Oldal 240 [240]
MARTIN MOORS
state becomes a religious concept by which God as lawgiver is thought as
the constitutive principle of such an ethical community. On their behalf,
moral human beings may consider their citizenship in “a people of God” as
a call, the possibility of which reason has no grasp at all.
2. The second is the mystery of satisfactio [Genugtuung].*’ The mystery of
satisfactio is another issue concerning “what God alone can do,” this time
with regard to human beings whose new life (after conversion to good) is
still burdened with guilt for the transgressions committed by the corrupted
disposition while living in sin and hence liable to punishment. Atonement
before God cannot occur by either sacrificial or ritual performances on
behalf of finite human beings who are born with the natural propensity
for evil. Hence, not even striving for good works of whatever sort®® can
wipe away, before heavenly justice, the guilt that burdens the converted
heart. The problem of satisfaction, redemption and reconciliation with God
concentrates ultimately on the fact that the human being “finds no capacity
in him sufficient to improve things in the future.”” On condition that the
human being must do everything that lies in his power, i.e., will, in order to
convert unto a total change of heart—though this will remain inadequate for
the intended effect—only the concept of divine grace can bring relief in this
“remarkable antinomy of human reason with itself."
“Here then,” says Kant, “is that surplus [Uberschuss] over the merit from
works [...], one which is imputed to us by grace.” It is in the context of
Christology that Kant elaborates the religious meaning of the concept of
satisfaction from the perspective of content. Referring to the symbola of the
traditional religious creeds, he states:
this very Son of God — bears as vicarious substitute the debt of sin for him [the
converted] and also for all who believe (practically) in him: as savior, he satisfies
the highest justice through suffering and death, and, as advocate, he makes it
possible for them to hope that they will appear justified before their judge.”
“What God alone can do” for the full attainment of the final moral end—under
the primal condition that the human being must have made himself by his proper
freedom worthy of this—amounts, in a Christological context, to “standing in
for another by virtue of the superabundance of his own good conduct and his
96 Religion Ak 6, 99.
"7 Religion, Ak 6, 143, also 72-74, 116-118.
98 Kant is manifestly a proponent of Reformation theology on atonement as he rejects, in
particular, the connection between punishment of God and acts of penance.
99 Religion, Ak 6, 117.
100 Religion Ak 6, 116.
Religion Ak 6, 75.
Religion, Ak 6, 74.
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Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 238 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:22