1. V. Systematic Response to Kant and Hegel in Philosophy and Theology

2. Systematic Responses
The following „responses“ are more than those proposed by the above mentioned Protestant and Catholic Kantians:
Those responses do not consist of a mere adaption or reception of some conceptual elements, but of a complete reconstruction of philosophy and theology, which includes a critique of Kant‘s and Hegel’s approaches in philosophy of religion as well.

3. Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788)
Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten (1759): the lack of knowing as the beginning of faith in a daimon, genius. Faith as a genial perception of reality.
Metakritik über den Purismus der reinen Vernunft (1784): Critique of Kant‘s dualism: sensitivity and reason although Kant speaks of a unknown unity of both.

4. Inconsistent purifications of reason in Kant
Three purifications of reason:
1) enlightened separation from tradition and history; 2) separation from experience; 3) separation of language from reason.

5. Response to Kant: Immediacy
Critique of these separations; no reason without language.
The analytic, separating reason fails to grasp reality‘s and humans’ unity.
Knowledge grounds on an immediate faith in reality (D. Hume). Since knowledge of reason always presupposes knowledge and is mediate, knowledge cannot be a real, unconditional beginning of knowing.
The knowledge of God is based on an immediate experience of its revelation in nature, history and Bible.

6. . Incarnation or deification of reason
God‘s presence has linguistic character, happens in words because of God‘s condescendence in creation, history, and incarnation. God‘s condescendence founds communication of idiomata / ἰδίωμα / characteristics between divine and human, founds the possibility for a human contact with God; the alternative is the deification of reason.
Hume’s skepticism is the way to an appropriate faith-theology.

7. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819)
Faith precedes reason (Hamann).
Critique of Kant‘s Ding-an-sich because of its improvable causality of appearances.

8. Certainty of life
New concepts of faith and reason as intuitive human capacities.
Cf. the perception of one’s body: we believe to have a body, this belief is certainty, it is not a knowledge made by concepts (cf. Michel Henry : certainty of my own life, which occurs to me: Gewissheit vom eigenen, mir „passierenden“ Leben).
Discursive understanding forms depend on intuition.
Looking for certainty presupposes a preceding intuition of certainty.
An intuitive experience of God is the motivation to ask for his existence

9. No proofs of God
Endorsement with Kant‘s critique of metaphysical rationalism: the proofs of God make God a dependant finite reality: depending on a superior matter. Proofs only guarantee mediate knowledge; the proved God is something conditional, finite.
Critique of Kant‘s theory of the postulated existence of God: God remains dependant on human subjectivity

10. Faith and Feeling Faith as immediate certainty, based on feeling.
Certainty due to feeling is the condition to know about uncertainty, doubts.
Feeling is the basis of self-consciousness, of will. We feel our freedom and the external world – and God who addresses us.
Feeling founds ethics: we conceive the esthetics of values

11. Conclusion A philosophy of religion is not based - on metaphysics
- on rationalism
- on practical reason
- on reasons of reason
It is based on
+ an immediate access to reality
+ faith and feeling
+ on God’s revelation

12. Antonio Rosmini ( )
Antonio Rosmini ( ), Italian priest, philosopher, theologian and patriot, and founder of a religious congregation.
Balance between reason and religion
tradition of philosophia perennis
Kant, Hegel
“Italian Kant”

13. Rosmini‘s Apriori Apriori: Idea of being, form and object of reason
Intuition of being (against Kant)
Knowledge gets activated by this idea of being, but only in a formal way. In the horizon of being, intellect perceives and understands.
Kant’s forms and categories are filters of the appearing reality, Rosmini’s form is like a “light:” is makes things cognizable.
The innate idea of being as the idea of all ideas: being is universal, the communal aspect of all realities.

14. Trinitarian Ontology
Rosmini criticizes Hegel’s category of the undetermined being as a first concept of God.
The idea of being = unlimited objectivity = presupposes an unlimited, absolute intellect; being has to exist: not as what exists (Seiendes, ens), but as an absolute, divine being.
Ideality, reality and morality of being → Philosophy of the Trinity

15. Condemnation and Beatification
Condemnation: 40 sentences: Decree Post obitum 1887
Ontologism (Vincenzo Gioberti : »L' Ente crea l'esistente«)
Pope Benedikt XVI. 18. November 2007 in Novara Beatification.

16. Georg Hermes ( )
Bonn 1819, Prof. of Dogmatics Hermesianimus – 1835 condemnation: Rationalism Mediation of faith/theology and modern philosophy / Kant. Facts: end of metaphysics, theology loses credibility H. refuses to escape in religion of feeling Reasonable approach, respecting boundaries put by Kant and going beyond Kant: 1) to reality: immediate consciousness of reality and its cause / reason by which reality presents itself to human knowledge; psychological necessity to accept / believe / assume reality as true (Für-wahr-halten / Für-wirklich-halten) = 2) Belief as the only approach to reality; knowledge as second form to know and grasp reality. Critique of Kant’s understanding of knowledge and faith. Faith as affirmation of a reality. Faith as bridge to theology.

17. Georg Hermes
3) Affirmation of an “Ur-ursache” (God): changing appearances in the subject of knowledge have to be ascribed to an absolute cause.
4) Critique of Kant’s moral postulate of God: there is no necessary link between morality and happiness; moral is autonomous and does not depend on the idea of compensative reward in heaven…
5) Revelation as knowledge, information, as abbreviation of natural knowledge; analogous cognition of revealed truth; revelation helps to realize autonomous morality → Kant’s concept of religion in the limits of pure reason.
Lit.: Th. Fliethmann, Vernünftig glauben. Die Theorie der Theologie bei Georg Hermes, Würzburg 1997.

18. Conclusion Intuitive, immediate knowledge of being, God.
Horizon of being as possibility of revelation.
Revelation in terms of knowledge.

19. 2. Discussion about Hegel‘s philosophy of Religion
Topics: personality of God (pantheism) – immortality of the soul (Ph. Marheineke, I.H. Fichte, C.H. Weiße)
The priority of idea and concept over history frees history; it becomes a subject of research (D.F. Strauß‘ Leben Jesu, 1835/36)
Christian or non-Christian character of Hegel‘s Philosophy of religion (B. Bauer, L. Feuerbach: Religionskritik)
Concept of philosophy (Kierkegaard: paradox of faith, Schelling: negative, positive philosophy)

20. Right Hegelians: Friends, Werkausausgabe
„Verein von Freunden des Verewigten“:
Karl Daub ( ),
Philipp Konrad Marheineke ( ),
Johannes Schulze (1786–1869),
Eduard Gans ( ),
Leopold von Henning ( ),
Heinrich Gustav Hotho ( ),
Karl Ludwig Michelet ( ),
Friedrich Christoph Förster ( )….

21. Philipp Konrad Marheineke (1780-1846)
Die Grundlehren der christlichen Dogmatik als Wissenschaft“ 1819, 2. Aufl. 1827
Philosophical justification of Christianity.
God is evident to human reason, not to feeling.
The human knowledge of God is possible, because God knows himself by means of human reason.

22. God constitutes Religion
Religion is the latent knowing of God which finds its fulfillment in a philosophical theology in which God is known.
He receives Hegel‘s concept of Spirit in order to explain God‘s unity with the human spirit.
The notion of revelations refers to the concept of spirit. The Trinity seems to depend on the world; it is the otherness of God.

23. Marheineke‘s Trinitarian Dogmatics
God Father: God‘s being per se, characteristics without determinations,
God Son: difference, creation, revelation.
God Spirit: Reconciliation
Revelation as God‘s self-reference and self-representation: within himself and therefore „outside“ of himself in creation and history of salvation.
In his relationship to God, the human being becomes person.

24. Ecclesiology and Eschatology
Church = truth of the state
State = external reality of the church.
No separation of state and church.
Due to the infinity of human spirit knowing of God and being God‘s knowing in otherness, the human person is not destroyed by death.
Apokatastasis: reconciliation of all contradictions in God.

25. Conclusion Theology has to assume the form of philosophy.
In scientific terms, theology exposes God‘s reality and revelation.
Theology is philosophy of the absolute religion.

26. Christian Hermann Weiße (1801-1866)
Philosophische Dogmatik oder Philosophie des Christentums (3 Bde., )
Against Hegel: Philosophy achieves a Logic which constitutes the concept of God.
God‘s reality is known by revelation. There is no identity with philosophy and theology.

27. Anton Günther ( )
inspired by René Descartes, I. Kant, G.W.F. Hegel
Opposition to the catholic „Vernunft-Haß“, hate of reason.
Immediate certainty of knowledge in consciousness: the idea of the Ego is the idea of being. Concepts are secondary in reference to immediate ideas. The Ego and its being are the origin of all internal appearances.
From the limitation of the Ego-idea, Günther deduces the idea of God. Kant did not know anything about the “ideal knowing of being”, he limited knowing on sensible experience.

28. Anton Günther
Dualism of knowledge: one knows appearing things in concepts, one grasps the reason of the things in ideas. Concepts belong to science, ideas belong to human spirit.
Revelation corresponds to reason, therefore a transformation of revelation in philosophical concepts is possible. Speculative knowledge surpasses revelation.
From faith we come to knowledge: a proof of the Trinity is possible.
Spirit, Nature and their synthesis in human being are the imagine(s) of the Trinity.
Accusation: Semirationalism

29. Left Hegelians: David Friedrich Strauß (1808-1874)
Critique of Marheinecke‘s Hegel-interpretation which does not consider the inferiority of religious representation.
Hegel: Impossibility of a historical foundation of Christianity. Only concept offers a justification: „resort in concept“.
Das Leben Jesu (1835/6): Dogma as myth = representation

30. Anthropological Christology
Philosophical interpretation of the
Christological myth = divine sonship as human ideal and aptitude.
Christology of the human species: We are all Christ in our relation to God.
Streitschriften (1837): Links- und Rechtshegelianer

31. Bruno Bauer (1809–1882)
Encounter with Strauß; „conversion“ to the left Hegelians
1841/42: Die Posaune des jüngsten Gerichts über Hegel den Atheisten und Antichristen:
The human consciousness of God is the consciousness of our universal openness. The religious relation is human self-relation.

32. Ludwig Feuerbach ( )
In 1824, F. attends Hegel’s lectures in philosophy of religion.
Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit (1830): Rejection of personal immortality.
D.F. Strauß: Das Leben Jesu  no historical basis of Hegel‘s interpretation of Christianity.
Impossibility of an incarnation: no individual can be the appearance of the Absolute.

33. Critique of Hegel‘s Philosophy (1839)
Hegel‘s Phil = “drunken philosophy”
Inversion of Hegel‘s thesis – the human consciousness is the self-consciousness of God – to: „The absolute Essence, the God of man, is his own essence.“
The formal difference between religion and philosophy implies a critique of religion.

34. Vom Wesen des Christentums (1839-40)
Religion is „the consciousness of the inifinity“. Religion has a human fundament. Religion is man‘s relation to his own essence.
Religion is self-alienation. God is the human self .

35. Feuerbach‘s Trinity Trinität: Ich – Du - Wir
"Das Bewußtsein des Menschen von sich in seiner Totalität ist das Bewußtsein der Trinität." (Das Wesen des Christentums, 1841, Werke 5,75).
“Man’s consciousness of himself in his totality is the consciousness of the Trinity.” (Essence of Christianity: PART I, The True or Anthropological Essence of Religion. Chapter VI. The Mystery of the Trinity and the Mother of God:
"Gott ohne Sohn ist Ich, Gott mit Sohn ist Du. Ich ist Verstand, Du ist Liebe; Liebe aber mit Verstand und Verstand mit Liebe ist Geist, ist erst der ganze Mensch. Geist aber ist die Totalität des Menschen als solchen, der totale Mensch ... Gemeinschaftliches Leben nur ist wahres, in sich befriedigtes, göttliches Leben dieser einfache Gedanke, diese dem Menschen natürliche, eingeborne Wahrheit ist das Geheimnis des übernatürlichen Mysteriums der Trinität." (ebd. 78 f.)
“God the Father is I, God the Son Thou. The I is understanding, the Thou love. But love with understanding and understanding with love is mind, and mind is the totality of man as such – the total man. Participated life is alone true, self-satisfying, divine life - this simple thought, this truth, natural, immanent in man, is the secret, the supernatural mystery of the Trinity. ” (ebd.)

36. The mystery of the suffering God
„God suffers – suffering is the predicate – but for men, for others, not for himself. What does that mean in plain speech? Nothing else than this: to suffer for others is divine. He who suffers for others, who lays down his lie for them, acts divinely, is a God to men.“

37. Conclusion
Hegel‘s philosophy of religion is used to reject the foundational significance of history in religious issues.
The speculative Theism is transformed into anthropology.
Philosophy of religion is a speculative or atheistic anthropology.

38. 3. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)
“Father of modern Protestant thought” sympathizes with Kant's general strategy of “denying knowledge in order to make room for faith” in connection with religious matters (Critique of Pure Reason, Bxxx) S. welcomes Kant's attack on traditional proofs of the existence of God. S. denies that religion is a form of knowledge or that it can be based on metaphysics (natural religion) or science.
1768 – 1834

39. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1799) The Christian Faith (1822,1830)
Idea of the supreme unity of thought and being is given in our personality, in immediate self-consciousness or feeling; Feeling = cessation of the antithesis of subject and object.
Feeling realizes the unity of our being, in which the opposite functions of cognition and volition have their fundamental and permanent background.
Religion depends on the feeling or intuition of the universe, consciousness of the unity of reason and nature, of the infinite and the eternal within the finite and the temporal.
Feeling of absolute dependence.

40. universum
S. opts for autonomy of metaphysics and moral; they do not need religion as a base or motivation. S. reclaims the same autonomy for religion.
Metaphysics ← thinking →
Moral ← acting → universum
Religion ← feeling intuition →

41. Plurality of Religion
Religion as the more general concept in reference to concrete religions; the relativity of Christianity as one religion among others.
"Religion is the outcome neither of the fear of death, nor of the fear of God. It answers a deep need in man. It is neither a metaphysic, nor a morality, but above all and essentially an intuition and a feeling. ... Dogmas are not, properly speaking, part of religion: rather it is that they are derived from it. Religion is the miracle of direct relationship with the infinite; and dogmas are the reflection of this miracle. Similarly belief in God, and in personal immortality, are not necessarily a part of religion; one can conceive of a religion without God, and it would be pure contemplation of the universe; the desire for personal immortality seems rather to show a lack of religion, since religion assumes a desire to lose oneself in the infinite, rather than to preserve one's own finite self.“

42. Differences among the religions: a specific religion depends on the finite reality which represents the infinitude → critique of natural religion.
Religion is individual, religion gets universal by communication of individual intuitions.
All religious contents are possible; criteria of content is its communicability.

43. Christianity‘s specific feature
Christianity contains the principle of all religions: the christological mediation of finitude and finite reality in. Therefore, it is “the religion of the religions”.
But it is not the concrete person of Jesus which defines the importance of Christianity, it is Jesus’ consciousness which one can withdraw from its historical realization.
Problematic: The mediation of finite and infinitude is only an act of the religious consciousness. Schleiermacher does not develop an idea of divine self-mediation to human consciousness - Cf. Hegel

44. The specific feature of religious consciousness
No particular object
Relativity of religious consciousness
religious consciousness as an individual consciousness: each consciousness identifies one different finite reality as manifestation of the infinitude.
No discourse about God himself, but about the conscious relation to him.
Church as the society in which religious subjects share the contents of their consciousness. Church is the community of religiously instructed people, able to communicate their religious feeling.

45. Conclusion
Schleiermacher‘s attempt to save Christianity‘s rationality by his approach of feeling and by the explication of the feeling of unconditional dependency on the Absolute as the explication of dogmatics respects the turn to subjectivity and the limits of reason which Kant defines: but therefore the reference of consciousness to reality (God, dogmatic contents) remains an open question. This open question evokes new discussions.

46. 4. a) Evangelische Tübinger Schule
Ferdinand Christian Baur ( )
sympathizer of Schleiermacher
The key to understand Christianity is not systematic theology, it is history and philosophy of religion: Due to an idea of religion we understand religions.
Later he turns to Hegel and presents the history of Christianity as a dialectic process.

47. 4. b) Kath. Tübinger Schule
Johann Sebastian von Drey ( ):
Religion = starting point of the philosophical question of God, not a concept.
Man discovers his consciousness as his independent personality – and the feeling of dependence on the Absolute.
This feeling is due to a preceding unity of God and human person, to an original revelation (in paradise).

48. Kath. Tübinger Schule Johann Adam Möhler (1796-1838)
The arguments for God‘s existence presuppose a first intuition of God due to a natural revelation in us.
Human person is positioned within the universe as revelation of God. It is not consciousness which leads to God, but man‘s position in the totality of being.

49. Kath. Tübinger Schule Johann Evangelist von Kuhn (1806-1887)
Under the influence of Jacobi, he argues against Hegel and scholastics.
Primordial revelation of God in our spirit, immediate idea of God.
The proofs of God’s existence require faith as a faith of reason: a first perception of God’s natural revelation. Religious faith is confidence in God.
Dogmatic theology does not depend on phil. knowledge of God.
Against Schleiermacher:
Faith is based on objective knowledge of God, the feeling of dependence is secondary.

50. Conclusion
Ecumenical consensus: affinity to Jacobi’s and Schleiermacher‘s approach of feeling.
Philosophy of immediacy, intuition
Interdenominational turn to objectivity: feeling is an effect of God‘s self-presenting in human spirit, in the universe.

51. 5. a) Neo-Scholasticism
Development of medieval scholastic philosophy starting from the second half of the 19th century.
Neo-Thomism
Gaetano Sanseverino (1811–65)
Maria Cornoldi (1822–92)
Joseph Kleutgen (1811–83), Albert Stöckl (1823–95) in Germany
Pius IX: recognizes its importance
Leo XIII (4 August 1879), Encyclical "Aeterni Patris“: Neo-Scholasticism = catholic think-form.
Accademia di San Tommaso (1874)

52. Neo-Scholastics Topics
1. God = actus purus, absolute perfection and infinite being (ipsum esse per se subsistens). God keeps always substantially distinct from every finite thing (ens a se, aseity); incarnation does not change God.
He is the exclusive creator, he is omnipotent, omniscient,…
2. Epistemology: We know the incommunicable, individual substance of things, penetrating their accidents. Metaphysic and theological knowledge is based on the analogia entis. History does not change the substance of the things.
2. Ontology of act and potency, act and essence, form and matter, substance and accidents. The act is the existence of essence – essence = what something is (quidditas / whatness). The essence is the potential / possible being of a reality. The form determines matter which is pure potentiality. The form is active in reference to matter due to being as activity. The concept of substance can say the same like essence (man, human being) or terms the concrete reality (Socrates = person).

53. 3. Anthropology: Man = a compound of matter (body) and form (soul ): anima forma corporis. Intellectus agens identifies the species (essence) of the appearing sensible object. The intellectual activity rests on sensory function and grabs the universal in the concrete by abstraction. Abstraction is the way to find the nucleus of the realities.
Upon knowledge follows the appetitive process. The will (appetitus intellectualis) is free in reference to the good. We are morally obliged, though not compelled, to attain it.
Natural happiness is the result from the full development of our powers of knowing and willing/volition (loving).
Supernatural happiness is the gift of God’s grace and consists in the direct and beatific vision / intuition of the Trinity.
There is a discussion about the relation between natural and supernatural happiness / bliss.

54. „Official Catholic“ Problems with Kant and Hegel
Joseph Kleutgen ( )
Giovanni Perrone ( ): criticism, decadence of philosophy, overrating of reason
Destruction of Metaphysics
Reduction of religion to morality
Faith as an intellectual act of affirmation in reference to truths of practical reason
Relativization of historical revelation and ecclesial mediation
Pantheism
Destruction of faith by philosophical concept

55. 5. b) I. Vatican Council: Dei Filius (1870) Against Rationalism (I
5. b) I. Vatican Council: Dei Filius (1870) Against Rationalism (I. Kant, Hegel) and Fideism (F. Schleichermacher, F.H. Jacobi, J.E. Kuhn)
The same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the source and end of all things, can be known
with certainty from the consideration of created things,
by the natural power of human reason: ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.

56. It is indeed thanks to this divine revelation, that those matters concerning God
which are not of themselves beyond the scope of human reason,
can, even in the present state of the human race, be known
by everyone
without difficulty,
with firm certitude and
with no intermingling of error.
It is not because of this that one must hold revelation to be absolutely necessary; the reason is that God directed human beings to a supernatural end,
that is a sharing in the good things of God that utterly surpasses the understanding of the human mind; indeed eye has not seen, neither has ear heard, nor has it come into our hearts to conceive what things God has prepared for those who love Him.

57. Against transforming faith in reason
This faith, which is the beginning of human salvation
we believe to be true what He has revealed,
not because we perceive its intrinsic truth by the natural light of reason,
but because of the authority of God himself, who makes the revelation and can neither deceive nor be deceived.

58. Against Fideism Canon 3. On faith
3. If anyone says that divine revelation cannot be made credible by external signs, and that therefore men and women ought to be moved to faith only by each one's internal experience or private inspiration: let him be anathema.

59. Chapter 4: On faith and reason
The perpetual agreement of the catholic church has maintained and maintains this too: that
there is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct
not only as regards its source,
but also as regards its object.
With regard to the source,
we know at the one level by natural reason,
at the other level by divine faith.
With regard to the object,
besides those things to which natural reason can attain,
there are proposed for our belief mysteries hidden in God
which, unless they are divinely revealed, are incapable of being known.

60. Conclusion
1. Catholic turn to metaphysical rationality in opposition to the approaches based on feeling (fideism) in order to gain objectivity (against Catholic School of Tubingen): philosophical proofs of God’s existence and attributes; historical proofs of God’s revelation: historical signs of credibility (miracles, church-history).
2. Rejection of a Kantian and Hegelian rationality, of a natural religion as criterion of historical religion.
3. Consequences: A problematic relation to the modern world and a loss of many promising approaches in philosophy and theology. Necessity of a mediation of Neo-Scholastic thinking and subject-theoretical philosophy.

61. 6. Protestant Phil. Approaches to Religion Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889)
Bonn
Human reality is exposed to the contradiction between spirit and nature.
Religion saves out of the contradiction between spirit and nature.
Religious knowledge is based on a feeling of the Ego which includes self-esteem. Therefore religion is subjective.
The Ego wants to protect its self-esteem and autonomy against nature which blocks spiritual activities and morality. In its moral crises, the Ego hands itself out to God, under his dominion the Ego is saved from the dominion of nature.
Problem: Religion and divine power serve only to resolve the problem of pestered Ego by nature and sensuality. God serves to self-assertion.

62. Wilhelm Herrmann ( )
Basis of religion is the self-feeling of the Ego. This Ego we can only experience (erleben), we cannot explain it scientifically (erklären).
Religion is something we experience, therefore it is individual and never object of science.
Religion is born in crises of moral subjectivity: its incapability to submit to the moral law is due to sensuality. The human person in its moral crises – in radical evil - makes itself dependent on a God to be preserved by him in its own independence.
Religion resolves the moral problem, it is not a consequence of moral = Kant.
Herrmann does not explain the required qualities of God which make this salvation possible.
Cf. Fichte: God saves from the moral crises because he is the unity of moral law – Sollen - and capability - Können.

63. Ernst Troeltsch ( )
Bonn prof. systematic theology, Heidelberg, 1914 Berlin
In the “Glaubenslehre” (1925) he explains against Schleiermacher that a contemporary Christianity can no longer rest on the assurance of the truth of revelation as a just given, nor can it be justified by natural theology. Therefore a phil. of religion gets importance in combination with a phil. of history.
Religion systematically:
Autonomy of the religious consciousness has to be established by the phil. of religion
Phil. of religion:
(1) psychol. analysis of religion: religious consciousness is related to extern reality. (How to prove it? He only affirms that in the desire to be saved by an absolute authority, the desire claims the reality of this authority.)
(2) Epistemology of religion: (cosmol. proof, religious Apriori, perceived in “naïve religiosity”.

64. (3) Metaphysics of religion: presence of God in consciousness as justification of its religiosity. In order to avoid that the relation to God is nothing but a human projection, T. turns to metaphysics. But he does not think God as the reality which communicating itself mediates the human relation to God. On the other hand, revelation and Apriori constitute a contradiction.
Problem: God as source of religious consciousness depends on this consciousness.
Solution (“!?”): God’s revelation is self-communication to reason, that God’s self-communication belongs to man’s consciousness = Hegel.

65. „Die Absolutheit des Christentums und die Religionsgeschichte“ (1902/1912) The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religions The Place of Christianity Among the World Religions (1923).
Superiority of Christianity?
Christianity, Jesus as the Absolute for Europe, valid “for us”. Jesus may not necessarily be of absolute significance to people immersed in cultures where other religious traditions are preeminent.
The basis of Christian belief cannot reside in miracles, or Christians must allow that other religions claim the same basis.
Christian superiority: “it is the loftiest and most spiritual revelation, we know”.
Hinduism and Buddhism = “really human and spiritual religions, capable of appealing in precisely the same way to the inner certitude and devotion of their followers as Christianity”.
Christianity’s superiority is less a theological assertion than a cultural one. Religion is ubiquitous, yet there is noting that all religions share.

66. Historical method
Historical method as the end of a dogmatic method because in history absolute truth does not exist. Rejection of “supernaturalism”: miracles, virgin birth, the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sin, bodily resurrection from the dead, second coming of Christ?
The early Christians needed to focus on a central personality to sustain its ongoing life and perpetuate the Christian message. For this purpose they used metaphysical categories to explain person and work of Jesus, and his significance for faith through the centuries to the present day.
These categories can be changed. “Incarnation” was once an useful but now outmoded way to express God’s presence in Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the supreme expression of the Old Testament’s prophetic tradition, he is not God incarnate.
Doubts concerning a universal and absolute salvific value of Jesus’ death on the cross.

67. Evaluation They confirm…
with Kant: no proofs of God‘s existence, no natural religion, relativity of christology and church.
Beyond Kant: feeling as the human capacity for transcendence
With Kant and Hegel: general (philosophical) concept of religion
With Hegel, against Kant: importance of the history of religion(s)
With Kant, against Hegel: relativity of Christianity
With Hegel: approach from consciousness (cf. Phenomenology of the Spirit)
Against Hegel: no parallel approach from the Absolute to religious consciousness
Problem: no certainty of the religious consciousness’ reference to a transcendent reality.
Catholic Neoscholatisc rejects these positions; claims of objectivity.
Protestant critique of these thesis because of the unity of culture and religion; God judges all cultures and religions by his revelation in Christ.