Karl Barth and Radical Politics, Second Edition

Hunsinger

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781532603952
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Karl Barth was one of the most important Christian theologians of the twentieth century, but his political views have often not been taken sufficiently into account. Beginning with a representative early essay by Karl Barth, this volume proceeds with essays by Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, Helmut Gollwitzer, Hermann Diem, Dieter Schellong, Joseph Bettis, and George Hunsinger. These contributions engage both the relationship of Barth's theology to his socialist politics as well as Marquardt's analysis. This new edition expands upon the earlier one by adding three new essays by Hunsinger on Barth's theology and its relevance for human rights, liberation theology, and the theories of Rene Girard on violence and scapegoating. Hunsinger has extended the discussion as well as deepened our insight into how theology can speak meaningfully about fundamental issues of human need.

1

Jesus Christ and the Movement for Social Justice (1911)1

Karl Barth

I am happy to be able to speak to you about Jesus, especially because the initiative for it has come from your side. The best and greatest thing that I can bring to you as a pastor will always be Jesus Christ and a portion of the powers which have gone out from his person into history and life. I take it as a sign of the mutual understanding between us that you for your part have come to me with a request for this best and greatest thing. I can say to you, however, that the other half of our theme lies just as much on my heart: the movement for social justice. A well-known theologian and author has recently argued that these two ought not to be joined together as they are in our topic: “Jesus Christ and the movement for social justice,” for that makes it sound as if they are really two different realities that must first be connected more or less artificially. Both are seen as one and the same: Jesus is the movement for social justice, and the movement for social justice is Jesus in the present. I can adopt this view in good conscience if I reserve the right to show more precisely in what sense I do so. The real contents of the person of Jesus can in fact be summed up by the words: “movement for social justice.” Moreover, I really believe that the social justice movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is not only the greatest and most urgent word of God to the present, but also in particular a quite direct continuation of the spiritual power which, as I said, entered into history and life with Jesus.

But against these ideas, there are objections from two sides, and I would guess that both are represented among us gathered here. The one side is formed by so-called Christian circles in the narrower sense of the term, with which the majority of bourgeois churchgoers are affiliated. If they read or hear that “Jesus Christ and the movement for social justice” have been linked together, they will protest more or less energetically that Christ is being made into a Social Democrat. “But please don’t paint the Savior too ‘red,’ will you?” a worthy colleague said to me when I told him of my present theme. Then the assertion customarily follows, almost with a certain enthusiasm, that it is completely impossible to associate Jesus with a political party. His person remains nonpartisan, above social conflicts, indeed, indifferent to them. His significance is eternal and not historically limited like that of the Social Democratic Party. And so it becomes an untruth and a profanation to draw him into the conflicts of the day, as supposedly occurs in our theme. From the “Christian” side matters can be made still easier, however, and that is what usually happens—unfortunately even among many of my colleagues. One points with outstretched finger at this or that gross error or mistake committed by the Social Democratic side. Here the workers beat up a strikebreaker; there someone perpetrated a poisonous newspaper article, abounding in hatred; elsewhere assembly representative Naine made a fool of himself through antimilitaristic tirades; and so on. What does all that—along with all the other irritating things socialists do—what does all that have to do with Jesus Christ? All that obviously has nothing at all to do with Jesus Christ. It has just as little to do with him as those problems found on the free-thinking or conservative side, such as philistine narrow-mindedness, brutal self-seeking, and the self-glorifying exercise of violence. The errors and mistakes of individual persons are found on all sides, and I would not like to point the finger at others.

What concerns us here, however, is not individual persons, but rather the subject matter itself. It is just as cheap as it is unjust to pound away again and again, saying: “Look what the socialists are doing!” It is precisely Christians who ought to know that we all fall short when we look at what we’re doing. When I talk about the movement for social justice, I am not talking about what some or all Social Democrats are doing; I am talking about what they want. As Christians we should like to be judged by God and man according to what we want, not just according to what we do. What concerns us, therefore, are not the words and deeds of Bebel or Jaures, of Greulich or Pflüger or Naine, nor even the words and deeds of socialists in Aargau and Safenwil. Rather, what concerns us is what all these persons have in common, what is left over after everything personal and accidental, good or evil, is taken into account, what they all with their words and deeds want. What they want comes to a few very simple thoughts and motifs, which together amount to a historical phenomenon which is self-contained and independent of the behavior of socialists and the tactics of the socialist parties, and which stands completely beyond the controversy of the day: namely, the movement for social justice. I find it difficult to see how it becomes a profanation of the eternal to associate this movement with Jesus Christ. Indeed, we just said that we did not want to talk about what is temporal and accidental in this movement. In the same sense that we are accustomed to linking “Jesus and the Reformation” or “Jesus and Missions,” in the same sense we now say: “Jesus and the Movement for Social Justice.” We don’t want to make Jesus into a German, French, or Aargau Social Democrat—that would be absurd—but rather we want to demonstrate the inner connection that exists between what is eternal, permanent, and general in modern social democracy [socialism] and the eternal Word of God, which in Jesus became flesh.

However, I still need to point out the objection that comes from the other side. Among you yourselves, dear friends of the labor union, or perhaps among your comrades in the canton outside, at least one or two persons thought quietly to himself at the announcement of this topic: “Oh, no! Jesus Christ and the movement for social justice! They are still trying to capture us socialists for an antediluvian world view or even for the church.” A social-democratic author, Joseph Dietzgen, has warned against connecting Christianity and socialism, for he sees it as a conservative maneuver. And in fact many a “Christian” approach to socialism does seem like a maneuver designed to “bring the people around” and make them once again into “pious little sheep.” While socialism was the means, the Christian church and world view were the actual purpose for which one worked. I would not be surprised if you quietly held a little suspicion toward me as well in this regard. And at this point it would be insufficient to assure you that I really don’t want to “bring anyone around.” Rather, I must also give you the reason why it isn’t so: I must explain why I would like to talk about the inherent connection between Jesus and socialism, and why the purpose of my lecture—that this connection may become clear to you—has nothing to do with your attitude toward the church. Perhaps you will have understood the connection between Jesus and socialism about which I want to speak. Perhaps—and this much I would wish for you—you will enter into a personal, inner relation with this man. Yet, afterward as before, it is still possible to make a wide arc around the church, even around the Safenwil church. The church can help you in your relationship to Jesus, but that is all. At all times there have been persons who have managed without this help. Perhaps you are among those persons. The church has often performed her service badly. That is quite certainly true of our church and of myself. Of the church, therefore, I can only say to you: “She is there in order to serve you. Do what you think is right.” The church is not Jesus, and Jesus is not the church.

The same holds true of the so-called Christian world view. If you understand the connection between the person of Jesus and your socialist convictions, and if you now want to arrange your life so that it corresponds to this connection, then that does not at all mean you have to “believe” or accept this, that, and the other thing. What Jesus has to bring to us are not ideas, but a way of life. One can have Christian ideas about God and the world or about man and his redemption, and still with all that be a complete heathen. And as an atheist, a materialist, and a Darwinist, one can be a genuine follower and disciple of Jesus. Jesus is not the Christian world view and the Christian world view is not Jesus. If I would like to interest you in Jesus today, then I can say to you gladly that I am not thinking of capturing you in order to “bring you around” to Christian ideas. I invite you to put them aside, and to concentrate your attention with me upon the one point we want to talk about: the bridge between Jesus and socialism. I would like nothing more from my lecture than that you all, my dear listeners, would see this bridge and attempt to go across it, some from this side to that, others from that side to this.

Now let us get into the subject matter. Socialism is a movement from below to above. In the discussion after my last lecture, someone put forth the claim that “we are the party of the poor devil!” As I look at you sitting before me, it seems to me that this indeed says a little too much; even you yourselves will not take it all too literally—but we both understand what was meant. Socialism is the movement of the economically dependent, of those who earn wages working for someone else, for a stranger; the movement of the proletariat, as the literature calls it. The proletarian is not always poor, but is always dependent in his existence upon the means and the goodwill of his brother, the factory owner. Here socialism sets in: It is and wants to be a proletarian movement. It wants to make independent those who are dependent, with all the consequences for their external, moral and cultural life which that would bring with it. Now one cannot say that Jesus also began precisely at this point. The reason is quite simply that two thousand years ago a proletariat in the contemporary sense of the term did not exist: There were still no factories. And yet it must strike everyone who reads his New Testament without prejudice that that which Jesus Christ was and wanted and attained, as seen from the human side, was entirely a movement from below. He himself came from the lowest social class of the Jewish people at that time. You all recall the Christmas story of the crib in Bethlehem. His father was a carpenter in an obscure town in Galilee, as he himself was during his entire life with the exception of his last years. Jesus was a worker, not a pastor. In his thirtieth year he laid down his tools and began to move from place to place, because he had something to say to the people. Once again, however, his position was fundamentally different from that of us pastors today. We have to be there for everyone, for high and low, for rich and poor; our character frequently suffers from this two-sided aspect of our calling. Jesus felt himself sent to the poor and the lowly; that is one of the most certain facts we encounter in the gospel story. Above his work stands that word in which we can still discern today the fire of a genuinely social spirit: He grieved when he saw the people, “because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34). Occasionally, we also hear of rich people who became his followers. If they did not turn back again after brief enthusiasm, like the rich young ruler (Matt 19:16–22)—he knew why!—then in Jesus’ presence they felt more like guests than like those who actually belonged to him. Nicodemus (John 3:1–2), “a ruler of the Jews,” who came to him by night, is a typical example of this. Indeed, in the last weeks of his life Jesus even turned to the rich and the educated with that which moved him—he went from Galilee to Jerusalem—but as you know, that attempt ended with the cross at Golgotha. What he brought was good news to the poor, to those who were dependent and uneducated: “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). “For he who is least among you all is the one who is great” (Luke 9:48). “See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt 18:10). Such sayings may not be interpreted as words of consolation from a philanthropic man who spoke thus from on high. “Yours is the kingdom of God!” said Jesus, and what he meant was this: You should rejoice that you belong to those who are least; you are nearer to salvation than those who are high and rich. “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes” (Matt 11:25). That clearly was Jesus’ own attitude: He found his friends among the fishermen of the Sea of Galilee, among the despised tax collectors who worked for the Romans, indeed among the prostitutes of the sea cities. One cannot reach lower down the social scale in the choice of one’s associates than Jesus did. To him there was no one underneath who was too low or too bad. And I repeat: That was not a cheap pity from above to below, but the eruption of a volcano from below to above. It is not the poor who need pity, but the rich; not t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Note to Reader
• Preface to the First Edition
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Introduction
• Conflict of Opinion
• Chapter 1: Jesus Christ and the Movement for Social Justice (1911)
• Chapter 2: Socialism in the Theology of Karl Barth
• Chapter 3: Kingdom of God and Socialism in the Theology of Karl Barth
• Chapter 4: Karl Barth as Socialist Controversy over a New Attempt to Understand Him
• Chapter 5: On Reading Karl Barth from the Left
• Chapter 6: Political Theology and Social EthicsThe Socialist Humanism of Karl Barth
• Chapter 7: Toward a Radical Barth
• Chapter 8: Karl Barth and Human Rights
• Chapter 9: Karl Barth and Liberation Theology
• Chapter 10: The Politics of the Nonviolent God
• Select Bibliography of Karl Barth’s Works
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments