Christmas Sermons: Displays of Development in a Theology of Christian Faith and Life (1790-1833)

Friedrich Schleiermacher

Sep 2019 · Wipf and Stock Publishers

About this ebook

New discoveries arise alongside memories in every Christmas sermon that Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) ever delivered. This book invites readers into an informed experience of Christmas through eleven sermons. In these pages readers watch Schleiermacher lay discovery and memory side by side, because this is how his own famed systemic theological views of Christian faith and life developed throughout his life. These sermons evoke first curiosity then wonderment at the prospects reading can open. For Schleiermacher, Christmas was always a special time to engender such experiences—a time to survey different vistas of Jesus’ birth and career. Schleiermacher lived when the modern age was being born. He contributed substantially to that birth and to the health of modern times. His sermons collected here display the main theological grounds for his worldview, which is still quite timely today.

About the author

Editor Terrence N. Tice, a contributor to Schleiermacher studies and translations for many years, is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Education at the University of Michigan. This book is a companion volume to Schleiermacher's popular dialogical drama Christmas Eve Celebration (Cascade Books, 2010). Translator Edwina Lawler, Emerita Professor of German at Drew University, has translated and edited works by Schleiermacher, including Fifteen Sermons of Friedrich Schleiermacher Delivered to Celebrate the Beginning of a New Year (2003).