On Religion
Friedrich Schleiermacher, Über die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern (1799)
Friedrich Schleiermacher — a Reformed chaplain in Berlin, writing to friends who thought religion was beneath them
- Catch rate
- Not found in the wild
- Base research
- 300
- Stat total
- 376
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
STAMINA — Middling. Five speeches, written to be read aloud.
CONTEND — Middling. It argues by warmth rather than by proof.
DEFEND — Middling. A feeling cannot be refuted, which protects it. It also cannot tell you anything.
POPULARITY — Middling. The young Romantics loved it, and it shaped a century of German theology.
Cited for this book
Schleiermacher wrote On Religion in 1799 for educated Berliners who despised religion. He said religion is not knowledge or morality but a feeling for the Infinite. Karl Barth later called him the father of modern theology, and argued against him for fifty years.
Moves learned
This book learns nothing new by levelling — everything it knows, it knew from the start or brought with it through development.
What answers it
The specific move or chapter of Scripture that cuts through this one, and why. The number is how much harder it hits than usual — ×4 is four times the normal force.
Wesley felt his heart strangely warmed, and he says exactly what warmed it: I did trust in Christ, Christ alone. A feeling with an object is a different thing from a feeling that is its own object.
A religion kept for what it does to the one who holds it has already changed who it is about.
Bavinck names it directly: trust with no knowledge in it cannot say what it is trusting. Feeling needs an object, and the object is not supplied by the feeling itself.
Schleiermacher places religion in a feeling that doctrine only puts into words later. Bavinck answers that a religion with no knowledge in it cannot say what the feeling is about. Feeling alone cannot tell you whether you trust the true God or a comfortable idea of him. Revelation gives the experience something real to be about: God making himself known.
A summary, not a quotation — of Bavinck, The Philosophy of Revelation (1908–09), the Stone Lectures.
Bavinck answers that religion begins with God speaking, not with a feeling. God shows himself to everyone in creation, and then speaks particular words, beginning with his call to Abraham.
Schleiermacher places religion in a feeling that doctrine only puts into words later. Bavinck answers that a religion with no knowledge in it cannot say what the feeling is about. Feeling alone cannot tell you whether you trust the true God or a comfortable idea of him. Revelation gives the experience something real to be about: God making himself known.
A summary, not a quotation — of Bavinck, The Philosophy of Revelation (1908–09), the Stone Lectures.