Because divine revelation is fundamental to Christian belief, and the Enlightenment is a major watershed in the history of theology, the bringing of both huge subjects together, with a focus on Germany, the crucible of modern thought, should be a significant event. Having published recently and separately on both Enlightenment theology and divine revelation, I approached this volume with some relish. Unfortunately, my hopes and expectations were disappointed. A lot of hard work has gone into this monograph. A substantial work, it expounds and compares Protestant, Catholic and Jewish thought in Germany on the concept of revelation between 1750 and 1850. The bulk of the book is devoted to Lutheran and Reformed theology, with chapters on Roman Catholic and Jewish theology to round it off.

I have puzzled about the intended purpose and audience of the book. It could be intended as: a) an introduction or overview for theology, philosophy or history undergraduates, or for postgraduates beginning their research; b) an advanced, critical exposition of its theme as a resource for research students and academics or c) a fresh interpretation of its field, intended to influence the direction of future research into the German post-Enlightenment period and its doctrines of divine revelation. However, I am doubtful whether it actually succeeds in any of these categories. The presentation is too abstract, allusive and detailed to serve as an introduction or overview. The work probably functions best as an advanced exposition of the major thinkers who are covered, and to that extent, it will prove useful for reference. Its narrative structure carries it from a purported starting point in the supposedly ‘deeply discredited’ (blurb) state of the doctrine of revelation in the German Enlightenment, to its revival in various (incompatible) forms in Hegel, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Hamann and Herder, with a postscript on the outlier, the Dane Kierkegaard. However, the third possible purpose, that of critical reinterpretation of the field, is vitiated for me by major flaws precisely of interpretation. I will now substantiate that claim.

The author indulges in many cavalier and unsupported value judgements. For example: ‘the Enlightenment’s notorious critique of revelation’. The disparaging adjective ‘notorious’ is uncalled-for here when we are only on page 3 and the argument has not been made. Benes seems to have been influenced uncritically by Jonathan Israel’s voluminous writings on the Enlightenment. Israel’s interpretation of the Enlightenment is widely regarded as selective and tendentious. He claims that the real, true or authentic Enlightenment was secular, humanistic and atheistic. The most original and daring thinkers, particularly Hobbes, Spinoza and Bayle, are twisted to that effect. But in England, Scotland and Germany, the Enlightenment was embedded in the churches and church-based universities and was a largely Christian and clerical phenomenon. In France, while the philosophes were virulently anti-clerical, they tended (with a few exceptions) to deism, not atheism.

There is another worrying and illogical generalisation early on. ‘A debilitating form of historicism struck revelation during the early Enlightenment and, when combined with rationalist critique and the looming obsolescence of theology’s methods as a discipline, spawned a defensive mission to rescue the term’ (p. 7). Since historicism and rationalism are alternative, even opposed, modes of thought or methodologies, they cannot be easily or at all ‘combined’.

The giant figures G. W. Leibniz and Christian Wolff are accused of ‘dogmatic rationalism’ (p. 18). But we are told shortly afterwards that both accepted divine revelation, miracles and prophecies and taught that the mystery of Christianity exceeded reason. Leibniz was a Christian philosophical theologian, an ecclesiologist and ecumenist (along with his other awe-inspiring achievements). Wolff was a Christian theist whose main contribution to theology was in the realm of natural theology. How a philosopher such as Wolff, who had a key place in his thought for empirical knowledge (the cachet of the Enlightenment), can be a ‘dogmatic rationalist’ beats me. The expression ‘dogmatic rationalist’ is wildly inappropriate for both of these thinkers. Johann David Michaelis (1717–91) is repeatedly described as a ‘rationalist’. But we are also told that he ‘affirmed nearly all the traditional doctrines, including miracles, prophecy, the resurrection, the trinity [sic], and the omnipotence and omniscience of God’ (p. 31). The term rationalist has become meaningless. The Enlightenment was, in part, a revulsion against all metaphysical speculation, as seen in Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche and Leibniz; but all of these were intensely religious thinkers, not rationalists in the normal sense of the word.

Hegel’s ‘exaltation of the Trinity as the central symbol of the living, revelatory God’ was, we are told, ‘regarded as heterodox at the time given its relative marginalization in Protestant thought’ (pp. 140-141). This is baffling. It is true that Schleiermacher, exceptionally, marginalised trinitarian doctrine in his Glaubenslehre for heuristic purposes, but lifting up the Trinity in Christian theology can never be heterodox.

The interpretation of Schleiermacher is not reliable. We are told that Jacobi and Schleiermacher ‘surrender[ed] knowledge of God to the illusive realm of feeling, subjective reflection and aesthetics’ (p. 128). To ‘surrender’ is to give up unconditionally and without protest; it is implausible for anyone to accuse the mighty Schleiermacher of ever doing that. ‘Illusive’ means deceptive, conducive to illusion; here, it is used as an unargued and inappropriate value judgement. It is asserted also that Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre ‘divested Scripture and its content of their status as revelation’ (p. 137). This is too absolute and lacking in nuance. For Schleiermacher, the New Testament was not revelation in the sense of propositional teaching imparted by God through the minds and words of the authors, but it nevertheless mediated the definitive revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the Christ event.

I noticed in passing that Trevor Hart has become ‘Trever Hard’ (p. 321, n. 137) – an unkind double typo.