1 Karl Barth, The Theology of Schleiermacher: Lectures at Göttingen, Winter Semester of 1923/24 (ed. Dietrich Ritschl; trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1982) 26. Barth asked this in reference to Schleiermacher's sermons. Later, turning his attention to the Glaubenslehre, he claimed, “The antithesis [between sin and grace] of his second part is a psychological one and therefore it falls short of the Christian antithesis at least in the New Testament and Reformation sense. This is what holds his system together” (ibid., 197).

2 See Richard R. Niebuhr, Schleiermacher on Christ and Religion: A New Introduction (New York: Scribner's, 1964) 43–59. Niebuhr's other, brief references to grace occur in discussions of Schleiermacher's doctrines of divine good pleasure and election, neither of which, as we shall see, is what Schleiermacher understood by grace.

3 Most books on Schleiermacher treat his philosophy of religion and theory of consciousness, his doctrine of God, or his Christology. In their recent essay, entitled “Providence and Grace: Schleiermacher on Justification and Election,” Dawn DeVries and B. A. Gerrish have also noted the dearth of literature on Schleiermacher's doctrine of grace; their own essay marks an important contribution, but because they had been commissioned to cover so much, they chose to focus on one aspect of the treatise on grace, namely, justification (in The Cambridge Companion to Schleiermacher [ed. Jacqueline Mariña; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005] 189–207). Richard Crouter has also examined one aspect of the “treatise,” repentance, in “More than Kindred Spirits: Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher on Repentance,” in Schleiermacher und Kierkegaard. Subjektivität und Wahrheit / Subjectivity and Truth. Akten des Schleiermacher-Kierkegaard-Kongresses in Kopenhagen, Oktober 2003 (ed. Niels J⊘rgen Cappel⊘rn, et al.; Berlin: Gruyter, 2006) 673–85. Another noteworthy exception is Emilio Brito, S.J., “Nature, Surnaturel, Grâce chez Schleiermacher” (Science et Esprit 43/3 [1991] 251–81); this is a rare example of a serious treatment of the topic. George N. Boyd's article, “The Medium is the Message: A Revisionist Reading of Augustine's Experience of Grace According to Schleiermacher and McLuhan” (Anglican Theological Review 56 [1974] 189–201) is superficial in its treatment of Schleiermacher.

4 Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche im Zusammenhange dargestellt (2 vols; 2d ed.; Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1830/31). In Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 1:13/1–2 (ed. Rolf Schäfer; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), hereafter, KGA. English translation: The Christian Faith, by H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: Clark, l928; first paperback edition, with a new foreword by B. A. Gerrish [New York: T&T Clark, 1999]). Whenever possible, Mackintosh and Stewart's translation will be used, but in many cases their translations prove inadequate, in which case I shall provide my own. Citations of the Glaubenslehre will refer to proposition and paragraph number and then to page number in The Christian Faith (e.g., §108.1; CF 481); where translations are mine, citations will refer to page number in the KGA (1:13/2), with cross-reference to The Christian Faith (e.g., §108.1; KGA 172; see CF 481).

5 Schleiermacher, On the Glaubenslehre: Two Letters to Dr. Lücke (trans. James Duke and Francis Fiorenza; American Academy of Religion Texts and Translations Series 3; Chico, Calif.: Scholars, 1981) 50.

6 Two examples come quickly to mind: Thomas Aquinas's treatise on grace in the Summa theologiae (First Part of the Second Part, Questions 109–14) and Jonathan Edward's “Treatise on Grace,” in Treatise on Grace and other posthumously published writings (ed. Paul Helm; Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1971).

7 For more on Schleiermacher's understanding of the task of theology in a modern context and of the development of doctrine, see B. A. Gerrish, “Continuity and Change: Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Task of Theology,” Chapter 1 in Tradition and the Modern World: Reformed Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978) 13–48; and John E. Thiel, Imagination and Authority: Theological Authorship in the Modern Tradition (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1991) 33–62.

8 This then serves as an important correction to Niebuhr. See note 2 above.

9 Walt Wyman, in his recent penetrating study, “The Role of the Protestant Confessions in The Christian Faith,” notes a shift in Schleiermacher's procedure in the propositions on regeneration and sanctification, which he attributes to such polemics: “[W]ith the section on regeneration Schleiermacher takes up the topics that were the subject of disputes between Catholics and Protestants. Thus here the confessions come into their own as evidence of the distinctively Protestant religious experiences and beliefs, and the Protestant-Catholic contrast plays an explicit role” (The Journal of Religion 87 [2007] 377). B. A. Gerrish also notes how important such polemics were for Schleiermacher's self-understanding as a Protestant theologian. Schleiermacher, he writes, “believed that the Protestant reform had established the church situation in which his own age still lived, and that Evangelical theology could still be pursued only as the Protestant theologian took his stand, with the Reformers, in opposition to Roman Catholicism” (“Schleiermacher and the Reformation: A Question of Doctrinal Development,” Chapter 11 in The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982] 180).

10 The polemics between Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians over grace and justification remained fierce through the 1960s. Groundwork for rapprochement, or at the very least for a will-ingness to step outside entrenched ideological frameworks, was laid on the Protestant side by, for instance, Paul Tillich and his positive assessment of what he called “Catholic Substance” (see Julia A. Lamm, “'Catholic Substance' Revisited: Reversals of Expectations in Tillich's Doctrine of God,” in Paul Tillich: A New Catholic Assessment [ed. Raymond F. Bulman and Frederick J. Parrella; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1994] 48–72) and by the careful historical work of B. A. Gerrish (Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther [Oxford: Clarendon, 1962]). On the Catholic side, the groundwork was laid by Hans Küng, who wrote a nonpolemical dissertation on Karl Barth's understanding of justification (Rechtfertigung. Die Lehre Karl Barths und eine katholische Besinnung; Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1957) and later by Karl Rahner and other Catholic theologians inspired by the ecumenical message of Vatican II. In 1965, Eugene TeSelle, a Protestant theologian, tried to explain the differences between Catholic and Protestant views of grace in a nonpolemical way: whereas “it is usual in Protestant theology to speak of grace as the free and unmerited activity of God for the benefit of the sinner, overcoming his bondage to sin and restoring him to the life for which he was originally destined” (238), at least one strand of Catholic theology “has insisted that grace is not exhausted by its function of overcoming sin. God is gracious not only to man as sinner but also to man as man. Even apart from sin it is proper to speak of grace, in that man is brought into a relationship with God which is not an inherent possibility of man himself but is only made possible by God's self-communication” (“The Problems of Nature and Grace,” The Journal of Religion 45 [1965] 238). In another essay, TeSelle formulated this chief difference in terms of nature and grace: “Nature and grace presents a singular problem for ecumenical discussion, for it is perhaps the only theological topic in which Catholic and Protestant thought have gone their own ways. . .. The Reformers and their successors were aware, to be sure, of the distinction between nature and grace: they even affirmed it explicitly; but it was not of central concern to them. By contrast, nature and grace became perhaps the central topic of intramural controversy in post-Tridentine Catholic theology” (“Nature and Grace in the Forum of Ecumenical Discussion,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 8 [1971] 540).

11 There are additional reasons why Schleiermacher's understanding of grace does not fit easily within the usual categories and polemics. There is, of course, his insistence that divine causality ought never be understood as usurping the natural causal system, even when it comes to grace and justification, which poses a challenge to the entire Western tradition and so creates some new fault lines. But there are other, less obvious reasons, too. For instance, the scriptural texts he draws on as inspiration are not the ones that had been bones of contention between Catholics and Protestants. Also, his doctrine of grace reflects his own experience of grace, which was steeped in his Pietist background, and Pietism does not fit easily within typical Catholic-Protestant polemics.

12 See Julia A. Lamm, The Living God: Schleiermacher's Theological Appropriation of Spinoza (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996) 201–12.

13 The intricacy of his structure, however important to understanding his dogmatics, can also inhibit understanding. Schleiermacher's treatise on grace constitutes the second division of the first section of the second aspect of the second part of his dogmatic system.

14 Heading for Part 2 of The Christian Faith; CF 259.

15 See Schleiermacher, On the Glaubenslehre, 59–60.

16 Section heading, CF 371.

17 §30.2; CF 126. In his second letter to Lücke, Schleiermacher even says that these “latter two forms are strictly speaking superfluous” (On the Glaubenslehre, 71).

18 “We must first explain how in virtue of this consciousness we conceive the Redeemer, next how we conceive the redeemed. The order fixes itself, for whatever in the state of the Christian contrasts with his former state in the fellowship of sinfulness can only be explained by the influence of the Redeemer. Hence the content of this section falls into two divisions” (§91.1; CF 372).

19 §100.3; CF 428, emphases added.

20 Division heading; CF 476.

21 §101.2; CF 433. See also §89.3; CF 368.

22 §101.2; CF 433.

23 See §86.2; CF 356.

24 §108.6; CF 495.

25 §80.1; CF 327.

26 Schleiermacher is consistent in limiting grace to Christ's redemptive and reconciling activity, which comes from the being of God in him (rather than being the consequence of his suffering and death; see below, note 151). For him, grace is not the operation or the gift of the Holy Spirit, nor is it understood more generally as divine presence, power, and activity. He writes, “But, for the Christian, nothing belongs to the consciousness of grace unless it is traced to the Redeemer as its cause, and therefore it must always be a different thing in His case from what it is in the case of others—naturally, since it is bound up with something else, namely, the peculiar redemptive activity of Christ” (§100.3; CF 431).

27 §91; CF 371, emphases added.

28 Schleiermacher claims that this is “the basic consciousness that each Christian has of his own state of grace, even where the most dissimilar views of Christianity prevail” (§91.1; CF 371).

29 §120.2; CF 553. See also §110.3; CF 509.

30 §120:2; CF 553.

31 See §100.2; CF 426. For more on Schleiermacher's doctrine of creation and its relation to preservation, see Lamm, The Living God, 136–43.

32 §93.3; CF 382.

33 See, e.g., §93.3 (CF 381), §93.4 (CF 383), and §94.3 (CF 388).

34 §94.1; CF 387.

35 §94.3; CF 388. See also §93.3 (CF 381), §101.3 (CF 434), and §100.3 (CF 429).

36 §94.3; CF 389, emphases added.

37 This is an interesting choice of words because, as he himself acknowledges, it would seem to undermine his task of writing a dogmatic theology that observes the limits set by the modern natural and historical sciences. He explains his choice nonetheless: “The expression is so extremely vague that it seems better to avoid it. But if we are willing to keep so close to its original use as to understand by it what belongs to the circle of doctrines which only a few share, but for others are a mystery, then we may accept it. Provided that we recognize that no one can be received into this circle arbitrarily, because doctrines are only expressions of inward experiences” (§100.3; CF 429. See also §101.3; CF 434–35).

38 §100.3; CF 430.

39 §88.4; CF 365, emphases added.

40 For more on the context in which the Glaubenslehre was written, in particular Schleiermacher's interest in supporting the Union of the Reformed and Luther Churches of Prussia (1817), see Wyman, “The Role of the Protestant Confessions,” 357–63; Kurt Nowak, Schleiermacher: Leben, Werk und Wirkung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001) 356–71; and Friedrich Schleiermacher On Creeds, Confessions and Church Union: That They May Be One (trans. Iain G. Nicol; Lewiston: Mellen, 2004).

41 §106.2; CF 477.

42 §108.2; CF 483.

43 “[W]e may add that these two conceptions, regeneration and sanctification, set forth just the same distinction as between the act of uniting and the state of union” (§106.1; CF 477).

44 “The treatment of the theme has therefore both a backward reference to the previous division of the subject and an anticipation of the main lines of the next Section” (§106.2; CF 478). This principle of constructing a systematic presentation reflects inversely his principles of interpretation in determining the order of Plato's dialogues (see Julia A. Lamm, “The Art of Interpreting Plato,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schleiermacher, 91–108).

45 §107.1; CF 479.

46 §107.2; CF 480.

47 “For the decision as to who is to attain to conversion and when we have already assigned, not to the realm of grace, making it depend on Christ, but to the realms of power, making it depend on God, which is the Father's drawing [people] to the Son” (§109.3; CF 500–1).

48 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960) 1:726.

49 All translations of scriptural passages are from the New Revised Standard Version.

50 See §106.1; CF 476, note.

51 §108.2; CF 483.

52 Wyman finds that “Where the quotations from the confessions actually appear in the course of any particular discussion in the Glaubenslehre is significant” (“The Role of the Protestant Confessions,” 367). In this particular case, the placement is significant because in appealing to two Lutheran confessions and one Reformed confession, Schleiermacher is signaling an understanding of conversion that is true to both traditions, which would only be appropriate for the new church of unity; also, the reference to Melanchthon may signal Schleiermacher's predilection for Melanchthon's more moderate view of human nature and free will, a view which eventually lost to more conservative Lutheran views in the Formula of Concord (1577). See below, notes 62 and 112.

53 §108.1; CF 481, 482.

54 §108.1; CF 482.

55 §108.2; CF 483. This representation of the Catholic view is inaccurate (see note 84 below).

56 §108.2; CF 484–85.

57 As a recent Barth scholar has put it, “Grace that is not disruptive is not grace—a point that Flannery O'Connor well grasped alongside Karl Barth. Grace, strictly speaking, does not mean continuity but radical discontinuity, not reform but revolution . . . not the perfecting of virtues but the forgiveness of sins, not improvement but resurrection from the dead. It means repentance, judgment, and death as the portal to life. It means negation and the negation of the negation. The grace of God really comes to lost sinners, but in coming it disrupts them to the core. It slays to make alive and sets the captive free” George Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000) 16–17.

58 See Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520–1725, vol. 3: The Divine Essence and Attributes (2d ed.; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2003) 569–74.

59 Note to §108.2; KGA 178; see CF 485.

60 §108.4; CF 489.

61 §108.2; KGA 179; see CF 486.

62 Schleiermacher has in mind here the orthodox Lutheran view, which takes Martin Luther's experience as paradigmatic. In the Smalcald Articles (1537), under “Repentance,” Luther wrote, “Now this is the thunderbolt of God, by means of which he destroys both the open sinner and the false saint and allows no one to be right but drives the whole lot of them into terror and despair. This is the hammer of which Jeremiah speaks. . .. This is not 'active contrition,' a contrived remorse, but 'passive contrition,' [torture of conscience], true affliction of the heart, suffering and the pain of death” (Article III:3, 2, in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert; trans. Charles P. Arend et al. [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000] 312). Schleiermacher quotes from Article XII of the Augsburg Confession: “Now, properly speaking, repentance consists of two parts: one is contrition or the terrors that strike the conscience when sin is recognized; the other is faith, which is brought to life by the Gospel or absolution. This faith believes that sins are forgiven on account of Christ” (XII:3–5; Kolb and Wengert, 45). The Solid Declaration (hereafter, SD) of the Formula of Concord carried through this emphasis on the divine wrath and the terror it causes in the soul: “Through these means (this preaching and hearing of his Word), God goes about his work and breaks our hearts and draws people, so that they recognize their sins and God's wrath through the preaching of the law and feel real terror, regret, and sorrow in their hearts” (SD Article II:54; Kolb and Wengert, 554).

63 §108.2; KGA 177; see CF 484.

64 §108.2; CF 484.

65 Ibid..

66 Ibid..

67 Schleiermacher rejects any notion of the human person, unregenerate or not, being “the object of divine displeasure and wrath” (§109.4; CF 503).

68 §108.2; CF 484.

69 §108.3; CF 487, slightly altered. See KGA 180–81.

70 §108.3; CF 487.

71 Schleiermacher concludes, “This is new evidence of the inadmissibility of the demand that everyone must be able to distinguish, in the phenomena of consciousness, between the working of grace as initiating the new life and the preparatory work of grace” (§108.3; CF 488).

72 §108.3; CF 487.

73 §108.2; CF 484.

74 §108.2; KGA 177; see CF 484.

75 §110.3; CF 509.

76 §108.2; CF 485. This language of the joyfulness of faith in conversion is not borrowed from the confessions. The footnote to this passage quotes the Apology of the Augsburg Confession: “Moreover, making alive should not be understood as a platonic mirage, but as consolation that truly sustains a life that flees [sin] in contrition” (XII:47, Kolb and Wengert, 194). Schleiermacher's emphasis on joyfulness goes beyond this consolation.

77 §108.3; CF 488.

78 §110.2; CF 508. Note that he does not describe faith as a laying hold of Christ or of Christ's merits, but as joyfulness in having been laid hold of by Christ.

79 §109.4; CF 504.

80 §108.2; CF 484.

81 §108.2; CF 485.

82 Schleiermacher thinks that this is “liable to too many misunderstandings” (§109.4; CF 504). For a discussion of the problem of faith being misconstrued as a work, see Jan Rohls, Reformed Confessions: Theology from Zurich to Barmen (trans. John Hoffmeyer; Louisville, Kentucky: Knox, 1998) 126–30.

83 §109.4; CF 504.

84 §108.1; CF 483. In his exposition of conversion Schleiermacher overtly criticized the Roman Catholic view, which he took to be represented by the Roman Catechism of Trent, only once—namely, for its understanding of “faith” as “only the divinely imparted and humanly accepted knowledge of man's destiny;” and for “its assertion being accordingly that faith precedes repentance and conversion” (§108.1; CF 483). Schleiermacher was inaccurate on this point. The Roman Catechism, citing the Council of Trent, does maintain that faith precedes repentance (“Penance, however, in those who repent, must be preceded by faith, for without faith no man can turn to God. Faith, therefore, cannot on any account be called a part of penance”); however, it also clearly states that conversion precedes faith. See Catechism of the Council of Trent for Parish Priests (trans. John A. McHugh, O.P. and Charles J. Callan, O.P.; N.Y.: Wagner, 1934) 264–65; hereafter, CCT. The differences here reflect in part differences over the sacraments. The Catechism associates conversion with Baptism (the “Sacrament of Faith,” CCT 162) and repentance with the sacrament of penance (the “second plank”). Schleiermacher concedes that such a “difference of language is unfortunate, increasing, of course, the difficulty of comparing clearly the points of divergence” (§108.1; CF 483).

85 §108.2; CF 483.

86 §108.2; CF 484.

87 Ibid.., emphases added. I have changed Mackintosh and Stewart's translation of leidentlich from “inert” to “dormant” in order to make it more consistent with Schleiermacher's employment of this term in §108.6, where they translate it as “passive.” As I shall argue more fully below, Schleiermacher chooses leidentlich in order to distinguish his view from a view of the person as entirely passive, as a close reading of this passage here in §108.2 indicates: “so ist der Wendepunkt zwischen beiden eine zwiefache Unthätigkeit in der Form eines Nichtmehrthätigseins in jener und Nochnichtthätigseins in dieser. Für sein geistig lebendiges Sein bleibt daher dem Subject nur übrig statt der verschwindenden Thätigkeit der leidentliche Nachklang derselben im Gefühl, und in Bezug auf die noch nicht begonnene als leidentliche Vorahnung das Verlangen” (KGA 176). Note how he chooses to employ many qualifications of “activity” rather than use the term “passivity.” He is trying to convey the stillest state of a living human being, who, because he or she is living, will always be in some way active. Here, I have chosen to translate leidentlich as “dormant” to capture the poetic sense of this particular passage; elsewhere I translate it as “receptive.” See note 131 below.

88 §108.2; CF 485.

89 §108.2; CF 485, emphases added. I have changed Mackintosh's and Stewart's translation of zweistrahlige as “acting in two directions” to “radiating in two directions,” since “acting” contradicts Schleiermacher's point about the minimum of activity. See KGA 177.

90 Likewise, in his treatment of original sin in §70, Schleiermacher appealed to Augustine's Enchiridion, citing him as an authority over against the Solid Declaration: “[W]e must nevertheless acknowledge with Augustine that some element of the original good must still survive in human nature” (§70.2; CF 284).

91 §108.2; CF 486.

92 Ibid..

93 These do not yet have “the fixed inward resolution to be no longer under the power of sin” (§110.2; CF 508).

94 §108.2; CF 486.

95 §108.2; CF 485.

96 Ibid..

97 §110.2; CF 506.

98 See §110.2; CF 507; see also §113.1; CF 525.

99 §108.2; CF 486.

100 §110.2; CF 506.

101 See above, pp. 141–42.

102 Division heading, CF 476, emphases added.

103 He has already explained the relation between natural and divine causality (see §51); grace is the most concrete instance and experience of that.

104 §108.5; CF 492.

105 §106.2; KGA 167; see CF 477–78, emphases added. Compare §88.2: “[I]t must still be possible to have the same experiences . . . Our proposition, therefore, depends upon the assumption that this influence of the fellowship in producing a like faith is none other than the influence of the personal perfection of Jesus Himself” (CF 363).

106 §108.5; CF 490–91, emphases added.

107 For more on the preached Word as a Reformation principle, see B. A. Gerrish, “Priesthood and Ministry: Luther's Fifth means of Grace,” and “Gospel and Eucharist: John Calvin on the Lord's Supper,” chaps. 5 & 6, respectively, in The Old Protestantism and the New (90–117).

108 There is for him no grace apart from the church: “[I]t is a condition of that activity of the Redeemer that the individuals should enter the sphere of His historical influence, where they become aware of Him in His self-revelation” (§100.2; CF 426–27).

109 §108.5; KGA 187; see CF 492.

110 §108.6, KGA 191; see CF 495. This is the only place where he uses this coupling of “nature and grace.”

111 §108.6, KGA 187; see CF 492.

112 The issue of synergy was at the center of the debate on free will between Luther and Erasmus. Erasmus wrote, “And the upshot of it is that we should not arrogate anything to ourselves but attribute all things we have received to the divine grace, which called us when we were turned away, which purified us by faith, which gave us this gift, that our will might be synergos (fellow-worker) with grace, although grace is itself sufficient for all things and has no need of the assistance of any human will” (“On the Freedom of the Will,” in Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation [ed. and trans. E. Gordon Rupp and Philip S. Watson; Library of Christian Classics; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969] 81). Erasmus rejected the notion that the human being “is simply to God as clay in the hands of a potter” because such complete passivity would mean that “whatever shape the vase takes must be attributed to no one but the potter” (ibid., 71). Luther responded, “For when it has been conceded and agreed that free choice, having lost its liberty, is perforce in bondage to sin and cannot will anything good, I can make no other sense of these words than that free choice is an empty phrase, of which the reality has been lost. Lost liberty, according to my grammar, is no liberty at all” (“On the Bondage of the Will,” in Luther and Erasmus, 181). The debate on synergism, however, was not only between “Catholic” and “Protestant” views of grace but also rocked Lutheranism itself. This debate on cooperation and free will was at the center of Protestant self-understanding and became a matter of fierce debates among second-generation Lutherans. In the so-called “synergist controversy,” “Gnesio-Lutherans” (“genuine Lutherans”), who insisted on adhering to the strongest statements of Luther on the matter and therefore rejected any conciliatory stance toward Catholics or Calvinists, opposed the “Philippists,” who followed Philipp Melanchthon's more moderate approach. For the most part, the more conservative interpretation of the Augsburg Confession dominated the Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord, the second article of which addresses the issue of free will. (The Solid Declaration is the full, “clear,” and final version of the Formula of Concord; the Epitome is a summary, or abridged version.) The Solid Declaration reiterated Luther's position “that the human being, blinded and held prisoner, does only the will of the devil and what is hostile to God the Lord. Therefore, there is no cooperation of our will in our conversion, and God must draw and give new birth to the human being” (II:44; Kolb and Wengert, 552). Several times it emphasizes that the human person brings nothing to conversion but is “like a block of wood” (II:73; Kolb and Wengert, 558), is “completely lifeless and 'dead'” (II:10; Kolb and Wengert, 545; see also II:7), is “like a block of wood or a stone” (II:20; Kolb and Wengert, 548; see also II:24, 54). For brief summaries of the synergist debates and the Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord, see Kolb and Wengert, 481–85; see also Creeds and Confessions of the Reformation Era (vol. 2 of Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition; ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003) 166–67.

113 SD II:77; Kolb and Wengert, 559.

114 §108.6; CF 493, emphases added.

115 §108.6; KGA 187; see CF 493.

116 See SD II:17, 18, 24.

117 SD II:2; Kolb and Wengert, 543.

118 §108.6; KGA 187–88; see CF, 493.

119 §108.6; KGA 188; see CF 493.

120 §108.6; KGA 188; see CF 493, emphases added.

121 He quotes two passages: “It follows from this, as has been said, that as soon as the Holy Spirit has begun his work of rebirth and renewal in us through the Word and the holy sacraments, it is certain that on the basis of his power we can and should be cooperating with him, though still in great weakness. This occurs not on the basis of our fleshly, natural powers but on the basis of the new powers and gifts which the Holy Spirit initiated in us in conversion” (SD II:65; Kolb and Wengert, 556); Schleiermacher adds, “What is said expressly of the period after conversion holds good all the more for the period preceding it” (CF 493, n. 1). He also makes reference to the Solid Declaration's appeal to Luther's position: “[H]uman beings in and of themselves or on the basis of their own natural powers are not capable of anything and cannot help with their own conversion” (SD II:89; Kolb and Wengert, 561).

122 “Anything proceeding purely from [one's] own inner life could co-operate only so far as the efficacy of divine grace was actually conditioned by these activities of [one's] own. It cannot indeed be denied that this may happen” (§108.6; CF 493).

123 §108.6; KGA 188; see CF 493. One cannot help but think of Karl Rahner's Hörer des Wortes (München: Kösel, 1963); trans. by Michael Richards, Hearers of the Word (N.Y.: Herder, 1969).

124 §108.6, KGA 188; see CF 493; emphases added.

125 See SD II:53; Kolb and Wengert, 554.

126 For Schleiermacher's understanding of sin and his interpretation of the “Fall,” see Glaubenslehre §§65–85.

127 §108.6; KGA 188; see CF 494, emphases added.

128 §108.6; CF 494; see KGA 188–89.

129 §108.6; KGA 189; see CF 494, emphases added.

130 Cooperation is stereotypically associated with the Catholic view, which is often mischaracterized in Protestant polemics.

131 §108.6; KGA 189; see CF 494. This passage demonstrates the difficulty of translating leidentlich. In Schleiermacher's time, leidentlich, like passiv, was an antonym for “active,” but it carried a wider range of meanings and associations. Formed from the infinitive leiden, “to suffer,” it carried connotations of suffering, tolerating, bearing, enduring, being acted upon, being passible, etc.—the one side of passion. As was also true of English at the time, these terms did not necessarily carry only negative connotations. In the first part of this long sentence, Schleiermacher's choice of the modifier leidentlich rather than passiv is intentional and is one of the hinges on which his doctrine of grace turns. Mackintosh and Stewart have translated it as “inert” (see note 87) and, most commonly, “passive.” As we have seen, however, Schleiermacher explicitly rejects the idea of a passivity that is inert or lifeless. I have chosen to translate it (in most cases) as “receptive” in order to convey the distinction Schleiermacher is making here: a relatively inactive or restful state in which the living human person is undergoing a change. The contrast is made clear in the next paragraph, in which the noun Passivität refers to something unacceptable to Schleiermacher. Nonetheless, his second use of the root word in the present passage, leidend, is best translated as “passive” since in this case Schleiermacher is responding to a Latin text which reads in part “non activam sed passivam.”

132 §108.6; KGA 190; see CF 495.

133 Mackintosh and Stewart found it necessary to insert the qualifier “pure” here to emphasize the distinction between passiv and leidentlich, a distinction they themselves do not consistently observe.

134 §108.2; CF 485; see KGA 177. See above, pp. 150–51.

135 Ibid..

136 §108.6; CF 495; see KGA 190.

137 §108.6, KGA 190; see CF 495; emphases added.

138 Ibid.., emphases added.

139 The full text to which he refers reads, “But before people are enlightened, converted, reborn, renewed, and drawn back to God by the Holy Spirit, they cannot in and of themselves, out of their own natural powers, begin, effect, or accomplish anything in spiritual matters for their own conversion or rebirth, any more than a stone or block of wood or piece of clay . . . can. For although they can control their bodies and can listen to the gospel and think about it to a certain extent and even speak of it (as Pharisees and hypocrites do), they regard it as foolishness and cannot believe it. They behave in this case worse than a block of wood, for they are rebellious against God's will and hostile to it, wherever the Holy Spirit does not exercise his powers in them and ignite and effect faith and other God-pleasing virtues and obedience in them” (SD II:24; Kolb and Wengert, 548–49; see also paragraphs 7, 10, 20, 59, 73, 77, 89).

140 Here I depart from Wyman's otherwise persuasive argument. Wyman concludes, “Schleiermacher is not jumping into the synergistic camp: in §108.6 he largely agrees with the Solid Declaration's antisynergistic assertions. But he does think that the document goes too far in II/24 with its analogies to a stone, a block of wood, and a lump of clay. In its zeal to put down synergism, the Solid Declaration dehumanizes human beings, reducing them to objects of grace deprived of subjectivity” (“The Role of the Protestant Confessions,” 380).

141 §108.6; KGA 190–91; see CF 495, emphases added.

142 Cf. §110.2; CF 507.

143 §108.6, KGA 191; see CF 495. See also §70.2: “The capacity to appropriate the grace offered to us is the indispensable condition of all the operations of grace, so that, without it, no improvement of man would be possible” (CF 283).

144 §90.1; CF 369.

145 §108.6; KGA 188; see CF 493. This is the second of two “unavoidable” questions that frame the discussion of §108.6, even though this second one is not really addressed until §112.

146 CF 505.

147 Schleiermacher feels the need to defend his use of the term sanctification. The term was rejected by Luther but was employed by Calvin as part of his duplex gratia. For Schleiermacher the decision not only to use the term but to highlight it was simple: “[T]he retention of the term 'sanctification' is justified because it is scriptural” (§110.1; CF 505), although he is quick to point out that Heiligung means not “being holy” but “striving for holiness” (ibid., 506).

148 “Anyone who holds that good works are necessary to blessedness, because for him faith is mere knowledge, is using a different vocabulary from ours, or holding an entirely different doctrine of redemption” (§112.1; CF 518).

149 §112.1; CF 518.

150 Ibid..

151 §112.1; CF 519. Some explanation of the significance of Christ's “active obedience” for Schleiermacher may be in order. In his soteriology, Schleiermacher emphasizes Christ's life, which was essentially active, to explain Christ's redeeming activity. True, this life was framed by the coming together of the human and divine in him (his supernatural origin) and by his death, but it is Christ's active obedience (rather than his passive obedience on the cross) that is redemptive: “The active obedience of Christ was rather his perfect fulfillment of the divine will. . .. Indeed, Christ's highest achievement consists in this, that He so animates us that we ourselves are led to an ever more perfect fulfillment of the divine will” (§104.3; CF 456). This is absolutely critical for Schleiermacher and for any comparison of his Christology with that of others. According to Schleiermacher's soteriology, Christ's redeeming activity is exhibited not so much in his death as in his life—in the power and activity of his God-consciousness. Christ's death, he argues, can be said to be salvific not because of the death per se but because of his active obedience, the result of his perfect God-consciousness. Schleiermacher distances himself from a “wounds theology” (instances of which he found in both Pietism and Roman Catholicism) that morbidly focuses on the suffering of the victim, as well as from a view of God as demanding the justice of a sacrifice (see §104.1; CF 452). In contrast to these views, he points to the continued agency of Christ. What was necessary was not Christ's death but “that He should first have entered into our fellowship” (§104.4; CF 457). The salvific aspect of his death was his activity: “For in His suffering unto death, occasioned by His steadfastness, there is manifested to us an absolutely self-denying love; and in this there is represented to us with perfect vividness the way in which God was in Him to reconcile the world to Himself, just as it is in His suffering that we feel most perfectly how imperturbable was His blessedness” (§104.4; CF 458–59). This soteriology naturally has implications for Schleiermacher's understanding of the Christian life of grace. Unlike Calvin, for example, who described the Christian life in terms of carrying the cross, Schleiermacher describes the gracious state of the redeemed in terms of a different kind of active obedience. In thus using Christ's active obedience as the paradigm for our own life of grace, Schleiermacher in no way means that Christ functions in our life as moral exemplar. He explicitly rejects this idea. Activity is not something we do on our own on the basis of an external example. It is faith, which is union with Christ: “Thus all real vital fellowship with Christ, in which He is in any sense taken as Redeemer, depends on the fact that living receptivity [Empfänglichkeit] for His influence is already present, and continues to be present” (§91.1; CF 371, slightly altered).

152 §110.1; CF 506.

153 §112.1; CF 518.

154 §112.1; CF 519.

155 §112.1; KGA 222; see CF 519.

156 On this point, it is instructive to keep in mind how important Gal 2:20 is for Schleiermacher, even if he does not cite it here: “and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” See also 1 Cor 15:10.

157 §112.2; CF 519.

158 Ibid..

159 §112.2; CF 520.

160 §112.2; KGA 222–23; see CF 520.

161 §112.2; CF 520.

162 §112.3; CF 521

163 Ibid..

164 §112.3; CF 520.

165 §112.3; CF 521.

166 See §108.1; CF 483. Historian John W. O'Malley, S.J. explains the complexity of sixteenth-century Roman Catholicism: “To be sure, Catholicism is diffuse, complex, and incoherent in ways different from early modern Protestantism. It was, for instance, doctrinally diffuse in that it did not have a single, clearly formulated teaching like justification by faith alone or, perhaps more significantly, 'Scripture alone,' to give it center, and it rather gloried in the fact. The doctrinal assertions at Trent covered a wide range of teachings with seemingly even hand. Those assertions found expression, moreover, in subtle and technical 'committee documents' that represented compromises and were thus incapable of packing the wallop of Luther's tracts and polemics or even of Calvin's Institutes” (Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000] 122). He goes on to note the importance of religious orders and their effect on doctrine: they “operated as a separate corps of organized ministers alongside and often in conflict with bishops and the parochial clergy. No Protestant church had anything like them. . .. They had their own traditions of theology and piety” (ibid., 124).

167 Wyman, “The Role of the Protestant Confessions,” 357.

168 Recall that Part Two is the “Explication of the facts of the religious self-consciousness, as they are determined by the antithesis” of sin and grace (Heading to Part Two, CF 260). Sin is the first aspect of the antithesis and is discussed in §§65–85; grace is the second aspect.

169 See note 10 above.

170 §108.6; KGA 190–91; cf. CF 495; see pp. 161–62 above.

171 This is not the only case in which this is true. Schleiermacher had a profound influence, for instance, on the Catholic Tübingen School.