Editing Friedrich Schleiermacher (section)

== Biography ==

=== Early life and development ===
Born in [[Wrocław|Breslau]] in [[Prussian Silesia]] as the grandson of Daniel Schleiermacher, a pastor at one time associated with the [[Zionites (Germany) |Zionites]],<ref>[http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/bce/mwt_themes_470_schleiermacher.htm Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology: Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768–1834)]</ref><ref>{{Cite CE1913| url = http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15761a.htm | title = Zionites | access-date = June 18, 2014}}</ref> and the son of Gottlieb Schleiermacher, a [[Reformed Church]] chaplain in the Prussian army, Schleiermacher started his formal education in a [[Moravian Church|Moravian]] school at [[Niesky]] in [[Upper Lusatia]], and at [[Barby, Germany|Barby]] near [[Magdeburg]]. However, [[Pietism|pietistic]] Moravian theology failed to satisfy his increasing doubts, and his father reluctantly gave him permission to enter the [[University of Halle]], which had already abandoned pietism and adopted the [[rationalism|rationalist]] spirit of [[Christian Wolff (philosopher)|Christian Wolff]] and [[Johann Salomo Semler]]. As a [[theology]] student, Schleiermacher pursued an independent course of reading and neglected the study of the [[Old Testament]] and of [[Oriental languages]]. However, he attended the lectures of Semler and became acquainted with the techniques of [[historical criticism]] of the [[New Testament]], and of [[Johann Augustus Eberhard]] from whom he acquired a love of the [[philosophies|philosophy]] of [[Plato]] and [[Aristotle]]. At the same time, he studied the writings of [[Immanuel Kant]] and [[Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi]] and began to apply ideas from the Greek philosophers to a reconstruction of Kant's system.<ref name=EB1911/>

Schleiermacher developed a deep-rooted skepticism as a student and soon rejected orthodox Christianity.<ref>Michael A. G. Haykin, Liberal Protestantism, p. 3</ref>

Brian Gerrish, a scholar of the works of Schleiermacher, wrote:

{{blockquote|In a letter to his father, Schleiermacher drops the mild hint that his teachers fail to deal with those widespread doubts that trouble so many young people of the present day. His father misses the hint. He has himself read some of the skeptical literature, he says, and can assure Schleiermacher that it is not worth wasting time on. For six whole months there is no further word from his son. Then comes the bombshell. In a moving letter of 21 January 1787, Schleiermacher admits that the doubts alluded to are his own. His father has said that faith is the "regalia of the Godhead," that is, God's royal due.<ref name="A. Gerrish 1984">
B. A. Gerrish, ''A Prince of the Church: Schleiermacher and the Beginnings of Modern Theology'' (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), p. 25.</ref>}}

Schleiermacher confessed:  "Faith is the regalia of the Godhead, you say. Alas! dearest father, if you believe that without this faith no one can attain to salvation in the next world, nor to tranquility in this—and such, I know, is your belief—oh! then pray to God to grant it to me, for to me it is now lost. I cannot believe that he who called himself the Son of Man was the true, eternal God; I cannot believe that his death was a vicarious atonement."<ref name="A. Gerrish 1984"/>

=== Tutoring, chaplaincy and first works ===
[[File:Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher 2.jpg|alt=|thumb|An engraving of Schleiermacher from his early adulthood]]
At the completion of his course at Halle, Schleiermacher became the private tutor to the family of Friedrich Alexander Burggraf und Graf zu [[Dohna-Schlobitten]] (1741–1810), developing in a cultivated and aristocratic household his deep love of family and social life. Two years later, in 1796, he became chaplain to the [[Charité]] Hospital in Berlin. Lacking scope for the development of his preaching skills, he sought mental and spiritual satisfaction in the city's cultivated society and in intensive philosophical studies, beginning to construct the framework of his philosophical and religious system. Here  Schleiermacher became acquainted with art, literature, science and general culture. He was strongly influenced by [[German Romanticism]], as represented by his friend [[Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel]]. That interest is borne out by his ''Confidential Letters on Schlegel's Lucinde'' as well as by his seven-year relationship (1798–1805) with Eleonore Christiane Grunow (née Krüger) (1769/1770–1837), the wife of Berlin clergyman August Christian Wilhelm Grunow (1764–1831).<ref name=EB1911/>

Though his ultimate principles remained unchanged, he placed more emphasis on human emotion and the imagination. Meanwhile, he studied [[Spinoza]] and [[Plato]], both of whom were important influences. He became more indebted to [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]] though they differed on fundamental points. He sympathised with some of Jacobi's positions, and took some ideas from [[Johann Gottlieb Fichte|Fichte]] and [[Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling|Schelling]]. The literary product of that period of rapid development was his influential book, ''Reden über die Religion'' ([[On Religion|''On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers'']]), and his "new year's gift" to the new century, the ''Monologen'' (''Soliloquies'').<ref name=EB1911/>

In the first book, Schleiermacher gave religion an unchanging place among the divine mysteries of human nature, distinguished it from what he regarded as current caricatures of religion and described the perennial forms of its manifestation. That established the programme of his subsequent theological system. In the ''Monologen'', he revealed his ethical manifesto in which he proclaimed his ideas on the freedom and independence of the spirit and on the relationship of the mind to the sensual world, and he sketched his ideal of the future of the individual and of society.<ref name=EB1911/>

=== Pastorship ===
From 1802 to 1804, Schleiermacher served as a pastor of a small [[Reformed churches|Reformed church]] in the [[Province of Pomerania (1653–1815)|Pomeranian]] town of [[Słupsk|Stolp]]. He relieved Friedrich Schlegel entirely of his nominal responsibility for the translation of Plato, which they had together undertaken (vols. 1–5, 1804–1810; vol. 6, Repub. 1828). Another work, ''Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre'' [Outlines of a Critique of the Doctrines of Morality to date] (1803), the first of his strictly critical and philosophical productions, occupied him; it is a criticism of all previous moral systems, including those of Kant and Fichte: Plato's and Spinoza's find most favour. It contends that the tests of the soundness of a moral system are the completeness of its view of the laws and ends of human life as a whole and the harmonious arrangement of its subject-matter under one fundamental principle. Although it is almost exclusively critical and negative, the book announces Schleiermacher's later view of moral science, attaching prime importance to a ''Güterlehre'', or doctrine of the ends to be obtained by moral action.<ref name=EB1911/> The obscurity of the book's style and its negative tone prevented immediate success.

=== Professorship ===
In 1804, Schleiermacher moved to become university preacher and professor of [[theology]] to the [[University of Halle]], where he remained until 1807. He quickly obtained a reputation as professor and preacher and exercised a powerful influence in spite of charges of atheism, Spinozism and pietism. In this period, he began his lectures on hermeneutics (1805–1833) and he also wrote his dialogue the ''Weihnachtsfeier'' (''Christmas Eve: Dialogue on the Incarnation'', 1806), which represents a midway point between his ''Speeches'' and his great dogmatic work, ''Der christliche Glaube'' (''The Christian Faith''); the speeches represent phases of his growing appreciation of Christianity as well as the conflicting elements of the theology of the period. After the [[Battle of Jena]], he returned to Berlin (1807), was soon appointed pastor of the [[Holy Trinity Church (Berlin)|Trinity Church]] and, on 18 May 1809, married Henriette von Willich (née von Mühlenfels; 1788–1840), the widow of his friend [[Ehrenfried von Willich|Johann Ehrenfried Theodor von Willich]] (1777–1807).<ref name= EB1911/>

At the foundation of the [[Humboldt University of Berlin|University of Berlin]] (1810), in which he took a prominent part, Schleiermacher obtained a theological chair and soon became secretary to the [[Prussian Academy of Sciences]]. He took a prominent part in the reorganization of the Prussian church and became the most powerful advocate of the union of the [[Lutheran]] and Reformed divisions of German Protestantism, paving the way for the [[Prussian Union (Evangelical Christian Church)|Prussian Union]] of Churches (1817). The 24 years of his professional career in Berlin began with his short outline of theological study (''Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums'', 1811) in which he sought to do for theology what he had done for religion in his ''Speeches''.<ref name=EB1911/>

While he preached every Sunday, Schleiermacher also gradually took up in his lectures in the university almost every branch of theology and philosophy: [[New Testament]] exegesis, introduction to and interpretation of the New Testament, [[ethics]] (both philosophic and Christian), [[dogma]]tic and practical theology, church history, history of philosophy, [[psychology]], [[dialectics]] ([[logic]] and [[metaphysics]]), [[politics]], [[pedagogy]], [[aesthetics]]<ref name=EB1911/> and [[translation]].

In politics, Schleiermacher supported liberty and progress, and in the period of reaction that followed the overthrow of [[Napoleon]], he was charged by the Prussian government with "demagogic agitation" in conjunction with the patriot [[Ernst Moritz Arndt]].<ref name=EB1911/>

At the same time, Schleiermacher prepared his chief theological work, ''Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche'' (1821–1822; 2nd ed., greatly altered, 1830–1831; 6th ed., 1884; ''The Christian faith according to the principles of the evangelical church''). Its fundamental principle is that the source and the basis of dogmatic theology are the religious feeling, the sense of absolute dependence on God as communicated by [[Jesus]] through the church, not the creeds or the letter of Scripture or the rationalistic understanding. The work is therefore simply a description of the facts of religious feeling, or of the inner life of the soul in its relations to God, and the inward facts are looked at in the various stages of their development and presented in their systematic connection. The aim of the work was to reform Protestant theology, to put an end to the unreason and superficiality of both supernaturalism and rationalism, and to deliver [[religion]] and [[theology]] from dependence on perpetually changing systems of [[philosophy]].<ref name=EB1911/>

Though the work added to the reputation of its author, it aroused the increased opposition of the theological schools it was intended to overthrow, and at the same time, Schleiermacher's defence of the right of the church to frame its own liturgy in opposition to the arbitrary dictation of the monarch or his ministers brought him fresh troubles. He felt isolated although his church and his lecture-room continued to be crowded.<ref name=EB1911/>

Schleiermacher continued with his translation of Plato and prepared a new and greatly-altered edition of his ''Christlicher Glaube'', anticipating the latter in two letters to his friend [[Gottfried Christian Friedrich Lücke|Gottfried Lücke]] (in the ''Studien und Kritiken'', 1829) in which he defended his theological position generally and his book in particular against opponents on both the right and the left.<ref name= EB1911/>

The same year, Schleiermacher lost his only son, Nathaniel (1820–1829), a blow that he said "drove the nails into his own coffin", but he continued to defend his theological position against [[Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg|Hengstenberg]]'s party and the rationalists Daniel Georg Konrad von Cölln (1788–1833) and David Schulz (1779–1854), protesting against both subscription to the ancient creeds and the imposition of a new rationalistic formulary.<ref name=EB1911/>

=== Death ===
[[File:Schleiermacher-Strasbourg.jpg|alt=|thumb|A statue of Schleiermacher at [[Palais Universitaire, Strasbourg|Palais Universitaire]] in [[Strasbourg]]]]
Schleiermacher died at 65 of [[pneumonia]] on 12 February 1834.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Knox|first=John S.|title=Friedrich Schleiermacher: A Theological Precursor of Postmodernity?|url= https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/friedrich-schleiermacher-a-theological-precursor-of-postmodernity/ |access-date=2020-10-15|website= Church Life Journal|date=November 23, 2018 }}</ref>