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 ...and a major contributor to the liberal, secular view of theology that undermined Christianity throughout Europe and the West.
Schleiermacher is often considered the leading 19th-century Protestant theologian. He studied under the Moravians, but rebelled against their teaching, finding it too restrictive. He defined religion as “a sense of the Infinite in the finite.” Religion should be independent of doctrine, because it is a deep-rooted, universal experience of humanity and necessary to all cultures. In his books, On Religion and The Christian Faith, he placed a strong emphasis on feeling as the basis of religion.
Schleiermacher revised the teaching of the creeds about Christ. Jesus, he said, was not fully God and fully man in the same sense of the creeds. This view pioneered the way for the later liberal views of Jesus as a divinely inspired man.
Liberal Theology was an aggressive attempt to merge the Bible with modern science and philosophy. These new liberal theologians applied Darwin’s evolutionary theory to Christianity and spoke of the evolution of the Bible, of the Church, and even of the soul. To the liberal theologians, the Bible was not a product of revelation, but a collection of myths, legends, and a few historical facts. It was not the Word of God but only contained the Word of God. The liberal theologians, like the evolutionary scientists, discarded the supernatural. They denied the virgin birth and the deity of Jesus Christ. They also denied that man is sinful, and that Christ died on the cross to atone for man’s sin. All these views stemmed from their basic belief that the Bible was not divinely inspired.
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