LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

LTR IX (Academic Year 1996-97) 13-24
SCHLEIERMACHER’S DOCTRINE OF BAPTISM
AS AN EXAMPLE OF HIS DIALECTIC OF
EXPERIENCE AND HISTORY
C. Robert Hogg, Jr
In his work on Protestant theology in the nineteenth century, Karl Barth
noted that the theology of F. D. E. Schleiermacher moves between two
poles: experience and history. 1 We may expand this insight by saying that
history is the sphere of the church as the believing community. The church
played a very important function in the theology of Schleiermacher. The
church is the gathering of those who have experienced the influence of the
Redeemer in their lives. Indeed, even the Scripture is normative only
inasmuch as it is the first statement of the church’s experience of the
Redeemer. It does not possess authority intrinsically. 2 And when the term
“church” is used here, it does not have reference to some denomination or
other (all of which will pass away); but as stated above, the term “church”
refers to all believers in Christ the Redeemer. History is one pole of
Schleiermacher’s thought because it is the sphere or arena in which the
individual relates to others who have experienced the forgiving influence of
Jesus the Redeemer.
The other pole of Schleiermacher’s thought is experience. Experience is
the sphere of God as the Being corresponding to man’s feeling of absolute
dependence. In Christianity it is, more specifically, the sphere of the
individual’s experience of Jesus as Redeemer. Schleiermacher’s experiences
in Pietism and his involvement in the early history of the Romantic
movement in Germany both played key roles in the formation of his thought
in this area. 3
The common factor in both poles of Schleiermacher’s thought is the
individual; more specifically, the individual’s experience of the feeling of
absolute dependence (§1-61 of The Christian Faith); the individual’s
experience of the fragmentary nature of this experience in himself, or sin
(§62-85); and the individual’s experience of the restoration of this feeling
1 Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Valley Forge, PA: Judson
Press, 1973) 450.
2 Note the remarkable statement in F. D. E. Schleiermacher (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1976) The Christian Faith §128.3: “Hence throughout the whole of the foregoing
exposition of faith we have assumed no more than faith itself, present in a feeling of need …
and Scripture we have adduced only as expressing the same faith in detail … .”
3 Martin Redeker’s Schleiermacher: Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1973) is an excellent introduction and overview.