Band 1

Martin Knutzen
Philosophischer Beweis von der Wahrheit der christlichen Religion (1747)

Eingeleitet, kommentiert und herausgegeben von Ulrich L. Lehner

Rezension

This text, and the series it introduces, are of interest to Anglophone scholars on a number of grounds. Martin Knutzen (1713-51), although forgotten in Germany as well as in the west, was in his day a bright light of Ko¨nigsberg scholarship and bridged the period between the time when Halle Pietism was the dominant force in the scholarship of East Prussia and the Enlightenment of the later eighteenth century. That Immanuel Kant and Johann George Hamann (who referred to him as 'the famous Knutzen') were his pupils suggests clearly enough that he was man of substance; and the object of his Philosophischer Beweis (which doubtless has Karl Barth not so much turning as thrashing about in his grave) was to mediate between Halle Pietism and the rationalism of Christian Wolff which became dominant in the German schools. For most of his life Knutzen was a devotee of physico-theology, and his present treatise bears admirable testimony to the importance in his Germany of the English theologians, from Tillotson to Tindal, an importance they have never regained. The problem Knutzen set himself was to find an apologetic appropriate both to God's wrath and to his mercy; both were rational. Not having survived into the age of modern Ulster, he has to ask rhetorically what would happen to a republic which forgave transgressors at their own request. Like Wolff, Knutzen was much impressed by the certainty of mathematical demonstration ; so he follows Euclid in trying to provide a second proof of his argument. This is confirmation by miracle, and supremely by the miracle of the resurrection. His basically unhistorical view is betrayed by the amount of space that he devotes to the fact that many of the first witnesses to the resurrection fetched up as martyrs, and so had no interest in faking their testimony. The intrinsic interest of Knutzen's text is increased by the publisher's announcement at the end of two further titles forthcoming, and an invitation to submit rare texts in German, English and French for publication without subsidy. This is an invitation Anglophone scholars ought not to neglect.

PETERSFIELD
W. R.WARD