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?