But it soon became very evident that the Rationalists and Supernaturalists were unable to harmonize. The points of difference were so decided that it was vain to expect a union. Reinhard was correct in his opinion that one or the other would have to yield. Just at the crisis when these two systems were attracting greatest attention, Schleiermacher published his System of Doctrines, 1821. In this work he proved what had not been conceived by any writer save himself, that there was another road to progress. As soon as it gained a hearing the disputants saw that their arguments were no longer of value, that the ground of the discussion was altogether changed, and that the cause of faith must eventually triumph. The book was a complete surprise to all parties. It was a stroke of genius, destined alike to recast existing theology and to create a new public sentiment for the future.
The leading ideas developed in this master-piece of theology are Christ, Religion, and the Church. The Rationalists had ever held that reason is the criterion of truth, but Schleiermacher elevates Christian consciousness to the throne. They had reduced religion to a mere formal morality; yet he shows that religion and morality are very different, and that the former consists neither in knowledge or action, but in the sentiment or feeling of the heart. Thus he develops the opinion first published in the Discourses on Religion. He uses the term "piety" to designate religion. This piety should become the great spring of our life and the inspiring power of faith. There is no real inconsistency between knowledge and piety; they can harmonize beautifully when carried to their loftiest extent. The religious feeling, which judges truth, is characterized by absolute dependence. This is not degrading to man, but his true dignity consists in it. We have different conceptions of God, derived from the feeling of dependence, which is varied according to the nature of outward circumstances. Christ must be judged by us not so much according to the received accounts of his life as by his great relations to us as Redeemer and Saviour. Our view of him must be deeper than his mere incarnation. He was concerned in creation just so far as it was not completed until redeemed. If we would have communion with God we can enjoy it only through the medium of Christ. The peculiar value of redemption lies in its applicability to our necessity for salvation. The very sinlessness of Christ can be in a measure incorporated with our humanity, and we should aim after the mind that was in Christ. We are never fully united with Christ until we have a perfect spirit of dependence. When this occurs, the soul is passing into the glorious condition of the new birth. The church is the depository of that spirit of Christ which every believer must enjoy in order to inherit eternal life. The church, however, is not self-existent. Like the heavenly bodies, whose motions are constantly maintained by infinite power, the church is ever dependent upon Christ's agency for its very life. Christ is the spirit moving in history and controlling all things for the greatest good. The church is in some sense an organism of which Christ is the head. This fact is the central point of theology, for without Christ our faith is vain.[56]
Such teaching was what the times needed. The mind required to be directed to Christ as the only remedy for skepticism. But we must confess that, in the midst of some of the most evangelical expositions of divine truth, Schleiermacher gave expression to serious doubts. He disclaimed any great authority inherent in the Old Testament in the following style: "The Old Testament Scriptures are indebted for their place in our Bible partly to the appeals made to them by the New Testament Scriptures, and partly to the historic connection of Christian worship and the Jewish synagogue, without participating, on that account, in the normal dignity, or inspiration, of those of the New Testament."[57] As far as the inspiration of the Old Testament is concerned, there must be a distinction observed between the law and the prophets. The law cannot be inspired, for the spirit that could inspire it would be in conflict with that which God sends into the heart by virtue of our connection with Christ. Upon the law depend all the subsequent historical books; and both are, therefore, uninspired, according to the standard by which we judge the New Testament. The prominent portions of the prophetic writings proceed principally from the material spirit of the people, which is not the Christian spirit.
It is plain that Schleiermacher's views concerning the Trinity were defective. He despatches it thus: "The church doctrine of the Trinity demands that we should think each of the three persons equal to the Divine Being, and vice versa; and each of the three persons equal to the others. We are unable to do either the one or the other, but can only conceive the persons in a gradation; and in like manner the unity of the substance either less than the persons, or the contrary." He discourses eloquently of the Spirit; but, after all, he teaches that the Holy Ghost is only the common spirit of the Christian church as a corporate body striving after unity. The term "common spirit," which he employs, he understands to be the same that is used in worldly polity; that is, the common tendency in all, who form one moral person, toward the welfare of the whole. This beneficial sentiment is, in each, the peculiar love to every individual. The Holy Ghost is the union of the Divine Being with human nature, in the form of the common spirit animating the corporate life of the faithful. Schleiermacher did not reject miracles altogether as historical facts, but cast doubt upon their character by holding that, if they did occur, it was only in conformity with a higher nature of which we know nothing. His opinion concerning the doctrine of angels was not orthodox; for he rejected the existence of the devil, and the supposition of the fall of angels from heaven. Some of the most important events in connection with Christ were discarded by him as unnecessary to saving faith, namely, the miraculous conception, the resurrection, ascension, and return of Christ to judgment. In his opinion sin was hurtfulness, not guilt.
It is astonishing that we find so much truth and error concentrated in the same man. But Neander was nevertheless correct in the words in which he announced Schleiermacher's death: "We have now lost a man from whom will be dated henceforth a new era in the history of theology." In reading closely some of his false positions, we soon meet with something so deep and spiritually earnest that we are forgetful of the doubt, being attracted by the greater glow of the living truth. As life advanced he improved in his appreciation of doctrine, and his latest works are hardly recognizable as written by the same hand. He published several books, of which we have made no mention, but in all the fruits of his pen he revealed an unfailing love of a personal Redeemer. His sermons were the outflow of his genial nature, kindled by his stern view of Christ's communion with his living disciples. Mr. Farrar eloquently sums up his work, though it must be acknowledged that the present generation stands too near the time of Schleiermacher's activity to bestow an impartial estimate upon either the theological position of the man or the influence resulting from him. "We have seen," says this author, "how completely he caught the influences of his time, absorbed them and transmitted them. If his teaching was defective in its constructive side; if he did not attain the firm grasp of objective verity which is implied in perfect doctrinal, not to say critical, orthodoxy, he at least gave the death-blow to the old Rationalism, which either from an empirical or a rational point of view, proposed to gain such a philosophy of religion as reduced it to morality. He rekindled spiritual apprehensions; he, above all, drew attention to the peculiar character of Christianity, as something more than the republication of natural religion, in the same manner that the Christian consciousness offered something more than merely moral experience. He set forth, however imperfectly, the idea of redemption, and the personality of the Redeemer; and awakened religious aspirations, which led his successors to a deeper appreciation of the truth as it is in Jesus. Much of his theology and some part of his philosophy had only a temporary interest relatively to the times; but his influence was perpetual. The faults were those of his age; the excellencies were his own. Men caught his deep love to a personal Christ without imbibing his doctrinal opinions. His own views became more evangelical as his life went on, and the views of his disciples more deeply Scriptural than those of their master. Thus the light kindled by him waxed purer and purer. The mantle remained after the prophet's spirit had ascended to the God that gave it."[58]
De Wette was, like Schleiermacher his friend and colleague at Berlin, a man in whom can be seen all the marks of a transition-character. There are two sides to his theological views, one bearing upon the old Rationalism and in sympathy with it, the other directly tending to revive faith and religion. Even before Schleiermacher became generally known, De Wette had openly declared that religion can be based upon feeling alone, and that a personal Saviour is the necessary centre of Christian faith. The entire theology of De Wette was the outgrowth of the cold, critical philosophy of Kant and the more earnest and living system of Fries. He was, therefore, a two-fold personage, and it is not an easy task to harmonize his theories. One set of his opinions was based upon truth, the other on beauty. Religion has two elements, faith and feeling; doctrines and æsthetics. Religion may exist æsthetically, but it can only become vital in the feeling, or self-consciousness. Religious feeling embraces three shades: enthusiasm or inspiration, resignation, and devotion. Every history is, in a certain sense, symbolical. It is the mere reflection or copy of the human mind in its activity. So are the appearance of Christ, his life, and death, in some degree symbolical. In this symbolism consists the character of the Christian revelation. Here have appeared the eternal ideas of reason in their greatest purity and fullness; and Rationalism is nothing more than a philosophical view of the Christian revelation of faith, or the knowledge of the relations in which idea and symbol stand to each other in Christianity. Therefore, we must judge the miraculous accounts of the evangelists as symbols of the ideas existing in the early history of Christianity.
De Wette reflects somewhat on the moral character of John, perhaps without intention, when he supposes him to have written late in life—a time when his faith would naturally predominate over his love of facts. Strauss couples De Wette with Vater, as having placed upon a solid foundation the mythical explication of the history of the Bible.[59] According to De Wette, the narrator may intend to write history, but he obviously does it in a poetic way. The first three evangelists betray a legendary and even a mythical character. This explains the discrepancies in their histories, and also in the discourses and doctrines of Jesus. The miracle that took place at the baptism of Christ was a pure myth; and the resurrection and reappearance of Christ have their existence more in the mind than in history. With this view of the New Testament, it is not surprising that the Old should receive even more rigorous usage. The larger part of the Pentateuch was supposed to be taken from two old documents, the Elohistic and Jehovistic, and was compiled somewhere near the close of the legal period. The five books, purporting to have been written by Moses, are the Hebrew epic, and contain no more truth than the great epic of the Greeks. As the Iliad and Odyssey are the production of the rhapsodists, so is the Pentateuch, with the exception of the Decalogue, the continuous and anonymous work of the priesthood. Abraham and Isaac are equally fabulous with Ulysses and Agamemnon. A Canaanitish Homer could have invented nothing better than the journeys of Jacob and the marriage of Rebecca. The departure from Egypt, the forty years in the wilderness, the seventy elders at the head of the tribes, and the complaints of Aaron are each an independent myth. The character of myths is varied in different books; poetic in Genesis, juridical in Exodus, priestly in Leviticus, political in Numbers, etymological, diplomatical, and genealogical, but seldom historical, in Deuteronomy.
De Wette's theological novel, Theodore, or the Doubter's Consecration, 1822, was designed to banish the doubts of the skeptic by seeking refuge in the theology of feeling. Tholuck replied to it in his Guido and Julius, in which he proves that a deep appreciation and acceptance of Christ by the soul is the only remedy for infidelity. "We perceive in De Wette a continual conflict between the longings of his heart and the theological creed to which he attached himself. The lines written by him just before his death touchingly declare the great failure of his life:
"I lived in times of doubt and strife,
When child-like faith was forced to yield:
I struggled to the end of life,
Alas! I did not gain the field."
With the name of the lamented Neander we hail the morning light of reviving faith. He was one of the purest characters in the history of the modern church. His influence was so great as to lead very many of the young men of Germany to embrace the vital doctrines of Christianity. His father was a Jewish peddler, Emanuel Mendel, and the boy was named David at circumcision. Various forces co-operated in directing his mind toward the Christian religion; of which we might mention the philosophy of Plato, the Romantic School, and above all, Schleiermacher's Discourses on Religion. When seventeen years of age he was baptized and received the combined name of his sponsors, John Augustus William Neander. In 1810 he began to lecture in the University of Heidelberg, and in 1813, owing to the publication of his Julian the Apostate, he received a call to Berlin. He was there brought into the society of Schleiermacher, Marheineke, De Wette, Fichte, Hegel, Ritter, Ranke and other celebrated men. It was very significant of the new life now beginning to be felt, that his lectures were numerously attended. Even Schleiermacher, his co-laborer for twenty years in the theological faculty, had a limited circle of auditors compared with the throngs who went to hear Neander.