Overview of the Work
Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche is Friedrich Schleiermacher’s systematic theology, composed as a coherent whole (“im Zusammenhange dargestellt”) and written from within the doctrinal standpoint of the Protestant, evangelical church. It is not an apologetic or a philosophical treatise but a work of dogmatics: its subject is the body of Christian doctrine as actually taught and lived in the evangelical church, and its aim is to show how the individual doctrines hang together in a single connected system rather than forming a loose compilation of isolated articles.
The work is built of numbered doctrinal propositions (Leitsätze), each followed by a fuller explanation and by supplementary notes. Its vocabulary is deliberately distinctive. Schleiermacher’s basic claim is that Christian doctrine is not primarily information about God or a code of conduct but the articulated expression of Christian piety — the religious self-consciousness of the believer set forth in speech. Dogmatics, accordingly, is “the science of the connection of the doctrines of faith,” and its statements are descriptions of a religious condition, not deductions from a speculative principle. Everything in the book turns on this basis.
The Introduction
The long introductory portion establishes the nature, sources, and method of dogmatics. Schleiermacher argues that piety, considered in itself, is neither a knowing nor a doing but a modification of feeling, of immediate self-consciousness; and the common element in all pious feeling is the feeling of absolute dependence. This is the famous foundation of the whole system. In that feeling, he proposes, the relation to God is already given: to be absolutely dependent is to be in relation to that on which one is absolutely dependent, and this is what is meant by “God.” He is careful to insist that God is not an object discovered by feeling in the way that objects are given to sense-perception; the feeling is not a proof of God’s existence. It is, rather, the mode in which the religious relation is lived.
From this, the relation of dogmatics to philosophy, to natural theology, and to religious experience is defined. Dogmatics does not derive its content from a philosophical system, nor does it offer a speculative account of God; it formulates the content of the Christian self-consciousness. Christian piety, on this account, is the highest form of the religious self-consciousness because in it the feeling of absolute dependence is determined by the redemption accomplished in Christ.
The introduction also treats the relation of dogmatics to Scripture and the confessions. Scripture is treated as the original record and norm of Christian proclamation; the confessions or “symbols” of the evangelical church function as the normative expression of its teaching, not as an independent source of doctrine. Schleiermacher rejects the notion of “fundamental articles” — the idea that a few doctrines are foundational and others subordinate — as a mistake for dogmatics, since in a coherent system no proposition is merely a floor for others. An excursus appended to the discussion of Scripture famously denies that the Old Testament can serve as a normative source for Christian doctrine, on the ground that its religious consciousness is not the Christian one.
The contrast between Protestant and Catholic principles is drawn in terms of the mediation of the individual’s relation to Christ. On the Protestant principle, the Christian’s relation to Christ is immediate, mediated only by the Word and the Holy Spirit, not by an institutional authority standing between the believer and Christ; the church’s order and authority are understood as subordinate to the Word. The book’s title signals precisely this: it presents doctrine “according to the principles of the evangelical church.”
The introduction closes by dividing the whole subject into two parts. The first considers the religious self-consciousness as such, apart from the opposition of sin and grace; the second considers it as it is determined by that opposition — that is, as it is affected by sin and as it is restored by grace.
The Religious Self-Consciousness as Such — God and the World
The first part treats the relation of the world to God as it lies prior to the distinction between sin and redemption. Here Schleiermacher develops the doctrines of creation, preservation, the constitution of the world, and the attributes of God.
God is described as the absolute causality, the sole and undivided ground of all that is. Because this causality is absolute, it is not one cause alongside others, and Schleiermacher consequently resists a view of divine action as a series of interruptions of the natural order. The world is the whole of finite being, which exists in dependence on God; its existence is not an object of independent proof but is given together with the feeling of absolute dependence. The doctrine of creation is thus not a cosmological narrative but an expression of the way the world is related to God.
The original perfection of the world is affirmed: the world is so constituted as to be the sphere in which the spirit comes to its development and in which the divine self-communication can take place. Alongside this, the book treats preservation as the continuation of the world’s dependence on God, and considers the relation of the natural order to divine causality, including the question of miracles. Schleiermacher’s tendency is to place miracle not in the exception but in the whole order of nature as grounded in God.
The attributes of God are then treated. Schleiermacher’s distinctive claim is that the divine attributes are not something existing in God independently of the religious consciousness, but are the various ways in which the feeling of absolute dependence is referred to God — that is, the forms in which the God-relation is construed. Among the attributes so derived he discusses eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, and, above all, love and wisdom, which he treats as the attributes that express God’s being in its relation to the world: love as the divine self-communication, wisdom as the ordering of the world toward that communication.
The Self-Consciousness Determined by the Opposition — Sin and Grace
The second and larger part treats the religious self-consciousness as it is determined by the opposition between sin and grace. It falls into two great divisions: the state determined by sin, and the state determined by redemption.
Sin
The first division treats the reality and the nature of sin. Sin is defined as the positive opposition of the flesh to the spirit — the predominance of the sensuous or lower element over the God-consciousness. Schleiermacher develops the doctrine of original sin not as the imputation of Adam’s transgression but as the common condition of the human race, arising from the mutual influence of individuals and generations, a state in which the capacity for good is impaired. He speaks of a complete incapacity for good, but balances this with an original capacity for receiving redemption, without which the universality of grace would be unintelligible. He also treats the condition of the human person as needing redemption, and the way in which the consciousness of sin presupposes a knowledge of grace, so that the two are known together.
The Person of Christ
Redemption is grounded in the person of Christ. Schleiermacher’s account centers on the God-consciousness of Jesus, which was, he holds, perfectly uninterrupted and always actual — never obscured by the flesh as in other human beings. This constant and complete union of the divine with the human in him constitutes his deity; his sinlessness and absolute perfection follow from it. Christ is presented as the archetype (Urbild) of humanity, the one in whom human nature is realized as it was intended to be, and as the second Adam, the new head of the race. In this connection Schleiermacher treats the classical Christological doctrine of the two natures and the formulas of the ancient church, interpreting them in light of what the Christian self-consciousness actually asserts. Several traditional propositions — among them the virgin birth, the descent into hell, and the ascension — are explicitly characterized as not belonging to the essential content of faith.
The Work of Christ
Christ’s work is understood as the communication of his God-consciousness to the community. Schleiermacher organizes this under the traditional threefold office. In the prophetic office Christ reveals the truth of the God-relation; in the priestly office he represents humanity before God, his active obedience fulfilling the law and his passive obedience taking up the world’s sin; in the kingly office he rules in the church as its living head. The book’s most controversial move here is its reinterpretation of reconciliation. Schleiermacher rejects the view that reconciliation consists in the appeasement of a divine punitive justice by a vicarious satisfaction. The believer is reconciled not by a transaction imputed from outside but by being taken up into the power of Christ’s perfect God-consciousness, so that the opposition between sin and grace is overcome in actual life. The doctrine of justification is thus bound inseparably to sanctification: the forgiveness of sins and the renewal of life are two aspects of a single relation to Christ, and the elaborate doctrine of an order of salvation is treated with reserve.
The Holy Spirit and the Christian Church
The continued presence of Christ in the world is the Holy Spirit. Schleiermacher describes the Spirit as the common spirit of the Christian community, the living unity of the Word of God with the fellowship of believers, and he insists that the Spirit is not an individual possession but belongs to the community as such. The church is the community in which the Spirit is the ruling principle of life; the book treats its origin, its attributes (holiness, catholicity, and the like), and the relation between the church as visible institution and as invisible communion. The distinction is not a separation: the visible church is the necessary form in which the Spirit’s work takes shape.
The means through which the Spirit works are the Word of God and the sacraments. Preaching is treated as the primary means of grace. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are understood as symbolic, expressive acts of the community in which the union with Christ is represented and realized, with the efficacy assigned to the spiritual presence of Christ rather than to a material change in the elements. The book treats the practice of infant baptism as appropriate and defensible without making it a doctrine of the first rank. It also discusses the power of the keys, the ordained ministry, and the relation between the ministry and the priesthood of all believers, arguing that the distinction is one of function and order within a single community, not of a spiritual difference between clergy and laity. The relation of church and state is likewise considered.
Election and the Consummation
The doctrine of election is treated as an expression of the absolute dependence of the church on the divine love and wisdom. Schleiermacher resists a strict double predestination: reprobation is not an eternal decree of God in the same sense as election, but the non-reception of grace, while election is the divine initiative that takes effect in the community. God’s electing will is understood as the divine self-communication, not as an arbitrary selection.
The final section treats the consummation of the church. Schleiermacher discusses the continuance of the soul, the last judgment, and eternal blessedness, and expresses himself with notable reserve about eternal punishment, presenting eschatological statements as expressions of the church’s hope rather than as fully determined doctrinal knowledge. He allows room for the hope of a universal consummation without elevating it to the status of dogma.
The Trinity and the Conclusion
The work closes with the doctrine of the Trinity, and this closing position is itself deliberate. Schleiermacher argues that the Trinity is not a doctrine of faith in the strict sense, because it does not arise directly from the religious self-consciousness as an expression of piety; it is rather a combination or summary of propositions about the union of the divine and the human in Christ and about the presence of the Spirit in the church. It is treated, accordingly, as standing at the outer boundary of dogmatics, as a formula that gathers up what has preceded rather than as a source from which the rest is derived.
Taken as a whole, The Christian Faith is a sustained attempt to restate the entire body of Protestant doctrine on the basis of one principle — the pious self-consciousness of the redeemed — and to display every locus of theology as an articulated moment of that consciousness.
