German Thinker in the Age of Enlightenment on God's Revelation and Sacred Scripture

Abstract

The article concerns the development of the views on the Divine Revelation and Sacred Scripture of German thinkers in the Age of Enlightenment. Thinkers of the early Enlightenment (represented by Spener and the pietist teaching founded by him) and the late Enlightenment (Neology, Reimarus and Lessing) are analyzed sequentially. At the same time, both for the early and for the later enlighteners there were a number of common features. First of all, they emphasized the importance of the practical element (virtuous life) and rejecting the value of the theoretical element (theoretical reflections as such) of religion. At the same time, the differences are no less pronounced. They trace most clearly in their attitude to the Sacred Scripture. Thus, among pietists and moderate neologists, we see appeal to the Sacred Scripture as an objective criterion for checking the truth of religious experiences and theoretical conclusions. For more radical neologists, we see the selection of different kinds of truths in Sacred Scripture, only a few of which were recognized as eternal and necessary for salvation. Reimarus presented a radical historical criticism of the Sacred Scripture and denied its divine inspiration. Lessing developed his concept of Revelation in controversy with Reimarus. He was agree with him in several important points but his views on Scripture (which was not given up in divine inspiration by him) and the main dogmas of the Christian faith was in general less critical.