HERESY SERIES: PART 1
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Question: Which of the Four Natural Heresies do you think Christians today are most likely to find alluring or true?
Background: Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) was a Prussian pastor, professor, and theologian who made significant contributions to numerous fields of study including philosophy, theology, and hermeneutics. He is most commonly referred to as the Father of Liberal Theology. As we learned in Discussion Topic 6, Schleiermacher was also known as the Father of Modern Hermeneutics. We also learned in Discussion Topic 6 that Schleiermacher’s first great work was On Religion (1799). But Schleiermacher magnum opus was his systematic theology textbook called The Christian Faith. This was first published in 1821, with a highly modified second edition being subsequently published in 1830. As with On Religion, The Christian Faith teaches that the basis of dogmatic theology is personal religious feelings, with the goal of achieving a sense of absolute dependence on God. To achieve this, Schleiermacher identifies four natural heresies that must be avoided. The following excerpt is from Section 22 of The Christian Faith, which is titled “The natural heresies in Christianity are the Docetic and the Nazarean, the Manichean and the Pelagian.”
Reading: Now, if the distinctive essence of Christianity consists in the fact that in it all religious emotions are related to the redemption wrought by Jesus of Nazareth, there will be two ways in which heresy can arise. That is to say: this fundamental formula will be retained in general (for otherwise the contradiction would be manifest and complete, so that participation in Christian communion could not even be desired), but either human nature will be so defined that a redemption in the strict sense cannot be accomplished, or the Redeemer will be defined in such a way that He cannot accomplish redemption. But each of these two cases, again, can appear in two different ways. As regards the former: if men are to be redeemed, they must both be in need of redemption and be capable of receiving it …
Now this is the unfailing consequence, if we suppose an Evil-in-itself as being original and opposed to God, and think of human nature as suffering from that inability by reason of a dominion which this original Evil exercises over it; and therefore we call this deviation the Manichean. But, on the other hand, suppose the ability to receive redemption is assumed so absolutely, and consequently any hindrance to the entry of the God-consciousness becomes so utterly infinitesimal, that at each particular moment in each individual it can be satisfactorily counterbalanced by an infinitesimal overweight. Then the need of redemption is reduced to zero, at least in the sense that it is no longer the need of one single Redeemer, but merely, for each person in one of his weak moments, the need of some other individual who, if only for the moment, is stronger as regards the eliciting of the God-consciousness. Thus redemption would not need to be the work of one particular Person, but would be a common work of all for all, in which, at most, some would only have a greater share than others; and this aberration we may with good reason call, as above, the Pelagian …
Turn now to the other kind of heresy. If Christ is to be the Redeemer, i.e. the real origin of constant living unhindered evocation of the God-consciousness, so that the participation of all others in it is mediated through Him alone, it is, on the one hand, necessary that He should enjoy an exclusive and peculiar superiority over all others, and, on the other hand, there must also be an essential likeness between Him and all men, because otherwise what He has to impart could not be the same as what they need. Therefore on this side also the general formula can be contradicted in two different ways, because each of these two requisites may be conceived so unlimitedly that the other no longer remains co-posited, but disappears. If the difference between Christ and those who are in need of redemption is made so unlimited that an essential likeness is incompatible with it, then His participation in human nature vanishes into a mere appearance; and consequently our God-consciousness, being something essentially different, cannot be derived from His, and redemption also is only an appearance. Now though the Docetics, properly so called, directly denied only the reality of the body of Christ, yet this likewise excludes the reality of human nature in His Person generally, since we never find body and soul given in separation from each other; and therefore we may fitly call this aberration the Docetic. Finally, if on the other hand the likeness of the Redeemer to those who are to be redeemed is made so unlimited that no room is left for a distinctive superiority as a constituent of His being, which must then be conceived under the same form as that of all other men, then there must ultimately be posited in Him also a need of redemption, however absolutely small, and the fundamental relationship is likewise essentially annulled. This aberration we call by the name given to those who are supposed first to have regarded Jesus entirely as an ordinary man, the Nazarean or Ebionitic. [Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, §22]
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