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 the opposing charac­ter­is­tics of God’s holiness as lawgiver and God’s goodness as governor of all human beings.

       The positive (though symbolic) models of God’s nature supplied by Kant’s Critical theology are supplemented by other models that guard against in­numer­able errors in both theology and religion. Kant outlines one of these in Kt7:459:

 

    

 

Figure V.5: God’s Three Moral Attributes

 

The fact that, in respect of all our ideas of the supersensible, reason is restricted to the conditions of its practical standpoint is of obvious use in connexion with the idea of God. It prevents theology from losing itself in the clouds of theosophy, i.e. in transcendent conceptions [of God] that confuse reason, or from sinking into the depths of demonology, i.e. an anthropomorphic mode of repre­senting the Supreme Being. Also it keeps religion from falling into theurgy, which is a fanati­cal delusion that a feeling can be communicated to us from other supersensible be­ings and that we in turn can influence them, or into idolatry, which is a supersti­tious delusion that one can make oneself acceptable to the Supreme Being by other means than that of having the moral law at heart.[31]

 

He describes these errors in terms of a 2LAR, with the four components being grouped into pairs according to the distinction between theological errors and religious errors, as shown in Figure V.6. The two 1LARs constituting this 2LAR are first, the distinction between pri­marily conceptual (+) and nonconceptual (-) errors, and second, the distinc­tion between theological (+) and religious (-) ones. Each type of error re­sults from treating the theoretical standpoint as a sufficient means of grasping God’s nature, leading to a neglect of the practical standpoint and a total failure to appreciate the symbolic character of all our language about God.

       The best way to avoid such theological and religious errors is to recognize that, because human beings ‘cannot affect God in any way’ [Kt35:(104)],     any attempt at manipulating God (as we do with things in the world that are

 

 

Figure V.6: Theological and Religious Errors

 

theoretically knowable) is futile. Instead, our response to God must be condi­tioned by God’s three moral attributes [(97)]: ‘Our bearing towards God must be char­acterized by reverence, love and fear—reverence for Him as a holy lawgiver, love for His beneficent rule, and fear of Him as a just judge.’ The first two responses function as polar opposites[32] that insure equilibrium in our religious outlook (i.e., they encourage us to strike a happy medium between keeping a safe distance from God’s awesome majesty and coming as close as possible to enjoy God’s fascinating love), while the third guards against the moral laziness that might set in if a person ever feels too far from or too close to God. Thus Kant utilizes the same threefold model in his recommendations on the theologi­cal education of children:

 

The thought of God should fill man with reverence every time he speaks His name, and he should therefore seldom use it, and never frivolously. The child must learn to feel respect for God as the master of his life and of the whole world; further, as the protector of man; and, finally, as his judge. [Kt39:495(216)]

 

       This account of God’s moral nature brings us full circle. Before reflecting on Kant’s view of God’s transcendence in V.1, we noted that divine ‘reason’ must be conceived as proceeding in a way that is opposite to human reason. We then explored how God’s immanence can be understood through various types of symbolism. We now conclude by observing that God’s immanent nature is also defined as being opposite to human nature. The main difference comes with the first moral attribute: being holy means God is never tempted by inclinations, whereas we are not only tempted, but inevitably yield at times [see VII.2.A]. This means the most we can hope to attain is virtue. ‘For God as Holy Will’ [Hi74:383], by contrast, ‘there is no tension between the form of the good according to the moral law and the material content of desire.’ Just as viewing the nature of the divine intellect as intellectual intuition and intuitive understand­ing means God’s ‘knowledge’ is not bound by sensible intuition and categorial understanding,[33] so also viewing the nature of divine will as holy means God’s ‘action’ is not bound by interest and inclination, as is the human will.[34] The practical aspect of the divine nature, like the theoretical, must be conceived in terms of a negation of human nature: ‘An interest is present only in a dependent will which is not of itself always in accord with reason’; so ‘in the divine will we cannot conceive of an interest.’[35] Kant explains further that ‘no imperatives hold for the divine will’, because God has no genuinely moral choices to make: ‘according to its own subjective constitution, [God’s will] can be deter­mined to act only through the con­ception of the good.’ This characteristic, as we saw in KSP1:VIII.3.B and XII.4, is what qualifies God to serve as the ‘sovereign’ in the ‘realm of ends’.[36]

       Temple thinks ‘holiness represents a call to be inhuman’ [Te94:116] and would entail deny­ing our ‘animal nature—our feelings, desires, and sympa­thies’—in short, ‘the eradication of every­thing that is distinctively human.’ But this is not Kant’s view (nor is it authentically Christian). For a person to be holy involves becoming not inhuman, but divine-human. And this does not re­quire the ‘eradication’ of our animal nature, but its transformation. Happi­ness and inclination are not absent from the highest good, but transformed to a higher level. Temple comes closest to this when he says [117] ‘Kant ... takes the holy will to be a vision of something more than human.’ Unfortunately, his entire article never even mentions God as the only genuinely holy being [see e.g., Kt5:414]; he totally misses Kant’s point, that holiness is inextricably tied to being religious—i.e., being in relationship with a holy God. Such a rela­tion­ship is possible, as we shall see in Part Three, only because an image of divine holiness, what Kant calls the ‘arche­type’ (the ideal internal image that is perfectly reflected in the life of Jesus), exists in every person [see VII.2.B].

       Hicks accuses Kant of failing to synthesize the two opposite approaches he has for conceiving God [Hi74:385]—viz., the ‘indeterminate’ concept of God as an ‘Absolute Subject’, whose powers of reasoning and willing are opposite to ours, and the ‘determinate’ (traditional) concept of God as an ‘Absolute Object’,[37] who can be known according to a specific set of attributes. He criticizes Kant for ‘remaining unnervingly naive, even cheerful, about the ironies his thought spawned.’ But as I have demonstrated in this chapter, these two aspects of Kant’s views on God’s nature are in fact like two sides of the single coin of his symbolic theology. Moreover, when we return to these two notions in XII.4, we shall find that in Kt9 Kant does attempt a synthesis: the Absolute Subject (God) and the Absolute Object (the World) are synthesized in the bearer of freedom (Christ, the ideal God-Man), who is thereby capable of combining the opposites of holiness and virtue.

       Kant’s Critical theology not only helps elucidate how best to understand the idea of God, an idea that determines the whole course of his System, but as we saw in IV.2-4, it also demonstrates how belief in that God is theoretically possible (systemt), judicially actual (systemj) and practically necessary (systemp). Nevertheless, theology as such cannot bridge the final gap in his Sys­tem, as shown in Figure III.8. For that, an actual (immediate) experience, rather than merely a rational theory, is required. With this in mind we shall therefore consider in the next chapter how Kant relates his theology to what motivates most theologians, namely, religion. This in turn will prepare us to look in more detail at Kant’s conception of religion in general [see Part Three] and of religious experience in particular [see Part Four].

 

  [1].  Kt1:29; s.a. KSP1:VII.2. Walsh [Wa90:49] makes the interesting suggestion that when Kant says these two stems ‘perhaps spring from a common, but to us unknown, root’, he may be thinking of the divine intellect (see below). Since we have no literal knowledge of the latter, however, Kant is very careful never to claim such an order of connection. Rather, everything we ‘know’ about God’s nature is only derivable by comparison with human nature.

  [2].  Kt1:139; s.a. Kt69:267; Go89:163-4. As Paulsen suggests in Pa02:151-2, mathematics is the closest thing we have to God’s way of knowing: ‘[God] determines reality by his thought.... In mathematics, the human understanding also by its own self-activity creates the objects of its knowledge; hence ... there is no unknowable element left over, no distinction between appearance and thing-in-itself.... The divine intellect ... bears the same relation to things that the human does to geometrical triangles and circles.’ This is one of the reasons I believe geometrical figures are so useful in clarifying reason’s architectonic structure: they provide human reason with the closest possible access to the kind of ‘reason’ employed by the ultimate ‘architect’ [cf. note IV.24].

  [3].  One of the leading contemporary Chinese interpreters of Kant, Mou Tsung-san, uses Kant’s rejection of intellectual intuition as one of the key points in his at­tempt to demonstrate how the Confucian philosophical tradition can complement and complete the inadequacies of the Western (i.e., Kantian) philosophical tradi­tion. He claims Kant was wrong to reject intellectual intuition, and takes Con­fucius’ concept of ‘li’ (a rational principle of insight into proper action) as proof enough that intellectual intuition is a real human power. Though Mou’s views have generated quite a following in Chinese circles, they are based on an unfortunate misread­ing of Kant’s theory. For not only does Confucius never defend what Kant means by ‘intellectual intuition’ (i.e., a way of gaining theoretical knowledge merely by thinking), but Kant’s own theory of practical reason and its freedom of volition serve virtually the same function as Confucius’ ‘li’. Confucius and Kant are closer than Mou wishes to admit, a fact that does not bode well for his overall project of showing the superiority of Confucius over Kant. For a fuller discussion of Mou’s view of Kant, see Pa95a.

  [4].  Along these lines Hicks says God’s intellectual intuition has ‘no separation of perception and conception’ [Hi74:383]; it is ‘an absolute subjective spontaneity of intellect, indeterminate in itself and the source of all determination.’ S.a. Kr56:81-3.

  [5].  Cf. Figs. VI.2 and VIII.1. We shall examine the philosophical basis for believing in a given body of revealed Scripture in VIII.3.A. Here we should note that the faith needed to justify one’s initial acceptance of a given canon as God’s unique revelation is in certain respects comparable to the faith in the thing in itself that is needed to enter Kant’s theoretical system [see KSP1:V.1-4].

  [6].  Cf. VIII.1 and IX.1, below, and KSP1:II.4. Ultimately, Kant wants his philosophy of religion to be universally applicable, so he tends to avoid taking a stand on theological doctrines and posi­tions that are specific to one tradition. The value of much of his Critical theology cannot be properly assessed unless this is kept constantly in mind. Yet when it comes to his appraisal of overall religious traditions, as we shall see in Chapter VIII, Kant leaves no doubt that he believes Christianity to be superior to other religious faiths.

  [7].  See VI.1. Since theology therefore forms a link between philosophy and religion, it is not surprising that those who think Kant has no positive theology also tend to misunder­stand the relationship between his philosophy and his views on religion. But as Despland says in De73:339, ‘it is not wise to divorce Kant’s philosophy from his re­ligion, as many of the neo-Kantians did.’ This is true not only because doing so wreaks havoc with Kant’s view of religion, but also because it makes it impossi­ble to appreciate how religious experience, as we shall see in Part Four, forms the consummation of Kant’s entire System of Perspectives.

  [8].  See e.g., Kt1:859. In comparing Kant’s theology in Kt1 with that in his early works, Schmucker argues in Sc72:495-500 ‘that the fundamental theses of Kant’s specific critique of transcendental theology go back partly even to ... 1755, partly at least to [the mid-1760s] ... and therefore must be considered, in their substance, as ... independent of the principles of Transcendental Analytic and Aesthetic.’ Treash gives a good explanation in Tr79:23-7 of the similarities and differences be­tween the theological positions Kant defends in Kt15 and in Kt1. He concludes that, ‘although [Kt15’s] positive conception of God as the ground of all possi­bility is preserved [in Kt1], the dogmatic [i.e., ontological, as opposed to transcen­dental] foundation upon which that conclusion rests is rejected.’ The details of Kant’s ‘possibility proof’ are discussed in AIV.1.

                  Although it is proper to see a fundamental consistency in Kant’s religious and the­ological outlook throughout most of his writings (a consistency I assume throughout this volume), this must not be taken as a reason for regarding such views as essentially unrelated to the rest of his philosophical System. On the contrary, as the present study demonstrates, Kant constructed his System partly in order to provide a philosophical structure for clarifying and defending those very (lifelong) beliefs.

  [9].  Greene claims in Gr34:lxvi-lxvii that, throughout ‘the productive years of his life’ (i.e., prior to working on Kt9), Kant ‘had always looked upon the idea of divine immanence with profound dis­trust.’ This can hardly be substantiated by a careful look at the evidence [see X.2-3]. That Kant was critical of casual claims to have experienced God is indisputable; but this does not mean he saw no use whatsoever for the notion of an immanent God. If my interpretation in this chapter is correct, then Kant’s tendency in Kt9 to acknowledge ‘only a God in me, around me, over me’ [21.145] need not be regarded as a radical reversal or a surprising change of mind, so much as an attempt to make explicit what was implicit in his System from the beginning.

[10].    Kt7:352. Morrison rightly points out [Mo94:108] that Kant’s symbolic interpretation of Christian doctrines and practices in Kt8 can be regarded as ‘a precursor of Paul Tillich’s method of theological symbolization.’ McCarthy also recognizes the importance of symbols for Kant [Mc82: 198], especially when interpreting the Bible [200]; but his worry that Kant’s ‘agnostic drift’ at times ‘seems ready to dissolve God into a symbol’ [Mc86:217] is unfounded, once we recognize that Kant does not intend his theological symbols to ‘dissolve’ anything (except perhaps religious illusions), but to empower practical reason by showing it’s genuine symbolic home in religion. Along these lines, Galbraith applies Jaspers’ term, ‘ciphers of transcendence’ [Ga96:7], to Kant’s practice of ‘refer[ring] to God only in ways which do not bring God down to the human level.’

                  In defense of the analogous or metaphorical character of such attempts to speak about God, Copleston says, in a thoroughly Kantian tone, that a ‘recognition of the fact that in being used to refer to and speak of God our language undergoes strains and stresses can serve to remind us that it is God of whom we are speaking, a God whom we can represent with the aid of analogies but who cannot be taken by storm and imprisoned within the web of our concepts’ [Co74:66].

[11].    S.a. Kt1:222-4,692-4,725-9; Kt2:357-60; Kt18:339; AA18:439,503; Co67:186n. In Es94:93 Ess and Gulick list eight past treatments of Kant’s understanding of analogy. They argue [91] ‘that Kant artfully used the notion of analogy to avoid inconsistency both in speaking about things in themselves and the transcendental Idea of God.’ This is possible because the use of analogy is essentially perspectival: it involves ‘a complex sort of meaning which allows the same term to function in different ways when referring to different domains of entities.’ Later [94] they add: ‘One must use analogy to interpret events at one level in terms appropriate to another level.’

                  Pelegrinis discusses the ‘logic of analogy’ in relation to both Kant and Wittgen­stein [Pe80: 151-60]. Although his interest is not in Kant’s theology, but in the ana­logical character of the categorical imperative, his view helps explain how we can use theological analogies even though we are unable to prove God’s existence. In Pe80:162 he says ‘in using an analogy in philosophy what we are required to do is not to give information or proof of the existence of something to which we ap­ply the analogy, but to give the rule or rules in accordance with which we use the term to which we apply the analogy.’

[12].    Co67:120; cf. Fig. V.2, below; s.a. Kt1:668-9,725,728; Kt2:356-60; AA18:439,503; Kt26:1089 (128-9). Collins elaborates [Co67:120-1]: ‘Even though we cannot directly apprehend God in His own nature, we can still study the relational presence of God in man’s moral life and the experi­enced world.... Kant asks us to acknowledge symbolic an­thropomorphism, not as our dire fate but as the fitting expression of our human si­tuation in reality, when­ever we engage in the search for God.’ As such, ‘anthropomorphism’ describes ‘how man carries on his ordinary reflections con­cerning God and achieves practical relationships with Him.’ Collins adds [125]: ‘The Kantian way of analogy is ... a distinctive religious searching out of the order of nature and human experience for the meanings which manifest God’s free, purposive mind and personal agency.’

[13].    See Mi79:162. Kuehn likewise observes that Kant calls something a ‘need of reason’ in order to establish that it ‘can be meaningful even if it is impossible to point to anything in experience which corresponds to it’ [Ku85:166]—though Kuehn unfortunately thinks such needs are purely conceptual in nature. For further comments on his interpretation, see note IV.15.

                  The grounding of reason in the judicial standpoint is also suggested by Kant’s practice of calling reason an ‘organ’ [e.g., Kt1:xxxvi]. Organisms, phenomena that exhibit a natu­ral purpose and a self-creative power, are one of the main topics of Kt7 [see KSP1:IX.3.A]. This con­firms Despland’s point [De73:65], that the needs of reason are not ‘psychological incen­tives’ that ‘may be needed by weak and pathologically affected men; [they are] part and parcel of the moral condition of responsible men.’ Thus Kant calls the practical postulates ‘an absolutely necessary need’ [Kt4:143]. As we shall see in Part Three, the need of reason that provides ultimate meaning for the judicial standpoint (and so corresponds to the three regulative ideas hypothesized by the theoretical standpoint and the two postulates posited by the practical standpoint) is for an historical faith to fill in the gaps left by a purely rational religion. Accordingly, Kant explicitly states in Kt65:9 [s.a. Kt8:192(180)] that ‘revelation is useful in making up the theoretical deficiency which our pure rational belief admits it has ... and helps ... to satisfy a rational need.’

[14].    I regard this as the essence of Kant’s contribution to the age-old theological controversy over the relationship between faith and reason. In Wo70:251-4 Wood says Kant’s contribution to this perennial debate was to forge a middle path between the speculative and ‘irrationalist’ ap­proaches. He assesses Kant’s philosophy as being truly compatible ‘with the genuine and valid conception of man’s condition which biblical faith contains’ [252]. Wood concludes [254] that ‘critical self-knowledge reveals not only that faith and reason are compatible with each other, but that for a being both finite and rational, faith and reason require each other.’ As Kant himself puts it in Kt8: 10(9), ‘a religion which rashly declares war on reason will not be able to hold out in the long run against it.’ This is precisely because genuine faith is ultimately one with reason! Akhutin [Ak91: 74] affirms that ‘faith makes reason itself reasonable, and believing reason gives meaning to, and makes rational and whole, all of a person’s life.’ Through faith, reason ‘restores its chastity.’

[15].    Hicks’ assessment, that Kant’s architectonic descriptions of God’s nature are ‘a quite traditional theistic conception of God ... as a determinate being’ [Hi74:382-3, e.a.], fails to appreciate the radically symbolic nature all such positive accounts have for Kant. The same can be said for Wood’s claim in Wo92:398 that ‘Kant’s conception of God belongs squarely in the scholastic-rationalist tradition. God is the supremely perfect being, extra-mundane, immutable, timelessly eternal. He is also living, knowing, and willing: omniscient, omnipotent, supremely holy, just, and beneficent.’ While passages can be found wherein Kant ascribes these attributes to God, his interpretation of what such attribution entails is highly original.

[16].    Da93b:46. Davidovich defends her view as follows [47]: ‘“God” is merely the object of a regu­lative idea. The claim “God exists” ... has nothing to do with the way the world is.’ But Kant would never express his position in such a skeptical way. First, as we saw in IV.2-4, Kant does not justify belief in God’s existence solely by appealing to regulative ideas; moral and especially judicial rea­sons for belief are closely related to ‘the way the world is.’ Second, the idea of God is irrelevant only to our knowledge of the world; Kant is careful to allow that the world may be the way it is be­cause of a hidden influence God has on it. (This is depicted by the vertical line in Figure V.3.) Davidovich replaces Kant’s humble Critical Perspective with a proud claim to negative knowl­edge.

[17].    Kt7:395. Ig81:759-60 expresses Kant’s position as follows: ‘If the irreducible is matter [= the transcendental perspective] it lands us in materialism, if it is the psy­che [= the empirical perspec­tive] it means psychologism, if it is ‘Theos’ [= the speculative perspective] it means Platonic idealism, if it is logic [= the logical per­spective] it means panlogicism. But Kant rejects all these extremes and never at­tempts to account for the ultimate unity behind everything ...’. ‘Never’ is a bit too strong, however, unless ‘accounts for’ is taken to mean ‘develops a theoretical­ly consti­tutive proof of’. For Kant is not only committed to a belief in such an underlying unity [see IV.4], but also has some forceful suggestions as to how we might conceive of it.

[18].    Kt15:126n(310n). Hicks’ reminder, that ‘sensory experience is ever incomplete and perspec­tival’ [Hi74:382], points directly to God’s perspectiveless, or perhaps omni-perspectival, nature. This difference between human and divine reasoning is probably the key factor giving rise to our inability to construct an adequate theology without paradox. Unfortunately, Hicks himself does not seem to appreciate this fact. Instead, he claims the view of God as having intellectual intuition ‘is incongruous with Kant’s conceptions of God as ... Ens Realissimum’, because the latter refers to a being with the highest degree of determination, whereas the former concept is wholly indeter­mi­nate. Yet this is a paradox that ought to be expected by anyone in a perspectival state; for Kant to adopt both views is like saying God is both perspectiveless and omni-perspectival.

                  Ironically, Cooke claims to ‘find no evidence’ in Kt1 of any concept of God ‘other than that of a very powerful and benevolent finite agent’ [Co88:319, e.a.], except in the discussion of ‘the ens realissimum’ (the very doctrine Hicks thinks is most determinate). Cooke claims ‘Kant is quite clear in rejecting the whole process of forming this concept as a dialectical illusion.’ But Kant re­jects this concept only as a way of gaining knowledge of God; as a way of forming the concept, he accepts it as the necessary starting point! Cooke admits that Kant does ‘sometimes ... use the lan­guage of Infinitude’ [323]; yet he claims Kant ‘is thinking of God as finite’, as ‘a timeless agent along side other timeless agents [i.e., human noumenal selves].’ Unfortunately, Cooke never de­fends this claim throughout his entire article. It is merely a groundless assumption. As we have seen, the fact that humans are also sensuous makes us temporal and finite in a way that is entirely different from God. Cooke thinks Kant’s preference for the physicotheological argument is evi­dence that Kant’s ‘thinking required only the concept of a finite designer.’ Yet Kant explicitly cites this as the reason that argument is inadequate: it does not prove enough to provide us with a concept of God as perspectiveless/omni-perspectival—i.e., infinite.

[19].    Indeed, more and more theologians are coming to realize that ‘transcendence and immanence [should] be seen as mutually enriching concepts rather than mutually destructive’ [Ja84:101]. Thus, Hart writes almost as if he is commenting on Figure V.3 (and even more so, Figure XII.2): ‘God is analogously the pole of the world as the world is the pole of things and as things are the pole of aspects/perspectives and as these are the pole of the “flow” of inner-time consciousness. And yet this transcendence ... is totally different because the divine is also absolutely immanent to consciousness’ [Ha90b:233].

[20].    Laywine interprets Kt19 as conveying a very similar view: ‘Kant makes space and time play the role of God in the sensible realm’, resulting in ‘a peculiar analogy between space and God’ [La93: 112]—i.e., the sensible world is to space and time as the intelligible world (cf. morality) is to God. Later [145] she adds that the Critical philosophy completes Kt19’s task ‘by making our understand­ing God’s vicegerent in the sensible world.’ Gulick observes a similarly profound role for God in Kt19 [Gu94:101]: ‘One principle underlies and connects together the Ideas of the intelligible world: God.’

[21].    Kt1:645, q.a. Despland describes Kant’s view along these lines in De73:145: ‘God is a free transcendent being who cannot be reduced to an object that is known and analysed or knowable and analysable.’ This view of God has a close affinity with Tillich’s theory of the ‘God above God’ [Ti52:180-3]. As Hicks puts it [Hi74:383], Kant’s ‘indeterminate’ way of conceiving God (i.e., his theory of the dual nature of divine reasoning, discussed in V.1) views God as ‘Absolute Subject’. Like Tillich’s ‘Ground of Being’, Kant’s theory suggests that ‘God is not even Being, for to be is to be determinate; God is purely a power of free intellectual productivity.’ Recognizing the close connection between Kant and Tillich enables us to appreciate how effectively Kant combines the fundamental presuppositions of what many would regard as the two most influential God-concepts of twentieth century theology: Tillich’s ‘God above God’ and Barth’s ‘living God’. Unfortunately, Tillich himself does not always recognize how much Kant’s theology coin­cides with his own. For instance, in Ti51:1.230 he criticizes Kant’s moral proof on the following grounds: ‘The experience of an unconditional element in man’s en­counter with reality is used for the establish­ment of an unconditional being ... within reality.’ Yet this reduction of Kant’s God to the ‘God be­low God’ cannot be justified by Kant’s own text. On the contrary, as we shall see in Part Four, Kant has a far more sophisticated view of the nature of our immediate experience of un­conditioned real­ity.

[22].    For the details of this, Kant’s own original theoretical proof of God’s existence, see AIV.1.

[23].    Kt4:137. As we shall see in Chapters VI-VIII, Kant always appeals to the practical as the stand­point that makes religious and theological language rationally meaningful. One of innumerable examples is the following reference to the ideas of heaven and hell: ‘Made available to us by the legislative reason itself, these Ideas are to be regarded ... from a practical standpoint’ [Kt31:332].

[24].    Thus Kant says the statement ‘God is omnipotent’ proposes ‘a logical reference only’ [Kt15:74 (233)]. Later he claims the word ‘alsufficiency’ has the most ‘logical accuracy’ as a description of God, though the word ‘infinity’ is more ‘beautiful and ... aesthetical’ [154(354)].

[25].    La93:112. Though Laywine is here commenting on several of Kant’s pre-Copernican works, her statement has a broader application; indeed, a nearly identical statement appears in Kt9:22.129.

[26].    As Kant says in Kt61:57: ‘The reasonable use of experience has its limits. It can indeed teach us that something is constituted in such or such a way, but never that it absolutely cannot be anything else; nor can analogy fill this immense void between the contingent and the necessary.’ The point here is that neither empirical (constitutive) knowledge nor hypothetical (regulative) supplements to that knowledge can bridge the ultimate gap in Kant’s System. For the gap arises whenever we step outside the immediacy of our experience and reflect upon it rationally [see KSP1:IV.1].

[27].    Ha90b:241. Hart adds the parenthetical comment: ‘For Kant this is also the function of prayer’—a point I shall confirm at length in Appendix VIII.

[28].    Kt4:131n; cf. Kt26:1001(29). In Kt8:139(131) Kant correlates these same three attributes with God’s nature as ‘Creator of heaven and earth’, ‘Preserver of the human race’, and ‘Administrator of His own holy laws’, respectively.

[29].    Theologically, God’s benevolence is called grace, and is manifested first as the gift of life it­self, then as the preservation of life, and finally as the restoration of life after death. The exact means of conceiving how this happens cannot be determined philosophically, according to Kant, but must be left up to each religious tradition’s revelation (i.e., theoretical knowledge, specially imparted by God). This further confirms the second attribute’s correlation with systemt. Kant’s views on revelation will be examined in Part Three [s.e. VIII.1 and VIII.3.A].

[30].    Cf. Fig. VI.1, below; s.a. Figs. III.5 and III.9 in KSP1. Although he does not make this point explicitly, Raschke implies that each of the three main aspects of Kant’s construction of a rational theology corresponds di­rectly to one of his three philosophical systems, by labeling three successive sec­tions of his discussion of Kant’s concept of God as follows: ‘God as World Cause’ [Ra75:104-8], ‘God as Supreme Will’ [108-11], and ‘God as Moral Purposer’ [111-6].

[31].    Elsewhere Kant describes theosophy as ‘knowledge of a divine nature that is inac­cessible’ [Kt69:305]. And in Kt23:401n(180n) he adds: ‘Theophany makes of Plato’s idea an idol ...; whereas theology ... erects an ideal ... ’.

[32].    See notes IX.20-21. Kant describes God’s second moral attribute in terms of giving unmerited love [see e.g., Kt8:145-7(136-7)]. We must keep in mind, therefore, that the word ‘good’ in the designation ‘good ruler’ refers to God’s kind-hearted disposition (i.e., good will) towards us, not to a dispassionate notion of moral perfection. The latter is related more to justice than to goodness. Collins [Co67:154] summarizes Kant’s position in the form of a helpful table listing the three types of human powers, divine attributes, and religious responses.

[33].    See Kt1:139,145-6. In Da93b:105-8 Davidovich describes this aspect of Kant’s view of God in terms of ‘an archetypal intellect’. She makes the interesting point that there is no need for a third aspect of divine ‘reason’, to correspond to the judicial standpoint, because everything God thinks is already fully formed. Unlike God, we humans need teleological explanations to compensate for our ignorance of supersensible reality. To this insight we can add the fact that our understanding and intuition are opposed to each other, thus requiring judgment in order to be united, whereas God’s rational powers must be presumed to be already fully synthesized in their original state.

                  Davidovich later adds the interesting suggestion that in Kt7 Kant flirts with the possibility that human nature itself may have access to a form of ‘Intuitive Reason’ [Da93b:126]: wherever ‘the “is”/“ought” dichotomy dissolves’ or the ‘gap between the ideal and the real’ is overcome, as Kant repeatedly attempts in Kt7, ‘an Intuitive Reason’ seems to be present. To this suggestion I would add that these are also the very points where Kant would regard us as coming closest to having an immediate experience of God. This is why Kant ends Kt7 with an Appendix on theology.

[34].    One of Kant’s clearest descriptions of this ‘transcendental concep­tion of God’ comes in a foot­note to a 1796 essay [Kt23:399-401(178-80)] and is worth quoting at length: ‘The transcen­dental conception of God, as the most real Being, cannot, abstract as it is, be avoided in philo­sophy; for it ... [purifies] all the concrete that may afterwards come into the applied theology and doctrine of religion.... If I [‘conceive God as the ... aggregate of all realities’] ..., I therefore attribute to him perhaps an understanding, or even a will ..., as realities. But an understanding, which I know, is a faculty of thinking, that is ... not without limitation of the subject. Therefore a Divine understand­ing is not to be assumed as a faculty of thinking. But I have not the smallest conception of another understanding, which is a faculty of intuition; consequently the conception of an [intuitive] under­stand­ing ... is totally devoid of sense. — In like manner, ... I have not the smallest concep­tion ... of a will [which is not limited by interest in] ... the succeeding of his volition, which therefore does not depend upon the existence of the external ob­ject.... — But when I form to myself a con­ception of the ens realissimum as the ground of all reality, I say, God is the being who compriseth the ground of all that is in the world for which we men have need to assume an understanding ... [and] a free will in order to render intelligible to ourselves the possibility of [‘the existence of all mundane beings’]. Here now, what the nature of the Supreme Being is (objectively), may be totally inscrutable and placed quite beyond the standpoint of all theoretical cognition possible for us, and yet (subjectively) reality from a prac­tical standpoint ... remain[s] to these con­ceptions; relatively to which an analogy only of the Divine under­stand­ing and will with those of man and his practical rea­son may be assumed ... From the moral law ... and from the theory of the nature of things in themselves, proceeds now the conception of God, to form which for ourselves practical pure reason necessitates.’ This passage not only gives us a good indication of how Kant develops his concep­tion of God, it also reveals how extensively his theology depends on the principle of perspec­tive. Moreover, the final sentence clearly states the twofold roots of Kant’s conception of God, which, as we shall see in X.3-4, is also reflected in his own religious experience [s.e. Fig. X.1].

[35].    Kt5:414n. Temple expresses Kant’s view as follows [Te94:113]: ‘A good will struggles to uphold the moral law in the face of contrary inclinations.... The holy will, by contrast, needs none of this. It has no contrary inclinations.’ Temple says Kant treats both of these as moral ideals for humans; but he complains that they are ‘incompatible’ [108-9], inasmuch as ‘virtue is morality in conflict while holiness is morality without conflict’ [115]. He rightly rejects the notion of a gradual transition occurring from one to the other, whereby ‘as virtue more and more predominates ... conflict begins to disappear and virtue gradually approaches to something like holiness.’ This attempted solution wrongly construes a qualitative distinction (a difference of type) to be a quanti­tative one (a difference of degree). A more appropriate solution is to see them as referring to two different standpoints, those of systemp and systemr. Morality aims at virtue; religion, by taking God into consideration, aims at holiness. The latter is the higher aim, but is not possible without divine assistance [see e.g., Kt35:10]. The former can be approximated, but cannot be perfected, without being transformed into the latter through a religious conversion. Thus a person cannot become holy through good life-conduct; but if a person’s disposition has been transformed by coming into relation with a holy will, then progress towards virtue in the person’s conduct will be evident as a by-product. This will be discussed further in VII.2.A, VIII.2.A, and AVI.4.

[36].    See e.g., Kt5:434. This sovereignty, and how it serves as the model for the ideal forms of human politics, will be one of the main topics of KSP4.

[37].    This may be an appropriate expression for the traditional way of forming a theological concept of God’s nature, but for Kant’s symbolic theology it is highly inappropriate. Kant explicitly cautions against taking any of his descriptions of God’s attributes as referring to anything absolute. As we shall see in XII.3, Kant himself would interpret this term as a reference to the idea of the world.

                  A better description of the paradox Hicks is commenting on is given by Wood in Wo78:93: ‘on the one hand, Kant ... strenuously insisted on a concept of God so precisely determined from the moral and metaphysical view as an ontologically perfect intelligent volitional agent possessed of supreme holiness, benevolence, and justice; while on the other hand he was so anxious to render this concept as empty, vague, and indefinite as possible by placing it beyond the power of our faculties to comprehend.’ Kant can be excused, according to Wood, on the grounds that this paradox is virtually the norm throughout the entire western tradition of rational theology. As a result, Wood overlooks the true uniqueness of Kant’s position, its synthesis of these opposing standpoints (the theoretical and the practical) by means of the principle of per­spective. When thought and knowl­edge are Kant’s main concern, he follows the ‘negative’ path; but when action and experience are at issue, a ‘positive’ or ‘affirmative’ theology takes its place through symbolic descriptions of God’s nature. Theologians who have come after Kant have not formulated their negative and positive theologies in precisely the same terms as Kant; but they have in many cases followed the general epistemological and systematic framework he established.

 

Back to the Table of Contents for this book.

Back to the listing of Steve Palmquist's published books.

Back to Steve Palmquist's home page

Send comments to the author: StevePq@hkbu.edu.hk