Prolegomena to a Robust Lutheran Theology - - Theophysical Causation

Kant argued that only those objects formed in a synthesis of sense perception can be objects that are in principle causally related to other objects. Only "substances" so formed can be causally-connected. Accordingly, if there are no substances, there can be no causality. An important result of Kant's work is the separation of the notion of 'cause' from that of 'reason'. One substance can cause the modification of another, but one substance cannot serve as a rational ground for the other. Conversely, one idea can serve as a rational ground for the other without the first causing the second.

Kant thus concluded that since there are no sense particulars falling under the concept of God, the divine cannot be a substance causally connected to another substance. Instead God is placed within the Ideas of Pure Reason. Human beings have, according to Kant, a natural metaphysical drive that can only find its resting place in the idea of the Unconditioned, the idea which contains "a therefore for every wherefore" (A585/B613). The demands of systemtatic unity and completeness find completeness in the Ideal of God: "A concept of an individual object which is completely determined through the mere idea" (A574/B602). As an Ideal of Reason, this being is not real: "This unconditioned is not, indeed, given as being in itself real, nor as having a reality that follows from its mere concept; it is, however, what alone can complete the series of conditions when we proceed to trace these conditions to their grounds. This is the course which our human reason, by its very nature, leads all of us" (A584/B612).

By expressly denying any causal relation to God - - and by making God a denizen of of the ideal realm - - Kant denies theophysical causation. Accordingly, predicating terms like 'create', 'redeem', and 'sustain' of 'God' must proceed in a different fashion than it had the antecedent tradition. After Kant, the theological tradition had to find ways to interpret their theological language in ways that did not suppose that God was a substance sustaining causal relations with His universe.

The effects upon religious practice were enormous. If God is causally-isolated from the universe, then God cannot answer prayer. Moreover, God cannot work miracles in the traditional sense of bringing about a state of affairs which would not customarily had come about. God really cannot do anything; He is an ideal to be contemplated. Accordingly, prayer becomes - - if people reflect profoundly enough upon the practice - - a self-centering activity, more like meditation.

Clearly, theology in a Lutheran key is possible on the supposition of denying theophysical causation. One can still preach law and gospel, and refer to the grace of Christ and the freedom Christ grants. However, one must subtly change the rules. It is not that God demands and through Christ's promise saves, it is rather that the idea or phenomenon of God is correlated with the fundamental phenomenon of demand, and the notion of Christ creates in the one experiencing it a sense of bonds being broken and the freedom of the future donated. This move is now in question, I believe, because in a pluralistic culture, why is it that one should insist upon the specificity of the notion or phenomenon of the Christ? And if there is no specificity, then Jesus cannot be the exclusive "Way and the Truth and the Life," a pretty basic assumption within traditional Lutheran theology.