Christian Faith

Friedrich Schleiermacher was the founder of Protestant liberalism. His description of the divine as the feeling of "absolute dependence" set the stage for all subsequent attempts to defend the Christian religion against post-Enlightment skepticism toward the truth of religious claims. College and seminary level students will profit from reading the primary source, as opposed to secondary treatments. I use portions of the text in an upper division course in modern theology for Bible and theology majors, knowing that the effort made now will benefit them greatly when they get to seminary.

Its no coincidence that Schleiermacher is called the 'father of modern theology.' This classic in systematic theology is indispensible to any theology student tho wants to understand liberal theology. The Christian faith is distinctly Christological in nature. Schleiermacher, because of his Moravian upbringing, has great reverance for Christ (unlike some of the modern theologians who were to follow). Another distinguishing characteristic of the Christian Faith is Schleiermacher's idea of "religion as feeling." For Schleiermacher, feeling was what authenticated religion. Another distiguishing feature is Schleiermacher's opinion of other faiths and Christianity's relation to those faiths. He has quite a progressive notion of religious pluralism for a nineteenth century theologian. In short, no theology scholar should be without this monumental work. As an accomponiment, I suggest you purchase Schleiermacher's "On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers," which is another book that gave birth to liberal theology. Schleiermacher truly was the greatest theologian between Martin Luther and Karl Barth.