The chapter presents the two late religio-political works of Pufendorf in his role as lay theologian Pufendorf, Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion in Reference to Civil Society (1687), and The Divine Feudal Law; or, Covenants with Mankind (1695). Both tracts consider the changes in religion and politics since the revocation of the tolerance edict of Nantes in 1685 and the acceptance of Huguenots in Protestant Brandenburg-Prussia. Pufendorf’s defence of Protestant positions and severe criticism of French expansionism and Papal supremacy are explained with reference to the respective political and ecclesial theological contexts that had developed since around 1600 (1). Pufendorf’s first tract argues for political toleration of more than one Christian confession and public worship in the state. This is possible because political sovereignty, based on natural law, and religious autonomy, based on the purely religious ends of churches, can and should coexist (2). The biblical reasoning behind this is intensified in the second tract, which argues for mutual appreciation and reconciliation of the Lutheran and Reformed (Calvinist) confessions. Here Pufendorf integrates his concept of natural law into a new, strictly biblical covenantal theology correlating God’s promises and men’s free obedience (3).

Justifying grace is for Kant the way religion symbolizes, in terms of our relation to God, our hope to overcome the propensity to evil through the change of heart. Divine forgiveness does not abolish or transcend morality but occurs in accordance with morality. The Son of God symbolizes as vicarious atonement our moral receptivity to God’s mercy. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross is the way Christianity symbolizes it in revealed religion. For Kant rational religion includes faith in God’s justifying grace. It does not include prevenient or sanctifying grace but does not exclude these either. They are religiously acceptable parts of revealed Christianity, but their reality and our need for them lie beyond what pure reason can know. Some critics claim that Kant’s account of divine grace is inconsistent with itself. But closer examination shows that it is self-consistent, and for Kant rational religion is even consistent with Augustinianism about grace, while neither affirming nor denying it.