Schleiermacher and Mediating Theology

Abstract This chapter examines Friedrich Schleiermacher’s relationship with the mediating theology movement that emerged from German universities. The chapter begins with a discussion of mediation as a core concept in Schleiermacher’s modern theology agenda, followed by an explanation of how his scientific-theological system offered a new method for doing theology at the modern university and provided a foundation for analyzing various religious topics. These efforts achieved further success due to the support he received from his students, who formed a “mediating school” beginning in the 1820s, and who applied ideas from philosophy, historicism, and science to their theological mediating project. The list of authors who built on Schleiermacher’s system in their historical, theological, and encyclopedic works includes Isaak Dorner, Karl Hagenbach, Johann Peter Lange, Carl Ullmann, Friedrich Lücke, Carl Nitzsch, August Neander, August Tholuck, August Twesten, Richard Rothe, and Alexander Schweitzer. Individually and collectively, they reconfigured Schleiermacher’s original mediating theology.