Schleiermacher - Modernism

[Bonaventure]

In examining the writings of the liberal, Lutheran minister Friedrich Schleiermacher, one can find a true example of modernism. For him and those who follow such flawed thinking, religion is inherently individualistic, unique, and intuitive. Everything depends on the inside. Examine the following absurd proposition:

Intuition is and always remains something individual, set apart, the immediate per-
ception, nothing more. To bind it and to incorporate it into a whole is once more
the business not of sense but of abstract thought. The same is true of religion; with
the individual intuitions and feelings; each of these is a self-contained work without
connections with others or dependence upon them; it knows nothing about derivation
and connection, for among all things religion can encounter, that is what its nature
most opposes. Not only an individual fact or deed that one could call original or
rst, but everything in religion is immediate and true for itself. (Second Speech, 26)

Also:

I shall try to make clear to you that for me divinity can be nothing other than a par-
ticular type of religious intuition. The rest of the religious intuitions are independent
of it and of each other. From my standpoint and according to my conceptions that
are known to you, the belief "No God, no religion" cannot occur... (Second Speech,
51)

Where is the infamous mania for converting everyone to individual denite forms of
religion, and where is the horrible motto quote outside of us, no salvation? (Fourth
Speech, 77)

But everything that belongs to a truly human life and that should be an ever more
active and eective drive in us must proceed from the innermost part of our consti-
tution. Religion is of this nature. In the mind in which it dwells it is uninterruptedly
active and living, making everything into an object for itself and every thought and
action into a theme of its heavenly imagination. Everything that, like religion, is
supposed to be a continuum in the human mind lies far beyond the realm of teaching
and inculcating. To everyone who views religion in this fashion, "instruction" in it
is therefore a tasteless and meaningless word. (Third Speech, 57)

I hope that in examining the aforementioned passages, Catholics and those seeking the truth know what Modernism really is, and how dangerous even a drop of modernism is within Catholic theology.

Bishop Williamson's lampoon of such junk thinking as "feeeeeelings" make absolute sense. Nothing is external, or divinely revealed. Schleiermacher, who supposedly sought to preach Christ, ends up looking absurd, since there is absolutely no reason for him to profess his religion, let alone dedicate his life to it.

[Mithrandylan]

Or, as Michael Davies would put it, a God "in here" as opposed to a God "out there."

Good post Bonaventure.