Section 1-31b

A supposed incidental character of this feeling just as little follows from the fact that individuals positioned in the midst of a fairly developed religious life take no part in it. This is so, for they themselves would have to admit that the matter itself is not so alien to them that they were not seized by such a feeling in certain elements of life, even though they might also have designated it by some name or other that does not reflect honor on them. Instead, only if someone could prove either that this feeling would not have a higher value than sensory feeling, or prove that yet another feeling of equal value would exist besides this feeling, could one be warranted in holding it to be a merely incidental form of self-consciousness, one that would indeed perhaps be found at all times among some people but that would still not be counted toward the completed status of human nature in all.³

Now, the account that we summarize here is required by the species-consciousness⁵ that indwells every human being. This consciousness finds satisfaction only in one’s stepping out from the narrow confines of one’s own personal existence⁶ and in one’s taking up the given facts of others’ personal existence into one’s own. This process is carried out in the following way. At a certain point of its building strength or ripeness, everything of an internal nature also becomes something external and as such becomes perceptible to the senses of others. In this fashion feeling, viewed as the mind and heart’s self-contained state of being determined, nevertheless does not bear the intention of existing exclusively in and of itself. This is true of it simply as feeling and solely by virtue of one’s species-consciousness, just as would be true, on the other hand, as it passes over into thinking or doing, which is not our present concern. Rather, this feeling, existing exclusively in and of itself, originally and also without any distinct aim or reference, comes to be something external by means of facial expression, gesture, tone of voice, and indirectly by means of the spoken word; in this way, moreover, for others it becomes a manifestation of what occurs internally.7

This unadorned articulation⁸ of feeling totally adheres to one’s being moved internally.⁹ It can also very definitely be distinguished from every instance of doing that it may pass into and that issues from somewhere else and, more likely than not, is breaking loose from it. Indeed, initially it arouses in others only a mere notion of the mental state of the person expressing it. This notion, however, then makes a transition into lively imitation by virtue of species-consciousness. Further, the more the person perceiving these signs is ready to transfer into the same state—in part, for general reasons and, in part, on account of a greater liveliness of the expression¹⁰ and a closer affinity with the expression—the more readily will this state be reproduced by means of such imitation. Based on experience, anyone must be conscious of this transmission of feeling from both sides, that of the one expressing a feeling and that of the one taking notice of it. Thus, anyone must also concede that one constantly finds oneself, in harmony with one’s own conscience, within a manifold community of feeling, viewed as a state consonant with one’s nature. Consequently, one must also concede that if such a community had not existed already, one would have joined in its founding.

As concerns the feeling of absolute dependence in particular, anyone would also know that it has first been awakened in oneself, on that same pathway, through the communicative and stimulative power of utterance.

3. The claim that this community is, first of all, uneven and fluid follows from what has just been stated. This is the case for two reasons. First, individuals are unevenly similar to one another everywhere, both as concerns the strength of their religious stirrings and in relation to that region of sensory self-consciousness within which God-consciousness most readily unites in each one. Second, thus the religious stirrings of any one person have a greater affinity with those of some persons than with those of other persons, and therefore a community of religious feeling also proceeds more readily with the first group than with the latter group. If the difference between the two is very great, one will then find oneself to be attracted to the first set of persons and repelled by the others. Yet, it is not as if one were repelled from the start or absolutely, so that one could not enter into any community of feeling with them whatsoever. Rather, one is repelled by the others only insofar as one is drawn more strongly to the first set than to them, thus in such a way that one could have community of feeling with them too if the first set were not present or in circumstances wherein one were placed especially close to them. That is to say, it would be hard to find any person in whom one could not recognize any religious state of mind and heart 11 whatsoever as being to a certain degree similar to one’s own and whom one would discern to be completely incapable of stirring or being stirred by oneself. Yet, the more stable a given community of feeling is taken to be in every instance—that is, the more closely the like-stimulated elements of life within it follow upon each other and the more readily the resultant stirring is taken to be reproduced there—the lower is the number of persons who can share in it. However far apart we may choose to imagine the end points of this continuum to be between the most intimate community of feeling and the most weakly formed, the result would be that those who would experience the most paltry and feeble religious stirrings could sustain a most exactly defined religious community of feeling only with those who are just as little capable of being stirred by, or in a position to imitate, the utterances of those whose religious stirrings arise in elements of a kind that they themselves can never enter into. A similar relationship exists between persons whose piety is more pure—that is, in that in every element of life one quite definitely distinguishes the religious content of one’s self-consciousness from the sensory content to which it is referred—and persons whose piety is less pure—that is, in that it is still very much entangled in sensory self-consciousness.

Now, the interval between these two end points we also then consider to be filled with any number of intermediate stages for every human being, and precisely this array is what is meant by the “fluidity” of such a community.

4. This is how the exchange of religious self-consciousness appears to us when we consider the relationship of isolated human beings to each other. However, if we look at the actual situation of human beings, what nevertheless presents itself is also comprised of well-established relationships within this fluid community, a community which, strictly taken, is on this account without borders. That is, in the first place, as soon as human development has come to the point of forming a household, even if this household is regulated only to a certain extent, in its internal life every family will also set up a community of religious self-consciousness such that it has distinct boundaries with respect to what lies outside it. This is so, in that family members are bound to a distinctive way of life, in part, by a distinct solidarity and affinity and, in part, also by the sameness of occasions in which religious 12 stirrings are tied into the mix. As a result, outsiders can have only an incidental, ephemeral part in its life, thus only a very uneven part in it as well.

Now, we also find, however, that families tend not to be completely isolated. Rather, they also exist en masse in distinctly limited associations, bound together by language and customs that they hold in common, knowingly or by presentiment. In this way, moreover, a distinct religious community then comes to be settled among them. This occurs, on the one hand, due to the predominant formal similarity among the particular families themselves. It occurs, on the other hand, in such a way that one family that has become especially receptive to religious stirrings has gained predominance as the one chiefly exercising self-initiated activity in this regard, and the other families present to this family only receptivity to their influence, being scarcely come of age, as it were. The latter process occurs, for example, in situations where there is an hereditary priesthood. We designate every such relatively self-contained community of piety by the term “church.”¹³ The reason is that, within distinct boundaries such a community forms an ever-renewing circulation of religious self-consciousness and a propagation of religious stirrings ordered and disposed within those same boundaries, with the result that telling which individuals belong to it and which do not can come to be recognized in some fashion.

Postscript. This would be the best place to explain why, based on our standpoint, the term “religion”¹⁴ tends to be used here in a sense different from customary usages, though, as far as possible, in our own circle we do not utilize the term except in a cursory fashion and only for variety’s sake.

First of all, then, if one is speaking of a distinct religion, this always happens with reference to a distinct church. Moreover, in general terms one takes this to mean the whole of the religious states of mind and heart that underlie such a community and that, accordingly, can be recognized as identical among its members. All of this is in keeping with its particular content, as it can be expounded by deliberating on both the religious stirrings and the reflections on them that are in evidence there. Now, connected with this usage is the fact that any individual’s susceptibility to being stirred by a given religious community varies in degree, as does the effect of an individual’s action upon the community. Thus, the part an individual plays in the circulation and propagation of religious stirrings is designated by the term “religiosity.”15

Now, suppose that one wanted to say “natural religion,” just as people say “Christian religion” and “Muhammadan religion.” In that case, one would, in turn, be abrogating the given rule and would be confusing language usage, because there is no such thing as a natural church and thus also no distinct environment in which one could inquire as to the features of natural religion. Suppose, in turn, that someone chose to use the term “religion plain and simple.”¹⁶ Then again, this term could not refer to any such whole. Rather, the only thing that could fittingly be understood by it would be the general tendency of the human mind and heart to produce religious stirrings, yet their movement outward and thus their striving for community would also always be implicated in them from the outset. That is, the possibility of particular religions would have to be considered but without thereby making a distinction between fluid and circumscribed communities. That tendency alone—that is, in general terms, the religious susceptibility to being stirred on the part of an individual soul—would then be religiosity plain and simple.

Rarely, however, have these various terms been properly sorted out in their actual usage.

Now, to the extent that the makeup of an individual’s religious states of mind and heart is not exactly identical with what has been recognized to be homogenous within a given community, customarily that purely personal factor, considered in accordance with its content, is termed “subjective religion,” whereas what is held in common is termed “objective religion.” This language usage too becomes highly troublesome as soon as a large church is split up into any number of smaller church communities but without completely surrendering its unity—as is the case among us today. That is to say, what is distinctive of the smaller church communities would then also be subjective religion in comparison with what is recognized to be held in common within the church at large. Likewise, the church at large would then also be objective religion in comparison with what is distinctive in its particular member church communities.

1. Ed. note: The simpler phrase here, tierähnlichen Verworrenheit des Bewuβtseins, refers to the subject-object entanglement (Verworrenheit) discussed in §5.

2. Ed. note: On rather core “new revelations” occurring in a religion only when the desire arises within it “to discover something of what is divine as yet unknown [or at least not clearly understood] within itself,” see OR (1821) V, supplemental note 11; also CF §10.P.S., §§12, 24, and 93.2.

3. Vollständigkeit der menschlichen Natur in allen. Ed. note: See §5n39. In both editions of CF (1821 and 1830), this first subsection of this proposition presents presuppositions and reasons for accepting them that also underlie all editions of On Religion (1799, 1806, 1821). Just as §§3–6 represent, in an introduction to a system of faith-doctrine, content similar to that in the second discourse there, though in the somewhat different language that befits Christian monotheism, so too §6 forms a transition to §§7–10, which represent here content on the communal aspect of all Christian life similar to that in the third discourse. In both instances, the lengthy notes Schleiermacher appended to each discourse in the 1821 edition of On Religion are also to be regarded as presupposed here. Cf. §3n2 and §5n4.

4. Ed. note: In referring to a wissenschaftliche Sittenlehre here, Schleiermacher denotes that very broad field of human (vs. physical) sciences. This field includes more philosophical investigation (philosophical ethics) and nonphilosophical inquiry that is “scientific” in a more specialized sense. Schleiermacher tends to use both Ethik and Sittenlehre for the broader field and to use Sittenlehre also for any intensive or systematic account of Sitte (custom, morals), including the nonphilosophical field he called “Christian ethics.”

5. Gattungsbewuβtsein. Ed. note: That is, the consciousness every human being has of belonging to the human species, to humanity as a whole. See also §§60.2 and 121.3 on human “species-consciousness” as “consciousness of humankind,” in the CF and OR indexes, respectively. Cf. esp. OR (1821) II, supplemental note 14 regarding how religious emotions like “humility” within a Christian community of faith combine one’s self-consciousness as to one’s being within that “organic whole” with one’s possessing “distinctive” contributions to that whole. Thus, any mediatory role is seen to be humbly present to some degree in all other members, this “in light of” that “higher mediatorship” which the Redeemer gives one. Here Schleiermacher is speaking of mediation of a kind that combines what is “most familiar” in human nature with what is “most foreign or repugnant.” The positive “counterpart” to humility in one’s feeling contains the perceptive consciousness that each individual is “indispensable to the rest.”

6. Persönlichkeit. Ed. note: In the German usage uniformly adopted by Schleiermacher, this term does not carry the connotation of having a “personality”; rather, it simply denotes one’s sheer existence as an individual human person. He also sometimes refers to social entities as “persons” in this sense.

7. Offenbarung des Inneren. Ed. note: At some places in the present work this word is taken to mean “revelation,” at other places “manifestation,” as here.

8. Diese bloβe Äusserung.

9. Innerlichen Bewegtheit.

10. Äusserung. Ed. note: This same word is used here for all the various steps of “expression” that lie along the pathway from (a) internal “articulation” of feeling (of what Schleiermacher occasionally calls Affekt—cf. §3n15), through (b) the various signs mentioned, which further make that feeling externally perceptible to others’ senses and thereby discernible to them, this depending on their varied degrees of readiness, to (c) “utterance” through signs such as tone or inflection, gesture, speech-acts, and use of actual words to convey meaning.

11. Gemütszustand.

12. Ed. note: In every other instance here, the adjective has been frommen; here it is religiösen, no doubt because now we are being asked to imagine communities that are at least incipiently institutions.

13. Kirche. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note reads: “This extension of the term ‘church’ is necessary for scientific usage” (Thönes, 1873).

14. Religion. Ed. note: In his marginal note, Schleiermacher notes that for isolated entities the term “religion” “is not at all adopted for usage in this book, because in them piety and community tend to be in competition with each other” (Thönes, 1873).

15. Religiosität. Ed. note: As usual, in these paragraphs “religious” has translated fromm, the meaning of which in English is much more often and more accurately conveyed by “religious” than by the narrower, more likely pejorative word “pious” (meaning self-righteous in that narrower sense and referring more often just to practices in the somewhat broader sense).

16. Religion schlechthin. Ed. note: As an alternative to this more colloquial expression, one could say “religion in the absolute sense”—that is, pure and unalloyed. The concept “feeling of absolute dependence” (schlechthinige Abhängigkeitsgefühl) bears the same meaning.

17. Ed. note: The terms examined here are all nouns. Comparatively, the use of the noun “religion” has a more long-lasting usage, albeit an equally indefinite one, in English than does “piety” for the same objects. Hence, in this translation the noun Frömmigkeit, which Schleiermacher often uses as an alternative for Religion, is always translated “piety,” but the adjective fromm is translated “religious.”

§7. The various distinctly circumscribed religious communities that have gained some prominence in history are related to each other, in part, as different stages of development and, in part, as different kinds.¹

1. Religious community that is formed as household worship within a particular family cannot very well be regarded as one that has gained historical prominence, because it is hidden within an inner circle. The transition from that situation to an actually historical phenomenon, however, is also often very gradual. The beginning of this process already lies in the expanded style of life to be found in the patriarchal household and in the enduring association among the families of sons and grandchildren living near each other. The two basic forms of church mentioned earlier (§6.4) can originally unfold on this basis alone.² If one compares a number of these two transitional configurations with each other, one can see that the two different forms of church can already be contained in them, at least the kernel of them.

Now, first, as concerns the different stages of development, gaining historical prominence 3 is itself already a higher stage and stands above simple, isolated household worship, just as the civic⁴ situation, even in its most incomplete forms, stands above the formless gatherings of people in the pre-civic situation. Yet, in no way does this differentiation betoken the structure or even the compass of the community itself. Rather, it concerns the makeup of its actual underlying religious states of mind and heart, in each case as that state is elaborated to a point of clarity in conscious contrast with the motions of sensory self-consciousness.⁵ Now, on the one hand, this development is also dependent on the overall development of mental powers,⁶ with the result that already, on this account alone, many a community cannot continue to exist any longer in its original distinctive mode of existence. For example, many forms of idol-worship, even if they lay claim to a high degree of mechanical skill, do not tolerate even a moderate scientific and artistic formation and would have to perish therein. Thus, on the other hand, sometimes this development also simply continues, in turn, on its own path despite these influences. Moreover, it bears no contradiction that, within a given collectivity, piety will develop to its highest potential while other mental functions of life⁷ lag far behind.

2. Yet, both of these differentiations—that into developmental stages and that into species or kinds 8—are, to be sure, not to be so firmly held to or so confidently arrived at here as they would be in the domain of nature.⁹ This is also the case both generally within the historical domain and in that of so-called moral persons.¹⁰ That is to say, here we do not have to do with unchanging formations that are constantly reproduced in the same fashion. Rather, each community of an individual nature is also capable of a greater or lesser development within its species-character.

Now, suppose that one were to imagine that just as an individual can indeed move from a more deficient religious community into a higher one, so too along this pathway a particular community could develop beyond its original stage without losing its species-character. Suppose, moreover, that this change could happen in any religious community equally well. In that case, naturally the concept of stages would then recede entirely, for the final instance at the lower stage and the first instance at the higher stage could form a constant interconnection, and at that point one would be more correct to say that each species would be formed upward through a series of developments from an incomplete to a more nearly complete status. Conversely, suppose that one posits that just as we can also say of an individual, in a certain sense, that one would become a new person by passing over into a higher form of religion, so too the species-character of a given community would have to fade away if it bore the intention of rising to a higher stage. In that case, even within the same stage, if its internal development were to continue along that route, the species-character of a religious community would then become unsettled and thus generally unsustainable; but then the stages would be all the more emphatically and sharply distinguished.

However, the notion that at the very least Christian piety is supposed to relate to most other formations of piety as true to false,12 a claim indeed heard frequently enough, does not comport with our proposition. This is so, for if other religions at the same stage as Christianity were false throughout, how could they bear so much that is similar to Christianity as being at that stage calls for? Moreover, if religions that occupy lower stages were comprised of pure errors, how would it be possible for people to pass over from them into Christianity, since receptivity for the higher truth of Christianity could, nevertheless, be grounded only in truth, and not in falsehood? Rather, underlying the entire presentation of doctrine that is being introduced here is the maxim both that error never occurs anywhere in and of itself but always exists only in relation to what is true, and that error will never have been completely understood until one has found its connection with truth and with whatever that is true to which the error is affixed.¹³ The apostle’s expressions are also in accord with this understanding when he depicts even polytheism as a perversion of the primary consciousness of God that underlies it and when he finds a dim, if foreboding, presentiment¹⁴ of the true God in some evidence of a longing for God, albeit one as yet unsatisfied, in all those fictive images¹⁵ he saw in Athens.¹⁶

1. Ed. note: In a marginal note, Schleiermacher states: “The principle of combination and distinction. Both stages and kinds are everywhere to be found. Compare the domains of the state and of the arts, and in the physical domain compare the complete and incomplete development of animals and plants and their species” (Thönes, 1873).

2. Ed. note: Here Schleiermacher’s marginal note explains: “The basic forms are these: aristocratic and democratic” (Thönes, 1873).

3. Ed. note: Here Schleiermacher’s note provides the following definition: “Historical prominence occurs when communal piety comes to have a public life” (Thönes, 1873).

4. Ed. note: The term bürgerlich conjures historic images of places offering relative safety, such as castles (Bürgen) and towns, each with its surrounding agricultural provisions, themselves the progenitors of the city (civitas).

5. Bewegungen des sinnlichen Selbstbewuβtseins. Ed. note: Gemütsbewegungen, rarely used by Schleiermacher, refers to emotions or affections (the latter from affectus, referring to that which makes an effect). In his usage, Affekt refers to the actions of the senses within a person, at the lowest and middle levels of self-consciousness, which he calls “sensory self-consciousness” (cf. §5.1). Affection refers to the result of one’s being affected in this way. Wahrnehmung refers to “sense perception.” Gefühl refers to feelings produced in sensory consciousness, notably at the middle level, then also at the highest level, which latter level he calls basically religious or “immediate self-consciousness.”

In turn, Gemütserregungen refers to stirrings of the psyche (soul, spirit), or mind and heart (intellect and feelings), differentially associated with both feelings and perceptions (Anschauungen), which are intentional at those same two levels of consciousness, higher than the lowest, purely animal level of sensory consciousness. The three levels he calls “general” ones, there being potentially many admixtures in and between each general level. For him, the Psyche, viewed as embodied mind and heart, is full of motions, of many kinds and at several levels. See §§5–6 here and his Psychology lectures.

6. Ed. note: The concept geistige Kräfte refers to all the internal movements, forces, functions, and active capacities of the human psyche or Geist. Hence, it refers to all that Schleiermacher refers to as stirrings (Erregungen) and other motions of one’s Gemüth (here translated “mind and heart,” to avoid a purely intellectual connotation of mental capacities or functions).

7. Ed. note: This phrase translates geistige Lebensfunktionen.

8. Gattungen oder Arten. Ed. note: In the biological sciences of that time, as subsequently, Gattung referred to a “species” and Art to a “genus” (kind); hence, these two terms are used in the translation here from this point on, though for most purposes “kind” is the only category Schleiermacher ordinarily needs, as will become evident.

9. Ed. note: That is, physical nature (Natur) as contrasted with human historical nature, within which humans are inseparably mind-body, according to his psychology.

10. Ed. note: In Schleiermacher’s ethics moralischen Person is a term applied to individual social organizations.

11. Ed. note: The phrase ausschlieβenden Vortrefflichkeit does not, as such, necessarily imply superiority in every respect, for which a number of other German terms could be utilized, notably Erhabenkeit, Vorrang, Überlegenheit. Rather, it opens the way to comparative investigation of certain aspects in other forms that can be shown to be similar or different in varying degrees, e.g., of those at the monotheistic stage of faith or communal life (cf. §8.4 below).

12. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note compares and contrasts the claim of “exclusive excellence” to that of “exclusive truth” (Thönes, 1873). See also §8.3 and OR (1821) II, supplementary note 8 on “the contrast between true and false religion” and OR (1821) V on “religion in the religions.”

13. Ed. note: Schleiermacher established similar maxims in his lectures on dialectic, to the effect that one is to expect truth in every error and error in every truth, that there is no absolute error, and that it can be very difficult to distinguish what is false from what is simply incomplete truth. See his 1811 Dialectic (Tice), 55–59 and passim; Brief Outline §209n; and on “the Spirit of truth” in Christian experience above in §§116.3 and 153–55. For another example and further explanation of the status of a maxim among many kinds of rules or principles, see §100n21. On similarity among all religions, see OR (1821) II, supplementary note 1, and OR (1821) V.

14. Ed. note: dunkle Ahndung is translated “dim, if foreboding, presentiment,” whereas Ahnung is always translated “presentiment.” Cf. §159n3.

15. Dichtungen. Ed. note: Notably “idols” and “representations by both … art and imagination” (Acts 17:16 and 29). In these passages the German Bible has it that Paul saw the city so gar abgöttlich and of various Bildern (“so greatly idolatrous” and full of graven “images”), which together could suggest the word Schleiermacher uses here.

16. Rom. 1:21ff. and Acts 17:27–30. Ed. note: Sermon on Acts 17:22–31, “On the Relationship of That Which All Religious People Have in Common with One Another to What Is Distinctively Christian,” 23rd Sunday in Trinity, Nov. 18, 1810, in SW II.7 (1836), 528–37.

§8. Those formations of piety in which all religious states of mind and heart express the dependence of all that is finite on one supreme and infinite being—that is, the monotheistic formations—occupy the highest stage, and all others are related to them as subordinate stages; from these subordinate formations human beings are destined to move into those higher ones.1

1. In general terms, we posit actual idol-worship, also called fetishism, and polyolatry as such subordinate stages. The first stage, in turn, is situated deep underneath the second stage. The idol-worshiper could very well have only one idol without this monolatry having any similarity whatsoever with monotheism, for in such a case one would be ascribing to the idol only a single influence on a restricted area of objects or changes, beyond either of which one’s own interest and any feeling one shares with others would not extend. Adding further idols would be only an incidental matter, ordinarily resting as it does on the experience of an incapacity in the original idol but altogether lacking in any expectation of completeness thereby. Rather, not moving above this stage chiefly rests on the fact that a sense for any totality² has not yet developed. The ancient ξόανἅ³ of the original Greek tribes were probably still idols proper,⁴ each one standing in and of itself alone. The combining of these various objects of veneration, whereby a single being 5 would be substituted for a number of such idols and the emergence of a number of mythical circles, wherein these images would be brought into connection with each other, was a development by means of which the transition was made from idol-worship toward actual polyolatry.⁶ In the meantime, the more the notion of a manifold of local dwelling places was still attached to the beings formed in this way, the more polytheism still smacked of idol-worship. Polyolatry proper would be present only where local references have wholly faded into the background and the gods, now spiritually defined, had formed an organically structured, homogenous plurality, one that is not exactly shown to be a unified assembly⁷ but is nevertheless presupposed and striven after as if it were. Thereupon, the more some particular of this nature⁸ is referred to their entire system and, in turn, this system is referred to all being⁹ that is taken into people’s consciousness, the more definitely will the dependence of all that is finite be given utterance in religiously stirred self-consciousness, except that this dependence would not be on one supreme being but on precisely this highest collectivity. In this state of religious faith,¹⁰ however, there cannot fail to be at least a sporadic presentiment that there should be unity of a supreme being behind the plurality of higher beings. At that point, moreover, polyolatry is already also in process of disappearing and the way is being cleared toward monotheism.

Now, this latter form of self-consciousness can be exhibited only in monotheism and indeed only as it is expressed in the proposition being explained here. This is the case, for if we are conscious of ourselves in our finitude, without adding anything else, as absolutely dependent, then the same thing goes for all that is finite, and in this connection we also take up the entire world into the unity of our self-consciousness.12 Thus, the various ways of forming a notion of that which is outside ourselves, to which the consciousness of absolute dependence is referred, is interconnected, in part, with how far self-consciousness can variously extend itself. This is so, in that, as long as a person still identifies oneself with only a tiny portion of finite being, one’s god will still be a fetish. In part, the various ways of forming such a notion are also interconnected with how clearly higher self-consciousness is distinguished from lower self-consciousness. As is natural, in both respects polytheism exhibits an amorphous middle stage. On occasion this stage is scarcely distinguishable from idol-worship. On occasion, when a hidden striving toward unity shows up in the way its multiple features are treated, this stage can border very close on monotheism, whether this hidden striving is then manifested in that its gods tend to be depicted more as powers of nature, or in that they symbolize human attributes that appear in actual social relationships, or in that the two features are combined in the same cultic practice. Otherwise, how, in and of itself, what is coposited in the feeling of absolute dependence was to have been reflected as a plurality of entities¹³ could not be explained. Suppose, however, that higher consciousness were not yet entirely separated from sensory self-consciousness. Then, what is coposited could also be apprehended only in a sensory manner, and at that point it would already bear the seed of multiplicity in itself.

Thus, only when one’s religious consciousness is capable of being combined without distinction with all states of one’s sensory self-consciousness, yet also bears a stamp definitely separated from those states, such that in one’s actual religious stirrings no stronger differentiation arises than that of a joyful versus a downcast tone—only at that point will a person have fortunately moved beyond those two stages defined above. Only at that point, moreover, can one’s feeling of absolute dependence refer simply to one Supreme Being.14

3. Now, on this account it can also rightly be said that once piety would have developed anywhere to the point of faith in one God over everything, it may also be foreseen that eventually no human being will remain at any of those lower stages at any locale on this earth. This end can be predicted, for at every time and place this monotheistic faith quite prominently endeavors to spread itself further and to open up receptivity of human beings to it, even if not always in the most proper manner. Also, this very effort, as we can now see, ultimately succeeds even among the least developed of tribes, and it succeeds in such a way that they sometimes move directly from fetishism to that higher stage without passing through polyolatry. In contrast, as far as our history has extended up to now, retrogression from monotheism, strictly considered, has never actually occurred. Among most Christians who during persecutions reverted to heathenism, this relapse was only a seeming one. Where this relapse happened in earnest, those very persons could only have been swept away previously by some general movement in their conversion to Christianity, without having taken up the actual nature¹⁵ of this faith into their personal consciousness.

It should not be inferred from this claim, however, that in order to explain the existence of fetishism it would be necessary to insert a still lower stage, namely one in which there is a total lack of any religious stirring. Although some people have already depicted the original state of human beings as such a brute existence,¹⁶ even though one cannot deny all traces of such an existence it is, nevertheless, not possible either to demonstrate historically or to get a general notion of how something of a higher nature can have developed of itself from this brutish state.¹⁷ No more is it also to be demonstrated that polyolatry has anywhere been transformed into genuine monotheism purely from within itself, though admittedly this process is at least conceivably possible, as has been indicated above. In general, however, we must ward against the demand that because we have distinctly displayed such a gradation in the formations of piety, it is, on that account, incumbent on us to add in some distinct original state of religion as well. After all, in other matters too, we do not ever return to such an original state of things.

4. At this highest stage, which is monotheism, history shows us only three great communities—Judaism, Christianity, and Muhammadanism. The first formation is almost in a process of extinction; the other two formations are still contending for dominion over the human race. By its restriction of Jehovah’s love to the Abrahamic tribe, Judaism still displays its affinity with the stage of fetishism, and its many veerings in the direction of idol-worship shows that during the political heyday of the Jewish people monotheistic faith was still not firmly rooted among them at that time. Only after their Babylonian exile had that faith emerged in an unalloyed and complete form. Despite its strictly held monotheism, by its passionate character and by the strikingly sensory content of the notions it holds, Islam, on the other hand, nonetheless betrays a strong influence from that sway of sensory orientation on the marked quality of its religious stirrings, which usually holds people fast at the stage of polyolatry.

Postscript 1. The presentation given here is not in agreement with a view that would recognize no piety at all but only superstition in religions at the subordinate stages, primarily because they are seen to have had their source in fear alone. In no way, however, does doing credit to Christianity require such a claim, for since Christianity itself claims that only love that is full and entire casts out all fear,²¹ it must also concede that imperfect love is never fully free of fear.²² Generally, moreover, it also obtains even in idol-worship that when an idol is prayed to only with a view to its protective role and not as one possessing the quality of an evil being, any fear expressed would in no way be wholly divorced from all stirrings of love; rather, it would be simply a foreshortening 23 of the feeling of absolute dependence coordinated with an imperfect love. Suppose that someone wanted to seek out an entirely different organ for these subordinate religions, quite apart from the fact that many of them are far too cheerfully disposed to be able to be conceived out of fear. It would surely be difficult to demonstrate what sort of tendency in the human soul, different from that proposed here, this would then be or what its inner intention would be. That is, what would it be by which idolatry is engendered and which, if religion proper should arise in its place, would have to disappear in turn. If this effort fails,²⁴ then our only recourse is not to deny a certain homogeneity in all these products issuing within the human spirit, and we must also do no less than acknowledge the same root²⁵ for all these lower potentialities.

1. Ed. note: “All that is finite” means “everything” in the universe. All things and processes and changes produced by divine causality are effected by the “One in the all.” Schleiermacher largely stopped using these exact expressions, “the One” and/in “the all,” after 1822, in view of critics’ still mistakenly referring to it to accuse him of pantheism. See his mere allusion to it in Der christliche Glaube (1821–1822) §133.3. In the present work, however, the meaning of it is repeated in slightly different forms, including separate use of “One” for God and of “all” for the whole of nature or the whole world. The relation of God to nature includes human nature, hence the entire ongoing process in creation and preservation of both the entire interconnected process of nature (Naturzusammenhang) and of the process of redemption within the human part of nature. Actually, it appears that his express intention all along had been to refer to God’s eternal, omniscient, omnipotent omnipresence (cf. §53) in the world. In his talk of God’s relation to human beings in Part One, “One” (Ein) is still attributed to God and “ all” (Alle) to the world, offered in a set of “presuppositions” that are themselves expressions of Christian religious immediate self-consciousness. In Part Two, expressions of what comprises the nature (Wesen) of God are used to sort out how to define God’s attributes of holiness and justice, each comparatively limited, as the earlier set of attributes was. This time, however, the expressions are limited by their necessary reference to the contrasting features of sin and evil. Then, finally, expressions regarding God’s nature are used, without such limitations, to define God’s attributes of love and wisdom, for reasons given where such attributes are discussed below. In both On Religion and Christian Faith, however, God’s benevolent love is differentiated from the other attributes, in that it is received in one’s immediate feeling, or immediate self-consciousness. That receptivity to God’s love is itself an internal state, one that constitutes elemental faith and piety. None of the other attributes has this characteristic. See §8n12.

2. Totalität. Ed. note: When referring to a wholeness or totality among things, Schleiermacher normally uses another term: Gesamtheit.

3. Ed. note: Carved images.

4. Ed. note: That is, literally visible representations, single figures carved of wood, not invisible phantoms of the imagination.

5. Wesen.

6. Ed. note: That is, the equivalent of idolatry but positioned within the stage of polytheism. To maintain consistency, these translations are used: “idol-worship” (Götzendienst), which is within the stage of “fetishism” (Fetischismus), “polyolatry” (Vielgötterei) and “monolatry” (Monolatrie), which are within the stage of “polytheism” (Polytheismus). Moreover, what is distinctive about each of the stages of “monotheism” (Monotheismus) is marked by this one word, despite any carryover in them from these other subordinate stages.

7. Allheit. Ed. note: Versus a Vielheit (homogenous plurality), which would be a mere collection of gods, not yet either fully organized or belonging together.

8. Ed. note: dieser Wesen. See §8n4.

9. Sein.

10. Ed. note: The expression des frommen Glaubens indicates that piety (Frömmigkeit), at all these stages and in between, is rooted in a feeling that rises through the various levels of self-consciousness to an utter, unexceptionable feeling of absolute dependence, which is then given utterance in thinking and acting. Within each developing stage, this specific process is called “religious (or pious) faith” in contrast to intellectual faith (belief). In marginal comments (Thönes, 1873) to §8.1 and §8.2, Schleiermacher builds an “analogy” between the three general stages of self-consciousness within a continuous spread from more sensory-oriented to more fully spiritual-oriented, with the stages of religion all rooted in some kind of faith. The different stages from worshiping one or more idols through worshiping a “system” of many gods to simply worshiping one God, he states, lie “not simply in objective consciousness but in self-consciousness. Here,” he adds, “the analogy consists in the unbroken spread between partial and total dependence.”

Schleiermacher held that the contrast between personalism and pantheism “runs through all three stages” in the development of religion, the gods/God coming to be regarded as “psychic entities” only in the later stages. For examples, see On Religion (1821) V, supplemental note 4. See also §36.1–2. For Schleiermacher’s further answer to the false charge of pantheism, see also §§32.2, 46.2, 49.2, and 53.2.

11. Ed. note: In context, consciousness of one’s being a “component part” involves more than that of being a distinct and separate part for Schleiermacher. To be a “component part” entails one’s being interconnected and interdependent with other parts of the world, ultimately with all parts, taken as a whole.

12. Ed. note: In On Religion (1821) I, supplemental note 5, he cites the 1821 version that corresponds to both §8.2 and §36 of Christian Faith (1830), partly described in §8n1 above. Other affirmations in successive discourses help to round out the very same picture as that evident in Christian Faith. Hence, in On Religion, discourse II, in a section to which the heading “God” has been added editorially, Schleiermacher states: “What I have been presenting is precisely the immediate and original being [activity of God’s being, not a divine identity for humans] of God in us through feeling. Isn’t God the sole and highest unity? Isn’t it God alone before whom and in whom all that is merely particular loses that status? If you regard the world as a universal whole, moreover, can you do this otherwise than in God? If you do not, then tell me something else that would enable us to differentiate Supreme Being, original and eternal being, from particular, temporal, and derivative being! We do not claim to have God in feeling other than through these stirrings, which the world brings forth in us. This is why God has not been spoken of in any other way.” Cf. CF §36.

13. Ed. note: Wesen. This term is also used for “human nature” and for “supreme being,” i.e., for those two entities and modes of being.

14. Ed. note: Cf. §36.

15. Wesen. Ed. note: That is, what characterizes it as distinctively Christian. This sense of the word does not imply an essence versus relatively incidental attributes. Rather, its use here seems to imply one’s missing the nature of Christianity, its “essence” with all its defining attributes, altogether.

16. Brutalität. Ed. note: Among other depictions, that of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1674) is particularly memorable. In his Leviathan (1651) 1.13 he presents that original state as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

17. Ed. note: On this point, see §60.1.

18. Ed. note: In marginal notes to subsections 3 and 4, Schleiermacher further expresses his intention to offer a summary historical account of rather broad scope here, one based on information available at that time—see On Religion, discourse V, also his lectures on the current geography and statistics of the church worldwide in KGA II/16 (2005). Thus, here as in these sources, he offers sample exceptions to his general depiction. In the marginal notes (Thönes, 1873) he indicates that citizenship has been a major force in people’s becoming monotheists, at least nominally, and he points out exceptions to be analyzed. For example, he mentions the inroads of Buddhism on Muhammadanism, which he attributes especially to deficiencies in the latter religion. The religion called Christianity is also depicted as not appearing historically with perfect purity. As an example, he cites a transition of Christians backward into Jewish ways, which he attributes to “a misunderstanding of the Old Testament.” This general point he drives home in §§148–56, in comparing the “visible” with the “invisible” church. In his Christian ethics lectures, what he calls “purifying” or “restorative” action addresses itself to deficiencies in Christian life, just as “polemics” does in philosophical theology (Brief Outline §§54–62). In his view, because of the historical embeddedness of all theology, evinced throughout Brief Outline, such analysis and critique is an ongoing task, never complete, as is the formation of Christianity itself (BO cf., notably, §§69–85).

19. Cf. §7.3.

20. Ed. note: Schleiermacher focused on love of God for human beings and their loving response, but he rejected any strictly human-to-human-like reciprocity between God and the world, also any independence of the world or “World Spirit” from God. (See OR (1821) II, supplemental note 12.) The term Weltgeist popularly used at the time, was not specifically Christian, but it was best understood in a Christian context versus Judaic and Muslim contexts. This view and this term appear in On Religion (1821) II, supplemental note 12. There he especially argues that our attitude of religious “reverence” toward what Weltgeist stands for is to be found in “all the various forms and stages of religion.” In addition, those who emphasize “personalism” in their metaphysics and view of God have acknowledged that Schleiermacher coined the term, though he eschewed referring to God as a person. See OR (1821) V, supplemental note 4, where Schleiermacher applies the contrast between “personalism” and “pantheism” as running through all three major stages in the development of religions: fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism.

21. 1 John 4:18. Ed. note: See the sermon on 1 John 4:16–18, Trinity Sunday, June 16, 1822, “The Perfection of Love,” originally published in 1825, also in SW II.4 (1835), 482–94, and (1844), 535–46. ET Tice in The Triune God (forthcoming). See also closely related sermons on John 16:21, Dec. 31, 1831, and on Rom. 5:7–8 from 1822, ET Wilson (1890).

22. Ed. note: Schleiermacher gives an additional account in On Religion (1821) II, supplementary note 11. It rejects the notion of any stage of religion growing from fear and concludes: “All growth toward perfection in religion is simply a progressive purification of love.” See also OR (1821) V, supplementary note 14, for an allied use of this statement.

23. Umbiegung. Ed. note: Literally, a bending back, presumably to preshape it, like the folding back of a leaf before it fully unfolds.

24. Ed. note: “If this effort fails” translates vielmehr, a linking term Schleiermacher occasionally uses to convey more than a single word could in English.

25. Wurzel. Ed. note: Also, “potentialities” translates Potenzen. Although this postscript serves largely to address certain theories that separate supposedly false religion from true religion, it also confirms and clarifies Schleiermacher’s argument regarding what constitutes religion as such, this time aided by metaphors drawn from the life sciences, chiefly from botany.

26. Ed. note: In a marginal note, Schleiermacher writes of this postscript on the relationship of pantheism to monotheism: “This opus supererogativum has done me no good” (Thönes, 1873). This allusion to a scholastic doctrine of an act of grace beyond any ordinary act is an ironic recognition of his earlier efforts to clear up the point, which merely served, it would seem, to invite further calumny.

27. Ed. note: Apparently, some had read phrases like “the One and the all” as if they presented a pantheist identification of “the One” and “the all.” However, among such passages, the following from On Religion is typical, and the two are clearly not identified. In On Religion (1821) III D, divine love and the concept of “One” and/or in “all” appear in the same passage, under the heading “Rhythms of Sensitivity/Sensibility.” There he states: “Now, this recognition of the alien other and this denial of what is purely private, both of which are everywhere thrust upon a person of developed sensibility, this ever-present rhythm between love and scorn of all finite and limited things within oneself—all this is impossible unless one has at least a dim presentiment of the world and of God. It must increasingly call forth a clearer, more definite yearning for the One and all.”

In Schleiermacher’s view, a process does indeed develop within oneself via images and imagination. Philosophy, science, and art all play a role in the mind’s discovery of a “resurrection” of all past religion, whether one likes it or not. Under the immediately following headings “Discovering the Universe” and “Resurrection” within OR (1821) III D, he refers first to currents of the day, freshly stirred by art, washing away both “vulgar scientific subtilties, lacking in true principles,” and “ruinous influence from false and fanciful intellectuality.” Then he avers that philosophy will teach one “to know oneself not as an individual only but as a living, co-creative member of the whole as well.” He adds: “All things shall be the reflection of one’s own spirit just as one’s spirit shall bear the impress of all things. One may search for oneself in this reflection then without losing or passing outside oneself, because all that is may lie within oneself.” At their entranceway, he imagines, all the human sciences (ethics) will hand one “a heavenly lyre and a magic looking glass.” By the latter “one may catch in countless forms the still and serious image of the Spirit, ever the same throughout the entire unending compass of humanity [elsewhere called by him “species-consciousness”], and using the lyre one may accompany what one sees with heavenly music. … One shall measure the might of nature from the bounds of world-creating space to the center of one’s own self. Everywhere one shall find oneself in unending strife and tenacious unity with nature, discovering in oneself both its innermost center and its furthest bounds. … One’s sight shall be firm and one’s outlook bright, under all disguises detecting the same reality and resting at last in nothing but the infinite and the One.”

Now, all of these musings are addressed to persons whose sensibility has not yet recognized the supernatural force that exists, waiting to be opened to within one’s natural self, perhaps through an accompanying, deeply probing ministration of God’s gift of faith through the divers influences coming from communities of faith, which he here alludes to as “sanctuaries.” These influences, in turn, are aided by a theology based on receptivity to grace through faith. The theology itself is largely hidden among these more philosophical and rhapsodic discourses, except for their 1821 supplementary notes. Yet, insofar as these discourses are correct and clear in their own right, Schleiermacher regards them to be appropriately consistent with the philosophy and scientific knowledge and theological perspective that he brings to them. As conditions change over time, revisions would have to be made on all sides. Meanwhile, their distinct and different aims must be kept separate unless or until their findings entirely cohere in the end. See Brief Outline (1830, ET 2011), 150–55; also Dialectic (1811, ET 1996), xv–xvi, 38.

28. Spekulation … Raissonements.

29. Ed. note: Against the charge of “materialistic pantheism” and in a careful account of where it is appropriate to conceive Supreme Being as “personal,” see On Religion (1821) II, supplemental note 19. There he also indicates preferring the concept “living God,” one especially incapable of passivity. This preference does not seem to exclude God’s acting in other “personal” ways with human beings. He also states: “The conception of a personal God is required where it is necessary to interpret for oneself one’s immediate religious experience or others’ or where one’s heart is engaged in direct communication, or dialogue, with Supreme Being.” On his other responses to the charge of pantheism, see OG 47–53 and his lengthy supplemental note 21 to OR (1821) II. There the discussion of “immortality” turns into one on an expectation of eternal life in the human need for communion with the living God.

30. Ed. note: At this juncture Schleiermacher affixes a marginal note: “This point too has been misunderstood, as if I had called Plato himself a pantheist” (Thönes, 1873). References to a singular god above the other gods are strewn throughout Plato’s writings, but such references are not identifiable as pantheism. For centuries, among the Hellenists the major alternative to any of these positions was an overall force called “Necessity.”

31. Ed. note: In further response to his critics, Schleiermacher adds this marginal note: “Thus, supposing that I were a pantheist, that position (since it bears no dogmatic character whatsoever) would, nevertheless, belong only to my philosophy, of which I would have to believe that it is compatible with my dogmatics. If this were the case, in accordance with my own viewpoint, I would just have to guard against mixing it into my dogmatics all the more” (Thönes, 1873).

32. Ed. note: Under the heading “Immortality” (Erstreblichkeit) in On Religion (1821) II, Schleiermacher states: “The usual conception of God as an individual being or outside and beyond the world is not the whole story for religion. It is only one way of expressing what God is—a way seldom unalloyed and always inadequate. The true nature of piety, however, is neither this nor any other concept. It is our immediate consciousness of the deity as we find the deity to be present in ourselves and in the world alike. Moreover, this is precisely why the aim and character of a religious life is not immortality, as so many wish and believe—or as so many pretend to believe, for their longing to know more than is allowable of immortality makes their belief highly suspect. It is not that immortality which is outside and beyond time—or rather after this time but still in time—but only that immortality which we can already possess in this temporal life of ours. It is an aim to fulfill, a problem we shall always be seeking to solve. In the midst of finitude to become one with the infinite, and to be eternal in every instant—this is the immortality of religion.” Cf. CF §163 and §§117–20; also his 1819 essay On the Doctrine of Election. Being “eternal’ here cannot mean being equivalent to God but means partaking of what is eternal in God, in that the experience is less time bound, yet being in communion with the deity, with “the supernatural become natural” in human life (see index).

33. Ed. note: See §§53–54. With God’s eternity and omniscience, these are two of the four general attributes that Schleiermacher adopts from monotheism as the highest stage of talk about God, which is outlined in a purely introductory way here and which he takes to be “presupposed” in Christian religious self-consciousness in expression of “the general relationship between God and the world.” He also holds that no attribute, strictly speaking, can express what can be said of God in Godself, apart from the world. Moreover, only our affirmation “God is love” (§§166–67) can be used fully to express what, in that consciousness, God is felt to be creatively, redemptively (thus, “economically”), in relationship to the world. The term “economic” refers to the Greek concept οἰκουμένη, the whole inhabited earth—a “household” (οἶκος), as it were, in which God dwells with human beings. The entire system of doctrine is to comprise an unfolding argument, the climax and conclusion of which lie in the affirmation that the God we can know wisely loves and is triune in relationship to both human beings and the world.

§9. In their reference to religious stirrings, those formations of piety display the greatest dissimilarity from each other that contrastingly subordinate what is natural in human situations to what is moral¹ and subordinate what is moral to what is natural.

1. Here we are attempting to make a conceptual division between coordinate formations of piety,2 one that thus relates as a cross-section to the division of the entire area. This we also do chiefly for the sake of identifying Christianity and thus for the highest stage. Whether the same division would also apply to the subordinate stages is a question that does not belong to the matter being treated here at all. For the highest stage, however, the attempt is necessary for us to make. This is so, for even if that stage turns out to be entirely occupied historically by the three communities designated here, we would, nevertheless, still have to find a more closely defined location so as to grasp where Christianity fits in. Otherwise we would be able to distinguish it from the other two communities only in an empirical fashion, wherewith we could reach no surety as to whether even the more essential differences were being made to stand out or as to whether perhaps only incidental features were being picked up. Hence, this attempt is to be regarded as successful only when we find a ground for this division by which Christianity is definitely separated either in and of itself from the other two formations of piety or even simply together with one of the other two formations from the third.

As concerns the first option, one could, first of all, divide these sensory-oriented feeling states into more spiritual and more physical ones, into those that arise through the influence of human beings and their actions and into those that arise through the influence of external nature. This division, however, could apply only to individual human beings, in that some tend to be religiously stirred more easily by impressions from external nature, whereas others tend to be religiously stirred more easily by social circumstances and by resonances⁶ that have arisen from that source. It is not possible, however, to explain a distinction between one religious community and others on this basis, in that every single one includes such differences within itself and none of them excludes either way of getting stirred religiously from its compass or even significantly places either source behind the other.

One could notice, further, that just as life as a whole is comprised of an interweaving of doing and undergoing and a succeeding of each from the other, so too a human being is conscious of oneself as sometimes being more active and sometimes being more passive. This notion, moreover, already permits of being construed more easily as the way greater masses of people are constituted in common, in that in some situations the active form of self-consciousness will rise more easily to the point of religious stirring and the passive form would stay back more at the sensory level, whereas in other situations the relationship would be just the reverse. Yet, it is surely the case that this distinction, simply conceived in this way, remains solely a fluid one, flowing between more and less, with the result that the very same element is to be conceived as more passive in comparison with one given element and as more active in comparison with yet another element.

If a wide-ranging classification is to be made among the various formations of piety, one that is applicable within the whole scheme of things, the fluid distinction just outlined has to be converted into the sort of contrasting subordination that is indicated in our proposition. In the one direction, this subordination is most strongly marked when passive states—whether pleasurable or not pleasurable, whether occasioned by social circumstances or by external nature—bestir the feeling of absolute dependence, but only to the extent that they are referred to self-initiated activity.7 That is, in this case passive states are referred to self-initiated activity only to the extent that we know the following: precisely because we find ourselves to be in relation to the totality of being, a relationship that is expressed within a given passive state, what we are to do is thus to be done in such a way that the action that is there for us to do, which action interconnects with that passive state and emerges out of that passive state, has precisely this sort of God-consciousness as its impetus. Thus, wherever piety takes its shape in this way, passive states raised to the point of religious stirring come to be simply an occasion for some distinct activity to unfold, an activity that can be explained only on the basis of a God-consciousness that is modified in just this way. Within the domain circumscribed by such religious stirrings, moreover, all passive relationships of a human being to the world appear only as means whereby the totality of one’s active states are called forth. In this manner, the contrast between what is sensorily pleasurable and not pleasurable is overpowered within that domain and fades into the background, though that contrast does indeed remain predominant in instances where sensory feeling does not rise to the point of religious stirring.

This subordination of passive to active states we designate by the term teleological piety. Admittedly, in other precincts this term is used somewhat differently. Here, however, it is to mean simply that the predominant relation to a moral⁸ task forms the fundamental typus of religious states of mind and heart. In this case, if action that is prefigured in religious stirrings is an actual working action⁹ that contributes to advancement of God’s reign,¹⁰ then the state of mind and heart is uplifting,¹¹ whether the feeling that occasions it is pleasurable or not pleasurable. In contrast, if an action that is here prefigured in religious stirring is a retreat into oneself or a seeking for help in overcoming some hindrance to the higher life, a hindrance that has become markedly apparent, then the state of mind and heart becomes one lowly in nature,12 whether the feeling that occasions it is pleasurable in that case or not pleasurable.

In taking the second, contrasting direction, the subordination of active to passive states is fully manifested when one’s self-consciousness regarding a state of activity is taken up into one’s feeling of absolute dependence only with respect to how that very state appears as the result of ongoing relationships between oneself as subject¹³ and the totality of all other being, thus this subordination of active to passive occurs when it is specifically referred to the passive aspect of the subject. In this case, however, every particular state of activity is simply a distinct expression of one’s ongoing relationship to commonly held human powers, a relationship that exists within the subject and that forms the personal distinctiveness of the subject. Consequently, in every religious stirring of this sort, that same relationship is itself posited as the result of the influences of all things on the subject, influences ordained by Supreme Being. Accordingly, in one’s uplifting states the relationship is posited as harmony—that is, as the beauty of an individual life—and in the not-pleasurable or lowly states, respectively, it is posited as discord or ugliness. Now, this second formation of piety, in which every element of self-initiated activity is taken up into the feeling of absolute dependence only as an individual’s being determined by the totality of finite being— thus, in which every element is referred to the passive aspect of one’s life—we choose to call aesthetic¹⁴ piety.

2. Now, a general demonstration concerning whether the modes of faith that have arisen in history can best be distinguished using this contrast would be the business of a general critical history of religion. Here the only question is whether the classification is warranted to the extent that it enables one to distinguish Christianity from modes of faith that are coordinate with it and to facilitate our separating out its distinctive nature by a closer determination of its location. In any case, the mode of faith that most comes to our minds, present as sharply contrasted to Christianity in this respect, is not coordinate with it but belongs to a lower stage, namely, Hellenistic polyolatry. In this mode of faith, the teleological tendency is entirely recessive. Neither in their religious symbols nor even in their mystery cults is there any significant trace of the idea of a totality of moral ends¹⁷ or of a relation of human situations in general to those ends. On the other hand, what we have called the aesthetic outlook pre-dominates most distinctly, in that even the gods are chiefly defined so as to depict various circumstances within the activities of the human soul and thus in a distinctive form of inner beauty. Now, even apart from Christianity’s occupying a higher stage, no one would readily deny that Christianity offers resistance to this characteristic in the sharpest way. Whatever comes to be God-consciousness within this Christian domain is also referred to the totality of all situations of activity within the idea of a reign of God.18 In contrast to this view, the notion of a “beauty of the soul,”¹⁹ which has been supposed to be conceived as the result of all the influences on the soul from nature and the world, has constantly remained so alien to Christianity—despite its massive early assumption of Hellenism into itself—that within its course of common parlance it has never taken up this notion within the domain of Christian piety or has given it currency in any treatment of Christian ethics at all. In contrast, that image of a reign of God, which is so significant, indeed is all-encompassing in Christianity, is simply the general expression of the fact that in Christianity all pain and all joy are religious only to the extent that they are referred to activity within God’s reign, and also of the fact that every religious stirring in Christianity that proceeds from a passive state ends up in consciousness of some transition into activity.²⁰

Now, however, it should also be decided herewith whether or not the designated contrast between the teleological tendency and the aesthetic tendency might still perchance stand in a necessary connection with a distinction between the two stages, with the result that all polytheism would necessarily belong to the aesthetic side of the contrast and all monotheism would belong to the teleological side. To make this decision, we must stick with only the highest stage itself and ask whether or not the two other monotheistic modes of faith relate to that stage in the same way Christianity does.

Accordingly, even if Judaism directly relates passive states to active ones, it does so more in the form of divine rewards and punishments than in the form of divine summonses and means for growth.²¹ Thus, the predominant form of God-consciousness in Judaism is, nevertheless, that of a commanding will, and thus even when it proceeds from passive states it turns to active ones.

1. Ed. note: dem Sittlichen. Throughout his writings, Schleiermacher assigns this domain to what involves human mentation and action (Ethik) in contrast to what is strictly nonhuman and physical (Physik), a distinction he draws from ancient Greek philosophy. Thus, in his ethical discourse, Moral (“morals”) refers to only part of the domain of morality (Sittlichkeit) and is not even restricted simply to moral custom (Sitte). In his lectures on Psychologie and elsewhere, moreover, he deems the human psyche to be inextricably body-mind in human life on earth. Thus, the Christian in this aspect of dogmatics concerns the whole of Christian life, individually and communally, not any diminished domain of human behavior. Sittlich was the only term he had available for this larger domain, despite its faulty associations.

2. Ed. note: In a marginal note, Schleiermacher issues the reminder that “formations of piety” means “only church, not piety itself “ (Thönes, 1873). At this particular point, moreover, “church” is largely an “empirical” category, as he will indicate below, not yet one that is adequate for locating the essential nature of Christianity from the other two prominent modes of monotheistic faith. Note that the scale from predominantly natural to predominantly moral becomes a vertical “cross-section” for the three major monotheisms that can be identified historically, which, in turn, also form a scale that could also include other monotheisms. Although this vertical scale could also apply to the three-part subdivision of major formations of piety from the lowest stage to the highest stage, this possibility is not at issue in this work.

3. Moment. Ed. note: This same term, also used for chemical elements, appears in the final sentence of this paragraph.

4. Ed. note: In a marginal note here (Thönes, 1873), Schleiermacher refers to the sensory stimuli as providing a “material” condition, whereas the separation of more prominent modes or types of monotheism refers to differences in “tendency” (Tendenz). Below, the latter concept is relayed by the word Richtung (meaning either “direction” or “tendency”).

5. Ed. note: In his marginal note at this point, Schleiermacher identifies his “procedure” here as a “critical” one, i.e., as one that sets up alternatives for the critical purpose of examining them comparatively (Thönes, 1873).

6. Stimmungen. Ed. note: Here “resonances” is intended to capture a variety of voices—spoken, or expressed through music, moods, and dispositions—all of which can be present in social circumstances.

7. Selbsttätigkeit. Ed. note: Particularly in earlier texts, such as the Brouillon (1804–1806), the equivalent term used is Spontaneität. Both are contrasted with Receptivität or Empfänglichkeit. Constantly, he takes both states, otherwise called “more active” and “more passive,” to be consistent in every human state of mind and heart (Gemütszustand).

8. Ed. note: Here “moral” (sittliche) refers to the formation of actions (Handlungen) in human relationships of any kind, including treatment of oneself. They are not restricted to morals in any narrower sense, but they do relate to an ideal end point (τέλος).

9. Ed. note: Here “actual working” translates werktätiger, as in the expression “working class”; it also means “practical” in the sense of praxis, but Schleiermacher’s usual word for that concept is praktisch. The phrase “prefigured in religious stirrings,” in turn, refers to the rooting of religious action in feeling, thus in religious stirrings (cf. §8n10 and n20).

10. Reiches Gottes.

11. Ed. note: Or “edifying” (erhebender).

12. Ed. note: Here the contrasting word is demütigender, which means being in a reduced, more humbling state of mind and heart, hence a lowly one in the context of “the higher life.”

13. Subjekt. Ed. note: As a “subject,” a person is literally “thrown under” (sub-ject), that is, in the language of contrast, this one undergoes and is relatively passive in reference to that with which one is fundamentally in relationship. Thus, within this typus of monotheism overall, one tends to be in a more lowly (demütigend) and more submissive state rather than in a state of self-initiated activity, in relationship to the Supreme Being, as in relation to all that occasions what the feeling of absolute dependence leads to in one’s life. By implication, in the latter case one tends not to be so predominantly active in the advancement of God’s reign.

14. Ed. note: The term Schleiermacher uses here draws especially from epistemological approaches like Eberhard’s that root mental functions in sense perception and attendant feelings at that level. (This is the basic meaning of the Greek word αἰσθητικός, often by extension applied especially to the study of art as well.) During his two student years in the University of Halle (April 1787 to May 1789), Schleiermacher had taken several courses in philosophy by Johann August Eberhard (1739–1809), a pastor and much-published philosopher from 1763 to 1778, then from 1778 onward a professor at Halle. These courses included one on Aesthetik, chiefly an empirical, epistemological investigation into how sense-oriented experience comes to function generally and then particularly in art. Schleiermacher’s subsequent lectures on the subject considerably diverged from Eberhard’s but were clearly stimulated by them. Eberhard had already published most of his noted philosophical works by 1788, including Allgemeine Theorie des Denkens und Empfindens (Berlin, 1776) and Theorie der schönen Künsten (Berlin, 1773), and he later issued a four-volume Handbuch der Aesthetik (Halle, 1803–1805).

15. Ed. note: “Shared religious feeling” translates fromme Mitgefühl, referring to the basic feeling shared in common within a community of faith. This word also has other meanings—namely, “sympathy” and “compassion”—which do not seem to fit almost anywhere in the present work. Cf. On Religion (1821) IV and supplemental note 10.

16. Ed. note: Here “rather narrowed down,” expressing a state of construction, translates zusammengezogenes.

17. Ed. note: Again, the concept sittlicher Zwecke (ends or purposes toward which human life should be tending) refers to the “telos” in “teleological” but not to a narrower conception of morals for which moralischer Zwecke might have been a more appropriate expression. Here “human situations in general” (menschlichen Zustände im Allgemeinen, over the entire compass of them) indicates the larger scope meant by sittliche in Schleiermacher’s ethical writings.

18. Ed. note: At this point Schleiermacher’s marginal note states: “Opponents have totally overlooked passages such as this one” (Thönes, 1873).

19. Ed. note: The marginal note claims: “Not once has even Platonic thought brought κάλλος [the idea of such “beauty”] into circulation” (Thönes, 1873).

20. Ed. note: On Jesus’ awakening of the reign of God in his early disciples, Schleiermacher describes this event as “a divine impetus and inspiration” that existed in him alone, one freely received by them, however. See OR (1821) III, supplemental notes 1–2. In OR (1821) III supplemental note 3, Schleiermacher links some positive relations of letter to spirit with this phenomenon. What does it mean to be politically free in this connection? See supplemental note 4, in which he analyzes the German social and political situation then current. See CF index on “reign of God,” on “spirit and letter,” and on “freedom, personal and political.”

21. Aufforderungen und Bildungsmitteln. Ed. note: That is, the Christian understanding of God suggested here is of one who by grace invites and calls, then provides the means and communal arrangements necessary to facilitate formation in a life of piety.

22. Ed. note: For Schleiermacher’s 1821 accounts of this distinction, see On Religion I, note 2, on a base in “sensation”; On Religion III, note 2, on an initial “sacred spark”; On Religion II, notes 12–13, and CG1 (1821) §16.3, on the main classification of monotheistic formations of piety.

§10. Every particular formation of communal piety has its unity, in part externally, as something historically constant, arising from a distinct beginning, and, in part internally, as a distinctive modification of all that also appears within every developed mode of faith of the same kind and stage. Moreover, the distinctive nature of each formation is to be observed on the basis of these two modes of unity taken together.

1. The first part of this proposition would be false if one could show, or even simply consider it to be possible, that Christian piety could somewhere emerge of itself, as it were, entirely apart from any historical connection with the impulse that proceeded from Christ. The same would then also be true of Jewish piety and Muhammadan piety in relation to Moses and Muhammad. No one, however, would claim this possibility. To be sure, such an external unity 2 would not be so firm at the subordinate stages. This is the case, in part, because there the starting point often falls into prehistoric times, as is also true of pre-Mosaic, monotheistic devotion to Jehovah, also, in part, because many of the historical forms at these stages such as Hellenistic polytheism and, even more, Roman polytheism, present themselves as wholes that were gradually woven together, or even that grew together of themselves, out of a number of very different starting points. Certainly, something similar could also be asserted regarding systems of piety stemming from within Nordic and Indian regions. These systems of piety may seem to be exceptions, but they rather serve to prove the rule given in our proposition. This is so, for the less it is possible definitely to show what the external unity of a system of piety is, the more unstable its internal unity is as well. It appears, moreover, that just as in the domain of nature even species are more indistinctly sustained at the subordinate stages of life, so too in the domain of piety a uniform consummation of external and internal unity remains to be reserved only for the higher stage of its development. Thus, even in the most complete formation of piety—which we ourselves would like to designate in advance to be Christianity—its internal distinctiveness must be intimately bound to that by which its external unity is grounded historically.

2. Now, there is no need for any further discussion here concerning the proper beginning of any religious community. That is, it is a matter of indifference whether a new modification of the feeling of absolute dependence would first be formed in one individual or simultaneously in more than one, except that in each formation of communal piety the second case is generally found to be less probable than the first case. Likewise, it would be unprofitable at this juncture to seek to distinguish the various ways in which such a new cultivation of piety can emerge in the soul, since community always emerges only by means of communication and translation. Some discussion does need to be added, however, regarding internal differentiation between formations of communal piety, which differentiation is expressly featured in the proposition.

3.⁸ Now, although we were able to set forth the concept “kind” only in a more indefinite sense for our domain, nevertheless that of an “individual entity”⁹ is more firmly established here. Moreover, the formulation set forth in our proposition is the same as that which applies to all differences of an individual nature that appear within the same genus and species. That is to say, every human being has everything that others do, yet every thing is differently determined, and the greatest similarity is merely a diminishing or, at most, relatively vanishing difference. Accordingly, every kind has the same characteristic as every other kind of its species has, and, in the proper sense, all that is added is merely incidental. Yet, the discovery of this differentiation in some distinctive existence¹⁰ is a task never totally resolvable in words and sentences; rather, that end can only be reached for by approximation.

Postscript.12 Only based on the two points set forth in our proposition—namely, based on the special beginning to which each religious community refers and based on the distinctive formation that religious stirrings and utterances concerning those stirrings assume in each such community—can linguistic usage of the two well-known expressions “positive” and “revealed” be regulated in theological language. It is also well-known that these rather variously entangled expressions are often used wholly in the same way, whether they refer in one place to particular doctrines and in another place to modes of faith wherever they may be, also in contrast to what is “natural” in one place and to what is in accord with “reason” in another place. On this account, it might also be difficult to fix their meaning in such as way as to form a uniform, univocal usage for them in the domain of scientific theology.

We have a good lead toward examining the expression “positive” in the use made of it in the domain called “doctrine of law,”¹³ wherein positive law is contrasted with natural law. If one compares these two concepts of law, one finds that “natural law” is never used in the same sense as “positive law,” namely, as the basis of a civic community. Even the originative and simplest relationships, such as those of paternal authority or marital union, are defined in a distinctive way in every society. In the state they are defined by acts of legislation written down, before that by prevailing custom.14 In contrast, natural law is simply that which permits of being abstracted in the same fashion from the legislation of all societies. Indeed, even if natural law were to be established in a different way, as a matter of pure knowledge, anyone would admit nonetheless that if the issue were to become one of how to apply it, natural law would still have to be more narrowly defined at that point and thus, when viewed as applicable, would likewise be capable of being traced back only to the act of producing this narrower definition.

Now, it is also the case with “natural religion” that when it is viewed as the basis of some religious community,¹⁵ it is actually nothing but whatever permits of being uniformly abstracted from the doctrines of all religious communities of the highest rank as something present in them all but differently defined in each one.¹⁶ Such a notion of “natural religion” has roughly indicated the common locations for all those religious states of mind and heart that are present in ecclesial communities. Suppose that one were to imagine all possible religious communities to have existed already. Suppose, too, that the various philosophical systems had smoothed out their differences with each other even with respect to the terminology to be used for such a teaching. Then the content of natural religion would have to be the same everywhere and self-identical at all times. Even then, however, natural religion would always and everywhere be simply a property possessed by certain select individuals from the various religious communities. These select individuals, aside from their distinct type and mode of piety and aside from the expression of that piety in doctrine, would also be able to view what is in reality divided as brought together in a higher unity, recognizing from their own standpoint what the other religious communities share in their interconnection with them as well.

It would also not be difficult to show, on the one hand, that what people designate by the word “natural religion” has also actually arisen in this fashion and, on the other hand, that particular attempts to make this secondary product into the basis for an ecclesial community have always failed¹⁷ and would always have to fail. Still, this matter has less of a place here. Suppose, however, in accordance with this analysis, that in any case such a natural entity were viewed as a sheer combination of doctrinal propositions 18—not so much a religion as, more properly speaking, a set of faith-doctrines,¹⁹ even if it had arisen in yet another way—and as such would simply comprise what is held in common among all monotheistic modes of faith. On that condition, what is positive in each of these modes of faith would prove to be what is individualized²⁰ in it. As we have shown above, what is individualized is not present in a given monotheistic mode of faith only here and there, by happenstance. Rather, although it comes more to the fore in one place and less so in another place, it is, exactly taken, still constantly present throughout that mode of faith. It is also simply a misconception when someone wants to distinguish actually existing religious communities by supposing that what is positive in one of them is lodged at one place, whereas in another among them it is lodged in another place—claiming, for example, that in Christianity it would be lodged in doctrines, in Judaism it would be lodged in commandments.²¹ That is to say, if in one given community commandments are more worked out and doctrines less so, and in another community the reverse is done, then in the first case doctrine is simply hidden in commandment, viewed in the guise of symbol, and in the second case doctrine itself appears in the guise of a commandment to express and to confess that doctrine. It would also be just as incorrect to deny that the prescriptions contained in Christian ethics would be what is positive as to deny that doctrine regarding Jehovah is what is positive in Judaism. In any case, neither commandment, viewed as the expression of a shared mode of action, nor doctrine, viewed as the expression of a shared kind of notion, is something originative in any mode of faith. Rather, both features are grounded in the shared distinctiveness of religious stirrings.²²

Now, without these specific religious stirrings even a given distinct religious community itself could not have arisen; however, this religious community will have continued to exist based on the fact that marks its beginning and with reference to that same fact. Thus, the distinctive stamp of its religious stirrings is also necessarily grounded in that fact. Its distinctive stamp, thus conceived, is then to be designated by the term positive.23 This term signifies that content of an individual nature²⁴ comprised of the totality of religious elements of life within a given religious community,²⁵ to the extent that this content is dependent on the originative fact from which the community itself has emerged as an interconnected historical phenomenon.

The expressions reveal, revealed, revelation proffer still more difficulties, in that already as they originated they sometimes meant more an illumination of what was obscure, confused, or unnoticed, and sometimes they meant more an uncovering and unwrapping of something that had previously been concealed and held secret. Still more entanglement, however, has come into them by means of the distinction made between mediated and immediate revelation. For all that, probably everyone will readily unite in recognizing that neither what is uncovered by one person in the domain of experience and passed on to others, nor what is devised by one person’s thinking things out and in that way acquired by others’ learning, will ever be designated as “revealed”—nor, moreover, that any divine communication or making known²⁶ will be presupposed to occur in these ways. Further, in this sense we do find this expression to be quite generally applied to the very inception of religious communities. That is to say, of what religious mysteries or special devotion to God would it not have been claimed by the Hellenes or by the Egyptians and Indians, that they originally came down from heaven or that they had been proclaimed by the deity in some manner lying outside an interconnection with things human? Indeed, not infrequently we also find the beginning of civil societies—just as from the outset onward what is moral and what is religious often make their appearance undivided—traced back to some divine sending of the one who initially gathered a given tribe into a civil union and thus find the new ordering of life grounded on a revelation. Accordingly, we would be able to say that the concept “revelation” designates the originative character of the fact that underlies a given religious community, insofar as this fact, viewed as conditioning those contents of an individual nature²⁷ regarding the religious stirrings that are coming forth within that community, is not itself to be understood, in turn, simply based on the earlier interconnected historical context referred to just above.

Now, awareness that here a divine causality is posited in what is originative requires no further discussion,28 nor does its being in an efficacious action that aims at and advances the salvation of human beings. Yet, I would not wish to accept the definition that divine causality would be a working on humans in their role as cognitive beings, for in that case revelation itself would also be originatively and essentially doctrine. I do not believe, moreover, that we could stick with this definition either if we are looking at the entire domain covered by the concept “revelation” or if we want to define the concept in advance chiefly in relation to Christianity. That is to say, if a combination of propositions can be understood based simply on their interconnection with other propositions, then nothing supernatural would even be necessary for their production. If this is not the case, it directly follows, before all else, that such a combination of propositions can also be comprehended—if we simply appeal, concerning them, to the first principles of hermeneutics²⁹—only as parts of a different whole, which whole is viewed, in turn, as an element in the life of a thinking being who originatively has an effect on us as a distinctive existence,³⁰ by means of the total impression made on us by this thinking being. This effect, moreover, is always an effect on self-consciousness. Thus, the originative fact will always be the appearance of such an existence, and the originative effect will always be that made on the self-consciousness of those in whose sphere of life that existence enters.

1. Ed. note: In various editions the pages Schleiermacher cites are as follows: Pünjer (1879), 256ff.; SW I.1 (1843), 402ff.; and KGA I/12 (1995), 265ff. On Religion (1821) V is organized into seven sections, in ET (Tice) called (A) The Multiplicity of Religion, (B) Positive Religion, (C) Natural Religion, (D) The Study of the Positive Religions, then (E) Judaism, (F) Christianity, and (G) The Coming Renascence of Religion. The 1821 passage cited here, somewhat revised from the first edition (1799) in both the second and third editions (1806, 1821), opens section B. It reads: “In sum, accordingly there is only one way left by which a religion of a genuinely individual nature can have been realized. One or another of the great relationships of humankind in the world and with Supreme Being is made the focal point of religion in its entirety in a distinctive fashion, and all the rest is referred to that one relationship. If one looks only at the general idea of religion, this process can appear to be purely arbitrary. In contrast, if one looks at the distinctive nature of its adherents, then the process bears within itself a strictly necessary character and is simply the natural expression of their very beings. Hereby a distinct spirit and a communal character come to suffuse the whole at the same time. Everything that was previously ambiguous and indefinite now gains firmness. Through the process of formation, one among the endless number of views and relations between particular features will be fully realized. All of these views and relations could have been developed, and all of them were to have been presented in history. In any case, all the particular features are, at that point, to be viewed from one perspective, which is directed to the focal point, and precisely in this way all relevant feelings sustain a certain harmony, more fully interlocking with each other and in a more lively fashion. From this point of view, religion can be given as a whole only in the totality of all possible forms. Moreover, it can be exhibited, therefore, only in an unending succession of forms, which are gradually developing at various points of time and space. Furthermore, nothing can contribute to its complete manifestation that is not contained in one of these forms.” In the 1806 edition, “some one of the great relationships of humanity in the universe [Universum]” replaced “a particular perception of the universe [Anschauung des Universums]” in the first, 1799 edition. In 1821, this phrase was further clarified to read (as above): “One or another of the great relationships of humankind in the world and with the Supreme Being.”

2. Einheit. Ed. note: Or “identity,” that which marks an entity as one single, distinctive whole.

3. Religionsgemeinschaft. Ed. note: Ordinarily, “religious community.” For a somewhat different meaning, which refers only to the internal roots of a religion, Schleiermacher uses fromme Gemeinschaft; he never uses religiöse Gemeinschaft for this restricted meaning.

4. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note reads: “Note well that this outlook would suffice only insofar as there is no third alternative, which is also inconceivable, however. (a) If anything that is attached to such an outlook is isolated [from God-consciousness], it would be merely a solitary object, thus would also stand outside the domain of piety. (b) If it were to be combined only with certain features, it would then be only a solitary piece available for union with those features” (Thönes, 1873).

5. Ed. note: In a marginal note here, Schleiermacher adds a third step in his argument: “Here, however, it is not a matter of anything being attached to one place that is lacking in another.—If this were the case, Indian religion and Christianity would then be distinguished only by their locale. All modes of piety that had adopted something similar would then have to flow together, as particular forms of idolatry have done” (Thönes, 1873).

6. Menschwerdung Gottes vorkommt und göttliche Geistesmitteilung.

7. Ed. note: On the principle of maximum flexibility among Christian communities and that of obviating against those communities’ becoming “wholly separated,” see OR (1821) IV, supplemental note 6. In note 7 there he emphasizes two other prime goals: (1) respect among different organized forms of religious association and (2) awareness contained in this affirmation: “In the strictest sense there is only one universal religious community.” Here he further addresses the issue of “conversion” from one mode of faith into another and that of nullus salus (no salvation outside … ). Cf. §113.3.

8. Ed. note: The marginal note beginning this subsection is this: “The task here is to discover what the particular individuality [Individualität] is: transition into the domain of apologetics” (Thönes, 1873). Cf. Brief Outline §§32–39.

9. Individuum.

10. Dasein.

11. Beziehung. Ed. note: That is, at a particular stage (e.g., monotheism) religious self-consciousness’s being specifically related to (being referred to, or its having reference to) some particular object or objects, which are themselves different in form and/or content, would serve to create other possible objects of piety. This statement is a prolepsis; that is, it anticipates the bold statement articulated in §11.

12. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note qualifies the content of the following examination of traditional terms as follows: “Remarks parallel to what was said about religion. These terms too are not to be regarded as essential” (Thönes, 1873). See the complementing pages in On Religion (1821) V, subsection A.

13. Rechtslehre. Ed. note: In German usage, this term (referring to mostly theoretical, always practically oriented teachings regarding law, now otherwise contained in philosophy of law and jurisprudence) roughly parallels Glaubenslehre (“faith-doctrine”) and Sittenlehre (ethics or “morals-doctrine,” doctrine regarding Christian life or action in theology)—the two parts of dogmatics. Schleiermacher also takes these two terms to be inadequate (cf. BO §223).

14. Sitte.

15. Cf. §6.P.S.

16. Ed. note: Accordingly, Schleiermacher appends this note at the margin: “One could ask whether redemption and original sin would not be missing in natural religion. These are themselves only expressions of a general nature, however” (Thönes, 1873).

17. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s marginal note is “For example, attempts in France and England. Why do the Unitarians continue to exist alone?” (Thönes, 1873).

18. Lehrsätzen. Ed. note: This is the meaning adopted here. Alternatively, the word could simply mean sentences containing teachings.

19. Glaubenslehre.

20. Ed. note: Here das Individualisierte is used, not the usual word Eigentümlich (“distinctive”). As is the case here, the two concepts do not ordinarily have the same meaning for Schleiermacher.

21. See Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem. Redeker note: Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum (Berlin, 1783), Zweiter Abschnitt, 31ff. See esp. 31. Ed. note: ET Tice: “I believe that Judaism knows nothing of any ‘revealed religion’ in the understanding that Christians have. The Israelites have divine legislation (Gesetzgebung) … but no doctrines, no saving truths, no general propositions of reason. These things the eternal God reveals to us as to all other human beings, always through nature and circumstance, never through word and letter.” In Schleiermacher’s textual reference to Mendelssohn, the word used is “commandments” (Gebote), not “legislation.”

22. Eigentümlichkeit der frommen Erregungen.

23. Positive.

24. Ed. note: Consistent with the expression noted in §10n20 just above, the expression here is der individuelle Inhalt. Above, “content” translates Gehalt.

25. Ed. note: As per usual, in this sentence frommen modifies Lebensmomente (religious elements). Moment in this case refers specifically to “elements” in the life of piety, as it does to what are called “elements” in English, rather than to temporal moments. Gemeinschaft (community) is modified by religiösen (religious), referring, as in discourses II–V of On Religion, taken together, to all aspects of its nature as a distinctive religion.

26. Kundmachung. Ed. note: See §10n32, n33, and n34 below.

27. Ed. note: See §10n24 just above. Here too the reference is to the individual nature of a community, not to individual human beings, though the shared stirrings referred to are held within persons who take part in that community.

28. Ed. note: In quite general terms, these two statements are slated for discussion only in Part One and Part Two of the actual presentation of doctrine.

29. Ed. note: These principles can now be accessed in several of Schleiermacher’s works in English translation.

30. Ed. note: That is, what achieves an effect on us does so als eigentümliche Existenz.

31. Ed. note: As would often be the case in contexts like this one, the word bestimmt has two or more contingent meanings here: for example, if by Jesus’ life “an entire existence” is so “determined,” it is likewise to be “defined by” that same divine communication, and being so defined marks out his “destiny.”

32. Ed. note: Here the word for “made known” is kundgemacht. For Schleiermacher, the concept “known” usually, but not necessarily, means an offering of either actual or complete knowledge, though it certainly does include either having a presentiment of, or having an acquaintance with, or having incomplete information concerning, or even having an inchoate knowing of—all short of having complete knowledge.

33. Kundmachungen. Ed. note: More literally, “acts of making known.” See notes 25 and 31 here. Usually Kundgebung and Kundmachung are idiomatic equivalents, but Schleiermacher seems to use them differently here.

34. Ed. note: The word “proclaims” here translates kundgeben, the giving out, announcement, or declaration of something to be known in one or more of the senses just indicated in §10n32.

35. Cf. Rom. 1:19. Ed. note: This verse, running into the next one, reads very differently in the Luther Bible than in standard English translations. Hence, both are given here. “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them” (RSV). An English translation of the Luther Bible text would read: “For what is known of God is revealed to them, for God has revealed it to them.” Verse 20 RSV: “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” Again, an English translation of the Luther Bible text would read: “Therewith that God’s invisible nature is made manifest—that is, God’s eternal power and deity—thus is perceived in what is made, namely, in the creation of the world.”

36. Ed. note: The wording is daβ Gott sich kundmachte, wie er an und für sich ist.

37. Ed. note: Here “grasped” translates aufgefaβt, “perceived by the senses” translates wahrgenommen, and “firmly held” twice translates festgehalten.

38. Kundmachung.

39. Unwissenheit. Ed. note: Or lack of any knowing (Wissen), i.e., a total ignorance. Cf. §10n32.

40. Ed. note: The proposition has directed attention, first and foremost, to “communal formations of piety,” not to strictly personal adaptations.

41. Ed. note: The phrase is wieviel Unrichtiges auch dem Wahren darin beigemischt sein mag. See §§153–155 and §116.3 on the admixing of error (Irrtum) and truth (Wahrheit) in the visible church. See also Brief Outline §§201–2 and 207n. See also summary of §10P.S. in §11n7.