Immanuel Kant, John Piper, and Rob Bell

While discussing Kant in Modern Philosophy, we touched on a few of his thoughts on both a perfect being theology, as well as a glory-based perception of God. The first half is interesting in its own right, and relates to what I studied last spring in Medieval Philosophy, but the second half concerning a glory-oriented being seems to be crafted specifically for a thread that has been running through our conversation in class: What is the nature of God? Our good friend John Piper is a well-known and outspoken proponent of the sort of glory-based theology that Kant addresses here.

I would do a bit more work myself, but Kant just says it well, so I’ll go ahead and quote him at length:

“Nevertheless, this [perfect being theology] is better than (2b) the theological concept, which derives morality from a most perfect divine will. There are two reasons for the inferiority of the theological concept; or, more accurately, they are two halves of a single reason which constitutes a dilemma confronting the theological approach to morality. The perfection of the divine will is not something that is given to us in intuition analogous to how items are given to us through the senses; so we have to derive it from our own concepts. Foremost among these is our concept of morality; if we let this generate our concept of God’s perfection, and then use the latter as a basis for morality, we are guilty of a flagrantly circular explanation. And if we don’t get at God’s perfection in that way, our only remaining concept of it is made up of the attributes of desire for glory and dominion, combined with the awe-inspiring conceptions of power and vengefulness; and any system of ethics based on these would be directly opposed to morality.” (Groundworks, pp. 38-39)

The first problem Kant raises is the apparently cyclic nature of the relationship between a divine being and morality. Kant is, of course, the father of deontology, and claims that morality is actually a metaphysically significant thing. As such, he notes that we often constrain our picture of God’s nature to that which is morally good, thus using morality to construct out picture of God’s nature. But then we turn around and say God is the author of the moral law. Kant realizes that something is suspect with this line of reasoning.

The second, and much more interesting and pertinent problem with the theological concept of morality arises when we reject the first move from before – starting with the moral law. And if we cannot begin by assigning morality to a most powerful being, we are bound to ascribe glory and dominion – Piper-esque sovereignty – to this being. But that ultimately results in a being that is an absolute moral monster who will achieve his end of self-glorification by any means possible. Hence the dilemma.

Maybe John Piper was doing Rob Bell a favor when he wished him “farewell.” I certainly would not want to be associated with a God like that!

And ultimately, Rob seems to offer up a picture of God that rejects parts of both Kant and Piper's views. God isn't obsessed with his glory, but he is no pure logician, either. Rather, God is seen as loving. I think Bell tries to give us a more holistic picture of both God and human nature.

Is Bell a virtue ethicist? That's a good question, but I'll save it for another time.