Stephen R. Palmquist

We all started out as evil. Immanuel Kant describes and attempts to solve three specific difficulties that arise out of the fact that we are all inevitably corrupted by evil. This chapter presents Kant's treatment of these difficulties as corresponding to three traditional problems in Christian theology: sanctification, eternal security, and justification. That the first difficulty relates to the doctrine of sanctification (how a Christian, following conversion, can become holy) is evident when Kant describes this difficulty in terms of the contrast between human imperfection and God's holiness. Kant provides an overview of how rational religion can come to terms with a practical need: we must be able to access divine grace in some form in order to have a reasonable hope of being sanctified, assured of an eternal destiny with God, and justified in spite of our past evil.

The seven numbered sections in Division One of the Third Piece of Religion present a systematic argument regarding the founding, the establishment, and the implementation of an ethical community. This chapter first examines Immanuel Kant's argument that the idea of such a community has objective reality because it arises out of a universal human duty. Next, it is shown that how he argues that the inability of human beings to fulfil this duty independently, thereby giving rise to the need to assume that God is the community's ultimate founder. What this means is that the ethical community must be a church (an ethical community under God's guidance) in order to succeed. The chapter discusses Kant's claim that the true church inevitably begins with an appeal to revelation even though it is a rational reality. It concludes with an analysis of Kant's account of different types of churches.

In this chapter, Immanuel Kant explains the crucial role played by biblical scholars: true religion must be universal, yet the dogmas that define a historical faith are not naturally universal. He attempts to defend the role of biblical scholars as both necessary and legitimate. Kant then turns to an analysis of why biblical theologians nevertheless tend to have a negative effect on church life and why the traditional linkage between Christianity and Judaism only exacerbates this problem. He relates both the “convoy” metaphor and his redefinition of faith, as grounded in one of two possible principles, to his earlier distinction between true service and pseudoservice. Kant also explores different aspects of how churches tend to be unsuccessful in such efforts and how such failures can be avoided. The chapter concludes with comments on a more affirmative topic, where Kant conveys a principle to assist visible churches in avoiding religious delusion.

Immanuel Kant's Fourth Piece Religion has two main parts that further develop the distinction between two “experiments”. Part One titled “On the Service of God in a Religion Generally” has sections dealing with natural religion and scholarly religion, and the four sections of Part Two titled “On the Pseudoservice of God in a Statutory Religion” focus on themes that alternate between the first and second experiments. Given the importance of immortality to Kant's conception of the highest good, one should not be surprised that, after he interprets Jesus’ gospel as being thoroughly consistent with his moral theory, he devotes a new paragraph to demonstrating that Jesus also acknowledged the “natural” (rational) need for moral persons who have lived this life in a way that requires numerous “sacrifices of happiness” to be able to look forward to a better situation in the afterlife.

Chinese translation of a revised version of a conference paper originally entitled "Kant on the Prudential Status of Historical Faith". Here is the original abstract in English: Because his ethical theory is grounded on the assumption that actions are virtuous only to the extent that they are motivated by the moral law, Kant has rarely, if ever, been regarded as a friend of prudence. That he is also not an enemy of prudence has been demonstrated by several recent studies of Kant’s moral philosophy. What has heretofore gone unnoticed, however, is that in explaining the genuine (and possibly indispensable) role played by empirical religious traditions, Kant appeals explicitly to the prudential status of what he calls “historical faith”. This paper will carefully examine Kant’s references to prudence in his book, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, demonstrating that the prudential status of historical faith is the key to understanding both its limitations (as no more than the vehicle of true religion, not the moral core) and its real value. The wise person will be religious, in one form or another, because to abandon any and all prudential appeals to a faith-based vehicle for morality would render the goal of living a good life extremely difficult, if not impossible, for embodied beings to achieve.

In this chapter, Immanuel Kant turns his attention back to the theme that was his earlier focus: the biblical scholars who tend to obscure the natural religion that lies at the heart of Jesus’ teaching. First, he argues that viewing unphilosophical clergy as spiritual guides is bound to promote delusory ways of being religious. Then, Kant claims that true service of God must be guided not by clergy but by conscience. According to Kant, the church leaders portray their preferred tradition in a way that enables them to control people toward nonmoral ends. He states the same basic point in terms of the distinction between virtue and “godliness”. Properly interpreting the latter term, holds the key to unlocking the mystery of how religion can serve as a path to realizing the former, universal human duty. Yet misinterpreting this same term leads straight to idolatry.