Kant’s impossible atonement

Nicholas Wolterstorff analyzes the “conundrum” of atonement in Kant’s treatment of rational religion. We need to be forgiven for the evil we’ve done, and we are incapable of doing this ourselves. God has to do it. Yet, Kant assumes a radical form of autonomy, which makes our moral value depend completely on our free actions. Kant uses the language of grace, but his assumption about human freedom turns grace into justice: God forgives those who have made themselves worthy of His indulgence. In fact, God in the end must forgive. As Wolterstorff puts it,

“God, in the Kantian system, wipes out the guilt of our wrongdoing if we present God with a good character; God is, in fact, morally required to do so. We have seen that such wiping out, if it were possible, would, in its indiscriminateness, raise a serious issue of justice. Further, we have seen that the claim that God can alter our moral status conflicts with Kant’s repeated insistence that only we ourselves can do so. But in fact such wiping out is not possible. Forgiveness is not the declaration that the guilty are no longer guilty but the declaration that the guilty will no longer be treated as guilty. Forgiveness, in that sense, is eminently possible. When that occurs, morality is transcended. The forgiven have no moral claim on forgiveness; it comes to them as grace.

“What Kant affirms is that only the worthy are saved – and that God, so as to bring it about that some are saved in spite of the wrongdoing of all, makes those of worthy character worthy in action as well. Kant affirms this without every surrendering the affirmation that each can make only himself or herself worthy. What Christianity affirms is that the unworthy are saved – saved by the grace of divine forgiveness.”