TY - JOUR
AU1 - Marsh,, Clive
AB - DeGruyter have provided a major service in bringing to print this vast collection of forty essays resulting from the 2015 Münster Schleiermacher conference. Even if it is likely that only theological libraries will be able to buy the book, the fact that the essays are ‘out there’ is valuable and important, and not just for Schleiermacher scholarship. In times when such collections are usually only ‘cherry-picked’ for individual essays which are already known from reading-lists and from ‘for further exploration’ PowerPoint slides (then to be called up in e-form), the value of hard-copy collections remains that they can be browsed and flicked through more easily—beyond a quick glance at a table of contents—and surprising serendipitous theological moments can result. After an essay by Klaas Huizing reflecting on theology’s literary forms, and Schleiermacher’s creativity and innovations in this regard, the work is divided into the three themes of the book’s subtitle: formation/education, piety, and aesthetics, with 10, 15, and 13 essays addressing the themes respectively. The range of topics is vast, the means by which the topics are addressed diverse, and the extent to which details of Schleiermacher’s life or writings are engaged with varies too. Yet this becomes a rich, informative, and provocative collection as a result, with plenty of connection to current debates, whether or not one is a Schleiermacher fan. Hartmut Kreß on Schleiermacher and childhood addresses children’s rights today. Christiane Erhardt digs into Schleiermacher’s contribution to Prussian school reform. Constantin Plaul’s exploration of what it means, and meant to Schleiermacher, to be an individual is an especially timely discussion when confusion reigns as to what attention can be paid to any sense of the Universal or universals. Georg Hardecker offers a new contribution to the well-mined ground of what Schleiermacher meant by ‘feeling’, and is able to conclude with a comment on the limitations of Karl Barth’s approach to truth due to the weight of what Schleiermacher’s understanding of Gefühl carries theologically. Kelly Brotzman, in one of the four English essays in the collection, provides a welcome exploration of Schleiermacher’s contribution to current approaches to experiential learning. In the second section, the essays by Eilert Herms and Andreas Arndt delve into Schleiermacher’s understanding and use of psychology in and for theology. Herms finds Schleiermacher proposing a basic theological anthropology that claims human beings to be souls and not to have souls (p. 239), a conviction offering a counter-cultural challenge in the present. One especially welcome essay in this section is Vasile Hristea’s study of enjoyment/pleasure, an often under-explored theme in theology. It would be intriguing to see the prompts offered here, which are related primarily to ethics, extended further. In the final, most far-reaching, range of essays making up the third section, studies of Schleiermacher’s own work are juxtaposed with discussions of other theorists and artistic contemporaries of Schleiermacher (e.g. Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Caspar David Friedrich). Christian Senkel’s exploration of the role of the imagination in theological discourse is especially weighty. Hermann Patsch’s examination of how Schleiermacher made use of Novalis’s poetic work within hymnody appears as a delight in this section, serving as a reminder of Schleiermacher’s multi-tasking (as systematician, philosopher, preacher, practical theologian, liturgist, and more). This is, then, a rewarding collection: a ‘must’ for Schleiermacher specialists, a ‘definitely worth working through’ for readers who have German. Could a selection of the German essays be translated and added to the four already in English, with a substantial introduction pointing out how valuable are the topics explored here (and Schleiermacher’s contributions) for theology in the present? Is there a risk-taking publisher willing to take the task on? © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Der Mensch und seine Seele: Bildung – Frömmigkeit – Ästhetik. Akten des Internationalen Kongresses der Schleiermacher-Gesellschaft in Münster, September 2015. Edited by ArnulfvonScheliha and JörgDierken
JF - Journal of Theological Studies
DO - 10.1093/jts/flaa010
DA - 2020-04-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/der-mensch-und-seine-seele-bildung-fr-mmigkeit-sthetik-akten-des-X4MiHAtdNh
SP - 1
VL - Advance Article
IS - 
DP - DeepDyve
ER -