Chapter V

Symbolic Theology and the Nature of God

 

 

... our knowledge is only a shadow in comparison with the greatness of God, and our powers are far transcended by him. [Kt18:26]

 

1. God’s Transcendence: Human Reason vs. Divine ‘Reason’

       Kant’s view of God’s nature is, to a large extent, patterned after his view of human nature. Virtually everything he says about the former has a cor­relate of one sort or another in the latter. Some interpreters have regarded this fact as evidence that Kant’s God is nothing more than a mental construct, a ‘philo­soph­ical fiction’ that is not meant to have any real existence—a view I refute in AIV.4. Such a position fails to recognize that the correspon­dence between Kant’s views of human and divine nature follows directly from his view that ‘[h]uman reason is by nature architectonic’ [Kt1:502]: everything we think about is inevitably influenced by the same patterning structures that are inextricably embedded in the mind. The correspondences must not be taken to imply that God is nothing but a projection of human nature, any more than the correspondence between the impressions of our senses and the external ob­jects affecting those senses can be properly taken as evidence that the latter are mere projections constructed out of the former [see KSP1:VI.1-4].

       From the theoretical standpoint, human nature is characterized primarily by the dual powers of sensible intuition and conceptual understanding, the two ‘stems’ that come together to form empirical knowledge.[1] Since our theoretical standpoint is wholly incapable of conveying, on its own, the least bit of empirical knowledge about God, we should not be surprised that one of Kant’s few definite theoretical statements about God’s nature is that we must regard God’s reasoning capacity as being characterized by exactly the opposite powers. That is, instead of having an understanding that processes concepts, God must be described, quite paradoxi­cally, as having an intu­itive understanding [see e.g., Kt1:145]; and instead of having an intuition governed by sensibility, God must be regarded as having the equally paradoxical power of intellectual intuition. Although Kant sometimes calls these powers ‘rational’ and regards God as the very source of reason itself, all such language is meta­phorical, for terms such as ‘reason’, as Kant points out in Kt26:1053(87) are ‘beneath the dignity of the divine nature.’ Mindful of this point (to be expanded in V.2), let us look more closely at these two aspects of divine ‘reason’.

       Intuitive understanding is the power ‘in which through self-con­sciousness all the manifold would eo ipso be given’ [Kt1:135]. Rather than having to intuit an object, form a concept on the basis of such intuitions, and synthe­size the two  in a judgment, an intuitive understanding would be able to create a real ob­ject in the very act of thinking about it. As Paton suggests, there would there­fore be in the divine understanding ‘no difference between thought and ac­tion, since its thinking would be essentially creative of reality’ [Pa67:101; cf. Kt1:138-9]. In the words of Davidovich [Da93b:130], ‘what it decides becomes reality.’ Likewise, there would be no difference between intuition and con­cep­tion, since ‘[a]n intuitive understanding ... would intuit the whole as such’ [En29:188], with its intuition being ‘at the same time the creation of the ob­ject intuited’ [Al85:27; s.a. Kt7:407-10]. Such an attribution entails that God’s theoret­i­cal nature is ultimately inscrutable to us, for although we can form a logically possible concept of an ‘intuitive understanding’, we cannot comprehend its real possibility. Thus, Kant says ‘we cannot form the least con­ception of any other possible understanding [than our own], either of such as is itself intuitive or of any that may possess an underlying mode of sensible intu­ition which is differ­ent in kind from that in space and time.’[2] Accordingly, he never attempts to develop this view in detail, since it is really just his way of in­suring that we must conceive of God as not being limited by the same condi­tions of sensible intuition to which human reason is bound.

       To grasp the full meaning of the paradoxical term ‘intuitive under­stand­ing’ —i.e., to know what it refers to—would require us to possess the power Kant calls ‘intellectual intuition’. The latter refers to an intuition rooted not in the transcendental object, repre­sented to us in the form of appearances (as is the case with ordinary human knowing [see KSP1:VI.2 and VII.2.A]), but in a purely intelligible thing that cannot be represented at all as a sensible object. Kant insists that God ‘can never be an object of intuition to us’ [Kt1:71]; for ‘such intellectual intuition seems to belong solely to the primordial being, and can never be ascribed to a dependent being’ [72]. To do so, it would have to ‘give us the existence of its object’ in the act of in­tuition itself [72]—a charac­ter­istic of the object that for human subjects is always pro­vided by the givenness of the unknowable thing in itself (or the undetermined transcendental object). An intellectual intuition of, for instance, one’s own self, would provide immediate knowledge of the self, rather than merely sensa­tions of the state of one’s self as an appearance in space and time [158-9; cf. 309].

       One of the implications of this theory is that we must regard God as being outside the limits of space and time. When Kant says that ‘in God no temporal sequence is thinkable’ [Kt8:50n(45n)], he is not trying to place limits on God, but is merely accentuating the fact that, when human beings form the concept of God, we must do so by negating the limits of our own rational capacity. By setting up space and time as transcendental conditions for all human knowl­edge, the Aesthetic section of Kt1, as Paulsen puts it [Pa02:160], protects ‘the conceivability of the objects of theology and pneumatology against the demand for their constructability in space and time.’ (Paulsen’s reference to ‘pneuma­tology’ accurately reflects the deep concern Kant had with spirits [see II.1-4] and rightly suggests that his development of a Critical theology will parallel his treatment of that issue in Kt18.) This is why, as we shall see in V.2, all our language about God must be regarded as symbolic.

       Another implication is that God must experience truth in a way that is rad­ically different from the way we come to know truth. As Hart suggests [Ha90b: 241]: ‘Things are not true [for God] because the divine mind corresponds to them, but they are true because they are generated products of the divine mind.’ In attempting to explain the epistemological status of divine knowing, Hart advances the following view: ‘For Kant’s God, the knowledge of the world cannot be a posteriori, because this would tie the divine to sensibility’ [245]. Likewise, God’s knowledge cannot be merely logical (analytic a priori). ‘Thus presumably for Kant’s God there is no distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori.’ But this amounts to little more than giving up any attempt to classify. In one sense, this may be the wisest approach. An option Hart does not consider, however, is that divine knowing could have an analytic a posteri­ori status. In that case, we could regard our own access to the analytic a posteriori—e.g., the power of language in general and naming in particular [see Pa87d], as well as the power of moral insight [KSP1:IV.3]—as an ‘image’ or ‘spark’ of God’s creative intellect in us.

       We would need intellectual intuition to have knowledge of a positive nou­menon [Kt1:307]; but as we saw in KSP1:VI.3, Kant regards this as impossible for us: ‘such a type of intuition, intellectual intuition, forms no part whatsoever of our faculty of knowledge’ [Kt1:308]. This does not mean that Kant regards such intuition as wholly impossible for humans, as is generally assumed. For the mistake Kant is warning against is not believ­ing we possess something like intellectual intui­tion, but in­ter­preting that mysteri­ous human power as a function of the theoretical stand­point. Thus, Kant’s description of the human will reveals that the true form of this power is mani­fested on­ly from the practical standpoint: ‘The faculty of de­sire is the faculty such a [living] being has of causing, through its ideas, the reality of the objects of these ideas’ [Kt4:9n]. Based on this defini­tion, so simi­lar as it is to that of intellectual intuition, Kant proceeds to replace the illegiti­mate theoretical power of intellectual intuition with the legitimate practical power of human freedom, which he believes can adequately fulfill all the func­tions often wrongly at­tributed to the former.[3]

       Intellectual intuition really amounts to the same thing as intuitive under­standing, only viewed from different perspectives: both refer to ‘an understand­ing which should know its object, not discursively through the categories [nor intuitively through space and time], but intuitively in a non-sensible intuition’ [Kt1:311-2]. Viewed from the logical perspective, it is called ‘intuitive under­standing’; viewed from the transcendental perspective, it is called ‘intellectual intuition’. In both cases Kant presents such descriptions of God as nothing more than a regulative hypothesis suggesting how we might conceive of a being whose nature transcends our own and of which ‘we cannot in the least represent to ourselves the [real] possibility’ [311]—a being whose faculties of intuition and concep­tion are not distinct, mutually-restrictive faculties, but are combined in a single faculty that creates whatever it thinks and thinks whatever it creates.[4] Kant describes God along these lines as early as Kt11:219: ‘God does not require the process of reasoning because, since all things are crystal clear to his gaze, one act of representation puts before his intelli­gence which things are identical and which are not, and he has no need of analysis as the darkened night of our in­telligence necessarily has.’

       Some commentators regard this theory of intuitive understanding, or intel­lectual intuition, as ‘Kant’s conception of God in its profoundest form’ [Gr34: xlix; s.a. Hi74:383]. But it actually just skims the surface of his theology. For Kant himself regarded this basic attribute, the radical transcendence of God’s na­ture, not as the culmination of all theological knowledge, but as its starting point: it creates the primary theoretical problem for theology—our ignorance of God’s existence [see IV.1]—a problem to be solved only gradually as Kant weaves his theological guiding-thread through his entire System. A related question is: how are we to carry on any theological pursuits if God’s nature is fundamentally paradoxical? The bulk of this chapter will be de­voted to expounding Kant’s answer to this question, and in so doing, the theo­retical depths of his rich concept of God will begin to un­fold before our eyes.

 

2. Philosophical Theology and the Symbolic Immanence of God

       Kant limits the scope of his theological reflection to ‘philosophical’ or ‘rational’ as opposed to ‘revealed’ theology. He never denies the legitimacy of the latter, but re­gards it as lying outside the boundaries of the Critical philoso­pher’s proper field of inquiry.[5] The former, by contrast, is inti­mately connected with each major division of Kant’s System. Rational theology is a philosophical investi­gation of how extensively we can see God manifested logically in sys­temt, hypothetically in sys­temp, and empirically in systemj. We must be care­ful, therefore, not to treat Kant’s theological conclusions as if they apply equally to revealed as to rational theology. To do so would be to commit a category mis­take, for it would require us to neglect Kant’s careful distinction between the Perspectives of the philosophical theologian and the biblical theologian.[6]

       Clearly, Kant saw philosophy and theology as complementary pur­suits, with the former preparing the way for the latter. But what about the relationship between these disciplines and religion? Religion on its own, Kant holds, ‘stands in no need of any speculative study of God’ [Kt35:(82)]: ‘Speculation concerning God ... does not appertain to the sphere of religion, for religion must be practical. Theology, indeed, can contain speculative elements, but to religion these must remain foreign’ [(93)]. (Kant’s ‘criterion’, incidentally, for judging ‘whether a particular question is religious or speculative’ is: ‘if, what­ever the answer, it will make no difference to our actions, the question is not religious but speculative’ [(93-4)].) The proper task of theology is ‘a practical one’ [Kt26:996(24)]: ‘it should not make us more learned, but better, wiser, and more upright.’ For the only reason it has any ‘speculative interest’ at all is ‘that our reason always needs a highest in order to measure and determine the less high according to it.’ When it is properly pursued, therefore, theology be­comes ‘a motive for ethics’—although this does not mean ‘the principle of ethical determination [i.e., the moral law] is theological’, for ‘it cannot be that’ [Kt35:(39)]. ‘We need theology’, Kant concludes, ‘solely on behalf of reli­gion, that is to say, our practical or, in other words, moral standpoint, and need it as a subjective requirement’ [Kt7:482]. So theology for Kant depends on phi­loso­phy for its theoretical justification and on religion for its practical justifi­cation.[7]

       This view of the relationship between philosophy, theology, and re­li­gion does not serve as a con­stitutive element for any of the systems in Kant’s Critical philosophy. Nevertheless, understand­ing his general assumptions on these matters will help us comprehend the religious and theological implica­tions he believes ought to be drawn from his System. Thus our main focus here in Part Two is on the philosophi­cal or ‘speculative’ (i.e., theoretical) foundation for theological reflection laid by Kant’s System. Despite his negative assess­ment of the traditional arguments for God’s existence [see IV.1 and AIV.1], we saw in IV.2-3 that his overall aim is positive: to provide reasons for believing without establishing any knowledge of God’s existence.

       The proposition ‘there is a God’, Kant tells us at the very outset of his ear­liest excursion into theology, is ‘the most important of all our cognitions’ [Kt15:65(219)]. He goes on to explain that ‘the natural human understanding’ does not depend in any way on metaphysical argu­ments for its ‘insights’ into God, but instead ‘conduct[s] us directly to the true and useful, so far as we stand in the utmost need of them.’ This respect for the common understanding over against the ‘false art’ of philosophical speculation is an attitude that re­mained with Kant throughout his life,[8] though this continuity is often over­looked by those who limit their attention to his more mature criticism of rational theology. Such neglect inevitably results in a misunderstanding of Kant’s reasons for taking such an apparently negative theological stance.

       Kant found it necessary, before he could say anything affirmative about our theoretical understand­ing of God, to destroy once and for all what he re­garded as dangerously misleading illusions about how far human beings can go in establishing conclusions about God’s existence. If God is to remain God (i.e., if our idea of God is to be appropriate and meaningful), we must regard the question of God’s existence, at least when viewed from a theoretical standpoint, as essentially a transcendent uncertainty. To bring our concept of God down to the level of potentially con­clusive theo­retical argu­ments is to reduce God to an object of categorial thought, to regard God as an appearance among other appearances, and in the long run, as a potential object of scientific observa­tion. Kant’s belief in a legitimate regulative use of the concept of God as an idea of reason [see IV.2] takes the place of past philosophers’ tendency to portray this concept as a potentially consti­tutive item of theoretical knowledge.

       This regulative use of the idea of God sets the stage for what Kant regards as the only legitimate way of understanding God’s immanence,[9] for it requires our language about God always to be interpreted symbolically. A ‘symbol’, Kant explains, express­es a concept ‘without employing a direct intuition for the purpose, but only drawing upon an analogy with one’.[10] Such symbolic analogies can provide, as he notes in Kt2:358n, ‘a notion of the relation of things which absolutely are unknown to me.’ To illustrate this, Kant cites the ‘perfect similarity’ between God’s love for humanity and the love of parents for their children [358; s.a. Lo81:305]. As Gulick [Gu94:106] puts it, ‘we crave sensible representations for each Idea, such as the Idea of God.’ The idea’s transcendent nature demands that we regard such representa­tions as ‘symbols related to the Idea through analogy.... The symbol represents what the Idea is for us, not what it is in itself.’ Calling such representations ‘regulative’ does not decrease their value, but heightens it; for ‘[i]deas ... guide our life. They organize our thought’ [106-7].

       In Kt8:65n(58n) Kant treats the use of analogy in symbolic language as a form of schematism: ‘we must always resort to some analogy to natural existences to render supersensible qualities intelligible to ourselves.... Such is the schematism of analogy, with which (as a means of explanation) we cannot dispense.’[11] In Kt69: 279-80 he compares ‘schematism’, requiring a direct con­nection be­tween intuition and concept, with ‘symbolization’, requiring an indirect con­nection. He says, ‘although I can have no properly theoretical cognition of the nonsensible, e.g. God, I can have knowledge by analogy and, to be sure, knowledge that it is necessary for reason to think.’ That the latter might refer to the categories is suggested by Ess and Gulick when they call the categories ‘analogical equivocals’ [Es94:94]. Likewise, Kt4 and Kt7 are tied together by ‘the notion of beauty as an analogical symbol of the good’.

       As applied to our idea of God, Kant’s view [Es94:96] is that

 

we think of the object of the theological idea ... as an analogon of a real thing ... Kant implies that we think in the Idea only the relation (Verhältnis) between God and appearances, as analogous to the relation (Verhältnis) between cause and effect ... Analogy used in this way ... [is] a qualitative equality between relations ...

 

Ess and Gulick continue [97]: using ‘analogy in the form of a proportion ... allows for predicating the categories of objects of the transcendental Ideas without thereby violating Kant’s original restriction of the categories to objects presented in sensible intuition.’ For here ‘we are encouraged to think and act as if God exists.’ A genuine misuse of the categories would conclude that we know God exists. This ‘focus on relation in analogy makes analogy ... crucial to the architectonic intentions and unity of the Kantian system.’ What this boils down to is that the talk of analogy is one manifestation of Kant’s principle of perspective. As usual in Kant-studies, ‘the interpreters’ allegations of inconsis­tency ... stem from a collective failure to recognize Kant’s use of analogy and analogical proportion’ [98]—or at least, to recognize it as an application of the principle of perspective.

       Kant’s most positive contribution to rational theology thus consists, as we shall see in the remainder of this chapter, in his construction of various rational, analogical models for God’s nature. Concerning these Kant reminds us that

 

all our knowledge of God is merely symbolic; and one who takes it, with the prop­erties of understanding, will, and so forth, which only evidence their objective real­ity in beings of this world, to be schematic, falls into anthropomorphism, just as, if he abandons every intuitive element, he falls into Deism which furnishes no knowledge whatsoever—not even from a practical standpoint. [Kt7:353]

 

His theistic alternative is that ‘a knowledge of God and His existence, that is to say a theology, is possible by means of attributes and determinations of this causality merely conceived in Him according to analogy, and this knowledge has all requisite reality from a practical standpoint’ [484-5; cf. Kt17:297(282)].

       By 1766 Kant already believed ‘it is incumbent upon man to judge of the divine will only from the harmony which he actually perceives in the world, or which, by the rule of analogy, according to the order of nature, he may sup­pose to be in it’ [Kt18:337(67)]. Two years earlier Kant had claimed in Kt17:297(282): ‘In all cases where an analogy to contingency is not present, metaphysi­cal knowledge of God can be very certain.’ As examples he cites God’s relation to space and time: ‘God is ... in no place, but He is present to all things in all places where they are. Simi­larly, ... with respect to Him nothing is future or past.’ Kant warns, however, that our judgments regarding God’s ways, i.e., God’s actions towards us human beings, ‘can have ei­ther certainty only by approximation or certainty which is moral.’

       Kant’s special brand of theism can be called a ‘symbolic-regulative anthro­pomorphism’, in contrast to the usual, ‘dogmatic-constitutive anthropo­mor­phism’ of conventional the­ism.[12] Although the former should always point to some practical (moral) meaning, Kant admits: ‘Anthropomorphism ... in the theoretical represen­tation of God and His being ... [is] harmless enough (as long as it does not in­flu­ence concepts of duty)’ [Kt8:168(156)]. Here, as Despland points out, ‘Kant’s dissent from deism’ is especially apparent [De73: 151]: his ‘radi­cal dis­covery of man as a symbol-using animal’ marks ‘a major break­through in phi­losophy of religion’ [155], for symbols serve as the ‘unifying concept’ of the various aspects of his philosophy of religion [260; s.a. 150-1]—a view we will have occasion to elaborate and confirm time and again throughout the remainder of this book [s.e. Part Three]. Thus, even though religious symbols must always have a moral element for Kant, Loades is quite right to say Kant’s ‘symbolic anthropomorphism ... was expressed in terms ... of hope’ [Lo81:307].

       Many theologians think of Kant’s the­ology first and foremost, if not exclusively, in terms of his criticism of the three traditional arguments for the existence of God. Since his arguments are relatively clear and have been thor­ough­ly described by all too many scholars, my detailed account of Kant’s posi­tion is relegated to AIV.1, where his claims are shown in each case to be based on perspectival reasoning. Downplaying this most famous aspect of his doctrine of God allows us to highlight the less known, but for Kant far more elemental, aspects of his position. Chapter IV’s scrutiny of Kant’s rea­sons for affirming the existence of a living God prepared the way for our initial look at the nature of God’s mysterious ‘reasoning’ power in V.1. Our recogni­tion here in V.2 of the thoroughly symbolic nature of philosophical theology has now prepared the way for a more detailed account of the architectonic structure of Kant’s conception of God’s at­tributes. Only by attending in this way to his thoroughly systematic treatment of the concept of God can the rich­ness and depth of Kant’s symbolic theology be adequately evinced.

3. Reason’s Theological Need: Architectonic Perspectives

    on the Perspectiveless Ground of Being

       Why should we even bother forming the concept of God, if in the end we have to admit that our conceptions are merely symbolic? The key to answering this question lies in what Kant calls the ‘need of reason’ [see note IV.5]. As we saw in IV.2, we must hypothetically posit ‘a self-subsistent, original, creative reason’ as the ‘single, highest and all-sufficient ground’ of ‘the sum of all appearances’, because we need some such creative and unifying force to ‘guide our reason’s empirical perspective in securing its greatest possible extension’ [Kt1:700-1, alt.]. This need is not a mere psychological weak­ness, but a logical force compelling us to establish architectonic connections between the other­wise chaotic aggregate of our empirical knowledge. In order to reach the point of highest unity, reason needs to exhibit a self-creative power, and it does this by imposing predetermined logical patterns onto the raw material presented to it. Reason’s need is further intensified in systemp, where it must postulate God and immortality in order to explain how the highest good is possible. And as Michalson tantalizingly suggests, the ‘need of reason’ is ulti­mately ‘an aesthetic ... ideal’ [Mi79:180]. By this he means reason’s greatest need is to see human life as ultimately meaningful.[13]

       The fact that each of Kant’s Critical standpoints directs us to a need of reason suggests that an essential task of Kantian critique may be the dis­cov­ery of what reason does and does not need. Kant hints at this as early as 1766, when he distinguishes in Kt18:369(115) between the scientist (the voice of knowledge by means of understanding) who exclaims ‘How many things there are which I do not understand!’ and the philosopher (the voice of wisdom by means of reason) who exclaims ‘How many things there are which I do not need!’ Along these lines, Despland aptly conveys this essential characteristic of Kantian reason when, in comment­ing on Kt20, he says [De73:35]: ‘Reasons themselves are in conflict with each other. Reason is not science. It is a need. It is lack of knowledge passionately fighting for knowledge. (The traditional opposition faith-reason is undercut.)’ In light of our discussion in KSP1:V.1-4 of the role of faith in justifying the transcendent starting-point of Kant’s entire System, we can take this one step further and say that for Kant reason’s highest need (and thus in a sense, reason itself) is faith![14]

       As demonstrated in KSP1:IV.3, both the hypothetical perspective and the practical standpoint (when viewed theoretically) are best described as having the status of analytic a posteriori belief. In AIV.1, below, the same status is accorded to Kant’s so-called ‘possibility proof’, which as we shall see, forms the basis for Kant’s conception of God’s nature. To this we can now add that when Kant appeals to reason’s need(s) he is also using a form of argument that is both analytic and yet a posteriori. It is analytic because it arises through a purely logical process of reasoning; it is a posteriori because it directs us, as we shall see, to something intimately bound up with our immediate ex­peri­ence—though not in such a way as to produce knowledge, as in synthetic forms of a posteriority. Kant’s failure to provide us with a technical term that accurately conveys this paradoxical status may be largely responsible for the tendency interpreters have had to regard his refuta­tions of the traditional arguments as implying that his rational theology is entire­ly negative and ‘deistic’, empty of anything that would offer support to a living faith. This ground­less charge is refuted in AIV.4. The remainder of this chapter will further confirm the conclusions drawn there: we shall ponder several of Kant’s positive suggestions as to how human beings can and do conceive of God’s na­ture, even though God’s existence is in and of itself unknowable. This section will focus mainly on God’s theoretical attributes and how they relate to certain basic theological types. This will prepare us to look more closely in V.4 at God’s moral nature.

       England [En29:183] claims that ‘Kant did not so much as make the attempt to fashion an adequate conception of the intelligent originator of nature.’ Likewise, Odero [Od91:267] reads Kant as saying ‘we do not know what God is.’ Yet, as we have seen and shall see, Kant has plenty to offer to the theologian in the way of tools to cope with the realities of human ignorance. Once we believe that God exists, architectonic reason gives us clear guidelines as to how our concept of God is to be formed [see e.g., Es94:90-1]. These Kant presents in the form of symbolic models of God’s nature which, far from being entirely negative and empty, of­fer a balanced and realistic way of responding to some long-standing theological issues.[15] These models, though rarely appreciated by commentators—perhaps because of their dependence on archi­tecton­ic patterns—consti­tute an important aspect of Kant’s systematic under­standing of our theoretical conception of God’s nature. Together with Kant’s ‘symbolic understanding of Christian materials’ in Kt8, they enable Kant ‘to make a genuine advance beyond the deists’ [Mc86:69; s.a. AIV.4].

       Kant’s dissatisfaction with traditional models of God’s nature is evident in Kt7:392-5, where he criticizes the four ways of systematically explain­ing the existence of finality in nature. As usual, he categorizes the pos­sibilities in terms of a 2LAR: philosophers posit either ‘a living God’ (theism), ‘a lifeless matter’

 

     

 

 Figure V.1: Possible Sources of Physical Ends

(materialism), ‘a lifeless God’ (deism), or ‘a living matter’ (hylozoism) [392, 392n]. As shown in Figure V.1, he groups these in pairs under a 1LAR between ‘idealism’ and ‘realism’ of physical ends, so they can be arranged (according to the model of the cross established in KSP1:III.3 [see Fig.III.1, above]). The two subordinate 1LARs that give rise to this 2LAR are first, a distinction between God (+) and the material world (-), and second, a distinction between living (+) and lifeless (-) conceptions of God/matter.

       Because the speculative perspective in systemt is unable ‘to demonstrate the existence of a supreme being’ [Kt1:667], there can be no theoretical knowl­edge that theism is true. But this should not be taken to imply that ‘the concept of “God” has no theoretical application.’[16] For as we have seen, a hypothetical application of purely logical distinctions can be ‘of very great value in correct­ing any knowledge of this being which may be derived from other sources [e.g., natural, moral, or revealed theology], in making it consistent with itself and with every intelligible perspective’ [667-8]. So even though Kant’s criticism of the traditional arguments appears at first to have wholly negative impli­cations for theists, Kant stresses that it also has the beneficial effect of guarding against ‘all counter-assertions [to theism], whether atheistic, deistic, or anthropomorphic’

 

 

Figure V.2: Four Basic Types of Theological Disposition

 

[668-9]. Here, as elsewhere [e.g., Kt2:356-7], Kant is thinking in terms of a similar 2LAR between four basic types of theological disposition. If we compare this map with that in Figure V.1, we can see an obvious corre­lation between materialism and atheism and between hylozoism and anthropo­morphism. Just as the materialist believes there is no life in matter, the atheist believes there is no God in reality. And just as hylozoism views matter as a living organism, anthropomorphism views God as existing in a human (hence, in a ‘no God’) form. With this alteration (replacing the notion of material ends in Figure V.1 with that of religious belief), the best way of grouping these terms into two pairs is to distinguish between religious (+) and nonreligious (-) ways of believing in God.

       Kant accounts for the different views of God defended by different philoso­phers as a direct result of the fact that ‘each considered the world from a differ­ent perspective’ [Kt26:1008(37)]. Of these four types of religious belief, Kant favors theism [see AIV.4 and note IV.24]. But he reveals his dissatis­faction with the the­oretical implications philosophers and theologians often impute to the­ism, by warning that even theism ‘is absolutely incapable of author­izing us to make any objec­tive as­sertion.’[17] The correspondence between Figures V.1 and III.4 suggests that none of these four views should enjoy a claim to absolute validity; each refers to a theory that results from emphasizing one perspective to the exclusion of the others.

       As we saw in more detail in IV.2, Kant defends the idea of God, when viewed as a regulative principle, as being philosophically useful even though it is empirically unattainable [see Kt1:643-4]. Aside from emphasizing that the regulative use of ideas is not empirical but hy­pothetical [cf. KSP1:VII.3.B], this also has clear implications for what form our conception of God should actually take. First of all it implies that, since ‘we can never reach [‘the greatest possible unity among appearances’] within this world, ... we must re­gard the absolutely necessary being as being outside the world’ [645]. But it is not im­mediately apparent just what type of transcendence Kant is thinking of here, or how it differs from that of the ideal (i.e., God as hypostatized object), or of the thing in itself. So let us look briefly at the relationships between these notions.

       The thing in itself transcends all our perspectives; it is perspective­less and passive [see Fig. III.5]. Likewise, Kant says God’s wisdom is ‘independent of all perspectives’.[18] Despite this similarity, the thing in itself and the idea of God play significantly different roles in Kant’s System. Recall the two versions of systemt discussed in KSP1:235-45. In the speculative version the thing in itself is the inner ‘ground’ of all our experience, while God, as an ideal object, is the ‘ultimate reality’ that transcends the limited sphere of human reality. In the proper, hypothetical version of systemt [see Fig. III.6], by contrast, the situation is just the reverse: the thing in itself is now transcendent in the sense that it fills the ‘space’ outside the ‘circle’ of our possible knowledge, while God, regarded now as an idea of reason, is transcendent in the sense of pointing beyond systemt towards the inward ground of immediate experience.

       Perhaps the best alternative would be to regard God in a more radical sense, as transcending the whole ‘plane’ of our world—i.e., as standing out­side both the thing in itself and our subject-object world of per­spectival knowl­edge. According to this notion, God transcends the very distinction between transcendence and immanence. The characterization of God as the ‘Ground of Being’ is best interpreted within this context. God is not the Ground of Being only in the sense that the thing in itself is the transcendent ground of the transcendental object and its appearance, nor only in the sense that the idea points towards the immanent ground of immediate experience; rather, as Source of both transcendence and immanence, the ‘Ground’ of this world must participate in both and yet remain ultimately distinct from either. That is, God has a single, all-encompassing Perspective that not only includes the logically original perspectivelessness of the thing in itself, but also encompasses both the original human Perspective of immediate experience, and all the intermediate perspectives that give rise to Kant’s System of Perspec­tives. Such a view is implied by Kant when he says:

 

Just as it would therefore be contradictory to say God is the creator of appearances, it is also contradictory to say that He, as the Creator, is the cause of actions in the world of sense, as these are appearances; yet at the same time He is the cause of the existence of the acting beings (as noumena). [Kt4:102; s.a. Gu87:16]

 

If we press this analogy to its limits, viewing God in this radically transcendent sense helps us understand how God can ‘be in a position’ to see into the very depths of our hearts (i.e., to be immanent), yet also to apprehend the true reality   of the things that make up the material of our world (i.e., to be transcendent).[19]

       This Kantian way of viewing the paradoxical coexistence of God’s immanence and transcendence can be appropriately depicted as follows:

 

                

 

Figure V.3: The Transcendence and Immanence of God in Relation to Kant’s Three Ideas of Reason

 

That this is not just a reconstruction of a view Kant himself never elaborated, but is an accurate model of the position he actually held, will become more clear in Chapters XI-XII, when we examine the final (uncompleted) work in Kant’s System [i.e., Kt9].[20] For now, let it suffice to say that transcendence without immanence would yield an irrelevant (if not meaningless) doctrine of God, whereas immanence without transcendence would be too presumptuous (if not outright idolatrous). After Kant, the theological issue ought never again be debated in the form, ‘Is God transcendent or immanent?’, but rather in the more modest and meaningful form, ‘Is there an immanent-and-transcendent God, or isn’t there?’ And to this latter question, Kant’s philosophy provides the basis for answering with a resounding ‘yes, I believe there is such a God!’

       The radically transcendent aspect of God’s nature seems to be what Kant is thinking of in suggesting that God is ‘outside the world’.[21] For he proceeds to say this view of God frees us

 

to derive the appearances of the world and their existences from other appearances, with unfailing confidence, just as if there were no necessary being, while yet we are also free to strive unceasingly towards the completeness of that derivation, just as if such a being were presupposed as an ultimate ground. [Kt1:646-7]

 

Kt26:993(22) makes this point rather more concisely: ‘The world depends on a supreme being, but the things in the world all mutually depend on one an­other.’ This ‘assumption’ that ‘God as the Universal Primordial Being is the cause ... of the existence of substance ... can never be given up’, Kant insists, for it is the basis of all theology [Kt4:100]. So for Kant, God cannot be identi­fied with the world or with our ideas (i.e., our idea of God is in no sense con­stitutive of the world), yet theistic belief yields ample evidence of God’s partic­ipation in both (i.e., by means of a regulative employment of the idea of God) [see IV.2].

       If God is radically transcendent, yet morally immanent, then what is the best way of going about constructing a theoretical model of God’s nature? The importance of one of Kant’s favorite models is obscured in Kt1 by the fact that he first introduces it in its illusory employment, as a fourfold representation of the ‘object of the ideal of reason’ [606]. According to the ‘possibi­lity proof’,[22] God is the most real being, the ens realissimum, but can also be described as ‘the primordial being (ens origi­narium)’, ‘the highest being (ens summum)’, and ‘the being of all beings (ens entium)’ [606-7]. Kant makes a parallel di­vi­sion in Kt26:1000(28-9) between three types of ‘rational theology’: ‘(a) tran­scen­den­talem, (b) naturalem, and (c) moralem.’ The first, divisible into cosmo­theol­ogy and ontotheology [1003(31)], he describes in terms of the ens origi­narium and the ens summum. The second refers to physicotheology, and concerns itself with God as ens intelli­gentia [highest intelligence]’ [1000(29), t.b.]. And the third refers to moral theology, treating God ‘as the summum bonum, as the highest good.’ Each of the four characterizations in such divisions of rational theology corre­sponds to one of Kant’s four reflective perspectives and can therefore be read­ily plotted onto a 2LAR cross (the former example being given in brackets where it dif­fers from the latter) [cf. Fig. AIV.1; s.e. note AIV.3]:

 

 

Figure V.4:

God’s Nature and the Types of Rational Theology

 

       Illusion arises not from the mere positing of such a fourfold description of God’s nature, but only from regarding these terms ‘as signifying the objective relation of an actual object to other things’ [Kt1:607]. Their proper purpose is not to yield knowledge of an ideal object, but to clarify the relation between our idea of God and our faculty of conception [607]: ‘We are left entirely without knowledge as to the existence of a being of such outstand­ing pre-eminence.’ Although the theoretical arguments used to justify these ways of conceiving God’s nature are not sufficient to establish objective knowledge, we have seen ‘that there are in the idea of reason obligations which are completely valid’ [617], even from the standpoint of systemt. Since ‘we know nothing that is better and more convincing’ than these arguments, and since ‘the natural bent of the common understanding’ is towards ‘monotheism’ (even in predomi­nantly polytheistic cultures) [617-8], Kant believes they do serve the important purpose of encouraging and/or clarifying our ra­tional belief. Especially when it is seen as a supplement to ‘a moral theology ..., transcen­den­tal theology, which before was problematic only, will prove itself indis­pens­able in determining the concept of this supreme being and in con­stantly testing reason’ [669]. It will provide us with ‘knowledge of God, though only from a practical stand­point.’[23] Thus, although he says the best way to avoid theologi­cal errors is ‘by leaving dogmatic judgments severely alone’ [Kt35:(85)]—i.e., ‘by not under­taking to judge where [one] does not know as much as is required for definitive judgment’ [Kt20:136]—Kant himself nevertheless does make some rather bold statements about God’s nature [see e.g., note AIV.6]. He does so because he be­lieves we do know enough about the structure of reason’s logical perspective to be able to construct architectonic models of what the divine nature must be like if God exists.[24] Such models fulfill the function not of providing conviction, but of helping us know what to believe, once we are convinced.

       Kant’s main reason for arguing, even in Kt1, that God is best thought of as the ens realissimum, is that this aspect of God’s nature fulfills an otherwise unsatisfiable need of reason. Human reason ‘seek[s] a resting-place in the regress from the conditioned, which is given, to the unconditioned’ [Kt1:612]. The idea of God, as the most real being, provides this place of rest. This does not mean, as Peccorini claims [Pe72:58-65], that Kant thinks he has a theoretically justifiable argument that proves God’s existence to be necessary. Rather, in claiming ‘that God has necessary existence’, Kant ‘is much more interested in knowing what God is than in knowing that God is.’[25] Moreover, he is careful to point out that the conclusion remains hypothetical. For justification he appeals not to philosophical argument but to common experience [Kt1:612]: ‘This is the course which our human reason, by its very nature, leads all of us, even the least reflective, to adopt, though not everyone continues to pursue it. It begins not with concepts, but with common experience, and thus bases itself on something actually existing.’ As we shall see in Part Four, this appeal to immediate experience is far more important to Kant than has generally been recognized: only by resting in the perspectiveless can we bridge the perspectival gap between the contingent and the necessary.[26]

 

4. God’s Trinitarian Nature: Holiness, Benevolence, and Justice

       We have now seen that Kant suggests several ways of conceiving of the attributes of God—i.e., ways of regarding God that are tied to the form of our finite, perspec­tival nature. Another example comes in Kt15:83-7(248-54), where Kant lists the predicates de­scribing God according to the following 2LAR: ‘The necessary Being’ (1) ‘is One’, (2) ‘is simple’, (3) ‘is immutable and eternal’, and (4) ‘comprehendeth the highest Reality.’ But he warns us that this is not a ‘determinate exposition of the conception of God’, but only ‘the analysis’ of the concept [89(256)]. Later, in Kt4:140, he claims that, as long as we regard ‘the concept of God [as] one which belongs originally not to physics, i.e., to speculative reason, but to morals’, we can say God ‘must be omnisci­ent, ... omnipo­tent, and similarly omnipresent, eternal, etc.’ The perspectival basis of such attribu­tions is brought out in Kt7:484, where Kant relates them to our cognitive faculties:

 

... we are obliged to conceive the eternity of God as an existence in all time, be­cause we can form no other conception of mere existence than that of ... duration. Similarly we have to conceive the divine omnipotence as an existence in all places ... All this we do without, however, being at liberty to ascribe any of these thought-forms to God as something cognized in Him.... [Just be­cause] I seek to conceive a supersensible being (God) as Intelli­gence ... I have no right whatsoever to flatter myself that I am in a position to ascribe intelligence to that being and thereby to cognize it by one of its attributes. For in that case I must omit all the above conditions under which I know an intelligence [e.g., the categories].

 

       Because God actually transcends all our perspectives, such at­tributions can­not be taken as literal descriptions of, so to speak, God’s very essence [see Kt7:465]. As Ward puts it: ‘The question whether God in himself is like the model is meaningless’, for such models have no absolute theoretical signifi­cance [Wa72:82]. ‘Practical reason’, explains Kant, ‘gives significance ... to the theoretical concept of a First Being. This significance is given from a practical standpoint’ [Kt4:133]. Accordingly, Kant is careful to emphasize the subjective character of any such list of divine attributes:

 

... these attributes of the Supreme Being can only be conceived by us on anal­ogy. ... [They] enable us to conceive a Supreme Being, not to cognize it or to pred­icate them of it in a more or less theoretical manner.... Yet the object which we have in view in employing them is not that we wish to determine the nature of the Being by reference to them—a nature which is inaccessible to us—but rather that we seek to use them for determining our own selves and our will.... [For] this be­ing ... transcends all our cognitive faculties ... But, once the question [of God’s na­ture] touches practical matters, a regulative principle ... then becomes also consti­tutive. In other words it is practically determinant ... [Kt7:456-7; s.a. 481]

 

As he further elaborates in Kt8:139(130-1), the only reason ‘we must conceive and comprehend all the [theoretical] attributes of the divine nature’, such as ‘unchangeableness, omniscience, omnipotence, etc.’, is that these ‘are requisite to the carrying out of the divine will’ with regard to God’s moral attributes. As Hart explains, ‘the function of assigning special attribution to God ... is the edifying determination of our self and our wills.’[27]

       The basic structure of Kant’s System of Perspectives provides a frame­work for interpreting his account of God’s moral nature [cf. Fig. VI.1, below]. ‘God’, Kant tells us, ‘is the only holy, the only blessed, and the only wise being’ [Kt4:131n]. These attributes define not God’s absolute nature, but the three essen­tial ways we have of interpreting how God relates to us: ‘He is thus the holy lawgiver (and creator), the beneficent ruler (and sustainer), and the just judge’.[28] Each attribute describes the moral aspect of how one of Kant’s three Critical systems relates to its transcendent ground. God’s holiness relates solely to systemp; it is the supreme attribute because reason is essentially practical. Just as practical reason is a creative power, God’s creative lawgiving sets in motion both the moral law and the natural law that determines the course of the phe­nom­enal world. Holiness sets God apart from us, because we are tempted by our interests [see note VIII.30 of KSP1, and Kt5:414n], whereas God has access to the moral law as it is in itself. Blessedness describes the character of a being who is capable of sustaining us by satisfying our inclina­tions, yet without ever contradicting the moral law. As we shall see in VII.2.A, this is something human beings are not capable of doing. Our need to regard God as a beneficent ruler thus arises out of the limitations systemt puts on systemp. Philo­soph­ically, God’s rule is manifested first, as the gift of free will, making moral action possible, and then as the gift of happiness, making life mean­ingful.[29] Finally, wisdom also sets God apart from us, beings whose existential judg­ments (cf. sys­temj) are always limited by our own ignorance; this attribute gives God the right to be the judge of all rational/personal beings.

       Moral Theology alone, unlike any of the other three types of theology specified in Figure V.4, can produce a concept of God that ‘is religiously satis­factory’, because, as Despland observes in De73:144: ‘To make God into a cause, a mechanic, or an artist is to make him like us. To make him holy, good, and just is to make him unlike us.’ Thus, Kant points out in Kt64:193n that ‘the conception of God, that shall be fit for religion ... must be a conception of him as a moral Being; ... the proof of the existence of such a Being can be no other than a moral one.’ He then repeats the same ‘three attributes of the supreme wisdom of the Author of the world’: ‘holiness, as legislator’; ‘good­ness, as governor’; and ‘justice, as judge’ [194]. Kant insists [194-5n] these three attributes ‘constitute the moral conception of God’, for their number can­not be changed, ‘[n]or can their order be altered.’ This is because his moral concept of God is architectonic, directly corresponding to the 1LSR structure of his three Critical sys­tems [see Fig. V.5].[30] As such, God’s just judgment can be regarded as the synthetic com­ponent in the divine nature, providing a bridge that links