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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 interpretation paradigmatically left no room for the holy mysteries, for religion was only recognized as religion to the extent that it was known. Ever more determined, 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 context. 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 Enlightenment: “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 Niethammer (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 Bibliothek, 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°
