Britannica Sources used in this answer

How did Friedrich Schleiermacher describe religion as a feeling of absolute dependence?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Charles Sprague Pearce: Religion — Philosophy of religion Detail of *Religion*, mural in lunette from the Family and Education series by Charles Sprague Pearce, 1897; in the Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.

Friedrich Schleiermacher, often recognized as the founder of modern Protestant theology, characterized religion as a unique, immediate feeling distinct from rational or ethical modes of perception.12

While his early work, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, defined religion as the "feeling and intuition of the universe" or the "sense of the Infinite in the finite," he later refined this concept in his systematic work, The Christian Faith. In this later formulation, he described the essence of religion as the "feeling of absolute dependence"—an immediate awareness that God lives and works within us as finite human beings.12

This concept suggests that the religious experience is fundamentally rooted in a consciousness of our own finitude in relation to the divine, rather than being primarily a matter of dogma or moral action.12