Kleine Schriften zum Fragmentenstreit

(lit.: Shorter Writings on the Fragments Controversy)

An open letter on history and faith, a dialogue on the apostle John's last sermon, and a parable of a burning palace.

by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing38 passages held

German, the original language

First published: 1777(aged 48)
Original language: German

Overview

The image theologians call Lessing's ditch comes from an open letter of 1777, "On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power". Its addressee, Johann Daniel Schumann, director of a school in Hannover, had just published a defence of the evidence for Christianity against the anonymous fragments that Lessing was printing from manuscripts in the Wolfenbüttel library. The letter's title recalls Origen, the early church father, who could say that Christianity carried its own proof in the miracles and fulfilled prophecies still visible in his day. Lessing lives in the eighteenth century, when there are no more miracles, and has only reports that other people once saw them. His conclusion is that accidental truths of history can never prove necessary truths of reason, and that between the two lies an ugly broad ditch he has tried many times, and failed, to jump. A dialogue, "The Testament of John", followed that autumn. It recalls a story preserved by Jerome, the Latin church father, that the apostle John in extreme old age had to be carried to church by his disciples, and that his sermons shrank until all he said was that the children should love one another — and it asks whether that might be the part of Christianity that matters. By 1778 Johann Melchior Goeze, Hamburg's chief pastor, had come out against him, and Lessing sent him "A Parable": a king's palace whose ground plans the experts quarrel over, until at a false cry of fire each runs into the street clutching his own plan instead of saving the building. He sent it with a small request, and with a letter declaring a feud if the request was refused.

Key concepts

What are "accidental truths of history" and "necessary truths of reason"?

Accidental truths are facts that happened but might not have, known to us only through reports, such as that a miracle took place in Judea. Necessary truths of reason hold everywhere and always and can be seen by thinking alone. Lessing's claim is that no amount of evidence of the first kind can ever prove a truth of the second kind.

What is "the proof of the spirit and of power"?

Origen's name for the evidence Christianity once carried in itself: miracles and fulfilled prophecies that people could still see happening. Lessing's point is that this proof worked for those who witnessed it. Later believers have only reports of it, and a report of a proof is not itself the proof, which is why the ditch opens.

Why does the aged John say only "Little children, love one another"?

In Lessing's dialogue, because that commandment is all he still needs to pass on. When his listeners tire of hearing the same words, he answers that this is enough, fully enough, if only it is done. Lessing's speaker calls it John's testament and asks whether it might weigh as much as the doctrines that later divided Christians.

What does the palace in "A Parable" stand for?

Christianity itself, the building people actually live in. The ground plans are the theologians' rival accounts of how it was designed. Lessing's parable says that the plans have come to matter more to the experts than the house, so that at a false alarm of fire they rush to save their papers and would let the building burn.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Ugly Broad Ditch

Can a report of something that happened long ago prove a truth meant for every age? The open letter on the proof of the spirit and of power answers no.

Origen, the early church father, could appeal to miracles and fulfilled prophecies still visible in his day. Lessing has only reports that others once saw them, and reports, however reliable, cannot carry the weight a witnessed miracle could. His conclusion fits in one sentence: accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason. Between the two lies an ugly broad ditch which he has often and earnestly tried to jump, and he begs anyone who can to help him across.

historical evidence
testimony
miracles
religious epistemology
epistemology
reason
reason and faith
belief
religious belief
metaphysics
scripture
hermeneutics
interpretation

Enter a dialogue

Love Before Doctrine

What in Christianity matters once the disputes are set aside? A dialogue and a parable answer by pointing away from doctrine, toward love and toward the building itself.

In "The Testament of John", Lessing retells the story that the apostle, in extreme old age, said nothing but "Little children, love one another", and that this was enough, and asks whether that testament might be the part of Christianity that counts. "A Parable" turns the point against the theologians. Experts quarrel over the ground plans of a great king's palace, and at a false cry of fire each runs to save his plan instead of the building. Those who examine the plans closely are denounced as arsonists.

christian ethics
love
doctrine
christianity
tradition
religious conflict
religious pluralism
religious reform
religious controversy
intellectual humility
intellectual freedom
preservation of knowledge
polemics
rhetoric
irony

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 38
distinct concepts: 94
by passages held, corpus-wide: #690

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “historical evidence” and “testimony”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 4 concepts, joined by 6 pairings. 16 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
historical evidence	testimony	6
miracles	testimony	5
historical evidence	miracles	4
historical evidence	religious epistemology	4
miracles	religious epistemology	4
religious epistemology	testimony	3

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1755 Pope ein Metaphysiker!
Written jointly with Moses Mendelssohn early in their friendship, this pamphlet first drew the line between poet and philosopher that Laocoön would later redraw between poet and painter.
DE
1757 Briefwechsel über das Trauerspiel
The workshop of Lessing's dramatic theory: here, against Mendelssohn and Nicolai, he first tested the account of pity that he later rebuilt for the Hamburg Dramaturgy.
DE
1766 Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie)
Prepared in Breslau, where Lessing served a Prussian general from 1760 to 1765, this is the one part Lessing published of a larger planned study, and it carries over the poet–philosopher divide of his Pope essay into the arts.
DE
1767 Hamburg Dramaturgy (Hamburgische Dramaturgie)
A periodical before it was a book, written week by week for a theatre that did not last, this became Lessing's principal work on the theory of drama.
DE
1777 Kleine Schriften zum Fragmentenstreit you are here DE
1778 A Rejoinder (Eine Duplik)
A reply to a single defender of the Easter accounts, written in the winter of 1777–78, just before the quarrel with Goeze crowded out every other exchange.
DE
1778 Anti-Goeze
The centre of the fragments controversy; after the duke's ban the same argument moved into Nathan the Wise.
DE
1778 Axioms (Axiomata, wenn es deren in dergleichen Dingen giebt)
Argued point by point rather than fought, this answer to Goeze sets out in compact form the distinction between the Bible and religion that the Anti-Goeze letters defend with ridicule.
DE
1778 Ernst and Falk: Dialogues for Freemasons (Ernst und Falk. Gespräche für Freimäurer)
Dialogue rather than treatise, and written for Freemasons rather than about them, this is where Lessing carried the tolerance argument of his theological quarrels into a theory of civil society.
DE
1780 The Education of the Human Race (Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts)
Its hundred numbered paragraphs, begun inside the fragments controversy and finished after it, turn the quarrel over scripture into a single picture of religious history.
DE
1784 Gotthold Ephraim Leßings theologischer Nachlaß (Theologischer Nachlass)
An editorial title for papers Lessing kept to himself: two of them come from his early twenties in Berlin, decades before the fragments controversy made his religious views public.
DE
1795 Philosophischer Nachlass
Working notes on metaphysics that Lessing kept to himself, from his Breslau years onward; at least one reached print only after Jacobi's report had made his Spinozism a public question.
DE

— or open another of their works