From the Religion of Reason to Theology as an Autonomous ‘Wissenschaft’. Immanuel Kant and Protestant Theology in the 19th Century

The paper reconstructs the reception of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy in the theologies of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Albrecht Ritschl and Wilhelm Herrmann, taking into account the modernization process in the 19th century. They used Kant’s philosophy to modernize the self-image of Protestant theology as a ‘science’. Around 1800, theologies emerged which took up the differentiation of religion in culture as an independent form. This transforms Kant’s religion of reason into the concept of the independence of religion in consciousness and determines theology as a ‘science’ that operates on the basis of the philosophy of religion. Against the backdrop of advancing cultural modernization, the special nature of the Christian religion became the focus of theology from the 1870s onwards. In these conceptions, religion is increasingly detached from the self-relationship of consciousness, and theology is understood as an autonomous Wissenschaft. This shows that in the history of the development of Protestant theology in the 19th century, it was not only the understanding of religion and theology that changed, but also the image of Kant’s philosophy that was referred to.