Reader's Guide to Schleiermacher's Christian Faith

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Second Part of the System of Doctrine: Explication of the Facts of the Religious Self-Consciousness, as they are determined by the Antithesis of Sin and Grace

Second Aspect of the Antithesis: Explication of the Consciousness of Grace

First Section: The State of the Christian as Consciousness of the Divine Grace

First Division: Christ

Introduction

§92 The peculiar activity and the exclusive dignity of the Redeemer imply each other, and are inseparably one in the self-consciousness of believers.

First Doctrine: The Person of Christ
Introduction

§93 If the spontaneity of the new corporate life is original in the Redeemer and proceeds from Him alone, then as an historical individual He must have been at the same time ideal (i.e. the ideal must have become completely historical in Him), and each historical moment of His experience must at the same time have borne within it the ideal.

§94 The Redeemer, then, is like all men in virtue of the identity of human nature, but distinguished from them by the constant potency of His God-consciousness, which was a veritable existence of God in Him.

§95 The ecclesiastical formulae concerning the Person of Christ need to be subjected to continual criticism.

First Theorem

§96 In Jesus Christ divine nature and human nature were combined into one person.

Second Theorem

§97 In the uniting of the divine nature with the human, the divine alone was active or self-imparting, and the human alone passive or in process of being assumed; but during the state of union every activity was a common activity of both natures.

Third Theorem

§98 Christ was distinguished from all other men by His essential sinlessness and His absolute perfection

§99 The facts of the resurrection and the Ascension of Christ, and the prediction of His Return to Judgment, cannot be laid down as properly constituent parts of the doctrine of His Person.

Second Doctrine: The Work of Christ
Introduction

§100 The Redeemer assumes believers into the power of His God-consciousness, and this is His redemptive activity.

§101 The Redeemer assumes the believers into the fellowship of His unclouded blessedness, and this is his reconciling activity.

§102 Church doctrine divides the whole activity of Christ into three offices, the prophetic, the priestly, and the kingly.

First Theorem

§103 The prophetic office of Christ consists in teaching, prophesying, and working miracles.

Second Theorem

§104 The priestly office of Christ includes His perfect fulfilment of the law (i.e. His active obedience), His atoning death (i.e. His passive obedience), and His intercession with the Father for believers.

Third Theorem

§105 The kingly office of Christ consists in the fact that everything which the community of believers requires for its well-being continually proceeds from Him.

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