Bible Stories

An accent on experience is associated with Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Schleiermacher was a child of the Romanticism which dawned as the eighteenth century ended. Romanticism was geared towards feelings, and Schleiermacher based his theology on religious experience. Kant had dismissed revealed truth, and this seemed to leave theologians nothing to rest on or work with. But Schleiermacher maintained that the gap could be filled by the Christian ‘God-consciousness’, the church’s shared sense of dependence on God through the God-filled man Jesus Christ. True theology is God-feelings put into words. Read more

Rationalism here means the belief that unaided reason can reach and judge everything, drawing full metaphysical maps of the whole universe and God too. Reason can judge revelation, if there is such a thing as revelation (and reason can judge that, too). Reason is lord for the Rationalist, and God is what the philosopher declares him to be. Read more