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The Antagonistic Correspondence of 1801 between Chaplain Sack and his Protégé Schleiermacher

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Albert L. Blackwell
Albert L. Blackwell
Affiliation:
Furman University, Greenville, SC 29613
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Extract

In the summer of 1801 a sharp, even bitter exchange of correspondence passed between the Court and Cathedral Preacher in Berlin, Friedrich Samuel Gottfried Sack, and his ministerial protégé Friedrich Schleiermacher. The points of contention were Schleiermacher's circle of Berlin friends, whom Sack considered inappropriate company for the young minister, and Schleiermacher's book of 1799, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, containing theological views judged by Sack to be irreconcilable with the Christian religion Schleiermacher had been ordained to preach. This candid exchange was Schleiermacher's first official encounter with rising tensions between his theological liberalism and the orthodoxy of his Reformed Church background. Indeed these two letters argue theological issues that plagued Schleiermacher throughout his career and have haunted his theology to our own day, the most central of these being Schleiermacher's refusal to apply terms of personality to God. Yet these seminal letters have received scant attention in German secondary literature, and to the English reader they have remained all but inaccessible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , January 1981 , pp. 101 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1981

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References

1 Even Dilthey's comprehensive biography restricts its treatment of these letters to summary and generalized comment. Dilthey, Wilhelm, Leben Schleiermachers (ed. Redeker, Martin; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1966–70) 1.iGoogle Scholar, 456–57, 540–41.

2 Redeker's biography limits its treatment of the exchange to a passing reference and two brief excerpts. Redeker, Martin, Schleiermacher: Life and Thought (trans. Wallhausser, John; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973) 43, 60, 63Google Scholar. In his single paragraph summarizing the exchange, Speigler misattributes Sack's letter to Karl Heinrich Sack, son of the author. Spiegler, Gerhard, The Eternal Covenant (New York: Harper & Row, 1967) 20Google Scholar. Biographer Sykes alludes to the exchange in a single sentence. Sykes, Stephen, Friedrich Schleiermacher (Richmond: John Knox, 1971) 9.Google Scholar

3 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, Aus Schleiermachers Leben in Briefen (2d ed.; Berlin: Reimer, 1860–63) 4. 42Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Briefe. All translations from the German in this article are my own.

4 Briefe, 4. 47. Schleiermacher's emphasis.

5 Meisner, Heinrich, Schleiermachers Lehrjahre (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1934) 46–48.Google Scholar

6 In 1816 Sack was to become the first Bishop of the newly organized Prussian state church, and in 1817, the year of his death, the first Prussian clergyman to be knighted. See Bigler, Robert M., The Politics of German Protestantism (Berkeley: University of California, 1972) 35.Google Scholar

7 Epstein, Klaus, The Genesis of German Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University, 1966) 142–43.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., 359.

9 Briefe, 3. 46. Schleiermacher's treatises of this early period, Über das höchste Gut and Über die Freiheit des Menschen, never came to print; see Dilthey, Wilhelm, Leben Schleiermachers (1st ed.; Berlin: Reimer, 1870)Google Scholar the Appendix entitled “Denkmale der inneren Entwicklung Schleiermachers”, 6–46.

10 Briefe, 4. 51.

11 Briefe, 1. 201. Entre deux: “in between”.

12 Just when this happened cannot be ascertained with certainty, but it appears to have been during the month of March, 1799. See Briefe, 3. 107.

13 Schleiermacher, , Predigten. Erste Sammlung (1801), in Schleiermachers sämmtliche Werke, 2/1 (Berlin: Reimer, 1834) 3–184.Google Scholar

14 For Schleiermacher's account of this course of events and his description of the contents of Sack's letter, see Briefe, 1. 270–72. Available in English in Schleiermacher, , The Life of Schleiermacher as Unfolded in his Autobiography and Letters (trans. Rowan, Frederica; London: Smith, Elder, 1860) 1. 257–59Google Scholar. Sack's introductory note, mentioned by Schleiermacher, has never come to light.

15 Sack, Karl Heinrich, “Briefwechsel zwischen dem Bischof Sack und Schleiermacher”, Theologische Studien und Kritiken 23 (1850) 148.Google Scholar

16 See the note by Ludwig Jonas, Briefe, 3. 275.

17 Falk, Johannes Daniel, ed., Taschenbuch für Freunde des Scherzes und der Satire 5 (Weimar: Industrie-Comptiors, 1801) 308.Google Scholar

18 Fürst, J., ed., Henriette Herz. Ihr Leben und Ihre Erinnerungen (Berlin: Hertz, 1850) 160–61.Google Scholar

19 Briefe, 1. 187–88. “Mendelssohn”: Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86), the Jewish Philosopher of Enlightenment. Bureaux d'esprit: “bureaus of wit”.

20 Schleiermacher, , “Lucinde: Ein Roman von Friedrich Schlegel”, Berliner Archiv der Zeit und ihres Geschmacks 2 (July, 1800) 37–43Google Scholar. Reprinted in Briefe, 4. 537–40.

21 Schleiermacher, Vertraute Briefe über Friedrich Schlegels Lucinde, in Sämmtliche Werke (n. 13 above) 3/1. 421–506.

22 Schleiermacher, , Schleiermacher als Mensch. Sein Werden. Familien- und Freundesbriefe 1783 bis 1804, ed. Meisner, Heinrich (Gotha: Perthes, 1922) 143.Google Scholar

23 Dilthey, Leben Schleiermachers (ed. Redeker) 1. i, 541.

24 Briefe, 3. 320 and 310.

25 Ibid., 311. For a sketch of Schleiermacher's two years of “exile” in Stolp see my article, “Three New Schleiermacher Letters Relating to his Wüizburg Appointment of 1804”, HTR 68 (1975) 333–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 See the discussion of this issue in Niebuhr, Richard R., Schleiermacher on Christ and Religion (New York: Scribner's, 1964) 16.Google Scholar

27 Schleiermacher, , Der christliche Glaube, Prop. 50.3 (ed. Redeker, Martin; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1960) 1. 258Google Scholar. Classic “particular passages” that Schleiermacher might have cited in this connection are Ps 139:6 and Isa 55:8–9.

28 Ibid., 259.

29 Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. Battles, Ford Lewis; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960) bk. 1, chap. 2Google Scholar, “What It Is to Know God, and to What Purpose the Knowledge of Him Tends”.

30 Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube, Prop. 50.3, 1. 259.

31 Ibid., 260.

32 Ibid., Prop. 85.1, 1. 458.

33 Schleiermacher, , Reden über die Religion (ed. Pünjer, G. Ch.; Braunschweig: Schwetschke, 1879) 144Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Reden. Cf. John Oman's English translation in Schleiermacher, , On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958) 116Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Speeches.

34 Reden, 144. Cf. Speeches, 115.

35 Reden, 50, 80, 99, and passim. Der christliche Glaube, Prop. 51.2, 1. 267.

36 de Spinoza, Benedict, Ethics (trans. Elwes, R. H. M.; New York: Dover, 1951) Prop. 38, p. 266Google Scholar. See also Props. 25 and 27, pp. 260 and 261.

37 K. H. Sack, “Briefwechsel”, 147.

38 Schleiermacher, “Nekrolog des Bischofs Sack”, included in ibid., 148–49.

39 K. H. Sack, “Briefwechsel”, 145–62.

40 Briefe 3. 275–86.

41 See above, n. 14. Also, Briefe, 3. 275n, and Schleiermacher als Mensch (see n. 22 above) 354 n. 53.