Sárospataki Füzetek 2. (1998)
1998 / 1. szám - Dr. Frank Sawyer: Is there a place for God int he inn of Philosophy?
transcendental view. By transcendental he means that the knowing subject does not know the real objects as they are (Dinge an sich) but things as they appear. Knowledge reaches across (transcendental) reality and composes its understanding of things. Reason does not reach beyond or above (transcendent) experience. Because we are so dependent upon our own faculties of sensory experience and reason, Kant thought that what we can know is merely ’phenomenal’, and not reality in itself. There is also a deeper ’noumenal’ reality, which is known by ’intuition’. Kant thought that an indication of this noumenal reality is that people cannot reach the highest virtues (harmony with the moral law) during their limited lifetime. Therefore God, eternity and the soul (’noumenal’ realities) must exist. So there are three kinds of reality for Kant: 1) the world of sense experience (phenomenal reality); 2) the world of our understanding (discernment of the laws of science and scientific conclusions); and 3) the ultimate reality which transcends our sense experience and is thus unknowable to the human mind. Yet the mind is not satisfied without this ultimate reality, which it then ’postulates’ (posits, supposes) in order to complete its unity of perspective. Thus Kant allows for both knowledge and faith. However, he also drastically separates science and religion, or knowledge and faith, by restricting them to different realms. He does say that theism best explains the world, but theism is a ’postulate’, not something ’provable’. While this last thought seems to make good sense, especially to the modern (critical, rational, scientific) mind, we must not forget that no philosophical, religious, or ideological view is ’provable’ in the same tangible way as more empirical things are. It is easier to demonstrate that gravity is functioning than that God is. However, this does not mean that there are no good rational arguments for God (as Kant also allows). KANT’S FOUR STEPS IN THEOLOGY1 His original contributions begin when he was 57 years old and published Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781). We shall consider the significance for theology and for modern questions about faith found in Kant’s idea of ’pure reason’. The FIRST STEP Kant took was to abolish the classical proofs for the existence of God. Indeed, God can neither be proved nor disproved, said Kant. Pure reason cannot reach God; but practical reason needs God. Dr. Fhan/t Sawuer 1 Hendrikus Berkhof: Two Hundred Years of Theology (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans: 1989), part 1. 22
