More Than a Feeling: Response

  This marks our fifth post in this series, now responding to Schleiermacher's points of criticism regarding the hypostatic union: Schleiermacher's third and fifth points we can treat at the same time. In them, we come to the crux of his criticism: How can there be a real unity of person in two natures? This has produced, according to Schleiermacher, an unavoidable precipice on all sides—either the two natures are mixed and form a third (e.g., Eutychianism), or the two natures are kept separated at the cost of the unity of the person (e.g., Nestorianism), or one nature becomes less important than the other and limited by it (e.g., certain kenotic or docetic or Apollinarian views). In practice, Schleiermacher rightly notes that this often...

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More Than a Feeling: Restatement

  Now begins our fourth post in this series, picking up at Schleiermacher's revision of the hypostatic union: RestatementSchleiermacher then proceeds to hope that the above criticisms have laid a sufficient foundation . . . . . . for such a revision, which attempts so to define the mutual relations of the divine and the human in the Redeemer, that both the expressions, divine nature and the duality of natures in the same Person (which, to say the least, are exceedingly inconvenient) shall be altogether avoided.1He goes on to frame his restatement of the doctrine thus: The Redeemer is like all men in the possession of the same human nature, but distinguished from all men through the absolute power of the God-consciousness that constituted...

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More Than a Feeling: the Hypostatic Union

We're launching right into our third post in this series: First Theorem (§96): the Hypostatic UnionThe Definition of Chalcedon (451 AD) set the parameters for what Christians believe about the person of God’s Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. This symbol of faith lays out several affirmations revolving around what is true of him. It made no attempt, however, to resolve its “apparent contradictions,"1 that is, to explain how the affirmations can be understood all together. The challenge for subsequent Christians with respect to christology has been to work out in a theologically consistent way how the antinomies of the creed can simultaneously be true.2 The doctrine of the hypostatic union immediately comes to mind: how can the divine (usually construed...

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More Than a Feeling: Gefühl

 We left off in the first post of this series noting that since Schleiermacher assumes familiarity with his argument up to the point of the First Theorem on the hypostatic union (§96) in his Christian Faith, it'd be helpful for us to unpack briefly two key aspects of his thought as they relate to his doctrine of Christ: (1) gefühl, the feeling of absolute dependence (god-consciousness); and (2) his definition of god (construed as relation). The order is important, as it is only through that moment of absolute dependence within our consciousness that we feel or intuit any relation to the unknown beyond the world (i.e., “god”) and can thus say anything about it. The Feeling of Absolute Dependence1Fully functioning adults process life—be...

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