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HANS ERICH BÖDEKER
great and simple aim of being at peace with oneself, and thus logically to the
indispensable feeling of the relationship of man against God."
Being at peace with oneself had become the supreme goal; being at peace
with God was ultimately no more than a means of achieving it. Ihis moral ori¬
entation, however, had an impact on the selection of doctrines which could be
used in religious instruction. Ihe subjects of this instruction were "the truth
of religion", or “principals of Christianity”. They could provide justification for
practical behaviour, for “[t]his is our religion; the love of God, which actively
expresses itself in a general benevolence and love of mankind.” Orthodoxy
and Pietism had already required the doctrine of faith and knowledge of God to
be practical; what was new was a demand for experience not only of “works” but
also of “faith”. The innovation was not so much the reduction of religion to mo¬
rality, but to see morality and religion as serving to realize “human destiny”.!°®
The Christian religion was practical to the extent that it made the achieve¬
ment of this destiny possible and subject to experience. Thus it was “the most
perfect religion one can imagine and that God can demand; the only one that
can make us similar to God, charitable towards others, perfect in ourselves,
satisfied and happy.”
In his work Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blofsen Vernunft, Kant had
traced the “meaning of religion” back to the tenet “that there is simply no sal¬
vation for man unless he incorporates in general moral principles into his way
of thinking.” !”° What remained, then, was “pure moral religion”’”' as a concept
that, because it was an attribute of human reason, could maintain itself. In the
concept of “pure moral religion”, therefore, Kant combined criticism of theol¬
ogy and positive religion with an attempt to bring out the humanistic content
of Christianity. “To the extent that morality is founded upon the concept of
man as a free being who nevertheless, through his reason, binds himself by
absolute laws, man requires neither the idea of another being over him in order
to recognize his duty, nor any driving motive other than the law itself, in order
to do his duty.”'”* Thus Kant explained the reciprocal dependence of freedom
and unconditional practical law as the central destiny of man. He also summed
up a long tradition of philosophical criticism of revealed religion by pushing
166 SPALDING, Vertraute Briefe (note 121), 327.
167 SPALDING, Über die Nutzbarkeit des Predigtamtes (note 56), 128, cf. also JERUSALEM, Betrach¬
tungen (note 58), vol. 1, 4th edition, 271.
168 Cf. SPARN, Vernünftiges Christentum (note 3), 38 ff.
16° JERUSALEM, Betrachtungen (note 58), vol. 1, 4th edition, 360.
170 KANT, Religion; Schriften AA, vol. 6, 121.
71 Cf. ibid., Vol. 6, 84, 111, 118, 153ff.
172 KANT, Religion (note 85), 3.
* 120 +