Nathan the Wise-Which One is the True Religion? is the title of a play written in 1778 by Gotthold Lessing (1729-81), an influential German writer of the Enlightenment era. Set in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade, with Christian crusaders threatening Muslim-controlled Palestine, the play has the Muslim leader Saladin asking Nathan the Wise which is the true religion, so that he too can make his own choice. Nathan replies with a parable.
A man in the East once had a priceless ring-so magical that "he who wore it, trusting its strength, was loved of God and man." Entrusting the treasure to his favorite son on the pledge that he too would pass it down to his favorite son, each heir would be favored regardless of his birth. "At last this ring, passed on from son to son, descended to a father of three sons; all three of whom were duly dutiful," and, consequently, whom "he must needs love alike."
Over time, the father could not help but promise each of the three sons the ring, depending on which son he was favoring at the moment. Finally, as he lay dying, the father-grieved at having to wound two of his sons, but a man of his word-sent secretly for a jeweler to make two more identical rings. Approving the jeweler's masterful reproductions, the father calls his sons to his side and confers his blessing-and a ring-on each one in turn. Then he dies.
Nathan continues, "What happens then you can predict-scarce is the father dead when all three sons appear, each with his ring, and each would be the reigning prince. They seek the facts, they quarrel, accuse. In vain; the genuine ring was not demonstrable-almost as little as today the genuine faith." Saladin replies that the three religions-unlike the three rings-can be clearly distinguished: "down to their clothing; down to food and drink!" Nathan replies, "In all respects except their basic grounds."
Are they not grounded all in history, or writ or handed down? But history must be accepted wholly upon faith-not so? Well then, whose faith are we least like to doubt? Our people's, surely? Those whose blood we share? The ones who from our childhood gave us proofs of love, who never duped us, but when it was for our good to be deceived? How can I trust my fathers less than you trust yours? Or vice versa, can I demand that your tradition should spurn that mine be not rejected? Or turn about again: The same holds true of Christians. Am I right? Saladin cannot but agree, "By Allah, yes!"
Nathan continues: the sons sue for the true (original) ring in court, each swearing to the judge that he had received the ring directly from his father's hand. And, of course, all three were right. All received the father's promise long before they were given their ring. Nevertheless, each son, owning the father's promise for himself, turns on his brother as an enemy and traitor to the father. "Thus said the judge: unless you swiftly bring your father here to me, I order you to leave my court. Think you that I am here for solving riddles? Would you wait, perhaps, until the genuine ring should rise and speak?"
Recalling the legend that the ring has magical power to make its wearer loved by God and man, the judge asks, "Who is most loved by the other two? Speak up! You're mute? The rings' effect is only backward, not outward? Each one loves himself the most? O then you are, all three, deceived deceivers! The genuine ring no doubt got lost. To hide the grievous loss, to make it good, the father caused three rings to serve for one." Ordering the sons to leave his court, the judge offers parting advice: "If each one from his father has his ring, then let each one believe his ring to be the true. Perhaps the father wished to tolerate no longer in his house the tyranny of just one ring!" Henceforth, "Let each aspire to emulate his father's unbeguiled, unprejudiced affection! Let each strive to match the rest in bringing to the fore the magic of the opal in his ring!" The parable concludes, "I bid you, in a thousand thousand years, to stand again before this seat. For then a wiser man than I will sit as judge upon this bench, and speak. Depart! So said the modest judge."
Evidently, of course, the modest judge is Lessing. Lessing's contemporary, Immanuel Kant, was not much for parables, but in his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, he carried forward the assumption that hidden beneath the accumulated myths, histories, scriptures, dogmas, and worship practices of particular religions was a pure religion of universal morality. "Ecclesiastical faiths"-the cause of division and wars-are but the outer garments that if stripped away disclosed the brightness of this "pure religion."
There is no reason to deny that Lessing's parable possesses a compelling logic. If, as Lessing wrote elsewhere, there is an ugly ditch separating the "necessary truths of reason" and the "accidental truths of history," there is no reason to deny that the pure religion of morality is universal-known by everyone deep down-and that the ecclesiastical faiths (like creedal Christianity) are dispensable. For all of Jacques Derrida's impressive criticism of modernity's dichotomies and hierarchies and his concern to rescue the scandal of the particular from modernity's obsession with the universal, his later writings repeat Kant's preference for pure religion over against ecclesiastical faiths. Derrida speaks of a "messianic consciousness"-the universal experience of looking toward the future in hope-that must never yield to the arrival of any particular messiah. And his contrast is even defended with the same arguments as Lessing and Kant: the one brings universal peace, while the other issues in division and violence.
It should be noted that the paragons of modernity did not actually transcend dogmatism, but deepened it. In fact, as an unacknowledged dogmatism, and simply assumed without any verification, it possessed an especially violent kind of rigor that led to its own crusades in the pursuit of "progress." Millions more were sacrificed on the altar of a supposedly emancipated reason and in the name of scientific progress than in all of the religious wars combined.
