[Introduction to Second Point of Doctrine]
§110. In community of life with Christ the natural forces of the regenerate are appropriated for Christ’s use, wherefrom a life is built that is conformed to Christ’s perfection and blessedness, and this process is called the state of sanctification.
1.1 Retention of the term “sanctification” is sufficiently justified by its scriptural status. However, since it depends on the rather indefinite concept regarding what is holy—“holy” being a concept that by divergent explanations and modes of usage has come to be still more complicated—it needs some further clarification for usage in dogmatic discourse. The nearest history-of-language element that comes into account is the Old Testament usage of the word “holy” regarding all that which, based on people’s being set apart from the generally shared course of life, amounts to a usage simply dedicated to people’s being related to God. This being related to God, however, allows for no distinction from this relation to God in any activity that would issue from an impetus proceeding from Christ. This relation is significant because Christ’s absolutely strong God-consciousness brings forth the relation and of itself includes separation from cooperative activity within the collective life of susceptibility to sin. We grant, moreover, that community is something essential to human nature. Thus, this Christian account already implies presupposing an effective tendency to form a new collective life, just as, also by means of the noted Old Testament usage, the term “holy” connects with the priestly standing of all Christians and presents the new collective life as a spiritual counterpart of the temple.2 As a result, the status of sanctification can also be viewed as service in this spiritual temple. Given this interconnection with distinctively Christian ideas, retention of the term “sanctification” for dogmatic use as well would seem to be all the more desirable. This is the case, since instead of this term someone could only too easily grab onto terms that would sooner place in shadows what is distinctively Christian in the spirit of the new life, thus making it more difficult to distinguish development of a Christian life from a gradual process of improvement along a strictly natural pathway.
The second linguistic element is the interconnection of the term “sanctification” with “holiness,” viewed as a divine attribute.3 We do, of course, stick by our explanation of this attribute, given above.4 It is evident, however, that through the mode of life to be more closely explicated here, the regenerate person also develops conscience in others, to the degree that all of this person’s activities diverge from what happens in the collective life of susceptibility to sin.5
Yet, in neither of these two cases can we call the condition one of holiness, which would be the same thing as being holy. Instead, we would call it sanctification, like becoming holy or getting to be holy, which we would define as striving to attain holiness and designate it by that same term, sanctification.6 If “being holy” were the meaning, a complete turnabout would have taken place already at a single point, at one’s rebirth. The result would be that every connection with the collective life of sin would be completely erased, and in that instant one’s entire nature would have to be wholly suffused by Christ and held under his dominion. At that point, however, this transformation would be entirely a part of regeneration, and there would be no doctrine whatsoever to set forth regarding what would have developed thereafter.
Sanctification, then, is thus to be understood as something in progress. As a result, from the turning point of regeneration onward7 the contents of what is accomplished in time are ever farther removed from what preceded that turning point and grows ever closer to pure suitability for the impetus that proceeds from Christ, thus also to one’s being indistinguishable from Christ. In consequence, these two features will also be the two points of view from which the standing of sanctification is to be considered.8
2. Thus, suppose that we first compare the state of someone who is in the process of sanctification with what preceded regeneration. Then, this comparison would, above all, not be about the distinction of elements in which dominion of susceptibility to sin had been manifested, but, on the contrary, would be about elements that had already hearkened to preparatory grace.9 We should not perchance limit these preparatory workings of grace only to people’s being brought near to repentance and to belief in certain thoughts or certain stirrings of feeling. Rather, these phenomena also show up in actions, since it would be against nature if lively thoughts and strong emotions were not to bear some influence on actions; to be sure, both sources of influence on actions would be stronger or weaker, depending on affinities with those actions, and both would be occurring at about the same time. Indeed, it is possible, given a more frequent return of similar influences, that the active results of these influences would even prove to be facilitative through repetition and would be formed into habits. Yet, in every particular case the impetus to such alteration of one’s actions comes simply from outside oneself. Moreover, this impetus remains effective only as long as the momentary stimulus still continues to sway, this without one’s being in a position to reproduce itself from within. In other situations, it is like one’s finding, even frequently, that one has pursued some compelling directive in action, but afterward it seems to be something foreign to one’s own self. Thus, such actions do not belong to the agent’s own life. Rather, they belong to an unfamiliar outer life, one that proves to have been strongly present in oneself.
Thus, actions that are similar to those that belong to the situation of sanctification but are not grounded in the regeneration of their agents are actually actions of the Christian collective life, which exercises some sway over individuals. This is also the case with habits that are formed in the same fashion. This practice is best observed in the example offered in Scripture regarding the relationship of strangers to native inhabitants of a people.10 That is, among themselves the latter of the two groups form law and custom based on the inner force afforded them by the indwelling, distinctive spirit they hold in common. Moreover, in that they behave in this way, all this process is within their very nature. On the other hand, strangers have had no part in the cultivation of law and custom, because they do not carry the formative force within themselves, but they accommodate themselves to custom and frequently act in accordance with custom, even where no demand is placed on them. In contrast, when they go back home, where these influxes from a community whose nature is foreign to them are no longer present, they habituate themselves with greatest ease, even to laws and customs adopted there in the meantime.
Accordingly, it is not so much the contents, much less the number11 of particular actions or of an entire series of them, that distinguishes the status of sanctification from the condition of human beings before their regeneration. Rather, in regeneration a repelling force has come into being, namely, a no-longer-willing-to-be in a collective life that is reproducing12 sin. This force does continue to have its steady effect within the form of an essential achievement of life,13 but it is, in turn, simply an outflow of one’s having-given-oneself-up to receiving Christ’s influence, which, within the entire system of self-initiated activity, has then grown in strength to a steadfast willing-to-be-determined-by-Christ.
This growing in strength, moreover, also remains the only tenable distinction if, simply reversing the direction, we look back from the new life to the old life. That is, the selfsame strength of God-consciousness does not come first, but this spiritual communication is bestowed on us only when sin has already developed as a power; and what has developed over time can also be removed only by something countering it in a timely manner. Since this is so, then approaching toward that aim of attaining a strong God-consciousness would also be delayed by what has already reached the point of being a habit. Thus, sin that is readily and often rearoused has to be worked against by that countering force of repulsion. Not only is this the case, but the susceptibility to sin of each individual is also grounded both before and outside of each one. Thus, sin itself cannot be completely extirpated in anyone but ever remains in the process of disappearing. To the extent that sin has not yet vanished, it can also still appear. Hence, actions can exist within the situation of sanctification that are even similar to such as were habitual prior to regeneration, actions in which the power of the collective life of sinfulness prominently holds sway and traces of preparatory grace are internally hidden. Indeed, suppose still further that in this manner growth in sanctification were not to occur without such struggle between the new and the old human being. Even then, over the entire course of this struggle, not once would it present a smoothly progressive increase in might on the one side and a smoothly regressive decrease in might on the other side. This is so, for in each case one’s own susceptibility to sin is always stirred anew by influences from sinful collective life all around us. As a result, even if the susceptibility to sin, regarded in and of itself, might be constantly reduced by growth of the new human being, this, nevertheless, cannot be claimed in the same fashion regarding reinforcements that susceptibility to sin obtains from without. At least given the variegated change occurring in this domain—in that individual life is laid hold of by sinful collective life in the most irregular and unforeseen ways, now more strongly and now more weakly—growth in sanctification could be explained only by a special kind of miracle,14 one not based on the natural course taken by divine grace within a human being. It could be so explained if it were not that, within the struggle one must go through, particular elements have also entered the fray, elements in which the might of sin rises to the fore more strongly than it did in earlier elements.
Thus, even after regeneration, a manifold change of conditions is manifested, and with it repentance—and indeed not only a little repentance over trivial matters. However, this repentance, nevertheless, is distinguished from every earlier instance of repentance by a steadfast inner no-longer-willing-to-be under the sway of sin. Moreover, it is posited as disappearing in the same way as the repentance that, as long as some resistance to the impetus of Christ still occurs even in obedience, also accompanies all those actions that appear to be fruits of this obedience but also show traces of resistance. Furthermore, even though those intermittent evidences of a lingering presence of sin can make particular instances appear to be retrogressive, as compared with other instances, nevertheless, a firm consciousness remains, such that the more numerous the series of such faltering instances one views en masse is, the greater the inroads of their amassed total is seen to be. Further, the surety of faith—viewed as an appreciation of interconnectedness with Christ and as good pleasure in that interconnectedness—is likewise constantly on the rise, with the result that, given the forces invested in Christ, sin can never obtain new purchase while it is being dislodged from its former hold. Viewed from this side of the struggle, the state of sanctification is chiefly distinguished from all prior states by this recognition: that sin can win no new ground.
3. Now, let us observe, from the other side of the struggle, how this state of sanctification approaches toward likeness to Christ. Above, we have already drawn a boundary line that we are not permitted to overstep. That is, from the very onset of his incarnation15 on, Christ developed naturally in every way, yet constantly and without interruption in organic union with the principle16 animating him for service to that principle. Such a service, however, is not bestowed on any other human being, all bringing with them, as they do, a personal existence based on a collective life of susceptibility to sin. Closely observed, this difference from Christ must indeed be posited in every element and also come into real consciousness in proportion to the clarity of self-consciousness in relation to what is divine, or one’s illumination. This is so, for wherever imperfection still exists, such that it does not solely give expression to the pattern of temporal development but also deserves to be named imperfection with respect to the relationship of deed to impetus, there some recollection of one’s old life would also be grounded, thus, some realization of that old life. Consequently, even elements that already, in and of themselves, contain advance in similarity to Christ would contain some consciousness of sin. This consciousness of sin, however, does not hinder interconnectedness with Christ being efficacious in every element belonging to the state of sanctification, and thus in every element of that state does not hinder that new life from deserving the designation of “being conformed to Christ’s perfection and blessedness” as given in our proposition.
This very life with Christ is already implied in the analogy exactly set forth that regeneration is to be seen as the divine act of union with human nature and sanctification as the situation of that union. This is the case, for that act of union would have been nothing but a fruitless illusion had it not brought forth an enduring situation of living union, in which the divine and human were to be divided no more. Rather, in all its accomplishments human nature would prove to be an instrument of that divine force. Thus, even the activity of regeneration proceeding from the divine force in Christ uniting individuals with him would have come to naught and would be no different from the most fleeting, transitory stirrings, yet surely anything but the end of an old life and beginning of a new life, unless that act had proved to be temporally effective within every element. As a result, every element is to be regarded as a repetition of that same initial act, viewed as a new act that involves people’s coming to be stirred by Christ’s receptive activity, and thus every element includes within it a not-willing-for-oneself but rather a willing-to-be-in-community-with-Christ. In these two desires, taken together, however, the sinless perfection of Christ, thus also, the self-consciousness that is diminishing in reference to self, the blessedness of Christ are coposited.
Now, suppose that here too we want to make clear what the boundaries of likeness and unlikeness consist of. To do this we must distinguish a constant feature and a varying feature in that which belongs to this growing suitability of elements in our life for impulses proceeding from Christ. Inasmuch as each element can be viewed as a renewal of one’s regeneration, each element is like every other element and each one participates in the perfection and blessedness of Christ, for there is no being taken up into community with Christ other than this. Now, on the one hand, this ever-constant likeness consists in one’s continually renewed will for the reign of God, just as in Christ this will grounded all particular actions and acts of will.17 Likewise, on the other hand, it is one’s consciousness of a union of divine being with human nature through Christ, just as also existed in Christ, in all the determinative factors18 of Christ’s self-consciousness. Now, this self-consciousness is likewise participation in Christ’s blessedness, since our being linked with Supreme Being brings absolute satisfaction,19 viewed as that participation in his sinless perfection, since sin resides outside the reign of God, but within itself the reign of God contains the strength of all that is good.
In contrast, all else that sticks out as some particular feature within the life of the regenerate, and insofar as it does, lies within the boundaries already drawn. As a result, not only do particular actions render more or less sin in their being carried out, but the same also goes for particular aims and goals. Correspondingly, suppose that in many of its elements an actual individual self-consciousness is in sorrow, yet is, at the same time, assuaged by the ever-remaining-constant feature, whereas in other elements it is joy that thereby transitions into being brought low,20 because only thereby can joy be justified, and in that instance only thereby can any sorrow lying nearby be assuaged.
Hence, any doctrine yet to be set forth as a particular doctrine concerning the state of sanctification can be related only to this contrast between a feature that belongs to its starting point and a feature that belongs to its goal.21
1. Ed. note: For glimpses into conceptual contents in this proposition, see esp. Rom. 8:29 and 12:2; Col. 2:6–7 and 3:12–17; also Eph. 2:8–22.
2. Ed. note: As indicators of usage, not proof texts, cf. 2 Cor. 6:16 and Eph. 2:21. Through Christ’s role as counterpart to high-priestly functions recorded in the Old Testament, Schleiermacher also reflects the widespread belief that Christians are called to be and comprise a priestly people among themselves. Cf. index.
3. Ed. note: In the present work, the terms for holy, what is holy, holiness, and sanctification all have the same root—Heil, Heilig, Heiligkeit, Heiligung—but they do not keep the same meaning.
5. Ed. note: At this point in the first edition §131.1, this influence of regenerate persons on others’ conscience is called an “awakening,” which is “obviously an approximation to divine holiness.”
6. Ed. note: Successively, not Heiligkeit or Heiligsein but Heiligung or Heiligwerden, sich heiligen, and Trachten nach Heiligkeit.
7. Ed. note: The turning point has been identified in §§108–9 in the process of conversion, specifically God’s justification coming to be received in faith, thus rebirth (Wiedergeburt), or the onset of the new human being, which in regeneration (Wiedergeburt) moves forward.
8. Ed. note: This is the place where the phrase Stand (locus, standing, status, state, situation) der Heiligung begins to be used most strategically. At this juncture “locus” represents a place in doctrine where the process of sanctification itself, not just the term, is to be observed, considered, and/or reflected on (betrachten).
9. Ed. note: See index on Grace, preparatory.
10. Eph. 2:19. Ed. note: In the first edition (1822), KGA I.7/2 (1980), 191, Schleiermacher’s note refers to Eph. 2:17–22, placed after the following sentence: “All the didactic portrayals of Christian community [in Scripture] also agree in their ascribing all that is stirring and lively within the whole to one Spirit, and all individuals are described as organs who are animated [beseelt] by that Spirit and as participants in that whole who are integrated into it by that Spirit.”
The initial outline for a sermon on Eph. 2:19, preached at Rügenwald on Dec. 16, 1802, is in Bauer (1908), 330–33. Despite his very well-constructed delivery, down to the last detail, he rarely appeared in a pulpit with more than an outline. Schleiermacher’s first extant sermon text on this Scripture is from Aug. 24, 1806; first printed in his second sermon collection (1808), then in SW II.1 (1834), 222–38, and (1843), 218–33; also in KGA III/1 (2012), 248–64. It has also been published in several special collections (1835–1969). The same Scripture text was also used in “Remarks at a Wedding,” ET in Seidel/Tice (1991), 195–98, also reproduced a few times after its appearance in a periodical in 1827 and in SW II.4 (1835), 818–20, and (1844), 855–57.
The Eph. 2:19 text reads: “So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (RSV). The sermons all refer to Christ’s working toward union of individuals by Christ’s Spirit in and through the church. Overall, they compare unions between couples in matrimony, those who gather in the civic union, and those who obtain union within the church.
11. Der numerische Wert.
12. Ed. note: In this passage the procreative term is kept, not only in the usual use of a term meaning “rebirth” (Wiedergeburt), in theology usually meaning “regeneration,” but also meaning “procreating” or “begetting,” from being in one generation to producing another (wiedererzeugenden Gesamtleben), in this case “reproducing,” or, with little change, “passing on,” some collective life.
13. Ed. note: Clemen’s conjecture of replacing Lebensverrichtung with Lebensrichtung would seem to miss the main point, merely repeating the obvious change in the course, direction, or alignment of one’s life but not keeping the characterization of a radical, essential turn in one’s life, a transformation to be viewed as an “achievement.” This point emphasizes that essential turn: even though sin remains in abundance, no-longer-willing-to-be in a collective life that is reproducing sin is now an outflow of justification. Further, one’s growing sanctification takes the form of countering any resistance to Christ’s influence.
14. Ed. note: On Christ as the apex of miracle, cf. §103.4. See also preliminary considerations on miracle in §§5, 13.l and 13.P.S., 14.P.S., 34.2–3, 47, and 76.3, and index. For him, recognition of miracle (Wunder) requires in the viewer an internal capacity to marvel (e.g., a relationship of faith with Christ). Thus, a miracle is not simply an objective fact supposedly associated with the object or event viewed. The source of miracle could be supernatural, but not absolutely so, as if poured directly through a pipeline into the natural order and breaking its laws, and it could be suprarational, but not absolutely so, not beyond all reason.
15. Menschwerdung. Ed. note: See index on this German term and the usual Latinate term “incarnation,” both holding a meaning different from Schleiermacher’s.
16. Prinzip. Ed. note: Since ancient times, this term had the meaning of a moving, originative source. Schleiermacher chiefly uses it in this sense.
17. Willensakten. Ed. note: This choice of “act” here underscores Schleiermacher’s consistent distinction of one’s “acts” of will and of actual activity from one’s “deeds” (Taten). Here Willensakten covers a wide gamut of volition, not simply acts of will—that is, acts of deciding or resolve. Volition of any kind, that is, acts of will and other expressions of will, provides impetus for “deeds,” whether these deeds turn out to be more or less good or more or less bad.
18. Bestimmtheiten.
19. Ed. note: The phrase “absolute satisfaction” (schlechthinige Befriedigung) contains an array of significant biblical meanings and associations, including being at peace or rest and suggesting a quiet mood of being utterly content, pleased, or gratified.
20. Demuth. Ed. note: Ordinarily this word means “humility.” Here it refers to joy’s being somewhat subdued but not replaced, thus to a mood of feeling rather low, so that sorrow is, in turn, admixed with and qualified by joy. In Schleiermacher’s catalog of moods and feelings, sometimes there turns out to be no definite word for such admixed affective states, arrayed as they are on sliding scales. One word he distinctively uses for a similar state, for example, is Wehmut, to be translated “tugging sadness and longing.” Especially when admixed with joy, he has found this term to be a distinctively Christian feeling, by virtue of its placement within the context of regenerate life, where sheer sadness over sin and its effects is always accompanied by an upbeat God-consciousness. See §120.P.S. See also esp. OR (1821) V, under the headings “Religious Character” and “Longing for Purification and Fulfillment.” See also OR (1821) V, supplemental note 14, on an association of Wehmut with both Demut (humility) and Stoltz (pride) and OR (1821) II immediately under the main heading “The Inner Locus” and supplemental note 14.
21. Ed. note: In an account that identifies what conditions accompany sanctification from its starting point onward, sin is always still present. When one is at the constant, ideal goal outside and beyond the old life, to the degree that it is realized within any element of one’s life, one lives in the reign of God. One participates in the new life while struggling over remnants of sinfulness from the old life left behind. Thus, the process of sanctification is outside the boundary of the ordinary and varying state that defines the ongoing process moving gradually toward that final goal, the end point that one seeks to reach in all the elements of one’s life. Hence, this arrangement also helps further to define the announced teleological nature of Christianity (cf. §§11–14). The same process describing what occurs for individuals here also applies to the entire doctrine of the church, viewed as a community of faith, yet to follow (cf. §§62–63 and 126), and to doctrines presented in between. In short, the operations of grace are transformative indeed, but they are also developmental throughout until the point of consummation is finally reached (cf. §§157–59 and 163).
§111. First Doctrinal Proposition: Regarding Sins of the Regenerate. Because the sins of those who are in the state of sanctification are always being combated in advance, they always bring their forgiveness with them in advance and have no capacity to annul the divine grace that comes in regeneration.
1. If we take together the two propositions just set forth—that in the condition of sanctification no new sins develop and that in all elements, thus also in all works and actions, even the best and most similar to Christ’s, something belonging to the earlier condition, consequently something sinful, still exists.1 On this basis, then, it is evident that in the state of sanctification no sin can exist that could put an end to regeneration. The reason is that some resistance to sin by the new human being is necessarily also contained in all of one’s sinful actions, even if not of a thoroughly penetrating and sufficient sort. Thus, in these sinful actions it is equally the case, as it is for those of the old human being in whom resistance to sin also proves to be insufficient, that the new human being is active and, in that such a one is active, also cannot have died out.
Now, surely no one has believed that the state of grace could wither away through elements in which the new kind of human being is active; rather, this would happen only by elements of the old kind of human being. What would occur instead is not a determinate contrast between old and new human beings but only a distinction of more or less, hence a distinction in which a point at which a particular destructive effect would have begun could not be definitely established.
Suppose that, instead, we were to set forth such a contrast and call the one action a sin and the other a good work. Accordingly, this contrast would always be a designation of which of these actions is the predominant part. In particular cases, designating the actual comparative difference between the two actions could indeed seem to be an almost endless task. Yet, if sin were to be the deed of a regenerate person, then the deed would, nevertheless, have to be something other than what would be sin in another individual, however similar it might seem to be. However, it would seem similar only by dint of that feature which would be the same in it and in the good works of the regenerate person.
Suppose that we take regeneration in the sense in which we have explained it here and imagine that only subsequently would a function of sinfulness develop that until then had been completely dormant or that such a totally new circumstance would form that could find no concord whatsoever within the domain where sin had had its locus up to then. It would be impossible then for anyone not to grant that that function, in the one case, or this set of circumstances, in the other case, should have developed in a sinful manner.
Moreover, suppose that we likewise imagine that already before one’s regeneration someone in a particular function or relationship, whether it then be by one’s personal distinctiveness or by the influence of good breeding or custom, that person had always been kept so pure that no sin had proceeded from that state. Then it would also not be possible to think that after one’s regeneration from there on out sin would creep in. What results clearly enough from this conclusion, moreover, is that in every case that tenders such an illusion, we would also always have to say, despite all else, that either the sin in question is not new but is based already on earlier times and is simply aroused once again, or regeneration was not proper and genuine, because susceptibility to sin could still generate something new.
Viewed from another side, we would also have to reject the converse of our proposition, because the claim that a regenerate person—who is indeed a new human being—could lose the grace of regeneration by a single action stands in most exact connection with the claim that we already rejected earlier, namely, that the first human beings could have lost certain attributes through a single action, attributes that they still had while they were engaged in that action. That is to say, one could want to assert that the opinion is not that loss of grace occurs by an action of the new human being, but rather, only by a nonaction of the new human being. Thus, for that reason, the presupposition that regeneration is the onset of life with Christ in us, which is indeed necessarily an action, would have to be retracted. Moreover, in this case as in the other one it becomes evident that, in whatever way one might conceive even such a destructive action, already the grace of regeneration would, nevertheless, have to have been lost in advance in every instance.
This consideration does indeed yield another analogy, to be used if one is to remain true to the concept of regeneration. This is so, for at this point an individual would also have had to renounce community of life with Christ by being cooperative with an impetus proceeding from Christ. In the same way, since in the case of the wicked spirit, this spirit would have to have broken away from this status of kinship by the very forces that would have most closely affiliated this spirit with God. Consequently, what we concluded there also follows here.2
Finally, suppose that we return to the task of definitely separating the condition of sanctification from the condition of being in a collective life that is susceptible to sin but under influences from preparatory grace, whether that task of separating is fulfilled or not. Then, in every instance embedded in this task would be the demand to distinguish a working of divine grace on human beings from a working that is produced from within and through human beings themselves. Now, suppose that the latter working were not a purely momentary one, retreating to itself in turn—that is, suppose it were a sheer moment of inspiration3—thus continuity would automatically follow therefrom. Then, one would imagine even this working of grace to be ceasing, in turn. Thus, its warranty would lie simply in the inspiration itself, whether it might have been long or short. Hence, for the contrary of our proposition, what remains to consider is simply the choice between an alteration of one’s nature wrought by one’s own deed or a voluntary withdrawing of divine grace prior to the decisive action. This would be taken to occur precisely as in another place, this time before the storied fall of human beings, a withdrawing of an extraordinary, discrete divine supporting grace. Hence, it also seems impossible that this contrary mode of doctrine can have come to the fore out of the self-consciousness of one who is conscious of divine grace and be conceived in this way. That is to say, given that we too have granted that in sensorily perceptible self-consciousness an element of regeneration definitely cannot be removed, consequently also granted that the surety regarding a form of life contrary to the earlier state does not ensue at once. Thus, we must assume, nevertheless, that even as a matter of experience expressions of the new life become ever more steadfast, and thereby confidence in the endurance of this union of life with Christ also has to enter into sensorily perceptible self-consciousness more and more. This is so, for, quite apart from all vacillations, a growing dominion of life with Christ over flesh does distinguish the state of sanctification. This natural confident expectation that is appropriate to regeneration can be expressed only in this part of our proposition, and not in what is contrary to it.
2. Thus, even though the contrary formulations are favored by reputed teachers and have got into some confessions, those formulations to the effect that faith could be lost, in turn,4 that justification could be lost, and that grace could be lost5—we concur with them much less than passages in other confessional symbols that maintain positions favorable to our proposition do, in part straightaway and in part indirectly, and that clearly express the same confidence.6
If we compare these contrasting expressions with each other, then the following results seem to come to the fore. First, the concept of a fall and that of those fallen and the intervening of baptism into the midst of them show that the formulation that contrasts with ours conforms to old ecclesial decisions. These decisions were made in opposition to a stringent desire happily to exclude others from their company, and with good reason. Yet, in no way had those who had fallen away, externally disowned Christian belief, and given up on the church7 lost their faith internally on that account. Rather, to give a few examples, they would have disowned certain beliefs only externally out of fear—that is, they might have been rather lacking as yet in bravery. In addition, at that time not all of those who had been baptized were reborn, any more than is the case now. Those, moreover, who had given up on Christianity, in order perchance to enjoy greater sensory freedom again, were not yet fully stirred within and had not yet attained proper faith and justification.8
Second, suppose that the concept of falling and of being fallen is applied to our circumstances today and, in that same sense of being devoid of faith and justification, the concept is tied to those circumstances. Then, even the question as to what kind of sin would occasion this being devoid of faith would be answered in many various ways. This would be the case, for to sin knowingly and willingly, to sin premeditatively, and to persist in sinning premeditatively are three very different kinds of definition.9
Suppose that we now constrain ourselves to the two extremes. Then, the first category belongs within the succession of different situations between more and less—that is, present in each person in the state of sanctification, since, often enough, even lack of perfection in doing good works takes place knowingly and willingly. In contrast, if we understand the third category indicated just above, namely, premeditative persistence, to mean an entire knowing resistance, then it belongs just as plainly to cases where regeneration was only an apparent one.
Third, it is surely not to be doubted that doctrine regarding the indestructible security of a justifying divine grace—or, more correctly stated, of the complete reliability of it—has not become the prevailing ecclesial doctrine. This result is simply grounded in controversy with the Roman church and in polemics against fanatical sects, just as every dogmatic statement that cannot gain currency as an analysis10 of Christian self-consciousness is either speculative or is grounded in a similarly external manner.11 This explanation is also made clear enough on the basis that the case of premeditative persistence-in-sin is itself implicated in it. The fanatic caricature of this doctrine is obvious: it authoritatively cites an inner surety of feeling alone, and then it enlarges what it has to say by switching items around in the proposition to the effect that what a regenerate person does is deemed right or at least permissible. These rubrics, however, find no support in our formulation as it is set forth here. Conclusions that the Roman church wants to draw from the doctrine of justification by faith are likewise sufficiently guarded against, in that we presuppose that a regenerate person is continually struggling against sin. However, as concerns thoughtless misuse of the doctrine, this misuse finds no more support for it as it does in the view that someone can always be reconverted when that person has fallen from grace, or as it does in the view that sins are possible for a regenerate person that do not make the person correspondingly lacking in the state of grace. Yet, it lies much closer to our presentation to counter the objection with the view that whoever seeks such an excuse does not want to struggle against sin, thus is surely no regenerate. Thus, the entire doctrine of justification has nothing to do with that person at all. Hence, there is no further ground for desiring to construct some better access to the doctrine, by adding untenable, obfuscating postscripts to the plain and simple testimony of evangelical Christian self-consciousness.
3. However, the assertion that sins committed in the state of sanctification always carry forgiveness of sins with them is not also intended to mean that it is as if the regenerate person were conscious of forgiveness in one’s actual sinning or were sinful in and with this consciousness. Rather, first sin has to come into consciousness in this person as one’s own deed, consequently as fully carried out and with repentance, in that forgiveness and repentance are mutually conditioned. Only this is a sure thing: that resistance to sin, even when it does not have a happy and victorious outcome, viewed as a harbinger of repentance, is also a harbinger of the consciousness of forgiveness. The actual meaning, however, is simply this: that what applies to the entire concept of justification, likewise applies to this particular part of that process, namely, that the gracious forgiveness of sin is not a particular decree or act intended for each person, and just as little is it a sheer declaratory act; rather, it is a general act that leads people out of the domain of fault, guilt, and deserving punishment, one that is indeed temporally fulfilled in each individual, but at that point really fulfilled and needing no repetition. This is so, for even in the act of forgiveness, divine omniscience is indeed not able to place sin as absolutely extinguished in the element of regeneration itself but only as in a gradual process of disappearing.
Now, conversion is the turning point into this process, but it is so in such a way that sin is still appearing even afterward. Accordingly, even afterward a relation to this act of conversion would have to exist in consciousness, but in a natural manner this relation would have to be a different one.
Suppose, then, that in the life under dominion of a general susceptibility to sin, sin itself is taken to be a collective fault, with the result that sin regarded as occurring one by one were not accounted to the individual as such but to everyone who has had a part in this collective fault and in such a way that, precisely for that reason, nothing of an individual nature would be forgiven. In that light, what would happen in the state of sanctification would be the exact opposite. That is to say, if redemption were also possible only under the form of a collective life, then, taken strictly in and of itself, sin would still not have its ground in this collective life but would have it only in individuals, inasmuch as they would still have something from the previous collective life in them. So, sin would also not be the fault of collective life but rather that of the individual and thus is accounted to some individual. However, it is only an apparent contradiction that sins would be accounted to some individual and that the individual would always be forgiven already, not only because in every instance forgiveness is such an accounting but because here too no other accounting than a forgiving one takes place. This is so, in turn, because, for the natural person who is passing over from the sinful collective life into the new life, sins are accounted on a personal track and indeed to this person more in a truly personal way than to an individual who still belongs to the old collective life. However, they are not accounted to the new human being, as such, who, identifying oneself with the whole by virtue of shared feeling, does not bear fault in one’s own person. Sins are thus forgiven this person because they can be accounted only to some individual who no longer exists. This person, therefore, also bears the consciousness of forgiveness as soon as this person is conscious of oneself as existing within the new collective life. This connection occurs because the continuity of the new life, by virtue of one’s desire for the reign of God and one’s not desiring sin,12 has not been interrupted and, at the very same time, some sort of resistance to sin has been brought to the fore. Yet, it is self-evident that this consciousness of forgiveness cannot exist at the very same time as a sin is committed, at whatever level this consciousness might be. Instead, one’s not desiring sin must necessarily become manifest as repentance only after the deed is done, and consciousness of forgiveness presupposes repentance.
4. All the less would there be something to say about the very struggle against sin, as in doing so one could hardly avoid swerving over into the domain of Christian ethics. This effort could be passed on to that domain if misunderstandings had not emerged regarding that struggle as well. It follows from concerns addressed thus far that in the state of sanctification, in each person the danger of falling into sin issues from those branches of meaning-giving sensory functions,13 which mostly held sway before one’s regeneration and which had been located within circumstances in which habits could most easily be shaped in ways favorable to one’s liking. Thus, this domain, within which one’s enticements lie, enticements against which it is always the hardest fully to mount a resistance against, is the domain of temptation for each person.
Now, however, in each person the efficacious activity of Christ’s life, which proceeds from his willing the reign of God, is defined on the basis of the demands that are issued to a person by virtue of one’s position in that collective life. Thereby Christ’s willing the reign of God is formed into distinct purposes. These purposes, moreover, are thus surely a constant thing, since Christian ethics embraces the whole of life. Accordingly, the domain of temptation can also lie only within the domain of one’s calling, in the broadest sense of that word. That is, there can be no struggle against one’s own sin other than after sin is effectually stirred up through our activity in the reign of God, consequently in such a way that, at the same time, whatever is waged against that sin has to be an activity within the reign of God. Thus, the struggle consists solely in this: that we seek to fend off or to overcome temptations that emerge within our activity in the reign of God. This formulation of the matter, moreover, must be able to include procedures against all that can still possibly be understood as sins in the changing course of our state of sanctification. This is so, for otherwise, two different but adjacent tasks would be set for us, tasks neither one of which could be sufficiently accomplished in any one instance without impairing the other effort. Further light can be shed on both tasks in the following way.
In every case, proper utilization of divine forgiveness of sin is conditioned by struggle against sin. In contrast, proper utilization of divine adoption, by virtue of which the person who is engaged in the state of sanctification can say that in sanctification one is still a child of God, conditioned by the liveliness and efficacy of faith. In the latter case, those engaged in sanctification are so even after sin is present, namely, in every instant, since sin is still present everywhere. Now, however, since the two sides are one and the same, likewise those things by which each is conditioned would also have to be only the same. Consequently, there is no haphazard struggle against possible future sins, which could always be simply a suppression or a debilitation of naturally developing sensory forces, a process whereby, at the same time, these sensory forces would get more ineffectual as organs of spirit. Further, there are also no exercises of repentance which are special, namely, that are formed in actions not arising from our work in the reign of God. Of still less significance is an arbitrary abandonment of the domain of temptation, which would be viewed, at the same time, as an abandonment of the domain of one’s calling—this since any such abandonment could in no way be derived from being taken into community of life with Christ, for this community would indeed also have to be community with his being sent into the world. That withdrawal would stand in contradiction to any such mission. Hence, the only proper course that remains is simply resistance against temptations that actually arise.
1. (1) Second Helvetic Confession (1566) 16: “Moreover, in the works even of the saints there is much that is unworthy of God and very much that is imperfect.” (2) Belgic Confession (1561) 24: “For we can do no work but what is polluted by our flesh.” Ed. note: (1) ET Cochrane (1972), 260; Latin only: Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 271; cf. §37n3. (2) ET and French in Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 412; Latin: Niemeyer (1840), 376.
2. Ed. note: See §§72, 80, and 81 for discussions of various conceptions that make ineffective use of the idea of a wicked spirit named the “devil.”
3. Ed. note: On “inspiration,” see §14.2.
4. Epitome of the Articles (Formula of Concord, 1577) 4: “Accordingly, we also believe … that when it is said that ‘the reborn do good works from a free and spontaneous spirit,’ that is not to be understood as if … they would nevertheless retain faith even if they deliberately persist in sin. … We condemn the teaching that faith in Christ … is not lost in one who knowingly and willingly sins.” Ed. note: ET Book of Concord (2000), 499f., with some changes in comparing the Latin and German in Bek. Luth. (1963), 788–90.
5. (1) Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), Loci praecipui theologici (1543–1559): “It is necessary to differentiate sins that in this life remain in the reborn from those sins on account of which grace … and faith are lost. Therefore, actual mortal sin in one’s falling after reconciliation is an inner or an outer action conflicting with God’s law and done against conscience.”—“It is not possible to counter the conscience of faith with an evil design.” (2) Augsburg Confession (1530) 12: “Those who have sinned after their baptism may obtain forgiveness of sins whenever they come to repentance. … Rejected here are those who teach that whoever has once … become righteous [fromm] cannot fall again.” (3) Declaratio Toruniensus (= Acta synodua generalis Toruniensus, 1645), in the section “On Grace”: “Let us decree, as it were, that God’s grace or his certitude … cannot abandon those once justified, even if they wallow in sins for the sake of pleasure. Yet, on the other hand, we do teach instead that those who are reborn, as often as they fall back into sins against their conscience, persist in them for a little while, and neither the living faith nor the justifying grace of God nor God’s certitude … do they retain for that time,” and so forth. (4) In his Dogmatik (1818), Franz Volkmar Reinhard (1755–1818) tries to reconcile the main proposition “ipsum tamen iustificationis descretum in Deo mutabile non est” (that very decree of justification is not mutable in God) with the proposition that a person could be justified more than once in one’s life, for as often as one receives true faith again after a preceding moral deterioration, the justifying decree that is in God related to this faith must also be restored. Cf. §128: “… iustificatio … neglecta fide iterum potest amitti” (justification can be lost when faith has again been neglected). Ed. note: (1) ET Kienzles; Latin: CR 21:681, 780. (2) ET Book of Concord (2000), 44; Latin and German: Bek. Luth. (1963), 66f. (3) ET Kienzles; Latin: Niemeyer (1840), 676. (4) ET Kienzles.
6. (1) Second Helvetic Confession (1566) 16: “The same (faith) keeps us in the service we owe to God.” (2) Gallican Confession (1559) 21: “We believe also that faith is not given to the elect only to introduce them into the right way but also to make them continue in it to the end.” (3) Solid Declaration (1577) 11: “He (God) wills to protect them in their great weakness, … to guide and lead them in his ways, to lift them up when they fall, and to comfort and preserve them.” (4) Augustine’s definition also belongs here: “I say that sin consists in forsaking faith, which works through love (dilecionem) even unto death.” Ed. note: (1) ET Cochrane(1972), 258; Latin alone: Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 269. Cf. note at §37n3. (2) ET and French in Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 371, also Cochrane (1972), 151; Latin: Niemeyer (1840), 334. (3) ET Book of Concord (2000), 644; Latin and German: Bek. Luth. (1963), 1069. In this particularly instructive example, as in many other places, the ET follows a German text far different from the corresponding Latin one that Schleiermacher used. Here the Latin reads: “In this eternal counsel God proposes to make them righteous in their many and varied infirmities, … to defend them, … and if they lapse to give them support … and to comfort and restore them to life.” As here, Tappert (1959), 619, tends to stay somewhat more faithful to the German meaning in translating this document. (4) Also quoted in §74.2 above, from “Admonition and Grace” (427) 12.35; ET Tice, cf. Fathers of the Church 2 (1947), 288; Latin: Migne Lat. 44:938.
7. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s tendency with respect to those once forcibly or harshly isolated from communities of faith was warmly to welcome all; only rarely and temporarily, if ever, did he exclude anyone from the Communion table, and he used only general terms to depict those who might fit these three categories even in strictly academic company. Thus, these general terms are used here as well. In German they are die Abfallenden, den christlichen Glauben äußerlich verleugnenden und die Kirche verlassenden. All three categories have been known to have highly dismissive meanings or epithets attached to them in ecclesial discourse. These general terms themselves barely hide a multitude of what he would call sins.
8. Ed. note: See §§136–38 on baptism, including the issue of whether and how infant baptism should be confirmed. As is typical in Schleiermacher’s discourse, all of these examples presuppose different stages and levels of development in one’s faith and capacity for expression in belief and action.
9. Cf. §74 above. Ed. note: Bestimmungen can mean either definitions (of a concept) or determinations (on the part of a sinner). Either meaning can easily apply here.
10. Analyse. Ed. note: Schleiermacher rarely employs technical terms indicating what he is doing in the main text. He must have thought it to be worthwhile to do so at this point. See §19, which opened the Introduction in the first edition (1821) and in the present second edition (1830) climaxes the section on “the relation of dogmatics to Christian piety” (§§15–19). This section places emphasis on rules that most directly bear on his task of analysis.
11. Ed. note: This principle, in focusing on merely external sources, announces Schleiermacher’s consistently held basis for discarding or properly replacing any specific content of doctrine that is not grounded in authentic internal Christian faith. See index on “speculation.” It would be more difficult to identify the full array of “external,” nontheological, or theologically well-grounded factors within his discourses on theology. No sizeable attempt to do so has been apparent thus far.
12. Ed. note: In this rare case, a word, Wollen, for both “will/willing” and “desire/desiring,” has such a twofold character that each English word can be applied equally to it. The first choice is etymologically the more accurate, but it can be mistaken to mean that one wills the reign of God into existence, for example. Yet, it is also more appropriate as a more inclusive function, whereas “desire,” though quite familiar as a key term in Augustine’s writings and, subsequently, has actually been one of many words that can be applied within that larger function of willing. It would seem to be best, then, simply to bear this anomaly in mind when using either word.
13. Zweigen der Sinnlichkeit. Ed. note: Already in the first editions of On Religion (1799) and Soliloquies (1800), Schleiermacher had forged an analysis of how meaning-giving mental functions operate, from a largely sensory level on up. Often readers have attributed a down and dirty quality of “sensuousness” to the lowest level, as can easily be encountered in ordinary German usage as well. However, this is not how he uses the term, and he does not apply derogatory meanings to it. For him, even the “sensory” level provides some meaningfulness, as in sense perception (Wahrnehmung), if admittedly limited, and that function never goes away. It always accompanies the higher levels of meaning-making, whether it is contributing to sin or not. For him, the word Sinn therefore conveys both “sense” as in sense, sensation, sensory, and “sense” as in sense, meaning, sensible; in his technical usage, as here, Sinnlichkeit denotes both. Yet, generally the word also means “sensual” and “sensuous,” almost irreplaceably. So, if—in some rare case, if any—he chose to use it in a derogatory manner, he would have to qualify it in context.
§112. Second Doctrinal Proposition: Regarding the Good Works of the Regenerate. The good works of the regenerate are natural effects of faith and as such are objects of divine good pleasure.1
(1) Apology Augsburg (1531) IV: “Furthermore, we not only teach how the law can be kept but also in what way it pleases God when we keep any of it, that is, not because we live up to (satisfacimus) the law but because we are in Christ.”2
(2) Smalcald Articles (Luther, 1537) Part III.13: “Good works follow such faith … and whatever in these works is still sinful or imperfect should not even be counted as sin or imperfection, precisely for the sake of this same Christ. Instead, the human creature should be … completely righteous and just according to both the person and his or her works. … We also say that if good works do not follow, then faith is false.”3
(3) Second Helvetic Confession (1566) XVI: “For we teach that truly good works grow out of a living faith … and are done by the faithful according to the will or rule of God’s Word. … and indeed works and worship which we choose arbitrarily are not pleasing to God. … Now the works which we do by faith are pleasing to God and are approved by him. Because of faith in Christ those who do good works … are pleasing to God. … We teach that God gives a rich reward to those who do good works. … However, we do not ascribe this reward … to the merit of the man who receives it.”4
(4) The First Confession at Basel (1534) IX: “This faith is continually exercised, signalized and confirmed by works of love, yet we do not ascribe to works, which are the fruit of faith, the righteousness and satisfaction for our sins.”5
(5) Belgic Confession (1561) XXIV: “which works, as they proceed from the good root of faith, are good and acceptable in the sight of God. … Therefore we do good works but not to merit by them. … In the meantime we do not deny that God rewards good works.”6
(6) Anglican Articles of Religion (1571) XIV: “Voluntary works besides, over and above God’s commandments, which they call works of supererogation, cannot be taught without arrogance and impiety.”7
1.8 Discussions so frequently present in our confessions, as in all older expositions of faith-doctrine, on the claim that good works are not necessary for justification we can take up only as something extraneous here. We say this, because—even though the first point of doctrine within the doctrine of regeneration set forth here accedes to the claim—it cannot occur to anyone to entertain thought of it by now. This is the case, for justification and conversion mutually condition each other, and so, because conversion cannot be conditioned by good works, justification is not conditioned by good works either. It would be a strange thing, moreover, if someone should want to attach yet another question to the matter, namely, whether eternal life or blessedness would be conditioned by good works. The reason is that, in any case, both of these outcomes begin with faith, in that what remains constant in the soul from rebirth9 on is included in both of them. We could not quarrel at all with anyone who wants to deny this assertion, because we would first have to contend over other points. That is to say, someone may hold that good works are necessary for obtaining blessedness, because by “faith” that individual simply means some knowledge, which we call belief.10 With that individual either we do not have usage of the term in common or, in fact, he or she shares nothing at all with us in doctrine regarding redemption. The oddest disagreement in this conflict, however, would arise if an overstatement were to be made that good works are injurious to blessedness and that one has repudiated blessedness only by halves, as if one could find something in it if the statement were only more suitably and closely defined11 and as if one could avoid all possibility of people’s taking offense at the alternative found thereby. Nevertheless, works that could be injurious as a result of putting one’s trust in them would not be good works in our sense. They would not be good works, for anyone who did them would have blessedness in faith already and could not find oneself desiring to rely on works first.
Contrary to these critiqued positions, the positive assertion that good works are natural effects of faith is so exactly connected to what we started with above that it needs no further elucidation. The reason is that once we allow ourselves to be taken up into community with Christ, we are deeply stirred, with him, by the union of what is divine with the human nature in Christ’s person, and our consent12 to this situation becomes a steadfast, active will to hold firm to this union and to spread its impact further.13 What this active will brings forth, moreover, is a good work, even if it were also only a first start at resistance against sin. Surely, then, it is therefore simply out of anxiety that one would deny that faith is confirmed or held firm by good works.14 That is: Let us suppose that one were to think of holding faith firm as if the actual implanting of it had been something merely transitory, which would be no more the case for faith than for acknowledgment of any kind of act. Accordingly, then, one could only imagine the life of faith to be a series of elements in which faith is inalterably the same. It would then be impossible, however, to think of two elements of faith being separated from each other unless the first element already had brought forth some good work before the second element began. As a result, one’s holding firmly to faith—to bring up this term again—is always brought about by one’s doing good works. It is then always correct to say that our union with Christ in faith, even if it is not likewise completely achieved, does likewise essentially consist of a continual, active obedience, just as Christ’s life consisted of the active obedience of his human nature to an indwelling being of God in him. Moreover, our being taken up into community of life with him is already likewise the seed-made-fertile of all good works, just as the act of union was already the seed of all redemptive activity.
Now, this matter can also be expressed in such a way that the regenerate person cannot be otherwise equipped for good works other than by virtue of faith. This being so, then it would, nevertheless, simply be a pointless misunderstanding if on this account one were to raise the question of whether good works were also free. This is the case, for the underlying presupposition of this question could only be that the very weakest will, one that can be overturned most easily, is the most free will, and that a champion of faith who would know no better way than to describe his situation by saying that he “can do no other” would not have been free.15
Now, fully lively receptivity, which is already the situation of the human being who is in the process of conversion, is clearly a freer one. Thus, one’s desire for the reign of God that was emerging from it is also a freer situation, because there is no will without freedom.16 Moreover, being-continually-and-receptively-open-to-the-influence-Christ-makes-on-one17 and being-continually-active-with that-desire-for-the-reign-of-God together comprise the new human being’s life-process.
2. Now, let us tie to this assertion the question of the extent to which the good works of the regenerate person are also that person’s own and in such a way that they are accounted to that person. Then we will want, preliminarily, to disregard that part of the question that happens to do with reward for good works and answer first the part that has to do with authorship of them. Let us then think, at the same time, on something given: that no redemption would exist without the founding of a new collective life, to which essentially everyone who appropriates redemption belongs. Then two questions arise, namely: To what extent do the good works belong to the individual, as such, or belong to Christ? And to what extent do they belong to the communal entity or belong to the individual? In regard to the first question, it is self-evident that by virtue of the community of life existing between the individual and Christ, that which belongs to Christ in good works cannot be separated from what belongs to each individual. This is the case, for in a process of separating the two the community between them would be broken up. On the other hand, a formulation that can make participation of the two parties known then can be attempted. Now, if conversion is the onset of sanctification, Christ is alone active in conversion and the individual is simply in the condition of living receptivity. Yet, in conversion the new life does come into being. Thus, even there we will also have to ascribe to Christ every element of active faith inasmuch as it is present, given the analogy of that start-up—that is, inasmuch as in that element of active faith new life comes into being or increases, in brief, inasmuch as it contains some progress. Suppose, in contrast, that we ourselves could make the new life grow. Then we would also have to be able to make it start. Yet, that would be tantamount to that turning point into the new human being occurring and the desire for the reign of God that emerges therein being our will; thus every element of faith-activity, inasmuch as it an expression of this will set within us, would also be ascribed to us and is our work.
Hence, if divine grace in sanctification is called “cooperative grace,” then this new life of human beings would be cooperative too. Apart from the inappropriateness of the term, it would, strictly taken, simply designate a second spot in authorship of the new life, always also still a misnomer. This is so, for divine grace does not work “with” us toward attainment of what is ours in our good works. Rather, grace has already worked to that end. On the other hand, what is the work of divine grace is also efficacious of itself alone. Using the expression “cooperative” would assign a third category to preparatory and efficacious grace.18 Chiefly, it would designate that a regenerate person will have become a self-initiating actor, and this tendency of the regenerate person is indisputably correct. However, since this third category would be no less effective than the second one, finding a replacement for the term “cooperative” would be desirable.
Now, it is obvious that this formulation regarding good works chiefly applies to a determination made by will. In the execution of such a determination, imperfection and sin are always present and hence cannot be ascribed to Christ. Accordingly, in our earlier discussion of how good works are formed, it has already been granted that something impure is even mixed into particular set purposes, and yet in our account we have stuck only with what makes for progress in each good work. If, however, we reflect on the relationship of the individual to the collective life of Christians, everything would seem to be absolutely held in common, and if each individual wanted to assess what one’s own part in collective activity would consist of, the effort would only be in service of a misconstrued interest.
3. Now, based on what the discussion has yielded thus far, it could very easily be understood that good works are an object of divine good pleasure, for it could be impossible for actual actions as they come to be present to be an object of divine good pleasure. This impossibility could be the case, because these actual actions, like good works, are also sins at the same time. Rather, in good works only what is an activity of faith, consequently an expression of community of life with Christ, can be an object of divine good pleasure. Consequently, it follows, then: if only that within our good works which is love is what is pleasing to God, then it is pleasing in our desiring the reign of God at the same time as it is love for human beings and love for Christ and love for God and also at the same time as it is the love of Christ that is in us and enduringly spreading through us. Now, just as what is present at one time and not present at another generally cannot be an object of divine good pleasure, thus in all its elements in the state of sanctification the object for this divine good pleasure must, above all else, be self-identical, just as it also draws to itself and assimilates what is changing. Hence, it is entirely correct to say that it is actually only the person who is an object of divine good pleasure, and only as God sees that person in Christ, but works are objects of divine good pleasure only for the person’s sake. This consciousness, moreover, in its necessarily being bound together with one’s desiring the reign of God, is blessedness, which itself is accompanying that desiring.
Arising in this way, the question as to whether God rewards good works might seem well-nigh superfluous. It might seem so, for in examining ourselves19 we find that if being a child of God is posited in being regenerated and blessedness is posited in being a child of God, then, indeed, the regenerate person cannot crave some reward, nor can a reward be guaranteed to that person, for the person already has the guarantee of continuing advancement in sanctification. The regenerate person could not crave some reward, however, because therein disposition and reward cannot be brought into any kind of relation to each other whatsoever, this, in turn, because works are still sins as well and such a disposition deserves no reward. This is the ground, moreover, on account of which one can rightly say that in the state of grace there is no place for reward.20 Widening one’s circle of influence, which is itself simply the same thing, in turn, as any enhancement of strengths, can only very inappropriately be called a reward, since all it does is to guarantee the opportunity for a reward to that for which a reward is supposed to be given. One could feel content that among the confessional symbols cited here, those which admit some reward for good works do so only halfway convinced. Whereupon, there is all the less ground, however, for having even a notion of reward, much less of one viewed as an inducement to sanctification.
4. Previously we have distinguished what in the activities of faith is an expression, in each case, of the status of what we have and of what is an increase in what we have. Thus, this distinction cannot be stretched as if there were two kinds of good works, namely, such as would move outward with whatever forces are in place and such as would increase the force in its value, for this is not what takes place. If it were, we would then have to be caught up in an endless and irresolvable struggle, in that within every instant something would have to be possible to do on both sides and thus one side would have to be neglected to some extent in favor of the other. Instead, it can be shown that in this domain there can be no special actions aimed at elevating the forces we have. If desire for the reign of God emerges with faith, then every person of faith emerges out of the person’s position in the world and in accordance with the measure of challenges to one’s forces that stand at one’s command and one’s acquaintance with the situation of one’s circle of influence, challenges pointing to activity within the reign of God.
The sum of all these circumstances would then form the domain of that person’s calling, the notion of which is intimately bound together with desire for the reign of God. Moreover, all of the good works of each individual must then lie within this domain, with the result that what does not belong to the individual’s calling is also not a good work for that individual.21 Now, actions belong within certain periods of life and circumstances, actions that move toward the point of exercising and enhancing one’s forces along with them directed toward calling and at that point of calling are justified in and of themselves as actions of one’s calling. Otherwise, however, every activity of one’s calling contributes of itself to what lies in the nature of all finite forces bent toward exercise and enhancement of forces. The more we examine our inner resources, however, the less can any other way be thought of. This is so, for the force of faith itself cannot be strengthened by special actions to which Christ has not provided impetus. In contrast, the actions to which he gives impetus are essentially actions of one’s calling by which something is suitably constituted for the reign of God. Furthermore, all that can happen for the purpose of strengthening other spiritual22 and sensory forces must all the more be able to be justified as actions of calling. This is so, because these other spiritual and sensory forces, strengthened as well as sinful, can function as well-pleasing to God. Now, if by “means of grace” we mean activities through which sanctification is further stimulated, whereas by “good works” we mean simply productions of sanctification, it follows, then, that we can recognize nothing as means of grace other than what are good works, at the same time, and can recognize that, at the same time, all good works must be means of grace. Thus, in this domain there are no purely ascetic actions, nor are there arbitrary ones—that is, there are no good works that lie beyond one’s calling, still less are there good works that someone, after one has satisfactorily performed one’s calling, could accomplish as though it were a bonus.
5. Now, what has been described thus far is supposed to be the very nature of sanctification, with the result that all that is of an efficacious character in the reign of God and all inner development of a human being proceeds from the vitalizing force of faith and from its action through love.23 If this is so, then a certain question could scarcely arise here in any way other than by an incidental remembrance, a question as to the necessity and use of law24—this also in any sense of the word that might be taken. That is to say, something similar to legislation will always be present in Christian life, for the purpose of ordering the actions of less prudent people to distinct domains. To that ordering, then, also belong civil legislation and every set of rules related to any sort of art. Such legislation, moreover, would also be a good work inasmuch as it would be grounded in love. Further, in that way it, viewed as an all-encompassing action and as one very much laying claim to spiritual strengths, would also be a means of grace. Yet, in the domain of sanctification we would still not be able to attribute any value to the law itself, because love always consists in much more and does much more than law can be or supply. Even for producing knowledge of sin, law does not suffice for those who are engaged in the state of sanctification, in that, in and of itself, it does not trace the production of external action back to the internal recesses of mind and heart.25 As a result, in Christ we have a much more complete knowledge of sin, just as Paul too,26 once faith had been revealed to him, no longer ascribed such necessity to law thereafter. Still less, however, is law able to hold before us the goal of sanctification. That is to say, the goal is nothing but a changing mode of life, in its entire compass presenting the force and purity of disposition,27 which law, viewed as a collection of particular prescriptions,28 can never clearly exhibit. Accordingly, Paul then also brings up works of the Spirit such as cannot be determined and measured by any law, for if one calls statements that express some disposition “commands,” this happens only in a figurative manner. Thus, even the two commandments that Christ brings up29 as the content of the whole law are only figuratively so. Moreover, they do not once depict the goal of sanctification unalloyed, in that they place love for God and love for neighbor separately, side by side. In contrast, what Christ sets forth as his single “command”30 he simply, by this designation, places over against that previously held law that is conveyed in a set of commands. He does so, for Christ’s “command” is actually no command at all, since it points solely to the comparison he makes with his own redemptive love.31
Therefore, today one would well need to say that in the Christian church it would be neither necessary nor advisable to begin instruction concerning sin with the Decalogue, still less instruction concerning sanctification, since both practices can lead only to flawed and superficial notions. Moreover, even if one busied oneself with dragging into the Decalogue all sorts of things that do not lie in it, this effort, on the one hand, is a bad example of arbitrary exposition of Scripture that has been long available. On the other hand, the same effort could result more easily and more coherently from the moral law of reason, itself formed under the influence of Christianity. The moral law of reason would, nevertheless, no longer arrange actions into formulations but would bring modes of action into formulations.32 If it let go of the imperative form and simply described, in all respects, the way life is lived in the reign of God, Christian ethics, however, would be far more adequate in its relationship to Christian faith-doctrine,33 consequently to its immediate determination.
1. Ed. note: This proposition serves, alongside §11, as a bridge to the presentation of Schleiermacher’s Christian Ethics and as a major part of a prolegomenon to it.
2. Ed. note: ET Book of Concord (2000), 142; Latin and German: Bek. Luth. (1963), 187.
3. Ed. note: ET Book of Concord (2000), 325; Latin and German: Bek. Luth. (1963), 460f.
4. Ed. note: ET Cochrane (1972), 258, 266f.; Latin only: Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 269–71; cf. note at §37n3.
5. Ed. note: ET Cochrane (1972), 94f.; Latin: Niemeyer (1840), 98f. See §104n35.
6. Ed. note: ET Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 411f.; Latin: Niemeyer (1840), 375f.
7. Ed. note: The quote is from the 1562 Latin edition. ET Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 495. See §37n5.
8. Ed. note: As the above confessional statements show, this proposition, line for line, is not a summary of Christian ethics but a set of considerations regarding a key topic of Reformation doctrine, which discards the notion that “good works” can either win one salvation or contribute to it. Continually it sticks to this topic, still important also for understanding the role of good works in the ongoing process of sanctification. As such, it does have a bearing on how one might conceive that role in relation to the tasks of Christian ethics. See the excerpts from the 1822/23 lectures ed. and trans. Brandt (ET 2011), the first edition of the 1826/27 lectures by Peiter (2011), their introduction (ET ed. and trans. Shelley, 1989), and a German/English collection of Peiter’s lifelong essays on this other half of dogmatics, ed. Tice.
9. Wiedergeburt. Ed. note: Although they both translate this word, “rebirth” can mean either the initial and decisive turn into the extended process of “regeneration,” as here, or the continuing effects in oneself of the entire process.
10. Ed. note: In German there is only one word for both faith and belief, Glaube. Some would claim that in Christian usage it simply means belief, viewed as assenting to some sort of knowledge, perhaps reserving the attitude of trust (Vertrauen) for inner faith, if such a one attaches importance to any such inner element at all.
11. Epitome of the Articles (Formula of Concord, 1577) 4: “We also repudiate … the bold expression that ‘good works are harmful to salvation.”’ One may fruitfully compare that statement with what immediately follows it. Ed. note: ET Book of Concord (2000), 499, with some changes in comparing the Latin and German in Bek. Luth. (1963), 789.
12. Zustimmung zu. Ed. note: Underlying such a state, to which consent is then applied and sustained by will, could well be a state described by the root meaning of this term, Stimmung/stimmen, which requires inclusion of states even deeper, where the roots of faith and allied feeling also lie, than acts of will. Language that is not directly or necessarily based on knowledge would include strictly perceptual language, either quite general (like “harmonize,” “in keeping with”) or arising from what our senses already suggest to us (like “resonate,” “see,” “behold,” “be deeply in touch with,” “be in good humor regarding,” “receiving and extending love,” “stirred by and forming a disposition from”).
13. Ed. note: The word is fortzupflanzen. The corresponding term in Schleiermacher’s Christian ethics is verbreitendes Handeln (“broadening action,” both “intensive” and “extensive”), whereas the image in the term used here suggests a process like that of plants, only in Christian life inwardly growing and outwardly propagating what is given and received in the union. This process, then, occurs in oneself, in participation within the community of faith, and in the outreach of all life there into other aspects of life in coexistence with the world and in its own systems. The other two commingling major categories in Schleiermacher’s “Christian Ethics” in 1826/27 are “effective action” (wirksame Handlung), including both struggle against sin (in earlier versions of the lectures called “purifying action”) and “restorative action” but much else as well, and “presentational” (darstellende ) types of action. Both of these major categories are especially applied to the community but—like the third factor here, namely, broadening (erweitende) action—both also include how one is effective or presents oneself and how the community is effective or presents its life within and to the rest of the world. In all these general, organizing respects, his expositions on Christian ethics readily correlate with the understanding of faith-doctrine offered in the present work, though their organization looks very different.
14. Epitome of the Articles (Formula of Concord, 1577) 4: “We believe … that faith is not conserved or retained in us by works but only by the Spirit of God.” The last phrase does not yet belong in this context; however, it too can indeed be said. Yet the Holy Spirit also cannot bring faith to maturity except through what is done in good works. Ed. note: Schleiermacher’s translation from the Latin is more likely “confirmed or held firm” (bewährt oder festgehalten) here, from conservari aut retineri; but the point holds either way. ET Tice, drawn from the Latin and German in Bek. Luth. (1963), 789; cf. Book of Concord (2000), 499.
15. Ed. note: This is a not very hidden but ironic reference to Martin Luther, who at the very beginning of the Reformation in Germany stated: “Here I stand. I can do no other.” Obviously, Luther had felt unfree and oppressed at that moment, like a terribly constrained serf, in bondage not to sin but to actions of the Roman church, justified and freed through Christ in faith; and at that moment he also felt forced, yet was courageous enough to be a powerful champion of reform, a hero of faith, in that respect standing tall and free. Here Schleiermacher is setting forth in 1830 this reminder of Luther’s great first act, of nailing his theses to a church door in 1517 and of the three-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation’s first great act of common confession at Augsburg, Oct. 17, 1830. See Schleiermacher’s Latin Oratio (Address) of Nov. 3, 1830, as keynote speaker in a celebration at the University of Berlin, which he had cofounded (1808–1810), in Nicol (2004), 29–44. Therein he attributes the rising of the Reformation to the relative freedom of many academic institutions in Germany. His ten 1830 sermons on the handing over of the Augsburg Confession to the king (published 1831) open with one of June 20 on the text 1 Cor. 7:23: “You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men.” See also his early, mostly philosophical essay on ethics, “On Freedom” (from 1790–1792), ed. and trans. Albert Blackwell (1992).
17. Einwirkungen. Ed. note: In this complex construction, “influence” translates Einwirkungen. Actually, in this work Christ’s influence, or the impression he makes, is always seen to be registered in or within oneself.
18. Ed. note: In this work, as in Schleiermacher’s “Christian Ethics,” in different contexts wirksam can mean either effective/effectual, reflecting a broader category, or efficacious, with respect to redemptive work. He seems to make no explicit, strict, and unqualified distinction between first, final, and efficient causes, as have Aristotle and others after him, including theologians. Instead, he slides over those distinctions in saying, simply: What God wills, God does. What we experience of what God does can be “preparatory” to what God does in and through Christ. This is the only way he can find to make a real distinction between causes in Evangelical faith-doctrine apart from attempts, by analogy, provisionally to map out divine attributes in a Christian version of monotheism, and these attributes too relate only to God’s work in creation and redemption. See index.
19. Ed. note: This entreaty in 2 John 1:8 starts a verse that ends a longer string in verses 1–8 that focuses on the true reward entailed in remaining faithful in one’s Christian life and ministry.
20. Ed. note: This conclusion is consistent with Jesus’ sayings in Matt. 5:46; 6:1–6, 16–18; and 10:40–42, concerning one’s continuing reward in regeneration and that reward’s not mounting up as if God used an accounting system to bestow grace. Schleiermacher especially draws on Paul’s offering an example from his own case in 1 Cor. 15–16. See also Col. 3:23f. and 2 John 1:1–8. Typically, Schleiermacher does not reveal key sources like this, as if they were direct proof texts for his own language, for he claims immediate self-consciousness in feeling-experience just as is indicated by these sources. He does not claim the literal words even if they actually came directly from Jesus, because their function, like everything done by Jesus, was to evoke a justified and regenerate life of faith, itself viewed as rooted in the internal experience of persons. See §§128–31 on which aspects of the New Testament may serve as norm and authority for Christian faith and doctrine; see also his lectures on the life of Jesus—ET ed. Verheyden (1975); SW I.6 (1864)—and his sermon series on Acts and select sermons from the Gospels in Trinity season, 1821, in SW II.10 (1856) and KGA III/6 (2015).
21. Ed. note: This paragraph makes especially clear that while a human being is still transitioning through the stages of conversion and is not yet through it, he or she is called an individual, but for purposes of dogmatic presentation one is called a person, modeled after the ideal personhood of the Redeemer. And yet, insofar as a person still has in oneself participation in the collective life of sin, by Schleiermacher’s lights, one is still also to be respected by all humans as a beloved, precious person, equal in standing and rights, just as, in the eyes of God, all individual human beings, including only once-born babies and all baptized and authentically confirmed and not yet confirmed children are. Each is here referred to simply as one individual within the human species, taken as a whole. Whether Schleiermacher always stuck to this distinction, even in his dogmatic writings, or by what date he did, cannot be certified at this point. In the present work, Person is always translated “person,” and Gläubiger is always translated “person of faith,” not “believer.” Otherwise, normally the context itself can already display which would be the correct term.
22. Ed. note: Here geist (spiritual) might well include “intellectual.”
23. Ed. note: In OG 84f., Schleiermacher notes that among the earliest critics of CG1 (1822), no one had mentioned his doctrine of sanctification or his eschatology. Both sections contained marked departures from those of these critics, however.
24. Ed. note: Here, Schleiermacher is, in effect, dismissing—as he always tended to do—all distinctions between natural versus revealed law, by Roman Catholics or Protestants, and any special contribution of a “third use of the law” regarding stimulus or encouragement of faith, just as he negated tendencies to use “natural theology” within Evangelical theology. He regarded such distinctions to be philosophical, not theological. See his Christian ethics lectures for treatment of these “questions.”
25. Ed. note: The phrase is das Innere des Gemütes.
26. Gal. 3:25 and 5:18, despite his speaking of the lusts of the flesh against the spirit.
27. Eph. 4:13, where we are expressly directed to a parallel with Christ.
28. “The law of commandments and ordinances,” Eph. 2:15—Solid Declaration 6: “It must be diligently noted that when we speak of good works that are in accord with the law of God … the word ‘law’ has one single meaning, namely the unchanging will of God, according to which human beings are to conduct themselves in this life.”—In general, however, in this article on “the third use of the law,” which, contrary to our view, protects the law in Christianity, one sees best the inexactness of the notion that underlies it and the kind of confusions that cannot be avoided in the process. Ed. note: ET Book of Concord (2000), 589; Latin and German: Bek. Luth. (1963), 965.
29. Matt. 22:37ff.
30. John 15:12. Ed. note: Sermon on John 15:8–17, July 16, 1826, SW II.9 (1847), 484–94.
31. Gallican Confession (1559) 23: “We believe that the ordinances of the law came to an end at the advent of Jesus Christ; but, although the ceremonies are no more in use, yet their substance and truth remain in the person of him in whom they are fulfilled.” Ed. note: ET and French in Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 372, also Cochrane (1972), 152; Latin: Niemeyer (1840), 335.
32. Where the reference is clearly to the Mosaic law, one cannot truly say of any law that “it teaches that it is God’s will and command that we walk in new life.” Ed. note: Solid Declaration 6 (1577). ET Book of Concord (2000), 589; Latin and German: Bek. Luth. (1963), 965.
33. Ed. note: The relationship is between Christian Sittenlehre and Glaubenslehre.
Regarding the Constitution of the World in Relation to Redemption
§113. All that is planted1 in the world through redemption is embraced within the community of faithful persons, in which all the regenerate are ever to be found already. Accordingly, this section contains the doctrine of the Christian church.
1. Our proposition makes the two expressions “community of faithful persons” and “Christian church” equivalent without further explanation. Thus, it might seem to have the Roman Symbol2 against it. Yet, neither do the older exemplars of that creed know anything of this differentiation between the two, nor does the Nicene Creed. Already at this point it must indeed be obvious that this community can be understood both in a narrower and in a broader sense. That is to say, if the regenerate are to have been found in it earlier, they would thus have belonged to it already—that is, before they were regenerated—but, patently, in a sense different from that of people who are actually faithful already. Without this distinction no transition into the church at all, and consequently no expansion of it, could possibly be imagined other than by an absolute leap, which would mean in an unhistorical fashion. In contrast, the situation is such that today the new life of every individual does indeed arise from the collective life, but that collective life arises from no other individual life than that of the Redeemer. Thus, we will have to say that the totality3 of those who live in the state of sanctification is the inner community. In contrast, the totality of those to whom those preparatory workings of grace from among the first group4 have been directed form the outer community to that extent, until they will have become members of the inner community through rebirth and can then help to cultivate the outer community. Yet, it would be an entirely new and simply confusing use of language if we chose to apportion the two parallel expressions to the two communities respectively.
In any case, no one form of community is either distinctly posited or distinctly excluded in this account. Rather, all forms that have existed or will yet exist, both complete and incomplete, are embraced here. This much alone is distinctly presupposed, that wherever regenerate persons are able to be in touch with one another, some sort of community also has to emerge among them. This is the case, for when they are able to be in touch with one another, their witness to faith also partially fills the same space, and a recognition and common agreement concerning what their efficacious action would be within that communal space is unmistakably bound therewith. What we said at the very outset of our treatment of the consciousness of grace5 was also intended to be understood as not at any remove from this present account, namely, that this consciousness would always derive from some collective life. Nevertheless, this claim finds its full explanation only at this point. This is so, for if we were not already to have found ourselves to be regenerate within this particular collective life, but would have had to seek out grace as such or to cultivate it in advance, then indeed precisely the most decisive workings of grace would not have been grounded in that collective life.
2. However, the more exactly our proposition coheres with what was just adduced, the more difficult it might seem to be to reconcile this proposition with the assertion that our dogmatic propositions are to express only what was the same even in the earliest modes of Christian piety as among us.6 That is to say, how should those who have received Christ in faith through his personal influences have been found to exist already within the community of faithful persons? In response, it is to be noted that a collective whole7 of those who were in need of and were awaiting redemption was already constantly in place at that time, a collective whole that was prepared to recognize itself as being in contrast to one that would offer remedy.8 As a consequence, this outer community did emerge precisely at the point of Christ’s appearance in public, in the course of which the power to create the inner community lay in Christ alone. Then, gradually, the inner community began to be shaped out of this outer one, the inner one initially arising among the disciples, who were constantly in Christ’s company. Hence, when the question has been raised as to whether it was, in fact, Christ’s aim to found such a community, it is clear enough to respond that he also could not have exercised any activity whatsoever of an attracting or of a redeeming kind if such a community were not coming into being. Therefore, exactly when and how he actually founded it does not need to be demonstrated at all. Rather, just as we are also acquainted with self-organizing activity in all spiritual relations, so self-organizing already belonged to the becoming natural9 of the supernatural in him. Moreover, it must be possible wholly to grasp the very nature10 of this organism,11 in part, based on Christ’s activity as it was also directed to individuals, who at that point became his organs, and, in part, based on his distinctive dignity, which was then to present itself in this organism as something that exists in contrast to the world. That question, however, is clearly answered, on the one hand, based on inner experiences that bear the appearance of being direct influences of Christ that are not conditioned by the community and, on the opposite hand, based on concerns about collisions between different communities that existed within the same circle, on account of which collisions some people would rather accord validity to civil community alone. What needs to be said on the second point has already been said above,12 as has been done concerning relationship of individuals who are bound with Christ into this community.13 Moreover, just as no redemptive efficacious action could take place toward individuals unless a community were arising, so this community, too, can consist of nothing other than all those elements that belong to the state of sanctification in all who are blessed by grace.
3. Now, the Christian self-consciousness that is articulated in our proposition is the general form of the shared feeling we have regarding things human and regarding human conditions, a feeling that is determined by our faith in Christ and that becomes all the more clear when we combine with it the negative expression that belongs to it. To be exact, suppose that, for us, apart from redemption, the world with respect to human beings has indeed become the locus of the original perfection of both human beings and things but also the locus of sin and evil. Suppose, further, that something new enters into precisely this world with Christ’s appearance, thus something that stands in contrast with the old situation. It follows that, for us, only that part of the world that is at one with the Christian church then becomes the locus of what perfection has come into being thereby or of what is good, and, for us, with respect to latent self-consciousness, only that part has become the locus of blessedness. All this does not occur by virtue of the original perfection of human nature and of the nature of things. Rather, instead, although all this is, to be sure, conditioned by these two things, it all occurs only by virtue of Christ’s sinless perfection and blessedness, which is constantly being extended in Christ and is being communicated through him. It is then coherent with all this action that to the extent that the world lies outside this community with Christ, for us it is continually the locus of sin and evil14 regardless of that original perfection of humans and of nature in general. As a result, no one can be surprised that already at this point our proposition states both that blessedness is present in the church alone and that the church alone generates blessedness,15 the latter because this blessedness cannot come from outside but can exist within the church only inasmuch as it is accomplished therein.
As for the rest, it is self-evident that this contrast of what is placed in the world through redemption with the rest of the world comes to be more strongly or weakly subject to tension depending, in each case, on how the distinctive dignity of Christ and what redemption contains16 are grasped. It is also self-evident that this contrast completely disappears and is lost in an indeterminate distinction between better and worse only where the very contrast between Christ and sinful human beings is likewise loosened and transformed.
4. In addition, this is how the claim that our proposition is nothing other than an expression of our Christian self-consciousness is best confirmed. That is to say, if by its very nature the Christian church were to be an object of external sense perception, then it would be possible for this perception to be communicated without its being bound to Christian self-consciousness. Now, it is the case, however, that those who do not share faith in Christ with us also do not acknowledge Christian community in its existence over against the world. Wherever the feeling of the need for redemption is entirely suppressed, certainly the Christian church will be misunderstood in every way, and from that point onward the two views would be explicated in the same fashion. With the first workings of preparatory grace that stir up this consciousness, there also arises a presentiment of the divine origin of the Christian church. Moreover, simultaneously with vital faith in Christ, faith in the actual presence of the reign of God in the community of faithful persons also invariably arises. Conversely, an incorrigible opposition to the Christian church can also open up the highest degree of resistance to redemption, wherewith even an external respect for the person of Christ can scarcely take place. On the other hand, faith in the Christian church as the reign of God not only contains within it the view that this reign of God will ever continue to exist over against the world. Rather, just as the reign of God has grown into such a community out of a few initiates, so too it cannot be imagined to be effective in any other way. Therein lies the hope that the church will increase and the world that is placed over against it will decrease. This is the case, in that for human nature Christ’s incarnation17 corresponds to what regeneration is for individual persons, and just as sanctification is the progressive appropriation of particular functions and, as time goes on, increasingly ceases to consist of fragmentary details but more and more every part harmoniously interplays with and mutually supports the other parts, so, here too, this cooperative and mutually reinforcing community is organized out of particular redemptive activities more and more. Furthermore, this organism must increasingly overwhelm what is but an inorganic mass over against it.
1. Ed. note: Here “planted” translates gesetzt, thus using a partly organic metaphor to express the setting down or positioning of the church in relation to the world.
2. Ed. note: The earlier (two third-century) versions of the eighth-century version, which is familiarly called the Apostles’ Creed (see §36n1), preceded the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of the fourth century (see §96n7).
3. Gesamtheit. Ed. note: or “collectivity.” Just above, “collective life” translates Gesamtleben, then refers to the specific collectivity (or totality, collective whole) of faithful persons.
4. Ed. note: For example, see §110.2. See index.
5. §87.
6. Ed. note: See also §§101.1 and 128.1.
7. Gesamtheit. Ed. note: See §113n2 just above.
8. Hülfe.
9. Naturwerden.
10. Wesen.
11. Organismus. Ed. note: In Schleiermacher’s usage, human interconnected relationships could be characterized using biological metaphors, as here, as well as with personal metaphors, such as using “person” to characterize a moral community.
12. In §§100 and 105.
13. In §106.2.
14. Gal. 1:4 and 1 John 5:19.
15. Ed. note: The term is selig macht. In another usage familiar in ecclesial tradition, it can also mean “brings salvation.”
16. Gehalt der Erlösung. Ed. note: Usage of this word itself suggests proportionate substance, strength, and extent.
17. Menschwerdung.
§114. If we want to present all declarations that belong to our Christian self-consciousness concerning the community of faithful persons comprehensively, we must first consider the emergence of the church, or the way in which it is formed out of what exists in the world, next consider the way in which the church continues to exist over against the world, and, finally, consider the overcoming of this contrast, or of prospects for the church’s consummation.
1. Now, to be sure, these three points of doctrine do not at all seem to relate to our Christian self-consciousness in the same way. The second point has to do with the sphere of our day-to-day experience. There our spiritual life takes its course within the contrast between church and world. To the extent that we know how to distinguish within ourselves between what belongs to the community of faithful persons and what still belongs to the world, the Christian feeling that we share will also correctly separate, within whatever is going on around us, what belongs to the church and what belongs to the world. All this, moreover, comprises features in our propositions concerning the continuance of the church in its coexistence with the world. However, propositions that come from other sources would not be included, even if they have this content. That is to say, just as in the case of individuals, what belongs to sinfulness and what belongs to grace can be decided not on the basis of some external aspect of a deed that is registered by sense perception but only on the basis of motions within oneself,1 so too, only those who are acquainted with the Christian church’s inner life on the basis of their own participation in it can speak of it aright. In contrast, if we can indeed set forth any declarations at all concerning the consummation of the church on the basis of our self-consciousness, they would, nonetheless, surely be only very unreliable. Moreover, we would be able to appropriate only historical indications concerning the emergence of the church, the direct communication of which indications cannot possibly belong here.
Now, to begin with this last-mentioned point of doctrine, the Christian church is increased in the process of individuals and whole masses of people gradually coming to be incorporated into the interconnectedness with Christ that exists there. Moreover, just as it is generally established that the new life of individuals proceeds from that collective life in the outer circle of which they have already been present, this process also obtains in the new life of those initial followers,2 since the power of the inner circle still lay wholly contained in Christ alone. Thus, the emergence of the Christian church is the same as what we witness in our own daily lives.
In this respect, however, if we proceed from the claim that gradually redemptive activity is to embrace everything, the task is not at all that of finding a rule for the way by which the church’s ordering would appear and on account of which this broadening of the church would occur in precisely such and such a fashion. Rather, since at the very same time the redemptive activity that occurs in the communal body3 of the church stretches out to far more persons than are assisted at any given time toward conversion through it, we have to see to it that we rightly conceive the difference between those persons in the communal body of the church and those other persons. Such a distinction is required, for it involves understanding the beginnings of the church. Moreover, for this purpose, to be sure, we would possess a self-consciousness that we would then have to grasp in thought. That is, herein we would possess a contrast that would have formed within our shared feeling, a contrast between a prior equal valuation of all persons in their common state of sinfulness and a subsequent distinction between persons blessed by grace and other persons.
As concerns the consummation of the church, if we apprehend our self-consciousness as something of a personal nature, then only growth in sanctification is given to us in that self-consciousness, without any anticipatory feeling4 to the effect that the total harmony of all our powers and the consummation of individual life, viewed as an organism for Christ’s life in us, would appear once our former life had been totally wiped out. Likewise, moreover, if we conceive our self-consciousness as a shared feeling, then the church would exist only as it is growing out of the world and is gradually distancing the world from itself. However, any anticipatory feeling to the effect that consummation of the church would occur would constantly be restrained by this imperishable feature of the shared feeling, namely, that with every individual existence the old way of life5 is repeatedly reborn. Thus, to the extent that the consummation of the church would be conditioned, even if viewed only as an anticipatory feeling, by cessation of all generating of the human race, this anticipatory feeling would founder on our species-consciousness and it would appear as if whatever Christian doctrine is to be presented on this subject would have to have a source other than Christian self-consciousness. Furthermore, then, such doctrine could not logically occupy a distinctive place in our presentation. Rather, in that it would have to rest on some sort of objective consciousness, it could be included within our presentation only in a subordinate manner6 in relation to the source of that objective consciousness.
Still, in this respect two things can already be noticed, even at this point. For one thing, we are not at all in a position to realize more fully as an anticipatory feeling the opposite notion: one of progress over endless time, a progress that, because it is repeatedly blocked by new generations, would approach consummation only asymptotically.7 Besides, this anticipatory feeling of progress over endless time would provide no ready supplement to the anticipatory feeling regarding the incomplete sanctification of one’s “I” at the close of one’s life. At that point, for another thing, although this anticipatory feeling cannot, of itself alone, form any doctrine in the same sense, because it is not an isolable element of self-consciousness, the conception of it can still offer a test, for which the alternative form of endless approximation could not serve, a test as to whether in what underlies this doctrine, namely, the doctrine regarding the continuation of the church, we have also conceived aright the nature of the reign of God. That is, the continuation of the church would also retain its truth in the effort to bring the reign of God, in and of itself, apart from its contrast with the world, into the doctrinal presentation. Moreover, insofar as this effort would achieve this end, the effort would be both natural and necessary.
2. Not to be overlooked is an analogous dissimilarity among the three main divisions. This dissimilarity consists in the fact that in treating of the second division we find ourselves entirely and, as far as possible, exclusively in the domain of Christ’s redemptive activity, for this activity constitutes the actual compass of Christ’s reign.8 On the other hand, if we think of absolute consummation in an extensive as well as in an intensive sense, at that point the dissimilarity between him and us would be entirely lifted,9 and consequently even his lordship would then cease. Moreover, this consideration offers new support for the claim that this subject cannot obtain for Christian doctrine in the strictest sense of the word. It does so especially since in the very consummation of the church no further need could be posited in self-consciousness, and consequently this consummation could be conceived as distinctively Christian only insofar as it would remain, despite all else, only as the consummation of a collective life that is dependent on Christ. Meanwhile, in this way certain changes in nature would also be constantly presupposed in relation to this consummation. These changes would lie outside the domain of Christ’s kingly lordship and would belong to the divine government of the world. The point in question, however, would concern the physical aspect of the divine government of the world, about which we have nothing to say in the present context.10 Hence, we would find ourselves, in any case, to be at the boundaries of Christian doctrine, in such a way that we could not say anything definite without overstepping them.
The same situation also obtains regarding the emergence of the Christian church, both at the beginning and as it proceeded.11 This is the case, for if in the great act of proclamation within the church, the power of the divine word and the power of that love which seeks the salvation12 of human beings are the same thing, then the difference in their effect on persons is based on differing states of receptivity. Moreover, these states are, at the same time, dependent on differing circumstances into which divine government of the world places different persons. Yet, here all this must appear to be quite natural, because divine government of the world also plays a role in any transition from the world into the church, whether it is that of an individual or that of whole masses of people, and, indeed, the divine government of the world can play that role only in the form of activity. Hence, our shared feeling would not be very complete if it were not to conceive the emerging difference between church and world as a result of divine government of the world. Here as well, however, something different is going on than an expansion on the earlier treatment of a necessary element. That is, above we have considered the Redeemer’s activity and its effect within the soul of an individual apart from the collective life. As a result, in the doctrine of sanctification, which follows, we could also consider the individual to be a self-standing particular being who acts on one’s own13 within one’s community of life with Christ. Now, the act through which the individual comes to be regenerate and the act through which the individual comes to be a member of the Christian church acting on one’s own are, indeed, entirely the same act. However, in those earlier passages14 we have not included this communal aspect of the act. Thus, here as well, inasmuch as this act grounds the individual’s relationship to the whole, we must describe the same act yet again in a way that is independent of that earlier presentation. At the same time, moreover, in this process we are most definitely referred to our self-consciousness, in which we always both distinguish and unite these two aspects: our personal existence acting on its own in community of life with Christ, and our life as integral members of the whole.
Now, although it is considered based on the two aspects just pointed out, the doctrine of the church in its coexistence with the world is the proper kernel giving rise to this entire section. Accordingly, it would also be entirely appropriate to the subject to establish this coexistence first of all and to handle the other two features in a more supplementary fashion. Nevertheless, we will gain greater clarity15 regarding our subject, and do so with better facility, by adopting an ordering that is natural to a course of history.
1. Ed. note: Here “motions within oneself” translates innern Bewegungen. Often Schleiermacher uses Regungen or Erregungen (“stirrings”) instead, referring to those same internal feeling states versus what comes into oneself from external sources through sense perception (Wahrnehmung) and is registered as sensations.
2. Erstlinge. Ed. note: Literally, “first children”—here the first among the newborn.
3. Gemeinwesen. Ed. note: That is, in the publicly visible life of the church, in parallel with other bodies of a society.
4. Vorgefühl. Ed. note: For such an anticipatory feeling for which there is, however, some foretaste in experience, Schleiermacher typically uses the terms Ahnung or Ahndung (cf. §159n3). In the fuller account of this third division, introduced in §§157–59, still other related terms are also used. The division extends through §163.P.S. In this work the term Vorgefühl tends to be used especially to convey one’s having a distinct feeling regarding the constitution of human life in the future, in particular in “the future life” beyond death (cf. §118.2, the sentence just before §118.3). See §146n1. In §146.2 Schleiermacher describes it as a special gift that Christ had, as do some persons of faith, one analogous to a prophetic gift but not simply a wish (cf. §147.1–2). Schleiermacher’s usage also bears a contrast with several other future-looking concepts, notably these: (1) Ahnung (“presentiment,” cf. §159n8, also §146 where only Vorgefühl is in the proposition, and §146n1 and n5); (2) Vorstellung (“intimation,” though usually simply “notion,” both meanings pointing imaginatively to something putatively cognitive that is less reliable than is a concept, being rather remote from being solidly based in what is perceptibly real, thus ordinarily more properly rendered metaphorically, cf. §158n3 and §163n6); (3) Phantasie (“fantasy,” a general use of the imagination to form pictures, memories, and sometimes projections into the future, cf. §159n11). Two other cognate concepts, each of which helps toward an understanding of Vorgefühl, are (4) Mitgefühl (“shared or common feeling,” rarely “compassion” in his usage, cf. §163n3—vs. Vorstellung—and compare §162n7); and (5) Prinzip, “principle,” cf. §163n20.
5. Ed. note: Here “the old way of life” translates der alte Mensch, literally the biblical phrase “the old man.”
6. [In a subordinate manner] similar to the way the facts of Christ’s resurrection and ascension were seen above.
7. Ed. note: This term, derived from mathematics, refers to a gradual approach to an end, an approach that is infinite and thus does not reach that end.
8. Cf. §105. Ed. note: The second division, introduced in §126, consists of §§126–156.
9. See 1 John 3:2.
10. Ed. note: Even in §§164–69, where the divine government of the world is a major theme, the spiritual aspect is featured, not the physical (leiblich, or bodily) aspect.
11. Ed. note: This first division of the doctrine of the church (§§115–25) opens with the doctrine of election and closes with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, viewed as the common spirit (Gemeingeist) of the church.
12. Heil. Ed. note: This same root appears in Heiligung (sanctification). It essentially means “salvation” only in the sense of coming and continuing to be “blessed,” or spiritually whole or well—that is, gaining sanctity.
13. Ed. note: Here the phrase “who acts on one’s own” translates selbständig. Implied is the recognition that one can act in this way while still being interdependent within such a community and not totally self-reliant.
14. Ed. note: See esp. §106, which introduces the points of doctrine regarding “how community with the perfection and blessedness of the Redeemer is expressed in the individual soul” (§§106–12), in regeneration and sanctification.
15. Ed. note: Here Anschaulichkeit could also quite fittingly be translated “finer perception,” for the questions addressed all have to do with how the church, viewed as community of faith and life with Christ and in the Holy Spirit, is to be perceived as a shared subject of members’ own immediate self-consciousness. Here, then, as an organ of the Holy Spirit, the church ceases to be merely a sociological category and is thereby treated chiefly as an “invisible,” if also “visible,” entity (cf. esp. §§148–56).