Bultmann on What Schleiermacher Got Right and Wrong
It’s turning into something of a “theological descendants of Schleiermacher commenting on his thought” week here at DET. I had a quote on him from Barth on Wednesday , and today it’s Bultmann. And yes, I’m reading Bultmann. Blame David . Rudolf Bultmann, What Is Theology , Fortress Texts in Modern Theology (Roy A. Harrisville, trans.; Eberhard Jüngel and Klaus W. Müller, eds.; Minneapolis, MN; Fortress Press, 1997) : 42. Schleiermacher’s analysis of the feeling of absolute dependence is not simply false. He does, in fact, see that God is not “given” - neither a given of that type of world toward which I know I am so dependent that I oppose it in the feeling of freedom, nor a given within the feeling of freedom, in regard to which I may speak of the “ deus in nobis ”… Schleiermacher sees that we can only speak of God when we speak of our existence , and that this is given us only in the question, that is, is not really given . Of course, he does not see that we come no further th