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II. Confessional Natural Theology and
Interdenominational Natural Religion
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Natural Theology
Natural knowledge of God
Theism
Confessional
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Natural Religion
Natural relation to God
Deism
Interdenominational
1. Philosophy of Theology:
Natural Theology
Marcus Terrentius Varro (* 116 v.
Chr.- † 27 v. Chr.),
Antiquitates rerum humanarum
et divinarum:
• theologia mythica
• theologia civilis
 theologia naturalis (theology of
the philosophers)
Augustine: cognitio Dei naturalis
• Liber naturae, liber Scripturae
Thomas Aquinas:
• Lumen naturale intellectus
Reformation:
• ambiguity of cognitio Dei naturalis
(“law”)
Enlightenment:
• natural theology as part of
 philosophy (Leibniz 1646-1716)
 metaphysics (Christian Wolff 16791754), and reflected
 natural religion (as a general
concept of religions) and
 the beginning of dogmatic theology
(tractatus De Deo Uno)
2. Natural Religion
• 16th-18th century:
• (1) Natural Religion = preparation to acknowledge
the revelation
• (2) Natural Religion = als religion of salvation:
Jean Bodin (1529 o. 1530-1596, French theorist
of state): „Si naturae lex et naturalis religio,
mentibus hominum insita, sufficit ad salutem
adipiscendam, non video, cur Mosis ritus,
ceremoniae necessariae sint.“
Natural Religion as Deism
Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648)
De veritate: veritates
catholicae
• 1. God‘s existence
• 2. adorability of the highest
reality
• 3. morally authentic
conduct of life as authentic
veneration of God
• 4. penitence for trespasses
• 5. otherworldly reward and
punishment
Deism
Friedrich Nietzsche: Deism =
Enlightment‘s philosophy of religion
John Toland (1670-1722) Conversion from Catholicism to
Protestantism
He writes in 1696 Christianity not mysterious and therefore it is
without dogmas, a continuation of the reformation, and
initiates a renewal of the Anglican Church
• sufficiency of “natural religion”
• religion based on revelation (dogma) may help to bring
natural religion based upon reason to life.
Interdenominational Deism
• Matthew Tindal (1657-1733) Christianity as
old as the Creation, or the Gospel a
Republication of the Religion of Nature (1730).
„Bible of Deism“.
• He changed from Anglicanism
to Catholicism and returned
to Anglicanism
Interreligious philosophy:
The problem of historical truth
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
(1729-1781)
• 1777 tract On the Proof of
the Spirit and of Power:
“That, then, is the ugly great
ditch which I cannot cross,
however often and however
earnestly I have tried to
make that leap."
“Accidental truths of history
can never become the proof
of necessary truths of
reason.”
Evaluation of interdenominational and
interreligious Deism
• 1. Loss of a God of history • 1. Rational knowledge of
God
• 2. Rational concept of
• 2. Loss of the Trinity
God
• 3. Loss of Incarnation and • 3. reason-based
veneration of God
Grace
• 4. interdenominational
• 4. Loss of the Church
congregation
• 5. interreligious relativism
• 5. Loss of Christian truth
and peace
claim
3. The Critique of
Natural Theology and Natural Religion
• David Hume
• Immanuel Kant
• Johann Georg Hermann
David Hume (1711-1776) ‘s critique of
natural religion and natural theology
The Natural History of Religion (1755):
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priority of ploytheism (against Tindal: monotheism not so old as
creation)
Motivation of monotheism is not reason, but passion, ambition
and flattery such as servile courtiers pay to princes. Thus a specific
deity like the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was finally
elevated to be the only God.
Tolerance of polytheism, intolerance of monotheism
Monotheistic position are not more rational as polytheistic
assumptions
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)
• Cleanthes: exponent of natural religion: teleological argument,
evidence of design in the universe
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Philo: attacks Cleanthes' natural religion , its anthropomorphism
and teleology
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human reason is inadequate to make any assumptions about the
divine
Ens necessarium could be the world as well; we do not know all its
characterisctis
Demea: Cosmological argument, theism, critique of Cleanthes'
"natural religion“: too anthropomorphic.
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Theological Critique (Protestant)
Johann Georg Hamann
(1730-1788)
• In 1780 he reads the
dialogues and supports
them in order to prove that
Christianity cannot be
reduced to Natural Religion.
• Hamann claims that “faith”
and not rational grounds
underlies his
contemporaries' high
valuation of reason. It is not
an impartial “reason” which
criticizes “blind faith”, but
another faith / conviction.
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Philosophical Critique of Natural Religion and
Natural Theology and the beginning of a
philosophy of religion: Immanuel Kant
• Hamann sent his translation
of Hume‘s Dialogues to
Kant, while Kant was writing
the Critique of the Pure
Reason.
• Consequences:
 Impossibility of a physicotheological proof
 Accepts Hume‘s critique of
the theistic
anthropomorphism
 Kant’s refuses Natural
Religion because of its
metaphysical form, but
develops a
philosophy of religion
III. I. Kant‘s philosophy of religion
• Philosophy of religion does not substitute the middle-aged
harmony of faith and knowledge, it is the point of
intersection: critical self-controlled thinking and religious,
theological thought.
• This self-controlled thinking negatively means:
1) critique of rational theology
it effects positively:
2) Restitution of a postulated idea of God by practical
(moral) philosophy
3) Philosophy of religion on the base of this restituted idea
of God
(no reduction of phil. of rel. to a mere analysis of
religious practice)
1. Critique of rational (natural) theology
• Decline of the ontological and metaphysical conditions of the
proves of God‘s existence:
Being is no longer an ontological principle: the universal act
constitutes the existence of contingent essence and permits to ask
for the origin of this act in an actus purus.
Being is the empirical position of an essentially defined thing, no
part of essence, no perfection of reality: therefore neither the
essence of God nor the idea of an ens perfectissimum includes
existence.
KrV: God as the ideal of reason (wise person): the subject of all
realities (omnitudo realitatis – wisdom)
{Why to pass from idea to ideal = from the omnitudo realitatis to
an absolute subject of this realities but excluding all realities which
are opposed to others and those which are incompatible with
God?}
2. Restitution of a postulated idea of
God by practical (moral) philosophy
• “a postulate of pure practical reason by which I
mean a theoretical proposition, not
demonstrable as such, but which is an
inseparable result of an unconditional a priori
practical law.”
• Theoretical: affirmation, no moral obligation
• Not demonstrable: not based on knowledge
• Connected with practical moral law
• This practical moral law = intelligible (no
empirical) factum of the reason = categorical
imperative
The postulates of moral law
• 1. freedom: moral law is directed to freedom
• 2. The law requires its realization which is not
attainable in actuality, but must be attainable
sometime in future → immortality of soul
• 3. not as a motif of acting, but as its effect, the
unconditional valid moral law requires unlimited
(unconditional) happiness which presupposes God
as the power which guarantees happiness in
correspondence to virtue, the highest good is the
unity of happiness, blissfulness (Glückseligkeit) and
virtue (Glückswürdigkeit – merit happiness).
3. Philosophy of religion on the base of
the restituted idea of God
• Like Toland, Tindal, Lessing and others, Kant bases religion
on reason and its moral law: the moral law requires the
postulate of God; therefore moral law can be considered as
God‘s commandment. But moral obligation does not
originate in God, it comes from autonomous reason.
• Religious actions (prayer, liturgy…) have to remember the
moral duty, they do neither achieve anything from God nor
compensate failed moral actions.
• There are no excuses for moral failure: moral duty proves
human capacity to act morally : We ought, so we can!
• Radical evil (original sin) is based on personal decision to
choose sensuality instead of morality as maxim of acting
• The moral interprets Bible.
• Natural, reason-based-religion remains open for “taught”
religion (religion of revelation)
„Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen
Vernunft A XVf.“: Vorrede zur 1. Aufl. 1793
• „Es steht aber der biblischen Theologie im Felde der Wissenschaften eine
philosophische Theologie gegenüber, die das anvertraute Gut einer
andern Fakultät ist. Diese, wenn sie nur innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen
Vernunft bleibt, und zur Bestätigung und Erläuterung ihrer Sätze die
Geschichte, Sprachen, Bücher aller Völker, selbst die Bibel benutzt, aber
nur für sich, ohne diese Sätze in die biblische Theologie hineinzutragen,
und dieser ihre öffentlichen Lehren, dafür der Geistliche privilegiert ist,
abändern zu wollen, muß volle Freiheit haben, sich, so weit, als ihre
Wissenschaft reicht, auszubreiten; und obgleich, wenn ausgemacht ist,
daß der erste wirklich seine Grenze überschritten, und in die biblische
Theologie Eingriffe getan habe, dem Theologen (bloß als Geistlichen
betrachtet) das Recht der Zensur nicht bestritten werden kann, so kann
doch, sobald jenes noch bezweifelt wird, und also die Frage eintritt: ob
jenes durch eine Schrift, oder einen andern öffentlichen Vortrag des
Philosophen geschehen sei, nur dem biblischen Theologen, als Gliede
seiner Fakultät, die Oberzensur zustehen, weil dieser auch das zweite
Interesse des gemeinen Wesens, nämlich den Flor der Wissenschaften zu
besorgen angewiesen, und eben so gültig als der erstere angestellt
worden ist.…“
“Religion within the Limits of Reason
Alone” prologue 1. ed.
• “Among the sciences, however, there is, over and
against Biblical theology, a philosophical theology,
which is an estate entrusted to another faculty.
So long as this philosophical theology remains
within the limits of reason alone, and for the
confirmation and exposition of its propositions
makes use of history, sayings, books of all
peoples, even the Bible, but only for itself,
without wishing to carry these propositions into
Biblical theology or to change the latter’s public
doctrines – a privilege of divines – it must have
complete freedom to expand as far as its science
reaches.” (A XVs.)
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Philosophical Questions concerning
Kant’s Philosophy of Religion
• → scientific reason and religion as opposed
human activities, irrationality of religion.
• 1790: the moral argument loses its
persuasiveness:
1. The danger of eternal bliss as a motif of action
2. Why does God create a world in which it is
necessary for the righteous to suffer, so that
God’s world needs a eternal compensation?
3. Are there additional human capacities than the
limited reason to get to God?
5. Protestant and Catholic Kantians
Heinrich Philipp Konrad Henke (1752-1809), Lutheran Theologian
• Concrete religions convert in moral religion of reason (cf. Lessing).
• Change from a Religion of Christ (“Christolatrism”) to Christ‘s Religion:
the religion that Jesus had.
No “Biblelatrism” (Inspiration),
no “Onomatolatrism” (ὄνομα) = unclear and confusing dogmatic
definitions like the Trinity or the doctrine of two different natures in
Christ.
Jesus is the morally perfect man teaching virtues and knowledge of God.
This teaching is necessary because of personal sins which first example is
Adam‘s sin (no original sin).
• Acting morally, one becomes an imagine of God (it is not a gift by
creation, we have to earn it).
Protestant and Catholic Kantians
Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk (1759-1837),
Protestant Philosopher of Religion
• Reason decides about revelation‘s content
• Revelation is necessary because of human
being‘s morally decadent condition; revelation
serves exclusively to wake up human
consciousness.
• Christ is the teacher of morality.
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Protestant and Catholic Kantians
Sebastian Mutschelle (1749-1800) Roman-Cath.
Theologian
• Reason as the source of the moral.
Wrong: God wants something, therefore it is
good.
Right: Something is good; therefore God wants it.
• Symmetry of charity and self-love (Selbstliebe)
• To love God = to follow the commandments
• Augustinus: De magistro = Vernunft
Protestant and Catholic Kantians
Matern Reuß (1751-1798) (Würzburger
Benedictine)
• Examination of cognitive capacities in order to
avoid unproven metaphysics.
• Theoretical reason leads to a positive
stalemate between the proofs for God and
proofs for atheism, materialism.
• Practical reason: postulates of freedom, soul,
God.
Protestant and Catholic Kantians
Ildephons Schwarz (1752-1794) Benedictine
Handbuch der christlichen Religion 1793/94
• Positive deadlock of pro and con theoretical
proofs of God and God’s non-existence… =
against materialism.
• Acceptance of Kant’s moral foundation of
theology.
• Revelation facilitates the realization of morality.
• Kant against Luther: grace is the revolution of
one’s way of thinking, not a simple pardon, nor a
pure imputation.
6. Evaluation of a theology within
Kant‘s philosophy of religion
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No theoretical knowledge of God.
Postulates of God‘s reality.
Moral formatting of religion.
Reason as criteria of religious belief.
Revelation is nothing but motivation, teaching:
Christ the ideal and teacher of morals and
virtues.
• Critique of central Christian Truths (Trinity).
• Protestant Kantians accept and receive Kant’s
approach more than Catholic ones.
7. Protestant Character of Kant‘s
philosophy of religion?
Friedrich Paulsen (1846-1908)
Philosopher, Pedagogue
• Immanuel Kant. Sein Leben und seine
Lehre (1898); Kant - der Philosoph
des Protestantismus (1899).
• Kant‘s understanding of religion
1) as something „antiintellectual“,
2) as a religion of conscience,
morality
• Kant‘s concept of a practical • Anti-intellectualism: Kant‘s critique
faith of reason corresponds
blocks a dogmatic rationalism which
Paulsen identifies with Cath.
to Luther‘s concept of
Theology (Neothomism).
religion as pertaining to
one’s inner conviction.
Protestant Character of Kant‘s
philosophy of religion?
Julius Kaftan (1848-1926), Protestant Theologian
• Kant‘s concept of morality corresponds to
Protestantism and distinguishes from Cath. and
Orthodoxy.
• The internal experience of morality leads to God
and not the cognition of the external world (= cf.
five ways to God in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa
Theologiae which start with external worldexperience: movement, causality….).
Protestant Character of Kant‘s
philosophy of religion?
Bruno Bauch (1877-1942)
philosopher, Neokantianism
Kant and Luther coincide in the idea of ethics
of conviction (Gesinnungsethik);
therefore both put the focus on tow things:
• 1) subjectivity and
• 2) morality as the decisive factor in relation to
God
Alexander Heit (* 1969)
Theologian, Basel
Versöhnte Vernunft. Eine Studie zur systematischen
Bedeutung des Rechtfertigungsgedankens für Kants
Religionsphilosophie (2006)
• Congruence of Kant and Luther in the doctrine of
justification.
• Kant articulates the difference between concrete
human being and moral duty (Sollen): faith in
justification is the answer to this difference in
conformity to reason (149).
Protestant Character of Kant‘s
philosophy of religion?
• Since Kant requires the personal appropriation and individual realization
of justification through the maxim of acting (Sittlichkeit / morality above
Sinnlichkeit / sensuality), Heit claims that Kant‘s position is closer to
Luther than to Melanchthon.
While Luther underlines the human existence determinating effect of faith
and a principle of appropriation concerning grace, Melanchthon develops
a mere forensic concept of justification (persistence of sinfulness,
unrighteousness, unregeneracy) which was received as the official
doctrine in the Formula Concordiae (Konkordienformel) of 1577.
Heit quotes Luther-Interpretations which affirm Luther‘s idea of
appropriation → exclusively this interpretation proves the claimed
nearness of Luther and Kant, and the thesis that Kant is the philosopher
of Protestantism.
Cf. Andreas Osiander (1498-1552): justification becomes a real part of the
person; God‘s Word is present in the justified.
8. A Catholic Kant?
• Kant‘s critique of sola fide, sola gratia, sola
scriptura: he insists on reason’s leading role
→ Walter Schultz, Kant als Philosoph des
Protestantismus (1960): that is really the
question, if he is it.
• Kant: Catholics are more consequential, he
praises enlightened Catholics: accepted
importance of reason and responsible actions.
What does Kant tell us about his
confessional standpoint?
Aloysius Winter, Kant zwischen den Konfessionen, in:
idem, Der andere Kant. Zur philosophischen
Theologie Immanuel Kants, Hildesheim 2000, 1-47:
• Kant keeps an equidistance to the confessions which
he calls religious parties, sects.
• Crucial: the religion of reason; confessional attributes
are scriptures (Bible, Koran), dogmas (Trinity), churchconstitutions, rituals (liturgy, devotions), costumes…
they are not essential; positively, they can help to
mediate and grasp better the religion of reason.
Kant‘s Experience
• 1732 Collegium Fridericianum
• Slavery: devotions, services, discipline
• Preparation to receive the Last Supper took 4
weeks, including a written confession
concerning the state of mind;
no separation of forum internum and
externum.
9. Kant – Philosopher of Ecumenism?
A. Winter, Kant zwischen den Konfessionen, 47:
Kant’s philosophy claims for
• Self-critique
• pure conviction
• rational argument
• against: dogmatism and skepticism
• search for natural and philosophical base of
religion
10. Results
Kant‘s moral philosophy of
religion as a point of reference
for:
• Protestant
• Catholic
• ecumenical and
interdenominational
approaches
• even for interreligious
approaches
Problematic and perspective:
• Moralistic reduction of
religion
• Revelation as admonition
and teaching, not a event,
history, relation between
God an mankind.
• Against this tendency may
help Kant‘s emphazis on
freedom: in order to
conceive revelation as an
event of God‘s and humans
freedom.
• Reduction of the dialogic
nature of human and divine
being.