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HANS ERICH BÖDEKER
establishing a Christianity of conviction with merely private significance nor
limiting Christian belief to an internal sphere of feeling and emotion; in his
view it proved its worth mainly in the field of charity.
According to Semler, official theology as “official church doctrine”*® was
the reverse of true theology. He interpreted church doctrine and theology as a
form of domination.*! And in his view the domination of church doctrine was
“superficial” and strained, and it conflicted with the claim by supporters of the
Enlightenment to have come of age in religious matters. Semler’s critical inves¬
tigation of Church theology in his work Versuch einer freien theologischen Lehre
paved the way for limiting the significance of theology to that of a scholarly,
academic discipline.* “Whatever ... is meant by the universality and infinity
of religion, one thing is clear: it is intended to make way for theology and an
understanding of Christianity which have cast off the shackles of orthodoxy,
but are capable of refuting the charge of apostasy.” Semler wanted to resist
dependence on the criteria of church doctrine, which denounced any free ac¬
tivity by a thinking Christian as a step “outside”, by presenting this “external
area” as a space for Christian freedom and “a more general form of Christian
existence”. But this does not make religion limitless; it is just that the church
must not be allowed to define the limits.** In Semler’s view, the only limit of the
“application of reason to the Christian doctrine and religion"? was godlessness.
Thus the differentiation between “private” and “public religion” was valid only
in the context of a Christian society.
Contemporary orthodoxy rejected Semler’s attempt to distinguish between
theology and religion because it permitted an individual selection of dogma.
Nevertheless, it was widely recognized and soon became part of the estab¬
lished repertoire of arguments in contemporary theological debate. According
to Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem (1709 — 1789), one of the leading con¬
temporary “neological” theologians, this distinction was intended to make clear
that religion was a matter of individual maturity.*° Thus the term “religion”
„30
30 SEMLER, Freie Lehrart, (note 26), $ 58.
SEMLER, Johann Salomo, Über historische, gesellschaftliche und moralische Religion der Christen,
Leipzig, Beer, 1786, 62. He speaks of the “citizen ofthe Church” as the “vassal ofthe Church”,
who is preferred to the “moral Christian”, cf. 88, 228f.
32. Cf. Hess, Semler, (note 25), 49ff.
33. RENDTORFE, Kirche und Theologie, (note 26), 58ff.
34 SEMLER, Freie Lehrart, (note 26), 209.
35 Ibid.
Cf. especially MULLER, Wolfgang Erich, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem. Eine Untersuchung
zur Theologie der “Betrachtung tiber die vornehmsten Wahrheiten der Religion”, Berlin, De Gruy¬
ter, 1984, 35ff., cf. also SCHIKORSKY, Isa, Gelehrsamkeit und Geselligkeit. Abt Johann Friedrich
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