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THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE EDUCATED CLASSES IN PROTESTANT GERMANY...
came to designate a more comprehensive context in which doctrine was of only
partial significance. "Religion" became the most general category of an un¬
dogmatic definition of Christianity. Eventually, it came to mean an individual,
Enlightened religious feeling as opposed to dogma, theology and doctrine.
The foreword to Johann Gottfried Herder’s (1744-1803) Von Religion,
Lehrmeinungen und Gebräuchen provides a good example of this usage: “Any
word that is about religion should be written religiously, that is, conscientiously,
and also demands to be read in the same way. ... Religion addresses human
feelings; it speaks to impartial conviction. In all groups and classes of society
man is permitted to be man only in order to perceive and practie religion.
Religion intervenes in all human preferences and drives them in order to har¬
monize them with itself and direct them to the right path. When religion parts
company with a doctrine, it leaves every doctrine in place; but religion does
not want to be doctrine. Doctrines separate and provoke bitterness; religion
unifies: for in all human hearts it is but one.”®’
The distinction between theology and religion, between private and public
religion, runs through the entire religious theory of the Enlightenment. For
Kant, “statutory church belief” contrasted with “pure religious belief". And
even in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770-1831) earliest fragments, which
helped him establish his own opinions on the crucial theological questions
of the day, we find, among other things, a differentiation between public and
private religion.* He also discussed it as the difference between objective and
subjective religion. Against the background of Semler’s writings in particular,
the historical origins not only of individual points, but also of the whole con¬
struction of Hegel’s theological argument become clear. This applies especially
in passages in which Hegel does not represent the special interest of the pro¬
fessional, free, rational theologian, but argues in favour of the subjectivity of
religion. Unlike Semler, however, Hegel thought this difference through, seeing
Wilhelm Jerusalem (1709-1789) in seiner Zeit, Braunschweig, Klosterkirche Riddagshausen,
1989.
HERDER, Johann Gottfried, Christliche Schriften. 5. Sammlung: Von Religion, Lehrmeinungen
und Gebräuchen, in B. Suphan (ed.), Sämmtliche Werke, Berlin, Weidemann, 1876, (herafter
quoted as HERDER, Werke) vol. 20, 133-265, here 135.; cf. WOLFES, Matthias, “Das höchste Gut,
was Gott allen Geschöpfen geben konnte, war und bleibt eigenes Daseyn.“ Herders Ideal freier
Religiosität, inM. Keßler - V. Leppin (eds.), Johann Gottfried Herder. Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes.
Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte, Vol. 92, Berlin - New York, 2005, De Gruyter, 193-308.
38 Cf. KANT, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft; Schriften AA, Vol. 6, 109-111.
% On this cf. OELMÜLLER, Unbefriedigte Aufklärung (note 14), 79ff. See also KRÜGER, Hans
Joachim, Theologie und Aufklärung. Untersuchungen zu ihrer Vermittlung beim jungen Hegel,
Stuttgart, Metzler, 1966, and TımM, Hermann, Fallhöhe des Geistes. Das religiöse Denken des
Jungen Hegel, Frankfurt/M., Syndikat, 1979.
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