LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

22 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW IX
But if children cannot believe, what then happens to them if they die
He says, “… it is only if we ascribe magical powers to baptism that we can
believe that it confers a claim relating to the life after death quite
irrespectively of its influence on this life.” 34 For Schleiermacher there is no
difference between the child who never was baptised and the child who was
baptised but did not live to renew his baptismal covenant. Infant Baptism is
a bond between the infant and the Kingdom, but it does not have magical
power to make them believe.
SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE
One cannot fail to be impressed by the inner consistency and systematic
nature of Schleiermacher’s presentation of Christianity. His entire
presentation, also in the doctrine of Baptism, moves between the poles of
experience and history, and is rooted in the notion that faith necessarily
involves self-consciousness.
In addition, fairness demands that we acknowledge
Schleiermacher’s own motivation for re-working the traditional corpus
doctrinae in this radically new way. First and foremost, he sought to be an
apologist for Christianity—one who explained the faith to those around him
in terms which they would understand. Hence the title of his first book,
Speeches on Religion to its Cultured Despisers.
With these considerations in mind, let us reflect on Schleiermacher’s
presentation of Baptism. In particular, it is worth pondering his notion that
faith necessarily involves self-consciousness. Schleiermacher says, “… this
term [i.e., ‘faith’] always signifies, in our present province, the certainty
which accompanies a state of the higher self-consciousness.” 35 Indeed, near
the very beginning of The Christian Faith he says:
§3. The piety which forms the basis of all ecclesiastical communions
is, considered purely in itself, neither a Knowing nor a Doing, but a
modification of Feeling, or of immediate self-consciousness. 36
The view that Schleiermacher espouses has a long history; already in the
public ministry of Jesus the disciples rebuked mothers who brought their
children to Jesus for His blessing. How shocked the disciples must have
been when Jesus told them that the Kingdom of God belonged to children
(ta. paidi,a), and that children are the paradigmatic recipients of that
Kingdom! Nor was this utterance isolated; on another occasion He said that
34 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith 637.
35 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith 68.
36 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith 5. Emphasis original.