Books by Kevin Vander Schel
This book examines the novel coordination of grace and history in Schleiermacher’s dogmatic writi... more This book examines the novel coordination of grace and history in Schleiermacher’s dogmatic writings, with special attention to his work in Christian Ethics (Christliche Sittenlehre). In the face of the reigning opposition between the theological schools of "Rationalism" and "Supranaturalism" in his time, Schleiermacher fashioned an innovative alternative approach to conceiving Christ’s relationship to human history. His dogmatic writings present the Christian church as a singular community of grace decisively shaped through the original influence of Christ in history. Schleiermacher presents this initial historical appearance of Christ as something “relatively supernatural,” the inauguration of a new and more complete manner of human historical living not entirely explicable by previous events. Yet after this remarkable beginning, he describes Christ’s continuing influence as entirely mediated by historical and natural processes. Schleiermacher thus envisions Christ’s influence in human history as a gradual transformation from within. His dogmatic theology describes the emergence of the Reign of God, a development that does not oppose or interrupt the natural and historical world but brings it to completion.
Edited Volumes by Kevin Vander Schel
The Oxford Handbook of Friedrich Schleiermacher,
ed. Andrew C. Dole, Shelli M. Poe, Kevin M. Vander Schel
Oxford University Press, 2023
Friedrich Schleiermacher is now regarded as among the most influential figures in the history of ... more Friedrich Schleiermacher is now regarded as among the most influential figures in the history of Christian thought for his contributions to theology, philosophy, and theories and methods in religious studies. The German-language critical edition of his work beginning in 1980, Schleiermacher Kritische Gesamtausgabe, and English translations of key portions of his corpus beginning in the late nineteenth century, have allowed scholars to investigate the richness of his thought. German scholars have often focused on Schleiermacher’s ties to early modern philosophy, his aesthetics, hermeneutics, and theory of religion, while English-speaking scholars have often focused on the theological influences and implications of Schleiermacher’s work. Over the last thirty years, both German and Anglophone scholars have been at work translating and analyzing key texts. This volume gathers authoritative interpretations of Schleiermacher’s work from both German and English-speaking scholars, bringing together the best that Schleiermacher scholarship has to offer. The first part, “Schleiermacher in Context,” offers a clear and nuanced understanding of Schleiermacher’s own historical and intellectual context. The second part, “Schleiermacher’s Thought,” presents a close analysis of the structure and content of Schleiermacher’s thought, in relation both to questions of method and particular theological themes and to broader inquiries in philosophy and the humanities. The third part, “Thinking after Schleiermacher,” provides an examination of the reception of his thought and of its contemporary implications for theology and the study of religion.
The rise of populism and nationalism in the West have raised concerns about the fragility of libe... more The rise of populism and nationalism in the West have raised concerns about the fragility of liberal political values, chief among them tolerance. But what alternative social resources exist for cultivating the interpersonal relationships and mutual goodwill necessary for sustainable peace? And how might the lived practices of religious communities carry potential to reinterpret or re-circuit these interpersonal tensions and transform the relationship with the cultural "other" (Fremde) from "foe" (Feind) to "friend" (Freund)? This volume contributes a unique analysis of this shifting discourse by viewing the contemporary socio-political upheaval through the lens of Friedrich Schleiermacher's theology, with a focus on the themes of friendship, interpersonal subjectivity, and sociability as a path beyond mere tolerance. Each of the essays of the volume is written by an internationally recognized scholar in the field, and the volume examines Schleiermacher's novel reflections across multiple social contexts, including North America, Great Britain, western Europe, and South Africa. As these essays demonstrate, the implications of this conversation continue to resound in contemporary religious communities and political discourse.
Frederick G. Lawrence is the authoritative interpreter of the work of Bernard Lonergan and an inc... more Frederick G. Lawrence is the authoritative interpreter of the work of Bernard Lonergan and an incisive reader of twentieth-century continental philosophy and hermeneutics.
The Fragility of Consciousness is the first published collection of his essays and contains several of his best known writings as well as unpublished work. The essays in this volume exhibit a long interdisciplinary engagement with the relationship between faith and reason in the context of the crisis of culture that has marked twentieth- and twenty-first century thought and practice. Frederick G. Lawrence, with his profound and generous commitment to the intellectual life of the church, has produced a body of work that engages with Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, Ricoeur, Strauss, Voegelin, and Benedict XVI among others. These essays also explore various themes such as the role of religion in a secular age, political theology, economics, neo-Thomism, Christology, and much more. In an age marked by social, cultural, political, and ecclesial fragmentation, Lawrence models a more generous way – one that prioritizes friendship, conversation, and understanding above all else.
Theological essays in honor of Boston College professor Frederick Lawrence, by his former doctora... more Theological essays in honor of Boston College professor Frederick Lawrence, by his former doctoral students. Forthcoming soon from Marquette University Press.
Peer-Reviewed by Kevin Vander Schel
Schleiermacher’s Speeches and the Modern Critique of Religion
Religions 15: The Impact of German Idealism on Religion, ed. Christian Danz, 2024
Friedrich Schleiermacher is often credited with playing a foundational role in the development of... more Friedrich Schleiermacher is often credited with playing a foundational role in the development of the modern concept of religion. His epoch-making Speeches on religion, published in 1799 amidst the widespread social and intellectual upheaval of the Sattelzeit, present a novel description
of religious feeling and religious communication, which mark a turning away from the rationalistic treatments of religion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and which served as both inspiration and foil for scholars of religion throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This essay suggests a reading of Schleiermacher’s Speeches that is organized around two interrelated claims. First, the text does not proceed as speculative philosophical treatise aiming to establish an overarching theory of religion but as a critical dialogue that inquires into the distinctive particularity of religion and religious expression. Second, religious piety, as depicted in the Speeches, is not found in the isolated inwardness of individual experience but in coordinated tension with sociality, in communications of religious feeling that are bound together with a living apprehension of the world. On this account, religion for Schleiermacher, though rooted in feeling and self-consciousness, is nonetheless no private
affair; it is realized within the developing complex of social and historical living.
A Transitional Institution: Schleiermacher on the Possibility and Limits of the Modern Christian State
Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, 2023
The early nineteenth century was a time between empires in German-speaking lands, following the c... more The early nineteenth century was a time between empires in German-speaking lands, following the collapse of the holy Roman empire in 1806. This was also the time at which modern concepts of nations, nationalism, and the state entered theological discourse, bound together with emerging notions of world historical progress. From this time until the First World War, the task of conceptualizing national identity and the nature of the ‘Christian state’ became a pressing theological problem. This essay seeks to locate Schleiermacher’s reflections on the Christian state within this developing problematic. Schleiermacher’s philosophical and theological works closely engaged emerging ideas of the nation, state, and historical progress. However, he departed from the more totalizing affirmations of national spirit and the Christian state of many of his contemporaries, arguing for a more limited conception of the state as a point of transition in the ongoing historical development of the reign of God.
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Das frühe neunzehnte Jahrhundert im deutschsprachigen Raum lässt sich als Zeit zwischen den Imperien charakterisieren, die auf den Zusammenbruch des Heiligen Römischen Reiches 1806 folgte. Dies war auch die Zeit, in der moderne Konzepte von Nationen, Nationalismus und Staat in den theologischen Diskurs eintraten, verbunden mit aufkommenden Vorstellungen von weltgeschichtlichem Fortschritt. Von dieser Zeit bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg wurde die Aufgabe, die nationale Identität und das Wesen des „christlichen Staates“ zu konzeptualisieren, zu einem drängenden theologischen Problem. Der vorliegende Aufsatz versucht, Schleiermachers Überlegungen zum christlichen Staat innerhalb dieser sich entwickelnden Problematik zu verorten. Schleiermachers philosophische und theologische Werke stehen in engem Zusammenhang mit den aufkommenden Ideen von Nation, Staat und historischem Fortschritt. Er wandte sich jedoch von den totalisierenden Bekräftigungen des nationalen Geistes und des christlichen Staates vieler seiner Zeitgenossen ab und plädierte für eine begrenztere Auffassung des Staates als eines Übergangspunktes in der fortschreitenden historischen Entwicklung der Herrschaft Gottes.
The relationship between religious faith and public reason has occupied an increasingly central r... more The relationship between religious faith and public reason has occupied an increasingly central role in Jürgen Habermas's mature work. Yet this recent engagement with questions of religious meaning also illuminates a significant area of development in Habermas's thought. While his earlier writings emphasized a need to subordinate religious beliefs to rational critique and to translate religious truth claims into publicly accessible forms of reasoning, his later writings signal a shift to a more cooperative understanding of religious faith and critical reason that highlights the ongoing potential of religion to advance rational discourse and social criticism in the public sphere. This essay traces this growing recognition of the irreducibility of religious meaning in Habermas's writings, and it attends to the non-translatable dimension of religious faith as a source of its ongoing contemporary significance.
Studies in Dogmatic Theology, 2018
This essay inquires into the unique intersection of Erich Przywara and John Henry Newman and expl... more This essay inquires into the unique intersection of Erich Przywara and John Henry Newman and explores the re-imagined notions of divine transcendence and the supernatural in their works. Przywara found in Newman a source of inspiration for a more lively presentation of Catholic thought and a model for illuminating the path toward a new Catholic intellectual culture. Newman's work highlights the actively inquiring disposition of faith, an active search for the meaning of its doctrines, a progressive and unceasing journey that comprises the entirety of one's life. By showing the changing Catholic responses to modernity and the evolving theological approaches that would come to characterize later twentieth-century Catholic thought, the paper emphasizes how Przywara and Newman contributed to a more vibrant form of Catholicism and a renewal of Catholic intellectual culture that anticipated the Church's wider opening to the world.
Annals of Theology / Roczniki Teologiczne , 2017
To many of his critics, Schleiermacher’s Christology signals an explicit weakness in his theologi... more To many of his critics, Schleiermacher’s Christology signals an explicit weakness in his theological system, as his emphasis on religious feeling and subjectivity seems to undermine any claims of the distinctive revelatory or supernatural character of Jesus Christ. This essay by contrast underscores both the originality of Schleiermacher’s understanding of Christ in history and its centrality to his overall thought by attending to the subtle theme of the “supernatural-becoming-natural” in his Glaubenslehre and Christliche Sittenlehre. Here the appearance of Christ yields a transformative influence that operates within natural and historical processes, inaugurating the reign of God that does not abolish the natural world but draws creation to its completed perfection.
"Grace and Human Action: Distinctively Christian Action in Schleiermacher's Christian Ethics," The Journal of Religion 96, no. 1 (Jan. 2016): 3-28.
While he is often overlooked as an ethical thinker, Friedrich Schleiermacher’s lectures on Christ... more While he is often overlooked as an ethical thinker, Friedrich Schleiermacher’s lectures on Christian Ethics (Christliche Sittenlehre) present a sophisticated and original account of Christian action that deepens and extends the theological vision of his Glaubenslehre. Set apart by its historically-minded approach, his treatment describes the distinctive forms of Christian action as rooted in a communication of grace, proceeding from the historical influence of the redeemer. The redemptive work of Christ, which continues in the Holy Spirit, permeates and uplifts human activity and founds the communal life of the church as a distinctive source for ongoing ethical reflection.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/683794
Schleiermacher’s treatment of election criticizes the narrow focus on individual salvation and em... more Schleiermacher’s treatment of election criticizes the narrow focus on individual salvation and emphasizes the primacy of divine grace. Yet more than merely offering a revision of this controversial doctrine, Schleiermacher’s position illuminates the larger correlation of grace, history, and soteriology in his theology. This essay examines Schleiermacher’s novel understanding of grace and history by attending to the subtle theme of the “supernatural-becoming-natural” in his thought. In contrast to rationalist and supernaturalist theologies in his day, his Christian Faith and Christian Ethics offer a historically-minded treatment that focuses on the original instance of grace in history: the appearance of the redeemer. Schleiermacher depicts the relatively supernatural influence of Christ as transforming the natural and historical world from within, drawing creation to its divinely-ordained completion. This dynamic highlights Schleiermacher’s work as an innovative contribution to ongoing discussions of grace and redemption in modern and contemporary systematic theology.
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/opth.2014.1.issue-1/opth-2015-0017/opth-2015-0017.xml
Articles in Edited Volumes by Kevin Vander Schel
Modern Method in Theological Anthropology: The Turn to the Subject
T & T Clark Companion to Theological Anthropology ed. Mary Ann Hinsdale and Stephen Okey (New York: Bloomsbury Academic), 2020
“Social Sin and the Cultivation of Nature”
Schleiermacher and Sustainability: A Theology for Ecological Living. Ed. Shelli Poe. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018. Pg. 146-76.
Schleiermacher’s original conception of social sin describes sinfulness as a collective condition... more Schleiermacher’s original conception of social sin describes sinfulness as a collective condition that everywhere imprints and distorts communal human action. Environmental devastation follows as the product of such sin, not as natural misfortune but as a social evil resulting from human conflict, oversight, and avarice. Schleiermacher’s Christian Ethics describes the Spirit-led Christian action that aims to restore and complete the created world. Here, the care for and cultivation of nature is not an isolated or peripheral spiritual task but is identical with the formation of virtuous living overall. Schleiermacher’s theology thus offers significant resources for reimagining distinctively Christian ecological living that supports and promotes life for all.
"Friedrich Schleiermacher"
T&T Clark Companion to the Doctrine of Sin, eds. David Lauber and Keith L. Johnson. New York: T&T Clark, 2016. Pp. 251-66.
“Reconsidering Schleiermacher’s Hermeneutical Thought: Ethics and Communicative Action”
Hermeneutics -- Ethics -- Education, ed. Andrzej Wiercinski. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2015.
“Redemption and the Outer Word: Reflections on Schleiermacher and Lonergan”
Grace and Friendship: Theological Essays. Marquette University Press, 2016. Pp. 301-18.
Encyclopedia Entries by Kevin Vander Schel
“Lonergan, Bernard,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, v. 16. Eds. Christine Helmer, Steven L. McKenzie, et al. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017.
Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, v. 16. Eds. Christine Helmer, Steven L. McKenzie, et al. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017.
"Taylor, Charles - Secularity," Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, eds. M.N.S. Sellers and Stephan Kirste (Springer Verlag, 2017).
Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, 2017
Though Charles Taylor’s (1931-) writings span a wide range of topics in political philosophy, soc... more Though Charles Taylor’s (1931-) writings span a wide range of topics in political philosophy, social theory, and ethics, the theme of secularity has remained an enduring focus of his work. This emphasis is made explicit in his landmark 2007 volume The Secular Age, which offers a philosophically nuanced and richly detailed analysis of the rise of secularism in the modern West. But the concern to demystify and disentangle the various dimensions of secularity in western society also permeates his earlier writings on behavior, modernity, and subjectivity, and it is likewise interwoven into his analyses of key modern philosophical voices and his continuing work on meaning and language. Currently Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at McGill University, Taylor’s work on the impact of secularism has earned widespread recognition. He received a Templeton Prize in 2007 for his research into ongoing forms of spirituality in contemporary society. In 2015, together with Jürgen Habermas, he was also awarded the John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity.
Over the course of his writings, Taylor’s analysis of secularism has continued to evolve and deepen. However, his treatments have also maintained a consistent perspective throughout. Arguing against manifold reductionist narratives that regard modern or scientific rationality as inevitably undermining the possibility of religious belief, Taylor depicts western secularity as a far-reaching cultural shift in what it means to believe, an underlying transformation in the “conditions of experience of and search for the spiritual." Amid this secular age, democratic societies find themselves in a new predicament of a significantly altered conception of the place and role of religion in the public sphere.
"Habermas, Jürgen - Faith and Reason," Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, eds. M.N.S. Sellers and Stephan Kirste (Springer Verlag, 2017).
Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, 2017
While Jürgen Habermas (1929- ) is perhaps best known for his theories of communicative action an... more While Jürgen Habermas (1929- ) is perhaps best known for his theories of communicative action and discourse ethics, the relationship between religious faith and secular reason has occupied an increasingly central role in his mature work. Habermas’s engagement with questions of faith and reason is notable for its interdisciplinary scope and developing perspective on the potential of religious faith and practice to inform responsible public discourse. Setting aside the presumption of progressive secularization as unable to account for the complex trajectories and conflicts of modernity, his writings call for new frameworks for critical reflection on religious belief and a significant re-evaluation of the place of religion in the public sphere.
In the five decades of his writing, Habermas’s position on the relationship of faith and reason has undergone significant development. While his early work described a need to subordinate religious truth claims to reasoned public critique, his recent writings highlight the ongoing potential of religion to meaningfully contribute to contemporary democratic society. Accordingly, many critics point to a religious turn in his later work. More precisely, however, Habermas’s developing treatment on religion proceeds in three phases: (1) the supercession of religious belief by communicative reason, (2) the co-existence of religious faith and communicative rationality, and (3) a genuine cooperation of religion and reason in advancing rational discourse in the public sphere. This evolving perspective reflects both Habermas’s ongoing connection to the Frankfurt School and his own influential theory of communicative action.
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Books by Kevin Vander Schel
Edited Volumes by Kevin Vander Schel
The Fragility of Consciousness is the first published collection of his essays and contains several of his best known writings as well as unpublished work. The essays in this volume exhibit a long interdisciplinary engagement with the relationship between faith and reason in the context of the crisis of culture that has marked twentieth- and twenty-first century thought and practice. Frederick G. Lawrence, with his profound and generous commitment to the intellectual life of the church, has produced a body of work that engages with Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, Ricoeur, Strauss, Voegelin, and Benedict XVI among others. These essays also explore various themes such as the role of religion in a secular age, political theology, economics, neo-Thomism, Christology, and much more. In an age marked by social, cultural, political, and ecclesial fragmentation, Lawrence models a more generous way – one that prioritizes friendship, conversation, and understanding above all else.
Peer-Reviewed by Kevin Vander Schel
of religious feeling and religious communication, which mark a turning away from the rationalistic treatments of religion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and which served as both inspiration and foil for scholars of religion throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This essay suggests a reading of Schleiermacher’s Speeches that is organized around two interrelated claims. First, the text does not proceed as speculative philosophical treatise aiming to establish an overarching theory of religion but as a critical dialogue that inquires into the distinctive particularity of religion and religious expression. Second, religious piety, as depicted in the Speeches, is not found in the isolated inwardness of individual experience but in coordinated tension with sociality, in communications of religious feeling that are bound together with a living apprehension of the world. On this account, religion for Schleiermacher, though rooted in feeling and self-consciousness, is nonetheless no private
affair; it is realized within the developing complex of social and historical living.
_____
Das frühe neunzehnte Jahrhundert im deutschsprachigen Raum lässt sich als Zeit zwischen den Imperien charakterisieren, die auf den Zusammenbruch des Heiligen Römischen Reiches 1806 folgte. Dies war auch die Zeit, in der moderne Konzepte von Nationen, Nationalismus und Staat in den theologischen Diskurs eintraten, verbunden mit aufkommenden Vorstellungen von weltgeschichtlichem Fortschritt. Von dieser Zeit bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg wurde die Aufgabe, die nationale Identität und das Wesen des „christlichen Staates“ zu konzeptualisieren, zu einem drängenden theologischen Problem. Der vorliegende Aufsatz versucht, Schleiermachers Überlegungen zum christlichen Staat innerhalb dieser sich entwickelnden Problematik zu verorten. Schleiermachers philosophische und theologische Werke stehen in engem Zusammenhang mit den aufkommenden Ideen von Nation, Staat und historischem Fortschritt. Er wandte sich jedoch von den totalisierenden Bekräftigungen des nationalen Geistes und des christlichen Staates vieler seiner Zeitgenossen ab und plädierte für eine begrenztere Auffassung des Staates als eines Übergangspunktes in der fortschreitenden historischen Entwicklung der Herrschaft Gottes.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/683794
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/opth.2014.1.issue-1/opth-2015-0017/opth-2015-0017.xml
Articles in Edited Volumes by Kevin Vander Schel
Encyclopedia Entries by Kevin Vander Schel
Over the course of his writings, Taylor’s analysis of secularism has continued to evolve and deepen. However, his treatments have also maintained a consistent perspective throughout. Arguing against manifold reductionist narratives that regard modern or scientific rationality as inevitably undermining the possibility of religious belief, Taylor depicts western secularity as a far-reaching cultural shift in what it means to believe, an underlying transformation in the “conditions of experience of and search for the spiritual." Amid this secular age, democratic societies find themselves in a new predicament of a significantly altered conception of the place and role of religion in the public sphere.
In the five decades of his writing, Habermas’s position on the relationship of faith and reason has undergone significant development. While his early work described a need to subordinate religious truth claims to reasoned public critique, his recent writings highlight the ongoing potential of religion to meaningfully contribute to contemporary democratic society. Accordingly, many critics point to a religious turn in his later work. More precisely, however, Habermas’s developing treatment on religion proceeds in three phases: (1) the supercession of religious belief by communicative reason, (2) the co-existence of religious faith and communicative rationality, and (3) a genuine cooperation of religion and reason in advancing rational discourse in the public sphere. This evolving perspective reflects both Habermas’s ongoing connection to the Frankfurt School and his own influential theory of communicative action.