Immanuel Kant Can't Climb Walls

Immanuel Kant built a wall that had devastating consequences for the entirety of modern history. Time and again, intellectuals have tried their hardest to tear down this wall … with little success. Could there really be a chink in Kant’s armor, a hole in the dike? Let’s find out.

Now, what wall are we talking about anyway? It’s certainly not a physical wall. It’s a wall between two realms that Kant called the noumenal and the phenomenal realms. Kant, with those tricky-to-spell words, is simply referring to the world that we can see, taste, touch, smell, and feel with the term phenomenal. Noumenal speaks of the realm outside our sense perception (God exists in the noumenal realm). Where the controversy lies is Kant’s next assumption – the wall between the two realms is utterly impassable. We cannot use science or even reason to bridge that wall. Humanity is cut off from God with no rational or scientific way to know if God even exists except by a blind leap of faith. Now if you happen to be a Christian, Kant’s speculations should rub against the grain. The Apostle Paul said in Romans 1:20 “For His [God’s] invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they [humanity ]are without excuse.”

Paul is saying that God has reached down from the noumenal realm and revealed Himself through the natural realm, that is, the phenomenal realm. But Kant says that there is an insurmountable wall between the noumenal and phenomenal realms. Either Kant is right and Paul is wrong, or Paul is right and Kant is wrong – but both of them can’t be correct at the same time.

The Bible was inspired by God, and written through human authors. If Paul is wrong, then God Himself is a liar. God forbid such an impossibility.

Immanuel Kant was a very clever person, or at least he thought so. His noumenal and phenomenal realms sound impressive, and we can nod appreciatively at the wall between the two realms … but only so long as we know that the wall is only built of sense perception (since we can’t use our five senses to perceive God). God is powerful enough to overleap the wall by revealing Himself through nature, just as Paul said. For with God, nothing is impossible.