History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology

by J. F. Hurst

Immediately before the appearance of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments by Lessing, there was the significant lull before the storm. A single editorial in some religious periodical might decide the fate of Rationalism. In a few years more it might lie outside the lecture-halls and renowned churches as thoroughly discarded as a cast-off garment. Or it might rise to new power and bend all opposition before it. Every one seemed to be waiting to see what would come next. Would it be the hoarse thunder and the glare of lightning; or would the clouds be rent and the clear sky be seen through the widening rifts?

Lessing touched a chord which vibrated throughout the land. While in charge of the celebrated Library at Wolfenbüttel he met with a manuscript production of Reimarus, bearing the title of Vindication of the Rational Worshipers of God. It can still be found in the Town Library of Hamburg. Between 1774 and 1778, Lessing issued seven Fragments from this work; and the result was, that Germany was electrified by the boldness and importance of the views there advanced. They cannot be considered the private opinions of Lessing, for in many places he appends notes stating his opposition to them. But he heartily approved the substance of the work, though his object in the publication of the Fragments was more to feel the public pulse than to instill theological doctrines into the minds of the people. Reimarus had been a doubter like many others of his countrymen. He committed his mental phases to paper, though he thought that it was not yet time to issue them for public notice. The Fragments published by Lessing contain the gist of his entire work, and contributed far more to the growth of skepticism than a larger production would probably have done. The historical evidences of Christianity and of the doctrine of inspiration, according to the Fragments, are clad in such a garb of superstition that they do not merit the credence of sensible men. The confessions framed at different periods of the history of the church have savored far more of human weakness than of divine knowledge. They bear but slight traces of Biblical truth. The Trinity is incomprehensible, and the heart should not feel bound to lean upon what Reason cannot fathom. Nearly all the Old Testament history is a string of legends and myths which an advanced age should indignantly reject. Christ never really intended to establish a permanent religion; the work of his apostles was something unanticipated by himself. His design was to restore Judaism to its former state, throw off the Roman yoke, and declare himself king. His public entry into Jerusalem was designed to be his installation as a temporal king; but he failed in his dependence upon popular support, and, instead of attaining a throne, he died on the cross. Belief in Scriptural records is perfectly natural to the Christian, for he has imbibed it from education and training. Reason is forestalled in the ordinary education of children; they are baptized before they are old enough to exercise their own reasoning faculties. Faith in Scripture testimony is really of no greater value than the belief of the Mohammedan or Jew in their oracles, unless Reason be permitted to occupy the seat of judgment.

We have said that the excitement raised by the publication of the Fragments was intense. There was in them more calmness of expression, and more apparent effort for truthful conclusions than many of the previously published works of the Rationalists had indicated. By and by, there sprang up a decided opposition to the work of Lessing; and from all quarters of the German church there came earnest and vigorous replies. It was surprising that there remained so much tenacity for the old faith. Lessing received the censure of many of the best and wisest men of his time; his publication of the Fragments was claimed to be a curse to the cause of truth. But he had accomplished what he wished, while his success was far beyond his expectation. He found that a large portion of his countrymen were not willing to cast loose from the old moorings of the Protestant teachings, and that, whatever the previous indications were, there was yet a deep undercurrent of attachment to the time-honored confessions of the church.

The movement employed by Lessing to find out what the people really believed is one of the shrewdest literary tricks on record. Without committing himself to what he issued, and watching carefully the effect of the Fragments, he began to publish his own views with no little assurance that he would prove successful. He learned that the Wolffian philosophy was becoming effete, and so he raised the cry, loud and clear, against its longer existence. He violently opposed the obliteration of all dependence upon the historical proofs of Christianity, and claimed that, in the matter of religion, the heart has a work not less than the reason. His principle was: overthrow this historical basis, and you endanger the whole edifice. He inflicted great injury upon the inflated, pompous Popular Philosophy, for he exposed its emptiness as but few were able to do. He opposed, with all the force of his rare satirical and logical power, the attempt of the Rationalists to substitute the intuitions of Reason for the dictates of the heart and for the promptings of faith. "What else," he asks, "is this modern theology when compared with orthodoxy, than filthy water with clear water? With orthodoxy we had, thanks to God, pretty much settled; between it and philosophy a barrier had been erected, behind which each of these could walk in its own way without molesting the other. But what is it that they are now doing? They pull down this barrier, and, under the pretext of making us rational Christians, they make us most irrational philosophers. In this we agree that our old religious system is false, but I should not like to say with you [he is writing to his brother] that it is a patch-work, got up by jugglers and semi-philosophers. I do not know of anything in the world in which human ingenuity had more shown and exercised itself than in it. A patch-work by jugglers and semi-philosophers is that religious system which they would put in the place of the old one, and, in doing so, would pretend to more rational philosophy than the old one claims."

It was difficult to tell what Lessing believed. His publication of the views of a doubter was of itself a proof that he agreed, to some extent at least, with them. This we must grant as a concession to his honesty and common sense. And when assailed by Götze and others for thus attacking the faith of the church, he replied that, even if the Fragmentists were right, Christianity was not thereby endangered.[31] He rejected the letter, but reserved the spirit of the Scriptures. With him, the letter is not the spirit and the Bible is not religion. Consequently, objections against the letter, as well as against the Bible, are not precisely objections against the spirit and religion. For the Bible evidently contains more than belongs to religion, and it is a mere supposition, that, in this additional matter which it contains, it must be equally infallible. Moreover, religion existed before there was a Bible. Christianity existed before evangelists and apostles had written. However much, therefore, may depend upon those Scriptures, it is not possible that the whole truth of the Christian religion should depend upon them. Since there existed a period in which it was so far spread, in which it had already taken hold of so many souls, and in which, nevertheless, not one letter was written of that which has come down to us, it must be possible also that everything which evangelists and prophets have written might be lost again, and yet the religion taught by them, stand. The Christian religion is not true because Evangelists and apostles taught it; but they taught it because it was true. It is from their internal truth that all written documents must be explained, and all these written documents cannot give it internal truth when it has none. The Christian religion is distinguished from the religion of Christ; the latter, being a life immediately implanted and maintained in our heart, manifests itself in love, and can neither stand nor fall with the Gospel. The truths of religion have nothing to do with the facts of history.

With such opinions as these, expressed in great clearness and conciseness, who can fail to perceive that their tendency was to overthrow the traditional faith of the church in large portions of the Bible? Who is to be the judge of what is to be retained and what rejected? Indeed, if Lessing be right, the entire Scripture record might be abolished without doing violence to religion. The effect of his writings was decidedly skeptical. His view of Christianity was merely æsthetical, and only so far as the Bible was an agent of popular elevation, did he seem to consider it valuable. He did not dispute the facts of Scripture history because of the various accounts given of them by the inspired writers. Variety of testimony was no ground for the total overthrow of the thing testified. He retained the history of the resurrection in spite of the different versions of it. "Who," he asks, "has ever ventured to draw the same inference in profane history? If Livy, Polybius, Dionysius, and Tacitus relate the very same event, it may be the very same battle, the very same siege, each one differing so much in the details that those of the one completely give the lie to those of the other, has any one, for that reason, ever denied the event itself in which they agree?"

We may examine the entire circle of Lessing's literary productions, and we shall see, scattered here and there through them, sentiments which, taken singly, would have a very beneficial effect upon the popular faith in inspiration and the historical testimony of the Scriptures. But, unhappily, these were overshadowed by others of a conflicting nature, and though he did not array himself as a champion of Rationalism, he proved himself one of the strongest promoters of its reign. He considered his age torpid and sluggish. It was his desire to awaken it. And he did succeed in giving to the chaotic times in which he lived that literary direction which we now look back upon as the starting-point of recent German literature. The chief evil that he inflicted was due to the position in which he placed himself as the combatant of the avowed friends of inspiration. He was honest in his love of truth, but he loved the search for it more than the attainment. The key to his whole life may be found in his own words: "If God should hold in his right hand all truth, and in his left the ever-active impulse and love of search after truth, although accompanied with the condition that I should ever err, and should say, 'Choose!' I would choose the left with humility, and say, 'Give, Father! Pure truth belongs to thee alone!'"

The revolution which Lessing wrought in literature was only equaled by that achieved by Kant in the domain of philosophy.