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Kant’s Attitude toward Luther’s Theology 19
Chapter 1 Kant’s Attitude toward Luther’s Theology from the Principles of Scriptural Exegesis
Qiuling Li
In 1517, Martin Luther set off a wave of Reformation on German soil with his Ninety-five Theses.1 Luther’s unique theological thought quickly gained wide- spread support. After the German civil war and the Thirty Years’ War after- wards, the legal status of Lutheranism was finally established, which, together with the Swiss Reformation and the English Reformation, greatly changed the religious situation and ideology in Europe. Later, Lutheranism mainly spread to and developed in Northern Europe. In 1525, the Teutonic Knights, en- trenched in Prussia, converted to Lutheranism and established the secular Duchy of Prussia, with Königsberg as its capital. In 1701, the duchy was up- graded to a kingdom, and the ruler of the duchy, Friedrich III, was crowned Friedrich I, king in Prussia, at Königsberg. In 1724, in the city of Königsberg the greatest philosopher in German history, Emmanuel Kant, was born. Lutheranism, as the state religion of Prussia, was naturally deep-rooted and flourishing in the city of Königsberg. Kant was born into a family heavily influ- enced by Lutheran Pietism. In such a situation, although representing the En- lightenment spirit of reason and freedom, the philosopher Kant did not dare to comment freely on the religion in the milieu of which he lived. For example, neither in his writings nor in his letters did Kant ever mention Luther’s name or his theological thought. Nevertheless, Kant was reprimanded by King Fried- rich William II of Prussia: “…how you misuse your philosophy to distort and disparage many of the cardinal and basic teachings of the Holy Scriptures and of Christianity,” “as you yourself must realize how irresponsibly you have acted against your duty as a teacher of youth and against our paternal purpose,
1 Parts of this article were published in Chinese with the title “Cong shijing yuanli kan Kangde dui Lude shenxue de taidu 从释经原理看康德对路德神学的态度” in International Journal of Sino-Western Studies, vol. 16 (June 2019), pp. 71-77 (
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004443617_003 20 Li which you know very well.”2 Samuel Collenbusch (1724-1803), an important representative of Pietism, even wrote to Kant asking, “What distinguishes the devil’s faith from Mr. Kant’s?”3 All this, of course, stems from Kant’s thoughts on the religion of pure reason and its relationship to the positive religion, as elaborated in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and a series of short papers. In his reply to the king, Kant defended himself and promised “as Your Majesty’s most loyal subject, that I will hereafter refrain altogether from discoursing publicly, in lectures or writings, on religion, whether natural or revealed.”4 Three years later, when the king died and the new king Friedrich William III acceded to the throne, Kant thought that his promise had auto- matically lapsed, so he published another book The Conflict of the Faculties, on which he not only published the correspondence with the former king, but also continued to insist that “ecclesiastical faith has the pure faith of religion for its supreme interpreter,”5 and proposed four principles of scriptural exege- sis, which clearly show his divergence from Lutheran theology and Lutheran Church. In view of this, and in view of the length, this paper focuses on the relation- ship between Kant’s principles of scriptural exegesis and the core of Luther’s Reformation theology: sola scriptura (by Scripture alone), sola fide (by faith alone), and sola gratia (by grace alone).
1 The Necessity of Scriptural Exegesis and the Principles of Scriptural Exegesis
As anyone familiar with Kant’s philosophy knows, in order to make the highest good possible by matching virtue with happiness, Kant puts forward the postu- late of practical reason, “the existence of God,” and assumes God’s attributes, such as omnipotence, omniscience, all-goodness, etc., so that God could
2 Kants gesammelte Schriften, herausgegeben von der Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin und Leipzig, 1922, Bd. XI, S. 525. Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties (1798), trans. Mary J. Gregor and Robert Anchor, in: Immanuel Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, eds. Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 240. 3 Kants gesammelte Schriften, herausgegeben von der Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin und Leipzig, 1922, Bd. XI, S. 536. 4 Kants gesammelte Schriften, Bd. XI, S. 530. Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties (1798), trans. Mary J. Gregor and Robert Anchor, in: Immanuel Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, eds. Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni, 242. 5 李秋零主编：《康德著作全集》, 第 6 卷, 中国人民大学出版社 2007 年, 第 110 页。 Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings, trans. and eds. Allen Wood and George Di Giovanni, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 118.