Immanuel Kant and Martin Luther

Have you ever misjudged anyone due the context into which you were born and raised? I certainly have in the simplest situations when I should have known better. The following is going to be a really elementary attempt at broadening this common experience to discuss the philosophy of Immanuel Kant as it relates to Martin Luther. I hope to redeem some of his thought from Christian attack specifically in the realm of the bound will. Please feel free to throw rocks at my hypothesis as I wrestle with this subject. I will be in your debt.

Background
Kant was raised as a Lutheran Pietist which meant that his religious categories were in the realm of morals and ethics. This was in contrast to Lutheran Orthodoxy which (at least doctrinally) emphasized the objective work of Christ which is given to the believer as a gift. Due to this upbringing, Kant believed he was able to formulate a defense of the existence of God by the moral grid that was within him. If there were no God, he argued, there would be no moral grid within man that made him perform moral works, even when doing so risked life and limb.

Now, there are all sorts of problems with this. What about the moral grids of cannibals, etc? This certainly would not prove the existence of the Christian God. Kant failed to remove himself from the Western Enlightenment context he found himself in. He was a victim of his own grid, if you will. This is really not what I wish to discuss, though. That was a background, more or less.

Internal Grid
I would really like to discuss the merits of man's internal grid itself. Kant's critique of John Locke and Isaac Newton's empiricism (experienced observation that infers causality) was that it assumed a blank state in the mind of man. Experiences and observations served as stimuli that man could discern and use. The stimuli went into the mind completely objectively and untainted by the receiver's context, cultural or otherwise.

Kant responded by saying that there was no way man could objectively observe his surroundings. Physical laws and observations are not objective, physical realities; they are laws of the mind. The mind has categories already developed that take stimuli and process them according to the mind's internal grid. Man only knows reality to the extent that it conforms to the mind's internal grid.

The Bound Will and Original Sin
In Luther's Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, he wrote in theses 3 and 4:

• Although the works of man may seem attractive and good, they are nevertheless likely to be mortal sins.
• Although the works of God are always unattractive and appear evil, they are nevertheless really eternal merits.

The interesting part here for me lies in human perception and action taken in response to that perception. If the appearance of human works is good and attractive, we will necessarily initiate them, join in them, or cheer them on. For instance, defeating a political foe and rising to power appears attractive. Think Machiavelli.

The reality of it, though, is that it almost always enthrones the self over God in one's mind. In riots, genocides, gang rapes, evil political movements like Nazism and Stalinism, and other mass movements, people like you and me willingly join in. Why? We all want to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Why?

It is because we are the proud owners of original sin which warps our internal grid. It warps the way we receive and process external stimuli. Due to this, we are bound to this internal grid like slaves. We inevitably act in the way most logical to what our grid is telling us, unaware of anything different.

The Nazareth Principle
God works by the Nazareth Principle. He chooses the weak and unattractive to confound the strong and wise. Consider where God may have worked in your life. Was it after you vanquished a political foe? Unequivocally no. He worked in your life when you were vanquished. He worked when you were unable to continue. Consider the suffering servant in Isaiah 53:

Isaiah 53:1-5 Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed.

Consider and be aware of this internal grid. Then swallow some Christian vitriol and thank Immanuel Kant for inadvertedly thinking through the givens of original sin and the bondage of the will.