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HANS ERICH BÖDEKER
righteousness or our reassurance”.’”” Reasonableness was declared the crucial
criterion of religion: every rational being had the right to think for himself:
“Religion without cognition is humanity without reason.” !”* Jerusalem’s inter¬
pretation paradigmatically left no room for the holy mysteries, for religion was
only recognized as religion to the extent that it was known. Ever more deter¬
mined, he turned from a rational religion of revelation to a revealed religion of
rationalism, and he increasingly came to equate reason and revelation. From
this theological position it was only a small step to seeing religion merely as
one of the mediums with which to fashion a broader intellectual culture.!?
Kant’s concept of “pure rational faith” (reiner Vernunftglaube) fits in this con¬
text. In discussing the postulate of the highest good in his Kritik der praktischen
Vernunft, he tried to clarify the idea of “pure rational faith’, which was intended
largely to correspond to Christian doctrine.’*° The “moral necessity” of God was
a subjective “need” which presupposed ethical convictions and, “in a practical
light, can be called belief, indeed, a belief in pure rational faith because pure
reason ... is the source from which it springs.”'?! This did not mean a belief in
reason, not even within the narrow bounds of Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft,
but a belief which necessarily sprang from moral reason, without therefore being
equated with morality. Kant drew a distinction between pure rational faith on
the one hand and the various manifestations of belief in revelation on the other.
He fully approved of rational faith as the essential core of all belief in revelation,
which he regarded merely as an aid to reflection. He set the “principle of pure
rational religion” (Vernunftreligion) against the belief of churchgoing Christians
in “suffering and reward.” Kant identified the former with the process of En¬
lightenment: “The reason for any transition to a new order of things must lie in
the principle of pure rational religion as a divine (so not empirical) revelation
that is constantly being experienced by all human beings. Once grasped after
mature reflection, it is put into practice by reforms gradually implemented, in
so far as the new order has to be the result of human efforts.”
Adopting Kant’s concept of Vernunftreligion, Friedrich Emannuel Nietham¬
mer (1766-1848) attempted to “define the content of religion” and to draw up
“principles concerning how its sources should be treated” in his study, Uber
127 Tbid., 407.
18 Tbid., 411.
129 Cf. Ibid., 745 ff.
120 Cf. OELMÜLLER, Unbefriedigte Aufklärung (note 14), 204.
131 Vorländer, Karl (ed.), KAnT, Immanuel, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Philosophische Biblio¬
thek, 38, unchanged reprint of the 9" edition. of 1929, Hamburg, Meiner, 1959, 144 f.
132 KANT, Werke, Vol. 6, 325; vol. 7, 352.
133 Cf. KANT, Religion; Schriften AA, vol. 6, 122, 124.
* 114°