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 Dependence¹

Fully functioning adults process life—be it physical sensations or emotions—through the intellect. Responses to each are determined after we’ve thought about them. Because we have volition, we are responsible for our responses. Even if we do not think before we act, we still hold ourselves responsible for the action, simply because we’re always able to think before we act (certain involuntary reactions notwithstanding).

Schleiermacher points out that in Christ we see an example of this at the highest level (to the “nth degree,” we might say): not only are his emotions and physical sensations processed or

funneled through his utter dependence on god, so is his every thought. This ultimate level of being is gott-bewusstsein (god-consciousness), and it’s possible for everyone, now that we recognize its perfection in god’s Messiah, Jesus (this is, incidentally, part and parcel of what it means to be redeemed for Schleiermacher, as we shall soon see).

But if this process comes before thinking, where does it reside in our psychological makeup? According to Schleiermacher, given that everything is processed as either thought or action, there yet remains a moment before that transition is made to either thought or action. “Our immediate awareness occurs in the split second before we translate a stirring into a thought or an action."² In other words, something happens in us before we think; it’s an immediate (as opposed to mediated) awareness referred to by Schleiermacher as “feeling” (understood in technical psychological terms³): “[Feeling] simply takes place in the subject, and thus, since it belongs altogether to the realm of receptivity, it is entirely an abiding-in-self; and in this sense it stands alone in antithesis to the to the other two—Knowing and Doing."⁴

Relation to God

In that moment of immediate awareness, we sense that things outside of us influence us, and we them. The dependency is reciprocal. But we also sense, in that moment, a non-objective “other” whose influence is one way (i.e., an other who cannot be observed, tested, manipulated or controlled by any conceivable experiment). The fact that we feel our dependence and freedom (but not absolute) in relation to other objects, leads us to a consciousness of absolute dependence upon an existence of pure activity:

The self-consciousness which accompanies all our activity, and therefore, since that is never zero, accompanies our whole existence, and negatives absolute freedom, is itself precisely a consciousness of absolute dependence; for it is the consciousness that the whole of our spontaneous activity comes from a source outside of us in just the same sense in which anything towards which we should have a feeling of absolute freedom must have proceeded entirely from ourselves. But without any feeling of freedom a feeling of absolute dependence would not be possible.⁵

In short, we are utterly dependent upon that “source outside of us,” of which we become aware through the fact of our feeling of freedom in relation to the world of objects. All the world's religions call this source “god.”

So in our immediate awareness in every moment of being stirred by something, before thought about what has stirred us, we sense a relationship with God who influences us but whom we do not influence in return. God’s influence is upon that immediate awareness that precedes every thought or action.”⁶

Importantly for Schleiermacher, this influence is universally open to all humans. What distinguishes us is how often we allow that awareness to become the funnel through which all our thoughts and actions derive. On one end of the continuum, there are those who never translate this awareness into thoughts or actions; on the other end, there is Jesus, whose life exemplified a perfect god-consciousness. In this, “Christ is just like us—except that he was able to do perfectly what we didn’t know we could do at all until we experienced redemption.”⁷

As we move into Schleiermacher’s discussion of the hypostatic union, it’s especially important to note clearly his theology-proper starting point: God is beyond our finite ability to be known, in any sense, as an object. God has no discernible properties, such as being located at a specific place, or time, of having a definite meaning, this way and not that way. If the true god could be known as an object, then we’d be able to exercise freedom in relation to it, and thus we would not be absolutely dependent upon it, and so the consciousness would not be the one, true god. He puts it as follows:

Any possibility of God being in any way given is entirely excluded, because anything that is outwardly given must be given as an object exposed to our counter influence, however slight this may be. The transference of the idea of God to any perceptible object, unless one is all the time conscious that it is a piece of purely arbitrary symbolism, is always a corruption, whether it be a temporary transference, i.e., a theophany, or a constitutive transference, in which God is represented as permanently a particular perceptible existence.⁸

Thus, knowing god is purely mystical in nature; language only points to that relation, that feeling, and is only “purely arbitrary symbolism” in that the person(s) giving it expression are bound by their historical and psychological situation, which expression gives the feeling its concreteness. This naturally leads us into Schleiermacher’s discussion of creedal christological affirmations, as they, too, are subject to the criticism he writes above with respect to speaking of the divine.

More anon . . .

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1 I’m grateful to Catherine L. Kelsey’s discussion on this point in Thinking About Christ with Schleiermacher (Louisville: WJK Press, 2003), 71–74.^↩

2 Ibid., 72.^↩

3 Whether or not this technicality saves it from the morass of solipsism is another matter.^↩

4 Schleiermacher, Christian Faith (§3), 5–12.^↩

5 Ibid. (§4), 16. What Schleiermacher called "God-consciousness," Freud called “the feeling of infantile helplessness” and the “longing for the father aroused by it” in Civilization and Its Discontents (New York: Norton, 1989), 20–21. Based on Schleiermacher’s criterion, is it possible to discern which interpretation of the awareness is more plausible?^↩

6 Kelsey, Thinking . . ., 72.^↩

7 Ibid., 73.^↩

8 Schleiermacher, Christian Faith (§4), 18. While the issues this raises with respect to “God-talk” are beyond the scope of this essay, nevertheless it should be taken into account when contemplating Schleiermacher’s christology.^↩

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More Than a Feeling

 

More heavenly than those glittering stars we hold
the eternal eyes which the Night hath opened within us. Farther
they see than the palest of those countless hosts—needing
no aid from the light, they penetrate the depths of a loving
soul—that fills a loftier region with bliss ineffable.

—Novalis, Hymns to the Night, I ¹

Introduction

One of the first and fundamental dogmas with which Christian theologians grapple is the creedal affirmation that Christ Jesus is truly human and truly divine—one person in two natures—by using concepts of what it means to be human and what it means to be divine that are available in their cultures. Friedrich Schleiermacher, in his most significant work, The Christian Faith, sets out to lay down a systematic account of Christianity during the course of which he focuses specifically on the ecclesiastical formulae that “in Jesus Christ the divine nature and human nature were combined in one person.”²

The occasion of its publication was the notorious or happy (depending on one’s vantage point) Prussian Union of 1817, decreed by King Frederick William III on the three-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, which unionized the Lutheran and Reformed churches, effectively weakening the entrenched and newly invigorated confessional Lutheranism, thus unsettling the old guard. George Cross notes that, given the need for Prussian political unity and strength at the close of the Napoleonic wars, “Schleiermacher’s religious convictions and his patriotism combined to make him a supporter of the movement.”³ But he also foresaw dangers, argues Cross, that threatened Protestantism’s life, namely, a stringent conservative reaction to the ecumenical times. As heated controversy arose, the first edition of The Christian Faith appeared (1821).

Schleiermacher, by a broad treatment of the great topics of Christian theology, aimed at stemming the current running toward a narrow and intolerant orthodoxy, and at the same time, by bringing into relief the religious reality which underlies the different confessions of Protestantism, he hoped to deepen the consciousness of the unity and worth of the Christian faith. (ibid., 111)

Of course, the work transcends its occasion, by being a particularly well-suited piece of writing for this modern age, a time in which nothing can be taken for granted, by a young theologian who found himself “within a tradition to which [he was] personally committed [and] turned upon it the full arsenal of critical scholarship and let the theological chips fly where they might.”⁴

Since Schleiermacher assumes familiarity with his argument up to the point of the First Theorem on the hypostatic union (§96), it behooves us to traverse 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” any relation to the unknown beyond the world (i.e., “God”) and can thus say anything about it, subjective though that may be.

To be continued . . .

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1 From Hymns to the Night and Spiritual Songs, trans. George MacDonald (London: Temple Lodge Publishing, 1992), 10.^↩

2 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, trans. H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), §96, 391.^↩

3 George Cross, The Theology of Schleiermacher (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1911), 110.^↩

4 Peter Berger, The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 70. Cross goes on to note that the genius of The Christian Faith lies in its attempt to free Christianity from its traditional moorings (which have obscured its truth) as well as from construing it in merely moralistic terms, thus showing it to be the most natural and preeminent of all religions: “It was the work of a writer . . . who had held his mind open to receive whatever he might find nourishing to a hungry spirit in all realms of study and the philosophies of all schools” (Theology of . . ., 112).^↩

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Growing Grace-Full

“But you, friends, are well-warned. Be on guard . . . . Grow in grace and 
understanding of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ."

— Peter, in his second letter to the scattered exiles (3:17–18)

You say, “Dawson?” I say, “What?” You say, “Dawson . . . .”

I’ll never forget that common refrain coming from the mouth of Dawson McAllister, especially since it was at a youth beach camp in 1991 where he was speaking that I walked down the aisle for the first time of my life, a shattered young man. Whenever I blow it big, usually in private, and usually revolving around lust or arrogance or anger, I start to replay that moment of a muggy summer night in Florida, suddenly overcome with tears. I can’t help but wonder, what kind of tears were they?

That’s the question that has plagued me over the years, not least when I’m struggling with deep, personal sins. They weren’t quite tears of joy; they didn’t feel much like tears of sorrow. And that’s what worries me—the authenticity of that “conversion experience.” What was I crying about? My penchant for introspection drives me to categorize those tears. But they defy categorization. They mock me.

Then I remember those mysterious words penned by Saint Paul:

The moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. (Rom. 8:26–28)

“ . . . wordless sighs, our aching groans.” That sounds about right. Overwhelmed as I was at the end of that aisle, surrounded by friends and acquaintances, whispering encouragements and praises in prayer while laying on hands, my groaning was too deep for words. God the Spirit, that one person who most of all sees through my aloof facade, when I didn’t have the words to even attempt to explain why I got up and walked toward the front, were right alongside helping me along—indeed, giving me wordless sighs and aching groans, to the glory of his grace. I suppose that’s a category, but it still defies explanation.

Of course, that doesn’t dissuade theologians from attempting to do so (thankfully). One such theologian writes that what the apostle is speaking of here is “an agonizing in prayer, a mixture of lament and longing in which, like a great swell of tide at sea, ‘too full for sound or foam,’ the weight of what is taking place has nothing to do with the waves and ripples on the surface” (Wright comm. Rom 8:26–27, p. 599). The Spirit of the living God comes alongside and intercedes at that precise moment—the moment when the individual faces the ruin and misery of the fallen world, finding that no words can express his or her sense of futility and longing for redemption. The Holy Spirit, in other words, enables us to finish our intercessions, despite the outward cry being “reduced” to wordless sighs and aching groans. And they reach the triune God. Yes, they reach him like so many beautiful drops of love on the ear of her beloved.

The odd thing about this experience of mine is that I had no intention or desire for it to happen. Up to the very last moment, that is, even while walking down the aisle, I had no inkling of futility, no lamentation, no remorse. In fact, a close friend came over to me during the fifteenth chorus of “Just as I Am” and whispered something inaudible; I thought he had asked me to come up to the front with him. You know, support and all. “Sure,” I said, and proceeded to follow him. But by the time I reached the end of that aisle I transformed into a crumpled mess. And I didn’t know why. At that moment, indeed, knowledge was completely irrelevant. I’m the last guy wanting to be seen quoting Bono (to be super-cool, one must avoid, at all costs, doing what cool people do), but damn it if he didn’t write the perfect lyrics for what it was I felt (“Until the End of the World,” Achtung Baby):

In waves of regret and waves of joy,
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy.
You, you said you’d wait ‘til the end of the world.

So it goes—we, God-haters all, when the time comes according to his good timing, reach out and find, amazingly, his presence, because that’s what he promised he would do. The various authors of Holy Scripture write about this in various ways, and one of those ways is with the language of “election.”

But, contrary to all the over- and under-statements about this doctrine, election is not about being specially chosen to a place above the rest, as a part of some special club or something like that; it’s about being specially chosen to die to self, to be the salt of the earth and a light to the world—to have, in short, lives providentially shaped “along the same lines as the life of [God’s] Son” (Rom. 8:29).

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A Question I Heard Often . . .

. . . back when I used to hang around churches.

WHAT IF you're scheduled to work on Sunday? And the question this implies: Is the old Sabbath still in effect today for Christians?

My answer usually goes something like this: I don't think so (read this to find a good reason). But you are indeed to reserve and guard the time for the gathering of the assembly, which, in God's wisdom and since God raised Jesus from the dead on the first day of the week, happens to be Sunday (and it's no small fact that the church eventually confirmed this day too). The day itself isn't sacred. The time and space set aside for the gathering of the elect is.

This is why Christ's disciples "need corporate worship to keep them strong" (as commonly expressed). God decided it would be through these means so to do. If a Christian is asked to work on Sunday, she does so. But she may want to make it clear that she'd prefer not to work during the time the church gathers (the principle still applies even if her Christ-community gathered at some other time during the week). We work when we're scheduled to work (with all due respect to Eric Liddell [but, damn, that's inspiring]). And you let your bosses know that you'd prefer not to work Sunday mornings, since that's when your community gathers (I assume for the sake argument). Going in right after the services let out is of course a perfectly viable option.

As an aside, the ancients (Israel included) reckoned the close of the day at sundown, not at 11:59 p.m. So, technically, if you are sabbatarian, you couldn't work from sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday.

Being scheduled to work on the Lord's Day is not a test from God to prove your sabbatarian mettle. But it could be a test from him to prove your standing up for what he has commanded you to do—not forsaking the assembly. And this "not forsaking" isn't a checklist thing, that is, going to church every Sunday. It's a way-of-life thing. To forsake the assembly is to consistently forgo—when you are able—gathering with God's elect for the purpose of re-coventanting together in the name of our triune Lord.

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A Holy Calling

A PREACHER ONCE PARAPHRASED a bygone theologian as a challenge to the congregation: “To convert one sinner from his way is an event of greater importance than the deliverance of sub-Saharan Africa from the problem of malaria.” He went on: “The very fact that we have pause here is an indication of the influence of relativistic thinking among us.”

On the one hand, this point needs to be heard—a church who thinks the primary concern of Christianity is to make the world a better place suffers form short-sightedness. But it also perpetuates a false dilemma. No doubt, for those churches who allow the message of the good news of Jesus Christ to be overshadowed by social action, the fact that top priority must always be given to the conversion of souls cannot be overstated. Yet the last thing a church that is so afraid of falling prey to the social gospel that works of charity are avoided needs is "theological" justification for their inaction. The remedy is clear: the situation ought not be cast in terms of either/or—either work toward the conversion of souls or work for the eradication of malaria in southern Africa (or abortion [through social, not legislative, action] in the West, child prostitution in southeast Asia, or wage-slavery and state-generated oppression the world over). Indeed, a church's works of charity is (or ought to be!) inextricably bound to the news that the king of all kings was born in Bethlehem about 2,000 years ago.

Maybe this stems from our confusion over what “conversion of souls” means. It’s not just about redeeming one’s spirit; salvation involves the whole person. In fact, a soul, in biblical terms, is the whole person—both the body God fashioned from the ground as well as the breath of life he breathed into that body (Gen. 2:7 KJV). “The conversion of souls,” then, has nothing to do with redeeming some kind of wispy vapor animating our bodies (that has more to do with a philosopher named Plato than we might think). Rather, it has everything to do with the calling God gives to those he's called out according to his boundless grace and love. (Note here that conversion, in the language of the New Testament, is denoted by the word calling, 1 Cor. 1:26; Eph. 4:1; 2 Thess. 1:11; 2 Tim. 1:9; Heb. 3:1; 2 Peter 1:10). So, there’s no doubt the calling of sinners into God’s kingdom, with no qualifications, ought to be the church’s top priority. We just need to remember that God has promised to deal with bodies and tangible things, like all of creation—not shadows and mist—when it comes to redemption.

Connected to this calling is the purpose or mission for which people have been called. Just because a church has a top priority doesn’t mean it's allowed to relegate its subsequent priorities to the shelf—especially when those other priorities flow from the top one itself. This speaks to the purpose of the church’s existence. It is why the church is often described as a “missionary church,” a body of people whose mission is to go into all the world and make disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ (the one given all authority in heaven and on earth), baptizing them as a sacramental act of entrance into the covenant community and of union with the risen Christ. Having been called (converted), God’s people are then “sent” to fulfill that holy calling (John 20:21). But to do what?

This brings us full circle: First, to proclaim the good news that Jesus is Lord, that sin and death have been defeated, that all people are called to trust in him and turn from sin if they want to be resurrected one day, and that by his Spirit he is establishing God’s kingdom now (hark, powers of the earth!). Second, precisely because Jesus is the one through whom God began this good and final work in the world (i.e., it is well underway), we too must get with the program. We are being sent, and thus we are called to be agents of God’s healing love in this dark world. (This is what it means, incidentally, to be the "people of God," that is, the "elect.")

There is no dilemma here. The two are bound up together in the very same mission. And it’s not a mission to establish a country club or voluntary association that meets every Sunday morning. It’s not a mission to become a better person and develop some kind of spiritual potential. It’s not a mission to huddle together in order to escape from an evil world and to pave the way for heaven when we die. It’s not a mission to fill our heads up with facts. It’s not a mission that merely seeks to encourage others, and it’s certainly not a mission to show the people of the world that Christians are just like them. The mission is clear, distinct, and twofold: the calling of people to talk about the gospel of God with others, as well as the calling to acts of “justice and mercy and faithfulness.”

In Matthew 23:1–39, Jesus lays into a series of woes. They serve as warnings to us today insofar as we’ve fallen off the missionary track. Behind these threats of sorrow lie Deuteronomy 27:15–26 and 28:16–20, where Israel is threatened with exile if they do not keep the covenant. This challenge Jesus basically reiterates to the leaders of Israel in his day. Matthew, in recording it, is challenging us too: he puts the choice of exile or long life in the land before us. In which place will you be found?

{Part of this originally appeared in Tabletalk 32.10 (Oct. 2008): 12–13}

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