Nicolas Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Der deutsche Sokrates (1732), in Nicolas Ludwig von Zinzendorf: Haupschrifted, vol 1; ed. E Beureuther and G. Meyer (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchandlung, 1962), pp. 289-90. Translated by Alister McGrath in The Christian Theology Reader.

1. Religion can be grasped without the conclusions of reason; otherwise no one could have religion except a person of intelligence.  As a result the best theologians would be those who have the greatest reason.  This cannot be believed and is contradicted be experience.

2. Religion must be a matter, which is able to be grasped through experience alone without any concepts.  If this were not so, someone born deaf or blind, or a mentally deficient person (ein wachsinniger Mensch), or a child, could not have the religion necessary for salvation.  The first could not hear the truth, the second would lack mental ability to think about and understand matters, and the third would lack the ability to grasp concepts to put them together and to test them.

3. There is less at stake in the truth of concepts than in the truth of experience; errors in doctrine are not as bad as errors in methods and an ignorant person is not as bad as a fool.

4. Understanding which arises out of concept changes with age, education, and other circumstances.  Understanding arrived at through experience is not subject to these changes; such understanding becomes better with time and circumstances.

5. If the divinity did not give itself in a recognizable form to a person, it could not desire that this person should recognize it.

6. Revelation is indispensably necessary in human experience; however, it is not so much necessary as useful that revelation should be reduced to comprehensible concepts….

11. Religion cannot be grasped by reason, so long as reason sets itself against experience.

12. The experience of something cannot be dismissed on the basis of any conclusion of reason.