Faith According to Schleiermacher

Paper Summary:

This paper focuses on Schleiermacher's revolutionary view on faith. The relationship between faith and reason, the difference between subjective and objective reality, and other topics regarding faith are discussed.

From the Paper:

"Having considered the previous characteristics of religion, Schleiermacher provides a definition as to what is religion. Religion is "the contemplation of the pious which is the immediate consciousness for the universal existence of all finite things, in and through the Infinite, and all temporal things in and through the Eternal." A pious person has this dialectic feeling when he realizes that he is a finite creature in an infinite universe. Religion is to seek this and to find it in all that lives and moves; it is a feeling of absolute dependence. The smallness is correlated with the largeness of the universe and a feeling of absolute dependence is established. A moral man therefore is not necessarily pious since morality always reveals itself as manipulating and as self-controlling, while "piety appears as a surrender, a submission to be moved by the Whole that stands over against man." Religion is also "not a knowledge or a science, either of the world or of God." Even without being knowledge, religion does recognize knowledge and science. "In itself, it is an affection, a revelation of the infinite in the finite, God being seen in it and it in God." According to this, there is not one true religion because it precedes the conception of truth and falsity and is simply and expression of feeling. Women, because of their nature, embody this feeling more than others."

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