A Revelation of the Inward: Schleiermacher’s Theology and the Hermeneutics of Interiority -- By: Gregory A. Thornbury

Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 03:1 (Spring 1999)
Article: A Revelation of the Inward: Schleiermacher’s Theology and the Hermeneutics of Interiority
Author: Gregory A. Thornbury


A Revelation of the Inward:
Schleiermacher’s Theology and the
Hermeneutics of Interiority

Gregory A. Thornbury

Gregory A. Thornbury is Instructor of Christian Studies at Union University, Jackson, Tennessee. He is co-editor of the forthcoming volume Who Will Be Saved? The Doctrine of Salvation at Century’s End (Crossway). He has also written a chapter on A. H. Strong for the revised edition of Baptist Theologians (Broadman and Holman). He is a Ph.D. candidate at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Introduction

For nearly two centuries, the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher has provoked controversy. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, theologians have debated, sometimes intensely, the meaning and applicability of Schleiermacher’s contribution for modern theology. Sympathy with Schleiermacher’s theology has often composed the dividing line between liberal and conservative, orthodox and heterodox. For example, Stephen Neill told the story of J. C. Thirlwall, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who ran afoul with authorities in the Anglican church in 1825 for translating Schleiermacher’s Essay on the Gospel of Luke. As a result of his translation of Schleiermacher, Thirlwall was denied the bishopric of Norwich, due to suspicions about his orthodoxy. Several years later, when the see at St. David’s was vacated, Lord Melbourne requested an interview with Thirlwall in order to confirm Thirlwall’s orthodoxy. Neill recounted, “The Prime Minister received Dr. Thirlwall in his bedroom; after an interview of some length, Melbourne turned to his departing guest and said: ‘I have done you a favor by presenting you with a bishopric; now I want you to do me a favor in return.’ …Melbourne continued: ‘What the devil made you translate Schleiermacher?’ History has, alas,” Neill wrote, “concealed the answer to the question.”1 Few theologians have felt apathetic about the theology of Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher forces theologians to declare their commitments about modernity, historical criticism, and theological method. Widely acclaimed as “the father of modern theology,” Friedrich Schleiermacher irrevocably changed the terms of modern theological debate. No one can afford to ignore Schleiermacher.

Schleiermacher’s influence has, at times, turned up in rather surprising places. At the close of the nineteenth century, conservative evangelical theologians began to look to Schleiermacher for inspiration. In the Southern Baptist tradition, E. Y. Mullins drank deeply from the well of Schleiermacher’s thought. Mullins incorporated Schleiermacher’s emphasis on feeling and experience into his own system, and significantly altered the ...

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