Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: at the same time, the Scriptures may be the means of its awakening. Faith is an inner certainty accompanying the higher self-consciousness; yet it is not an objective certainty based upon demonstration.' Da nun aber Jeder nur vermittelst eines eigenen freien Entschlusses hine- intreten kann; so musz diesem die Gewissheit vorangehen dasz durch die Einwirkung Christi der Zustand der Erlosungsbedurftigkeit aufgehoben und jener herbeigefuhrt werde, und diese Gewissheit ist eben der Glaube an Christum.' Schleiermacher's discussion makes certain things clear. He is using conventional terms in an unconventional sense; and just as this yields a new result for the general view of Christian doctrine, so it does in the matter of Christian assurance. It is clear that with him the Scriptures hold no such place as they had before held in Protestant theology, either as touch-stone of truth, or as norm of the certainty of personal salvation. Further, personal assurance is directly related to Christ. At the same time, it must be recognized that Schleiermacher the philosopher, and Schleiermacher the theologian never really got together. For his philosophy, as Heim points out, seeks the a priori of universal logical validity, while his theology starts with a contingent historic figure—that of Christ; and that which, from the philosophical side, he views as inadequate symbol, from the churchly side he allows universal speculative validity. Schleiermacher has far more significance for the method of Christian theology as a whole than for any specific contribution to the problem of personal assurance. C. The Nineteenth Century. The advent of an inductively-grounded scientific theory of evolution was, beyond question, the most far-reaching and significant development in the field of thought witn... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.