LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

HOGG: SCHLEIERMACHER’S DOCTRINE OF BAPTISM 15
things—baptism and regeneration.” 6 This view would be true in an ideal
sense, but according to Schleiermacher it is never realised in the real world.
If in comparing Baptism and regeneration we are forced to give priority
to one or the other, we must yield priority to Baptism as that which
conditions regeneration. This is because the consciousness of regeneration is
subject to the ups and downs of the Christian’s sanctification. Baptism,
however, is not subject to such ups and downs, but stands as a “given”, and
as an act of the church’s will.
In addition to being an act of the church’s will, Baptism is that act
whereby the church receives the individual into its fellowship. Here
Schleiermacher stresses the fellowship of the church as opposed to that of
the world. Of the church he says: “the Church only confronts us as
something growing out of the world and gradually, of itself, expelling the
world … .” 7 Thus the church is an entity distinct from, and set over against,
the world. And what does fellowship with this body involve
Here certainly we have a self-consciousness which has to be grasped in
thought, namely, the antithesis which is established in our fellow-feeling
and sympathy between the previous inclusion of all in the common state of
sinfulness, and the new differentiation between those under grace and
others. 8
So, while like the entire world the church shares in the common state of
sinfulness, which is defined as God-forgetfulness (Proposition 11.2 of The
Christian Faith), the church also experiences the grace of God, which is to
say it experiences Christ as the Redeemer (§§100-101 of The Christian
Faith).
It is this fellowship, the fellowship of the church as the group of people
under the influence of the Redeemer and acted upon by His influence, that a
person joins when he is baptised. Added to his painful self-consciousness of
his God-forgetfulness is the transforming influence of the grace of God in
Jesus the Redeemer, and in Him the restoration of man’s Godconsciousness.
Thus, considered under the sphere of the church, Baptism is
the act of will whereby the church receives the individual into its fellowship.
But Schleiermacher takes pains to indicate that Baptism is not just the
act of the church; it is also “the channel of the divine justifying activity”. 9
For that which distinguishes the church from the world is precisely this, that
the church is also where God works. As he says in Proposition 124 of The
Christian Faith:
6 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith 625.
7 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith 529.
8 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith 529.
9 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith 619.