Justification among the Liberals

No one really speaks for liberals; liberalism is so diverse no one represents it all. Except F.D.E. Schleiermacher, the father of liberal theology. In a world coming of age, or moving from one age to another, Schleiermacher, raised among the Moravian Pietists of Germany’s Lutheran church, sought to communicate the Christian faith in a way that knew the limits of science but explored the dimensions of religious experience.

Which leads us to Alan J. Spence’s sketch of how Schleiermacher understood justification in his book Justification: A Guide for the Perplexed, and it should be remembered that Lutheranism and justification by faith are almost synonymous. The justification worldview Spence outlines — God as judge, humans as sinners deserving condemnation, God’s gracious restoration of humans to being right with God by divine declaration on the basis of what Christ alone has done, our reception of that judgment by faith — comes into serious conflict with Schleiermacher’s worldview and justification in the liberal tradition would never again be the same. Schleiermacher’s famous book is called The Christian Faith.

What factors in liberalism come into play that reorient the meaning of justification?

Spence’s contention, and this is a well-worn meme in theological studies, is that Schleiermacher’s theology explored not the objective reality of God, or even the objective reality of Scripture, but the subjective world of spirituality. Thus, “the appropriate subject-matter of theology is human spirituality or piety” (95). [So much of the contemporary discussion of “spirituality” is a Schleiermachian kind of exploration, and this approach provides the widest possible field for ecumenical unity — exploring religious experience permits various religions to communicate across the spectrum.]

The essence of this Schleiermachian approach is his famous expression: “the consciousness of being absolutely dependent” (95). Systematic theology in his hands is all re-expressed in light of that consciousness.

Faith in God? “nothing but the certainty concerning the feeling of absolute dependence” (97). Sin? When “God-consciousness…. determines our self-consciousness as pain” (97). It is a consciousness of estrangement. Justice of God? This is an “ordained … connexion between evil and actual sin” (98) — in other words, the correlation of evil and injustice and our lack of God-consciousness. So the justice of God for Schleiermacher seems to be entirely retributive. God’s justice holds back sin before the coming of redemption.

Person and work of Christ? What makes Jesus unique is his singular and absolute God-consciousness so his work is to draw us into his God-consciousness. His difference then is one of degree, not kind. He alone originates this God-consciousness though; ours is derivative from his.

Salvation is communicated through the community that forms a continuity with the God-consciousness of Jesus. He was against what he called a “magical” view of salvation: double imputation, transference of our sin to him or his standing to us, something from the 1st Century impacting us now … thus the death of Jesus is not of value to our salvation now; it is not atoning.

So, now, what about justification? It is about our self-consciousness changing and forgiveness is a new kind of consciousness toward God, not about something God does for us.

Spence: “The outward shape of a Protestant understanding of justification is present in Schleiermacher’s presentation. But the heart of it has been removed” (107). It is not an act of God but a perception by humans.

The words of Reinhold H. Richard Niebuhr loom: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross” (108; from Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America, 193).