Oldal 115 [115]
THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE EDUCATED CLASSES IN PROTESTANT GERMANY...
Truths of Natural Religion) Hermann Samuel Reimarus depicted the natural
religion of reason and the worship of God it involved in glowing terms. He pro¬
fessed himself a believer in natural religion in which “healthy reason and natural
law ... are the real source of all duties and virtues”, in which God is “honoured
most humbly, in accordance with rational knowledge.” According to him, any
belief that “is not built upon the rudiments of a rational religion” is blind.’”°
Enlightened theologians repeatedly professed the congruence of reason
and revelation. Spalding left behind the “barren, dark passages of formalistic
religion," and he called for “a rational notion of the way in which God acts. ...
Above all else I should like to see reason receive its crucial rights, undiminished
and in full, in inquiry and investigation”? In Jerusalem’s view, it was not only
through revelation that human reason gained a certain degree of insight into the
relationship with God. At the same time, he measured the extent and substance
of human knowledge of revelation in terms of the development of human reason.
Thus he tried to combine his view of the dependence of reason on revelation with
his developmental scheme of religion. “Up, up my soul!”, Sack exhorted himself
in his Apologie des Christentums “in order to investigate whether the foundations
upon which you have so far built your faith and hopes are true or false.” 1
Jerusalem’s term “simplicity” summed up the idea that religious statements
require no special understanding of dogma and applied to all human beings."
He justified his call for “simplicity” in religion by pointing out that people
needed comprehensible instructions in order to practice virtue and attain
righteousness. For Jerusalem, the religion of Jesus was at the highest stage of
“simplicity”; it was “universal” in that it could lead all humans “to a true and
rational knowledge of God”.’*° Consequently, in his view, “religion” was “the
most reliable rational doctrine.” All doctrines which “are accepted as essential
elements of religion without knowledge and examination” now came under
99 «
the heading of "superstition", "because they have no essential bearing on our
120 REIMARUS, Hermann Samuel, Die vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion in zehn
Abhandlungen auf eine begreifliche Art erkläret und gerettet, 2nd. corrected edition, Hamburg,
Piscator, 1755, 720f.
SPALDING, Johann Joachim, Vertraute Briefe die Religion betreffend, 3rd edition with an addition,
Breslau, Lowe, 1788, 189.
122 SPALDING, Johann Joachim, Gedanken über den Werth der Gefühle in den Christentum, 5th newly
revised and corrected edition, Leipzig, Weidmann, 1784, xiii.
13 Cf. JERUSALEM, Betrachtungen (note 58), vol. 3,. 801., on this cf. MÜLLER, Jerusalem (note 36),
ITE.
124 Sack, Vertheidigter Glaube (note 61), Part 1, 76.
125 Cf. JERUSALEM, Betrachtungen,(note 58), vol. 5, 801.
126 Tbid., vol. 1, 412.
121
e 113"