Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) gave an account of the Christian faith and its relation to natural science that required none of the indeterminacy that contemporary theologians judge essential, says Pedersen. He explains the German theologian's eternal covenant between the Christian faith and natural science. His topics include the science of Schleiermacher's world and the world of his science: natural science in the early 19th century, divine wisdom and the order of the world: Leibniz and Schleiermacher on the perfection of nature, the self-preservation of the divine essence: Schleiermacher on the world as the artwork of God, and the essential identity of ethics and natural philosophy. Annotation ©2017 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
Schleiermachers readers have long been familiar with his proposal for an eternal covenant between theology and natural science. Yet there is disagreement both about what this covenant amounts to, why Schleiermacher proposed it, and how he meant it to be persuasive. In The Eternal Covenant, Pedersen argues, contrary to received wisdom, that the eternal covenant is not first a methodological or political proposal but is, rather, the end result of a complex case from the doctrine of God, the notion of a world, and an account of divine action. With his compound case against miracles, Schleiermacher secures the in-principle explicability of everything in the world through natural causes. However, his case is not only negative. Far from a mere concession, the eternal covenant is an argument for what Schleiermacher calls, the essential identity of ethics and natural philosophy. Indeed, because the nature system is both intended for love and wisely ordered, the world is a supremely beautiful divine artwork and is, therefore, the absolute self-revelation of God. Schleiermachers case is a challenging alternative to reigning accounts of God, nature, divine action, and the relationship between religion and science.
