2009/04/20 by Ian S. Markham · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
paper · doi:10.1002/9781118427170.ch44
openalex publication_date 2009/04/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher has been described as the Father of Modern Theology. Heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant, Schleiermacher made two key assumptions. First, the classical arguments for the existence of God are unhelpful. Second, Schleiermacher assumes the Kantian account of knowledge. Religion is beyond the institution, the Bible, and doctrine. For Schleiermacher, one finds religion within; it is an encounter with the universe. Schleiermacher challenged all the conventional aspects of Christianity. The doctrine of the Trinity emerges out of Schleiermacher's account of God in his book, The Christian Faith. According to Schleiermacher, one should not see Christianity as a belief in miracles of the Bible; instead it is engagement with the transformative power of redemption through Jesus. Modern talk about “spirituality” rather than “religion,” which pervades many of the mainline denominations in Europe and America, has its roots in the thought of Schleiermacher.