Episode 139 - Schleiermacher And The Cross

Schleiermacher can make the cross sound obvious, humane, and even beautiful and that’s exactly why we take him so seriously. We trace how this towering modern Protestant thinker tries to keep Christianity credible after the Enlightenment by rebuilding theology around what he thinks we can actually “know”: human religious experience. For him, faith centres on a lived God-consciousness, a sense of absolute dependence on God, awakened uniquely through Jesus and shared in the fellowship of Christ.

From there, atonement shifts dramatically. We walk through Schleiermacher’s reading of Christ’s priestly office, his careful use of the Old Testament high priest, and his reworking of justification so God “views us in Christ” as we share Christ’s impulse to fulfil the divine will. We also flag what he sidelines: miracles, resurrection focus, and the thicker biblical claim that Jesus is not only priest but also sacrifice.

Then we reach the pressure point: the cross. Schleiermacher rejects divine punishment and treats the world as a closed system where suffering is the social consequence of sin. Jesus, the sinless one, “bears” the sins of others by enduring the harm done to him, while remaining perfectly beloved of God. The intended effect is pastoral and psychological: breaking the assumed link between suffering and God’s anger. We test that claim against Gethsemane, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, Hebrews, Passover, the Lamb of God, cleansing blood, wrath, and final judgement.

Subscribe, share with a friend who loves theology, and leave a review. Where do you think Schleiermacher gets the cross right, and where does he turn it into a different religion?

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Transcript

Schleiermacher And Enlightenment Faith

Family Stories And Christmas Eve Dialogues

Rev Dr PRB 0:30

Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-centred cosmic civilization as we continue to explore this theme of atonement. Now, in the last episode, we had the help of Jim Packer as we noticed the way the different accounts of atonement could either have three options the cross facing towards humanity, the face the cross dealing with cosmic enemies, and then the cross dealing with God. And we wanted to dive into Schleiermacher, Friedrich Schleiermacher, who is you know he's born in the late 18th century and lives into the first part of the 19th century, and he is this towering figure over modern Protestant theology, and his influence is just enormous. And he he was born in a Pietist evangelical background, and then when he kind of goes to university and engages, well, I think he's at theological college, and he's not getting answers to the questions that he wants, that he's asking. The like very much it's the enlightenment, it's the rationalism, and it's this revolution in viewing the Bible, kind of reading it as they would read any other book and engaging with it, not from faith, but from scepticism, dirt to trust your own understanding, all these kinds of categories are coming into play. A whole new style of questioning is emerging, and the idea is to believe to bel w try to justify beliefs, not on the ground of faith, but on the ground of reason. All of that is going on. Schleimacher's dissatisfied, leaves his theological college, goes away, studies academic things, but eventually kind of returns to the faith, in but the faith in a new way in the Christian faith, and now he's worked out a new construction of theology that's compatible with, critical of, but compatible with the Enlightenment project. And essentially, he says, look, we can't discover anything about the unseen realms that theology has always worked on in the past, what's going on in the highest heaven, or metaphysical assertions. But what we can do is examine human beings, and human beings have this faculty of religion, and there's this experience of religion that is in Christianity of and this absolute dependence on God, and this has been brought about by Jesus, and Jesus alone, it's impossible to have this consciousness of God without Jesus, but that all those connected with him is the fellowship of Christ, the community, or really Christendom, all of this is in fellowship with Christ and has therefore been opened up to this God consciousness. Now that human religious experience is within the realm of human knowledge and research. So Schleimaka builds an account of religion that is like that. And his great work is called The Christian Faith, and it's from that that we're going to examine his view of atonement. But uh joining me in this episode is my other son, Jonathan, who is in ordination training, he's at Wycliffe College in Oxford. He's home at the moment through kind of the Easter break period. And we thought it'd be good for him to come on when I'm examining Schleiermacher because Schleiermacher is has been a big part of our family over the years. Even when Jonathan was first born, I kept trying to get him to say how his first word that he ever would speak would be Schleiermacher, but I was unsuccessful on that. But uh tell us, Jonathan, what has been experiences of Schleiermacher in you growing up in this family?

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Yeah, it's Schleimacher's name has often come up, both in arguments, debates, but probably the uh most kind of vivid memory of him was growing up, Dad had this tradition of reading Christmas Eve every Christmas. Schleimacher's book, Christmas Eve. And so it's this tradition of reading this book, which of course really it produces a fantastic Christmas spirit. I mean, you can't deny it. He gets the Christmas kind of spirit well, in a sense, but we just loved as a family following these dialogues. Uh, stupid Leonard and Perfect Sophie.

Rev Dr PRB 5:53

Perfect Sophie, sad Leonard.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

I know everything he said is wrong, everything she does is perfect, which of course, in a way, kind of does show up in some of his thinking. On particularly, I remember one moment in the story, even as a kid, I used to kind of get angry and told you to skip it. Yeah, uh which it was this picture of Schlanmarker saying, Oh, like the real heart of Christmas, and he gives this a picture of like a dusty old church. There's like just very you know, very few people, they're all at the front singing badly, and some old hymn that no one likes. But at the back, there's this wonderful picture of these two people who just love each other and they're about to nip out of church.

Rev Dr PRB 6:39

No, it's a mother with her church.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Oh, yeah, sorry.

Rev Dr PRB 6:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

And I thought it was such a kind of perfect image of, and again, it is a beautiful thing that they share. But it I always got annoyed as a kid that for him it was like church has no place, it's dead, it's dying, it's dusty. That's not Christmas. Christmas is kind of like again, that family who can't be bothered with church.

Rev Dr PRB 7:00

Well, as those it's more like I don't, I think you're put slightly too harsh too harsh on him there. It's like there it's like uh this human experience of dependence where there's a mother and the child, yeah. And he's like, ah, look, that's what it's really all about. But rather than what church kinda but he's in his way, I know I would always be standing up for Schleiermacher and saying, ah, but he's always standing up for him. But I'm saying, you know, he's trying to say, let's not get lost in the structural outward stuff, the reality is the inner stuff, and of course, you you have always resisted that and said no, the physical stuff that is the real stuff, and so you've always even now you you always emphasize the importance of the physical and the concrete rather than just the inner feeling. So that was the experience. Now I I remember I bought you a copy of Schleiermacher, but I said, don't open it because until you're ready for it, because he's he's a dangerous person to read. It's like a forbidden book from a forbidden section of a library. What have you got with it?

SPEAKER_01 8:18

It is currently on my library shelf, still chained up, so dad will be happy. But I I do keep it in the wrapper and I do look at it and I try and read him through other angles and and bits of him from perspectives. But I have to admit, I'm still quite terrified to read him directly. He is like, I know how even the the bits I get of him, he's so convincing. And he really does get the heart of things well.

Rev Dr PRB 8:43

Yeah, isn't it? That's the thing. He's like he his ability to understand theology and completely understand what are the issues involved in theology, and like how a subject has been taught for all the hundreds of years and everything, and and and and Bible, what are the Bible verses that are and he'll sometimes explain all that and then say, but we can't say that anymore, and so we need to go in this direction, and then he he maps out his solution to it, which mostly we have to go, oh no, we can't with that, you can't do that. But his ability, his brilliance in understanding theology before he commits his heresies, has always uh compelled me.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

I think you told us kids we had to first read Bart on Schleimacher, then we were allowed to kind of approach Schleimacher.

Christ’s Priestly Office Without Resurrection

High Priest Model And God Consciousness

Rev Dr PRB 9:43

Oh yeah, I did. I said read somebody who's like really exposed his problems first. Okay, well, that's the introduction. Um let's get into Schleimacher. How he de how does he deal with the atonement? Well, I'll first of all I've like collected together a lot of quotations, and it's from his like effectively chapter 104 in the Christian faith, when he's dealing with the priestly office of Christ, which includes what Schleimacher heads it with is the priestly office of Christ, which includes his perfect fulfilment of the law, that is his active obedience, his atoning death, his passive obedience, and his intercession with the Father for believers. Well, we won't get into the intercession bit, the high the high priestly work in heaven. Interestingly, he doesn't really have any resurrection, of course. Shy Maker doesn't believe in things like that. Not really, and there's even a point at which he kind of wonders if Jesus was kind of resuscitated in the tomb once he got into the the cool of the tomb, he wasn't quite dead and recovered. So he he even toys with that at one point, but he he basically goes straight from the death to Jesus in heaven, which implies you know that implies he doesn't really have room for the resurrection because that is too much of a a miracle, which uh as an enlightenment man he he struggles with miracles and doesn't see the point of them. Right, let's get into this. What does he do? So he he says the aim the the ancient high priest in the law of Moses is the model, but he warns us not to like he says quite often in theology there's a confusion where things that are true of the high priest in the law are attributed to Christ, as well as things that are true of the sacrifice. So the sacrificer and the sacrifice are confused, he says, and we need to ri really carefully keep those separate and only look at the elements that pertain to being the high priest and not bring in any of the elements that are true of the sacrifice. So he makes the point that the actual high priest doesn't have any suffering in in his role. The high priest's job is to have this kind of set-apart life at the centre of the ancient people of God, and in that role, he repres he has to have physical perfection, and his daily life is kept completely pure from all the contaminations of daily life, so that he is this constant anchor point for the whole community that they can look at this man or think about this man, and their lives are relatively distant from God because they're relatively distant from the tabernacle and temple, but then their lives are up and down, uncleanness, cleanness, you know, defilement comes into their lives, so they feel comparatively much more distant and variable in their relationship with God, whereas they can think of this high priest who is there at the centre of the community, who kind of in Schleimmacher's mind he represents that what now he of course he doesn't have prophecy, there isn't any prophecy because that would be miraculous, but rather they represent the high priest, the reality that would be manifested in Christ, this perfect reality where there's a person who has a total God consciousness, because again, that high priest would sometimes go into this inner room that represents being completely in the prom presence of God, completely connected to God, and has a life that is you know comparatively, completely, consistently very close to God. So he said that's the point of it, and the priest, that high priest, is the whole community is represented in him. And if we are part of his community, we are connected via him.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

So that's his big first explanation of the how the ancient high priest, but also obviously how that connects to Jesus, because he's obviously looking more typologically, but it is interesting, obviously, that that some of that meaning is obviously we do see, particularly just in the uniform of the high priest, obviously the stones representing the tribes of Israel and the church really on his heart, on his shoulders. But even that idea of his mind is always about God with the gold plate on his head saying holy. So it is a brilliant kind of bringing out of just what how the priest would look to the people.

Fulfilment Of Divine Will Not Law

Rev Dr PRB 15:18

Yeah, excellent. And so, in a way, all that Schleimacher's saying there, you know, we kind of go, Yeah, yeah, all that's kind of true, that's good. And so I'll read from Schleiermacher here. He says, This forms the basis of our relationship with Christ, acknowledging this is the foundation of all that's Christian. This implies that no single human being is inherently righteous before God without a connection with Christ. So you get the point then. So for him, his model is Jesus is this man. So get we need he doesn't have him as the incarnate God or anything like that. That's leave that to one side. He's this kind of he's not really he's not really a divine human, but he's the a human who is absolutely kind of integrated into this God consciousness, completely caught up into the consciousness and even life of God, really. And so, as such, we are to look to Christ, and you'll see later he's gonna say, meditate on his death also for a particular reason, but that Christ brought about this fellowship of people who are inspired by him and enabled by Jesus to have this something of this same God consciousness, and they have those that are connected to Christ, and because of his what he's done, what he's taught, what he's done, everything, then this kind of possibility of a God consciousness like his, modelled on his, with the same desire in us, even if we're much more distant from God, yet we have the same desire to have this perfection of God consciousness and perfect life in us. And so by he's like saying that that's the justification by faith kind of thing. Because we're trusting in or connected to Jesus, we are represented by him. And let me let me read it. So no single human being is inherently righteous before God without a connection to with Christ. No aspect of humanity's communal life at any time is righteous either. It was like the entire Jewish people. The high priest alone appeared directly before God. God viewed the whole people only within him in a sense. In the same way, Christ is our high priest. God views us not individually, but only in Christ. In a living fellowship with Christ, no one wants to be anything in his own right, no one wishes to be regarded as such by God. Each person wants to appear solely animated by Christ. They want to be a component of his ongoing work. You see, and just as a footnote there, the ongoing work of Christ is us build like continuing to spread this God consciousness and achieve it more. So we this makes us I'll just read a little bit more and then we'll move to the next bit. Christ now presents us as pure before God. He does this by virtue of his own flawless fulfillment of the divine will. His life within us means the impetus to fulfil that will is also active in us. This makes us objects of divine favour through this connection with Christ. This is the meaning of the frequently misunderstood assertion that Christ's obedience constitutes our righteousness. It also states that his righteousness is imputed to us. So you can see how he's kind of taken away all the kind of legal categories almost from justification and made it into this communal experience of human life that's inspired by Christ, but connected to Christ genuinely, and God seeing humanity through this perfect example of humanity. Okay, so yeah, did you have anything to comment on all that?

SPEAKER_01 20:03

No, I think I mean the only one thing I remember earlier in the week, again, there are just little things where he's been very careful with his definition of a priest. So even I brought up that technically he's right, the the kind of job description of a high priest would not have them kind of coming necessarily doing any of that in pure work or dealing with plague or anything like that. However, the kind of chief type high priest, Aaron, who that kind of the beginning of it. Well, you've got Milkedeck, technically Jesus the Christmas. That's Christmas, but obviously the human Aaron, he does in numbers many times goes and opposes kind of the plague of God. So actually, Aaron, when he is God's instating the high priest image, it is a character who can protect people from plague, disease, and and act as their shield. But again, it's very technical how Schleimarch is limiting it to the job description, yeah, not the analogy or the character.

Why Priest Not Sacrifice

Rev Dr PRB 21:08

That's right. He doesn't want any of these kind of what he would call mythological elements or anything. He just wants to get to something that anybody would go, oh yeah, I can I get that. That's kind of my experience of humanity, kind of the more like that. One of the interesting things is he doesn't want to say Christ fulfilled the law of Moses because he says the idea that Jesus is obeying or Christ is obeying the law is unhelpful because he says it cannot any any when we start talking about law. I'll read this bit, the term law inherently signifies a distinction, it means a separation between a superior, commanding will and an imperfect, subordinate will. It cannot be asserted that Christ willingly subjected himself to the law. He could not willingly allow himself to differ from the divine will. See, he would say if Christ is obeying a law, then that law is external to him and superior to him, and almost that he's not in full alignment, naturally in full alignment with it. So he says, No, we should just say that Christ perfectly fulfills the divine will, meaning what God wants, Jesus wants, and there's this perfect, seamless harmony, and then he almost says, what the Mosaic law is describing about these sort of things you should do, these sort of things you shouldn't do. Jesus just naturally is that in his personality. He naturally is the fulfilment of all that kind of thing, insofar as that stuff is a true uh presentation of what God really wants. You know, see what he's done, he kind of takes away. Way anything that's exterior and makes it all interior to Jesus. So the when he says these things, it's all part of the general plan. So he also then says, so what happens in his death? Now remember, what he's done is he's excluded sacrifice language. He says that everything must be understood as Jesus as the sacrificer, not as the sacrificed. You reacted to that straight away when we were doing it, because what does that mean in terms of the Bible?

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Oh, I mean, it's it's clear that I mean, obviously in Hebrews, the the idea of him as priest and sacrifice is so key. Him at the right hand of the throne, the lamb looking as if it had been slain. John the Baptist. Yeah, exactly. So it is it's a huge part of the Bible that it no, he is both. And even so, in a way, humans can get a picture of one of these roles or titles that Jesus fulfills. But the brilliant thing about him is he fulfills them all.

Rev Dr PRB 24:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

And of course, so f so key that in Revelation, actually, it's the sacrifice that, particularly for John as it's been revealed to him, that's so key. I mean, the hundred and forty-four thousand washed in the blood of the Lamb, it's it's meant to be a deeply sacrificial image that brings this church to this glorious kind of um righteousness living with God. So actually, the sacrifice is a huge part of who Jesus is.

Rev Dr PRB 24:26

It is, and as we'll see, how how how is he gonna deal with this concept of like John the Baptist says, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world? How's he gonna handle that? Well, we'll see. What it's uh it's a typically clever Schleiermacker movie. But he first of all says in terms of him being our substitute, he has it that we cannot say that Christ fulfilled the divine will in our place in our in as a substitute for us, in the sense that because he has completed the will of God, therefore we don't need to or we shouldn't complete the will of God. He says, obviously, that's ridiculous. No Christian wants feels like that. Or what we want to do is we want to we want to be in perfect harmony with the will of God. It's not that, oh well, he's done it, therefore we don't need to bother about the will of God. So he said, that's it isn't he doesn't fulfill it in such a way that we don't we don't fulfil the will of God. That's that's not right. But again, all these things he says, there's a truth in that. We're like, yeah, no, of course, he saves us in order to to be to do to do the will of God. Of course, that's true. But uh, of course, what he Schleimac is doing in a way though is trying to create space between this idea of what does the law require and what does Jesus do. He's trying to always cut through that, as he says, he would think of it as move those things aside so we can get to the heart of the matter. Whether he is doing that. He also says, You can't have it that Jesus it does so much righteous things, things that he has like an uh an excess of right of goodness, righteousness, and perfection, so that he has lots of extra righteousness, that we haven't done enough righteousness, and that but Jesus has this huge amount that he's accumulated by being so good, and so it Jesus gives out and can say, Okay, I've got a huge amount of extra righteousness, I can give that out to the people that follow me to top up their levels to get them to the level of righteousness that they need. And you and of course that idea of super arrogatory merits of Christ, he Schimacher won't have any of that because he says, This would mean Christ, I'm quoting from him here, this would mean Christ performed more than was required to please God, but only that which is perfect can stand before God. Consequently, even Christ himself had no surplus to distribute among us. And that's again quite a powerful point in the sense that if absolute perfection is just the baseline of what is required to have a perfect God consciousness, that is all that Christ he is perfect, and that's all that there is no there's no extra as if he only needed a hundred unit units of righteousness, but he's actually accumulated a million or something.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Because it's that picture of if the high priest is say a healthy individual, how is he kind of more healthy, or if it's to the law, if you're blameless, you're just blameless. You can't be more blameless, or in a sense, more obedient than just obeying. Yeah, so it is a brilliant kind of framework he's put there.

A Death Not Purposed By God

Evil As Punishment In A Closed System

Rev Dr PRB 28:00

Yeah, it's helpful. Now then, this is let's get to the heart of the attack. All of that is to just frame it so that we can say, So, what is the point of his death then? Well, in let me set the general picture before we go to his general view is Christ kind of doesn't have to die by on the cross, and there's nothing inevitable about it, and Christ himself doesn't purpose it. What because he says, look, the the right thing for human beings is to preserve their life, and there's no it's totally unchristian to come to give up your life to like commit suicide, kind of, and so the he's like Christ isn't doing anything like that, all he is doing with is with his perfect God consciousness, he's doing the will of God, and that brings him into this set of circumstances in which the Jews and the Romans commit sins against him and he bur he he bears the consequences of their sins, and then but his death as such is not rec is not is not purposed by God or by himself. And that Kit Schleimacher even says, it is conceivable that Jesus could have died of a disease, an accidental disease, or died of old age in his bed. But if he died in those ways, it this this manifestation of what he shows in his death would not have been so clear or public. But it is it's not inconceivable to Schleimacher for Christ to have died in some completely different way, and in that context, he says the particular wounds and injuries that Jesus receives in his death were not to read any significance into those at all. That again, but it it's just it's totally irrelevant whether pierced in the hands, pierced in the feet, hung on a cross, you know, because that idea that we might want to say, but cursed is anyone who is hung on a tree, and lots have made of that in theology. He can't really make anything of that because that would require a miraculous purposing to bring about these circumstances, that that is the specific death that Christ dies, and he doesn't have that, so he he reads nothing into any of the circumstances whatsoever of the death of Jesus, and he warns us to stay away from what he called calls wounds theology and instead understand what's really going on in the death of Jesus. Okay, so what is really going on in the death of Jesus? Let's like take this carefully, and I'll ask you to comment on this first move that Schleiermecker makes. He says this in every human society, evil and sin are equivalent. The evil by meaning bad things happening because of sin. That's what and just to clarify, when he uses the word evil here, he doesn't mean moral evil, he means evil in the sense of the problem of evil as in the problem of suffering. So evil here is meaning the evil consequences or bad consequences of sin, the effects of sin. That's what is e meant by evil here. Let me read it then. In every society, evil and sin are equivalent. The evil is undoubtedly the punishment for the sin. Listen carefully, I'll read that again. In every human society, in the world as it is now, evil and sin are equivalent. The evil is undoubtedly the punishment for the sin. However, each individual does not suffer entirely and exclusively the precise evil connected with his personal sin. Therefore, we can say that in every instance that whenever someone suffers evil not connected with his own sin, they are suffering the punishment for others. They're bearing the sins of others. Whenever we suffer evil because of other people's sins, we bear the sins of others, we suffer the punishment of the sins of others. And then he says, and the causality of this sin has thus been exhausted. So if the punishment, the evil consequences fall on somebody else, then that's that then these others can no longer be afflicted by the evil because of his punishment. So a person I could commit a sin which causes the punishment. The punishment for my sin falls on somebody else, they bear all the consequences of my sin. And therefore I may not receive any punishment at all for my sin because all my sin has been borne by another. They have carried the punishment of my sin. Right. This is the critical bit. Go on, Jonathan.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

It feels like one of the kind of clever catch Schleimarker's doing here is equating uh obviously here, evil, punishment, and in a way, sin. There's a way in which, for him, just hurt or harm, he's he's using that as a framework for evil. Evil produces harm and requires harm to be dealt with. There's a way in which he's he's reduced it all to just hurt or harm. And the problem with this, in a way, is he's he's kind of put the whole world in a closed ecosystem where all the hurt we deal is kind of dealt with within the world ecosphere. There's no so you can see even in that paragraph, he's he's produced it very well that there's no requirement for any external hurt. So again, this idea of divine punishment isn't isn't in his thinking, it's not it's not a thing. Because he has done hurt and harm and punishment and evil, it's all the same. We are the only ones who do hurt, not God. Because we're sinful, we produce harm and others take that harm. So he's also not in that same in that paragraph done something brilliant in a sense of saying God isn't the one dealing any harm. There is no harm he needs to deal. There is no divine punishment. We receive all the punishment because of our own actions. Within humanity, again, he's got a very communal outlook. But he's also done in that framework the idea that of really with Jesus, the idea of taking hurt and harm. Yeah, which we'll come on to that later.

Rev Dr PRB 35:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

But I mean, as we can see, I mean, if we were even to comment on some bits from the Bible, for instance, the idea of in the law, if you hurt an animal of a neighbour, you would have to pay the neighbour. Say you killed the animal. According to Schleimacher, there would be no payment needed because the animal took all the punishment, all the hurt. So the evil deed was kind of paid for by the animal. But that's not what it says in the law. God's very much saying, no, no, you've hurt the animal, but you've also hurt, in a way, the kind of person over the animal, which in the Bible at large is really saying God's saying, You can you can hurt humans, but that also hurts me. You have to not just pay kind of the her harm against humans, but against me. Hence, in the flood, animals can't hurt humans because they'd have to pay for their actions towards God. So again, we can see in all these, Schleimark has done a brilliant thing of pushing.

The Cross As Psychological Liberation

Rev Dr PRB 36:08

Yeah, and and the flood itself, he can't believe in anything like the flood or Sodom and Gomorrah, like pun like for divine judgment coming down from the heavens. Because all those will be miraculous occurrences, and he doesn't have any of that. He's like, in fact, he says the I in these notes, he says, where it to think of God as angry and bringing punishment down upon us, or as specifically thinking now of Jesus on the cross, the idea that there's this angry God who pours out this kind of this anger and punishment coming down from heaven, that it's focused upon this man who must absorb it all, and and and only after it's been absorbed can God kind of get relief and be like, okay, I've worked out my anger now. Schleiermacher contemplates very, very briefly mentioned and says that of course that kind of thinking just comes from the most like darkest, barbaric human conditions. He's like, There's no place for that sort of thinking. So, as you say, any all in the Bible, the idea that God brings punishments, additional punishments from heaven and causes suffering from heaven, like with Sodom and like with the flood. But lots of times with the prophets and he's like, I'm going to bring about trouble for you. And then Thessalonians, when Jesus comes back at the end, he will cause trouble for those who trouble us and all that kind of no way, there's no place for that at all in Schleiermacher. The idea, as you say, it's a closed system, and it's it's difficult to understand judicial procedures like where you may deliberately inflict additional pain and suffering on a criminal in addition to the natural outflow of what they've done. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's what that we can see. The key move there then is he can't have a God who intervenes from heaven in an enlightenment system. It's a closed system, effectively, and all that we can have is that you can have an interior life, an interior, like existential life. Your interior life can be open to God and connected to God, but in this sort of exterior world, that it's a completely closed system, and the providence of God for Schleiermacher is identical with the laws of the universe, the natural laws of cause and effect in the universe. So, what about then the meaning of the death of Jesus? Well, Jesus just was carried on re doing his perfect obedience to the will of God that brings him into these circumstances where the the whole symbolically the whole world sins against him, Jews and Gentiles. They commit sins against him, and and he accepts that. Uh in a wrong way, he suffers the consequences of the sins of others. And quite specifically, he's not talking about this, like he's not carrying my sin today or your sin today. He's carrying very specifically and concretely the sins that were committed against him in that trial, and him being beaten by the Romans and being betrayed by people, people lying against him, making false accusations against him. Then he has no sin. Schleimach is very, very big on that. Jesus does nothing wrong, he is perfectly sinless, and so he is the subject or the object of grave injustices by the Jews, the Jewish leader, religious leaders, and the Roman civic leaders, and then they murder him and cause him great. So they do many, many sins against him, and he bears the punishment of that sin, the sin of others. You see, and he means it quite in the same way that you or I could also bear the punishment of other people's sins, but in our cases, we sin also, so we some of our suffering is actually the consequences of our own sins in our own cases, but in his case, he bears only the punishments of other people's sins. There are no consequences that are naturally should fall upon him, and so he bears the sins, the punishment of the sins around him, and in a sense, cat bears their sins, he says. So he uses the language that Jesus is bearing the sins of the whole world because he means it symbolically, and he's carrying the punishment of others' sins. But as he's doing this, he's on the cross, but on the cross, he still has this perfect blessedness of God, perfect God consciousness, and we are to look at him and say, ah, this is the pure man, the blessed man, who is completely filled with the consciousness of God and is completely beloved by God there. And though he is carrying the sins of others, though he is bearing this punishment, he is still beloved of God, still has a perfect consciousness of God, right up to and including death. And therefore, we are to see that bad things happening to us. There's a he Jesus is breaking the connection between our sin and bad things happening to us. That there isn't a direct connection between bad things happening to us and the bad things we and sins that we do. And Jesus breaks that and makes it so that we can look at him and endure bad things, the consequences of other sins and even our own or whatever, and not imagine that that separates us from God. When we look at Jesus and contemplate Jesus in his death, we can say, ah, it is possible to have this perfect consciousness of God in spite of the sins, in spite of the punishment, and there is no connection between sin, direct connection between sin and punishment, because very often punishment is born without sin and in and supremely so in Jesus. So Jesus breaks this delusion that has been upon humanity, that we imagine that our sins separate us from God and that He hates us and wishes to bring punishments upon us. Jesus kind of breaks that and makes us realize that if we're connected to Him and we're inspired and His impulse is within us, we can continue this project of fulfilling the divine will with this confidence that there is no punishment to fall upon us. Go on, Jonathan.

Gethsemane And Forsakenness Push Back

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Yeah, I mean it's it is a brilliant system that he's done, really, in a sense. If you're if you are not attempting to be faithful to the Bible, because that's the thing that immediately came to mind is as we've already talked about, God's the whole problem really is with our quotations and that framework Schleimarker produces is it doesn't require God, and in a way that's the point. But also what's that what that requires is really that the scriptures, the instances where God does intervene, the the miracles or where there are prophecies, those have to in a way be negated. He needs to have it that what Jesus is is just an example of the non-continuation of evil. So just a human example, a human way of life, which has been in some way through God consciousness, it is the way of life, a human way of life God wishes.

Rev Dr PRB 44:26

Yeah. And then Psalm 22, Jesus, what would you make of that?

SPEAKER_01 44:30

Tell us about that. My god, my god, why have you forsaken me? Because it seems like Steinmarker almost has it as it's Jesus is only saying that for our benefit, he's saying you feel this and you shouldn't.

Rev Dr PRB 44:41

Yeah, but it's something to do with notes where he says, because he obviously the words of Jesus on the cross don't correspond to having a perfect God consciousness. It's like Jesus is literally saying, I do not have a perfect God consciousness in the garden, too.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Oh yeah, go on. Yeah. I mean clearly in the Garden of Gethsemane. So Schleimark has this brilliant way of harmony, this idea of harmony with what God's way of li his living kind of thinking is. But then of course in the Garden of Gethsemane, we see this moment, both there and really in the temptation, where Jesus is having to choose to obey his father's will. So I mean, in some sense, the the kind of miracle the miracle of the incarnation is that there is this moment where he has to choose now, as we do, obviously him in a different way, but he does have to choose to obey his father's will, which he says in the Garden. Yeah.

Rev Dr PRB 45:38

Not as I will, implying that I kind of want to avo to not have this, but I will do what you will. And that the the how difficult that is for him to submit himself to the will of the Father.

SPEAKER_01 45:51

And then in Hebrews, he him learning obedience. Oh yeah. So again, it is very clear Jesus has to choose his father's will, and of course, that there is something divine happening on the cross. It isn't just a human dying. And we talked earlier that there is this idea of not enough goodness.

Rev Dr PRB 46:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:13

And the problem with that is again, you with this idea of no divinity, or no divine nature, really.

Rev Dr PRB 46:21

Yeah, Jesus doesn't have a divine nature. In Schleimaka.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

Yeah, that's a good point. You you end up with this kind of finite Jesus, one who doesn't interact with us today, or who interacted with the Old Testament saints. So you end again, it is a it's a brilliant framework if you really take this idea of the the gospel is a human Jesus achieving, dying, suffering, and God kind of was just there, but we don't really know how. If if that thinking pushed to its its logical conclusion, does produce this a finite Jesus where the best he can do is show us we are evil, but we don't have to be.

Rev Dr PRB 47:03

Yeah, it's true, and that God accepts us as righteous as long as we have within us either we're connected to the fellowship of Jesus, and also we have this desire to be like Christ, and then God's like, that's good enough. There is no need for forgiveness, there is no wrath of God. Atonement, really, in a way, what separates us from God is not being connected to the fellowship of Christ and not having this awareness of God's love or benevolence towards us, anyway, and that or towards humanity in general. And so there isn't really that there isn't any need for anything to be changed on God's side. There isn't really, I mean, would Schleimacker might say that there are external enemies that we need to be redeemed from, as i.e., society society has ideas about God and punishment and sin that we need to be delivered from. But essentially, the cross, the effect of the cross is on us. So it's that model, that first model we considered in our last podcast, that the cross is facing really towards humanity, it's not facing to God, it's not for really facing to the devil or any or or death, really, because Schumacher doesn't really have Jesus conquering death, not really, it's really the effect of the cross is almost like a social or psychological effect that is upon us to help us break the connection between sin and punishment and to instead realise God is not angry, God is not bringing punishment, there is this benevolence towards us in and through Christ.

What Schleiermacher Misses In Scripture

SPEAKER_01 48:50

Yeah. Which is a brilliant framework, but it just isn't really the biblical it's brilliant as an alternative religion, yeah, but it is not really quite Christianity.

Rev Dr PRB 49:01

But as we bring this to a conclusion, it's been a long episode because it's we've been de diving into it. It's the what we want to take is is the notion that this is our way of present because there are things that Christ does show to us about God and about correct behaviour in his death on the cross. And we we we Peter specifically remembers how Christ behaved at the time of his trial and crucifixion, and how Jesus did have this total trust in his father, and this is the sort of thing Schleiermacher loves to lean into. Jesus had this complete sense of dependence upon his father and was just trusting that it doesn't matter whether humans around him judge him guilty or condemn him, he was entrusting himself as to the one who judges justly, and so all that's going on. So that is the though there is elements in the death in the passion and death of Jesus that are facing towards us human beings to teach us how to die properly, how to endure persecution, how to trust in our heavenly father under the most severe pressure, why we should uh submit to his will while rather than our own, and why there is suffering first and then glory. Really, one Peter does so much of that kind of the me it all but one Peter also has the way that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from sin, and Schleimacher might say that phrase, but you realise when he says it, he doesn't mean it in the way that it's traditionally been understood. So we've had an example of the cross facing towards humanity, and and it's really designed to provoke us to see the flaws of what Schleimacher's doing, but also when people now will say there is no wrath of God, there is no judgment of God, and what the cross is doing is telling us not to worry, or versions, or just it's just a de it's only a demonstration that God loves us, and again, that is in the Bible. This is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us, loved us, and gave himself for us. That's in the Bible. The cross is the ultimate demonstration of his love for us, for God the Father so loved the world that he gave his only son, and and gave his son specifically, not only for the incarnation, but specifically, really, and most strongly in John chapter 3, it's thinking of the way he will be lifted up on the cross. So all that's there, yes, it is it is the ultimate demonstration of the love of God. It's uh it's the guarantee of a love. If he loved us enough for to die for us when we were sinners, how much more can we be sure of his love now that we are friends? All of that goes isn't there in the Bible, it is a demonstration of the love of God, it is showing us how to die, how to suffer, how to bear the sins of other people that we are unjustly facing, and all of that. So, in a way, lots of what Shlayamacher says is in the Bible, is just what does he not say? What does Shlayamach not say that's in the Bible? He has none of there is divine wrath in the Bible, there is divine judgment, there is this day of judgment to come where there is great trouble coming from above, there are not natural processes, all of these things, and then this all that that's this concept of how do you deal with sin if there is this sense of that sin really does alienate us from God, and God really is angered by sin, and that there's an uncleanness attached to sin that needs to be dealt with. The elements really that are all the points where Schleimacher says, let's not focus on Jesus as a sacrifice, and then the Bible does, even the fact that Jesus dies at Passover and refers to his own blood in the context of being a Passover lamb. The really the whole of the Bible and the whole of the minute of Jesus' own words about his death do presuppose that he is the sacrifice, the Lamb of God, and in our next sessions we'll get into that.