Kant's Moral Argument
Renewing Your Mind
Ligonier Ministries
4.8 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
Our sense of duty to do good can only have meaning if it comes from God. Is this enough to prove that God exists? Today, R.C. Sproul responds to the influential views of Immanuel Kant.
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Meet Today's Teacher:
R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew's Chapel, first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine.
Meet the Host:
Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of media for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, and host of the Ask Ligonier podcast.
Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If Kant is right, then manifestly Paul is wrong. |
| 0:05.8 | And if Paul is right, then Kant has made an error. |
| 0:11.0 | And I'm obviously convinced that Paul is right and why I've been a stick in the mud with |
| 0:15.3 | respect to classical apologetics is that I'm saying that the task of the Christian philosopher in our day is to knock this wall down and not just lie down and play dead at the feet of Kant. |
| 0:32.6 | What are the consequences of our ideas? Why is it that today it's a commonly held belief that we can only know that which we can see with our eyes, |
| 0:44.3 | or see through a microscope? |
| 0:46.3 | That wasn't what was always believed. |
| 0:48.3 | We as Christians certainly don't believe that, and the Apostle Paul didn't believe or teach it either. It's good to have you |
| 0:55.4 | with us for this Tuesday edition of renewing your mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham. This week, we've begun |
| 1:02.0 | considering the philosophical ideas and the fallout of the Enlightenment, as you hear messages from |
| 1:08.0 | R.C. Sprole's overview of philosophy, the consequences of ideas. |
| 1:13.1 | Dr. Sprole introduced us to Emmanuel Kant yesterday. |
| 1:16.6 | But what did he believe about God? |
| 1:19.6 | And in what way did he disagree with what Paul teaches in Romans chapter 1? |
| 1:24.6 | And why did he oppose the classical arguments for the existence of God? |
| 1:30.3 | Here's Dr. Sprawl. |
| 1:33.3 | If we were to try to capture the agnosticism of Emmanuel Kant with respect to theology and metaphysics, it would be with the common expression |
| 1:47.1 | that you hear, quote, you can't get there from here. |
| 1:54.8 | Kant is famous for building, as it were, an unscalable wall between this world and the transcendent realm. |
| 2:07.5 | The wall is so solid, so impregnable, so high, you can't get over it, so low, you can't |
| 2:15.4 | get under it, so wide, you can't get around it, and so thick, you can't get under it so wide, you can't get around it and |
| 2:18.3 | so thick, you can't burrow through it. |
... |
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