pilgrim people

What then of the church of Jesus Christ? For Kant, the church as an historical institution is outmoded and obsolete. He conceded that it “did good service” once upon a time, but that that time has surely passed. As a person grows from infancy into adulthood, there are certain things along the way that should be “laid aside” when they are no longer necessary or helpful lest they become a “fetter” (Religion, 112). Since he described his age as an enlightened age, Kant believed the hierarchical structure of the church, which puts laity in religious tutelage to a class of clergy, should be abolished. People must think for themselves, not act as little children who are dependent upon their parents for guidance. Such external pressure from the “custodians of orthodoxy” who often “instill into their flock a pious terror of the slightest swerving from certain dogmas resting on history” undermines people’s confidence in their capacities and hinders all improvements in the “ethical community of believers – which constitutes the being of the true church” (Religion, 124).

Seeing the true church (i.e. the universal ethical community) as being mired by the historical institution of ecclesiastical faith, Kant looked forward to a golden age that would have no place for office-bearers in the visible church, only a true egalitarianism: 

The humiliating distinction between laity and clergy disappears, and equality arises from true freedom, yet without anarchy, because, though each obeys the (non-statutory) law which he prescribes to himself, he must at the same time regard this law as the will of a World-Ruler revealed to him through reason, a will which by invisible means unites all under one common government into one state – a state previously and inadequately represented and prepared for by the visible church. (Religion, 112) 

Such eschatological hope will not be brought about by a mystical or experiential religion; rather, this “beautiful ideal of the moral world-epoch” will come about in an ordinary manner as people collectively do the right thing: 

[The coming age will be] brought about by the introduction of true universal religion and in faith foreseen even to its culmination – which we cannot conceive as a culmination in experience, but can merely anticipate, i.e., prepare for, in continual progress and approximation toward the highest good possible on earth (and in all of this there is nothing mystical, but everything moves quite naturally in a moral fashion). (Religion, 126)    

For Kant, the church is not a covenantal community formed around the redemptive-historical event of Jesus Christ. Nor is the church united by a common creed or confession. Rather, as Allen Wood points out, “In Kant’s view, what unites people in a true religious community is…a common devotion to the moral improvement of humanity.”   

Some concluding thoughts

While trying to rescue religion from radical sketicism and establish a religious devotion to a transcendent Lawgiver, Kant fashioed a theological method that ultimately remained anthropocentric from beginning to end. His method led inescapably to an emphasis upon the divine voice of reason which is universally heard by autnomous humans, voice from within the self.

Although he presupposed the noumenal realm for his pure religion, Kant’s theology remained caught in the phenomenal, without any possibility of getting across this great chasm. In his effort to protect morality by removing the historical particulars of ecclesiastical faith, Kant seems to miss altogether the covenantal bridge across that chasm in the most important event in all of human history, viz., the life, death and resurrection of the God-man, Jesus Christ. 

So how Kantian are you? How has this thinker affected your thoughts about Christ and his church?

Who was Jesus for Kant? Well, in the first place, Kant saw no essential need of a redemptive-historical event in the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Contrary to the Protestant Reformation’s doctrine of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, because of the finished work of Christ alone (Sola Gratia; Sola Fide; Solus Christus), Kant finds the notion of vicarious atonement and imputed merit unreasonable. There is nothing accomplished for people in the person and work of Christ other than perhaps a great moral example for our pure universal religion.

Yet even reduced to a universal example, Christ is not necessary, for we already possess whatever is needed to exercise pure religion. “We need, therefore, no empirical example to make the idea of a person morally well-pleasing to God our archetype; this idea as an archetype is already present in our reason.” (Pure Religion, 56) Fully understanding the distinction between archetypal theology (theologia archetypa) and ectypal theology (theologia ectypa), Kant nevertheless believes that archetypes are present in the moral consciousness. There is simply no need for the noumenal to become the phenomenal and satisfy the requirements of the Lawgiver; we only need to do what we already know is right.     

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A popular notion in our day is that organized religion must be pitted against spirituality. The former is disparaged as passé at best and hatefully intolerant at worst, while the latter is readily embraced as chic and healthy. Organized religion is particular and manifests itself in narrow doctrines, liturgical customs and exclusive tradition. Spirituality, on the other hand, is universal and can express itself in a wide variety of personal faiths and individual practices that generally seek one common goal, namely, self-improvement.

Roughly corresponding to this contrast of religion v. spirituality is the contrast of “ecclesiastical faith” and “pure religion” by the eighteenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Displaying creative interaction between the pietism in which he was raised and the rationalism in which he was influenced, Kant sought to structure a universal theology that would emphasize the moral or practical side of the religious life, while remaining free from the archaic and ignorant particulars of an ecclesiastical tradition that superstitiously get handed down over the course of history. For Kant, particular “ecclesiastical faith” is unnecessary and encumbering to universal “pure religion” because the latter is better practiced without the former.

 The Universal: “Pure Religion”

In order to understand Kant’s position on “pure religion,” one must first have a basic idea of his epistemology (theory of knowledge), which was revolutionary to the eighteenth century philosophical world. First a Cartesian rationalist, Kant said he was awakened from his “dogmatic slumber” by reading the Scottish philosopher David Hume. He found Hume’s radical skepticism challenging. But unlike Hume, Kant believed that this limitation did not demand a skeptical rejection of all metaphysical concepts. Wanting to rescue religion out of the hands of the rationalism of his day and offer a new balance between transcendence and imminence, Kant attempted to reconcile rationalism and empiricism by categorizing all of existence into two realms, viz., the noumenal and the phenomenal. In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant argued that the noumenal realm is the metaphysical, which contains objects as they exist apart from any relation to a knowing subject (i.e. the “thing-in-itself”) or objects for which we simply lack the needed equipment to perceive. Kant placed God, the self and substances in the noumenal realm and, therefore, inaccessible to our knowledge.

The phenomenal realm, on the other hand,

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