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HANS ERICH BÖDEKER Christian truths, but rather turned also to the distinct religious consciousness of the individual Christian. This dissociation from the Church, however, was not the end of religion, but only the transformation of its traditional appearance.'** Private religion was obviously from its inception limited to the “more capable individuals”, as Semler had once put it. He elaborated extensively and specifically upon this “theory of two classes of Christians” within the discussion of Enlightenment individualization of religious consciousness.’ Going against the orthodox line, he defended the right to one’s own perceptions, freedom for theology, doctrine and research, and the “private religion” of the thinking Christian. He explicitly tied the assertion of religious freedom to a specific level of reflection. And given the low standard of education of large sections of the population at that time, Semler reckoned that only a small minority would be bearers of an independent “private religion”. He never failed to refer to the distinction, which he believed that religion had always drawn, between two “classes” of people. Semler’s main concern was that the “capable” should have “the freedom of morally experienced Christians”.’°° Their capabilities entitled them to this freedom, for it enabled them to achieve the ultimate purpose of religion. “Thinking Christians no longer need a teacher.”’”' “Only the weak need external order and guidance.” '** The Church, with its doctrines, provided for “incapable Christians” exactly what “capable Christians” were able to work out for themselves. This distinction between the religion of the educated individual, private religion, and the religion of the Church was one of the most effective transformations within the modern religious culture. In the preface which Lessing planned for Nathan der Weise, for example, (two legible pages survived among his papers, but have since disappeared), the antithesis between reason and revelation acquired an “educational” dimension and foundation: for the less educated “rabble” — revelation; for “scholars” or philosophers, that is in contemporary terms, the Gebildeten (educated classes) — reason. Philosophy was seen as the concern exclusively of those who were capable of Enlightenment, even though for Lessing this dichotomy dissolved into a historical-philosophical perspective. Lessing suggested that lower religious 188 Cf. for the Protestant concept of church, BODEKER, Hans Erich, Kirche als Religionsgesellschaft im Diskurs der deutschen protestantischen Aufklärung. Eine Strukturskizze, in L. Hölscher (ed.), Baupläne der sichtbaren Kirche. Sprachliche Konzepte religiöser Vergemeinschaftung in Europa, Bausteine zu einer Europäischen Religionsgeschichte im Zeitalter der Säkularisierung, Göttingen, Wallstein, 2007, 53-89. 189 Cf. RENDTOREF, Kirche und Theologie (note 26), 53ff. 190 SEMLER, Freie Lehrart (note 26), 6f. 11 Thid., 8. 12 Ibid., 180. * 124 +
