first part of Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre are intelligible onl}' when translated into the formulas of Spinoza, whence they were derived ; and adds that he made no greater difference between God and the world than Spinoza made between the natura naturans and the natura naturata} Schleiermacher wrote at the time when the dispute between the Rationalists and Supernaturalists was at its height. The one referred all events to natural causes ; the other contended for the possibility of miracles and of a supernatural revelation. Both parties being Theists, the Rationalists had no ground to stand on. For if the existence of an extramundane, personal God, the creator of the world, be admitted, it is utterly unreasonable to deny that He may intervene with his immediate agency in the sequence of events. Schleiermacher cut the knot by denying the difference between the natural and supernatural. There is really no extramundane God, no other sphere of divine activity than the world, and no other law of his action than necessity. 2
Involves the Rejection of the Doctrine of the Trinity.
4. Schleiermacher's system ignores the doctrine of the Trinity. With him God in the world, is the Father; God in Christ, the Son; God in the Church, the Spirit. All personal preexistence of Christ is thus necessarily excluded. The Scriptures and the Church teach that the eternal Son of God, who was with the Father from eter- nity ; who made the worlds ; who could say, " Before Abraham ■was I am," became man, being born of a woman, yet without sin. This Schleiermacher denies. There was no Son of God, before the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. Then only, Christ began to be as a distinct person ; He had no preexistence beyond that which is common to all men.
5. This system makes Christ a mere man. He is constantly represented as the Ideal man, Urbild, a perfect man. In Him the idea of humanity is said to be fully realized. His life is said to be one ; and that one a true human life. There was in Him but one nature, and that nature human. Now it matters little that with these representations Christ is said to be divine, and his life a divine life ; for this is said on the ground that the divine is human, and the human divine. God and man are one. The difference be-
1 Baur's Lehrz von der Dreieinigkeit, vol. iii. p. 851.
2 See Baur, p. 858, who quotes Zeller ( Theol. Jahrb. Bd. 1, H. 2, S. 285) as, saying that these principles, which appear everywhere in Schleiermacher's Bogmatik, contain the whole secret of its Spinozism.
446 PART m. Ch. III. — the person of CHRIST.
tween Christ and other men is simply one of degree. He is per- fect, we are imperfect. He is, as Baur said, simply primus inter pares. Christ is the Urbild or archetypal man. But " the actu- ality of the archetypal does not go beyond our nature."^ Even in the modified form in which his doctrine has been adopted in this country, this feature of the system has been retained. Dr. Nevin in his " Mystical Presence " is abundant in his assertion of the simple humanity of Christ. He says He had not one life of the body and another of the soul ; nor one life of his humanity and another of his divinity. It is one life throughout, and it " is in all respects a true human life."^ "Christ is the archetypal man in whom the true idea of humanity is brought to view." He " is the ideal man." Our nature is said to be complete only in Him. This also is the staple of the " Mercersburg Review " in all its articles relating either to Anthropology or Soteriology. It is everywhere assumed that God and man are one ; that divinity is the completed development of humanity. " The glorification of Christ was the full advancement of our human nature itself to the power of a divine life." There is nothing in Christ which does not belong to humanity. Steudel therefore says of the Christology of Schleier- macher that it makes Christ only " a finished man." Knapp says, that he deifies the human and renders human the divine.^ Dorner says, " He believed the perfect being of God to be in Christ ; and for this reason regarded Him as the complete man. And so, vice versa, because He is the complete man, the consciousness of God has become a being of God in Him." * That is, because He is a perfect man. He is God. And Strauss says, that according to Schleiermacher the creation of man imperfect in Adam was com- pleted in Christ ; and as Christ did not assume a true body and a reasonable soul, but generic humanity, human nature as a generic life is raised to the power of divinity, not in Him only but also in the Church. The incarnation of God is not a unique manifestation in the flesh, in the person of Christ, appearing on earth for thirty- three years and then transferred to heaven. This, it is said, would have been only " a sublime avatar, fantastically paraded thus long before men," without any farther effect. On the contrary, it is the introduction of the life of God into humanity rendering it divine. It is natural that those who thus deify themselves, should look upon those who regard themselves as " worms of the dust," as
1 Dorner's Person of Christ, div. n. vol. Hi. p. 301.
2 The Mystical Presence, Philadelphia, 1846, p. 167.
8 Gess's Uehersicht iiher Schleiermachert System, p. 225. 4 Domer, ut supra, u. vol. iii. p. 194.