The shadow of God: Kant, Hegel, and the passage from heaven to history/ Michael Rosen.

Abstract

"Michael Rosen shows how the redemptive hope of religion became the redemptive hope of historical progress. This was the heart of German Idealism: purpose lay not in God's judgment but in worldly projects; freedom required not being subject to arbitrary authority, human or divine. Yet purpose and freedom never shed their theistic structure"--