When Religion Had a Mind: The History of Philosophical Religion

Last updated on: November 24, 2013 at 10:03 am by Guest Contributor

When Religion Had a Mind: The History of Philosophical Religion 2013-11-24T10:03:00-05:00 Guest Contributor

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Written in 1779 by the playwright and philosopher Gotthold Lessing, Nathan the Wise ranks among the most powerful arguments for religious tolerance in the entirety of the eighteenth century. Germany in the age of Enlightenment was still trembling from the confessional disputes of earlier times. The Reformation motto “cuius regio, eius religio” (where the prince reigns, so too his religion) had not put an end to strife amongst Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholics. But Lessing’s play extended the hand of tolerance even beyond the Christian fold, to Judaism and Islam. In a brilliant feat of displacement, he removed the dramatic action from the Germany of his own day and set his characters in a half-imaginary Jerusalem in the midst of the Third Crusade, where Muslims and Christians scramble for dominion of the Holy City. The play’s hero is the eponymous Nathan, a pious Jew who keeps a household along with his adopted daughter and her Christian maidservant. The critical heart of the play is the confrontation between Nathan and Saladin, the Egyptian sultan who rules the land. Saladin presents Nathan with a challenge: of the three monotheistic religions, only one can be true. But surely a man as wise as Nathan does not obey mere accidents of birth and circumstance. If he remains a Jew, it must be with good reason. Saladin therefore asks that Nathan justify his faith.

Nathan is at first perplexed—he thought Saladin had summoned him only for a loan—but he marshals his wits and explains himself with the following parable. There was once a man who possessed a ring with miraculous properties. Whosoever wore the ring would be beloved of God and men. When the man died, the ring passed through the generations until it fell into the hands of a father with three sons. Since he loved all his sons equally, he sent for a jeweler to fashion two more rings that were in outward appearance identical to the first. The father gives a ring to each of his three sons and promptly dies, leaving them to puzzle over the question of which is genuine. A quarrel breaks out, and they present their case to a judge, each of them swearing the genuine ring is his alone. The judge reminds them that the true ring had the power to make its possessor beloved of God and men. But in their quarrel each brother now hates the other. The sly judge concludes that no ring could be the original—it must have been lost. He offers an alternative: each son should be permitted to believe that his own ring is the true one. After all, it is possible that the father could not tolerate “the tyranny of just one ring.” The judge admonishes the sons to model themselves after their father in unprejudiced affection, each to strive to outdo his brothers in benevolence. Some day, maybe in a “thousand thousand years,” the magic hidden in the jewel will reveal itself when a wiser judge sits at the bench.

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