Page 95 [95]
OCR
THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE EDUCATED CLASSES IN PROTESTANT GERMANY... themselves", not merely accept it. Otherwise, he claimed, man was no longer the subject of his belief, but merely the recipient of someone elses belief. Ihis Enlightened pathos of searching for truth harmonized well with Lessing’s high esteem for intellectual and religious subjectivity. This demand for unconditional recognition of human dignity and freedom was a basic feature of the theological thinking and argumentation of Lessing and his German contemporaries. In 1778, he still declared it his duty “to examine with my own eyes, quid liquidum sit in causa christianorum”.’* The credibility of faith of which Lessing repeatedly tried to convince himself was all too often arrogantly and self-confidently thrust aside as a religious problem by his orthodox contemporaries. Again and again, Lessing and others were forced energetically to defend the principle of the dignity of the religious subject. In his reply to his main orthodox adversary in the “Fragmentenstreit”, Johann Melchior Goeze (1717- 1786),’’ who objected that in Lessing’s interpretation the “inner truth” of religion had atrophied into a merely subjective function, Lessing explicitly defended the notion of having come of age in religious matters. In the attribution of “inner goodness” and of “inner truth’, Lessing emphasized the connection between subjective experience and the moral motive, orientated by the needs of human beings, which was recognized by contemporary philosophy. This was a basic feature of the view according to which people had come of age in religious matters as opposed to a theonomic view of reality.'® Lessing’s declaration that he was an “enthusiast for theology, not a theologian”'? expressed the distance separating Lessing from the institutionalized and official theology of his day. The distinction between “enthusiast for theology” and “theologian”, predicated upon the notion of thinking (experiencing) for oneself, supported Lessing’s claim to individual religious beliefs, which presupposed the freedom to make one’s own judgement. In declaring this, however, Lessing threatened the officially sanctioned separation between private opinion and spiritual authority in religious matters.”° The formation of an Enlightened religious subjectivity was also a basic feature of theological developments from the middle of the eighteenth century 1° Quoted from BARTH, Protestantische Theologie (note 3), 203. 17 Cf. REINITZER, Heimo -SPARn, Walter (eds.), “Verspätete Orthodoxie“. Über D. Johann Melchior Goeze (1717-1786), Wiesbaden, Harrosowitz, 1989.; HÖHNE, Hans, Johann Melchior Goeze. Stationen einer Streiterkarrriere. Münster, LIT, 2004. 18 Cf. LESSING, Anti.Goeze. Sechster, Schriften LM, Vol. 13, 178f. 1% Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, Axiomata I, in H. G. Göpfert (ed.), Lessings Werke, Theologische Schriften III/ Philosophische Schriften, Vol. 8, München, Hanser, 1979, 130. ?° Ibid., 109. On the context, cf. BOLLACHER, Vernunft und Geschichte (note 7), 80ff, 94f. + 93 +
