God in the Wasteland

Schleiermacher dismissed entirely the vertical dimension of a God outside of experience summoning sinners through biblical revelation to pass beyond themselves into union with God through Christ.

This is not an entirely modern discovery. John Calvin begins his theology with the assertion that wisdom in religious matters consists in perceiving the interconnectedness of self-knowledge and the knowledge of God.

we find that we are able to resolve internal conflicts,

Schleiermacher repudiated objective knowledge of God and then, like the romantics, reached down into his own being to find the grounding for his knowledge of God.30

Schleiermacher,

but he went on to propose that this knowledge is grounded in religious rather than moral experience.

Kant initially argued that reason cannot establish the reality and nature of God, and then, in his Critique of Practical Reason, he went on to propose that it is only in moral experience that such knowledge can be grounded, for the knowledge we have of ourselves as moral beings is inexplicable

But the distinction remains at the heart of knowing how to preserve a biblical understanding of God.

In our experience, the line between flesh and spirit becomes blurry.