Immanuel
Kant writes: “God’s justice is usually divided into justitiam remunerativam et punitivam, according as God punishes
evil and rewards good. But the
rewards God bestows on us proceed not from his justice but from his
benevolence. For if they came to
us from justice then there would be no premia
gratuita, but rather we would have to possess some right to demand them,
and God would have to be bound to give them to us. Justice gives nothing gratuitously; it gives to each only
the merited reward. But even if we
unceasingly observe all moral laws, we can never do more than is our duty;
hence we can never expect rewards from God’s justice.” [Immanuel
Kant, Lectures on the Philosophical
Doctrine of Religion, 28: 1085, quoted from Religion and Rational Theology, translated and edited by Allen Wood
and George di Giovanni (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 417].
Immanuel
Kant has been accused of holding that we merit God’s grace by our actions
because we choose to adhere to the moral law and hence by choosing to adhere to
the moral law we thereby make ourselves worthy of happiness. In this point of view, that happiness would
be a gift from God, and he gives it when we merit it from having chosen the
moral law as the incentive for our actions. But this would reverse the very idea of God’s grace being
freely given from his sovereignty, since this kind of position would mean that
God is constrained to reward us for our good choices and hence, that is merited
happiness, not unmerited grace.
Kant would be in direct conflict with the Christian concept of grace if
this were his position. However as
the quote above shows, this is not Kant’s position. Kant has a position that is consistent with the doctrine of
unmerited grace that St. Paul and the Gospels articulate.
In this quote above Kant distinguishes
between remunerative justice and punitive justice. Remunerative justice regards positive rewards for just
actions whereas punitive justice has to do with punishments for unjust
actions. Kant is saying that God
definitely punishes unjust actions and we merit punishment by our unjust
actions, but that God does not reward just actions. God’s justice is not the source of reward but of
punishment. The source of God’s
reward is in his benevolence. There
is a great difference between God’s justice and his benevolence. God’s benevolence is freely given to
all and is not based on merit. As
Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “But
I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your
heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes
rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:44-45). God gives his benevolence universally
to all people. He gives rain to
both the just and the unjust. He
doesn’t just give rain to the just, but also to the unjust. So merit has nothing to do with God’s
benevolence. His benevolence
extends to all people. He gives
good things even when we don’t deserve it.
As Kant would put it – God wills the happiness of human
beings universally, and does not favor some people over other people by virtue
of having merited it. It is the
universality of God’s will that characterizes his benevolence. And it is also unmerited benevolence
since it is given whether one deserves it or not. God universally wills that all people be saved and that all
people be happy. We do not deserve
this by our moral decision-making according to Kant because our morality is
motivated by duty. We are to
choose the moral law as the incentive for our actions not because we are trying
to please God but because it is our duty to do so. We are under the moral law and it requires of us that we
conform our maxims to the universality of the moral law. To expect a reward for this is
precisely to be moral out of self-love, which is an evil motive. Hence we are to be moral for the sake
of being moral and by virtue of that pure motive we become worthy of happiness. But being worthy of happiness does not
mean that we thereby acquire a right to be happy. Happiness is not a reward but a free gift of grace.
Hence, we can conclude that Kant does not hold that we
make a demand on God by our moral action and then grace is no longer
grace. Rather, in our decision to
make our maxims conform to the universality of the moral law we become worthy
of happiness which is a gift of God and always was a gift of God’s benevolence
and good will toward human beings.
