The Precarious Status of Resurrection in Friedrich Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre

Abstract:  The Glaubenslehre provides the context for this exploration of Schleiermacher's understanding of Christ's resurrection in relation to redemption, the nature-system and eschatology. In spite of Schleiermacher's affirmation of the historicity of Christ's resurrection, he proceeds to empty the resurrection of redemptive significance, thereby maintaining consistency with a nature-system that implicitly disallows miracles, and resulting in an eschatology in which the resurrection of individual believers is posited in severe tension with the consummation of the church. Thus, the weight of Schleiermacher's consistent argumentation regarding redemption, the nature-system and eschatology suggests that there is no room for resurrection in the Glaubenslehre in relation to either Christ or individual believers.     

The Mediation of Redemption in Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre

Abstract:  In §24 of the Glaubenslehre , Friedrich Schleiermacher conceives of a 'provisional antithesis' between Protestantism – which 'makes the individual's relation to the Church dependent on his relation to Christ'– and Catholicism – which 'makes the individual's relation to Christ dependent on his relation to the Church'. This antithesis has been criticized for defining a Protestantism that is inconsistent with the (Protestant) theology of redemption presented elsewhere in the Glaubenslehre . This article seeks to refute this criticism, arguing that while Schleiermacher acknowledges the roles of both Christ and the church in redemption, he ultimately gives theological priority to the former.     

Incarnation, Resurrection and the Doctrine of the Trinity: A Comparison of Thomas F. Torrance and Roger Haight

Abstract:  By comparing the thought of T.F. Torrance and Roger Haight, this article shows that whenever the starting-point for interpreting the resurrection is not Jesus himself as the incarnate Word, then Christology and soteriology are undermined because of a faulty understanding of the Trinity, with the result that salvation is equated with the human religious quest for meaning. Because the incarnation and resurrection are intimately connected, this article suggests that any docetic view of the one will lead to a docetic view of the other. And this has soteriological implications: if Jesus is not seen as the only Savior, then we must somehow save ourselves.     

Kenosis,Necessity and Incarnation

The doctrine of the Incarnation faces the following modal challenge: ‘The Son, as God, exists of necessity; Jesus, as man, exists only contingently. Therefore they cannot be one and the same.’ On the face it, the kenotic model, on which the Son gave up some of the divine properties at the Incarnation, cannot help to meet this challenge, since the suggestion that the Son gave up necessary existence implies that the necessity in question was only contingent, and this notion makes no sense. A necessary being is necessarily (and therefore eternally) so. This paper, however, argues that some necessities may appropriately be described as ‘contingent’, being conditional on contingent and mutable circumstances, and that there is a natural understanding of divine necessity on which the Son could give up necessary existence on becoming incarnate.     

Incarnation and pastoral care

This essay is an examination of the usefulness of incarnation as a theological metaphor for pastoral care and counseling. Understanding the incarnation as both an event and as a paradigm of God's relationship to the world provides a theological perspective for examining four interrelated questions about identity and the helping relationship frequently asked by the pastoral care-giver. The incarnation metaphor finally frees us to care in the confidence that in God the Incarnating One, all things, including our care for the sick, are held together.Dr. Anderson is Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Counseling at Wartburg Theological Seminary, 333 Wartburg Place, Dubuque, Iowa 52001.     

Eternal Life in Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith

This article advocates that some form of personal immortality is not only taught in F.D.E. Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre but is also necessary for the coherence of the same work. The combination of a naturalized account of redemption, a commitment to universal salvation and the realist observation that some never know Christ in this life causes Schleiermacher to posit a certain but content‐free afterlife to account for the discrepancy.     

Happy Danes and Deep Incarnation

The new Copenhagen School of Deep Incarnation posits that, in Jesus Christ, God has become incarnate and therefore present “in, with, and under” all physical and biological processes. This claim raises the issue of “compatibilism,” according to which divine action and creaturely action are compatible, and “incompatibilism,” according to which divine action must be absent to allow for free creaturely action. Niels Henrik Gregersen, representing the Copenhagen School, affirms both compatibilism at the quantum level of physical activity and incompatibilism at the level of nature's self‐organization. This article points out the incoherence of this position along with the positions proffered by process theologians and kenotic theologians.     

Incarnation and Semiotics: A Theological and Anthropological Hypothesis Part 1: Incarnation and Peirce's Taxonomy of Signs

This is the first in a pair of articles in which we draw on C.S. Peirce's semiotics (theory of signs) to develop a new approach to the Christian concept of Incarnation. In this article (Part 1) we use Peirce's taxonomy of signs to explore what it means to understand the life of Jesus as the embodiment of the quality of the life of God within the fabric of the created order. In Part 2, we explore some ways in which this semiotic approach to the Incarnation offers constructive opportunities in theological anthropology and suggests some empirically testable hypotheses about human evolution.     

Incarnation and the Divine Hiddenness Debate

This paper examines the debate that has arisen in connection with J. L. Schellenberg's work on divine hiddenness. It singles out as especially deserving of attention Paul Moser's proposal that the debate distinguish more clearly between classical theism and Hebraic theisms. This worthwhile proposal, I argue, will be unlikely to exert its full potential influence upon the debate unless certain features of Christian incarnation belief are recognized and addressed in connection with it.     

Divine Action,Resurrection, and the Transformation of the Universe

Abstract

The article examines the notion of self-organization and explores the reality of biological processes from an epistemological point of view. First, I briefly analyze what is currently regarded as one of the most important discoveries not only in physics, but also in biology—namely, complex systems and deterministic chaos; secondly, I offer some reflections on the new frontiers of contemporary biology— namely, functional genomics and systems biology. The central part of the article focuses on the epistemological transition from genetic determinism to the new conception of “meaning” as emergence.