Schleiermacher, Newman, Warfield

In our Shapers of Contemporary Protestant Theology course here at Moore we have been reading sections from Schleiermacher, Newman and now Warfield. It is quite interesting to see the lines of concern and thought criss-cross in surprising ways. Having read Newman on the development of Christian doctrine, it is fascinating to see Warfield appealing to some of the same criteria in trying to defend the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture. This doctrine, he argues, is early, ubiquitous and persistent.

Warfield claims:

Despite these attempts to introduce lowered conceptions, the doctrine of the plenary inpsiration of the Scriptures, which looks upon them as an oracular book, in all its parts and elements, alike, of God, trustworthy in all its affirmations of every kind, remains to-day, as it has always been, the vital faith of the people of God, and the formal teaching of the organized church.

Newman might have agreed with this as a method, if not an affirmation. The doctrine, he says, is not merely a matter of form alone, but is a necessary preservative of the lively faith of the church.

Of course it is in the role of the church that they will differ. Newman appeals to the need for an authorised interpretive magisterium and the providential care of God. Warfield will put the church - and he DOES have an ecclesiological concern - is the role of a hearing, listening and obeying church, the church that recognises rather than authorises the authority of scripture....

Schleiermacher on the Atonement

Influenced by the philosophy of Aristotle and Immanuel Kant, Schleiermacher was ordained in the German Reformed Church in 1794. He defined religion as the “feeling of absolute dependence”, Christianity being the highest although not the only true religion. His thoughts on the atonement of Christ are found in The Christian Faith, p. 100-105.

Schleiermacher reacted against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and argued that religion was a matter of the heart, not the head. He speaks of God as the object of our sense of god-consciousness, yet with almost no stress on his personal nature. Sin is spoken of as the struggle between man’s lower consciousness, the natural impulses belonging to this life of senses, and his god-consciousness.

Under this scheme, redemption becomes the liberation of our god-consciousness from its oppression by our lower consciousness. This is accomplished not by the substitutionary sacrifice of the God-man, but by Jesus the archetypal man. Jesus was the man who embodied this god-consciousness. He was not supernatural but his example transcends common humanity.
The Redeemer them is like all men in virtue of the identity of human nature, but distinguished from them all by the constant potency of his god-consciousness, which was a veritable existence of God in Him.

Though enormously influential, Schleiermacher’s view is biblically inadequate, not distinctively Christian and depends in fact on a kind of pantheism. Talk of forgiveness of sins is quite remote to Schleiermacher...