[Introduction to Second Point of Doctrine]
§153. Just as error is possible in every part of the visible church and consequently is somehow really present there as well, so the corrective force1 of truth likewise does not fail to be present in any part.
1. To be sure, all error is an ingredient of sin to the extent that error is knowingly and willingly decided but is an act of thinking that does not correspond to what the thought is actually about. Thus, in general terms, its presence must be remedied or obviated by the progressive efficacious action of the Holy Spirit—not directly, but insofar as the Holy Spirit works against the sinful rudiments of error. Still, here the principal concern is with truth and error only in the religious domain.
Now, if what was said about the absolute purity of Christ’s impulse above2 must also be applied to this subject, then error will also be possible everywhere, and indeed at every point, as much in the forming of religious notions as in the religious forming of our aims. This is so, for if a sensory stimulus falsifies a given aim unconsciously, at that point the willing that is directed to the process of forming a religious notion can also be falsified, and then the error must also be present in every aspect of the aim’s being carried out. Moreover, as long as the conception of our circumstances in the Christian church can be contaminated in this same manner, no aim can be formed free of error. As a result, no full, real element of life will exist in pure truth. Rather, a greater or lesser amount of error exists in what is true within every act of pious3 consciousness.
Now, the entire course of error’s being mixed into the efficacious action of the Spirit of truth is reflected in the formulations just set forth. Moreover, at every point every individual will also find the source of falsification in oneself and, by virtue of one’s own consciousness, will have no doubt that error also becomes really present everywhere, even though in particular instances it can recede to something scarcely noticeable.
However, it is just as certain that even though error has massively penetrated into particular regions of the Christian church, it is still unimaginable that any part of it that is organized as a separate whole could exist without some efficacious action of the Spirit of truth. That is to say, wherever recognition of Christ persists as the basis for a collective life, precisely in that way the basis is also already laid down for all worship of God in spirit and in truth,4 even if the very disfigurement of worship is the most significant feature of such an organization. This situation already proceeds from the fact that in no branch of the visible church is recognition of Scripture and of the ministry of the divine Word missing, even where the sacraments are lacking to it or might be regarded as amiss on account of the abnormal way they are administered. Hence, in every ecclesial community there are, at the very least, some individuals who rise above the prevailing errors and bear in themselves the seeds of a more definite development of the truth.
2. Yet, since our proposition assumes that error is present everywhere, even if only infinitesimally so, in that way it might seem to contradict what we have earlier asserted regarding Scripture.5 That is to say, even if Scripture is subject to the possibility of error in such a manner that it would also contain error in some way or another, then it cannot be the norm for the production of all religious thoughts, for its normative dignity, if it were imparted to error, would have to spread and consolidate this error. Even worse, at that point truth would have to have a different firm locus within the church for the purpose of being able to turn the corrective power of truth against errors contained in Scripture itself. However, in our present reflection we have to do not with Scripture as it lies before us today but with its origination. Moreover, in the first place, we will be able readily to grant, connecting well with what was said there, that even in the apostles’ production of religious thoughts the general possibility of error would have been realized in isolated instances without its penetrating into Scripture as a whole on that account, given that Scripture was assembled under the guidance of the Holy Spirit precisely as a collection of writings that were most error-free. Indeed, Scripture itself gives us testimony6 of how human error existed even in the apostles’ thinking as a transient phenomenon and, accordingly, enables us to have a sense of how the initial stimuli of error might also have been distorted, perhaps often, before the influence of those stimuli could come to light. Accordingly, in the second place, we might well need to admit also of Scripture itself, so as not wholly to suspend the natural connection of it with all other writings, that in the many sorts of continuous subordinate thoughts which were not taken up but, nevertheless, which belonged to the production of thoughts by the writers of holy writ, slight traces of human erring would have been discoverable. Moreover, this presence of error would not at all inveigh against either their normative dignity or against the activity of the Holy Spirit in their conception.
1. Ed. note: berichtigenden Kraft. See also §149. On reformation to and within Christianity, see OR (1821) V, supplementary note 12.
2. §110.3. Ed. note: In the final subsection to that proposition, which introduces the doctrine of sanctification, Schleiermacher summarizes this “impulse,” or “impetus,” as follows. It is one that comes from “the divine power in Christ” and the accompanying “willingness to be in community with Christ.” This impulse, he indicates, contains both “an element that remains the same [gleichbleibendes] and a varying [wechselndes] element.” The first element, which remains the same, is comprised of “an ever-renewing will for the reign of God, as it underlay all particular actions and acts of will in Christ, likewise … the consciousness of the union of the divine being with human nature through Christ as it was also the same within Christ viewed as the determinations of his self-consciousness.” This means “participation in his blessedness, … absolute contentment [Befriedigung], … participation in his absolute perfection,” “in the strength [Kräftigkeit] of all that is good” over against sin. Moreover, this pure impulse from Christ leads to joy over against the sorrow, regret, and humility that exist on account of sin.
3. Ed. note: Here, for the first time in this proposition, the adjective is frommen, normally translated “religious” here. Just above, “religious” translates religösen, referring, respectively, to the religious domain (Gebiet), religious notions (Vorstellungen), religious forming (Bildung) of aims, and the process of forming a religious notion (Vorstellen).
4. Anbetung. Ed. note: The reference is to John 4:24.
5. In §§129 and 131.
6. Acts 10:14; 16:7; and Gal. 2:11.
§154. First Doctrinal Proposition. No presentation of Christian piety that issues from the visible church bears in itself pure and perfect truth.
1. If Scripture itself is not actually a presentation proceeding from the visible church but, rather, has first served to constitute the visible church, to that extent it does not belong within the sphere our proposition covers. Yet, someone could well object that, precisely as a consequence of the principles set forth there, error would be transmitted to the lowest degree in all orderly actions, thus also in the appointment of those who are officially charged with purification of existing notions so as to communicate Christian truth. To be sure, if these persons also remain subject to error, each regarded in and of oneself alone, the ruling force1 of the common spirit would thereby have to be vouchsafed in this occupation so that the false tendencies of individuals would reciprocally cancel each other out in the community. However, it would belong to this situation that every such tendency would also find its exact counterweight in some other tendency.
Now, if all possible tendencies do indeed exist within the whole as well, but the whole is already partitioned by internal differences, the one-sidedness of any one such part cannot be overcome within the part itself; rather, each portion of the church can err even in its official presentations. However, it does not yet follow from this observation that if the church were undivided at some time or other, pure and complete truth would automatically be offered in those official presentations. The reason is that not all tendencies that might cancel each other out exist in the church at the same time; rather, at any given time one-sided views also exist in the church that can be overcome only in a succeeding period. Indeed, suppose that we would have to assert that the justification for the arising of the Evangelical church rests in the fact that there could be an original, unofficial reforming influence of specially inspired individuals upon the whole. Then it already follows from this admission that it was not the capacity for reformation2 that was seated in the official organization of the whole but the need for reformation. This is a situation that can arise anywhere and that can recur periodically, wherever and as long as the relationship between the whole and certain individuals to each other vacillates between a predominate self-initiating activity of either one and a predominate receptivity of the other.
2. Now, generally, no definition of a doctrine that is conceived, even in the most complete state of community, can thus be viewed as unreformable3 and valid for all times on that account. So, that is true, above all, of doctrines that have arisen due to controversy, as the presentation of a greater or lesser majority, in that in a controversy everything that induces error is stirred up most of all. Hence, on the one hand, no one can be bound to acknowledge the content of such presentations as Christian truth, except insofar as they are also the expression of one’s own religious consciousness or are commended to oneself by their scriptural character. On the other hand, according to the measure of one’s strengths and resources, the reformation of public doctrine remains an occupation the exercise of which every individual has the duty, and thus also the right, to join through examination of whatever concepts and statements have been set forth. One must not be impeded in carrying out this occupation. However, of itself there nonetheless extends throughout the entire course of this occupation an agreement as to the basic principles, according to which principles and in the meaning of which principles error is to be opposed—except that even this agreement can gradually form within each church only once the church has learned how to gain a clear knowledge of itself.
Accordingly, we will ever prize the fact that as it came into being, the Evangelical church did not choose to submit itself to the decision of a general council of the church in regard to doctrines that were in dispute. However, we can no longer prize its having, nevertheless, immediately resumed adherence to the collected ecumenical confessions, which are still nothing but products of similar councils that were, moreover, occasioned by disunity and consequently were not especially suited to meting out truth. It is likewise to be prized that the onetime status of convictions was laid down in brief confessional writings for Christendom as a whole, whereby reforming influence upon the whole first took a firm hold; but it is not to be prized that by means of these very writings people subsequently wanted to impede the very undertaking from which these writings had emerged, as if these writings were themselves unreformable.
1. Ed. note: waltende Kraft.
2. Verbesserung. Ed. note: Literally, this word means simply “improvement.”
3. Ed. note: unverbesserlich. This subsection seems to be as close as Schleiermacher gets to the classic saying reformata sed semper reformanda (“reformed but ever reforming”), though the attitude suffuses his historically oriented theological work. His major writings on confessional and church union issues (1817–1831) have been translated and introduced by Iain G. Nicol (2004).
§155. Second Doctrinal Proposition. All errors that are generated in the visible church are eventually overcome by the truth that is continually at work in it.
1. This proposition hangs so closely together with the just previous one that in general terms an objection cannot very well be made to it. If error, no matter how severe it may be, relates to truth only in the way described, then in every organic part of the whole church, error must be diminished the more the Holy Spirit appropriates the organism of thought.1 Error is restrained, moreover, by two sorts of influence, each of which may prevail differently at different times. First, error is restrained within an individual who is erring in a particular fashion through the influence of a public mode of thinking that then takes hold of the individual from all sides. Second, error is also restrained within a mass of people, this time through the influence of spiritually accomplished individuals, an influence that is constantly spreading a clear consciousness on the matter.
However, if anyone thinks that in addition to this error in the truth2 there also exists in Christendom an error exclusive of all truth and that, on that account, some other path must be struck with regard to that additional kind of error, then the matter is as follows. Notions can exist that issue from an incomplete faith in Christ. Notions can also exist that are directed against those who give witness to a more complete faith in Christ. The truth that ever remains the same within the church nevertheless underlies both kinds of notion. On the other hand, thoughts and rules of life exist that do not at all issue from Christian consciousness. Of these particular thoughts and rules of life, moreover, one thus cannot say that they are simply errors in the truth. Furthermore, one also cannot say that these thoughts and rules of life belong to the domain of Christendom simply to the extent that they are in those persons who have fostered them and in whom a dominion of the Christian spirit has already been introduced from elsewhere. This would be so, in that a distinct consciousness of that influence would not yet be present. That is to say, where no relation whatsoever to this spirit exists, there also exists at that time and place no part of the visible church. In that situation, moreover, the church has to do with particular incorrect notions only to the extent that these notions can yield a point of connection for its broadening activity. In the first of these two cases, however, even if the error in question as yet appears to have no rudiment of Christian truth in it whatsoever, it still rates as a precursor of that Christian spirit, for there is already present in it a point at which Christian consciousness can begin to develop.3
2. Obviously, however, our proposition cannot intend to designate any particular time. Rather, in the history of Christendom one can certainly point out significant periods in which error has developed and has taken the upper hand while, in contrast, truth was repulsed. However, such phenomena are fitted more to motivating a different judgment concerning previous conditions that were apparently more favorable than to justifying the belief that truth had vanished from the church or had only been partially lost, a belief that would not comport with faith in4 the reign of Christ. Moreover, in the visible church everything can be traced back to the fact that the advancement of truth and the overcoming of error by truth assumes a twofold shape. The one shape emerges when truth gradually destroys error that stands over against it. The other shape emerges when error that is attached, unconsciously,5 to the very expression of truth is, with all its effects, detached from the truth and, although the truth might seem to have lost something of its power and efficacy, truth is indeed clarified6 to the end of its exercising greater efficacy.
Independently of this process, history frequently depicts an apparent diminishment of the sphere of truth by revolt,7 in which overwhelming external force is ordinarily at work.8 If revolt is not apparent, however, then Christianity was also merely apparent earlier, in that it is not possible to imagine any interconnection at all between some power of this sort and the state of community of life with Christ. Along this path, therefore, no repression9 of Christian consciousness whatsoever can be brought about, much less a total disappearance of it.
1. Organismus des Denkens.
2. Ed. note: Here the same German preposition governs a relation of error to truth with the Christian domain and the relation of faith with respect to Christ: an (which mainly connotes a direction or approach toward), not in (which mainly connotes a specific location in, into, or within). However, generally only the English word “in” is available for translating an, though in some instances, as here, one could say “moving toward.”
3. Ed. note: The set of problems to which Schleiermacher is addressing himself at this point prominently includes relations to other religions, already partly addressed within his fifth discourse in On Religion. See also his references to preparatory grace elsewhere in the present work, most immediately in §156.3.
4. Ed. note: Here again, the preposition is an, and thus the meaning of the word Glaube must shift from mere “belief “ to an inner condition of relationship called “faith,” which indeed includes and necessarily presupposes certain beliefs but is not confined to or exclusively defined by them.
5. Ed. note: unbewußt. This is one of those occasional important junctures at which Schleiermacher affirms activities, and corresponding impulses and motives, that do not immediately rise to consciousness but are nonetheless held in the mind unconsciously. This affirmation, then, is of critical significance for his ability to expect confidence in the ongoing presence of the invisible church, for what has been held unconsciously may, or does somehow, eventually rise to consciousness. In this confident awareness, selectively applied, Schleiermacher is a clear-cut precursor of Sigmund Freud (1856–1940). In part, his point concerning how error can be unconsciously attached to truth is illustrated by the very fact that he could not possibly be aware of such a relationship. Formally, with respect to truth and error, the same process occurs in philosophy and science as well as in religious faith. What Freud and his successors have done is to define further basic dynamics of unconscious processes and, while no doubt both committing and correcting some errors of their own, also to clarify and refine what is true about those dynamics and processes.
6. Ed. note: More literally, sich läutert means cleansed, purified, or refined.
7. Abfall. Ed. note: Literally, a falling off—in the areas of belief or faith: decline.
8. Ed. note: aüssere Gewalt wirksam ist.
9. Ed. note: Here Schleiermacher employs a term that has distinct military overtones, Zurückgedrängt werden, “to be forced back.” Later psychological research came to employ verdrängen and Verdrängung for “repressing” and “repression.”
Postscript to These Two Points of Doctrine
§156. The claim that the true church began at the outset of the human race and remains one and the same to the very end of the human race must not be taken to mean that the Christian church, properly so called, is itself only part of a larger whole.
(1) Augsburg Confession (1530) VII: “It is also taught that at all times there must be and remain one holy Christian church. It is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel.”1
(2) Apology Augsburg (1531) VII: “Paul distinguishes the people of the law in this way: the church is a spiritual people. … Among the people of the law, in addition to the promise about Christ, those born according to the flesh had promises regarding physical well-being, political affairs, etc. … the people according to the gospel are only those who receive this promise of the Spirit.”2
(3) Second Helvetic Confession (1566) XVII: “Because God, from the beginning, would have men to be saved … it is altogether necessary that there always should have been, and should be now, and to the end of the world, a Church. … This Church militant was set up differently before the law among the patriarchs, otherwise under Moses by the Law, and differently by Christ through the Gospel. … here we acknowledge a diversity of times and a diversity in the signs of the promised and delivered Christ.”3
(4) Scots Confession (1560) V: “We … believe that God … called to life his Kirk in all ages from Adam till the coming of Christ Jesus in the flesh.”4
(5) Belgic Confession (1561) XXVII: “We believe … one catholic church. … This church hath been from the beginning of the world and will be to the end thereof.”5
1. Not only do the last three confessional writings cited from the Reformed side express the unity of the Old Testament and New Testament church, but the same is the case on the Lutheran side as well. This is so, for even if one wanted to draw from the Augsburg Confession to the contrary, the same sense of the matter is undeniably present in its authentic explanation, the Apology. Only in the Saxon Confession does Melanchthon appear to be more cautious, in that he does not extend beyond the time of Christ’s birth with his examples. However, if this move appears to be actually intentional, it also appears to be rather less consistent, in that, nevertheless, Christ could not as yet have exercised any redemptive efficacious action on Simeon, Hannah, and the others mentioned there.6 Rather, after the pattern of Simeon’s belief, Melanchthon too was indisputably thinking of the messianic belief of earlier times. Now, if one were actually supposed to understand the unity of the church from the very beginning of humanity onward, as one of these cited passages seems to do—that is, in such a way that Christ was for the third period of humanity what Moses was for the second period, then our divergence from these passages in the confessional symbols would widen still further. If we then recall what we said earlier,7 the matter comes down to defining more exactly the difference between our proposition and that of the passages cited from the confessional symbols.
We proceed from both sets of passages by asserting that the church would exist only where faith in Christ is present. Yet, the latter set of confessional symbols holds that this church would exist already from the beginning of the world, whereas we hold that the church would begin only with the personal efficacious action of Christ. Thus, the second set of confessional symbols would have to assume that faith in Christ would have existed before his personal efficacious action, whereas we condition that faith in Christ upon this personal efficacious action of Christ and thus derive that faith from it. So, this is the first point to be settled. Doing so, however, is interconnected with the fact that both sets of passages proceed, at the same time, from the assertion that faith generates blessedness.8 Yet, whereas the second set of confessional symbols claims that the personal efficacious action of Christ would not be necessary to bring about the blessedness of human beings, we, on the other hand, claim that the love of God that generates blessedness would not have become effective until the appearance of Christ. Furthermore, the question arises as to whether a choice would really have to be made between these two assumptions and, in the pertinent case, on what basis the choice would have to be decided. Since these statements, viewed in and of themselves, are not predicated on our immediate self-consciousness, we can only indicate even of our own statement here, by virtue of its negative form, that it has arisen only with reference to claims that are foreign to us, whereas, for the comparison that is to be made, no other criterion can be acknowledged than an agreement with what has already been established as an expression of our immediate self-consciousness.
2. Now, as concerns the first point, we have already established9 that for us the Old Testament prophecies cannot be grounds for faith on account of their being fulfilled—not in the sense that we would have had faith in Christ because he had been foretold in the way in which he had later been found to be. This is the case, in that in our Evangelical sense this foretelling of the messiah cannot be a ground for faith at all. To be sure, this difference does not obviate against the promises’ having been able to serve as a ground of blessedness for human beings before Christ’s appearance. That is, presupposing a sharpened consciousness of sinfulness and of the need for redemption, if a redeemer would then be promised, people could fix their longing upon that promise, and an anticipatory feeling10 of a future blessedness in his company could arise, which as a shared joy could, in a certain sense, overcome an individual’s own lack of blessedness.
However, this concession is but to a life in the shadows, a presentiment11 of the Christian church but not the Christian church itself. This is so, for we are simply saying that this church would never exist except where faith exists, inasmuch as this faith is one’s whole appropriation of Christ and inasmuch as Christ’s existence is, at the same time, essentially of a community-forming nature. Indeed, here one can, in a certain sense, admit to an appropriation of Christ’s blessedness but not to an appropriation of his perfection. Moreover, that faith in the messianic promises never, at any time, became community-forming under the old covenant; rather, it is historically quite clear that community there rested entirely on the law.
For that reason, the distinction is not exhausted if one simply admits that different symbols were used at the time of the promised messiah and at the time when the messiah actually appeared. Rather, even faith itself became different between the two times, and at the time when law prevailed, the true faith of the New Testament was only something that lay in the future.12 Moreover, even what has been conceded thus far cannot be proven, namely, that the messianic promises in the old covenant really contained the concept of a redeemer in the sense we have assumed it to have, in keeping with the books of confessional symbols, or that they applied that concept to the consciousness of sin in the sense we have also conceived it to have. Suppose, however, that one not only wants to make this assertion but also wants to equate faith before Christ’s appearance with our own, this also in relation to the perfection of Christ that is effective in us and our bond of love as brethren. Then one would also have to concede that those who heard the promise were in a position not only to form the concept of sinless perfection itself from very incomplete indications but also to put that concept into effect. Moreover, this concession obviously leads to the conclusion that Christ’s real appearance would not have been necessary for our attaining blessedness but that merely the promise of it would have had to be kept alive.
3. Now, in that we are able to obtain so little agreement on this matter, no less unsatisfactory a yield might seem to follow from our claim that human beings did not attain to blessedness prior to Christ’s appearance. However, in face of the inference that the love of God generating blessedness would have begun only with Christ’s appearance, we must restrict ourselves, precisely in accordance with our own basic principles, to saying that only the temporal appearance of this love that generates blessedness would not have begun earlier. We have no objection, however, to acknowledging the point in this form, for we simply find ourselves to be in the same situation as the whole human race, a situation in which every individual still finds oneself even today: only in regeneration does one attain to a partaking of love that generates blessedness.13 That is, up to Christ’s appearance the whole human race was in the condition of living under preparatory grace—the whole of it, not exclusively the entire series that the Jewish historical books take us through from Adam through the patriarchs to the founding of Mosaism.14 This is the case, for this preparatory grace has everywhere been in evidence, where and in the measure that the effects of divine sanctification and righteousness were present, and from this point outward we too preserve the same equal status of Jew and Gentile from which Paul also proceeded. The way in which Paul relates Christ’s appearance to the promise and faith of Abraham is also in accord with this view, more than might appear at first glance, namely, in that preparatory divine grace has not been revealed in a special or exclusive way in any statutory law. Rather, it has been revealed preeminently in the fact that a lasting abode had to be preserved for monotheism and in the fact that action on this basis is faith—faith that can also just as well be viewed as obedience. For this reason, moreover, faith was accounted to Abraham as righteousness when he then became an instrument of preparatory divine grace and when, in this relation to what was to come, he could, by that same grace, become an object of the divine good pleasure.
Hence, in this manner it is also possible to assume a justification for Christ’s sake15 before Christ’s appearance, one that is analogous to a blessedness contained in shared feeling regarding the future: consequently, it is possible to assume scattered features of the church before Christ’s appearance but not the church itself. Suppose, on the other hand, that someone holds, instead of this claim, that there would have been a true church from the beginning of the human race onward, simply the view that from the beginning onward there would have been no other originator of blessedness for human beings and no other basis for the divine good pleasure toward human beings than Christ. In that case, no objection is to be raised against this latter position.
1. Ed. note: ET Book of Concord (2000), 42; Latin and German: Bek. Luth. (1963), 61.
2. Ed. note: ET Book of Concord (2000), 176; Latin and German: Bek. Luth. (1963), 236f.
3. Ed. note: ET Cochrane (1972), 261f.; Latin only: Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 271–25; cf. §37n3.
4. Ed. note: ET drawn from the original English and Latin versions in Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 442, also Cochrane (1972), 167; cf. an inferior Latin version in Niemeyer (1840), 342, and a closely related ET by Bulloch (1960).
5. Ed. note: ET and French in Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 416f., also Cochrane (1972), 208; Latin: Niemeyer (1840), 379.
6. Saxon Confession (= Melanchthon, Repetitio Confessionis Augustanae, 1551) in Symbole (1816), 164, CR 28:409: “Nevertheless, in that assembly there are many who are not holy but who agree about true teaching, just as in the time of Mary these were the church: Zachariah, Simeon, Elizabeth, Mary, Anna, the shepherds and many others who were agreeing about pure teaching and were listening not to the Sadducees or Pharisees but to Zachariah, Simeon, Anna, Mary and the like.” Ed. note: ET Kienzles.
7. In §12.2. Ed. note: Under §12 Schleiermacher presents an argument supporting the position that Christianity is not “a transformation or a renewing continuation of Judaism” any more than would be true of its relation to Gentile religion, with the sole exception that ordinarily Gentile converts would first have to adopt a form of monotheism directly from Christianity, while Jews would not. Abraham’s faith, for example, was in acceptance of a “promise” from God to him and his people of what was to come, whereas Christianity represents God’s “fulfillment” of a different and larger promise in Christ on behalf of all humanity. More specifically, in §12.2 Schleiermacher elaborates on this position as follows. In Christ, and then by the Holy Spirit, what God reveals is certainly “suprarational” in that it does not depend on reason alone, but it is not “absolutely suprarational” in that this divine Spirit is “the supreme enhancement of human reason” and is ultimately to be “completely at one” with reason. Thus, in §13 he argues for the position that there is simply no gradual transition to Christianity from Jewish or Gentile religion, nor is there any homogeneity between them and Christianity. All other so-called revelation tends to be restricted in some fashion, whereas that which is brought through Christianity, though perfectly natural, is alone able to lift the entire human race into a higher life.
8. Ed. note: The theme of what makes for blessedness runs through the entirety of Part Two. To trace the thread, see, for example, §§87, 90.1, 91.2, 101, 106.1–2, 109.3–4, 110.3, 121.3, 137.2, 159.3, 162.3, and 163.
9. In §14.P.S.
10. Vorgefühl.
11. Ed. note: Here “presentiment” translates Ahnung while, as indicated in the previous note, “anticipatory feeling” translates Vorgefühl. For the distinction, see §146n1.
12. Cf. Gal. 3:22–23. Ed. note: Sermon on Gal. 3:21–23, Dec. 10, 1820, SW II.2 (1834), 21–35.
13. Seligmachende Liebe. Ed. note: That is, God’s grace effected in and through Christ.
14. Mosaismus.
15. Ed. note: eine Rechtfertigung um Christi willen. That is, a being made righteous in God’s sight, in accordance with the redemption to come through Christ.
Regarding the Consummation of the Church
[Introduction to Division Three]
§157. Since the church cannot attain its consummation within the course of human life on the earth, the depiction of its consummated state is immediately useful only as a pattern that we are to approximate.
1. In and of itself, the sufficient ground for this consummation of the church lies in the Holy Spirit, viewed as the vital principle of the church’s common life.1 However, since the Holy Spirit’s efficacious action is subject to the law of temporal life, that consummation can occur only when all resistance is vanquished, in such a way that within the sphere of the Holy Spirit’s efficacious action nothing that counteracts it temporally remains, and thus all influences of the world upon the church are at an end.
For this to happen, it would first have to be presupposed that Christianity will have spread over the entire earth2 and indeed in such a way that no other mode of faith would exist as an organized community any longer. That is to say, as long as these outdated and incomplete forms of religion still exist alongside Christianity and want to persist alongside the church, their adherents will also be so deeply stamped with their character that when Christianity takes hold of them, individually or collectively, they will bring with them much that is corrupt, even if unconsciously, from which separations and errors will emerge.
Now, our self-consciousness attests to the fact that, in general terms, the emergence of faith in the Redeemer is conditioned not by any influence in particular but by the shared consciousness of sin that can be awakened in all and, on account of the selfsameness of human nature, by the general capacity to receive a specific impression from the Redeemer as well. Thus, we hope that this spread of Christianity over the mass of humanity will accelerate as the majestic presence of Christ is reflected ever more clearly in the church itself.3 Hence, the possibility is undeniable that this end might yet occur in the course of human affairs, but human procreation does not cease as this course proceeds and sin unfolds anew in each generation.4 Consequently, even if it is posited that the more the power of sin loses its sway, the more it is pushed back and the more easily it is broken, then the church still repeatedly takes the world into itself in this manner. Hence, the church also constantly stands in conflict, as was described earlier, and therefore never reaches consummation.
Now, it is customary to call the church wrapped in conflict the church militant, in part, because it must defend itself against the world and, in part, because it must seek to overcome the world. On the other hand, precisely for the reason that it is imagined as in a state of consummation, it is termed the church triumphant, because at that point what was the world is in this sense engulfed by the church and no longer exists as the church’s antagonist.
2. Thus, from our standpoint, strictly taken, no doctrine of the church’s consummation can arise for us, since our Christian self-consciousness flatly cannot say anything about this situation, which for us is entirely unfamiliar. This is so, for since we have also recognized Christ to be the end of prophecy,5 this already implies that the church too recognizes no gift of the Spirit for prefiguring a future on which—because it lies beyond all things human—our activity can have no influence whatsoever. Indeed, we could hardly conceive such a picture, or hold it clearly in mind, for lack of any analogy. Given that these prefigurings do, nonetheless, take up a lot of room in the church, we are still obliged to inquire as to their source before drumming them out of our presentation.
Now, the first task here is to refer to prophecies regarding the church’s consummation in the New Testament, all of which prophecies we must, in any case, trace back to Christ’s utterances that are prophetic in nature. Now, suppose that these utterances were to be handled in accordance with the rules,6 and would, nonetheless, never be viewed as genuine faith propositions. Suppose, too, that these utterances would be handled only as statements that we take on testimony but that do not stand in such a close connection with our faith as do similar ones that concern the person of the Redeemer. Then we would also hardly be able to find a place for such statements within our account of faith-doctrines, and, without exception, we would do this only as they concern the Redeemer and our relationship to him. These statements are also not faith-doctrines inasmuch as their content, overstepping our mental capacity as it does, is no description of our actual self-consciousness. Yet, the matter looks different when, apart from their leading us beyond our own real conditions, we stick by our proviso that they should contain nothing of what is derived from influences of the world in our present circumstances. That the world should be curtailed, even beyond what the cooperation of any one individual could achieve, is ever the object of our prayers, and accordingly the church consummate is the locus of the final answer to these prayers. Consequently, this notion is rooted in our Christian self-consciousness as the community that human nature shares with Christ, a community that persists under entirely unfamiliar and only waveringly imaginable conditions, but also persists as the community that can alone be thought to be fully free of all that has its basis in the resistance of the flesh against the spirit.
1. Ed. note: als dem gemeinsamen Lebensprinzip. As before, “principle” here means originative driving force. Regarding the Holy Spirit, see §116n1.
2. Rom. 11:25–26.
3. Eph. 1:22–23 and 2:21–22. Ed. note: Sermon outline only on Eph. 2:19–21, preparatory service, Saturday, Aug. 5, 1797, Bauer (1908), 328–30. The images in these passages indicate an exalted leading presence of Christ throughout the whole, thus here Herrlichkeit is rendered not in its usual sense of awesome “glory” or “splendor” but in the sense of majesty, of Christ as Lord.
4. Ed. note: See the accounts of “original” and “actual” sin in §§66–74. There it is made clear that original sin is due to and transmitted by acts of free will, not by the process of procreation as such. Every newborn enters into the collective life of sin, variously carried from generation to generation as “original” sin, and every child contributes “actual” sin to the mix by one’s own self-initiated activity.
6. Regeln der Kunst. Ed. note: For Schleiermacher, every form of art, craft, or discourse requires rules proper to its aims and contents—as, for example, rules for proper communication in the church, notably in practical theology.
§158. Just as faith in the continuing existence of the human person is already contained in faith in the immutability of the union of the divine being with human nature in the person of Christ, so for the Christian there emerges out of that faith the inclination to form a notion of a state after death.
1. The opinion expressed in our proposition cannot be read as if belief in the continuation of personal existence1 after death—or, as we are generally used to expressing it, in “the immortality of the soul”—would have to have arisen precisely in this way, since traces of this belief are to be met with everywhere and, in particular, this belief was predominate among the Jewish people at the times of Christ and the apostles. Rather, our statement simply means that without the connection identified here, the belief could not find any place within our account of Christian faith-doctrine.2 Likewise, all of our preceding deliberations have been presented and demonstrated wholly without any connection with this belief, and only a single doctrinal proposition, that regarding the ascension of Christ, which was also indirect in nature, even alludes to it. As a result, anyone who has found one’s Christian self-consciousness portrayed in our presentation thus far must also grant the following. Presupposing the facts of Christianity and what we have told of it, out of the consciousness of sin that acknowledges the need for redemption, there can develop faith in the Redeemer in the way described here, and out of that faith, communication of Christ’s blessedness can also develop in each moment of life, even at the last instant, even if we would have had no intimation3 of a state after death. Accordingly, the question very naturally arises as to whether and along what path this belief in an afterlife would have come to be associated with our religious self-consciousness if the Redeemer had not adopted and sanctioned that belief. In this connection, moreover, only one twofold possibility becomes apparent. Either the continuation of personal existence would have been conveyed as truth by cognitive activity, thus by way of objective consciousness, or it would originally have been imparted to us in our immediate self-consciousness, whether essentially bound to Godconsciousness, which underlies everything here, or of itself and independent of God-consciousness.
Now, as concerns the first option, at that point this doctrine would belong to a higher level of natural science, and surety regarding it could exist only among those who had mastered procedure belonging to this science, with the result that others could have possessed the doctrine only at second hand. This, however, is patently not how the matter stands. Rather, it is undeniable that in the scientific domain this belief has been just as vigorously impugned by some, in fact repeatedly afresh, as it has been defended by others. Indeed, anyone who has more closely examined the so-called rational proofs for immortality would hardly be able to believe that the notion itself is a product of this domain. Rather, it has come from some other source in some way or another, and science has then sought to combine it with its other findings. Moreover, by the nature of the matter, such a procedure also would have to remain ever open to criticism. Hence, a presentation of faith-doctrine could never be justified in adopting these proofs if it wants to make any broader use of the notion of immortality. Even less, however, could it be obligated to examine the notion and make up for the notion’s deficiencies. Instead, a presentation of faith-doctrine would have to wait until the notion is established scientifically, leaving the matter undecided until then, since otherwise presentation of faith-doctrine would be made dependent on a philosophical position still in dispute.
Now, as concerns the other option, if belief in immortality were, in general terms, coherent with God-consciousness, it would have been a great mistake not to have explicated it then and there. However, this mistake would already have been remarked on and avenged, which has certainly not been the case. Precisely this fact, moreover, cannot predispose us to assume such a coherence between the two. To be sure, there does indeed exist a nonreligious denial of immortality, one that coheres with a denial of God’s existence, since both denials are inherent in the materialistic or atomistic way of thinking. However, there likewise exists an entirely different renunciation of any continuation of personal existence after death, a position far remote from that which regards spiritual activities4 simply as material phenomena and subordinates spirit to matter. This position asserts instead that, in strictly real terms, spirit is the power that engenders living matter and conforms that matter to itself. That is to say, from this point of view it is possible to claim two things at once: on the one hand, that God-consciousness would constitute the essence of every life that is, in the higher sense, self-conscious or rational, but, on the other hand, also that if the spirit is essentially immortal in this productive activity, the individual soul is but a passing action of this productive activity, consequently is likewise essentially ephemeral. Accordingly, any supposed action of this sort that would reach beyond the distinct point of development and the distinct region of human existence to which it belongs would lose its meaning. Any dominion of God-consciousness that would also require the purest morality and the most elevated spirituality in life would be completely compatible with such a renunciation of any continuation of personal existence after death.
Now, we must also recognize that, to be sure, some people do hold to a belief in the continuation of personal existence that corresponds to the spirit of piety in general terms, a belief that views the presence of Godconsciousness in the human soul as the reason why it cannot share in the general destiny of transient existence. This belief, however, is likewise not a religious one, for how is this belief to be at all akin to God-consciousness if it proceeds solely from an interest in the sensory contents of life, even if this interest is refined to a certain degree? That is always the case, moreover, when immortality is postulated for the purpose of recompense, in that it is presupposed that no pure and immediate tendency toward piety and morality would exist, but each of these would be sought only as a means to attain to complete happiness5 on the other side. Hence, if it must be conceded that there is a way to reject any continuation of personal existence beyond death and that with such rejection one can be more suffused with God-consciousness than by way of accepting that continuation, then no claim to an interconnection between this belief and God-consciousness, regarded in itself, can be sustained any longer.
2. It may well be claimed, however, that belief in the continuation of personal existence after death coheres with our faith in the Redeemer. That is to say, if he ascribes such a continuation to himself in all that he says regarding his return or reunion with his own, and given that he can say this of himself only as a human person, since only as such could he also share in community with his followers, so, by implication, the same must be true of us as well. This is the case, by virtue of the selfsameness of human nature in him and in us. However obvious this point may seem, we must still investigate whether and what sort of objections can be raised against it as well, be they then against the correctness of the presupposition or against the legitimacy of the inference.
Objections of the first sort could refer only to a deviant explanation of Christ’s discourses, and to that extent they would also not be adjudged here at all but would devolve to the art of interpretation. Meanwhile, this much would be proper to say here: Suppose that someone should want to claim, in good faith, that all the discourses of Christ that are pertinent here were to be understood as figurative and as inauthentic in some fashion, and that Christ would not therein ascribe to himself any personal continuation at all after death. Therewith, a faith in Christ as it has been presented here would certainly remain possible—for even though the disclaiming of personal continuation after death just described would then be something common to both Christ and ourselves, nonetheless the distinctive difference between Christ and ourselves would not necessarily be suspended on that account. However, if such a mode of interpretation should ever gain currency in the church and underlie Christian faith, then a thoroughgoing transformation of Christianity would, nonetheless, have to emerge from this fact. Moreover, it is already implied in this kind of inference that we do not presuppose that such an interpretation could be made in good faith.
The matter would not be greatly different if someone wanted to place in doubt the legitimacy of the inference drawn,6 on the ground that even if Christ ascribed to himself personal continuation beyond death, he would simply have adopted this ascription from the belief that then prevailed, without any distinct conviction of his own, and also would simply have made use of this opinion as he did in similar cases. In consequence, his expressions on this matter would not belong to those that cohered with Christ’s certainty concerning his dignity and destiny—they would not belong in such a way that faith in either his dignity or his destiny would not be possible without accepting these expressions as well. That is to say, hardly anyone would be able honestly to claim that Christ would likewise also simply have dismissed the Sadducees’ position, without his having conviction of his own on the matter, and that his belief in the irresistible advancement of his word7 would have been independent of his belief in the continuation of his personal existence after his death.
Now, if a firm conviction regarding this matter on Christ’s part is not denied, then the only objection anyone could still want to raise is that from the continuation of Christ’s personal existence after death, in which we would then have to believe with him, nothing follows for our own death. That is, nothing would follow for us inasmuch as his continuation would rest only on what is distinctive about him, on the union of the divine being with human nature, itself exclusively formative of his human person. Moreover, one would therefore have to say that precisely because and insofar as the Redeemer is immortal, this would not be true of all other human beings. This explanation, however, would be docetic—granted in a particular way but still unqualifiedly docetic. This is the case, for the distinction between an immortal soul and a mortal soul cannot alone consist in or alone be made intelligible by the consideration that at some point or other the one soul really does die; rather from the outset, always and in every respect, the activities and conditions of the one soul would have to be different from those of the other souls. Hence, if the Redeemer’s soul were imperishable but ours were perishable, then it could not rightly be said that as a human being he was like us in all things except sin. That is, if one wanted to say that originally it was certainly of the nature of the human soul to be immortal, but the passing on of sin to each soul would have made it mortal, then it follows that the entire original work of God would have been destroyed by sin and that something else would have had to take the place of that work. Hence, we would also have to dismiss out of hand the bifurcation that some want to assume, namely, that all souls will indeed die from sin and in death will be lost with the body, but through community of life with Christ, the faithful would obtain a share in immortality and with him would press through death into life. This position is untenable, for it bears one or the other of two unacceptable implications. Either the position refers back to a presupposition that is Manichean in spirit and holds that those who do not attain to community of life with Christ could also, already on that account, never become immortal. Or if the others are by nature the same as they are, then through regeneration even nature itself would have to have become entirely different, in every way.
Thus, nothing else remains except to hold that if we reckon the Redeemer’s expressions concerning the eternal continuation of his personal existence beyond death to be an aspect of the complete truth he represents, as his disciples undeniably did, then all members of the human race have that continuation to look forward to. In this way, however, the Redeemer certainly also remains the mediator of immortality, only not alone for those who have already had faith in him here but for everyone without exception.
This conclusion is understandable, first, in the sense that if personal continuation beyond death did not belong to human nature, then a union of the divine being with human nature to form a personal existence such as that of the Redeemer also would not have been possible. Second, the other way around, because God had chosen to complete and to redeem human nature through such a union, on that account from the outset individual human beings also would always have had to bear within themselves the same immortality of which the Redeemer was conscious. This bearing the same immortality within themselves comprises the true Christian surety regarding this belief. Every other guarantee for this belief, even if it were more graphically clear than previous attempts would lead us to expect, would nonetheless remain alien to the Christian as such, until such time as this belief would belong, as it were, to those notions that would constitute the full-orbed general conviction of humankind.
3. Now, in a natural fashion this faith is indeed accompanied by an effort to form and establish a graphic intimation of the state of personal existence after death. However, we cannot make even the least claim that up to a certain point we would succeed in such a venture. That is to say, the question concerning the condition of that existence after death, acquaintance with which would nonetheless have to underlie any graphic intimation8 of it, is a cosmological question. Moreover, “space” and “spatiality” are so closely akin to “time” and “hour” that they also, like them, lie outside the sphere of communications that the Redeemer had available to make to us. Hence, even his allusions9 are all, in part, purely figurative and, in part, so indistinctly held in relation to everything else that nothing further is to be derived from them than what is so greatly essential for every Christian in every intimation regarding a state beyond death—that is, for a Christian, apart from continuation beyond death of union of persons of faith with the Redeemer, this intimation could only point to damnation. Likewise, what the apostles say on this subject is expressed only as presentiment10 and with the understanding that there is a lack of any more definite knowledge.
Thus, however true it may also be that every element of our present life is, as such, the more complete and imbued with wisdom the more fully and clearly both past and future are brought to mind in it, we should not ever turn to wanting to determine our present aims by somehow visualizing that future form of life. Instead, we must indeed guard against admitting, in addition, any influence of attempts to form notions that derive from the interest of sensory self-consciousness with respect to the continuation of personal existence beyond death, as if these attempts had sprung from our Christian faith. Consequently, moreover, even if such attempts might be nobler than Jewish or Muhammadan ones,11 they are still unexceptionally sensory in nature. Such influence can all too easily become detrimental to Christian faith and life and can thus ruin the present for us. Hence, as concerns the notion12 of a future life, our task now is chiefly that of carefully examining propositions advanced by others and whatever opinion has come to prevail.
1. Persönlichkeit. Ed. note: Here, as throughout Schleiermacher’s discourse, except when specifically defined otherwise (as rarely occurs), this term invariably means not “personality” but existence in a personal manner, albeit having a set of distinctive characteristics, versus being merely an individual quantity and versus having, say, a charming or harsh personality in the eyes of others. For example, he describes Jesus as having a personal existence, but he never refers to him as the Redeemer in these two contrasting ways. In general usage even today, persönlich likewise means “personally” or “in person,” while Persönlichkeit has accrued other meanings in German, just as it has in English.
2. Ed. note: In this rare instance, Glaube appears in both of its meanings—that is, “religious faith” and any “belief,” whether religious or not.
3. Vorstellung. Ed. note: In Schleiermacher’s discourse, “notion” ordinarily translates this word most accurately. In this proposition, wherever one’s attention is directed imaginatively to some anticipated future state of affairs, “intimation” seems more suited, as in the familiar title Intimations of Immortality (1807) by William Wordsworth (1770–1850). Otherwise “notion” is used.
4. Ed. note: geistigen Tätigkeiten.
5. Glückseligkeit.
6. Ed. note: This second sort of objective is referred to in the sentence just previous to the preceding paragraph.
7. Wortes. Ed. note: In KGA I/13.2 (2003), Schäfer adopts Werkes (work) from the unrevised manuscript instead of Wortes. While this choice may seem more immediately plausible, the presence of “word” in the original edited text of 1831 is certainly consistent with accounts in Scripture. In Matt. 22:23–33/Luke 20:27–38 Jesus countered some Sadducees—a group who, unlike the Pharisees, refused to believe in bodily resurrection—emphasizing, however, that God is “the God of the living, not of the dead.” This group continued to attack the apostles similarly (cf. Acts 4:1–3; 5:17) and Paul (Acts 23:6–10) on the same issue. Then in John 5:24 (RSV) Jesus is reported to say: “[Anyone] who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; [that person] does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (cf. also John 4:12 and 8:53). His work involves his proclamation of himself, that is, his word. See §103.
8. Anschauliches Vorstellung. Ed. note: As just above, “graphic intimation” seems to capture what he is referring to here. Ordinarily these are terms that would mean “clearly perceptible” and “notion.” The latter of these terms is ordinarily taken to be less clear than a scientifically supported concept. In this context “intimation” of immortality seems to fit ordinary usage well. See also §158n3 above.
9. The things people say that I think of here are known to all and are too numerous to adduce them in detail. Ed. note: Andeutungen is the word used here; “intimations” and “suggestions” are near synonyms.
10. Ahnung. Ed. note: See §146n1.
11. Ed. note: Cf. the contrast between more “teleological” and more “aesthetic” modes of faith in §11. Here “sensory” refers to more “aesthetic” attempts at visualizing, imagining, or bringing to mind details of an afterlife, but not necessarily artistic ones.
§159. The fulfillment of these two tasks, to present the church in its consummation and to present the state of souls in an afterlife, is attempted in official church doctrines of the last things. However, the same value cannot be attached to these doctrines as to the doctrines treated thus far.
1. The German expression “last things,” even though rather generally adopted, has something strange about it that is more concealed in the word eschatology. That is, the expression “things” threatens to lead us entirely outside the domain of inner life, with which we are alone concerned nevertheless; and, to be sure, it also contains a sign that, at the same time, something is being endeavored here that could not be achieved by real faith-doctrines in our sense of the term. The two expressions have this in common, that if the beginning of an entirely new and eternally enduring spiritual form of life is presented, from our standpoint, as the “last,” thereupon that everlasting duration seems to be simply the end of temporal existence, which is almost insignificant in comparison with that everlasting duration. This position permits of being justified only by applying the concept of retribution,1 which is therefore also a dominant feature. In strong contrast, if one considers the same everlasting duration to be the further development of the new life that has begun here, thereupon the shortness of that temporal existence seems to be only the preparatory and introductory beginning of it.
The first way of looking at the matter, which bears the concept of retribution before it, appeals chiefly to passages in which Christ depicts himself as the one to whom the power of judgment is entrusted. On the other hand, the second way of looking at the matter, which rests on the concept of development, appeals chiefly to passages in which Christ says that he has come “to save.”2 Undeniably, this second way of looking at the matter coheres more closely with the foreboding presentiment3 of personal continuation beyond death as that is demonstrable in the self-consciousness of a Christian. In contrast, the first one corresponds more to the notion of the church’s consummation, which, in order to attach itself to some point in our present collective life, requires cutting off all that is “world,” even from its external connection with the church. Accordingly, the doctrinal propositions regarding the last things all belong in common with these two tasks, named in this proposition, for each doctrinal proposition relates to both tasks.
If we should want to form for ourselves a Christian notion of a state of existence after this life, it would not, at the same time, correspond, however, to the notion of the church’s consummate state of existence. Thus, we would not be able to believe that we had spoken of a “last thing” by the latter notion but would have to assume that some development would still lie ahead that would bring the church to its consummation. Conversely, if we should imagine the church’s consummation to be ushered in during the present course of things human, we would have to attach something else to the state of existence after death so as to give it some distinctive content. Yet, no ingredient for this purpose could be drawn from our Christian self-consciousness, for it has nothing different from this in it. Therefore, it has laid in the nature of the matter to draw the two elements together in such a way that the consummation of the church, which we nevertheless cannot imagine to be possible in this life, shifts into that afterlife which we still have to imagine to ourselves; and the notion of that afterlife, the foundation of which would still be community with Christ, would wholly consist in the consummate state of the church, so that the new form of life would rise above the present one in a decisive manner.
Nevertheless, we are not, however, in a position to depict the concurrence of the two elements or to offer warranty for that concurrence. That is to say, if the church consummate is not to be imagined after the analogy of the church militant, then we also do not know whether we are to project into that afterlife a harmonious chorus of common life and work for which no actual purpose is assigned. If, on the other hand, we want to imagine future life as a progressive development, after the analogy of the present one, then we would still have to doubt whether such a life would be possible in the church consummate. So, in this way the resolutions of the two tasks never seem to concur in any exact way.
The same quandary arises when we hold to the allusions given in Scripture. Here much is to be found that expresses depiction of the church consummate, yet not in such a way that we could claim with any surety that it is to occur only after the close of all things earthly.4 For this reason, from ancient times onward many Christians have expectantly awaited a consummation of the church here on earth. On the other hand, other passages tend more to depict a life after death,5 but one could well doubt whether they are also depictions of the church consummate.
2. Now, for these reasons we can in no way assign the same value to the propositions that follow, treating as they do of “the last things,” as we have assigned to the propositions we have advanced up to now. To be sure, the following is not to be denied: In that we are conscious of our spiritual life as the communicated perfection and blessedness of Christ, this already implies that in general terms what is consummate is alone originally true, whereas what is incomplete is true only by means of what is consummate. This affirmation, moreover, comprises our belief in the reality6 of the church consummate, but it is so only as an effectual driving force within us, which is what is genuinely active7 in all those elements of life that advance the church.
Yet, given this lifting of the distinction between inner principle and outer appearance, which is also ineradicably present in our self-consciousness, to think of this effectual principle as somehow present, at the same time, as something always appearing spatially and temporally, is not a thinking process that can be so well grounded. In like fashion, it is already implied in the identification of all individual human beings with Christ that for the Christian the general presentiment8 of the spirit’s imperishability, even in the form of an individual human being, rises to the point of surety, but an exact way to envisage this continuation beyond death is also not contained in this attitude. Rather, we are no more capable of carrying out this process of envisaging continuation in the form of a progressive development into infinity than in the form of a consummation that remains invariably the same, in that our power of sensory imagination is inadequate for the purpose.
Suppose, on the other hand, that, quite apart from their origin in our self-consciousness, we try to treat these propositions as matters that we accept on scriptural authority. In that case, here too we cannot compare them with the doctrine regarding Christ’s resurrection, which treats of the disciples’ reports concerning a fact that stands in the closest possible relation to their calling. This is so, for if we indeed had evidence of a sort that enabled us to gather how Christ had formed the two intimations in himself, so that we could reproduce the process in ourselves, then we would seek to adopt his self-consciousness for ourselves with complete confidence. That is, we would do this if in this sphere too we simply wanted to ascribe to him a completely developed human capacity for foreboding presentiment9 devoid of all wavering based in sin. However, such a derivation of these propositions is not available to us in any case, for we never do find a cohesive, irrefutable treatment of these subjects anywhere, one that undeniably underlies an aim of imparting firm information concerning them. In all the particular utterances related to this matter, in part, the object itself is contestable, in part, the sketch is indistinctly drawn, and the interpretation is shaky in numerous respects.
Hence, nothing is left to us but to deal with those various modes of intimations which have long been given currency in the church and have been carried over into our confessional documents, without any fresh examination, simply as attempts that employ an insufficiently supported capacity for presentiment.10 We do this under the title of prophetic points of doctrine, giving both the reasons for and the serious doubts lodged against them. Further, we enter upon this effort with the proviso that in any new formations of these doctrines that may eventuate, in order to remain a distinct product of Christian imagination,11 the effort has to be placed under the protection of the art of interpretation.12 Everything that seems strange to our given sphere of experience and that is proposed as an object of some future experience devolve, in any case, to imagination. Moreover, our task would be to process only that material which is offered to us, not giving way to arbitrariness or to the presumption of serving out new revelations.
3. Under these conditions, an actual construction of these propositions within a compact, coherent whole is also not to be imagined. Rather, since the content of these propositions is generally presupposed as familiar, we must be satisfied to vouchsafe through the matter itself that no different content has demonstrably the same cast, in that everywhere the intent will be to present the two notions—personal continuation beyond death and the consummation of the church—in a single picture conceived through the senses.
Accordingly, first of all, the continuation of personal existence beyond death will be presented as a transcending of death under the image of the resurrection of the flesh. The consummation of the church, however, will be presented in a twofold manner. First to be considered is the extent to which this consummation, conditioned by the supposition that no further influences on the church by those who do not belong to the church are possible, is introduced as a separation of the faithful from the unfaithful by the last judgment. Second, to the extent that the church consummate is in contrast to the church militant, completely severed from all operations of sin and all defect within persons of faith, it will be presented as eternal blessedness. However, the continuation of personal existence beyond death, and in this way the resurrection of the flesh as well, was to be conceived as extending over the entire human race; consequently, a mode of existence would also have to be of a sort that can be applied to those who are separated out from persons of faith. Thus, eternal blessedness would be thought to stand over against eternal damnation of those lacking in faith, something also introduced by the last judgment. However, it is quite clear that since no image of our future experience can indeed be prefigured by that notion, we cannot mark out a special point of doctrine regarding it but can only treat it as the shadow of blessedness or as the dark side of judgment.
These particular images, however, can be fused together into one sensory whole in view of the new form of existence’s being conditioned by Christ’s coming again, to which all that belongs to the consummation of his work must be referred. Hence, it appears to be most natural to begin with this return of Christ, viewed as introducing all the other points of doctrine, therewith to unfold all the rest on this basis and in relation to it in their natural sequence.
1. Vergeltungsbegriffe. Ed. note: Here “retribution” seems to allude to Heb. 2:2, which itself points to a day of retribution (Vergeltungstag).
2. Ed. note: selig zu machen. This is the wording, for example, in Matt. 18:11: “to save the lost.”
3. Ahndung. Ed. note: During Schleiermacher’s lifetime, this term, “foreboding presentiment,” was gradually being distinguished from Ahnung, which continued to mean “presentiment” chiefly with a positive or neutral meaning. Schleiermacher uses both terms in this proposition.
4. John 6:53–56; Acts 1:6–7; and Eph. 4. Ed. note: Sermons on (1) John 6:52–60, Dec. 12, 1824, SW II.8 (1837), 455–67; (2) Acts 1:6–11, May 7, 1812, Festpredigten (1833), SW II.2 (1835), 518–30, ET Wilson (1890), 423–38; (3) Eph. 4:1–3, undated (by 1827), SW II.4 (1835), 636–56, and (1844), 688–706; and (4) Eph. 4:23, originally in London, Sept. 21, 1828, SW II.4 (1835), 171–81, and (1844), 246–56.
5. See 1 Cor. 15:23ff. and Phil. 3:21. Ed. note: Sermon only on Phil. 3:17–21, Jan. 19, 1823, SW II.10 (1856), 697–706.
6. Realität. Ed. note: This term, rarely used in Schleiermacher’s theological discourse, serves to emphasize his point: what is originally and ultimately perfect, or complete, is itself absolutely, consummately real. Our ordinary, organic so-called reality (Wirklichkeit) is always admixed with what we can “see,” with imperfect, mutually isolated, and defective appearances (phenomena); hence, Realität is to that extent “invisible.”
7. Ed. note: das eigentlich Handelnde.
8. Ahnung. Ed. note: See §159n3 above.
9. Ahndungsvermögen.
10. Ahnungsvermögen.
11. Phantasie. Ed. note: From early on, Schleiermacher used this term to represent a valued but often unsteady capacity of imagination to form images and notions. It need not be a mere, undisciplined play of fancy, in English often relayed by the word “fantasy,” which is very different from Schleiermacher’s use of Phantasie.
12. Auslegungskunst. Ed. note: That is, under the general, inseparable rules of both hermeneutics and criticism. See his lectures and Academy essays regarding this twofold art of what he also calls “exegesis” when applied to texts. The general results of applying this art, or technical discipline, to the problems just introduced are laid out in §160.
§160. Since Christ’s disciples could not hold that the comforting promises of his coming again1 were fulfilled in the days after his resurrection, they expected this fulfillment at the end of all things human on earth.2 Now, since the separation of the good from the bad is joined to this notion of the end time, we teach a return of Christ for judgment.
(1) Roman Symbol (ca. 8th century): “Thence he will come to judge the living and the dead.”3
(2) Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (325, 381): “He is coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead. There will be no end to his kingdom.”4
(3) The Augsburg Confession (1530) article 3 simply refers to the Roman Symbol of ca. 700 A.D. (the Apostles’ Creed5) then enlarged upon much further.
(4) Second Helvetic Confession (1566) XI: “And from heaven the same Christ will return in judgment,” etc.6
(5) Belgic Confession (1561) XXXVII: “We believe … that our Lord Jesus Christ will come from heaven, corporally and visibly, as he ascended with great glory and majesty, to declare himself judge of the quick and the dead.”7
1. We have no report that Christ had repeated similar promises in the days of his resurrection appearances.8 Rather, he spoke only of his entering into his glory and apprised his disciples of his spiritual presence.9 Yet, this circumstance could have aroused no hesitation in the disciples’ minds that would have occasioned their explaining those promises as if they had already been fulfilled, for in their context they were pointing out, too explicitly for this interpretation, a return of Christ in which he would make himself known to all human beings. For this reason, the disciples were thus susceptibly confident of a literal meaning in these discourses of Christ,10 even though the meaning was not given to them in Christ’s own name, that afterward as the destruction of Jerusalem occurred, in the distinct prophecy of which Christ had also spoken of his future appearance, not once could the question be raised among Christians as to whether all of these discourses could perchance designate that future return of Christ in a way not to be understood in a literal fashion. Hence, after all chiliastic11 elements had been extirpated, the opinion was very quickly established and given currency almost everywhere that Christ’s return would coincide with the end of the earth in its present state.
2. However, if one more closely examines the most generally cited and strongest passages of this sort used to support this opinion, one finds, in part, that suspicion is aroused as to whether they are to be taken literally—some on account of dates given, others on account of their overweening moralistic application. One also finds, in part, that even if one wants to take Christ’s personal return literally, in the same context much else is nonetheless present that is not at all to be taken literally, with the result that in adopting such an interpretation, the entire unity of the discourse gets lost. However, if we bracket out such literal interpretation, then we have no more biblical warrant for the view that reunion of the faithful with Christ—which is the essential content of our belief in personal continuation beyond death—depends on such a personal return of Christ, just as elsewhere he himself speaks of that reunion without mentioning this return.12 Much less do we have biblical warrant, first, for the view that such an eventual general separation between good and bad people would be tied to these two things, just as Paul then also entirely passes over any such separation,13 and, second, for the view that this event, effected by a distinct reappearance of Christ, would at the same time bring with it the termination of our present form of life. According to this examination, everything that might be formed into a definite picture falls asunder. What then remains is to assert the following, viewed as the essential component of our proposition, in that we substitute Christ’s strong efficacious action for his physical presence. Since the church’s consummation, viewed as the cessation of its unsteady coming into being and growth, is possible only by a leap and only under the condition that propagation would cease and the coexistence of good and bad people would cease, this leap would have to be regarded, through and through, as an act of the kingly power14 of Christ. This perspective, moreover, certainly lies deep in Christian faith, in such a way that even if it does not develop of itself into a distinct thought in each individual, each one does find it appealing once it is given. That is to say, if in Christ the divine being is everlastingly united with human nature, this nature also cannot be so firmly bound to the soil of one world body in all the heavens that it would have to be embroiled in its eventually being destroyed in accordance with cosmic laws. Rather, everything that relates to this human nature must be imagined in its connection with this union with the divine being and, at the same time, as capable of being regarded as a deed proceeding from this union.
In this way, in this point of doctrine everything that is figurative and, as such, must remain unsettled then proceeds from the interest in personal continuation beyond death; but, on the other hand, what can be set forth securely relates to the consummation of the church.
1. After bracketing out all passages that manifestly are entirely parabolic in nature, we find this kind of statement in Matt. 16:27–28; 24:20 etc.; 25:31 etc.; Mark 13:26 etc.; Luke 21:27–28; and John 14:5, 18; and 16:16.
2. See 2 Cor. 5:1–10; 2 Thess. 1:7–10; 2:8; 2 Tim. 4:1; 1 Pet. 4:5–7, 13; 2 Pet. 3:10.
3. Ed. note: Schleiermacher actually quotes the Greek of the Interrogatory Creed of Hippolytus (ca. 215), an early form of the Roman Symbol = Apostles’ Creed (early 700s). See §36n1.
4. Ed. note: Quoted in Greek. ET Book of Concord (2000), 23, from the Greek; Latin and German: Bek. Luth (1963), 26.
5. Ed. note: ET Book of Concord (2000), 22, 39; Latin and German in Bek. Luth. (1963), 55.
6. Ed. note: ET Cochrane (1972), 245; Latin only: Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 256; cf. §37n3.
7. Ed. note: ET and French in Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 433f., also Cochrane (1972), 218; Latin: Niemeyer (1840), 387f.
8. John 21:22 is probably not definite enough to be used here.
9. Matt. 28:20; Luke 24:26; and John 20:17. Ed. note: Sermons on (1) Matt. 28:20, May 8, 1823, Bauer (1909), 20–29; (2) Luke 24:25–26, Mar. 11, 1832, SW II.2 (1835), 207–19; and (3) John 20:17, May 25, 1797, sermon outline in Zimmer (1882), 374–75.
10. Acts 1:11. Ed. note: Sermon on Acts 1:10–11, May 31, 1810, SW II.7 (1836), 402–10.
11. Ed. note: Chiliasm (from the Greek word for “a thousand”), presumably based on Rev. 20:1–7, is the view that Christ’s return would lead to his reign on earth for a millennium (hence the synonym “millenarianism”) before the end or consummation of all things earthly.
12. John 17:24. Ed. note: Sermon outline on John 17:24, May 22, 1800, Zimmer (1887), 69.
13. In 1 Cor. 15:20ff. and 1 Thess. 4:14ff. Ed. note: Sermon only on 1 Thess. 4:13–14, 18, Nov. 26, 1820, Bauer (1909), 9–16.
§161. Partly in figurative1 and partly in didactic2 discourse as well, Christ not only sanctioned the notion of the resurrection of the dead that was prevalent among his people, but in his discourses he also ascribed this awakening to his own agency. Moreover, it is simply a further extension of this teaching of Christ, though entirely natural and drawn from discourses akin to it, to claim that all of a sudden the general awakening of the dead will cause the usual course of human life on earth to cease.3
1. We are so generally conscious of the interconnection of all the activities of our spirit, even the deepest and innermost ones, with our physical activities that we cannot really manage to get a notion of an individual’s finite spiritual life without having a notion of its organic, bodily existence. Indeed, we only imagine the spirit as soul if it is in a body, so that there can be no talk whatsoever of an immortality of the soul in its distinctive4 meaning without a bodily life. Thus, just as the effectual activity of the spirit, viewed as a distinct soul, ceases at the same time as bodily life in death, likewise it can only begin again with bodily life.
Indisputably, however, something more does lie in the notion of the resurrection of the flesh, namely, a selfsameness of life such that life after resurrection and life before death constitutes one and the same personal existence. Moreover, nominally this characterization also belongs to the Jewish notion of the matter.5 Obviously, the soul, viewed in and of itself as individual existence, also endures only in its constancy of consciousness,6 which constancy, in turn, appears to us to be conditioned by memory. We view memory, on its part, as just as much tied to what is bodily as is any other activity of spirit. As a result, we can get no intimation of how such a unifying memory could operate under completely different bodily circumstances, for without such a memory the soul, viewed in and of itself, would certainly not be the same.
However, this requirement seems, in turn, to refer to something that we have already denied above, namely, the human spirit’s being bound to the soil of earth.7 That is to say, in one respect, every organized entity is, at the same time, a product of the world body that bears it and dependent on the mode and nature of that world body; hence, the similarity of the individual’s future body with the individual’s present one would also presuppose a similarity of two worlds. In another respect, memory too is dependent, by virtue of its organic aspect, on affinity of impressions, just as in present life too, memory of a distinct stretch in time turns very pale when the whole scene has changed. Suppose that one adds to this observation that the more superior that future life is to the present one, the less even a decisive will could come to the aid of that memory. In such a case, it must surely be conceded that the more the soul, viewed in and of itself, should remain the same, all the more would the future life have to be a pure, readily linked continuation of the present one. Given that condition, however, the other point of departure for all these intimations, namely, the consummation of the church, comes off badly as something that would not be possible in such a life. Hence, the interest in the church’s consummation necessitates our again restricting the similarity between our future and present corporality, all the more so if we are to avoid that extreme. Moreover, two defining qualifications, that the resurrection body would be immortal8 and without distinct gendered functions,9 have their basis in that restriction.
The first defining qualification, which already presupposes an entirely different constitution of the future world, would push the interest in bodily self-preservation out of the way, an interest that we experience as a rampant seed of strife between flesh and spirit. In addition, the other defining qualification would guard against a mixture of the church consummate with new souls emerging as they are being restored, in that we cannot imagine the latter process without some natural force preceding the development of spirit, consequently without sinfulness. Patently, however, both defining qualifications, in turn, do injury to the selfsameness of the soul and to the constancy of consciousness. That is to say, the immortal body would also have to show itself to be different from the mortal body in every element and function. Moreover, at that point the soul could take into itself, all the less, the share that the mortal body had in the forming of our present consciousness and retain it in memory.
Furthermore, as concerns the other defining qualification, on the one hand, we can get no intimation that if gendered functions would cease, the organic system on which they rest would continue to be maintained. On the other hand, we can get no intimation that a male soul and a female soul should not be different, as such. Hence, if every soul were to cease being one of the two souls, because of an altered organization of life, no soul would then be the same any longer.
Thus, it is clearly evident here that although both points of departure would, to be sure, be allowed for in our doctrine, the two do not converge in what they require. That is, the resurrection of the flesh must be imagined in one way if the individual10 is to remain completely the same and in a different way if it is to occur collectively in the church consummate. Hence, these particular features do not merge into a single clearly manageable notion. Rather, this notion suffers from an indefinite quality that informs the distinctive character of these points of doctrine, one suitable to the general title, “prophetic doctrine,” that we have assigned to them.
2. The simultaneous resurrection of all in common presupposes that those who are being resurrected would have been found since their death in some state11 different from that which they enter through this simultaneous resurrection itself. Now, the reality to which the notion of a last judgment points also rests on this presupposition. Naturally, the sensory interest in the continuation of individual existence beyond death is directed, first of all, to this intermediate state as the state that takes place just before it. The question arises, moreover, as to whether we have a rule, given our standpoint, for guiding such attempts to imagine what happens, or for any necessity to keep a watch on those attempts. The first option would be the case only if we were to find something about this intermediate state set forth in the New Testament writings. However, when we look at all that could be counted for this purpose,12 in part, its instructive character is indecisive and, in part, the interpretation is in dispute.
The second option would be compelling if something that is contrary to our Christian self-consciousness could be included in our attempts to imagine this intermediate state. Now, this intermediate state can be imagined in a purely negative way as a state of having ceased the old activities of life and as a state of having not yet begun the new ones, and this comprises the notion of souls being asleep.13 Our Christian self-consciousness can lodge no distinct complaint against this notion. Suppose, however, that, on the one hand, all Christians thereby come to be of equal status, in that for those who are first asleep as for those who are asleep last, the intermediate period is simply a blank. Then, on the other hand, if the soul’s awakening is to be imagined as simultaneous with creation of the new body, it becomes hard to envisage how recollection of the earlier state could, at the same time, be either supposed or established. Suppose, in contrast, that the intermediate state is imagined to be a conscious state. Then the requirement of our Christian faith is, to be sure, that it must not be a state devoid of community with Christ. This is so, for in that case the intermediate state would be a fall from grace, which could be regarded only as a punishment, and this perspective would bring us to a notion [purgatory] that the Evangelical church rejected at its very beginning.14
Suppose that one wanted, instead, to imagine that a community with Christ already existed in this intermediate state as well. In that case, one must also completely abandon any likeness of ancient, including Jewish, notions of a diminished life in the underworld. This is so, for since all obstacles to blessed community with Christ that emerge within this life from the sensory world would have fallen away, at its onset that intermediate state would have to be a state raised to completion. In that case, however, it would be hard not to regard the notion of a general resurrection of the dead to be something superfluous and hard not to regard a reuniting of the soul with a body to be a retrograde occurrence. Indeed, it appears that to be consistent only one way out remains, namely, to conjecture that within that intermediate state every individual soul would, in and of itself, be in community with the Redeemer; however, the community of the blessed among themselves, consequently the efficacious action of each individual as well, would be conditioned by the resurrection of the flesh, therefore this resurrection would also be necessary for that raised state of completion.
Under this presupposition, however, the actual existence of the church would remain constant and unbroken right up to the point of resurrection, just as the actual existence of the individual was taken to be in accordance with the first-mentioned presupposition. Consequently, one of these two features will always be the more endangered the better thought of the other feature is. For this reason, some have understood the simultaneous general resurrection only figuratively and have chosen to draw from other scriptural passages15 to the effect that the future life begins for each individual alike immediately after one’s death.16 Inherent in this notion, however, are two claims, the first claim is that the soul would already have the new body, in that it would be separated from the old one—a notion that is frequently found to be assumed. The second claim is that both the simultaneous last judgment and, consequently, the personal return of Christ would have to be understood no less figuratively than the general resurrection is understood, because the assigned purpose of Christ’s return would have dropped away entirely.
Based on these observations, we have to waver between this latter more biblical notion—in accordance with which the future life and the church triumphant suddenly but surely, though at the cost of an otherwise uninterrupted continuity, end up being one immense whole through the efficacious action of Christ in connection with huge cosmic changes—and the first less biblical notion. That first notion—though indeed viewed in such a way that one would have to wish for it a natural scientific warranty, since it relies on a close affinity with earthly conditions—would maintain the continuity17 of personal existence in the purest way possible, in accordance with which the church consummate would, however, be only gradually growing away from the earthly life that would continue to exist alongside it in the same period.
3. Now, if we still stick with general resurrection and, at the same time, also with the prevailing mode of envisaging the topics of the following points of doctrine, one more difficulty is yet to be disposed of. That is, if totally opposite states enter into the picture for the blessed and the damned, then the requirement that the new bodies they receive must not be the same is self-evident, because the way these respective states are organized must be suited to the life circumstances that are to unfold. Furthermore, a new difficulty arises from this observation if one wants to combine the notion of general resurrection with that of the last judgment. That is to say, if the two classes become instantly different in this resurrection, then all these people will already have been tried and their sentence will have been laid down before the last judgment, so that this last judgment would become superfluous. All the more would this be the case as such a difference between bodies arising simultaneously could not be realized by the effective activity of the same cosmic forces in this context using a purely ethical18 contrast, but it could be realized only by an immediately creative divine dictum. Suppose, on the other hand, that at the resurrection those persons who were to be blessed and those persons who were to be damned still had the same status. Then, obversely, judgment would not be carried out through the resurrection itself. Moreover, since, postresurrection, those internal changes that transform the way individual lives are organized would have to enter into one class of persons or the other or into both classes of persons, then the reality to which the notion of final judgment points would simply depend on these changes being introduced simultaneously, whereas, in contrast, the simultaneity of the resurrection of the dead and the metamorphosis of the living both become superfluous.
In consequence, if we put all these examinations of the matter together, what we also find is that the various notions regarding the connection of future life to present life cannot attain to any completely definite result. However, what is left, to be viewed as the essential contents of this point of doctrine, is simply the following. First, it is essential that an ascension19 of the resurrected Redeemer is possible only to the extent that a renewal of organic life is also in store for all individual human beings, one that is connected to their present condition. Second, it is also essential, however, that the unfolding of a future state would have to be posited, on the one hand, as conditioned by the divine power invested in Christ and, on the other hand, at the same time as a cosmic occurrence20 that is attributed to the general divine ordering of the world. The first, the divine power invested in Christ, stands firm as the presupposition of faith, which presupposition grounds the effort to form notions regarding this content. The second, a cosmic occurrence attributed to the divine ordering of the world, remains a wavering, unsettled task, which is never to be completely resolved by us.
1. Matt. 25:31ff.; John 5:28–29 and 6:40, 54. Ed. note: Sermons on (1) John 5:24–30, June 27, 1824, SW II.8 (1837), 347–64; (2–3) John 6:36–44 and 6:52–60, Nov. 14 and Dec. 12, 1824, SW II.8 (1837), 430–42 and 455–67.
2. Matt. 22:30–32.
3. See 1 Cor. 15:51–52 and 1 Thess. 4:15–18. Ed. note: Sermon on 1 Thess. 4:13–14, 18 (see §160n13).
4. Eigentümlichen. Ed. note: Instead of this word in the original printing, Schäfer (KGA I/13.2) chooses eigentlichen (actual) from the original uncorrected manuscript. This would indeed be the word usually found in the phrase, but either meaning could be proper.
5. Luke 20:28–33.
6. Stetigkeit des Bewußtseins.
8. See 1 Cor. 15:22.
9. Matt. 22:30. Ed. note: Here the reference is to not marrying, like the angels.
10. Individuum. Ed. note: That is, the individual human being is selfsame; the word Schleiermacher has been using for a distinctive individual here is einzelne.
11. Zustand. Ed. note: This word suggests not only a “state” but also a condition or even a specific place (e.g., purgatory) in which the dead would have to wait until all the rest would have died.
12. Luke 16:22ff. and 23:43; 1 Pet. 3:19–20. Ed. note: Sermons on (1) Luke 16:19–31, June 21, 1795, SW II.1 (1834), 97–112; (2) Luke 16:19–31, June 4, 1820, SW II.4 (1835), 321–37, and (1844), 371–87; and (3) Luke 23:43, Mar. 18, 1821, Festpredigten (1826), SW II.2 (1834), 123–37, ET DeVries (1987), 58–72.
13. Ed. note: At this point in the 1821–1822 edition (KGA I/7.2, 326), Peiter aptly refers to a passage on this notion in Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider (1776–1848), Handbuch der Dogmatik, Bd 2 (1818), 376f. In his essay on election (1819) Schleiermacher had constantly referred to views of this major theologian on the subject.
14. (1) Smalcald Articles (Luther, 1537) Part 2: “Purgatory … is to be regarded as an apparition of the devil. For it too is against the chief article that Christ alone (and not human works) is to help souls. Besides, concerning the dead we have received neither command nor institution.” (2) Second Helvetic Confession (1566) 26: “What some teach concerning the fire of purgatory is opposed to the Christian faith, namely, ‘I believe in the forgiveness of sins and the life everlasting,’ and to the perfect purgation through Christ and to the words of Christ our Lord (John 5:24; 13:10).” Ed. note: (1) ET Book of Concord (2000), 303; Latin and German: Bek. Luth. (1963), 420. (2) ET Cochrane (1972), 295; Latin only: Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 301; cf. §37n3.
15. Directly, though unsurely, in Luke 23:43, indirectly in Phil. 1:21–24. Ed. note: Sermons on (1) Luke 23:43, Mar. 18, 1821, Festpredigten (1826), SW II.2 (1834), 123–37, ET DeVries, (1987), 58–72; (2) Phil. 1:21–24, Mar. 24, 1822, SW II.10 (1856), 426–43.
16. Second Helvetic Confession (1566) 26: “We believe that the faithful, after bodily death, go directly to Christ. … Likewise, we believe that unbelievers are immediately cast into hell.” Ed. note: ET Cochrane (1972), 295; Latin only: Creeds, vol. 3 (1919), 301; cf. §37n3.
17. Kontinuität. Ed. note: This is the first use of this Latinate word; just above the word was Stetigkeit, which can also mean steadiness or constancy (§161n6 above).
18. Ed. note: ethischen. The meaning here might have a strictly moral reference but not necessarily, for Schleiermacher normally uses the word to refer to the entire domain of human life, as in the contrast between the physical and the human (ethical) sciences.
20. Ed. note: kosmisches Ereignis. As before, “cosmic” refers to God’s ordering of the entire cosmos, or universe, not to some supposedly special event outside or contrary to the general ordering God has established and preserves in nature.