him to adopt a philosophical system whose principles and tendencies were decidedly pantheistic. And, thirdly, he succumbed to the attacks which rationalistic criticism had made against faitli in the Bible. He could not receive it as a supernatural revelation from God. He did not regard it as containing doctrines which we are bound to believe on the authority of the sacred writers. Deprived, therefore, of the historical Christ, or at least deprived of the ordi- nary historical basis for faith in Christ, he determined to construct a Christology and a whole system of Christian theology from within ; to weave it out of the materials furnished by his own religious consciousness. He said to the Rationalists that they might expunge what they pleased from the evangelical records ; they might demol- ish the whole edifice of Church theology, he had a Christ and a Christianity in his own bosom. In the prosecution of the novel and difficult task of constructing a system of Christian theology out of the facts of Christian experience, he designed to secure for it a position unassailable by philosophy. Philosophy being a matter of knowledge, and religion a matter of feeling, the two belonged to distinct spheres, and therefore there need be no collision between them.
Schleiermacher^ Christology.
He assumed, (1.) That religion in general, and Christianity in particular, was not a doctrine or system of doctrine ; not a cultus, or a discipline ; but a life, an inward spiritual power or force. (2.) That the true Christian is conscious of being the recipient of this new life. (3.) That he knows that it did not originate in himself, nor in the Church to which he belongs, because humanity neither in the individual nor in any of its organizations is capable of producing what is specifically new and higher and better than itself. (4.) This necessitates the assumption of a source, or author of this life, outside of the race of ordinary men or of hu- manity in its regular development. (5.) Hence he assumed the actual historical existence of a new, sinless, and absolutely perfect man by a new creative act. (6.) That man was Christ, from whom every Christian is conscious that he derives the new life of wliich he is the subject. (7.) Christ is the Urbild, or Ideal Man, in whom the idea of humanity is fully realized. (8.) He is nevertheless divine, or God in fashion as a man, because man is the modus existendi of God on the earth. In ordinary men, even in Adam, God, so to speak, was and is imperfectly developed. The God- consciousness, or God within, is overborne by ouj* world- con- sciousness, or our consciousness as determined by things seen and
442 PART m. Ch. in.— the person of CHRIST.
temporal. (9.) In Christ this was not the case. In Him, without struggle or opposition, the God-consciousness, or God within, con- trolled his whole inward and outward life. (10.) Christ's pre- eminence over other men consisted in his absolute sinlessuess and freedom from error. Of Him it is to be said, not simply potest non peccare^ but non potest peccare. He could not be tempted ; for temptation supposes the possibility of sin, and the possibility of sin supposes less than perfection. (11.) The redeeming work and worth of Christ consists not in what He taught or in what He did, but in what He was. What He taught and what He did may be explained in different ways, or even explained away, but what He was, remains, and is the one all important fact. (12.) As He was thus perfect, thus the ideal and miraculously produced man, He is the source of life to others. He awakens the dormant God- consciousness in men, and gives it ascendency over the sensibility, or sensuous element of our nature, so that believers come to be, in the same sense, although ever in a less degree, what Christ was, God manifest in the flesh. This being the work of Christ, and this redeeming process being due to what He was, his resurrection, ascension, session at the right hand of God, etc., etc., may all be dispensed with. They may be admitted on historical grounds, good m6n having testified to them as facts, but they have no religious import or power. (13.) The new life of which Christ is the author, which in this country is commonly denominated " his human divine life," is the animating and constituting principle of the Church, and it is by union with the Church that this life passes over to individ- ual believers.
Objections to this Theory.
This is a meagre outline of Schleiermacher's Christology. His doctrine concerning Christ is so implicated with his peculiar views on anthropology, on theology, and on the relation of God to the world, that it can neither be fully presented nor properly appreciated except as an integral part of his whole system.
Gladly as Schleiermacher's theory was embraced as a refuge by those who had been constrained to give up Christianity as a doc- trine, and great as have been its popularity and influence, it was assailed from very different quarters and judged from many differ- ent standpoints. Here it can only be viewed from the position of Christian theology. It should be remembered that as the idealist does not feel and act according to his theory, so the inward life of a theologian may not be determined by his speculative doctrines. This does not render error less objectionable or less dangerous. It