Shleiermacher On Religion

In Edward’s selected sermon God Glorified in Man’s Dependence, he proposes that “there is an absolute and universal dependence of the redeemed on God for all their good” (Edwards, 1), and second, “God hereby is exalted and glorified in the work of redemption,” (Edwards, 1). The redeemed are entirely dependent on God; they have all their good of him, and that they have all through him, and they have all in him. He is the cause of their good and the only proper cause. He is our savior. “It is God that pardons and justifies, and delivers from going down to hell, and into his favour the redeemed are received. It is God that delivers from the dominion of sin, cleanses us from our filthiness,” (Edwards, 2). It is clear why we must be dependent on

He says, “Religion’s essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling,” (Schleiermacher, 22). When he uses the term feeling, he is not so much talking about what we know as emotions, but rather intuition. Intuition is something that is perceived, and “it is the highest and most universal formula of religion on the basis of which you should be able to find every place in religion from which you may determine its essence and its limits,” (Schleiermacher, 24). In relations to God, Schleiermacher discusses the idea of absolute dependence. This absolute dependence within consciousness is our relation to God. God is an internal feeling that we have, and when we feel God, we express it in words and deeds, prayer and praise. This contradicts usual notions of God because God is usually something external, but for Schleiermacher, God is a feeling inside of you, whether it is love, hate, or

First, he says that “God is that which concerns man ultimately” and secondly he says, “God is being-itself”. The former describes man’s ultimate concern for God. This means that man worships one God and nothing else. It also means that the commitment is complete in all dimensions of the man – the mind, heart and soul. This is parallel to the commandment, “The Lord, our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with your entire mind, and with all your strength,” (Tillich, 13). The latter of the two phrases, “God is being-itself”, Tillich wants to make a clear distinction between “a being” and “being”. God cannot be “a being” because that would make him part of the finite realm. God must always be symbolic in order to avoid being corrupted by our ambiguity and own finitude. God also stand above the level of individual existence, therefore he is “Being-Itself”; he is not alongside other beings in creation, but is the overarching principle that defines the