“Paul DeHart between Möhler and Schleiermacher: Unspeakable Cults as Correction and Continuation of Schleiermacherian Christology”

This paper proposes Paul DeHart’s Unspeakable Cults: An Essay in Christology as a launching point for a renewed Schleiermacherian Christology in the twenty-first century. DeHart’s theology offers a key correction of Schleiermacher’s thought, which I analyze through consideration of the incisive and underappreciated critique leveled against Schleiermacher by his Roman Catholic contemporary Johann Adam Möhler. On Möhler,’s account, Schleiermacher’s desire in the Glaubenslehre to avoid theological speculation leaves Schleiermacher with no principled reason to pass beyond postulating an activity of God in relation to the world-system to an activity of God in se. DeHart’s broadly Thomist correction of Schleiermacher preserves the distinctive features of Schleiermacher’s Christology, bringing together a modern historical and scientific consciousness with a consistent Chalcedonianism. DeHart’s theology shows how a contemporary Schleiermacherian Christology offers perhaps unparalleled resources for integrating historical theology, contextual theologies, and key interlocutors in Biblical studies and the critical study of religion.