Schleiermacher and the Hebrew Bible (2)

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

As I discussed in Part 1 yesterday, Schleiermacher held to a traditional Christian view of Christianity that saw the Hebrew Bible/Tanakh/Old Testament as effectively secondary in importance to the New Testament. He seemed to view it as having little value for Christian theology, except as kind of an extra explanation for things dealt with in the New Testament. Paul Capetz points out that Schleiermacher went so far as to argue for something like an inferior canonical status the books of the Old Testament in the Christian canon, although he didn't advocate taking them out of the Christian Bible altogether:

He argued against the canonical standing of the OT on the grounds that it expresses Jewish, not Christian, religion. For him this conclusion was the unavoidable result of the advancing critical scholarship that was undermining the christological exegesis used to defend the church’s claim to the OT against the synagogue’s counter-claim to its sole rightful possession. [my emphasis]

As Capetz discusses at some length, even though Schleiermacher's view represented in part the traditional Christian attitude toward the Hebrew Bible, he also recognized in a way that most Christian theologians of his day (and many even now!) do not, that Judaism was not a shell of a religion that had been superseded by Christianity, but a separate religion in its own right.

What is most sympathetic about Schleiermacher's position on the Hebrew Bible is that he recognized the ways in which Christian interpretations obscured the meanings of the Hebrew Scripture:

On the basis of historical scholarship, he recognized the real differences between the OT and the NT that had been smoothed over by premodern forms of exegesis; as a result, he was right in criticizing previous theologians for trying to make the OT say something about Jesus that it does not say. His argument underscored the legitimate rationale for historical criticism, namely, that it alone makes possible an understanding of the biblical texts free from the distortions of anachronism. Indeed, it is to his credit that he frankly acknowledged the Jewish character of the OT and pleaded for an end to the church’s historic polemic against the synagogue over its rightful possession. He was, moreover, prescient in his prediction that critical scholarship would occasion difficult problems for the church’s inherited theology. [my emphasis]

However, Capetz also points out at length that in his theological conclusions from this sound historical-critical view of the Scriptures, Schleiermacher returned to the position of the 2nd-century Christian theologian (and heretic) Marcion, at least in rejecting the Old Testament as a guide for Christian theology and insisting that Judaism was a clearly distinct religion from Christianity:

For Schleiermacher, early Christianity was a completely new religion and stood in the same relation, religiously speaking, to Judaism as to paganism, notwithstanding its historical ties to the former. Whereas conversion to Christianity required that Gentiles abandon their idolatrous worship, it required that Jews relinquish the Mosaic legislation. Accordingly, the step from Judaism to Christianity was as much a transition to another religion as the step from paganism to Christianity.

Capetz does note, "Although Schleiermacher shared Marcion’s view of the absolute novelty of Christianity in relation to Judaism, he did not defend it on the mythological grounds that Jews and Christians worship two distinct deities."

Capetz also explains that Schleiermacher's view of Judaism and of its relationship to Christianity doesn't stand up in the light of current scholarship. While Christianity developed into a separate religion, it clearly developed historically and theologically from Jewish roots. Schleiermacher's view of the Jewish religion also had an anachronistic aspect, seemingly viewing monotheism as always being a part of the faith described in the Tanakh:

He apparently assumed that Judaism was the religion of Israel even before the exile.30 Yet modern study has shown that Judaism first began to take shape during the exilic crisis of Israel’s earlier national religion and so is not identical with pre-exilic religion. ... By comparison with Judaism, pre-exilic Israelite religion was not a thoroughgoing monotheism but, rather, a “henotheism” since Israel’s national deity was not yet conceived consistently in radical terms as the creator and sovereign of the entire world. Accordingly, a genuine monotheism developed in consort with the emergence of Judaism, not in spite of it! While vestiges of the pre-monotheistic Israelite religion are embedded in older strata of the OT, these traditions were subject to reinterpretation from the monotheistic perspective of the Jewish redactors of the OT. Hence, Schleiermacher’s criticism of Jewish monotheism as less than pure results, in part, from his lack of adequate knowledge of the actual historical relations between pre-exilic Israelite religion and post-exilic Jewish religion, including the theological struggle of monotheism with henotheism that is reflected in the literature of the OT.

The traditional Christian view recognized the faith's emergence from Judaism, though it emphasized the radical break between the two. Schleiermacher essentially emphasized that aspect of the Christian view, though he based it on more realistic historical scholarship of the Hebrew Bible, i.e., declining to read it exclusively in Christian terms. Capetz writes:

Since the religion we now call “Christianity” began its existence as one variety of Judaism, it is anachronistic to describe it as a new religion in its original phase, as Schleiermacher did; indeed, it is difficult to identify at what stage in its history we can speak of it as a different religion from Judaism. Yet if this is the case, must we not grant that the NT, too, is in a real sense a document of Jewish religion?

Capetz also explains:

From the perspective of hindsight, we know that what began as a Jewish sect developed into a distinct religious community whose self-definition had to be hammered out in polemics against rabbinic Judaism as well as against paganism. But from this fact of history it does not follow that the material substance of Christian religion is as discontinuous with Judaism as with the Hellenistic religions from which the church drew the majority of its converts. Schleiermacher was right to point out the philosophical developments on Greek soil that had prepared for the reception by non-Jews of a monotheistic and ethical religion. Yet his comparison of pagan converts to Jewish converts is misleading since the latter did not understand themselves as rejecting the legacy of Israel for a new religion but, rather, as embracing its fulfillment. This was clearly true of the apostle Paul. [my emphasis]

However, the later Christian reading-back of Christianity into the books of the Tanakh is also highly problematic:

Not only has historical research into the OT undermined the traditional “proofs” of Jesus’ messianic status, but even the very idea of a “messiah” appears to be a mythological or symbolic one, as [David Friedrich] Strauss [1808-1874] clearly understood. Moreover, the early Christians, by ascribing this title to Jesus, radically redefined its content in light of his non-messianic fate.

Capetz states his own judgment on the status of the Hebrew Bible for Christianity as follows:

Accordingly, the OT’s enduring import for the church is to insure that its faith is never interpreted in such a manner that explicitly contradicts or even implicitly denies these presuppositions which are contained in all authentic proclamation of the gospel. That the ethical monotheism to which the OT bears definitive witness has as a matter of fact actually functioned in this sense as a necessary - though not sufficient - norm by which to test the adequacy of the various interpretations of the gospel found in the NT and the post-biblical tradition is ample warrant for deeming the OT to be of indispensable religious and theological value to Christian faith. This rationale for attributing a definite sort of canonical status to the OT - different from that of the NT but no less important—does not sidestep the challenge of historical criticism to traditional theology. It also validates the legitimate motive at work in the ancient church’s retention of the OT without endorsing the inadequate argumentation on which it based this decision.

Tags: christian theology, judaism, schleiermacher