SCHLEIERMACHER AS HISTORIAN AND BELIEVER
(Dedicated to the memory
of Dr. Robert W. Streetman, “the Swami Streetmananda”)
Van
A. Harvey, in The Historian & the Believer, claims
provocatively that "From liberal Protestantism to the new hermeneutic,
Protestant theology may be regarded as a series of salvage
operations, attempts to show how one can still believe in Jesus Christ
and not violate an ideal of intellectual integrity.”1
This paper will pursue the question of whether Harvey’s claim
is justified at least at the outset of the history he
describes. We will interrogate the father of "liberal Protestantism"
along the lines of Harvey's treatment of the issue of the
historian’s "morality of knowledge.” We will consider
Friedrich Schleiermacher as both "historian and believer,” in Harvey’s
terms.
Harvey carefully sets out
the dilemma facing Christian theologians whose faith-commitment to
Jesus/Christ is dependent at all on historical knowledge of
Jesus. Almost none of the famous theologians is immune from
this problem, no matter how historically skeptical they pretend to be.
How can the theologian's will to believe fail to tend to pad, fudge,
or falsify the evidence before him? Harvey begins with a story
told by Martin Kähler to the effect that a certain troubled
student feared the collapse of Christian faith, or at least
apologetics, if the Fourth Gospel were shown not to have been written
by the son of Zebedee. The student was so scrupulously honest that he
could never help but suspect that any evidence in favor of his
convictions was being slanted or fabricated by his desire to hold onto
traditional beliefs. Such is the tension entailed by any orthodox
apologist whose commitment to truth is material and not merely formal.
As if to move along a spectrum of theological belief, Harvey shows how
the will-to-believe dilemma traps theologians from C. H. Dodd, to Paul
Tillich, to Karl Barth, to Rudolf Bultmann. The historian-believer
problem is put in its most extreme form in the consideration of
Tillich. Does Christian faith collapse if Jesus never existed at all?
Tillich echoes the view of his teachers Kähler and Herrmann that
Christian faith dare not rest on the shifting sands of historical
research. Kähler wrote:
The attachment of the
certainty of Christian conviction to the unpredictable results of
historical research [is] a stumbling block.... I have become
increasingly certain that my Christian faith cannot have a causal
connection with the “authenticity” of the Gospels. 2
Herrmann also clearly
sees the historian-believer dilemma:
it is a fatal drawback
that no historical judgment, however certain it may appear, ever
attains anything more than probability. But what sort of religion
would that be which accepted a basis for its convictions with the
consciousness that it was only probably safe?
It is a fatal error to
attempt to establish the basis of faith by means of historical
investigation. The basis of faith must be something fixed; the results
of historical inquiry are continually changing. 3
Both men go on to seek
refuge in the picture of Jesus Christ yielded by the New Testament
accounts. Whatever accretions may have attached themselves in the
course of the formation of the gospel traditions, the believer is
assured of at least the continuity of this "picture" with the
historical Jesus. Who could have made up such
a
character? Similarly,
Tillich says that though the historian cannot even assure the name
"Jesus" to the historical figure in question, the Christ certainly
existed. The picture of Christ does in fact communicate “New Being.”
It could not do this if it did not represent a real person in whom New
Being initially became concretized under the .conditions of finitude
and existence. "Without the concreteness of the New Being, its newness
would be empty.” "A picture imagined by the... contemporaries of Jesus
would have expressed this untransformed existence and their quest for
a New Being. But it would not have been the New Being.”4
So the gospel portrait
must represent a real individual. So, in principle, even for Tillich,
faith does indeed depend on dubious historical judgments. Bultmann
would fall victim to the same analysis inasmuch as he does need a "das"
if not a "was" of the historical Jesus at the foundation of his
kerygmatic Christ.
If it is possible to put
the dilemma in even more extreme form,
Harvey
points out that even a theology which could dispense altogether with a
historical Jesus, but still needed a particular "picture" of him,
would not be safe. Even this kind of gospel portrait must be the
result of a (debatable) historical exegetical reconstruction of
various texts: "Even this 'picture of Christ' in the New Testament, of
which Kähler and Tillich speak as though it were independent of
criticism, can be abstracted only by an act of historical
imagination.” 5 As long as one's Christology or theology
requires the historicity of some item about Jesus, can one engage
honestly in historical research with its inescapable, inherent
methodological doubt? Can one at the same time say “I think
that,” and "I believe that” about the same proposition?
And where can Friedrich
Schleiermacher fit into this discussion with sentiments like this one?
Since the Gospels...
which are our sole historical sources about Christ, narrate miracle
stories about him with more or less emphasis, our judgment concerning
miracles is not injured; for otherwise our faith in the person of
Christ would be ruined, and he would become for us a mythical person!
6
First, it must be noted
that Schleiermacher claims to be quite an impartial historian. He is
quite clear that the New Testament documents can claim no special
exemption from historical criticism.
The Holy Scripture can
only be understood as a book subject to the law that governs human
transmission and one that can only be comprehended when all the
resources of the intelligence are brought into play. There must be a
continuous application of all the skills of criticism and exegesis to
the canonical books. 7
Schleiermacher begins his
legitimization of the impartiality of criticism with the assurance
that this is allowable by the nature of the scriptures themselves. In
other words, it is lucky for the historian that the scriptures are of
such a nature as to allow such treatment. The historian can do his
work only with the permission of the believer. Schleiermacher goes on
to set himself a critical ideal which he does not in fact seem to
achieve, as will later become clear:
all inquiries intended to
ascertain the authors of the books we have, and the genuineness or the
reverse of particular passages, must pursue an unhampered course. . .
.
We refuse to be perverted
from the purest hermeneutical methods, as would be the case if we
knowingly preferred to put an artificial interpretation on a passage
rather than construe it in a sense suggestive of a less pure view of
Christian faith. 8
All this Schleiermacher
says concerning exegesis generally, but he makes it clear that no
different standards are to apply to research on the life of Jesus: “We
must undertake it as we should any other similar one with respect to a
man who is no longer in any way an object of faith for us.”9
Yet another quote concerning impartial research begins to alter the
picture subtly, yet significantly. Schleiermacher says that,
In the present state of
the Christian church we cannot be satisfied to take our departure only
from faith in him, or only from faith in the Gospel accounts as
inspired truth. On the contrary, in this dispute our faith can become
firm and direct only if we establish the facts quite impartially.
10
Yet if establishing faith
is the end in view, how impartial can such an investigation really
be? An instructive parallel shows how apologetical Schleiermacher's
purpose is. In The Christian Faith, he discusses whether faith
must presuppose a doctrine of scriptural authority. “The authority of
Holy Scripture cannot be the foundation of faith in Christ; rather
must the latter be presupposed before a peculiar authority can be
granted to Holy Scripture.”11 If it were the former, belief
in Christ would be restricted to only those capable of being convinced
by rational argumentation for the inspiration of scripture. Thus, the
context for Schleiermacher's talk about impartiality toward the
scriptural records is that of apologetics, even evangelism. This
observation helps us characterize Schleiermacher's position in the
historian-believer schema. He definitely attempts a "both-and"
position. As Strauss remarked, “He had wanted to occupy a middle
position between faith and [historical] science.”12 In
Schleiermacher's own words, “My philosophy and my dogmatic are firmly
committed not to contradict each other... and as long as I can
recall, they have mutually affected one another and gradually
approached one another.” 13
Here Schleiermacher
frankly admits that he cannot keep the two apart, yet in The Life
of Jesus, he seems to try:
if we wish to be
theologians, the scientific orientation and the Christian faith must
be compatible. But if out of a dark concern we attempted to be able to
know the results of investigation in advance, we would deceive
ourselves.14
But perhaps he is
deceiving himself, for few readers of The Life of Jesus will
conclude that Schleiermacher's dogmatic preferences left his
exegetical judgment untouched.
We have already suggested
that historical-exegetical freedom for Schleiermacher was given its
place by the generosity of the queen of the sciences, theology. It
becomes even more evident just how this is so. It is not just that the
doctrine of inspiration fortunately allows critical study, or that
apologetics will be more effective if it allows and employs criticism.
Now we find that criticism is actually part of the ongoing process of
canonization. In the Brief Outline, Schleiermacher thus
dignifies "higher criticism": “The Protestant Church necessarily
claims to be continually occupied in determining the canon more
exactly; and this is the greatest exegetical-theological task of
higher criticism.”15
How can
criticism advance canonization?
The same influence [of
the Spirit which led to rejection of apocryphal materials as being
uncanonical] reveals itself even yet in the Church's careful estimate
of the different grades of normative authority to be conceded to
particular portions of Scripture, as also with decisions regarding
all sorts of lacunae and interpolations; so that the judgment
of the Church is only approximating ever more closely to a complete
expulsion of the apocryphal and the pure preservation of the
canonical.16
There are two very
different principles of criticism/canonization at work here. First,
Schleiermacher mentions textual criticism, the elimination of later
glosses and transcriptional errors from original, canonical texts.
Second, he suggests that a hierarchy of authority must be established
within the canon. How can this be done? How can it be justified if the
canon is to remain a "canon" (i.e., an authority) at all?
It must be kept in mind
that Schleiermacher is not working with quite the
same
"Sola Scriptura" model as
traditional Protestantism. For him, Christian piety, or
self-consciousness, is the ultimate formal norm for theology. The New
Testament writings then function as records of the foundational stage
of that piety. So "precautions [should] be taken to avoid the
impression that a doctrine must belong to Christianity because it is
contained in Scripture, whereas in point of fact it is only contained
in Scripture because it belongs to Christianity.”17 The
resulting authority of the canon is one of legitimization, not one of
binding norm: "indeed everything mentioned in the New Testament
Scriptures proper may legitimately be given a place in our religious
teaching as well. The idea may be used if we find it suitable."18
If the authority of the
New Testament canon is in its role of attesting to original Christian
piety, criticism could serve to further delineate this authority by
making clearer what this piety was, and what understandings of the New
Testament are more or less consistent with it. Here we come to the
most fundamental role of criticism for faith generally and for
canonicity specifically. Jesus Christ and his self-consciousness form
the real center of authority, the true canon-within-the-canon for
Schleiermacher. Criticism could make the normative fountainhead of
Christian faith clearer and purer if it could render a more accurate
picture of the historical Jesus. Thus a vital theological interest in
life-of-Jesus-research stands near the very heart of Schleiermacher's
dogmatic-methodological edifice. In the long run, it seems to have
been quite an understatement for Schleiermacher to say that "if we
wish to be theologians, the scientific orientation and the Christian
faith must be compatible.”19
Let us pursue further the
connection between Schleiermacher's view of scripture and his use of
criticism. Often the divided loyalties of believing
"would-be-historians" interfere right at this point. Fundamentalists,
for example, tend to reject any critical hypothesis that will endanger
the inerrancy of the Bible. Is Schleiermacher held captive by his
theological view of inspiration? We have already had occasion to note
that Schleiermacher felt that any quality of inspiration would not
render the texts immune from criticism. Sometimes he sounds
surprisingly conservative, with his careful attempts to safeguard the
text from the imputation of errors:
Scripture precisely as a
collection of all that was freest of error was brought together under
the Spirit's guidance.... we may well admit as regards Scripture that
among the many peripheral ideas which prevailed at the time yet were
not ultimately given a place in the Bible, but none the less belonged
to the thought processes of the sacred writers, slight traces of human
error might have been found. This does not in any way detract from the
normative authority of Scripture.20
Yet the Spirit kept the
text error-free in such a natural, provident way that the texts were
produced not by automatic writing, but by the normal process of
composition.
Nothing but utterly dead
scholasticism could try to . . . represent the written word in its
bare externality as a special product of inspiration. . . . This
being assumed it at once follows that we must reject the suggestion
that in virtue of their divine inspiration the sacred books demand a
hermeneutical and critical treatment different from one guided by the
rules which obtain elsewhere.21
Accordingly, when
Schleiermacher comes to discuss the harmonizations of parallel
accounts attempted by orthodox apologists, he attributes such
exegetical gymnastics to "a certain strict theory of the inspiration
of our New Testamentbooks,” 22 which, however, he does not
share:
we come to the conclusion
that evangelical narratives are not inspired narratives, but accounts
such as we find elsewhere. A literal application of the doctrine of
inspiration to the Gospel accounts cannot be made.23
Schleiermacher hints at a
few specific principles of criticism he feels entitled to employ in
his approach to scripture. One is the criterion of intentionality:
Such authority we do not
ascribe uniformly to every part of the Holy Scripture. . . so that
casual expressions and what are merely side-thoughts do not possess
the same degree of normativeness as belongs to whatever may at each
point be the main subject. 24
Interestingly,
Schleiermacher seems to be applying specifically to the Christian
scriptures what he had made earlier as a general statement to the
"cultured despisers of religion":
I beg you. . . not to
regard everything found in . . . the sacred sources as religion. . . .
When they speak worldly wisdom and morality, or metaphysics and
poetry, therefore, do not at once conclude that it must be forced into
religion. 25
For instance, we need not
take Christ's ascription of the Pentateuch to Moses as a normative
didactic judgment. "He simply makes use of the generally accepted
designation of the book.” 26
Secondly, (and obviously
related to the first) there is Schleiermacher's use of a sort of
"criterion of dissimilarity," i.e., any notion which Jesus and the
apostles took from common opinion, rather than explicitly from the Old
Testament or from a new revelation, is not binding. Thirdly, there is
a kind of demythologizing of what Schleiermacher calls "the forms of
prophetic thought," the mythical and the visionary. The former is "the
historical presentation of what is suprahistorical," the latter, "the
earthly presentation of what is more than earthly." 27 Such
language only gives new expression to "principles already known.” It
is important to realize that Strauss’s central difficulty with
Schleiermacher's Christoloqy lay at this very point. His own
conception of myth having been influenced by Baur and Schelling,
Strauss wanted to put the incarnation of God in Christ on
Schleiermacher's "mythical" side, i.e., a poetic way of expressing the
otherwise known philosophical truth of God-man unity. Schleiermacher
himself, of course, tried to keep the incarnation of God in Christ
(albeit somewhat demythologized) on the side of otherwise known truth,
with “peripheral” matters such as eschatology as the merely mythical
expressions.
Speaking of Strauss, it
is remarkable that Schleiermacher's criticism actually employs some of
Strauss' own favorite methods. One is inevitably reminded of The
Life of Jesus Critically Examined when Schleiermacher says, e.g.,
“we must presuppose as possible that these narratives have an
apocryphal character because they are based on such a definite
tendency.”28 Again, like Strauss, Schleiermacher suggests
that certain gospel events like the birth in Bethlehem may have
originated in imagined fulfillments of messianic prophecies.29
Also, Schleiermacher dismisses portions of the Lukan birth narrative
because of the theatrical treatment of characters and the full-blown
poetic monologues which are obviously literary devices, not historical
reminiscenses.30 Of course, Strauss becomes indignant at
the half-heartedness with which Schleiermacher applies these critical
tools, the most flagrant example being his estimate of the Gospel of
John. But we will return to his advocacy of John later.
Basically, then, it does
not seem that Schleiermacher's view of inspiration biases his
treatment of the text. But this is by no means the whole story. As we
have already noted, the real canon within the scripture is Christ
himself:
the fact that all
doctrines and precepts developed in the Christian Church have
universal authority only through their being traced back to Christ,
has no other ground than His perfect ideality in everything connected
with the power of the God-consciousness. 31
These “doctrines and
precepts" come to us through the scriptures, to be sure, but how?
All that they teach
derives from Christ; hence in Christ himself must be the original
divine bestowal of all that the Holy Scriptures contain--not,
however, as isolated particulars, by way of inspiration, but as a
single divine bestowal of knowledge out of which the particulars
evolve organically. 32 [Emphasis mine.]
Again,
The New Testament
writings are. . . a preaching come down to us, hence faith springs
from them.... but in no sense conditionally on the acceptance of a
special doctrine about these writings, as having had their origin in
special divine revelation or inspiration.33 [Emphasis
mine.]
Notice that any doctrine
Schleiermacher may have had concerning the “inspiration” of the
scriptural texts, it could not possibly have controlled his criticism,
since he had absolutely nothing to lose there. Inspiration of the
texts as texts is not the locus of normative authority at all.
Rather the authority lies with the apostles as writing witnesses of
Christ. In fact in this capacity they can even be said to be inspired.
Regarding the
eyewitnesses, he writes that the Spirit's “activity is...closely
delimited by the individual in whom He is working, with scarcely any
weakening or alteration.”34 This, obviously, is the
inspiration that counts. And though the inspired production of a
canonical text would not necessarily guarantee accuracy, the inspired
function of eye witness apostles does. As witnesses to the
God-conscious Christ, they must report Christ's deeds as accurately as
his words since the former are really presupposed by the latter
(especially, of course, in John, where. didactic dialogues follow on
the heels of related miracle stories). Besides, all of Christ's deeds
were declarative of his God-consciousness, and thus were didactic
anyway.35
If historical accuracy is
guaranteed by the eyewitness-apostle function, what about secondary,
apostolic assertions on doctrinal subjects which do not directly echo
Jesus' teaching? Highest authority, of course, does go to Jesus' own
statements as recorded by the disciples.
True, if we had evidence
to show how. . . Christ formed these. . . conceptions in His own mind,
we should endeavour with perfect confidence to appropriate His thought
for ourselves; for here too we should ascribe to Him nothing less than
a perfectly developed human power of premonition, free from all
uncertainty due to sin. 36
Second highest authority
would attach itself to apostolic statements which logically follow
from Christ's teaching (of his God-consciousness), i.e., "Statements
made by the disciples regarding a fact connected in the closest
possible way with their vocation.” Third come statements which are not
so logically entailed. Yet there is a Christological connection even
here, since surely Christ would not have chosen witnesses who could so
easily drift into error. "Christ, in choosing for Himself such
witnesses, cannot have known what is in men.”37
Thus we see a three-level
authority in scripture, none of which has to do with an "inspired"
origin or status of the texts as texts. First, the scriptures are
authoritative as factual evidence for Christ's teaching, the ultimate
authority for faith. Second, the scriptures preserve apostolic
teachings central to their vocation as witnesses to Christ. Third,
they give us trustworthy apostolic opinions: "I have no commandment of
the Lord; yet I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of
the Lord to be faithful' (1 Corinthians 7: 25). Now we are in a
position to understand just where Schleiermacher's theological
commitments affected his criticism and exegesis. His faith in
scripture is not such that it would prevent him from rejecting, e.g.,
the historicity of certain events or claims of authorship. However his
heavily-loaded view of the role of Christ's eyewitness-apostles may
make us question whether Schleiermacher lives up to his own critical
ideal of impartiality, particularly this one:
all inquiries to
ascertain the authors of the books we have, and the genuineness or the
reverse of particular passages, must pursue an unhampered course. . .
. We refuse to be perverted from the purest hermeneutical methods, as
would be the case if we knowingly preferred to put an artificial
interpretation on a passage rather than construe it in a sense
suggestive of a less pure view of Christian faith. 38
How then does
Schleiermacher conduct his criticism of the gospels? In his early
Speeches, we are not led to expect that Schleiermacher will do
them any special favors. He refers to the gospels as lithe mutilated
delineations of His life."39 But by The Christian Faith, he
is more charitable. In the course of setting forth his high regard for
eyewitness-apostolic testimony, he brings up the question of
non-apostolic, second-generation gospels:
nor can we in this
respect make any distinction between the apostolic teachings and the
evangelical narratives.... one who him self had had no experience in
the matter might yet, moved by the same impulse and the same Spirit,
put together material which he had derived from the pure and original
knowledge of others as fruitfully as an original writer could have
done. 40
So all might be given the
benefit of the doubt, at least in principle. But what happens when
Schleiermacher the historian actually goes to work? His critical
stance could not be clearer: "I always regard John... as the basic and
authentic authority and represent the other Gospels as needing careful
criticism.”41 This may come as a rather startling
statement. Modern scholarship is preponderantly against the
traditional view that the Fourth Gospel is a reliable historical
account of Jesus, even when scholars are willing to push back the
composition of this gospel to a much earlier date than has generally
been assigned to it. The principle reasons for this estimate of John's
historical value were set out clearly in Schleiermacher's own day by
Strauss and others. Briefly these include factors such as the. obvious
dramatic and poetic stylization and dogmatic stereotyping of all the
characters and their words, the vast difference in subject matter
between Jesusl discourses here and in the Synoptics, and the
similarity of doctrine and vocabulary between "John" and the Johannine
Epistles. Schleiermacher sees some of these difficulties and tries
rather implausibly to explain them (away).
Also, he seems to have
arbitrarily shifted critical grounds used on the Synoptics when he
came to John, as if to protect that gospel. For instance, the songs in
Luke's birth narratives are too stylized to represent actual memories,
but the complicated spiraling dialogues in John, with all their puns
and double meanings are somehow to be received as the verba
ipsissima Jesu. Similarly, Schleiermacher points to the choppiness
of the Synoptics and disagreements between them as a reason for
preferring John's coherent and well-ordered narrative. Yet in his
consideration of the trial of Jesus, he prefers John, this time
because its admitted "awkwardness" is a sign of genuineness.42
Why this preference for
John? It may be instructive to compare two statements from
Schleiermacher on this question. First, "I know no other rule to set
up except this: The Gospel of John is an account by an eyewitness, and
the whole Gospel was written by one man. The first three Gospels are
compilations of many accounts that earlier stood by themselves.”43
A sound enough principle, or so it seems on the surface: an eyewitness
is to be preferred over later, composite accounts. Yet the steep
critical hurdles that must be surmounted by a claim for eyewitness
authorship of this gospel are many and well known. They are certainly
no less serious than the evidence tending to disconfirm eye-witness
authorship for Matthew. Yet Schleiermacher chooses John, not Matthew,
to defend. Why? The answer is probably to be found in our second
relevant statement: "I can think of Christ's whole state of mind only
as it is described in the discourses in the Gospel of John.”44
In other words, the Christology of this gospel is most amenable to
Schleiermacher’s dogmatic preferences.
This is not to say that
in composing his Life of Jesus lectures Schleiermacher merely
used John to proof text the full-blown system of dogma outlined in
The Christian Faith. But it is impossible to ignore the many bald
faced statements to the effect that Schleiermacher's
exegetical-historical judgments were governed by what he thought was
acceptable to faith. Here a re a few examples:
since I cannot imagine an
angel appearing during a historical era, I regard them as superfluous
persons. Therefore they are to be regarded as men.45
It does not seem
appropriate to me, no matter how the idea is phrased, to speak of a
plan that Jesus made for his public activity. 46
"My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me?" . . . I cannot think of this saying as an
expression of Christ's self-consciousness. 47
I cannot possibly believe
that for a time he shared the common view that the Messiah would have
to exercise an external civil power and that he only later changed his
opinion. That would be such a fundamental error that, if I were to
ascribe it to Christ, he would have to cease to be an object of
reverence for me. 48
Similarly, Schleiermacher
cannot have his normative teacher Jesus holding opinions that he
himself would be unable to hold. This naturally affects his historical
judgment. He persuades himself that Jesus really did not believe in
Satan, the eschatological Last Judgment, or even his own preexistence.
Like Schleiermacher himself, Jesus and John knew that a truly human
being could not have memories of pre-existence.49 It is
clear that Schleiermacher the believer dominates his alter ego,
Schleiermadier the historian. This is not surprising in view of his
avowed commitment to have the two be connected and compatible in a
theological framework. Yet he did claim to be impartial in his
historical work. Thus Schleiermacher is a prime example of Van
Harvey's historian-believer dilemma.
One of
Harvey's
most helpful sections in The Historian & the Believer is that
concerned with the principle of analogy set forth by Ernst Troeltsch.
The principle of analogy becomes controversial in biblical studies
because of how it reflects on miracle stories. The principle implies
that criteria appropriate to the testing of an event claim can only be
drawn from the study of several other well-attested events of the same
kind. But a miracle is by definition extraordinary. There will be no
(or few) other well-attested parallels from which to draw appropriate
criteria for historical authentication. Thus by the very nature of
historical probability, there could be no probability predicated of a
miracle story. Even if a miracle actually occurred, it would be
unavailable to the historian.
Furthermore, since there
is quite a stock of analogous, and verifiably legendary,
miracle stories on hand, a miracle-claim will almost always be
“probably” legendary, (again, even if it actually did occur), since it
fits quite plausibly in this class of phenomena or data.
Schleiermacher's ambivalent allegiance to the principle of analogy is
illustrated by the two diametrically opposite possibilities of
understanding the following statement: “we cannot include these
[“external” miraculous] phenomena in the field of nature familiar to
us without having recourse to presuppositions such that the
trustworthiness of the whole body of records concerning Christ is
imperilled.”50 This can be read as parallel to a statement
of F. H. Bradley:
The phenomenon to be
solved is an historical phenomenon, and its solution must be an
historical solution, and to propose as a solution a fact which, when
taken as historical, contradicts the very notion of history, and
dissolves together with history both itself and every other certain
event, this is a proposition which may indeed do credit to its
author's zeal, but hardly to his prudence.51
To admit of the
miraculous would undermine the very basis the historian has for
appraising any historical source as being either genuine or spurious.
Or, Schleiermacher’s words might be taken as parallel to another of
his statements, quoted by Strauss:
Since the Gospels...
which are our sole historical sources about Christ, narrate miracle
stories about him with more or less emphasis, our judgment concerning
miracles is not injured; for otherwise our faith in the person of
Christ would be ruined, and he would become for us a mythological
person! 52
In other words, if we
naturalistically eliminated the gospel miracle-stories we would be
admitting the late and legendary character of the gospels, and thus
their unreliability.
However this enigmatic
quote is to be understood, it is clear that Schleiermacher at least
was aware of the issues included with the use of analogy in historical
understanding. Of course the outstanding example of this
is his
zealous attempt to
formulate a non-superhuman Christology. Archetypal though he was,
Jesus was in every way a normal human being, who arrived at his mature
knowledge and abilities by normal human processes.
And so we shall be able
to follow no other rule than this: everything that appears in Christ's
individuality as a life-moment appears as a deed and an action, and it
must be able to be apprehended in its historical connection in a
purely human way; but nevertheless, we conceive it as the expression
or effect of God which was internal. 53
Jesus' unadulterated
consciousness of God was tantamount to God's veritable existence in
Jesus. But, as Strauss points out, the use of such apologetic
qualifiers makes it obvious that Schleiermacher knew he was not
talking about the incarnation in any traditional sense. Strauss summed
up Schleiermacher's Christology this way: "We think of the divine in
Christ... no longer. in personal terms, no longer as a divine being
united with the human but only as an effective impulse working on it.”
54
Schleiermacher's attempt at a Christ conceivable in human terms was
dubious in its success. Schleiermacher defended the humanness of being
sinless (as he claimed Jesus was) by reminding us that Christian
theology has always considered sin to be alien to true human nature.
Strauss objected that this still did not make Schleiermacher's Christ
a man on the order of other men. In other words, this kind of Christ
is like no other man; he violates the principle of analogy. Also,
Jesus would have been the only man to have grown in knowledge without
ever making a mistake. No, in the end, Schleiermacher's Jesus is just
as inconceivable as the Christ of orthodox dogma, only this Son of Man
indeed has nowhere to lay his head, since neither naturalists nor
orthodox will accept him. Once again, Schleiermacher has been unable
to avoid the historian-believer trap: "without the principle of
analogy, it seems impossible to understand the past; if, however, one
employs the principle of analogy, it seems impossible to do justice to
the alleged uniqueness of Jesus Christ” (Harvey).55
Schleiermacher evidences a shrewd awareness of the historian's
dependence on a traceable cause-and-effect sequence. As is well known
the following argument forms at least part of Schleiermacher1s
Christological apologetic: a founder with absolute God-consciousness
is needed as a sufficient cause for the appearance of a society whose
segments experience God-consciousness in various relative ways, all
attributable to him. Schleiermacher goes on to use the principle of
analogy against itself in order to gain plausibility for his
"historical" claim that in Christ something unique and unprecedented
appeared in history. Science does in other areas recognize real
novelty, so why not here?
If science must admit the
possibility that even today matter could conglomerate and begin to
rotate in limitless space, then it must also concede that there is an
appearance in the realm of spi ritual life which likewise we can only
explain as a new creation, as the pure beginning of a higher spiritual
life-development. 56
Schleiermacher wants to
win recognition on naturalistic terms of a new and unique event, the
appearance of the archetypal Christ. There is yet another serious
difficulty here. According to the historian's principle of analogy, as
F. H. Bradley had said, unique events in the past are always
recognized as theoretically possible but they cannot be judged
probable until they are no longer unique, i.e., until such an event
occurs in our experience and provides an analogy for the first
event-claim.
Yet Schleiermacher may
not be arguing for more than recognition of the possibility of
something unique, not that the scientific parallel makes the
incarnation "probable." Schleiermacher's advocacy of the unique on
naturalistic terms brings us to our final question about his
relationship to the principle of analogy. How does he deal with
the gospel miracles, the focus of our earlier discussion of analogy?
In The Christian Faith, Schleiermacher leaves little doubt as
to his view: "It can never be necessary in the interest of religion so
to interpret a fact so that its dependence on God absolutely excludes
its being conditioned by the system of Nature.”57 In other
words, no supernatural causation.
But that does not rule
out the historical genuineness of the events reported as “signs” or
“miracles” in the gospel accounts: “since our knowledge of created
nature is continually growing, we have not the least right to
maintain that anything is impossible,” especially things like
psychosomatic healings.58 In fact, it is our experience
with analogous events that make certain gospel miracles more
historically acceptable:
The more we can
establish a comparison between Christ's way of accomplishing a given
result and that employed by other people the more we can comprehend
the acts as genuine constituents of the life of Jesus.... the less...
we can discover analogies, the less we shall be able to form a
definite idea of the account and understand the facts on which it is
based.59
In this statement
Schleiermacher goes quite a distance with the principle of analogy. He
comes awfully close to admitting that non-analogous “miracles” would
have to be rejected as forming no part of the genuine life of Jesus.
“We wish we could dispense with all the miraculous accounts in the
life of Jesus that go beyond the sphere of human life and existence.”60
Yet he does not; he can only say that such miracle-stories "have the
least value for faith. They are not necessary. Faith in Christ would
be the same if Christ had performed no miracles.”61
Schleiermacher had admitted in almost identical words that Jesus'
virgin conception and his birth in Bethlehem were both unnecessary for
faith. He seemed to take this fact as adequate license to dismiss them
both as legendary. Yet he stops short of that when it comes to
superhuman miracles. Why? The answer is not far to seek. The Gospel of
John includes both modest and extravagant miracles. One might excise
legendary miracle tales from the admittedly inferior Synoptics. But
the existence of legends must not be admitted in the account of the
eyewitness John, or "our faith in the person of Christ would be
ruined, and he would become for us a mythological person!” Once
again, Schleiermacher the consistent" believer overwhelms
Schleiermacher the historian.
To conclude, it should
now be obvious that Schleiermacher did not escape the
historian-believer trap into which Van Harvey finds so many modern
theologians having fallen. Like them, Schleiermacher is unable to
prevent his dogmatic interests from falsifying the results of his
historical research. He professes impartiality in his study of
scripture and of the life of Jesus, but he cannot stop his faith from
tailoring his version of the historical Jesus. This is no surprise
since scriptural inspiration and authority are primarily located in
Jesus anyway. And though he is aware of most of the relevant issues of
the historiographical principle of analogy, he uses it only
inconsistently. This control of factual data by religious faith is a
particularly serious lapse in Schleiermacher's case, since he had
always maintained that piety is logically independent of knowledge.