“The man of heavenly disposition”. Kant’s philosophy of religiion and Jesus of the Gospels

Abstract

The purpose of this article is an analysis of Kant’s view upon the momentous historical phaenomenon of Jesus Christ, his birth, his teachings and his suffering on the cross, in the light of Kant’s ethics and philosophical theology. The German philosopher conceives Jesus’ life as an experience of embodied “archetype of moral perfection”, and accordingly evaluates traditional theological concepts about Jesus with regard to the extent in which they can purely and fully express the underlying ideal of reason. Kant can therefore include the idea of an immaculate birth of a sinless creature, as a practical symbol, into the creed of the religion of reason, although this same idea as a theoretical notion immerses the reason in scholastical speculation. Kant sees the core substance of moral religion as preached by Jesus represented in the commandments of love towards God and our fellowmen. In the specific precepts of the Evangelical morals the philosopher emphasizes the shift of accent in Jesus’ doctrine from the purposiveness of external conduct towards the inner disposition. For a sacrifice of worldly satisfactions for the sake of a pure life Jesus opens a prospect of a prize in heaven: and yet, according to Kant, different from the man who fulfills his duty for duty’s sake. The “steward” from the Gospel parable acts legally, but not morally. Nevertheless is his disposition so widely spread that Kant may identify the path of external churchism with the “broad way”, while the path of good conduct is the “narrow way”; it is however essentially important that, for Kant, for all possible rigor of demands on the “narrow way”, the correct vision of the essential way of God-worship (the disposition of moral religiosity) does not exclude wandering along the “broad way”. Jesus, according to Kant, gives an example through his suffering and his death: suffering serves as a “touchstone” of moral disposition. In the same way as the archetype of holiness has with his holy will overcome his suffering which, for him, was not punishment for a crime, so one following his lead has practical faith in the ideal of perfection, if he is capable of liberating himself from the empirical logic of punishment and remuneration, and obeys the rule of duty in its full extent as an unconditional norm. The image of the Cross becomes thus apparent in the focus point of Kantian moral religion, just as it stays in the focus point of early Protestant piety. There remains merely a question about what happened after the Cross.