Kant on Baptism
Can ethics be liturgical and thus symbolic? Such a possibility would go against the grain of Kantian ethics, for instance, that insists on acting out of sense of duty without formality, habituation, or conformity. But would it?
We note first that Kant could not prove that morality is real or efficacious. In his Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals (1785), he gave a genuine effort to prove that morality is real (and not a chimera) based on the concept of freedom. But freedom too cannot be proven as real, even though we must presuppose it when we act. Thus Kant admitted in his Critique of Practical Reason (1788) that the certainty of morality could not be proven but must be recognized as given, as the undeniable “fact of reason.” (Factum means ‘something done’ (Rel. 1998: 47, editor’s fn. j).) Baptism, however, for Kant, allows us to think that our defective disposition that predisposes us to commit radical evil can be changed and converted to becoming a disposition that does good instead. Baptism frees us from the bondage of our propensity to do evil. The power that causes the conversion (which is defined as “an exit from evil and an entry into goodness,” Rel. 6:74; 1998:90) is not that of the Holy Spirit (as Christians would assert) but (to say within the boundaries of reason) that of reason itself. For reason seeks to achieve the ideal that it projects from within. The ideal that baptism symbolizes is humanity that is well pleasing in God’s judgment, as exemplified and accomplished by Jesus Christ in his conduct and teaching, including his vicarious suffering and death.
In one of his last works, Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1792), Kant makes a surprising turn toward religion and resorts to the symbolism of Christian baptism to address the inscrutable problem that he identified early on in his career but could not resolve until the end of his career, namely, the problem of what he called “the philosopher’s stone,” i.e., the efficacy of will. The problem has to do with the fact that our will does not always do what reason dictates. This problem of will is re-introduced in his book on religion (in Part I) as that of radical evil. He argue (in Part II) that ultimately human will needs Christ’s example of moral perfection as the prototype to imitate or model after to overcome the propensity for evil and to strive toward Christ’s example of moral perfection in the eyes of God. More specifically, human heart must be transformed and converted from the propensity for evil to that for good. This conversion is made possible by rational belief held in the hope of becoming “a human being well-pleasing to God,” as so interpreted in, for example, Anselm and others, where “only in mere becoming is imputed to us as if we already possessed it here in full” (Rel., 6:75; 1998: 91; italics his). The symbolism of baptism allows such a rational inference, because:
Yet such a divinely disposed teacher, though in fact totally human, would nonetheless be able to speak truly of himself as if the ideal of goodness were displayed incarnate in him (in his teaching and conduct). […] Now, when expressed in thought as the ideal of humankind, such a disposition… is perfectly valid for all human beings, at all times, and in all worlds, before the highest righteousness, whenever a human being makes his own like unto it, as he ought.
Rel., 6:65-66; 1998: 83-84.
Jesus Christ presents to us (but “externally,” Rel., 6:66; 1998: 84) in his teaching and conduct an ideal of perfect human disposition universally valid for all human beings to uphold and to emulate—valid within the boundaries of reason. Baptism allows us to think as if Christ’s moral perfection (toward which we strive to achieve in this life) is imputed to us already through his “sacrifice”—as symbolized in baptism—the sacrifice through which “the old [empirical] human being” is buried, while “the new [intelligible] human being” is born from within “in the disposition of the Son of God” (Rel., 6:74; 1998: 90).
This is the conversion that baptism symbolizes and allows us to think rationally by the “schematism of analogy” (Rel., 6: 64, fn.; 1998: 83)—by the analogy between Christ’s perfect humanity and our imperfect humanity.
The Pauline theology of baptism as death of the old self and re-birth of the new (Rom 6.5-8; Gal 5.24-25) is adopted here; because it works for Kant, as it can be employed well within the boundaries of reason. For baptism allows us by “schematism of analogy” to strive toward “the ideal of the Son of God which is being placed before us as model [Vorbild, also ‘example’]” (Rel., 6:66; 1998: 84).
Baptism for Kant does not make us righteous ontologically or metaphysically; we do not become united with Christ, as conversion for Kant is not theōsis. But baptism for him allows us to rationally think that we are “morally another being” pleasing “in the sight of a divine judge” (Rel. 6:74; 1998: 90; italics his) by “the surplus [of Christ’s righteousness] … which is imputed to us by grace” (Rel., 6:75; 1998: 91; italics his). Baptism, in short, enables a “deduction of the idea of a justification of a human being who is indeed guilty but has passed into a disposition well-pleasing to God” (Rel., 6: 76; 1998: 92; italics his). The symbolism of baptism, as presented by St Paul, provides for Kant rationally justified analogy for our own moral conversion, whereby our disposition to do evil is transformed into a disposition towards doing good instead, as exemplified by Christ perfect teaching and conduct.
Is conversion possible? Yes, according to Kant, because it is rationally and practically justified, as reason allows us to think so. Kant thus remains within the Protestant tradition of interpreting sacraments as the physical occasions that give rise to thought. For it is reason that moves the will by the power of its own ideal—the ideal that Christ exhibits for all humanity to uphold by schematism of analogy.