1799–1830

Schleiermacher: Religion as Feeling and Theology as the Expression of Religious Self-Consciousness

In On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1799) Schleiermacher assigned religion a third domain – neither knowledge nor morality, but "feeling" (Gefühl), "a sense and taste for the infinite." In The Christian Faith (1821–1822; 1830), according to González probably the most influential theological work of the 19th century, piety is "the consciousness of absolute dependence," and Christianity is a monotheistic faith of the teleological type in which everything is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth. Doctrines are descriptions of Christian religious feelings; the criterion is the experience of believers, so doctrines are subject to revision. Barth accused him of replacing talk about God with talk about man; González also points to the debt of 20th-century theology to him.