The Routledge Companion to Modern Christian Thought

Chad Meister, James Beilby, Chad Meister, James Beilby

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415782173
• eBook ISBN: 9781136677991
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This Companion provides an unrivalled view of the field of modern Christian thought, from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century and beyond. Written by an outstanding team of theologians and philosophers of religion, it covers the following topics within Christian thought:

• Key figures and influencers
• Central events and movements
• Major theological issues and key approaches to Christian Theology
• Recent topics and trends in Christian thought

Each entry is clear and accessible, making the book the ideal resource for students of Christian thought and history and philosophy of religion, and a valuable reference for professional theologians and philosophers.

Part I

KEY FIGURES

1

IMMANUEL KANT

Pamela Sue Anderson

Introduction: greatness and humility

... there would never be a great philosopher after this point who would not be a post-Kantian philosopher.

(A. W. Moore 2012: 107)

It is has been argued that Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is rightly acknowledged as a great, or even a “very great,” philosopher because “he radically and inspiringly shifted the debates not in one, but many philosophical areas” (Anderson and Bell 2010: 11). The areas of philosophical debates where Kant gave us the means to answer critical issues in a new way include metaphysics, epistemology, morality, aesthetics and philosophy of religion, or what might be called philosophical theology. However, it is equally possible to argue that the major upshot of Kant's philosophical writings is the tradition we now call “Modern Christian Thought” (Michalson 1999: 1–27, 123–38). The exact nature of Kant's distinctive influence on this tradition continues to be the source of lively and, at times, highly contentious debates (Chignell 2012: 144–50). The lack of consensus concerning the precise nature of Kant's influence on modern philosophy and Christian theology does not make him any less influential – quite the reverse!

A seriously contentious question concerning Kant's relation to modernity and to Christianity still rages about science and religion. Is Kant the modern source of (the Christian) religion's supposed incompatibility with scientific knowledge? It is already clear in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Kant 1952; first German edition [A] 1781; second edition [B] 1787) that he limited the claims of modern science by establishing the boundaries of scientific, or “empirical,” knowledge in eighteenth-century Europe, in order to make room for religious faith. Perhaps the most well-known statement from this first Critique is that “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith” (Kant 1952: 29 [Bxxx]).

Yet caution is clearly necessary before we jump to the wrong conclusions about Kant and modern Christian thought: he did not relegate either modern thinking to theoretical knowledge or Christian faith to an irrational view born of its separation from theoretical reason. Instead, Kant's modern manner of thinking about science and religion maintains the legitimacy of each domain of thought by drawing salient and fine distinctions like that between theoretical and practical reason and that between knowledge and faith. Of course, there will continue to be disagreements concerning the implications of these distinctions; but this only makes it more helpful here to turn, in the sections which follow, to discussion of Kant's central terms.

Whatever account given of Kant's role in shaping modern Christian thought, it must be correct to have Kant stand as the first, key figure at the very beginning of the Routledge Companion to Modern Christian Thought. Today one of the roles given to Kant is shaping a new form of “Liberalism,” currently described as “analytic and synthetic theology” (Chignell 2009: 130–34). In this chapter, I will argue that although Kant exhibits a deep ambivalence to religion and, in particular, to Christianity, the remarkable greatness of his contribution to philosophical theology is only matched by the profound humility which was cultivated in developing his three Critiques. It is not only Kant's first Critique, but also his Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kant 2000) which continues to shape his Enlightenment legacy for not only Christianity but other religions (see, for example, Bunin 2012; cf. Kant 2000).

Science and religion

As will become clearer in developing the argument of the present chapter, Kant's critical distinctions pervade philosophy and Christian theology; so they could be described here in a number of ways. The most straightforward way to begin is to say that Kant's genius could afford to support “both science and religion precisely because he located the assurance of the latter, not in the outer, observable world of either natural or supernatural occurrences, but in the inner hidden world of rational beings always apprehending the pull of an invisible moral law” (Michalson 1990: 2). Roughly, prior to the rise of modern science, philosophical theologians could build their arguments concerning God's attributes from evident features of nature; and this was the basis of “natural theology.” In contrast, modern theologians after Kant have struggled to argue objectively on the basis of the observable world for their knowledge of God.

Taking a sharp turn away from the premodern Christian tradition, Kant follows David Hume and questions the bounds of “empirical” knowledge, in order to demonstrate not only that modern science renders natural theology redundant but that religion is no longer a matter of knowing the natural world (Copleston 1960: 58–61, 132–40). The latter negative conclusion has led to considerable philosophical and theological disagreements about “the modern” Kantian conception of religion. In fact, some recent “analytic theologians” have rejected both Kant and modern religion, in order to return to, or retain, natural theology (Chignell 2009: 120–22, 125–28; cf. Wolterstorff 1998: 1–18; Anderson 2010: 95–101).

Again, caution is necessary. The fact that religion is not based on empirical knowledge of God does not render religion, for Kant, a matter of either irrational or untrustworthy emotion. Instead, Kant's “practical reason” and the question of “moral goodness” have led modern thought to religion. Before discussing practical reason and Kantian morality, let us further consider the impact of a scientific conception of knowledge on Christian theology. As already suggested, the whole Christian tradition of natural theology, which has at its heart arguments from evident features of the natural world to the existence and nature of God, was discredited among philosophers at least by Kant's arguments concerning the “boundaries” (Grenzen) to what humans could know (Byrne 2007: 18–54; Swinburne 2011: 1; Anderson 2012: 167–92).

Kant's “justly famous” critique of the arguments of natural theology, in his first Critique, led to a reputation of having “attempted to assassinate God” (Byrne 2007: 19 f.). Now, those philosophers of religion who endorse Kant's so-called “deathblow to natural theology” often affirm Hume's help with that blow given to the proofs for God's existence. Those contemporary analytic theologians like Richard Swinburne, who do not make this endorsement, argue that Kant makes the same, or a similar, mistake to Hume when it comes to limiting human knowledge to the spatial–temporal world from which God is excluded by definition (Swinburne 2011: 10–12). Peter Byrne contends that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason undermines natural theology by demonstrating “that reason cannot work when ontologised” (Byrne 2007: 21–31); simply put, the ontological argument on which, Kant claims, the other arguments for God's existence depend fails. Christian philosophers of religion such as Byrne and Swinburne may disagree about the success of Kant's critique of the theistic proofs; yet, they will clearly agree that Kant's critical philosophy has had a decisive impact on modern Christian thought.

Moral religion and reason

An undeniable and profound tension in Kant's own thought colored the next two centuries of philosophy and theology with the analysis of concepts and the critiques of reason. Together, his twofold method of analysis and critique came to characterize modern thought and to challenge thinking which had preceded these modern methods. The intellectual and political receptions of what has been called Kant's “rational theology,” or “moral religion” (Wood 1970; 1992; Carter 2011) are marked by extreme responses to ground-breaking claims concerning the roles of reason, morality and religion.

Kant's conceptions of religion and reason have been blamed for everything from modern atheism (Michalson 1999: 2–5, 124–27) to contemporary feminism (Anderson and Bell 2010: 75–79, 83–86; Hampson 2010: 147–60). Kant has been said to be the source of (i) the deepest respect for reason as in the moral law and (ii) the most dangerous uses of autonomous reason in modern societies. But such reactions equally reflect caricatures of the actual eighteenth-century philosopher and his accounts of the modern individual's faith, emotion and reason. The critical question is whether we can separate Kant's positive contribution to Christian moral thought from the unwitting upshot – in areas such as post-secular philosophy and orthodox Christian theology – of what he wrote!

For Kant, morality does not rest on religion; but the reverse is true. Not only does religion rest on morality, but the moral law is a rational law. However, in order to understand fully the descriptions of Kant's theology as rational and religion as moral, it is necessary to notice the similarity and difference between views of this century and an eighteenth-century view of science and free will, of reason and natural inclination.

In the twenty-first century, it might be popular to assume that free will, morality and religion have each been undermined by science. For this reason, some philosophers of religion find that broadly construed “science” remains a threat to both morality and religion in particular. In the eighteenth century, Kant himself felt a similar threat which was posed by the rise of modern science in Europe. At that time scientific knowledge was associated with “empiricism”; and the Scottish empiricist David Hume provides Kant with “a means for awakening [reason] from its sweet dogmatic dreams” (Kant 1952: 605 [A757/B785]). But Kant tackles both German rationalism and British empiricism.

Basically, prior to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, German rationalist metaphysics and morality had been threatened by Hume's well-known empiricist skepticism. Kant's solution to this threat aimed to avoid either the rationalist's dogmatism or the empiricist's skepticism when it comes to knowledge. Moreover, when it comes to the question of freedom, to the metaphysics of morality and to religion within the boundaries of mere reason, Kant offers a creative and original solution to the problem of reason and sensibility (Kant 1952; 1996; 1998). His two-aspect account of freedom, which is first set out in the first Critique, seeks to make sense of both empirical realism and transcendental idealism (Anderson and Bell 2010: 17–21); this great attempt shapes not only (his) epistemology but also (his) morality and religion.

Kantian morality: autonomy and natural inclinations

It is well known that Kantian morality focuses on duty, the moral law and God. However, the deeper philosophical problem for Kant is how to make sense of appearances or “phenomena,” and of things-in-themselves or “noumena”; the former can be known, the latter are unknowable. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason demonstrates that although the natural world is and phenomena are determined by causal laws, human beings are free insofar as they act not according to causality, but rationally and autonomously. Autonomy is necessary to render rational action more than an effect of natural inclination as its cause; autonomy is not only the necessary condition for rational action, it is necessary for morality itself.

So, to make sense of human freedom, Kant seeks to reconcile natural inclinations and autonomous reason. The necessary a priori category of causality makes possible sensible knowledge; and natural inclinations are determined by the law of cause and effect. Yet, as already stated, freedom means acting rationally and autonomously. To establish this, Kant employs the metaphor of “two worlds”: freedom must be located in “the intelligible world” of autonomous rational choice; causation is located in “the sensible world”: but morality requires the compatibility of both of these worlds. Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals gives this account of human freedom and morality:

[W]hen we think of ourselves as free we transfer ourselves into the world of understanding as members of it and cognize autonomy of the will along with its consequence, morality; but if we think of ourselves as put under obligation we regard ourselves as belonging to the world of sense and yet at the same time to the world of understanding.

(Kant 1997b: [4.452–53])

For Kant, when it comes to morality, “obligation” has to be read in terms of “belonging to two worlds at the same time” (above). Or, in less metaphorical terms, it results from an inner tension between natural inclination and (the world of) understanding.

Theoretical and practical reason

The metaphors about two worlds are also crucial for making sense of theoretical and practical reason. In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant creates an even stronger position for the will, or practical reason, than he did for knowledge, or theoretical reason. For the human will, morality is always an “ought” – that is, an obligation – and never simply knowledge of what “is.” For human agents, as two-aspect subjects (cf. Anderson and Bell 2010: 19–20, 29–35), “what is the case” is not morally “what ought to be.” In Kant's terms, cognition of autonomy of the will as both free from the heteronomy of natural inclinations and free in the world of understanding is never something we can have fully as human agents. Instead, freedom is a “regulative,” or a guiding, ideal for human willing.

In contrast to human freedom, perfect freedom is the possession of “the good will” alone. There can be no “ought” for a perfectly good and fully rational being; but such a being could not be human; it would be divine. Kant postulates that “God” simply “is” perfect goodness and “is” full rationality. So, “the moral law” remains always an “is” for the “God” whose existence must be postulated, in order to make sense of human morality. Again, in direct contrast, for human agents, the moral law is always an “ought,” or obligation, precisely because we can never be perfectly good or fully rational.

Nevertheless, perfect goodness and full rationality are, according to Kant, what human moral action strives for. In fact, human awareness – that is, our consciousness – of the moral law is a direct result of knowing that “what is the case” is not necessarily “what ought to be.” Knowing what we are naturally inclined to do is not what we ought to do. So, as long as human subjects belong to “the world of sense” and yet, at the same time, to “the world of understanding,” we can never be completely intelligible to ourselves. But let us consider more closely how we know that we are under obligation, insofar as we find ourselves, in metaphorical terms, belonging to two worlds.

If we want to be fair to the first and second Critiques, then, arguably, interpretation of Kant's two-world language is best treated as metaphorical (Anderson and Bell 2010: 20–21). Instead of existing literally in two different worlds at the same time, we can view ourselves from two different aspects, as sensible and as intelligible, as determined and as free, as desiring and as reasoning. Similarly, we view ourselves as both naturally inclined to an action and freely choosing to do a moral action. More strongly stated, to make sense of Kant's theoretical and practical reasoning, we can and must see ourselves as two-aspect subjects.

What makes for the distinctiveness of humanity, according to Kant, is rationality. This belief in humanity as rational binds us together; and this rationality makes us both human and moral agents. In turn, our distinctiveness as rational and moral sets humanity apart – as holy – from (non-rational) animals; we can reason as humans in a manner which renders us different from the rest of sensible nature. And yet, Kant makes an even bolder assumption: that human subjects are never fully rational and so, that even “the Holy One of the Gospel,” that is, the man Christ, would have to be compared with “the moral law,” since the moral law is “our ideal of moral perfection” (Kant 1997b: 21 [4.408]). This comparison of Christ as the divine human to an independent standard of goodness is necess...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Key Figures
• Part II Major Events and Movements
• Part III Theological Loci
• Part IV Theological Approaches
• Part V Recent Currents
• Index