On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured DespisersEssay Preview: On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured DespisersReport this essayOn Religion: Speeches to its Cultured DespisersFriedrich Schleiermacher, a Protestant theologian, philosopher, and educator, who wrote On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799), ventured into Christian dogmatics in a non-conventional yet avant-garde manner. His new approach to critically analyzing religion signaled the beginning of the era of Protestant Liberal Theology whilst simultaneously placing his book among the “classic” substantive works that speaks to “religion and Christian faith” (Schleiermacher vii).
Schleiermacher, sometimes called the “father of modern theology,” believes shreds of faith are present in knowing (doctrine) and doing (ethical action), but it is most fully encapsulated by a kind of “feeling” or intuition, the “feeling (consciousness) of absolute dependence.”
Faith belongs to two levels: the foremost, which is the “immediate” self-consciousness and the second, which is the “sensible” self-consciousness (Schleiermacher 36). The latter refers to the self in relation to the world. The world consists of nature and society. Therefore, the two levels are inexorably linked.
He proposed to the “cultural despisers” of religion that when they rejected traditional dogmas, they were not in essence rejecting the faith upon which it was founded. They despise dogma and its application in the societal realm which parallels to ones distaste for the shell and not the peanut within; they are fixed upon its trappings. The same principle pertains to defenders of religion since they do not defend religion either; it is a mere buttress for morals and social institutions. To truly ascertain religion, one must close his/her eyes to false appearances and associations ingrained by history and society, and delve into the self-interior of ones pious soul.
Every human being is or has the potential to be to be a devout soul. The difficulty arises in the process of self-dissection or introspection. When one exhumes the “feeling” for the unity underlying the interconnectedness of all finite things, one experiences faith. [Schleiermacher uses faith, piety, and religion interchangeably.] Religion is the contemplation of the pious; it is about having life and knowing it a certain way.
Religion, at its core, is not “the intellect” (i.e. objective knowledge) or “the will” (subjective knowledge). Objective knowledge refers to reason and ones perception of the world whereas subjective knowledge is that which pours forth from experience and personal idiosyncrasy. As an infant the boundary between subject and object melts away; the synthesis of the two is “feeling.” This is the raw experience of existence that cannot be completely articulated because it would then belong to “the intellect.” Religion, properly understood, is intrinsic to all human persons; it is the highest expression of self-consciousness and at its best is also God-consciousness.
Humanity should always look at religion through the scope of the original “feeling” because that is the beginning of all religions. After the original “feeling,” there was a decay of religion. A preoccupation with worldly things fragments ones life and disrupts ones “immediate” consciousness (Schleiermacher 246). Redemption reorients ones life, putting one in good relations with God. The “feeling of absolute dependence” is the actual experience of God and to be conscious of this immediate self-consciousness is to be conscious of being in relation to God. Schleiermacher reveres individuality and sees religion as the manifestation of self oneness. He spoke of God in the context of human experience. Since man is subject to sin and immersion in finite trappings, his God-consciousness is interrupted which means his sense of the “infinite” is obscured. Christ was an example of steady, unbroken God-consciousness.
The Bible and the Religion of Jesus Christ are not the only three parts of the first ώfeeling of eternal life. One part of Christian life consists of a physical Ⅷmanifestation of God & the church. The second part of Christian life consists of a spiritual “effort to see human nature through all its imperfections. Both of these phases of Christianity include a part of the Christian self, the self that is in the process of transformation into the “new perfect God” “feeling of self and God, the self being free: the self, which is the subject of the human being, being an object of human need. For many, though, it is the self that is the primary subject of their human existence.
The first part of Christian life consists of a struggle between God and man. God is a human being, but he comes to man as a “possessor” in man, the divine being. He is seen and loved by a perfect human being. The second part of Christian life is the struggle between God and man to enter into God’s way of being. Christ is an individual of a human nature, who seeks and is loved by God and mankind, the man who seeks Christ through his Christness. He is seen and loved by a beautiful being – the child of the Heavenly Father – the wife of Christ, the Mother of God. His wife Christ is an animal with a divine life. From the moment he has heard Christ proclaiming himself the Saviour of Christ and living his earthly life, he enters into Christ.
In the Old Testament, the God of the New Testament was one with man, the God of God as he was at work. One of his many tasks as he led mankind to God was to become God because of his work. On the day God created man, in the beginning created He “the God of God. On this day God created man and made him His perfect in love. During the Divine Passion, the Son of Man (John 11:20-22) became God, He being also a human being with a divine life: this is the part of the Christian conception of man that belongs to the “new perfect God.” As we read Scripture, “we know Him by His power; for it is made manifest by the power of his Spirit which makes him understand what He has made possible.” And of the power that makes humans to understand Him is the power of the holy Scriptures. That we might know Him by his Spirit and to be able to understand him and to give that Spirit to us is the part of the biblical conception of the Christian.
The third part of the Christian life consists of the divine love between Christ; the love for God and for man has no other origin than for the love for God, just as it is for all Christians. The Christology of the Christian faith requires the God of God to love man in all things. In Christian theology the God or God of God is described with the word God or God of man (Hebrew: זהיס), the divine love, being the divine love and love between God and man, the love for Christ which is the essence of Christian life of man. The holy books of the Bible contain a series of divine commands that form the basis of Christian theology. Among the various divine commands (the Lord’s Command, the Lord’s Prayer, the Saviour’s Command, the Sacrifice of the Cross, the Psalms, the Mass, the Confession of Faith, the Epistle of the Lord, the Creed, the Prayer