Kant from the Moral Law to the Christian church
October 22, 2009
Kant shows that all rational people must either renounce any pretense concerning morality or else accept the Highest Good as the only means of unifying practical human rationality, namely in making the moral law the supremely prudent course of action (and where otherwise there would be a conflict within practical reasoning itself). Accordingly then all rational people (to the extent they are concerned about the moral) must postulate an eternal soul (in order to achieved to the required moral perfection) and a God (in order to apportion happiness commensurate with the degree of moral perfection.
Next Kant will intervene and prescribe the rational approach to this God.
First we are to understand a moral religion. There are two aspects. First a moral religion has it that God is thoroughly pleased with a moral disposition and those actions which flow from that disposition. Second there is the understanding that any aid that God might choose to give to people may not be expected until they are doing the best they can. Thus this touches the pleasing of God and the aid of God. This is the necessary condition for any religion which wishes to call itself a moral religion. It is the natural religion (for rational humans) and it is the universal religion. It is the one religion that all people will subscribe to on their own (when thoughtful and thorough).
Now to Kant’s take on the human condition. The human has a natural propensity to act contrary to the moral religion in putting the prudent above the moral. We make a choice to tell a lie in order to spare ourselves some punishment. We expect this propensity in all and thus are on guard and use this as a need to avoid being moral in all our interactions with others. We justify our own immorality by referring to that of others. And at the same time we hide our immorality by excusing ourselves for immoral intentions by notion that “no harm was done†and thus count ourselves as proper and upright and thus abuse the very term itself.
The good news is that our propensity can be overcome by making a choice to live a moral life. Our immoral disposition can be account as voluntary and thus as subject to change.
The realist news is that no one can really expect to live a moral life in a world with such a natural propensity for the immoral choice. That is not going happen. The only way that a person might reasonably expect to achieve to moral perfection in this world is to team up with some other person of a like mind and to practice living in a moral realm and to encourage each another to remain moral while in the corrupt world and to cooperate in the search for enlightenment and justice. God (moral and unchanging) provides an constitution for such an unified effort and so the correct term for the organization is church.
Kant doubts that such a church, just started from scratch, will work and recommends taking a current church (or faith) and cleaning it up.
The universal church will conform to the moral religion and thus while creeds and sacred histories may be affirmed, they are affirmed only for the sake of solidarity with kindred spirits, and cannot be held as binding on the conscience.
Kant recommended the Christian religion. He would probably like the Unitarians and the Episcopalians.
As a reflection, I see a church composed of believers and unbelievers. The believers would affirm the creeds in sincerity while the unbelievers would receipt them for solidarity.
The unbelieving members of the church would have a hope that they will be found pleasing to God while the believing members would have the belief (knowledge in faith) that they are pleasing to God even now.
The scriptural justification perhaps for this theoretical distinction of Christians as believing and not believing, is Zacchaeus who was pronounced as redeemed by Jesus himself and who had no knowledge of any atoning death or resurrection, and thus who would have to be classified as unbelieving (and no disbelieving).