Schleiermacher on Feeling - Speech 2

A few days ago I mentioned how Schleiermacher has received a lot of criticism over basing religion not in metaphysics (philosophy/speculation/system) or in morality (codes/duties) but in intuition and feeling. A friend commented that his primary problem with Schleiermacher is that this move toward feeling cuts Schleiermacher's religion off from love because love is more than a feeling and must be connected with morality (i.e. with duty maybe?) In my post I raised the suggestion that a problem with feeling is that it may be too subjective or individualistic. If, however, Schleiermacher is not as individualistic as he has been made out to be by his accusers and if, instead, religion requires relationship then he may be able to respond to the subjectivism objection. Moreover, if religion requires inter-subjectivity (i.e. mutually dependent relationships with others) he might also be able to respond to my friend's concerns that Schleiermacher's religion is without a love that acts.

I re-read Speech 2 again yesterday. On pages 119-120 of Richard Crouter's (Cambridge) translation of On Religion we read the following:

As long as the first man was alone with homself and nature, the deity did indeed rule over him; it addressed the man in various ways, but h did not understand it, for he did not answer it; his paradise was beautiful and the stars shone down on him from a beautiful heaven, but the sens for the world did not open up within him; he did not even develop within his soul; but his heart was moved by a longing for a world, and so he gathered before him the animal creation to see if one might perhaps be formed from it. Since the deity recognized that his world would be nothing so long as man was alone, it created for him a partner, and now, for the first time, the world rose before his eyes. In the flesh and bone of his bone he discovered humanity, and in humanity the world. (My emphasis)

And then on the next page he writes:

All our history is contained in this saga ... In order to intuit the world and to have religion, man must first have found humanity, and he finds it only in love and through love.

The quotations are the bedrock for Schleiermacher for how human beings access and experience the Absolute.* His arguments go on for pages and pages, but it is fair to summarize with the above quotes: Feeling and Intuition ARE NOT subjective, individualistic matters. They are rooted in concrete histories, times and places. "The mind, if it is to produce and sustain religion, must be intuited in a world." So religion is foremost an inter-subjective experience. Moreover, this inter-subjectivity for Schleiermacher entails love. Inter-subjectivity for him, in order for religion to be possible, is by its nature a relationship of love. In other words, true religion depends on love.

Now, in order to address my friend's point we need to see that love for Schleiermacher entails some kind of action, morality or duty. It cannot be just a warm, happy feeling. But we're making progress, are we not? Hopefully, I'll be able to address this point soon.

*Writing in his Romantic context, Schleiermacher and friends used terms like the Infinite, the Absolute and so on in attempt to encompass everything that anyone might consider a first principle. So the Absolute and the Infinite for Schleiermacher would have been God, but it would not be fair to substitute them with God because he was not making that identification in the Speeches.

Relating Religious Studies and Theology

What is the place of Theology in a secular liberal arts university? And how can or how should Theology and Religious Studies (i.e. the academic study of religion) be related to one another? These have become important questions to me in the last year as I have moved into the Religious Studies department at Northwestern. I honestly have no good answers to the first question presently. And with regard to the second question, I can only speak from my own case for now.

I am excited to be doing Theology in a Religious Studies setting because Religious Studies allows me to fill my methodological toolkit with methods from across the disciplines: from Political Science to Sociology to History, Anthropology and Philosophy. I can use sociological research methods, for example, to analyze theological evolution of Christian thought around the world today as a form of properly theological systematization. In short, in the globalized Christian church of the 21st century it has seemed to me the Theology needs some of the analytic power of Religious Studies.

It only occurred to me just the other day to wonder about the opposite direction of exchange: Might Religious Studies be able to benefit from Theology's methodological stores? What would this look like?

Why do we have to have a Christian version of everything? Why am I predisposed to not liking them?

Why am I sometimes predisposed to criticizing or making fun of evangelicals/ism?  What's the deal with this thing called GodTube?  Why do we have to have a GodTube, a "Christian" version of YouTube?  But, then, why not?  Why is that I was fairly sure before even watching one video there that the enterprise was cheesy and that I wouldn't ever want to be caught watching something there by one of my more liberally inclined friends?  I actually do think it is sort of a corny - not to mention unnecessary - idea.  On the other hand, I'm willing to admit that it has many helpful things to offer Christians.  I also won't say it's not very creative, artistically innovative or professional (things evangelicals are often criticized of being, cf. most Christian movies).  The question is why are many people (myself often included) predisposed to thinking this is so cheesey and this is funny.  

Faith and Globalization - Volf and Sanneh on Yale panel

How do faith and globalization affect one another?  How is each a function of the other?  These are questions that interest me greatly.  I had a special opportunity to interview Lamin Sanneh yesterday when he came to the Divinity School here in Chicago to give a talk on the topic "Resisting Mission, Redefining Engagement".  I hope to publish some selected portions of that conversation soon, but in the meantime you might enjoy this panel session in which Prof. Sanneh participated as part of the course Tony Blair just taught at Yale, "Faith and Globalization."