Schleiermacher, Friedrich
SCHLEIERMACHER, FRIEDRICH (1768–1834), German Evangelical theologian, philosopher, and pedagogue. His reappraisal of the task and content not only of Christian dogmatics but also of the whole of Christian life, faith, and theology earned him the title "church father of the nineteenth century." His distinctive approach to Christian doctrine also gave him an importance for the beginnings of nontheological ways of studying religion, and as an eminent figure in church, academy, and society he influenced public life and culture in Germany well beyond the circle of professional theologians.
Life and Works
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was born on November 21, 1768, in Prussian Breslau, Lower Silesia (now, as formerly, Wrocław, in southwestern Poland). His father, Gottlieb Schleiermacher, was a Reformed pastor and a chaplain in the army of Frederick the Great. Previously a thinker of the "enlightened" variety, Gottlieb Schleiermacher encountered the Herrnhutian community (stemming from the Moravian movement) at Gnadenfrei and underwent a spiritual reawakening. Five years later (1783) his fourteen-year-old son Friedrich attended the Herrnhutian Pedagogium at Niesky (1783–1785) and then the community's theological seminary at Barby (1785–1787).
The impress of Herrnhutian Pietism on Schleiermacher was permanent. Many years later (in 1802) he recalled that in the Brethrens' circles he first awoke to humanity's relationship with a higher world, acquiring the religious tendency that carried him through all the storms of skepticism.
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