In Defense of Kant's Religion

6. Book Two of Religion

152 ∏ Book Two of Religion Without question, one of the most striking features of Book Two of Religion is Kant’s use of Christic imagery. Kant’s talk of the ‘‘prototype,’’ who is the ‘‘Word’’ or ‘‘[God’s] only-begotten Son,’’ is rather shocking to those familiar with the Kantian paradigm. In many ways, Kant’s philosophy epitomizes the rationalist emphasis on reason over history. And while Kant consistently asserts, ‘‘no human being can hold it impossible that . . . God might have given to it, in a higher revelation, certain truths’’ (28:1119), Kant is equally consistent with reference to the epistemological limitations humans face regarding revelatory possibilities. To use Kant’s words in Conflict, ‘‘if God should really speak to a human being, the latter could still never know that it was God speaking’’ (7:63). Or, in Allen Wood’s words, ‘‘though divine revelation itself is not impossible, it is impossible for any man to know through experience that God has in any instance actually revealed himself.’’1 For Kant to draw explicitly on ‘‘revelatory’’ resources raises serious questions over exactly what he is up to in Book Two of Religion. The interpretative approaches to this content are roughly three in number . First, we find the translation approach of John Hare and Bernard Reardon. By construing Kant’s entire argument in Religion as a translation of Christian concepts, per the second experiment in the Second Preface, Hare and Reardon are able to offer an explanation of why Kant draws on historical Christology . Simply put, his experiment necessitates it. Under the guide of Religion-asTranslation , Reardon suggests that Kant finds the rational usefulness of Christ to lie in his embodiment (at least symbolically) of the ideal of virtue, which we must emulate. Reardon writes: Book Two of Religion 153 Kant turns to the doctrine of the incarnation as alone expressing the humanly realized moral ideal in all its perfectness. . . . The historical example thus sets before us, as of one who goes about disseminating good by both word and deed, is completed by afflictions, even to the extreme of an ignominious death, which he endured wholly undeservedly for the sake of the world and even his enemies. . . . [Kant] insists that the only way for man to please God and gain salvation is through a practical faith in the incarnate Son of God; a faith, that is, whereby he makes his own the dispositions of which the incarnate is the ideal exemplar.2 In other words, the Christ of Christian theology is the union of divine perfection and human nature, and therefore provides a picture of the moral ideal Kant’s practical philosophy suggests we ought to emulate. Hare also sees this motif in Religion, but goes even further, drawing out an entire Trinitarian theology from Book Two. Says Hare: ‘‘We have in these translations a reading of the three persons of the Trinity. Christ is understood as humanity in its full moral perfection. . . . God the Spirit is translated as the good disposition, which exists within us, is seen as our ‘Comforter,’ and provides us with assurance (through our actions, which are its fruits) of its own presence within us. God the Father is translated as the idea of holiness.’’3 In short, the Christic imagery under the guide of Religion-as-Translation is merely the outworking of Kant’s experiment, which is fixed on testing a speci fic purported revelation. The appearance of Christic imagery (if not fullblown Trinitarian theology) should, therefore, not be surprising. A second way of dealing with Kant’s apparent Christology in Book Two is the Religion-as-Symbol approach, found in readers such as Keith Ward and Stephen Palmquist. Both Ward and Palmquist see Kant’s Christology as a symbol meant to spur on moral progress in the face of our personal moral failings. As Ward sees it, religious symbols ‘‘express what is indefinable in a particular mental state in such a way that it can be communicated to others.’’4 Under such a reading, Jesus is the chosen historical-religious symbol Kant draws upon to invigorate moral exertion. But this does not indicate that Kant has exclusive commitments to Christianity or that Kant thinks Jesus actually is the moral prototype of humanity made manifest. The symbol could be drawn from any historical faith. Only insofar as Kant has chosen Christianity to be the vehicle for his symbolic theology does the moral ideal take on a Christological character. As Ward puts it: In...