Friedrich Schleiermacher’s theology as a resource for ecological economics

Neo-classical and ecological economics

According to McFague, the neo-classical economic model understands human beings as a group of individuals who work together to benefit themselves by optimal usage of natural resources. ⁷ Humans are independent agents who act on the basis of self-interest, through which they create a corporation that they believe will benefit everyone eventually. For neo-classical thinkers, “as long as the economy grows, individuals in a society will sooner or later participate in prosperity.” ⁸ The focus here is on expanding the economy by privileging those with financial capital. The problem is that distributive justice and the optimal scale of the human economy to the planet’s economy are externalities: “the issues of who benefits from an economic system and whether the planet can bear the system’s burden are not part of neo-classical economics.” ⁹ Neo-classical economics lacks a commitment to distributive justice and an acknowledgment of the appropriate limits of human expansion and domination.

In contrast, an ecological economic model takes the planet as its primary object of concern. It understands the earth “more like an organism or community, that survives and prospers through the interdependence of all its parts, human and non-human.” ¹⁰ A focus on the interdependence of various parts of creation emphasizes the limited function and scope these parts have in relation to one another—including human beings. As Rosemary Radford Ruether puts it, “Humans are within, not outside of, this self-sustaining ecosystem of the natural world. They can only survive themselves by sustaining it.” ¹¹ When the organism is healthy, it survives and thrives. In fact, its members “work together to provide innumerable ‘free services’ that none could do alone, and that we take for granted.” ¹² Kathryn Tanner describes such free services as benefits properly bestowed on all people, “whether or not you can pay for them or have done the giver a good turn, even if you’ve misused them, and so forth.” ¹³ Ecological economics diverges from neo-classical economics in three ways: by expanding its vision from humanity to the planet; by emphasizing the need for each part of the one interdependent organism to properly function within its own limits; and by shifting the focus away from competitive relations. ¹⁴

Naturzusammenhang: The interconnected process of nature, humanity, and Christ

Schleiermacher’s concept of Naturzusammenhang, which runs throughout his Christian Faith, coheres with these features of ecological economics. Schleiermacher invites his readers to imagine “the creation of the world and, along with this, the entirety of the interconnectedness of nature to be one divine act.” ¹⁵ Everything is determined by this organic, interconnected natural process. ¹⁶ Under such a conception, each part fits together with the other parts so that “all could just as well be for the purpose of each part, just as each part could be so for all.” ¹⁷ This interconnectedness of the natural world is no insignificant aspect of Schleiermacher’s theology. It features heavily in his doctrine of creation, anthropology, ecclesiology, and soteriology. ¹⁸ Most fundamentally, the Naturzusammenhang is involved in the Christian’s sense of her relation to the divine. For Schleiermacher, these two fully coincide: “the fullest conviction that everything is completely conditioned by and grounded in the totality of the interconnected process of nature and the inner surety regarding the absolute dependence of all that is finite on God.” ¹⁹ Recognition of the universe as an interconnected process of nature goes hand in hand with the Christian’s sense that everything as a whole depends upon the divine. ²⁰

Humanity, for its part, is not lifted out of the interconnectivity of nature. ²¹ Everything is conditioned by the Naturzusammenhang. Not only human bodies but also objective human consciousnesses are “conditioned and determined by the interconnected process of nature.” ²² Moreover, human nature itself is constituted with reference to each instance of human being. ²³ Schleiermacher explains,

If in an individual being within the given species something shows itself that would contradict the earlier definition, then the species would have been wrongly defined all along, and it would have to be defined differently. Or, on the other hand, the identity of the given individual being would simply have been mistaken. ²⁴

These are just so many concentric circles within Schleiermacher’s thought. Moving inward, there is first the divine on whom everything absolutely depends, then the interconnected process of nature, then interconnected humanity within it. ²⁶ Jesus of Nazareth, whom Schleiermacher calls the Christ, is situated deeper within these circles. For Schleiermacher, the whole of creation and all of humanity are shaped or determined by Christ. He explains,

Christ had come to be determined in the way he was only because and insofar as the whole given interconnection of things was also determined in a certain fashion, and, in reverse, the whole given interconnection of things would have been determined in the way it was only because and insofar as Christ too would have been determined in a certain fashion. ²⁷

Keeping Schleiermacher’s Naturzusammenhang in mind, it should come as no surprise that he sees Christ’s activity as expanding across the whole of humanity. ³² Moving back out of his concentric circles, the progressive completion of humanity’s creation comes about through Christ’s historical influence in the church and, through it, in the world. ³³ Schleiermacher claims that as the influence of Christ continues through time, “all other communities of faith are destined to pass over into Christianity.” ³⁴ That is, the “totality of the new creation [i.e., the corporate life that traces itself to the influence of Jesus] is simply equivalent to the total mass of humanity.” ³⁵ According to Schleiermacher, the whole of creation is determined by Christ, whose person and work ramify outward through time and space by the Spirit in the church until all are brought within the Christian community of grace.

“An irresolvable dissonance”

A key motivation for this totalizing claim is Schleiermacher’s notion of humanity’s species-consciousness. As we have seen, every individual human being co-constitutes the nature of humanity, and personal self-consciousness includes species-consciousness. A problem arises when to species-consciousness is added a recognition that all people are not brought within the Christian community before death. Schleiermacher explains,

The shared feeling of Christians is at ease with one or another person’s being taken up into the community of redemption earlier or later; however, an irresolvable dissonance does remain if, on the presupposition that there is a continuing existence after death, we were to think of a portion of the human race as entirely excluded from this community …. All this gains a whole other perspective, as soon as we hold ourselves to be justified in assuming that this contrast is simply in the process of vanishing at every particular point, with the result that everyone who is now still outside this blessed community would at some time or other be within it, deeply touched by the workings of divine grace. This would be the case, for there would at that point be no bifurcation in our species-consciousness anymore, and for that consciousness the merely gradual transition of individuals into the full enjoyment of redemption would be entirely the same as the gradual progress of sanctification is for our personally-oriented self-consciousness. That is, it would simply be the natural form that divine activity would of necessity take on in its historical appearance, and … it would be the indispensable condition of all temporal efficacious action of the Word-become-flesh. ³⁶

By making this move, Schleiermacher emphasizes the individual within his soteriology in a relatively non-historical way. Here we find a “gradual transition of individuals into the full enjoyment of redemption” after death, apart from those individuals’ historical location. ³⁸ While Schleiermacher’s theological anthropology in his Christian Faith emphasizes humanity’s interconnectivity within the process of nature, his soteriology here treats the non-Christian human as an individual whose personal formation in community must be upended by an after-death (i.e., nonhistorical) individual transformation. There is no doubt that Schleiermacher tends toward this uncharacteristic claim, ironically perhaps, because of his deep affirmation of community, which is part and parcel of human personal- and species-consciousness. ³⁹ His understanding of the one divine decree of all to blessedness also pushes him to assert that the Christian community will become total. ⁴⁰ However, because the transformation of the non-Christian person after death would occur outside the historical life of faith of an individual engaged with others, Schleiermacher’s organic, historical understanding of humanity curiously drops out of view.

This flickering of ahistorical individualism and Schleiermacher’s claim about the totalizing growth of a privileged portion of humanity make his theology an ambivalent resource for ecological economics. These features of his theology could cohere with two habits of thought similar to those of a neo-classical economic model. First, a parallel may be identified between the concept of an ahistorical, individual reception of salvation after death and an eventual trickle-down of economic benefits distributed to the economy’s members. Both of these movements of thought encourage the development of a privileged portion of society, leaving to some distant future the benefits such development may have for others. Second, a parallel attitude may be generated between totalizing Christian claims and the neo-classical economic model’s disregard for the optimal scale of the human economy within the planet’s economy. ⁴¹ In both of these cases, limits of expansion that would preserve others as others are not set in place. If Schleiermacher’s work is to be a theological support for ecological economics, then this portion of his dogmatics requires careful reconstruction—both in terms of the eventual totalization of Christianity and an individualized salvation after death as the means of such totalization.

Ecumenical theology and ecological economics

Daniel Pedersen has argued that a reconstruction of Schleiermacher’s system of doctrine that excludes the afterlife is not possible without doing irreparable damage to that system. ⁴² Following Schleiermacher’s train of thought, Pedersen argues that given the existence of non-Christians at their deaths, an afterlife is required for Christ to redeem the whole world. Since Schleiermacher’s doctrinal system rests on redemption by Christ, “what is in question in Schleiermacher’s account of eternal life is actually the validity of his dogmatics as a whole.” ⁴³ Pedersen is certainly correct that Schleiermacher relies on the idea of an afterlife in his Christian Faith as the way to ensure universal redemption. As an argument against those who do not recognize the role of the afterlife and universal salvation in Schleiermacher’s thought, Pedersen’s contribution is significant. ⁴⁴

However, his conclusion that the afterlife is essential to Schleiermacher’s doctrinal system is unwarranted. There is an alternative way to cope with the “irresolvable dissonance” Schleiermacher identifies between the existence of non-Christian persons and the divine election of all to blessedness. ⁴⁵ Using Schleiermacher’s concept of the Naturzusammenhang and his characteristic concern for upholding properly Christian epistemic limits, theologians inspired by him may retain his christomorphic understanding of the interdependent universe while avoiding his totalizing claims and reliance on the afterlife for achieving universal blessedness. What follows is a constructive proposal regarding Schleiermacher’s system of doctrine that brings the flickering moment of ahistorical individualism in his ecclesiology and anthropology into line with his emphasis on the Naturzusammenhang, and brings the totalizing claim within his soteriology into line with his acknowledgement of the Christian’s epistemic limitations. Where Pedersen sees an afterlife as the key to Schleiermacher’s doctrinal coherence, I see it as standing in tension with major movements of his thought.

Schleiermacher states that apart from belief in the unchanging union of the divine essence with human nature in the person of Christ, a belief in the persistence of human personality after death “could not have been given a place in our Christian Dogmatic.” ⁴⁶ Indeed, only the paragraph on the ascension of Christ points in that direction, and that paragraph is not directly a doctrine of faith. As such, Schleiermacher indicates that we could embrace the essential features of Christianity “even though we had no conception whatever of a life after death.” ⁴⁷ What compels him to consider the possibility of an afterlife are Christ’s sayings about his “return or reunion with His people.” ⁴⁸ If interpreted literally, these sayings imply Christ’s personal survival of death. If, however, the authenticity of these sayings were called into question by exegesis or if they were figuratively interpreted, then “faith in Christ as we have here presented it would certainly still be possible,” even if it would result in “a complete transformation of Christianity” as it is understood in the general populace. ⁴⁹ A belief in the afterlife is not, therefore, a pervasive or logical requirement of the system of doctrine Schleiermacher constructs in his Christian Faith. Rather, it is one way of dealing with the dissonance between humanity’s species-consciousness, the divine election of all to blessedness, and the fact that the Christian community is not equal to the total mass of humanity.

Schleiermacher likely chooses this way of dealing with the dissonance he has identified because of “the generally predominant presupposition within the Christian church of a personal existence after death.” ⁵⁰ As those familiar with Schleiermacher’s work know, he is not averse to reconstructing popular understandings of Christian faith and espousing doctrines that would be considered heterodox by the general populace. Nonetheless, here he adopts the predominant presupposition of the church as he knows it. ⁵¹ Perhaps he was choosing his battles. What is important to notice is that if one is willing to interpret figuratively the sayings of Christ that imply personal survival of death, belief in an afterlife is not essential to Schleiermacher’s system of doctrine.

In contrast, the persistent union of Christ with human nature must be maintained as an integral part of Schleiermacher’s system of doctrine. Without the union of the divine essence with human nature in the person of Christ, there is no redemption and no Redeemer, that is, no Christ and no Christianity. Schleiermacher’s doctrinal system requires that as long as human nature exists, the divine essence must be united to it in and through the person of Christ. ⁵² Because of his organic understanding of humanity, this requirement of his doctrinal system is already met by the incarnation and life of Christ as historical givens, without any mention of the afterlife. Each human being is united with Christ just as they are connected with every other human throughout history, with the difference that history itself is christomorphically determined. When the continued union of the divine essence with human nature through the common Spirit of the church is also taken into account, it should be clear that belief in personal survival of death is not required in order to affirm the persistent union of Christ and human nature. As long as humanity exists, it is and will be united to Christ because of the christomorphic determination of the world, the entrance of Christ into history within the one human organism, and the Spirit of Christ that abides in the church.

The afterlife is also dispensable as a requirement for the divine election of all to blessedness. That is chiefly because, for Schleiermacher, individuals are elected only as part of the whole of humanity. There is no divine election of individuals as individuals. ⁵³ Each human being is elected to blessedness only insofar as each is a part of the organic whole. This organicism in Schleiermacher’s thought offers the possibility of solving the “irresolvable dissonance” he has identified by appealing to a distinction between humanity’s election to blessedness as a whole and each individual human’s experience of redemption in Christ and his Spirit. This solution would admittedly be a marked change from Schleiermacher’s theology in his Christian Faith. However, it retains divine omnipotence and omnibenevolence while avoiding arbitrariness and failure in a characteristically Schleiermacherian way by focusing on the whole universe. The divine is almighty love and has the whole universe as the scope of divine activity; this need not imply divine arbitrariness and failure in the event that each human being does not become Christian. Rather, it may indicate that humanity, as one organic whole that is part of the interconnected universe, is not monolithic in its blessedness. ⁵⁴

This seems to be the limit of what Schleiermacherian Christians may say about the divine government of the universe. Schleiermacher does not build his dogmatics on a doctrine of creation or anthropology that is unconnected to the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth: ⁵⁵ “within Christianity everything is referred to the redemption accomplished through Jesus of Nazareth.” ⁵⁶ In other words, Christian claims arise out of piety in relation to the Redeemer. Christians do not have unfiltered epistemic access to divine activity. As such, Schleiermacher’s christomorphism can neither entail nor provide warrant for any positive statements about those who are not Christian other than that they are included in humanity, which is elected to blessedness. Schleiermacher states,

From our standpoint, the term “passing over” is the most suitable one, because it says “no” to only a distinct action. It is not as if no divine activity, or no divine decree for that matter, would have been implicated in relation to them. Rather, only as a consequence of the overall divine ordering of things is this divine activity so completely bound up in remote internal and external preparations that they merely seem to us to be passed over …. Of those who do not evidence these workings we have no basis for declaring anything else but precisely this negation, and indeed only in their relation to the reign of God at a given time and the workings of grace that proceed from it. ⁵⁷

Christian ignorance is tempered by a robust sense of humanity’s interdependence. Such interdependence, in turn, requires both natural and historical diversity for the whole to function. ⁵⁸ As part of the whole, religious persons and communities are historically conditioned; any given religious tradition could not exist without some degree of historical connection to the others. ⁵⁹ This acknowledgement could form the beginning of an appreciation of others as others on whom each depends.

The historical interdependence of religious traditions is not altogether foreign to Schleiermacher’s mature theology. In the introduction to Schleiermacher’s Christian Faith, most of his comments relate Christianity to other religions in analytical rather than historical terms. Thereafter, he makes a number of quite regrettable statements (to say the least) about Christianity’s relation to other religions. ⁶⁰ Nonetheless, he acknowledges that Jesus was born into a Jewish context ⁶¹ and developed in accord with the activities of those around him: “he could have developed only in a certain affinity with his surroundings, thus in the general culture of his people.” ⁶² Likewise, Schleiermacher claims that “Christ could hardly have been a complete human being if his personal existence had not been determined by characteristics of his people.” ⁶³ Even though Schleiermacher usually minimizes Jesus’ Jewishness, he does recognize that it is in and through Jesus’ Jewish body, land, people, and culture that he receives the activity of the divine and acts accordingly. ⁶⁴ Thus, although Schleiermacher makes a number of ecumenical blunders, he nonetheless recognizes the historical character of religions. ⁶⁵ As Thomas Reynolds explains,

Schleiermacher does not regard the religions as incommensurate and self-enclosed historical monads, each utterly relative to its own context …. History is an open field of direct engagement between differences, differences that modify each other. Schleiermacher admits as much. There is no solitary community of discourse insulated from the experience of other communities and their modes of discourse. ⁶⁶

In the ways outlined above, Schleiermacher’s concept of Naturzusammenhang and his own epistemological limitations make possible a reconstructed version of his theology that could support ecological economics. Such a reconstruction foregrounds Christian agnosticism about those who are not Christian while emphasizing diversity as an essential part of the Naturzusammenhang. It thereby puts into question Schleiermacher’s totalizing claim regarding the Christian communion in relation to other religious faiths, while retaining the claims that all are connected to Christ through the incarnation within the Naturzusammenhang and all are within the scope of divine activity. On this account, Christians may claim that the progressive completion of humanity’s creation comes about in the world through Christ’s historical and living influence in the church; but they must leave room for Christian ignorance as well. Christians see the world christomorphically and can see it no other way; it is precisely because of these epistemic limitations that they have no basis for making positive claims about those who are not Christian except that they, too, are elected to blessedness and are within the scope of the divine activity.

In this article, I have been considering a confluence of multiple theological loci, including soteriology, ecclesiology, anthropology, and creation or ecology. Though etymology is not a reliable form of argument, McFague is right to note that “it is no coincidence that the Greek word for house, oikos, is the source of our words for economics, ecology, and ecumenical.” ⁶⁸ The world house, in which all of creation lives, includes a complicated interplay of religious homes, ecological habitats, and economically housed humans. Given the importance of habits of thought, theology is not unrelated to economy and ecology. Schleiermacher’s focus on the Naturzusammenhang makes his work a prime resource for appropriation by ecofeminists and all those concerned with ecological economics. After reconstructing a portion of his theology—removing the totalizing growth of the Christian community within the larger whole of humanity while retaining his focus on diversity, epistemic limits, and the interconnectivity of humanity and creation—his mature work could support the establishment of sustainable and just planetary living.