Karl Rosenkranz on Friedrich Schleiermacher (3 of 3)

Conclusion, continuing from Part 2: Rosenkranz defended Schleiermacher from some of the criticisms directed against him. For instance, in Der christliche Glaube § 170, Schleiermacher writes that the teaching of the Trinity cannot be derived philosophically. Rosenkranz writes that this is not because Schleiermacher rejects the teaching of the Trinity but rather a statement that it cannot be derived from his philosophy. It's notable that in § 170, Schleiermacher accurately argues that the dogma of the Trinity cannot be lifted directly from the Gospel of John. The doctrine of the Trinity developed over time through much controversy, and was first clearly established as Christian orthodox doctrine by the Council of Nicaea of 325 CE.

At the same time, Rosenkranz was not satisfied with Schleiermacher's treatment of the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, as something like a metaphor for the Christian church itself, the church in the sense of the mystical body of Christ. "Der heilige Geist ist nach Schleiermacher die Vereinigung des göttlichen Wesens mit der menschlichen Natur in der Form des das Gesammtleben der Gläubigen beseelenden Gemeingeistes." (The Holy Spirit is, according to Schleiermacher, the unity of the divine essence with human nature in the form of that of the common life of the believers annimated by the spirit of the community.) Rosenkranz argues that with this conception, "hat Schleiermacher auch den Begriff des göttlichen Geistes nicht erreicht." (Schleiermacher also did not reach the concept of the divine Spirit.) Rosenkranz argues that the doctrine of the Trinity requires a more clear designation of the Holy Spirit as a divine Person with an identity distinct from the Church. He argues that Schleiermacher only makes "Analogieen vom Geist eines Volkes und vom Geist der Menschheit." (analogies with the spirit of a people and with the spirit of humanity.)

Rosenkranz describes the period of Schleiermacher's thought represented by Der christliche Glaube as one in which "verwicklete Schleiemacher sich immer bestimmter in den Widerspruch, die Theologie philosophisch begründen und sie nichts desto weniger von der Philosophie unabhängig machen zu wollen." [Scheiermacher became more and more decidedly entangled in the contradiction, that he wanted to ground theology philosophically and nevertheless to make it independent of philosophy.] (emphasis in original)

The criticisms sketched above are the major ones identified by Rosenkranz in his critique of Schleiermacher's theology. Along the way, he deals with numerous other provocative aspects of it. Rosenkranz treats Schleiermacher's work with respect although in places he makes emphatic arguments against it.

For example, Rosenkranz is partially critical and partially supportive of Schleiermacher's approach to the more fantastic aspects of the Christian Scriptures. Schleiermacher argued for the application of reason to Christian religious understanding and contended that the "signs and wonders" of the Bible should be understood as stories conveying important religious truths, not as actual physical events. And Schleiermacher dismisses angels and the Devil as products of the imagination. As Rosenkranz characterizes Schleiermacher's position:

In Bezug auf die beiden Anhänge zum Lehrstücke von der Schöpfung, nämlich von den Engeln und vom Teufel, müssen wir Schleiermacher's [sic] Folgerichtigkeit rühmen. Diese Vorstellungen sind für ihn inhaltslos und können nur als ein durch die Tradition entstandenes Anhängsel des frommen Gefühls genommen werden. Ein so in sich seinem Begriff ruhendes Selbstbewußtsein, wie das seinige, ist gegen solche Imaginationen absolut sicher gestellt.

[In relation to the two attachments of the angels and the Devil to the portions of the teachings on the Creation, we must praise Schleiermacher's consistency. These concepts are for him without content and can only be taken as appendages of pious feeling. A self-consciousness that is so content in its notion as his is absolutely fixed against such imaginary figures.]

Although it wouldn't have been the best translation to put it this way, what Rosenkranz is saying there is that Schleiermacher is confident enough in his basic conception of Christian theology that he has no problem excluding such notion as angels and the Devil which are inconsistent with his conception. And Rosenkranz praises him for his consistency, which would even today would cause discomfort among many of the pious.

But while Rosenkranz makes it clear that he's no fan of the resurgent "mystical obscurantism" of that time which embraces concepts like Satan and angels in a superstitious way, he also expresses concern that a superficial dismissal of those Scriptural notions risks missing important aspects of Christian teaching about good and evil.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

Another notable aspect of Rosenkranz’ evaluation of Schleiermacher’s theology is his observation that Schleiermacher undervalues the Old Testament:

In Bezug auf das alte Testament, §. 132., geht Schleiermacher aber so weit, daß er ihm die normale Dignität und die Eingebung der Neutestamentischen Schriften abspricht und als Grund für seine Aufnahme in unsere Bibel theils nur die Berufung der Neutestamentischen Schriften auf die Alttestamentischen, theils den geschichtlichen Zusammenhang des christlichen Gottesdienstes mit der Jüdischen Synagoge anführt. Sollte aber der Grund, weshalb wir Christen das Alte Testament mit dem Neuen immer zusammengefaßt haben, wirklich nur ein so äußerlicher sein? Sollte nur die anfängliche Beschaffenheit unseres Cultus, sein erster Hervorgang aus dem Jüdischen, und wieterhin das Bedürfniß der historischen Erklärung des Neuen Testamentes das Band dieser Schriften sein. Ist nicht auch ein innerer Zusammenhang derselben da, eine innere gegenseitige Ergänzung, welche auch für uns Christen das regste Interesse an dem Alten Testament aufrecht hält, unabhängig von aller Historie, Philologie und Enrichtung des Cultus?

[But in relation to the Old Testament, § 132, Schleiermacher goes so far as to deny it the normal dignity and the inspiration of the New Testament. And as a basis for its inclusion in our Bible, partially he partially cites the historical connection of the Christian religious services with the Jewish synagogue. But should the reason why we Christians have always combined it with the New really be such a merely superficial one? Should only the early condition of our religious tradition, its original emergence out of the Jewish tradition, and further the need for the historical clarification of New Testament, be the link of these Scriptures {Old and New Testament}? Is not there also an inner connection between the two there, an inner supplementation, which continues to hold the most intense interest even for us Christians, independent from all history, philology and the establishment of the religious tradition?] (italics in original)

Schleiermacher shared with other Romantics the notion of united nature and reason and of the centrality of love to his philosophy of the Christian religion. But his philosophy of religion departed significantly from that of Hegel and an Old Hegelian like Karl Rosenkranz. Hegel himself wrote, in lines that he likely applied to the philosophy of his colleague Schleiermacher in Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, Teil 3: Die vollendete Religion (1924), "Wäre Gott nur in der Empfindung, so ständen die Menschen nicht höher wie die Tiere; er ist zwar auch für das Gefühl, aber nur in der Erscheinung." (If God existed only in feeling, then humans would stand no higher than the animals; he also exists for feeling, but only in the appearance.) Hegel and Rosenkranz believed Schleiermacher relied too exclusively on the subjective view in describing the reality of God, that his philosophy failed to describe the objective aspect of God's reality.

Tags: christian theology, karl rosenkranz, schleiermacher

Karl Rosenkranz on Friedrich Schleiermacher (2 of 3)

Friedrich Schleiermacher

Continuing from Part 1 yesterday: Rosenkranz describes his more general Hegelian criticism of Schleiermacher's dialectics as follows, saying the deficiency is:

... daß alle Bestimmungen von ihm nur in der Reflexion des Positiven und Negativen genommen werden, ohne weder die Entgegensetzung als wirklichen Widerspruch, noch auch die Aufhebung des Widerspruchs in seiner Grunde zu erkennen, in welchem, als der Einheit der Entgegengesetzten, das bloße Beziehen verschidener Seiten ein Ende hätte. So stehen sich nun Sünde und Gnade, der Mensch und Christus, die menschliche und die göttliche Natur, die Welt und die Kirche, die Gegenwart und die Zukunft der Kirche nur einander gegenüber, statt sich lebendig durch sich selbst als die Unterschiede der Idee zu bewegen.

[... that all he takes all analysis only in the positive and negative, without either recognizing the opposition as true contradiction, nor also recognzing the ablation of the contraction, which puts an end to the simple relationship of different sides. So stand sins and grace, human and Christ, the human and divine nature, the world and the church, the present and the future of the church only opposite one another, instead of moving themselves in a living way as the differences of the Idea.]

Rosenkranz is also dissatisfied with Schleiermacher's Christology. How can Jesus of Nazareth have been both fully human and fully God? Schleiermacher's answer is that Jesus was a man who was fully infused with the consciousness of God that he was aware of God in every moment of his life in the same way. He points to several aspects of Schleiermacher's argument that he finds deficient. In Schleiermacher's Christology, "weder der Bruch des Menschen so tief, noch die Einheit Gottes mit Christo so innig ist, als die Kirche lehrt." (neither is the rupture with humanity so deep, nor the unity of God with Christ so intimate, as the Church teaches) (S. 79) He writes that Schleiermacher's Christology is "von einem doketischen Anstrich gefärbt" (tinted with a Docetic color). Docetism is one of the classic Christian heresies, which argued that Jesus' human body was only an illusion, a belief that was incorporated into some forms of Gnosticism.

Rosenkranz notes that Schleiermacher's Christology is heavily rooted in the Gospel of John and its concept of Christ as Logos. But he also contrasts it with the image of Jesus that he sees in that Gospel. And Rosenkranz writes vividly:

Um so populär als möglich hierüber auszusprech, bitten wir den geniegten Leser, erst ein Stück von Schleiermacher's [sic] Christologie und demnächst ein Stück aus dem Evangelium Johannis zu lesen. Dort wird ihnen die Empfindung entstehen, welche uns bei jedem Großen anwandelt, ws zugleich seltsam ist; das Staunen über eine so einzige Persönlichkeit, die Verwunderung über ihr geheimnißvolles Verhalten zu Gott wird sie ergreifen. Sie werden sich angezogen und doch entfernt gehalten fühlen. Hier aber wird, trotz des unleugbar wunderbaren Anstrichs, die innigste Liebe zu Christus in ihnen entbrennen; seine Fremdheit wird sie stören und sie werden fühlen, daß wirklich Gott durch Christus in eigener Person zu ihnen redet; wer ihn siehet, siehet den Vater.

[In order to express this in as accessible a way as possible, we ask the readers who are so inclined to first read a portion of Schleiermacher's Christology and then next a portion from the Gospel of John. There {in the Gospel} the feeling will develop in you, which varies among us toward that Great Man {Jesus}, which is strange at the same time; the amazement over such a unique personality, the wonderment over his mysterious relationship to God will grip you. You will be drawn to him and yet feel yourself held at a distance. But here, despite the undeniably wonderful colors {of the story}, the deepest love for Christ will be aroused within you; his strangeness will disturb you and you will feel that God is really speaking to you through Christ in his own person; whoever sees him, see the Father.]

Schleiermacher's Christology is one illustration of his affinity with the Romantic thinkers like Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854). Schleiermacher argued in discussing the Incarnation of Jesus that if God could take human form, that means that that humanity has the capability of taking on divine attributes. He viewed Jesus as having fully realized that capability.

(Concludes in Part 3)

Tags: christian theology, karl rosenkranz, schleiermacher

Karl Rosenkranz on Friedrich Schleiermacher (1 of 3)

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was recognized throughout the 19th century as a major Protestant theologian, as one of the most significant and politically democratic Romantic thinkers. Ecumenical Christian theologian Hans Küng considers Schleiermacher the most important Christian theologian of the 19th century and the first Christian theologian who developed a distinctively modern view of Christianity. He was also highly regarded for his philological work translating Plato into German, as a pedagogical reformer, and as an activist mobilizing Prussians to the anti-French resistance during the Wars of Liberation against the Napoleonic occupation.

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

Karl Rosenkranz (1805-1879), the Hegelian scholar and leading figure among the Old Hegelians, published his Kritik der Schleiermacherischen Glaubenslehre (Critique of the Schleiermacherian Religious Teaching) in 1836. Most of the content had previously been published in 1830-31 as a series of articles in the Berliner Jahrbücher and focuses on the content of the 2nd edition of Schleiermacher's Der christliche Glaube (The Christian Faith), which appeared in 1830. In the preface to the book, Rosenkranz describes vividly from his own experience in the 1920s Schleiermacher's ability to inspire his listeners and to explain complex and imaginative concepts in a clear way. The Kritik der Schleiermacherischen Glaubenslehre was a philosophical and theological reckoning with Schleiermacher’s Christian theology from Rosenkranz' Hegelian outlook.

Schleiermacher's theology was informed by the philosophies of his time and took full account of the historical-critical Scriptural studies of his day. Going beyond Enlightenment rationalism, he argued that faith must be understood as involving both reason and emotion. Schleiermacher wanted to situate Biblical scholarship and philosophical reason within a Protestant theology with a distinctly mystical element.

The mystical core of Schleiermacher's theology was heavily influenced by his own Pietist background. His father was a Reformed (Calvinist) Protestant minister, and Schleiermacher studied under the Moravian Brethern (Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine). Schleiermacher argued that individuals experienced the reality of God through their own feelings. And this feeling takes the form of an awareness of the individual's utter dependence on God. Rosenkranz found this too exclusively a subjective basis on which to describe God, who also must be understand as an objective essence in and for Himself.

Ronsenkranz' Hegelian understanding of Christian theology required the establishment of a clear distinction and contradiction (in the technical Hegelian dialectical sense) between the finite and the infinite. He argues that Schleiermacher’s theology fails to establish that distinction adequately:

Das Mengelhafte hierin ist, daß Schleiermacher das Endliche und Unedliche als einen abstracten Gegensatz behandelt; jedes ist; das Endliche aber ist abhängig vom Unendliche und hat im Verhältniß [sic] zu ihm den Character eines rein Bestimmunglosen. Es verschwindet im Unendlichen. Und doch ist es.

[The insufficiency in this is that Schleiermacher deals with the finite and the infinite as an abstract contradiction; both exist; but the finite is dependent on the infinite and relative to it has the character of a purely indeterminate thing. It disappears in the infinite. And nevertheless it exists.]

This is a quarrel on Rosenkranz' part with the notion, particularly emphasized by Protestant theology, of the transcendence of God. Kant’s philosophy is known as transcendental philosophy because of its speculative nature, and Kant influenced Schleiermacher's theology in important ways. In Rosenkranz' understanding, the finite and the infinite must be established not only in a subjective but an objective way. And in his view, Schleiermacher's theology is founded so heavily in that subjective experience of the individual's emotional perception of God that it provides no clear way for the individual ego to achieve the knowledge of the infinity of God.

Schleiermacher’s version of dialectics was different from Hegel's. In Hegel's dialectical concept of development, processes contained a positive contradiction in opposition to a negative contradiction, in a dynamic that resolved itself by what Hegel called Aufheben ("ablation" in English), in which the positive and negative contractions were both preserved and cancelled out as they are lifted to a higher level. Rosenkranz argues that Schleiermacher's dialectics failed to achieve the Aufheben/ablation of the contradiction between the finite and the infinite, which for Hegel takes place in the state of Absolute Spirit.

(Continued in Part 2)

Tags: christian theology, karl rosenkranz, schleiermacher

The financial troubles of the Crystal Cathedral and Christian Right outlooks

Looking for enlightened, compassionate theological or social perspectives from today's Christian fundamentalist leaders is like looking for honesty and integrity in Karl Rove, or a conscience in Dick Cheney.

Still, a couple of recent pieces from the conservative Protestant realm of the Christian Post point to a point of friction within the politically conservative Protestant outlook, the question of the Prosperity Gospel, the teaching associated with American Pentecostalism in particular that Christianity teaches us how to get rich and that wealth is a sign of godliness:

Michelle A. Vu reports in Idolatry is Biggest Obstacle to World Mission, Says U.K. Theologian 10/24/2010 on a speech by Chris Wright:

God's people today, like in the Old Testament, have fallen to worshiping the false gods and idols of the world, said the international director of U.K.-based Langham Partnerships as he spoke before the thousands attending the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangeliziation.

"Idolatry ... is the biggest single obstacle to world mission," said Wright, who will be the main drafter of the much-anticipated Cape Town Commitment that will come out of the weeklong gathering of mission-minded Christian leaders.

According to Wright, the three idols are: power and pride, popularity and success, and wealth and greed.

This is partially a conventional warning against the sin of pride and a caution against arrogance leading to mistaken judgment. But he called out the Prosperity Gospel specifically:

But the Kingdom of God cannot be built on the foundations of dishonesty and lies, such as questionable statistics of success, he said. It also cannot be built based on the false teaching of prosperity gospel, which distorts what it means to be blessed by God and does not properly teach about suffering and the cross, Wright added.

"We are a scandal and a stumbling block to the mission of God," Wright stated. ...

During a press conference Saturday afternoon, Wright explained that his address was inspired by a friend and scholar who visited his home country in Latin America. The friend reported that he attended ten different churches that claim to be evangelical, but not one of them preached the Bible. Furthermore, the pastors of the churches wielded great power with no accountability, and were considerably wealthy.

After hearing his friend’s story, Wright realized that the evangelical movement needed a "reformation" because it was facing similar problems to that of the medieval church before the Reformation.

"This is not just something casual. This is a deep-seated corruption in the Church of Christ," said Wright. "And of course this is not just in Latin America, but all over the world."

Another piece is by Brother Al, aka, the Rev. Albert Mohler, the leading theologian of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bankruptcy in the Cathedral 10/22/2010, gloating (in a holy way, of course) about the bankruptcy of Rev. Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral in Orange County CA, as reported in Rebecca Cathcart, California's Crystal Cathedral Files for Bankruptcy New York Times 10/18/2010. Brother Al writes:

Without doubt, the media impact of the news was guaranteed by the fact that Robert Schuller has been so closely identified with his own version of prosperity theology. How does the ministry built on "Possibility Thinking" declare financial bankruptcy? ...

"Possibility Thinking" was Schuller's central message. He told his fellow preachers not to worry about repeating themselves in sermons, insisting that every message (he did not like to call his messages "sermons") must be about the development of a positive mental outlook.

Though ordained in the Reformed Church in America, Schuller minimized historic Christian orthodoxy and stressed instead the message of positive thinking. ...

In his 1986 book, Your Church Has a Fantastic Future, Schuller provided what he called "A Possibility Thinker’s Guide to a Successful Church.” The book is a manual for a ministry built on pure pragmatism, sensationalistic promotion, a therapeutic message, and a constant and incessant focus on thinking positively. ...

In an odd and upside-down way, the news of bankruptcy at the Crystal Cathedral makes that point emphatically. The most significant problem at the Crystal Cathedral is not financial, but theological. The issue is not money, but this ministry's message. The "gospel of success" is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ, therapy is no substitute for theology, and "Possibility Thinking" is not the message of the Bible.

It turns out that Robert Schuller offers the best analysis of this crisis with his own words. "No church has a money problem; churches only have idea problems." The theological crisis in Garden Grove is far more significant than the financial crisis. [my emphasis]

Brother Al doesn't cite any studies to show that churches following his own theological prescriptions fare better financially. In fact, membership growth in the Southern Baptist Convention has slowed and is likely to reverse itself in the coming years if current trends continue.

As far as the money part goes, lots of things can affect the financial performance of such institutions, in this instance a combination of religious operations and entertainment businesses. A lot of it has to do with plain old dollars-and-sense business management: good accounting, making reasonable revenue projections, keeping adequate reserves and insurance, etc. One of my favorite books ever about money and finances in general is The Seven Laws of Money (1974) by Michael Phillips. In it, he writes, "The high priests of money ... are obviously accountants. May we should have a cult in which accountants are worshipped; projects related to that cult would probably be very successful."

Of course, that particular arrangement would be difficult to pass off as conventional Christianity. The point is that Brother Al's gloating over the Crystal Cathedral's money problems as a theological victory is more than a little overdrawn. After all, as the Times article reports, revenue took a dive in 2008, when there was a a major financial crash. Whether or not the church's members had their faith in the Prosperity Gospel shaken thereby, they amount of actual money they have had to contribute to the church's revenue in the last two years has almost certainly been reduced.

But criticisms like these from Brother Al are unlikely to lead to a lot of conservative white Christians in the US rejecting the Prosperity Gospel for a prophetic notion of solidarity with the poor in the their struggles against the wealthy and the injustices of class society. Brother Al promotes a variety of Calvinism, which is presumably why he made the reference quoted above, "Though ordained in the [Calvinist] Reformed Church in America, Schuller minimized historic Christian orthodoxy."

Brother Al's brand of Calvinism is, I suspect, largely about John Calvin's theocratic side, which viewed the Church as the secular law-giver. But Calvinism with its doctrine of predestination can serve well as an ideology for acceptance of existing social conditions as God-ordained and out of the control of individuals. And for conservative white Protestants like Brother Al, the current system of plutocracy and growing inequality of income and wealth that prevail in the United States are not something that should be challenged. The evils of the secular government, on the other hand, particularly government by the Kenyan revolutionary Antichrist Barack Obama, are something to be challenged - especially when they challenge the claims of plutocracy and restrained corporate power.

Brother Al's theological objection to the Prosperity Gospel he states as follows:

Dennis Voskuil, a professor of church history at Schuller’s alma mater, Western Theological Seminary, placed Schuller within the context of the New Thought movement. "Robert Schuller is indirectly related to a long line of popular religionists who have proclaimed the gospel of this-worldly well-being through positive thinking," he wrote. "His lineage includes such disparate figures as Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, Ralph Waldo Trine, and Norman Vincent Peale. While there are many ideological branches on this family tree, all of its members have stressed a utilitarian message of self-help through some form of mind-conditioning."

Russell Chandler in his factually very useful book Understanding The New Age (revised edition 1993) also links the Schuller approach to the New Thought movement of which Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science was the most famous in its early days in the 19th century. Chandler, Voskuil and Brother Al are right in making that connection. Chandler does note, though, that Schuller himself partially objected to that association. Giving a different example of a Prosperity Gospel advocate, Chandler writes:

It is closely akin to the teachings of the Church of Christ, Scientist, founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879, and bears striking resemblance to the self-esteem theme of Reformed Church in America minister Norman Vincent Peale, whose Power of Positive Thinking was an immediate smash in 1952 and remains so to this day.

It is also echoed in some of the preachments and writings of another Reformed Church minister, Robert Schuller, whose giant Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, has become synonymous with "Possibility Thinking." Ever since the ebullient prophet of happiness mounted the tar-paper roof of a drive-in theater snack shack in 1955 and launched the nation's first year-round drive-in church, Schuller has pronounced that a lack of self-esteem separates the average believer from fully understanding God.

After reading the first edition of this book, Schuller telephoned me, objecting strongly to being classed as "a fellow traveler" with New Agers. "I don't deserve that," he chided. "And I categorically deny that I believe in pantheism, reincarnation, channeling, astrology or crystals." Schuller added that he was "frustrated with the New Age movement" although, in his opinion, too much of the "anti-New Age work today is simply condemning it." Schuller went on to defend his concepts of "self-esteem" and "self-potential" theology, saying they are biblical ideas taught by Jesus.

It appears that Schuller specifically wanted to distance himself from other esoteric practices. But Chandler's quote doesn't have himself objecting specifically to placing his version of the Prosperity Gospel in the tradition of New Thought.

William James discussed earlier version of this optimistic, positive-thinking approach of which the Prosperity Gospel is part in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902; Library of America edition 1987). He identified it with the "healthy-minded" religious attitude of those possessing what he called the "once-born" religious consciousness. Its opponents, who expressed similar criticisms to those of Brother Al, James included among those of the "twice-born" religious attitude, characterized by an intense awareness of the prevalence of Sin in human affairs. James considered the Epicureans and Stoics the highest expressions of the "healthy-minded" attitude in the ancient Greek world.

James meant terms like "healthy-minded" and "twice-born" to be descriptive, not judgmental or pejorative. He observes of the twice-born type, in a comment pointing to the attitude of passive acceptance of existing evils, "Envy of the placid beasts seems to be a very widespread affection in this type of sadness" or "religious melancholy". At least in relation to preserving the power and privileges of billionaires, "envy of the placid beasts" is the kind of perspective Brother Al's Calvinism promotes.

But he also observes of the once-born with the "healthy-minded" religious attitude, "If religious intolerance and hanging and burning could again become the order of the day, there is little doubt that, however it may have been in the past, the healthy-minded would at present show themselves the less indulgent party of the two."

James found constructive aspects to both kinds of religiosity. Affirmation of life and nature are prominent characteristics of the "once-born". Awareness of the tragedies and evils of life are pronounced among the "twice-born". James was writing before the two world wars and the Holocaust. But the importance of being keenly aware of the presence of evil in the world was already abundantly evident in 1902.

So there are theologically, socially and politically progressive aspects that can be found in both of William James' broad types of thinking. But with the Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal variants of the Prosperity Gospel, we're dealing with a fundamentally conservative brand of Christianity that celebrates narrow individualism and largely ignores or is hostile to considerations of human solidarity and social justice. With Brother Al's brand of Calvinism, we're dealing with an authoritarian form of Christianity which promotes acceptance of social and class conditions that should be intolerable, and even encourages fighting for the maintenance of those conditions at the expense of the poorest and most socially vulnerable - including many of the adherents of that religious outlook.

Social justice, the rights of humanity and especially of the poor, the need for compassion toward others, obligations to the community and rejection of bigotry and racism and xenophobia can never be fully read out of the Christian Gospel. So there will always be individuals from the Prosperity Gospel and the conservative-Calvinist camps who adopt a more humane and forward-looking religious and social stance. But conservative Protestants criticizing the Prosperity Gospel isn't in itself a sign of some new progressive tendency emerging. And it is certainly not a sign of a political split between the Christian Right and the Country Club Republicans who identify far more with the Kochtopus than with the Christian Savior.

Tags: calvinism, christian right, christian theology, christianism

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

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

Schleiermacher, 1949

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

Georg Krönert wrote on the topic "Schleiermacher und die Gegenwart" (Schleiermacher and the Present) in the Zeitschrift für Relgions- und Geistesgeschichte 2 (1949/1950), discussing the relevance of the 19th-century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher to contemporary religious problems.

He begins it with an interesting contrast between Schleiermacher and Martin Luther. Luther had a sense of being constantly engaged in struggle, Schleiermacher conveyed a deep sense of calm. Luther was preoccupied with evil and the Devil, for Schleiermacher those were more marginal concerns in a theology centered in love. Luther thought in exclusivist terms, Schleiermacher in expansive and universal ways. "Luthers Symbol ist die Linie, Schleiermachers dagegen die Kugel." (Luther's symbol is the line, Schleiermacher's in contrast the globe.)

Krönert takes Schleiermacher's universal sense to be more appropriate to needs of the times, including his embrace of the latest scientific findings. This world-openness is an essential part of the view of the modern European, Krönert argues.

Krönert also prizes Schleiermacher's concept of religion as the "Sinn und Geschamck fürs Unendliche," (sense and taste for the unending) as Krönert puts it. Here he strikes a mystical note that's seemingly different from his praise of Schleiermacher's openness to science. But he's making an historical point. Luther could call on a religious conscience among his fellow Christians that is no longer as universal even among Europeans as it was in Luther's time. On the contrary, modern people suffer from a "vollkommene religiöse Insensibilität" (complete insensitivity to religion). Luther's warnings of the wrath of God are not so persuasive to contemporaries. Martin Marty means something like this when he talks about how Hell disappeared (and no one noticed).

Krönert also argues that Luther could rely on rational arguments to persuade people of his time about Christianity, where Schleiermacher's awareness of the role of feeling in religion is more appropriate to contemporary conditions. Krönert's argument on this point is weak. Schleiermacher elaborated on the role of emotion in religion using a kind of psychological language that was not available to Luther. But, as Krönert himself points out in his discussion of the more prevalent role of the Christian sense of conscience in Luther's day, feeling was very much present in matters of religion in those time. Krönert also makes an embarrassing point here calling on the findings of "modern parapsychology" (!!!) to emphasize his point. Given his own personal trials with the occultist who became his wife's confidant and the sister-in-law of his daughter, it's safe to say that Schleiermacher would not have approved of this mode of arguing for his own theology. Nevertheless, Krönert continues in the following paragraph to praise Schleiermacher's effort to de-mythologize Christianity, or at least of the theology of the New Testament writings.

Krönert makes a dubious biographical speculation that Schleiermacher's disappointment in his love for Eleonore Grunow somehow gave him his strong sense for what the Christian Church ideally is by strenthening his understanding for family. He fell in love with her, she was married, they never got together. Maybe that affected his theological understanding of the Church, maybe not, but Krönert certainly does not make it clear why he thinks it did.

Krönert also praises Schleiermacher's embrace of the ecumenical goal of uniting the Reformed and Lutheran Churches of the Prussia of his day under a common Protestant grouping, which Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III proposed in 1817. Schleiermacher supported the union of the two Protestant traditions and elaborated his own theology (Schleiermacher was a Reformed minister) in a way that would accomodate such a union. But he also warned against government dictation of the church rituals and insisted that freedom of conscience in Christian scholarship and ritual should be maintined in the unified Protestant Church.

Tags: christian theology, schleiermacher

Why democracy and Christianity need science

John Locke (1632-1704)

Mari, following on your posts In Defense of Science and And Better Yet, It's Free!, I just wanted to mention that Skeptical Inquirer magazine has been fighting the good fight for science against superstition and pseudoscience for a long time. And continues to do so, with articles like Debating Creationists (May/June 2007) and Fighting the Fundamentalists (Mar/Apr 2007). Their articles are written in a "popular" style, meaning you don't have to have a Ph.D. in biology or physics to understand them. (I read not long ago that Robert Oppenheimer, father of the A-bomb, used to complain that the articles in Scientific American were often too technical for him to follow.)

I've lately been reading a book with the New Agey-sounding title, The Meeting of East and West. It's written by F.S.C. Northrop, who was a Professor of Philosophy and Law at the Yale Law School. It was published in 1946, during that brief period after the Second World War when there was still an immediate possibility for a more cooperative international environment than the Cold War turned out to be. His not-modest goal in the book was to suggest ways in which the major assumptions of Eastern and Western civilizations could be drawn upon to produce a new philosophical foundation for a more free and peaceful world. Like I said, not a modest goal.

This kind of history of ideas has its limits, but this is one of the better examples I've encountered. One of the things he stresses about Western civilization (I'm just getting to the Eastern part) is that the notions of democratic political liberty and human rights which the rising capitalist orders in European countries brought to some degree of realization - aka, "classical liberalism" - were philosophically based on the implications of physical science. The Jeffersonian notions of freedom of speech and religion and the need for rule by a democratic majority were heavily based on the ideas of English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), who derived his basic understanding of human equality from working out the implications of the physics of Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton.

I won't go into the more excruciating details here. But basically, Locke's philosophy addressed the nature of the observer in the theoretical scheme of the physics of his day, in which "the sensed qualities in sensed space and time" are not considered direct qualities of the object being observed, but qualities perceived "indirectly by way of the observer".

There are obviously quite a few intermediate steps to get from there to the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the Continental Congress. Freedom in practice had to be obtained through a political and military revolution against the British, not by arguments over the philosophy of science. But Northrup's point is valid and important. Our democratic notions of freedom stem from a scientific understanding of the world, as well as from moral and religious notions of the dignity of the individual human. Science is an integral part of democracy, not a luxury that can be treated as a fad or partisan preference without undercutting the basis of democracy.

Northrup also argues that sound Christian theology requires sound science. This one takes me more words even to summarize the argument than the one about Locke and physics. But here goes.

Northrup has a chapter on "Roman Catholic Culture and Greek Science" in which he essentially polemicizes in favor of Catholic religious tradition which, despite its well-known conflicts with some scientific ideas like Galileo's, based Christian theology on scientific philosophical foundations. St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/25-1274) founded his theology on Aristotle's philosophy, an approach adopted by the Roman Catholic Church, replacing the previous Platonic conception of Christian theology.

This Aristotelian doctrine later had a reactionary effect when Church leaders refused initially to accept important developments in physics like those associated with Galileo. But in the 13th century, it was a process of assimilating the most advanced findings of the most modern science, which of course came to Christian Europe from the Arab world, largely through Al-Andalus (Spain). Ibn Rushd of Al-Andalus (1126-1198), known in the West as Averroës (or Averrhoës), was the leading commentator on Aristotle of his time. And Ibn Rushd's exposition of Aristotle's ideas and his use of Aristotle's ideas in his Islamic theology, were very influential on St. Thomas.

Northrup argues that Thomistic/Aristotelian theology gave Catholic Christianity a theoretical grounding in the material world that is lacking in Protestant Christianity in general. Aristotle understood the human soul (Greek: πνευμα, pneuma) as being intimately bound with the physical body though not identical to it. The heart was the seat of the soul, in his view, because it was where blood mixed with breath. The blood flowing through the body binds the various parts of the body to the soul. He identified spirit as a part of the soul, though in English we tend to use the terms as synonyms. (The Greek pneuma means "breath" as well as "spirit" and "soul", suggesting that for the Greeks the concepts were closely connected.)

In Thomistic theology, the soul also functions as what is called the "final cause" in Aristotle's philosophy, i.e., it defines what the whole human being becomes. As Northrup summarizes it, "Thus the final cause or rational principle in Aristotelian science defines not merely the content of human reason and the nature of the human soul and the divine perfection, but also even that divine perfection as it is known by revelation."

In other words, Catholic Christianity does not draw the radical, existential difference between the material and spiritual worlds that traditional Protestant thought does. Where Aristotle argued that "the soul must fall within the science of Nature", Catholic Thomist theology considers a person to be one substance, the human being's "body and soul [as] being merely the material and the formal components of this one substance". By contrast, Protestant theology makes a different assumption. He writes:

Instead, according to the modern Protestant theory, the individual human being is an interacting aggregate of a tremendous number of substances, one of which, the mental substance, is his soul, the remaining substances being the many material atoms making up his body. Thus it must be emphasized that when both Catholic and Protestant Christians talk about a human being as having both a body and soul they mean quite different things. It is to be emphasized also that the Catholic or Church of England conception of the human being is very much closer to the Marxian conception [!!!] than is that of the traditional Protestants. The reason for this is that for the Roman Catholics following Aristotle, the soul is the form and organization and final cause of the body as actually determined by scientific observation and inquiry conducted by means of the senses. There is nothing esoteric about it. Thus a human being for the Roman Catholics, as well as for the Marxians, is a person who, by his very nature, has material, physical needs of a definite, formal, material kind. Nor is an inquiry by scientists which shows human beings as well as other individual substances to be material in character quite the bugaboo and moral horror for the Roman Catholics that it tends to be for the Protestants. For to be a concrete substance on earth is to be composed of a material as well as a formal principle. The soul is the form of the material body. It is not a completely independent mental substance of a purely immaterial kind having nothing to do in its own nature either with the atoms of the body or with the form and organization of the body. (my emphasis)

Because of these different conceptions of the person as a spiritual being, Catholics have more of a sense of continuity between the divine and human realms, which makes intermediate entities acting between God and humanity (angels, saints) more acceptable for Catholics than Protestants. Protestant Christianity tends to minimize the significance of angels and saints and to dismiss Catholic reverence for figures like Mary as the Mother of God as being idolatrous.

Buried in academic philosophical language though it is, Northrup brings out an important point that may explain a good deal about why many Protestant fundamentalists are science-phobic. Scientific findings elaborating the natural state of human beings are more of a threat to their conception of the individual human soul and its relationship to God than they would be to someone holding the kind of Catholic viewpoint Northrup describes.

He argues that a Christian philosophy "must be adequate to the totality of present empirical evidence, and do for our time what the Aristotelian science and philosophy of the Thomistic theology did for the final stage of Greek science and the later Middle Ages."

Or, in other words, sound Christian theology requires sound science.

Tags: christian theology, christianity, christian fundamentalism, john locke, thomas aquinas, f.s.c. northrop, meeting of east and west