is nevertheless a fact, and enables us to condemn a system without wounding our charity for its author. Schleiermacher, however, was an exceptional case. As a general rule, a man's faith is the expression of his inward life.
1. The first objection to Schleiermacher's theory is that it is not and does not pretend to be Biblical. It is not founded upon the objective teachings of the Word of God. It assumes, indeed, that the religious experience of the Apostles and early Christians was substantially the same, and therefore involved the same truths, as the experience of Christians of the present day. Schleiermacher even admits that their experience was so pure and distinctly marked as to have the authority of a standard by which other believers are to judge of their own. But he denies that the interpretation which they gave of their experience has normal authority for us, that is, he says that we are not bound to believe what the Apostles believed. His appeals to the Scriptures in support of his peculiar doctrines are extremely rare, and merely incidental. He professes to build up a system independent of the Bible, founded on what Christians now find in the contents of their own consciousness.
2. The system is not what it purports to be. Schleiermacher professed to discard speculation from the province of religion. He undertook to construct a theory of Christianity with which philoso- phy should have nothing to do, and therefore one against which it could have no right to object. In point of fact his system is a mat- ter of speculation from beginning to end. It could never have ex- isted except as the product of a mind imbued with the principles of German philosophy. It has no coherence, no force, and indeed no meaning, unless you take for granted the correctness of his views of the nature of God, of the nature of man, and of the relation of God to the world. This objection was urged against his system by all parties in Germany. The supernaturalists, who believed in the Bible, charged him with substituting the conclusions of his own philosophy for the dictates of Christian consciousness. And the philosophers said he was true neither to his philosophy nor to his religion. He changed from one ground to the other just as it suited his purpose. On this subject Strauss^ says that Schleiermacher first betrayed philosophy to theology, and then theology to philos- ophy ; and that this half-and-halfness is characteristic of his whole position. Although this was said in a spirit of unkindness, it is nevertheless true. His speculative opinions, i. e., the conclusions at which he arrives by the way of speculation, are the basis of hia
1 Dogmatik, Tubingen, 1841, vol. ii. p. 176
444 PART in. Ch. III. — the person of CHRIST.
whole system ; and therefore those who adopt it receive it on tha authority of reason, and not on that of revelation. It is a philo- sophical theory and nothing more. This will become apparent as we proceed.
Founded on Pantheistic Principles.
3. A third objection is that the system is essentially pantheistic. This is, indeed, an ambiguous term. It is here used, however, in its ordinary and proper sense. It is not meant that Schleiermacher held that the universe is God, or God the universe, but that he denied any proper dualism between God and the world, and between God and man. He held such views of God as were inconsistent with Theism in the true and accepted meaning of the word. That is, he did not admit the existence of a personal, extramundane God. This is a charge brought against his system from the begin- ning, even by avowed pantheists themselves. They say that while denying the existence of a personal God he nevertheless teaches doctrines inconsistent with that denial, i. e., with what they regard as the true view of the relation of the infinite to the finite. Theists brought the same objection. Dr. Braniss^ says, "Die Annahme eines personlichen Gottes ist in diesem System unmoglich," i. e., " The admission of a personal God is, in this system, impossible." ^ This he proves, among other ways, by a reference to what Schleier- macher teaches of the attributes of God, which with him are not predicates of a subject; they tell us nothing as to what God is, they are only forms or states of our own consciousness, as determined by our relation to the system of things in their causal relation. Strauss, from another standpoint, says that Schleiermacher could never reconcile himself to the acknowledgment of a personal, extra- mundane God. Christ was the only God he had ; and this, alas ! was little more than an ideal God ; one who had been ; but whether He still is, he leaves undetermined, at least theoretically. Baur presents the inconsistency of Schleiermacher in different points of view. In one place he says that he swung to and fro between the idealism of Kant and Fichte, and the pantheism of Spinoza and Scheliing, which he regarded only as the different poles of the same system (derselben Weltanschauung).^ Again he says that the essential element of Schleiermacher's doctrine of God is the same immanence of God in the world that Spinoza taught.* He Uidorses the criticism of Strauss, that all the main positions of the
1 Ueher Schleiermacher'' s Glavbenlehre, ein kritischer Versuch, p. 182.
2 See Gess, Uebersicht iiber Schleiermacher's System, p. 185.
8 Baur's Lehre von der Breieinigkeit, vol. iii p. 842. ^ Urid. p. 850.