Eternal Life in Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith

Eternal Life in Schleiermacher’s TheChristian Faithijst_553 340..357

DANIEL PEDERSEN*

Abstract: This article advocates that some form of personal immortality is notonly taught in F.D.E. Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre but is also necessary forthe coherence of the same work. The combination of a naturalized account ofredemption, a commitment to universal salvation and the realist observation thatsome never know Christ in this life causes Schleiermacher to posit a certain butcontent-free afterlife to account for the discrepancy.

Introduction

It might seem odd to some that an author has to argue for the inclusion of a doctrineof eternal life in a Christian dogmatics. But in the case of Schleiermacher’s TheChristian Faith some has been written – and much remained unwritten – to make thisissue a genuine point of contention. In particular, recent publications in the Englishlanguage have each in their own way reinforced the notion that Schleiermacher’saccount of God’s care for humanity ends with death,1 and that those who dieunredeemed will remain so.2 More troubling than this, however, is the conspicuouslack of literature on the topic at all. A single example of the absence of engagementwith Schleiermacher’s doctrine of eternal life comes from the index of theCambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher where not a single reference isto be found to ‘eternal life’, ‘immortality’ or ‘resurrection’, and where only onereference points the reader to ‘eschatology’.3 Schleiermacher’s doctrine of eternallife is something that is either ignored or rejected in many recent texts.

* Princeton Theological Seminary, 64 Mercer St, Box 74, Princeton, NJ 08542, USA.

1 Nathan D. Hieb, ‘The Precarious State of Resurrection in Friedrich Schleiermacher’sGlaubenslehre’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 9 (2007), pp. 398–414.

2 Abraham Varghese Kunnuthara, Schleiermacher on Christian Consciousness of God’sWork in History, Princeton Theological Monograph Series 76 (Eugene, OR: PickwickPublications, 2008).

3 Jacqueline Marina, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

International Journal of Systematic Theology Volume 13 Number 3 July 2011doi:10.1111/j.1468-2400.2010.00553.x

© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Schleiermacher’s account of eternal life is important for two reasons. Theprimary reason offered in this article is that without a doctrine of eternal lifeSchleiermacher’s dogmatics is incoherent. If he allows for no doctrine of eternallife, then Christ cannot redeem the totality of the world, nor indeed could he be Christat all. Without universal salvation our own salvation is impossible (see below), andwithout a living Christ Schleiermacher has no Trinity. Since the Glaubenslehre issuch a tightly knit system, the removal of a major piece of its internal logic leaves itbroken. Thus, what is in question in Schleiermacher’s account of eternal life isactually the validity of his dogmatics as a whole. Anyone who sees Schleiermacher’sdogmatics as a live theological option has much at stake in his dogmatics includinga doctrine of eternal life.

Of secondary concern is Schleiermacher’s methodology in the Glaubenslehre(hereafter referred to as his ‘theology of consciousness’). If his methodologyprecludes a doctrine of eternal life then, as above, his system as a whole is incoherent.But in this case the problem does not merely lie with the specifics of the systemas it has been written, but with the methodology at large. It is his theology ofconsciousness that has yielded the Christian religious affections which demanduniversal salvation: the content of our own redemption is ever-increasing love for allpeople and so the loss (damnation or annihilation) of any other person prevents ourown salvation as our love for the lost is stretched into an eternity of grief. Yet ifSchleiermacher’s theology of consciousness excludes eternal life, or if it confines thedoctrine in even its broadest form to total agnosticism, then no one’s redemption ispossible given his methodology. Schleiermacher’s method becomes self-defeating.On the other hand, a theology of consciousness might not demand the ever-increasinglove for all people as inherent in redemption, and thus rescue the methodology in thisway. Such an alternative is viable. However, the major inheritors of the theology ofconsciousness (Schweizer, Troeltsch)4 came to the same universalistic conclusions asSchleiermacher himself did. Those wishing to keep Schleiermacher’s methodologywould either need to abandon his universalist reasoning and go against the theologyof consciousness tradition, or they would need to grant some grounds for holdinga doctrine of eternal life given his methodology. This article opts for the latteroption, and calls those doctrines which Schleiermacher’s methodology allows‘proper doctrines’. However, there are more methodological options thanSchleiermacher’s own system specifically allows for and hence methodology is asecondary concern. But it remains a concern nonetheless.

Schleiermacher’s The Christian Faith5 is a work of striking self-consistency.Each step in his dogmatics interlocks with every other to create a systematic theologyof machine-like precision. All parts must work together if his system is to succeed.

4 Here I take as authoritative Troeltsch’s final draft of his lecture on the Consummation.Cf. Ernst Troeltsch, The Christian Faith, trans. Garrett E. Paul (Minneapolis: FortressPress, 1991), p. 288.

5 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928).

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To have the totality of The Christian Faith consistent with his method of a theologyof consciousness everything in Schleiermacher’s dogmatics must relate to theconsciousness of redemption in Christ. In accordance with this consciousnessSchleiermacher includes a teaching of what may be generally called a doctrine ofeternal life to account for the personal survival of believers beyond death, a doctrinewhich is necessary to complete his system at large in relation to the doctrine ofredemption. This article will first explore the doctrines of redemption and electionwhich are contained in Schleiermacher’s explication of sin and grace, and thenexplore those doctrines he discusses under the heading ‘The Consummation of theChurch’. It will be shown that not only is Schleiermacher’s doctrine of eternal life aproper doctrine in his theology of consciousness, and therefore an important part ofhis system, but moreover that without eternal life Schleiermacher’s The ChristianFaith is incoherent.

Universal predestination to blessedness, historically transmitted

Foremost in any understanding of Schleiermacher’s account of eternal life is hisaccount of redemption. In Schleiermacher’s system, Christ ‘assumes us into thisfellowship of his activity and life’,6 which Schleiermacher elucidates as the ‘powerof his God-consciousness’7 and his ‘unclouded blessedness’.8 There is forSchleiermacher an inseparable link between redemption and communion with Godin Christ,9 God-consciousness and unclouded blessedness being equivalent terms fordenoting the power of this transformation in sequence. Redemption consists both inthe joining of the God-consciousness of Christ with the believer and also thesustaining of that same state, which Schleiermacher calls grace.10 In sum, there is noredemption without the quality of blessedness found only in Christ, which ishis powerful God-consciousness, continued indefinitely. Moreover, this feeling

6 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 425.7 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 425.8 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 431.9 It should be noted that Schleiermacher’s soteriology is of the second-Adam type rather

than the ‘educative influence’ variety as Hinze suggests. Bradford E. Hinze, NarratingHistory, Developing Doctrine: Friedrich Schleiermacher and Johann Sabastian Drey(Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1993), p. 265. For readings of Schleiermacher’s soteriology asthe second-Adam type see Matthias Gockel, Barth and Schleiermacher on the Doctrine ofElection: A Systematic-Theological Comparison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006),p. 71 and Kevin W. Hector, ‘Actualism and Incarnation: The High Christology of FriedrichSchleiermacher’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 8 (2006), p. 321.

10 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 425. For a detailed treatmentof Schleiermacher’s parsing of redemption see: Paul T. Nimmo, ‘The Mediation ofRedemption in Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre’, International Journal of SystematicTheology 5 (2003), pp. 188–9.


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of redemption is what gives Christians their unique religious consciousness.11

Redemption in Christ is foundational for a Christian’s self-understanding as itmodifies the more general feeling of absolute dependence. It is the consciousness ofredemption which leads Schleiermacher eventually to derive eternal life.

For Schleiermacher this redemption is necessarily transmitted by historicalmeans. The Redeemer communicated his God-consciousness historically to hisdisciples and they transmitted that same God-consciousness to others and so on.12

God-consciousness, the substance of the kingdom of God itself, can only be spreadwithin the natural bounds of the world by person-to-person transmission. Becauseredemption can only be transmitted historically, it is naturally limited by historicalmeans as well. In sum, these means and limitations constitute Schleiermacher’snaturalized account of redemption. We, as observers of the limits of the spread ofredemption in the world, can thus assume a boundary of those who have or have notbeen exposed to Christ’s perfect God-consciousness. At any given point in spaceand time Christians see the redemptive activity of Christ as multiple, variable andincomplete. This simply amounts to the common observation that some people areChristians and some are not. It is by this naturalized account that Schleiermacherexplains why some are Christians and others are not. The world is divided betweenthose who are redeemed and those who have not been at any one moment by theoperations of nature (such as where and when one is born).

Our empirical observations, however, come into conflict with our God-consciousness. Through the feeling of absolute dependence we sense the unity ofGod’s action toward the world.13 This leads us to posit attributes of God that describeGod’s relation to us.14 The first of these attributes, eternality, describes God’s activityas it originates outside of time altogether. God interacts with the world according toour God-consciousness in unitary fashion, but according to empirical observationindividuals can only be redeemed through the particular workings of nature. Here ourGod-consciousness comes into apparent conflict with our observations of the world:through redemption we have come to believe God’s eternal plan for the world is for itsredemption through Christ, but through observation of that same world it is plain thatmany are not Christian. It seems our God-consciousness is misleading.

To address this disunity Schleiermacher appeals to the doctrine of election.Contrary to the sixteenth-century Reformers, Schleiermacher does not use thisdoctrine to account for the fact that some are Christians while others are not bymerely granting that some will remain unredeemed. Schleiermacher does not, inother words, affirm the plan of God to damn15 as well as to save. He instead affirmsthe unity of God’s purpose in spite of our own observation:

11 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 52.12 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 525.13 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, pp. 229–30.14 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, pp. 194–232.15 More specifically Schleiermacher rejects the notion of eternal damnation. The temporary

state of not yet being in Christ is for him a kind of reprobation, in the sense of being



There is only one eternal and universal decree justifying men for Christ’s sake.This decree, moreover, is the same as that which sent Christ on His mission, forotherwise that mission would have been conceived and determined by Godwithout its consequences. And once more, the decree that sent Christ forth is onewith the decree creating the human race, for in Christ first human nature isbrought to perfection . . . Thenceforward the promulgation in time of this divineact is really a continuous one, but in its effects it appears to us in as many pointsseparated and (as it were) strung out from one another, as there are differentpeople whose union with Christ is accomplished.16

A unity of purpose is accomplished even though redemption may appear to us to behappening in atomistic isolation. Any one momentary observation does not destroythe unity of God’s redemptive activity in Christ that we experience through ourGod-consciousness.

Schleiermacher insists that election must take account of the disparity betweenGod’s eternal plan and our historical observations, but we do not yet know why thatelection must be a universal predestination to blessedness. Schleiermacher againappeals to the consciousness of redemption for his argument. He explains that sincean effect of inheriting Christ’s God-consciousness is an ever greater concern forthose other than ourselves – Christian sympathy – it is incompatible with our ownredemption that some should be lost while others are redeemed.17 In order to satisfythe love we feel more and more as Christians, all must eventually be redeemed. Atthis point in The Christian Faith Schleiermacher has insisted that the only way toaccount for those who are yet to be redeemed is through a doctrine of electionto universal blessedness. If at any one moment some are unredeemed, it is merely afunction of the one divine decree being played out in time. Schleiermacher writes:‘Mercy in the case of the same people must show itself as justice. And in thought thisis incompatible with the permanent exclusion of some from the communicatedblessedness of Christ.’18

Schleiermacher has at this point established that the entirety of humanity ispredestined to unclouded blessedness in Christ, as consistent with our own Christianconsciousness of redemption. He has also maintained that the God-consciousnessconstitutive of redemption is communicated historically and so limits who isredeemed at any one moment. While there is no longer a disparity between God-consciousness and reality, Schleiermacher must still articulate the role of history inthis predestination. How will the unredeemed be reached? He notes:

passed over. Matthias Gockel, ‘New Perspectives on an Old Debate: FriedrichSchleiermacher’s Essay on Election’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 6(2004), p. 315.

16 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 501.17 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 539.18 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 544.


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All this takes on a quite different aspect as soon as we venture to hold that ateach particular point this antithesis is merely a vanishing one, so that everyonestill outside this fellowship will some time or another be laid hold of by thedivine operations of grace and brought within it.19

Redemption is communicated naturally, but also inevitably. That this is merely a‘vanishing’ point rather than a completion, Schleiermacher accounts for by notingthe production of new sinners – children – that make the redemption of every personat any one moment impossible.20 Even so, the possibility remains that all peoplewill at some point in their lives be redeemed.

‘Death shall not destroy my comfort’21

Even while hoping for redemption in life, Schleiermacher concedes that many willregrettably die before they are assumed into the Redeemer’s fellowship. It is plainlyobservable that the church does not yet cover the whole of the earth, and moreover,not all members of the church show signs of regeneration. Children die before theymight ever know redemption in this life and whole continents of civilizations livedwithout Christ for centuries. The reality of death outside of the fellowship of Christforces Schleiermacher to account further for the universal election upon which he hasalready insisted. Knowing that he is at an impasse, Schleiermacher does not concedethat some will remain permanently unredeemed,22 but instead appends the necessarydoctrine of personal survival after death:

If, however, we proceed on the definite assumption that all belonging to thehuman race are eventually taken up into living fellowship with Christ, there isnothing for it but this single divine fore-ordination. We infer from it that for suchan [sic] one this fore-ordination has not been fulfilled during his lifetime, but notby any means that a different fore-ordination is being fulfilled by his death;rather, the state in which he dies is only an intermediate state. Such is that faithin Christ which ascribes to Him a claim and power over the whole human race,without at the same time needing to admit any blind preference, and in whichthere is encountered no contradiction between the end in view in the divine plan

19 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 540.20 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 696 (in ‘The Consummation of the Church’, at

which we have not technically arrived).21 Title of an old American folk hymn.22 This contra Kunnuthara, who claims Schleiermacher ‘accepts this divinely ordered

discrimination’ (Schleiermacher on Christian Consciousness of God’s Work in History,p. 93). Schleiermacher in his treatment of election rejects any result short of universalelection, including the annihilation of some (The Christian Faith, p. 545). Annihilation isultimately not a viable solution because even though it is a milder fate than damnation,when stretched into eternity our grief for the annihilated becomes unbearable. Again, ourChristian sympathy for the lost hinders our own redemption, if lost they are indeed.



of salvation and the result accomplished by the divine government of theworld.23

With this still-unelaborated doctrine Schleiermacher responds to the problems athand. He simultaneously accounts for the reality of the world and the plan of God forredemption, all with responses properly derived from the Christian consciousness.Some form of life after death is thus a part of Schleiermacher’s doctrine proper.

Because all of the above considerations are derived from the Christianconsciousness of redemption, Schleiermacher can treat them as doctrines. They areintuitions of the present that require future fulfillment. He states:

In a comprehensive summary of what our Christian self-consciousness has tosay about the fellowship of believers, we must first treat of the origin of theChurch, the way in which it takes shape and disengages from the world; thenthe way in which the Church maintains itself in antithesis to the world; andfinally the abrogation of this antithesis, or the prospect of the Church’sconsummation.24

In sum, all of the considerations described above are elaborations on the doctrine ofthe church in its relation to our present religious consciousness. That this presentconsciousness leads Christians to make claims about the future does not demeantheir authority as doctrines. It is the source of a doctrine, not the subject of a doctrinethat authorizes it as an appropriate subject for Christian dogmatics in a theologyof consciousness. The doctrine of the predestination of all to blessedness withits ensuing doctrine of life after death is derived directly from the Christianconsciousness of redemption as it relates to the church. Schleiermacher’s treatmentof personal survival after death is taken up in more detail in ‘The Consummation ofthe Church’.

We have so far followed Schleiermacher’s elaboration on the Christianconsciousness of redemption in Christ as communicated through natural means. Thiswas elaborated in the doctrine of universal redemption which Schleiermacherderived from that same God-consciousness. We then followed Schleiermacher as hereconciled historical transmission of Christ’s God-consciousness with the Christianconsciousness of universal election to blessedness. Here Schleiermacher explainedhow each doctrine relates to the other, but had yet to detail how these relations canactually become effective – what makes universal redemption possible given hiscommitments. Schleiermacher has claimed that the end of life is not the end ofa person’s capacity to be redeemed, but has yet to reason out how people canbe redeemed once dead or how the redemption of the whole world could ever becomplete. These problems and others are treated in ‘The Consummation of theChurch’.

23 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 549.24 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 528.


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Eternal life in ‘The Consummation of the Church’

In ‘The Consummation of the Church’ Schleiermacher treats several doctrines:the consummation itself, eternal life, and other related doctrines such as the lastjudgement. In his preface to this section it is important to note what Schleiermacherdoes and does not say regarding the doctrinal status of ‘The Consummation ofthe Church’. As is sometimes quoted in support of ignoring the entire section on ‘TheConsummation of the Church’, Schleiermacher says: ‘Strictly speaking, therefore,from our point of view we can have no doctrine of the consummation of the Church,for our Christian consciousness has absolutely nothing to say regarding a conditionso outside our ken.’25 Schleiermacher concludes this because we have no experienceof a world that is totally different from our own, and hence no access to a picture ofa consummated world.26 The world as it will be when it is consummated is so outsideour purview that no doctrine about such a world can be articulated in detail.

What Schleiermacher does not say here is that such a world is not at all relatedto our religious self-consciousness – rather he claims the opposite. It is only thespecifics of the consummated world itself that are outside doctrinal limitations. Anyattempt to articulate the ‘condition’ of such a world doctrinally will fail because sucha world is, by nature, foreign to our experience. But to conceive of such a world is‘rooted in our Christian consciousness as representing the unbroken fellowship ofhuman nature with Christ’,27 though in unimaginable circumstances. A doctrinedetailing the consummation cannot be a proper doctrine because the images it triesto use are indelibly linked to our present circumstances whereas the state it describesis absolutely foreign. A doctrine detailing the consummation cannot work because itwould be a telling of the future in present-day terms, not because such a future issomething Christians cannot properly believe in per se. Belief in what the doctrine ofthe consummation has historically attempted to describe, namely the ‘unbrokenfellowship of human nature with Christ’, is in fact ‘rooted in our Christianconsciousness’, and is thus a proper topic of a Christian dogmatics. Therefore thecontent of ‘The Consummation of the Church’ is to be taken as dogmatic explicationof the Christian religious consciousness in this broader sense except whereSchleiermacher notes otherwise.

Belief in personal survival after death falls into the category of doctrine proper.However, as Schleiermacher is quick to point out, it is derived indirectly from theGod-consciousness. Schleiermacher explains that ‘if belief in immortality werebound up with the God-consciousness in general, it would be a serious error on our

25 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 697.26 There is here a ‘categorical and epistemological difference’, as Bernd Oberdorfer

describes it. Bernd Oberdorfer, ‘Schleiermacher on Eschatology and Resurrection’, inTed Peters, Robert John Russell and Michael Welker, eds., Resurrection: Theological andScientific Assessments (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 167.

27 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, pp. 697–8 (my emphasis).



part not to have developed it at the outset when dealing with that subject’.28 A beliefin immortality is not derived or strictly necessary without other beliefs derivingdirectly from the God-consciousness and from observed reality. The redemption ofChrist is the foundational consciousness of the believer; explication of beliefsassociated with the church as the community of God-conscious believers follows.Only upon inspection, when the death of people outside fellowship with Christ isobserved empirically, is a doctrine of immortality necessary, and then only to accountfor apparent inconsistencies. In this sense it is not inherently bound up with theGod-consciousness, but it is that doctrine which is posited to reconcile God’saction in redemption with the divine governance of the world. Yet death and,correspondingly, eternal life must be accounted for in connection with the divineelection to universal blessedness and that accounting is doctrine proper.

‘Would that where I am, they also may be whom thou hast given me’29

Schleiermacher fleshes out his earlier statement when he notes that thoughimmortality need not be part of the religious consciousness as such, it is inherentlyconnected to Christ. After examining all the ways immortality does not properlyenter the Christian consciousness, Schleiermacher explains:

None the less, it may well be held that belief in the survival of personality isbound up with faith in the Redeemer. The Redeemer ascribes such survival toHimself in everything that He says about His return or reunion with His people;and (since He can only say these things of Himself as a human person, becauseonly as such could He have fellowship even with His disciples) it follows that invirtue of the identity of human nature in Him and in us, the same must hold goodof ourselves.30

Belief in personal survival after death is not an explication of our immediate religiousconsciousness but it is an explication of the Redeemer’s perfect God-consciousnessand our God-consciousness as it relates to him. Yet Schleiermacher is unwilling toconcede that immortality is something new in Christ. Instead he believes it issomething common to all people as it is present in Christ’s humanity.

Schleiermacher’s reasoning for this comes from testing the possibility of aChrist who was uniquely immortal in a world of mortal humans. ‘But if we cannotdeny His firm conviction on the subject,’ thinks Schleiermacher, ‘the only furtherobjection that could be suggested is that the survival of His personality (His belief inwhich we, in that case, should have to share) implies nothing for our own . . . Such

28 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 699.29 This quotation of Jn 17:24 was spoken by Schleiermacher at his son’s funeral. Friedrich

Schleiermacher, ‘Sermon at Nathanael’s Grave’, Journal of Religion 57 (1978), pp. 72–5.30 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 700.


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a belief would be docetic, and none the less docetic that it is so only in one particularrespect.’31 Such a Christ, in the end, would no longer be fully human. Only aChrist who holds immortality in common with all people can be said to be trulyrepresentative of humanity. Only a Christ who is immortal along with all humans canredeem. Christ would only seem to be human but would be radically different fromhumanity by virtue of his immortality and hence not human in truth. Since we are, infact, redeemed by virtue of the God consciousness made powerful in us by thefully-human Christ, it follows that we are also all immortal.32

Schleiermacher does not make this Christian belief in immortality anindependent belief in itself, but rather makes it a consequence of belief in Christ’struth, both in the form of his teaching and his person, verified through our experienceof redemption. Schleiermacher writes:

Nothing remains therefore but to say that if we take the utterances of theRedeemer about His eternal personal survival as being imbued with His perfecttruth, as His disciples undeniably did, then all who are of human race can lookforward to survival too. Even so the Redeemer continues to be the mediator ofimmortality, only not exclusively for those who believe on Him here, but for all,without exception; in this sense, that if personal immortality did not belong tohuman nature, no union of the Divine Essence with human nature to form sucha personality as that of the Redeemer would have been possible; and conversely,that since God had determined to perfect and redeem human nature through suchunion, human individuals must all along have possessed the same immortality asthe Redeemer was conscious of.33

Eternal life is a necessary doctrine to hold if one believes in the church as foundedby Christ and transmitted by his disciples. However, immortality remains nothingnew. Christ did not win immortality for humanity or create it new himself, but wassimply aware of what was already universal: all humans are inheritors of immortalityas something native to human nature. The preservation of human immortality isnecessary, moreover, for the union of the divine and human natures in Christ.34

Without immortality, there is no incarnation.

31 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 701.32 To the possible objection that Christ was, along with humanity, mortal, Schleiermacher

calls as evidence Christ’s personal belief in himself as immortal, a belief that arises fromhis perfect God-consciousness. Rather than belief in immortality being a cultural given,Schleiermacher claims, Christ may well have opted for the view of mortality held by theSadducees. Christ had options and he chose to believe he was immortal. Without Christ’simmortality Schleiermacher is left with lying disciples or an incompetent Christ, nopriestly or kingly offices, no real incarnation and no Trinity. Schleiermacher, TheChristian Faith, pp. 700–1.

33 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 702.34 See Gockel, Barth and Schleiermacher on the Doctrine of Election: A Systematic-

Theological Comparison, p. 95. It is in this context that the necessity of eternal life forredemption becomes clearest in Schleiermacher’s system. Eternal life is not a product ofChrist, but a prerequisite.



The first thing to note about Schleiermacher’s conclusion is that, while thisdiscussion of immortality is in ‘The Consummation of the Church’, it is not truly adoctrine of the consummation, especially not a doctrine that spells out the details ofthe consummation. It is instead a preface to the doctrine of the consummation,35 onethat makes holding such a doctrine plausible. The consummation of the church isonly possible if the church in its totality is, or becomes, alive, or rather, is immortal.However, Schleiermacher does not derive his conclusions on immortality from thedoctrine of the consummation in isolation, but instead from the consciousness ofredemption in Christ. The history of the church, in the form of Christ’s teaching andthe disciples’ remembering, is far more important than the future of the church forarriving at immortality. Immortality is to be regarded as our future because theRedeemer believed in it himself, and in order to actually redeem us – which he hasdone – he must possess immortality in common with all people. Schleiermacher’sdoctrine of eternal life is included in ‘The Consummation of the Church’, but isderived christologically.

The second aspect to note of Schleiermacher’s teaching on immortality is itsfunction in the larger system, especially as it relates to the problems of a naturalizedaccount of the redemption of all people, even people who have died outside thefellowship of Christ. Schleiermacher earlier noted that for those who died outsideof fellowship with Christ death is not, in the end, an election to death but rather an‘intermediate state’.36 In Schleiermacher’s teaching on eternal life this position ismore fully elaborated. In Schleiermacher’s model, eternal life functions as that statein which his earlier claim of universal predestination to blessedness in Christ can befulfilled. Eternal life is naturalized, since it is something common to all people, sothis universal election occurs without violation of the nature system.37 A universalconception of eternal life – such as Schleiermacher offers – avoids the problem ofmiracles since God’s actions to create humans and to preserve them in eternal life areconsonant even though they are in sequence.38 Christ’s redemption is spread both

35 To the common objection that this part of the Schleiermacher’s dogmatics is on the subjectof ‘prophetic doctrines’and hence should be ignored as speculative, it is helpful to note that§§157–9 (pp. 696–707) precede those sections explicitly labeled as ‘prophetic doctrines’.

36 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 549.37 Hieb’s conclusion that any eschatological hope is impossible in Schleiermacher’s

account of the system of nature is based on the assumption that dramatic happeningswithin the system of nature constitute miracles. Hieb is absolutely correct in saying thatSchleiermacher rejects miracles, but Schleiermacher limits miracles to violations of thesystem of nature, not the fulfillment of that system. The incarnation was novel in atemporal sense, yet was in complete unity with the eternal purpose of God and nota violation of the system of nature. Eschatological happenings are similarly possible –they are likewise the fulfillment of the system of nature. See Hieb, ‘The Precarious Stateof Resurrection in Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre’, pp. 403–9.

38 Further, this conception keeps Schleiermacher’s ‘eternal covenant’ with science bypositing this state as eschatological and hence not in competition, by definition, with anyscience of the day.


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naturally and universally. Personal survival beyond death is the doctrine that allowsall of these commitments to be reconciled.

Schleiermacher, having argued for the necessity of personal immortality, moveson to discuss its content. However, here is where his agnosticism on the details ofpersonal survival after death comes to the fore. Schleiermacher can only claim whatis derived from the Christian consciousness:

This belief naturally is accompanied by a desire to form and keep clear ideas asto the condition of personality after death. But it is wholly impossible for us toclaim that we shall definitely succeed . . . nothing can be gathered from [thesayings of Christ] more than what for every Christian is so much the essentialthing in every conception he may form of existence after death, that without itsuch existence would be mere perdition – namely, the persistent union ofbelievers with the Redeemer.39

The only thing we can claim for certain from the religious consciousness about ourlife after death is that Christ will be a part of it. Once again though, this doctrine,along with the belief in life after death, is properly derived from the Christianconsciousness, and so what can be claimed is not to be relativized even though it isbasic. Some form of life after death where the Redeemer is fully present need not bedoubted. It is only the details of that life that cannot be properly imagined.

Immortality and the consummation of the church

The doctrines so far handled in ‘The Consummation of the Church’, the completionof universal election and eternal life, are both doctrines derived from the redemptionaccomplished by Christ. However, at this point they are still in tension with oneanother because they are two separate facets of one belief. ‘The solution of these twoproblems, to represent the church in its consummation and the state of souls in thefuture life, is attempted in the ecclesial doctrines of the Last Things,’ arguesSchleiermacher, ‘but to these doctrines we cannot ascribe the same value as to thedoctrines already handled.’40 Here again Schleiermacher must be carefully parsed toavoid misunderstanding. Ascribing a lesser value to eternal life based on the later partof this statement by Schleiermacher would be a mistake. The referent ‘to thesedoctrines’ – the doctrines which are to be given lesser value – can only be to the‘ecclesial doctrines of the Last Things’ since they are the only doctrines that havebeen mentioned as doctrines in this sentence. ‘Represent[ing] the Church inits consummation’ and ‘the state of souls in the future life’ is the task of theseecclesial doctrines. But note that it is ‘the solution to these two problems’, theirrepresentation, not the doctrines of the consummation and eternal life themselves




that is at stake. Neither the consummation of the church nor belief in eternal lifeshould be passed over. Instead they are to be given a greater doctrinal status: theyare ‘the doctrines already handled’ against which all subsequent claims must bemeasured. Schleiermacher definitively arrives at a doctrine of eternal life, but onceagain, its details are not doctrine.

Moreover, the synthesis of the doctrines of the consummation and eternal life isa doctrinal issue. Both the consummation and eternal life are solutions to theproblems gained from a commitment to naturalized redemption and universalelection. Hence as solutions they must be unified into a single doctrinal articulation.Schleiermacher concludes:

Hence it was in the nature of the case that both elements should be thusconjoined – the consummation of the Church (which we cannot regard aspossible in this life) being placed in that future life of which we cannot but forma conception, and the idea that life (based as it must be on fellowship withChrist) being filled out with content from the perfected state of the Church. Itmust be so, if the new form of life is decisively to transcend the present.41

Ultimately, even though we can say very little about the future state of theconsummated church filled with immortal humans, we can say a good deal aboutthe relationship between a consummated church and its immortal members. Thecritical contents of the doctrine of the consummation must be mirrored in the state ofeternal life: our eternal life will be free from sin, and so on. Conversely, theconsummation of the church, because it is not possible in this life since sin is inherentin it, must occur in the future life, and therefore we must have future lives to have aconsummated church. Without knowing about the particular details of either,Schleiermacher asserts that the essential content of each is, properly speaking,doctrine, and that the reconciliation of the two doctrines is also doctrine. It is merelythe details of each state that cannot be remarked upon because ‘the new form of lifeis decisively to transcend the present’. That there will be a ‘new form of life’ isassumed.

It is to the specific descriptions of the future life alone that Schleiermacherdirects his modest agnosticism. Because the future life is so transcendently different,it is impossible to use our experience of this world to make an accurate picture ofthe next. However, the church does attempt to make pictures of this future life.These ‘ecclesial doctrines of the Last Things’ utilize images from the ‘sensuousimagination’ – sense experience – to represent the future life. The doctrines of theresurrection and the last judgement are two such doctrines.42 Schleiermacher’sskepticism about the resurrection is directed at the representation of the future life,not belief in the future life as such. Therefore it is not warranted to conclude thatSchleiermacher has no place for eternal life in his system because he questions, for



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example, the bodily resurrection as traditionally understood by the church alongsideother traditional ‘pictures’.

Those who find Schleiermacher un-traditional on the resurrection and lastjudgement have reason to feel so. While maintaining a doctrine both of theconsummation of the church and of eternal life, Schleiermacher is dogged in hisinsistence that those doctrines cannot be elaborated with reference to the redemptionin Christ. ‘[W]e therefore always remain uncertain,’ Schleiermacher asserts, ‘how thestate which is the Church’s highest consummation can be gained or possessed in thisform by individual personalities emerging into immortality’.43 Yet once again, whatSchleiermacher insists upon is the inability of Christians in the present to discern thenature of the future to which God has elected them, not that such a future is absentfrom a Christian’s religious consciousness. It is, as Schleiermacher puts it in theabove passage, an issue of ‘how’ this future state will be achieved since it ‘isdecisively to transcend the present’. There are not, for Schleiermacher, doubts asto whether such a state will exist at all, since the existence of a future state isnecessitated by Christian convictions regarding universal election, by the perfecttruth received from Christ in his teachings and by the incarnation itself.

In considering the religious consciousness relating to eternal life and theconsummation of the church, Schleiermacher oscillates between problematic notionscontained within each in relation to the other but ultimately concludes that both areproper doctrines, although at first he finds these two doctrines to be in tension in theircontent. Especially in regard to the bodily resurrection and the last judgement,Schleiermacher is politely skeptical. But from Schleiermacher’s doubt emerges hismost decisive affirmation of the doctrinal legitimacy of each belief. ‘What seems toemerge from these considerations is this,’ reflects Schleiermacher: ‘Both elements –the consummation of the Church and personal survival – can each for itself be takenup with perfect truth in our Christian consciousness.’44 While their convergence is amystery, belief in the reality of each is a properly doctrinal teaching derived from theChristian consciousness. Nothing more can be offered about either doctrine than asimple skeletal outline, but even in its obscurity eternal life remains essential toSchleiermacher’s system.

The necessity of immortality

Schleiermacher’s system would be difficult to recognize without immortality. Inorder to create a system where eternal life was not a necessary part of his doctrine,Schleiermacher would have to give up either universal redemption, naturalcommunication of redemption via the church, the goodness of the world and/or God,the accurate perception of reality or the uniqueness of Christ as the sole Redeemer.




Eternal life is so essentially a part of Schleiermacher’s system that only by giving upone of these other major commitments could he maintain his system in its absence.

The first and most obvious belief Schleiermacher could give up in order toaccount for his system without eternal life would be the twin doctrines of thegoodness of God and the goodness of the world. Schleiermacher derives the love ofGod and the goodness of the world from redemption in Christ. But were a good Godor a good world disposed of, or were God and the world conceived as good butinsufficient, eternal life would not be needed to reconcile faith in the Redeemer andthe world. Redemption might only be for some or indeed, the world might be createdsolely for evil. Such a conception is impossible, however, from the Christianconsciousness. This is the simplest solution, of course, but it is also the leastsatisfying. Through our God-consciousness we see the totality of the world asdirectly related to the redemption accomplished in Christ. Schleiermacher mustmaintain that God is all-powerful and all-good45 to have a God who reflects ourunderstanding of the world through Christ. Schleiermacher must maintain a worldthat is good because it is the act of that same God in Christ. Sacrificing the goodnessof God or the system of nature is entirely untenable. Schleiermacher cannot ignorethe goodness of the world because the world was made by God precisely for theblessedness of Christ.

A second belief Schleiermacher could abandon in order to have a coherentsystem without the doctrine of eternal life is the doctrine of universal election.Schleiermacher could simply hold to everything he claims about how redemption iscommunicated, how it affects believers, and how God and the world work if he wouldonly allow that some would die unredeemed, outside of Christ. The world would bemade for redemption, but many might never be redeemed. This solution is simpleand yet conflicts enormously with the God-consciousness expressed in Christiansympathy. Schleiermacher would have to devise a new and separate theodicy if hewere to account for the ultimate death of people in a world that God eternallyordained for redemption. This solution would certainly be more in line with theChristian tradition than Schleiermacher’s own doctrine of universal redemption, butit holds many problems for Schleiermacher’s system of consciousness with whichthe tradition as a whole was not concerned. A theology of consciousness mightneed to be jettisoned altogether if Schleiermacher surrendered universalism sinceannihilation and damnation conflict so greatly with our consciousness of redemption.Thus, sacrificing universal election to blessedness in Christ is nearly as problematicfor Schleiermacher’s system as sacrificing the world’s goodness, even if it accordsmore with tradition.

The third belief Schleiermacher could give up were he to discard eternal life asan ingredient in his system would be that of naturally communicated redemption. Inthis model Schleiermacher would sacrifice his commitment to the historical spread ofthe church and the equation of that church with the sphere of the redeemed. Although

45 God’s omnipotence and benevolence are still to be understood in Schleiermacher’sparticular sense.


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he would seem to give up very little, he would have to supplement his system a greatdeal. Schleiermacher would need to re-explain the entire purpose of a created world;he would need to re-explain human sin should he want to keep the tenor of hisprevious theodicy; and his entire exploration of the second and third Persons of theTrinity would need to be re-examined. Schleiermacher would be forced to give upthe language of the supernatural becoming natural, and therefore might possibly beforced in such a system to give up the feeling of absolute dependence, and alsoperhaps with it a theology of consciousness. While probably the least immediatelyoffensive of the alternatives, giving up a naturalized theology of redemption wouldentail a reworking of Schleiermacher’s whole system.

As a fourth solution, Schleiermacher could consider conceding Christians’accurate perception of who is redeemed and who is not. We could simply be wrongto think that any people ever die unredeemed. There would then be no discrepancybetween reality and Christian God-consciousness. Our mistaken perception wouldaccount for the difference. Christians yearn for universal redemption out of theirGod-consciousness, and lo, it is granted – and all in a person’s life-span, regardlessof age. Any explanation of how this might be accomplished in a given person’slifetime if they have not had contact with a redeemed Christian is a mystery. Even so,it has the advantage of maintaining all doctrines as they presently stand, exceptingeternal life. The only belief that must be modified is one that is not properly thesubject of the Christian self-consciousness: knowing who is redeemed. By believing,contrary to observation, that everyone is redeemed during his or her lifetime,Schleiermacher would no longer need the doctrine of eternal life. While this is asimple solution, it could be awkward to follow through on doctrinally. An abrogationof accurate perception of reality implies many unpleasant consequences for a systemthat depends on sense perception to apprehend God, both in generating the feeling ofabsolute dependence and in truly knowing the person of Jesus Christ. Withoutrealism Schleiermacher is left without a system.

Finally, the doctrine of eternal life might be removed from Schleiermacher’ssystem by sacrificing the uniqueness of Christ. He could maintain that all people areat least exposed to a fully potent God-consciousness in the course of their lifetimesby affirming the presence of multiple ‘Christs’ in history. The Christian religiousconsciousness would, of course, be derived from Jesus of Nazareth but other faithtraditions might have redemption derived from individuals with equally perfectGod-consciousnesses. The multiplicity of ‘Christs’ might be accounted for in thesame manner that Schleiermacher accounts for the universal redemption of the worldoccurring in different scenes: it could all constitute the one, eternal act of God borneout in separate instances, analogous to moments of time. There was, after all, forSchleiermacher a time in history when Christ had not yet come even though Christwas eternally willed. Acts borne out in temporal sequence need not contradictthe singular nature of God, nor would multiple simultaneous acts since, asSchleiermacher noted earlier, the multiplicity of redemption in the world is really theone decree of God working itself out. At worst this part of the system is no moreproblematic than Schleiermacher’s conclusion of an eternal life that has little relation



to the life we now know. More problematic, however, is the likelihood thatmultiple redeemers still would not account for those who die outside thefellowship of any redeemer, such as isolated peoples or new-born babies. Life afterdeath would still be needed to account for these people’s redemption. In addition,the Christian church has never had a place for multiple redeemers46 and so weresuch a solution suggested, it could not be adopted as Christian by the church forwhose use it was made.

After exploring the many possible changes one could make to Schleiermacher’sdogmatics in an effort to avoid some form of eternal life, it is apparent thatsuch a solution would be impossible to execute given Schleiermacher’s projectof elucidating a Christian theology of consciousness. All possible solutions areanathema to such a theology. In order for Schleiermacher to account for all he wishesto account for in his dogmatics, he must include a doctrine of eternal life.

Conclusion

Given how little has been written on Schleiermacher’s doctrine of eternal life, it isremarkable how significant the doctrine is for his theology. His doctrine is strictlynecessary for the viability of his dogmatics as it stands and methodologicallyawkward if excluded. Conversely, those arguments which actively assert thatSchleiermacher has no account of personal immortality make a de facto argumentagainst his theology as a whole. Hence the question of eternal life is central to thosewho engage his theology as either detractor or friend: to the former, eternal life is thechink in Schleiermacher’s armor; to the latter it is a central pillar of his theology andought to be guarded accordingly. This article seeks to support Schleiermacherby showing that some form of personal immortality is included in his system, isnecessitated by that same system and is included as properly doctrinal in accordancewith his theology of consciousness.

In Schleiermacher’s theology of consciousness we may only construct dogmaticpropositions from our religious consciousness: the feeling of absolute dependence asmodified by redemption in Christ. The experience of personal redemption leads us tobelieve in the universal predestination of all to blessedness in Christ. This beliefemanates from Christian sympathy in which we love all people more and more byvirtue of that same redemption. Redemption is transmitted naturally through aGod-willed system of nature. Yet, these propositions are irreconcilable to observedreality when we consider not only that at any given moment much of the world isunredeemed but also that many people die outside of the fellowship of Christ. Theonly way for Schleiermacher to reconcile his commitments is for him to articulate adoctrine of personal immortality, giving those who die outside of Christ a future lifein which God may effect their redemption. The doctrine of personal immortality is

46 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 56.


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properly derived from the religious consciousness from the beliefs and sayings ofChrist himself, and from the doctrine of the incarnation. Moreover, immortality, soarticulated, is universal and so is not a violation of the nature system, but rather afuture that all people are destined to enjoy. Without such a future, Schleiermacher’ssystem would fall apart. In the end Schleiermacher arrives at a historicallytransmitted, universal predestination to blessedness in Christ that is reconcilable withperceived reality and our Christian sympathy only through the deployment of adoctrine of eternal life.



Documents

Eternal Life in Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith