Mornings with Schleiermacher: A Devotional Inspired by the Father of Modern Theology (Chad Bahl) - A Review

  

MORNINGS WITH SCHLEIERMACHER: A Devotional Inspired bythe Father of Modern Theology. By Chad Bahl. Chico, CA: Quoir, 2024. XX + 193 pages. 

Although the name Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) might be unfamiliar to many, he is one of the most important Christian theologians of the nineteenth century. His influence continues to this day, even if it is mediated to us by other theologians. He has been called the Father of Modern or Liberal Theology, but he not only influenced theological developments, he also influenced the creation of modern theological education. Besides his theological and pastoral work, Schleiermacher served as one of the founders of the University of Berlin (also known as Humboldt University), along with Johann Gottlieb Fichte in 1809. It is considered a model of the modern university. In his capacity as an educator, he helped define the basic categories of theological education: Philosophical Theology (Apologetics, Polemics), Historical Theology (including Bible, Church History, and Dogmatic Theology), and Practical Theology [see Friedrich Schleiermacher, Brief Outline of Theology as a Field of Study, Third Edition for more on this. Despite his influence on the creation of modern theology, he was not without his critics. In the early Twentieth Century, a growing number of theologians led by Karl Barth found that Schleiermacher’s theological ideas had proven less than helpful for a new day, especially after Schleiermacher’s theological heirs supported the German war effort during World War I. Although Barth critiqued Schleiermacher, he also recognized his importance to the ongoing theological work of his own day.

The question we might want to ask is whether a German theologian from the late seventeenth to early nineteenth theologian can speak to twenty-first-century Christians. At least one such Christian, Chad Bahl has found Schleiermacher to be an important influence as he migrates out of conservative evangelicalism into a progressive form of Open and Relational Theology. Bahl, who by profession is a pharmacist and the editor of Deconstructing Hell: Open and Relational Responses to the Doctrine of Eternal Conscious Torment, a book to which I contributed an essay. Bahl has undertaken doctoral stories in Open and Relational Theology with Thomas Jay Oord. His focus is on Schleiermacher’s theology in dialog with Process Theology. It is out of these studies that Bahl decided to create a thirty-day devotional centered on Schleiermacher’s writings.

In Mornings with Schleiermacher, Chad Bahl seeks to introduce a contemporary audience to Schleiermacher's theological ideas. As he has emerged out of conservative evangelicalism,  Bahl has turned to Schleiermacher as a way of making sense of his own theological journey. You might call Schleiermacher Bahl’s theological muse and mentor. As I noted above, this book has its roots in a doctoral project focusing on Schleiermacher's theology. In this book, Bahl attempts to do three things. First, he offers the reader a month-long daily devotional. Secondly, he offers a brief biography of Schleiermacher. Finally, with the biographical sketch as an introduction, he reproduces Schleiermacher’s book The Monologen, which Bahl suggests is Schleiermacher’s spiritual autobiography. In all, Bahl offers readers who might not be professional theologians, a devotionally oriented introduction to Schleiermacher’s life and writings, which he has found especially helpful to his spiritual journey.

Bahl begins uses his Preface to orient us to the book and how to use it, including offering us a brief description of the central themes of Schleiermacher’s theology. The preface, titled “Making the Most of Mornings of Schleiermacher,” begins with an epigraph from Karl Barth’s The Theology of Schleiermacher: “If anyone still speaks today in Protestant theology as though he were still among us, it is Schleiermacher. We study Paul and the reformers, but we see through the eyes of Schleiermacher and think along the same lines he did” (p. xv). Barth could say this even though he strongly critiqued Schleiermacher’s theology (a critique I largely follow). In this preface, Bahl also helpfully briefly introduces us to the major themes of Schleiermacher’s theology and writings. These include “Faith through Feeling,” “Feeling of Absolute Dependence,” “God Consciousness,” and “Polymath.” The last isn’t a theme, but rather a description of Schleiermacher’s life story, for he was a theologian, philosopher, biblical scholar, and translator of classic texts from Plato and Aristotle. I want to point out here the key piece of Schleiermacher’s theology that Bahl has focused on, and that is the role that “feeling” plays in Schleiermacher’s theology. It is that emphasis that seems to attract Bahl to Schleiermacher.

The first major section of the book is the daily devotional. Each of the thirty devotionals includes an epigraph that contains a quote from one of Schleiermacher’s works, including On Religion, the Monologen, and The Christian Faith. He then uses that quotation to build a devotional directed at progressive Christians. Bahl suggests that Schleiermacher "helped recenter faith in a way that prioritized the experience of a relationship with God and spoke out strongly against the extremes of both biblical literalism and spiritual relativism." (p. xvi). As noted, the idea of religion or faith being defined in terms of a “feeling of absolute dependence on God" stands at the center of Schleiermacher’s theology, though questions have been raised as to what that means especially if it is disconnected from scripture or dogmatic theology. After he offers his take on the theme rooted in a saying from Schleiermacher, Bahl poses three reflection questions inviting the user to write down their “Musings.” As we engage with Schleiermacher’s writings and Bahl’s interpretation, we discover that Schleiermacher focuses his attention on the inner spiritual life not on the externals. This is not a theology that seems designed to instigate action, but rather inner contemplation. At times, it seems individualistic, though Schleiermacher also has a strong commitment to experiencing absolute dependence within a community context.

In one of the devotionals (Day 27) titled “We Intuit God,” Bahl draws on a definition of “the feeling of absolute dependence,” which Schleiermacher defines in the quotation as being “a universal element of life; and the recognition of this fact entirely takes the place, for the system of doctrine, of all the so-called proofs of the existence of God” (p. 79). In his reflection, Bahl suggests that when it comes to this feeling that Schleiermacher talks about, it’s not a subjective feeling. Bahl writes: “This feeling can be likened to the feeling we have of our eyes in our sockets or the brain in our head. Non-sensate, but instinctual” (p. 79).  When it comes to grounding that feeling, Bahl, following Schleiermacher, is skeptical of granting too much authority to the Bible, for it is, Bahl writes a book that “informs faith,” but “it is not the foundation of it” (p. 47).

Having spent thirty days with Schleiermacher, the reader is invited to dive deeper into Schleiermacher’s life and work. Thus, Part Two offers the reader a nicely laid out and informative biographical sketch of Schleiermacher’s life and work. But, more importantly, it serves as the introduction to one of Schleiermacher’s lesser-known works, The Monologen. Bahl notes that Schleiermacher’s works, especially the early ones, have Immanuel Kant as their foil. He points out that “If Kant wanted to relegate belief in God to the sphere of moral behavior, David Hume desired to banish belief in the divine altogether” (p. 93). It is these key Enlightenment thinkers that Schleiermacher addresses in his works, for they are the “cultured despisers” he sought to answer. Standing behind all of this is also his experiences growing up among the Moravians, whom he found much too narrow for his liking, in part because they limited his access to writers such as Kant. He left there for the university at Halle. I was surprised that Bahl didn't note that Halle had a Pietist orientation, as there are hints of Pietism in Schleiermacher's experiential theology. We discover here that while Schleiermacher rejected Kant's view of religion as morality, he turned to a more experience-based religion, with, as I read it, a somewhat individualistic orientation. Thus, in the end, he landed on “feelings,” a concept that owes some of its development to the Romantic movement of the era. Thus, for him feelings served as the best connector to God, so he replaced dogmatic theology with feelings, as well as prioritizing grace. 

Part Three offers us an edition of The Monologen, one of Schleiermacher's earliest works, which Bahl suggests is his spiritual autobiography. Appearing after his On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1799), which offered an apologetic for the Christian faith, The Monologen first appeared in 1800, with further editions being published in 1810 and 1822. The version that Bahl reproduces is the third from 1822. This brief book is composed of five soliloquies, which are titled: "Reflection,” “Soundings,” “The World,” “Prospect,” and “Youth and Age.” As I read The Monologen, I noticed that the focus was on the inner life of a person, guided by one’s feelings. What I noticed in reading The Monologen is that while it is spiritual it is very human-focused, with no mention of Jesus or the Bible or even God. In other words, though written by a Christian theologian and pastor there isn’t anything distinctly Christian about the work. It is, however, an invitation to introspection, not focusing on the negative aspects of one’s life, but the positive. Thus, Schleiermacher in the closing paragraph of the final soliloquy, “Youth and Age”:

Thus is my inner life joyous and untrammeled! And how should time and destiny ever teach me another philosophy? I give the world its due; in my outward behavior, I strive for order and wisdom, discretion and proportion. Indeed, what reason have I to disdain anything that proceeds so readily and freely and happily from my inner being and its activity? By observing the world one will gain all this in rich measure without effort. But in beholding himself, man triumphs over discouragement and weakness, for from the consciousness of inner freedom there blossoms eternal youth and joy. On these I have laid hold, nor shall I ever give them up, and so I can see with a smile my eyes growing dim, and my blond locks turning white. Nought can happen to affright my heart, and the pulse of my inner life will beat with vigor until death. (pp. 185-186).  

While this was written when Schleiermacher was rather young, if not changed in the third edition, he demonstrates a very positive outlook on life. Thus, one can see how theologians like Karl Barth, writing during the devastating realities of World War I might find this version of the Christian faith less than satisfying. That Chad Bahl chose to include this version of The Monologen in his devotional suggests that he found it spiritually helpful.

As for the version of The Monologen that is included in the book, according to the publisher, it is in the public domain. Rob Edwards is acknowledged as having reformatted the work.  As for the translator, neither Bahl nor the publisher gives us information on that matter. In any case, at least in its paperback format, nicely formatted and easy to read.

I approached the book having been influenced by Barth’s reading of Schleiermacher. I find him intriguing but not altogether helpful. I find him to be inward-focused and not all that realistic about the world we live in. Yet, I understand why he chose this route that runs between hardened orthodoxy and skepticism. From a personal perspective, having never read The Monologen, I was surprised to find little that is distinctly Christian. Bahl may address some of my questions in the thesis he is currently writing. I must say he has read a lot more of Schleiermacher than I have, so I defer to him in his analysis. I wonder though if a Christian theology that is rooted in feelings of absolute dependence is sustainable without some other resources standing behind it. Who is this God Schleiermacher is depending upon? Is intuition sufficient? There are other questions as to the influence of Pietism on Schleiermacher’s thinking, as well as the Romantic Movement of the age. Of course, that’s not the purpose of this book directed at people, like Chad Bahl, who are seeking a pathway out of the narrow confines of conservative evangelicalism.

While I still find myself unsatisfied with my reading of Schleiermacher, Mornings with Schleiermacher does allow us to hear Schleiermacher’s voice and ponder what he might have to say to us in the twenty-first century. Is he overly positive in his self-examination? Will it speak to the calls for justice and systemic change that many are calling for? Will it help us build bridges across cultural and social divides? I wonder. These are, of course, my questions. What I appreciate about Mornings with Schleiermacher, is that Chad Bahl allows us to engage with Schleiermacher and with his own journey, for it seems that he has, at least at this moment, found spiritual sustenance as he moves into a more progressive form of Christianity. Whether Schleiermacher fits with a Process-oriented theology, is another question not answered by this book.