Gotthold Lessing lived “in the eighteenth century, in which miracles no longer happen.”
I have a suspicion that Catholics in the eighteenth century would have disputed this, but let’s set that aside for the moment and grant the claim as true, if just for Protestants.
Well: A hundred and fifty years after Lessing, Pentecostalism kicks off and miracles return to Protestantism rather dramatically. Today, in the twenty-first century, the average Christian you pull off the global street will report the “proof of the spirit and of power” in their first- or secondhand experience.
The boring way to read this is that Lessing had a pair of epistemological glasses that failed to take seriously the issue of belief in miracles. The more fun way to read this is that poor old Lessing had the bad fortune to be born in the two-hundred-year smidgen of world history when miracles were on hold. If only he could have held out for a bit longer …
