Kant Lexicon
God
Deism (transcendental theology) is the thesis that there is a cause of the world, as ascertained through a priori proof. Theism (natural theology) is the thesis that there is an author of the world, as ascertained through appeal to experience. Natural theology can appeal to an author of the physical world or to the author of the moral world (in which case it is moral theology). As has been shown, the attempts to prove God's knowledge through appeal to reason alone or to physical nature are purely speculative, taking our principles beyond their legitimate employment in experience. So transcendental theology is useful only insofar as it "serves as a permanent censor of our reason" (A640/B668). It also allows the refutation of contrary views, such as atheism and anthropomorphism. The transcendental ideal is "an ideal without a flaw, a concept which completes and crowns the whole of human knowledge. Its objective reality cannot indeed be proved, but it also cannot be disproved, by merely speculative reason" (A641/B669). It leaves the way open for moral theology by providing "purely tanscendental predicates" indispensible to theology: "necessity, infinity, unity, existence outside the world (and not as world-soul), eternity as free from conditions fo time, omnipresence as free from conditions of space, omnipotence, etc." (A641-2/B669-70).
