Schleiermacher was a prominent German theologian at the beginning of the 19th century, but he speaks to the current theological debate in the sense that any really great theologian forces contemporary theologians to think again. Schleiermacher does this perhaps more successfully than any other theologian of the 19th or 20th centuries and there is today a surprisingly new interest in his writings. His influence on Protestantism was enormous, and generations of theologians have built on, developed, and modified his ideas.