The historical, theological, and philosophical details of several massive shifts in Christianized religious belief and worship are too many to discuss in this article. However, a large part of what characterizes modern Christian worship and theology today flows from the work of a very intelligent man who provided an intellectual argument that shifted the focus of faith from fact to feeling. While Christians have always had powerful feelings that can be expressed in words, actions, and music, a saving faith is based on the clear, inerrant Word of God via the person of Jesus Christ. Who Jesus is and what He did to save us is the center of the church’s message and worship. F.D.E. Scheiermacher was not first to emphasize feelings and experience over the Scriptures, but he provided an intellectual, philosophical, and theological rationale to do so. Believing that the words of the Bible were undependable, he developed an alternate view of the Bible and redefined the nature of religious faith in general.
Wikipedia softens the impact of Schleiermacher’s works in the opening sentence of his biographical entry.
“Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher … (November 21, 1768 – February 12, 1834) was a German Reformed theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment with traditional Protestant Christianity.”*
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Schleiermacher 1.14.2022
More accurately, he embraced the so-called “higher criticisms” of the Bible, rejected Biblical Christianity, and was a major force in shifting a large portion of the visible church away from reliance on the Word of God to reliance on human thought, intuition, emotions, and individual perceptions. As a younger man, he despised his preacher-father’s Reformed theology and chose the rationalist University of Halle, where he was well-trained in the theology and textual criticism of Wolfe, Semler, Bauer, and others. He also learned much from the works of philosophers like Kant and Jacobi.
While he was first a pastor and later had official position in the politicized and unionist Prussian Reformed Church, he did not share most historic doctrinal beliefs. We might consider an excerpt from one of his earlier works. In his Addresses on Religion (1799), he wrote:
“Religion is the outcome neither of the fear of death, nor of the fear of God. It answers a deep need in man. It is neither a metaphysic, nor a morality, but above all and essentially an intuition and a feeling. … Dogmas are not, properly speaking, part of religion: rather it is that they are derived from it. Religion is the miracle of direct relationship with the infinite; and dogmas are the reflection of this miracle. Similarly belief in God, and in personal immortality, are not necessarily a part of religion; one can conceive of a religion without God, and it would be pure contemplation of the universe; the desire for personal immortality seems rather to show a lack of religion, since religion assumes a desire to lose oneself in the infinite, rather than to preserve one’s own finite self.”**
** Quoted in Kedourie, Elie. Nationalism, p. 26. Praeger University Series. 1961.
Again, there is much more depth and width to Schleiermacher’s works. But the quote above has two main forces I’d like to note. 1) Doctrine, teachings, specific beliefs are not the base of faith, rather, the inner intuitions of the heart and feelings experienced by the religious person are. In brief, true faith is what we feel is true. From our feelings and intuitions, we can construct and vocalize what we believe is true. 2) Over time, this emphasis on feelings became vital in many sectors of Christianized worship and music. What is felt in a worship setting is foremost, teachings and doctrines of Scripture are not.
Also, while serving as a leader in the Prussian Reformed Church and becoming known as a political agitator, he produced his chief theological work, The Christian Faith According to the Principles of the Evangelical Church (1821-1822). It is a refinement of his earlier position. Its fundamental principle is that the source and the basis of dogmatic theology is the religious feeling, the sense of absolute dependence on God as communicated by Jesus through the church, not the creeds or the letter of Scripture or the rationalistic understanding.
Scheiermacher’s work also aided later higher-critical theologians who sought to “de-mythologize” the Bible, find the “historic Jesus”, produce a myriad of textual criticism approaches, and more. He is now widely acknowledged as the “father of modern liberal theology.” However, his influence has also deeply affected many Evangelical, Charismatic, Pentecostal, Lutheran, and Catholic sectors.
Clearly, the Word-centered, apostolic faith and historic worship forms such as those in our Missouri Synod are anathema to those who have embraced an emotional, self-centered, subjective view of Christian faith, worship, and music.
In a systematic theology class long ago, my seminary professor, himself a leading theologian, gave us a hint to help our test scores. “If a question asks you to name the person whose influence was fundamental in producing some kind of error in theology or worship, and you are uncertain, answer it with Schleiermacher.” His point: it is hard to overemphasize the negative effects in Christian doctrine, worship, and music that the work of this one intelligent, yet misguided man spawned by his attempt to reconcile his distrust of Holy Scripture with a faith still under the banner of “Christian.” Even those who like what F.D.E. Schleiermacher brought usually agree about his importance.
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