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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 experienced spokesman of the German Enlightenment, launched his final and most important theological attack in the 1770s. This precipitated the so-called “Fragmentenstreit” (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 important 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 Atheismus. 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 (Reimarus, 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. + 89 +
