This affected his theology. Without miracle, he could not arrive at orthodox doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation. If the example of Schleiermacher is instructive, orthodoxy entails miracle, for without miracle, orthodoxy is impossible.

Orthodox theology maintains that Jesus Christ was fully human and fully God. Athanasius (296-373) was the classic theologian who fought against Arius for the full divinity of Christ. Athanasius believed that Jesus Christ was fully God because God did in Christ what only God could do. In Christ, God did miracles -- healings, exorcisms, raising Jesus from the dead, and by his sacrifice reconciling the world to himself. Schleiermacher denied all this.

How then did he understand the divine nature of Christ? According to Schleiermacher, all persons possess a God-consciousness as part of their human nature. In us it is weak and intermittent.

In Jesus, however, it was perfectly continuous and powerful, "... instead of being obscured and powerless as in us, the God consciousness in Him was absolutely clear and determined each moment, to the exclusion of all else, so that it must be regarded as a continual living presence, and withal a real existence of God in Him ..."(2) For Schleiermacher, Jesus' perfect awareness of God was the "real existence of God" in him. That "divine" nature of Christ was not God. It was the human awareness of God raised to perfection. As a result, Jesus had no real divine nature, simply a human nature with a perfect God-consciousness.

Schleiermacher knew very well he could be considered Ebionite, the heresy that Christ was fully human but not fully God. Schleiermacher defended himself by stating that he "could be called Ebionite only by one who feels that he must insist upon an empirical emergence of divine properties if he is to recognize a superhuman element in the Redeemer; ..."(3) By "empirical emergence of divine properties," Schleiermacher means that God in Christ had no empirical effects in the world. "Empirical effects" would be miracles. Without miracle, Schleiermacher becomes Ebionite, denying Christ's divine nature by defining it as a human nature with a perfect God-consciousness.

Let us now consider one other matter: how miracle relates to knowing God. There is a vast difference between knowing about God and knowing God. To know God one must encounter him in some fashion. If God spoke or appeared to someone, and if his speech or appearance had effects on the soul, that would be a miracle.

For Schleiermacher, these effects would only occur if God and the self were distinct, if God were objectively over against us as he spoke to us. Since Schleiermacher did not believe in miracles, he was forced to merge the self with the Infinite in the moment of encounter, thereby erasing the distinction between the self and God.

In his words, "I lie on the bosom of the infinite world. At this moment I am its soul, for I feel all its powers and its infinite life as my own; at that moment it is my body, for I penetrate its muscles and its limbs as my own, and its innermost nerves move according to my sense ... "(4)

This, in contrast to orthodox theology, denies God's transcendence, his utter difference from us. One corollary of this, beyond the scope of this short essay, was that Schleiermacher was never able to develop an orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.(5)

Schleiermacher was a genius, a brilliant theologian, and he shows what happens theologically when miracle is denied. In light of his theological logic, we are driven to a conclusion. Apart from miracle, one must blend the self with God in the moment of God speaking to us.

Or, to put it another way, one cannot know God as distinct from us except by miracle. Further, when God speaks to the heart or mind as Scripture, that is no less miraculous than God affecting our bodies as in physical healing. Both are equally miraculous and Schleiermacher denied both.

If one denies physical miracles because they are miracles, then one should deny that God speaks living words. Given those denials, contemporary Christian thought generally goes in one of two directions, either a mystical pantheism as in Schleiermacher, or a dead biblicism that gleans facts about God from the Bible but never meets the living God of Scripture face to face.

God speaks. Above all, he speaks as Scripture. And he doesn't just speak, he also acts, today as much as ever. We need to believe that. Jesus is risen from the dead. He proclaims his everlasting gospel. He confronts sinners with judgment, mercy, and forgiveness. He heals the sick, casts out demons, lifts up the downtrodden, reconciles enemies, feeds the hungry, confronts injustice, and calls his people, the body of Christ to do today in his Name the deeds he did in the flesh.

How glorious it would be if God's people believed that. What a blessing it would be if we proclaimed healing and deliverance as an integral part of the gospel message.(6) Did Jesus command us to do that? "And he sent them to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick." (Lk. 9:2)

Endnotes

1. For a fuller discussion of Schleiermacher, see the theology section of my web page, www.rsanders.org.

2. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, English Translation of the Second German Edition. Edited by H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928), p. 397.

3. Ibid., p. 398.

4. Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion, Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. Introduction, translation, and notes by Richard Crouter. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 112-3.

5. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, pp. 738ff.

6. Among many passages see Matt. 10:1-8, 28:18-20; Mk. 6:7-13, 16:17-20; Lk. 9:1-6; Jn. 14:11-14, 20:19-23.

--The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D. is rector of Christ the King Anglican Church in Jacksonville, Florida.