- THE high importance of Kant’s contributions to the right understanding of the Christian idea of Reconciliation lies less in any positive contribution to the structure of doctrine, than in the fact that he established critically—that is, with scientific strictness—those general presuppositions of the idea of Reconciliation which lie in the consciousness of moral freedom and of moral guilt. In impressing on the present generation this service done to Christianity and theology by the great philosopher, it is not necessary to upbraid as superficial the men of the Illumination whom he left so far behind him, and not just to impute to them frivolity, a way of thinking low and yet unclear, and want of reverence for the spiritual attainments of earlier generations. On the other hand, it is not sufficient to delineate and criticise only Kant’s direct views on the philosophy of religion. For, judged by these, he would appear simply as a member of that group of rationalists which belongs now to the past, and his superiority to the men of the Illumination would seem by no means very marked. But in the point on which he really rose above the Illumination, he still—after endless variations in the direction of theological thought—presents us with a canon that cannot be superseded for the right estimation of the fundamental idea of Christianity. The Illumination had trifled away the Christian problem of reconciliation on the one hand by referring men’s obligation towards God’s law to the relative criterion of their internal and external situation, and on the other hand by denying all internal conviction of guilt. Töllner, in particular, had applied the criterion of the existence of a set purpose in acts of transgression in such a manner that the consciousness of guilt was limited almost in the same way as by Bauny, the Jesuit branded by Pascal (p. 366); and Eberhard had expressed the opinion that the fact of subjective moral evil could be established only through the experience of physical evil (p. 362), while all the discussions of those who shared his sentiments pointed to the conclusion that it was only in the very rarest cases that these two kinds of evil were experienced together. In opposition to the insecurity of this view, Kant not only maintains that the law which springs from the practical consciousness of freedom is absolutely binding, but at the same time asserts that the imputation of the whole empirical course of action and transgression flows with necessity from the intelligible (noetic) notion of freedom. By demonstrating the necessary and indissoluble correlation of freedom and moral law, Kant enables us to understand how the aimless empirico-dogmatical discussion of the notion of guilt, which is found in the men of the Illumination, accords with the fact that they refuse to acknowledge any absolute standard of moral law. That conception of the absolute obligation of the moral law which Kant developed in accordance with the notion of freedom, provides him with the means of establishing, on a surer basis than was afforded by the old Protestant doctrine of original sin, the corresponding subjective consciousness that we are in effect guilty in the eye of the law. For the old doctrine, though put forward with a thoroughly practical design, had never been able to produce a corresponding practical consciousness; since the attribute of guilt in original sin was never adequately proved, and indeed could not be proved. Now, any attempt to prove too much is sure to be avenged by the loss even of that subordinate truth which was actually capable of demonstration from the premisses. When, therefore, the Illumination directed attention to the actual sin of the individual, the just valuation of which had been hindered by the pre-eminence accorded to the doctrine of original sin, the experience formed in connexion with the latter notion operated towards causing sin to be defined for the most part as natural weakness attaching to man’s sensual constitution, and not to be recognised as thoroughgoing guilt.
It lies in the peculiar distinction between will and nature, that the laws of the former, when discovered by the methods of scientific knowledge, are recognised as guiding points for the activity of the will, and so are capable of producing specific changes in the practical course of that faculty. On the other hand, our knowledge of the laws of nature has no influence on the character of their course. Although, therefore, Kant was quite conscious that he as a philosopher did not make morality, but presupposed it as a fixed datum of which it was his work to discover the principles, yet it lies in the nature of the case that his express unfolding of the laws of the will could not find scientific recognition without at the same time becoming a practical motive to influence the lives of his contemporaries. For the knowledge of those laws was attained only through the activity of the practical reason. But that faculty is at the same time the sufficient ground of the whole direction of man’s life, and cannot therefore be expressly enlightened by the knowledge of its own inmost laws without being at the same time recalled from possible deflections and strengthened in its impulse towards the right goal. Hence Kant’s Ethic had a peculiarly stimulating influence on the moral development of character. The Illumination itself was more than a link in the development of theology and moral philosophy. It was at the same time a peculiar phenomenon in the sphere of morals and religion, entering into the latter sphere because the principles of the school were at once dogmatic and popular. On the other hand, Kant’s way of looking at the universe, which was critical, not dogmatical, was not one that could have a direct importance for religion. But indirectly the system has this importance, that it secures that a man shall pass upon himself the very same moral judgment as is presupposed as the normal estimate of self by Christianity in its Protestant form. Hence the quite specific advance in epistemological method made by Kant has at the same time the significance of a practical restoration of Protestantism. Protestantism is quite as decidedly marked off from mediæval Christianity, by asserting in the sphere of ethics the absoluteness of the public law, as by resting in the sphere of religion on the absoluteness of God’s grace. The characteristic test of the prevalence of these two tendencies is to be found in the orthodox development of the doctrine of Reconciliation. That doctrine, it is true, had not proved impregnable either to the deliberately-aimed criticisms of the Illuminantists, or to the inarticulate feeling of incongruence in its elements which took hold of their semi-orthodox assailants; for in reality the purely forensic view of law and punishment is not adequate to the ethico-religious problem of the removal of guilt and the consciousness thereof. Accordingly, both parties alike lost the sense of the absolute validity of the law, based on the essential nature of God. And so when Kant furnished a fresh proof of this thesis from the nature of man—from his legislative freedom—a step was taken which marks not only the defeat of the principles of the Illumination, but also the renewal of the moral view of the universe due to the Reformation. For only a superficial criticism will hold it for an irreconcilable contradiction that the Reformers deduce the law from God, Kant from human freedom. Whether indeed Kant succeeded in his undertaking to supply a formal proof of the harmony of religious faith with the practical reason, is a question that we must decide hereafter.