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THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE EDUCATED CLASSES IN PROTESTANT GERMANY...
(1756-1794) were entirely untypical of eighteenth-century Germany." At the
time, the will to reform and transform basic articles of religion had a greater
impact.
1he Enlightenment did not approach theology and the Church merely from
the outside. Ihe process of guestioning Christianity and the Church, which
were no longer seen as absolute entities, "took place within the Church; indeed
the Church itself implemented this process through its appointment of agents;
it came about through the will of the faithful. Therein lies the real crisis which
the Enlightenment caused in the church.” And religious issues were no longer
confined to the theological discourse proper. Theological topics continued to
influence public debate. Not only did theology try to promote certain views
of theological issues among the public; the laity also took part by publishing
theological writings.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), the freest and most experien¬
ced spokesman of the German Enlightenment, launched his final and most
important theological attack in the 1770s. This precipitated the so-called “Frag¬
mentenstreit” (Fragments Dispute), a theological conflict about the relationship
between reason and revelation, in which the Christian sensibility, claiming
to have “grown up” and attained its “maturity”, struggled to comprehend the
rational content of revealed religion. The theological chapter of the German
Enlightenment was not yet closed, and for Lessing, it was always more import¬
ant than the political and social chapter.’
Again, it was characteristic of the German Enlightenment that Lessing
fought out this issue before the tribunal of a lay public. By publishing the
5 Cf. for this long time neglected topic especially SCHRÖDER, Winfried, Ursprünge des Atheis¬
mus. Untersuchungen zur Metaphysik- und Religionskritik des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, 2. mit
einem neuen Nachwort versehene und bibliographisch aktualisierte Auflage, Stuttgart — Bad
Cannstatt, Fromman-Holzboog, 2012, and for a short survey see BEUTEL, Aufklärung (note
3) 287-295, WILD, Reiner, Freidenker in Deutschland, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 6
(1979), 253-285, which is stilla stimulating article.
° SCHMIDT, Kurt Dietrich, Grundriß der Kirchengeschichte, 3" ed., Göttingen, Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1960, 442.
On the context cf. BOEHART, William, Politik und Religion. Studien zum Fragmentenstreit (Rei¬
marus, Goeze, Lessing), Schwarzenbek, Martienss, 1988.; KRÖGER, Wolfgang, Das Publikum
als Richter. Lessing und die “kleineren Respondenten“ im Fragmentenstreit, Nendeln, KTO Press,
1979.; see also BOLLACHER, Martin, Lessing, Vernunft und Geschichte: Untersuchungen zum
Problem religiöser Aufklärung in den Spätschriften, (Studien zur deutschen Literatur), Vol. 56,
Tübingen, De Gruyter, 1978. Arno Schilson surveys the literature in Lessings Christentum
Kleine Vandenhoeck Reihe 1463 (Göttingen 1980), for the contents ofthe “Fragments“ and the
thrust of Lessing’s criticism see SCHILSON, Arno, Lessing and Theology, in B. Fischer-T. C. Fox
(eds.), A Companion to the Works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Woodbridge, Camden House,
2005, 163-170.
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