by nationalism, whereas Christian monotheism is free of this defect.

Capetz points out a conceptual flaw in Schleiermacher's understand on monotheism in non-Christian religions. His criticism of Jewish monotheism as being "corrupted by nationalism" meant that he thought it was particularist - particular to a single people - rather than universal:

Schleiermacher’s comparison of Jewish and Christian monotheisms results from an unfair juxtaposition of an actual Judaism and an idealized Christianity. Christianity has been particularistic (as distinct from historically particular) in its own way on account of the belief that "outside of the church there is no salvation." Finally, doubt must surely be cast on Schleiermacher’s claim that monotheism has found its purest expression in Christianity when it is recalled that Jews and Muslims alike have traditionally looked upon trinitarianism as a relapse into polytheism. That he was sensitive to this criticism is evident from his plea for reconsideration of the Sabellian way of interpreting the trinitarian doctrine. [my emphasis]

Continued in Part 2 tomorrow.

Tags: christian theology, judaism, schleiermacher