^{page 283 note 1} Karl Barth stated this graphically and succinctly when he observed that the theologian must read both his Bible and his morning newspaper. See, Barth, Karl, The Humanity of God, trans. Wieser, Thomas and Thomas, John Newton (Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1960), p. 90.Google Scholar

^{page 284 note 1} The comments in this section on the history of the interpretation of Schleiermacher's thought rely, in part, on the only bibliography of Schleiermacher's material which, to my knowledge, purports to be comprehensive. See, Tice, Terrence Nelson, Schleiermacher's Theological Method With Special Attention to His Production of Church Dogmatics, Vol. III (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, Inc., 1961), pp. 17–90Google Scholar. Even though the bibliography, in this form, is somewhat incomplete and inaccurate in several of its detailed entries, it is still extremely helpful as a whole. Moreover, it has recently been published in a form which I have not yet examined, so these problems may no longer exist. In any case, it should now be consulted in this later form. See, Tice, Terrence N., Schleiermacher Bibliography (Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1966).Google Scholar

^{page 284 note 2} Reported by Lücke, Friedrich in ‘Reminiscences of Schleiermacher’, contained in Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Brief Outline of the Study of Theology, trans. Farrer, William (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1850), p. 8.Google Scholar

^{page 284 note 3} In the later editions of Rudolf Otto's republication of the first edition of Schleiermacher's Reden he appended a short bibliography of secondary materials relating to Schleiermacher. It is rather significant that only one entry is made from the years before 1870. See Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Ueber die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern, heraus von Rudolph Otto (4. Aufl.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1920), pp. xiii–xiv.Google Scholar

^{page 285 note 1} e.g. Marheineke, a colleague of Schleiermacher at the University of Berlin, who apparently opposed Schleiermacher as a matter of principle. On one occasion Schleiermacher found it necessary to caution a newly-formed commission against excessive reliance on the authority of the ruler as a basis for instituting liturgical reform in the recently united church. See Sincerus, Pacificus (pseudonym for Friedrich Schleiermacher), Ueber das liturgische Recht evangelischer Landesfürsten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1824)Google Scholar, reprinted in Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher, Sämmtliche Werke, I.5 (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1946), pp. 477–535. Following this appeal by Schleiermacher, Marheineke published a monograph which had the characteristic programme of ‘proving from scripture’ that Schleiermacher was wrong. See Marheineke, Philipp Konrad, Ueber die wahre Stelle des liturgischen Rechts im evangelischen Kirchenregiment: Pruefung der Schrift, Ueber das liturgische Recht evangelischer Landesfürsten (Berlin: Duncker und Humbolt, 1825).Google Scholar

^{page 285 note 2} e.g. Ferdinand Delbrück, F. C. Baur, J. C. F. Steudel. It was Delbrück who published the first substantial criticism of Schleiermacher in a book on Melanchthon and thereby precipitated a controversy concerning Schleiermacher's ‘pantheism’ which lasted for several years. See Delbrück, Johann Friedrich Ferdinand, Philipp Melanchthon: der Glaubenslehrer (Bonn: A. Marcus, 1826).Google Scholar

^{page 285 note 3} e.g. K. G. Bretschneider, a critic whom Schleiermacher took special pains to answer in a postscript to paragraph 19 of the second edition of the Glaubenslehre. Any division such as the text makes at this point almost necessarily has shortcomings. This one, for example, does not account for Albrecht Ritschl who stands as something of a bridge between the first and second period of Schleiermacher interpretation.

It should be noted that this ‘borrowing’ was by no means uncritical. As Martin Kähler so carefully points out, this group felt completely free to ‘correct’ and to ‘overcome’ Schleiermacher's formulations. See Kähler, Martin, Geschichte der protestantischen Dogmatik im 19. Jahrhundert, Bd. XVI von Theologische Bücherei, heraus. von Ernst Kähler (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1962), pp. 121–124.Google Scholar

^{page 286 note 1} Barth, Karl, Die protestantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert: Ihre Vorgeschichte und ihre Geschichte (3. Aufl.; Zürich; Evangelischer Verlag AG, 1960), p. 379.Google Scholar

^{page 286 note 2} All of the transition dates are, of course, approximate in both directions. The year 1870 was chosen because of the publication of Dilthey, Wilhelm, Leben Schleiermachers, Bd. I (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1870).Google Scholar

^{page 286 note 3} Johnson, William Alexander, On Religion: A Study of Theological Method in Schleiermacher and Nygren (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1964), p. xGoogle Scholar, quotes Nygren's description of his own programme as the attempt to ‘demonstrate religion as a necessary and universal experience, inseparable from the nature of man’. Even though much of Nygren's work comes after 1918, he is an excellent example of the interest of the age between 1870 and 1918. During this period Schleiermacher's concept of religion as an essential and inescapable part of humanity was analysed both broadly, e.g. Huber, Eugen, Die Entwicklung des Religionsbergriffs bei Schleiermacher (Leipzig: Dieterich'sche Verlags-Buchhandlung, 1901)Google Scholar, and narrowly, e.g. Fuchs, Emil, Schleiermachers Religionsbegriff und religiöse Stellung zur Zeit der ersten Augsabe der Reden (1799–1806) (Giessen: J. Richer'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1901)Google Scholar. One must be careful, moreover, not to interpret these remarks in too narrow a sense, for these men generally shared another conviction with Schleiermacher. Since religion was taken to be an integral and indispensable part of life, to speak of religion meant, therefore, to speak of the whole of life. Thus, Schleiermacher became for these ‘cultural protestants’ not only ‘the church father of the nineteenth century', but one of the great fathers of modern education, politics, aesthetics, and ethics as well. See Lülmann, Christian, Schleiermacher: der Kircherwater des 19. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1907)Google Scholar. In this comprehensive sense Schleiermacher's concept of religion was one of the foundations of the age.

^{page 287 note 1} Albrecht Ritschl is an excellent Illustration of the attitude which I am describing in these last two sentences. On the one hand, Ritschl could calmly state that his methodology had been adopted from Schleiermacher. See e.g. Ritschl, Albrecht, Theologie und Metaphysik (2. Aufl.; Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1893), p. 54Google Scholar, where he observes that it was from Schleiermacher that he learned the necessity of exhibiting the religious relations ‘in the frame of the subjective life'. On the other hand, Ritschl could speak of Schleiermacher as a theological subversive of the first order. See e.g. Ritschl, Albrecht, Schleiermachers Reden über die Religion und ihre Nachwirkungen auf die evangelische Kirche Deutschlands (Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1874), p. 19Google Scholar, where he writes: ‘In my youth one of the tasks of every student of theology was to work through Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre. I have gained nothing for my system from this undertaking. … Now, in the age of Luthardt's compendium, that unreasonable demand upon theological students has long since died; but from my experience I am careful not to invite a young man to make the rocky journey through the Glaubenslehre or the Reden of Schleiermacher without my own guidance.' For a more complete treatment of this rather complex attitude of Ritschl, see my article, ‘The Problem of Ritschl's Relationship to Schleiermacher’, Scottish Journal of Theology, Vol. XIX, No. 3 (September 1966), 257–268.Google Scholar

^{page 287 note 2} e.g., Barth states that Schleiermacher ‘forced Christianity, solely for the sake of culture, into a position where the whole was already surrendered’ and that he is one of the ‘purest and most unambiguous manifestations’ of that theology which imagines the Word of God to be a human possibility. See, Barth, Karl, Theology and Church, trans. Smith, Louise Pettibone (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 198, 202.Google Scholar

^{page 288 note 1} Niebuhr, Richard R., Schleiermacher On Christ and Religion: A New Introduction (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964), p. 7.Google Scholar

^{page 289 note 1} Odebrecht, Rudolph, ed., Friedrich Schleiermachers Dialektik (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1942).Google Scholar

^{page 289 note 2} At least twenty-five doctoral dissertations on various aspects of Schleiermacher's thought have been published since 1940 with two-thirds of that number coming since 1953. And that does not take into account the output of the last two years. About a year ago, for example, our department was examining credentials from most of the major graduate schools in religion in the eastern half of the United States. At least half of the students who were seeking degrees in systematic theology were writing dissertations related to Schleiermacher's thought.

^{page 289 note 3} Niebuhr, op. cit., p. 6.

^{page 289 note 4} Scifert, Paul, Die Theologie des jungen Schleiermacher (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1960), p. 201.Google Scholar

^{page 288 note 5} Birkner, Hans-Joachim, Schleiermachers Christliche Sittenlehre im Zusammenhang seines philosophische-theologischen Systems (Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1964), p. 147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 289 note 6} Stephan, Horst, Die Lehre Schleiermachers von der Erlösung (Tübingen and Leipzig: J. C. B. Mohr, 1901).Google Scholar

^{page 289 note 7} Beckmann, Klaus-Martin, Der Begriff der Häresie bei Schleiermacher (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1959)Google Scholar. Beckmann contends that Schleiermacher's concept of heresy can be understood only when seen between the twin foci of his Christology and his soteriology.

^{page 289 note 8} e.g. Tice, op. cit., Vols. I–II. If one were to read Tice's dissertation in isolation from Schleiermacher's total corpus, one would be tempted to adopt the conclusion that Schleiermacher was almost a crypto-Barthian. (Recall e.g. that Tice's title announces his intention to deal with Schleiermacher's ‘Church Dogmatics’.) That this position is adopted at the expense alternately of ignoring Schleiermacher's earlier works and of interpreting them exclusively in the light of his latest works seems not to disturb Tice. This lacuna is interesting, to say the least, in the light of Tice's own comment that ‘it is high time the Baur-Ritschl-(Kattenbusch-Brunner)-Barth interpretation of Schleiermacher and the nineteenth century had its shoulders pinned down, through exact, comprehensive study’. See ibid., Vol. III, p. 23.

^{page 290 note 1} Niebuhr uses the term ‘christomorphic’ rather than the term ‘christocentric’, and the difference is not entirely beside the point. Nevertheless, I do not think I am doing violence to any of the men mentioned when I group them together on this particular issue.

^{page 290 note 2} Niebuhr, op. cit., p. 11.

^{page 290 note 3} ibid., p. 9.

^{page 291 note 1} ibid.

^{page 291 note 2} In one sense of course, the entire book is the reference for this statement. More narrowly, the reader may refer to ibid., pp. 28–31, where Niebuhr introduces his thesis in terms of Die Weihnachtsfeier.

^{page 292 note 1} Niebuhr, op. cit., p. 29.

^{page 292 note 2} ibid., p. 106. Italics mine.

^{page 292 note 3} ibid., pp. 29–30.

^{page 292 note 4} ibid., p. 30.

^{page 292 note 5} ibid., pp. 30–31.

^{page 292 note 6} Odebrecht, op. cit., pp. 5–44.

^{page 293 note 1} The Odebrecht edition seems to be unavailable on the second-hand markets either in the United States or in Europe. I have asked University Microfilms to make this book available through their ‘out of print’ programme, but it is not yet certain if this will be possible.

^{page 293 note 2} Krapf, Gustaf-Adolf, ‘Platonic Dialectics and Schleiermacher's Thought’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1953)Google Scholar. This dissertation is a fine exposition of the Odebrecht thesis. It is most unfortunate that it has not been more widely circulated.

^{page 293 note 3} The same thing could, I should contend, be said of the majority of the interpretations of Schleiermacher's thought which have appeared, especially during this period. That is the basis of my first section which proposed a history of the interpretation of Schleiermacher's thought as a hermeneutical device for understanding nineteenth- and twentieth-century protestant theology. I should expect the next generation of theologians will view Niebuhr's book also as such a manifesto.

^{page 294 note 1} Niebuhr, op. cit., p. 6.

^{page 294 note 2} ibid., p. 16.

^{page 294 note 3} But if Niebuhr wishes his book to be a participant in such a conversation and if he expects to be taken with complete seriousness, he is then under obligation to demonstrate the inadequacy of his opponents’ interpretations rather than merely to deplore the ‘misunderstanding and misinterpretation’ which have resulted from them. See ibid., p. 9.

^{page 296 note 1} ibid., p. 90.

^{page 296 note 2} ibid., p. 3.

^{page 296 note 3} ibid., pp. 90–92.

^{page 297 note 1} One of the gravest transgressions of this standard that I know is an article which I myself wrote some years ago. It is far worse than Niebuhr's book in its failure to acknowledge the complexity of Schleiermacher's thought. See ‘The Question of Development in Schleiermacher's Theology’, Canadian Journal of Theology, Vol. X, No. 3 (April 1964), 75–87.Google Scholar