Karl Barth. Paul S. Chung
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this speech a classic example of the religious-socialist identification of the Laborers’ movement with Jesus, and Jesus with the well-being of this movement. The Socialistic Party newspaper printed the complete text of the speech, reporting, “The lecture of Pastor Barth last Sunday here on the theme ‘Jesus and Social Question,’ given at the request of the local Laborers’ Society, was well attended. Women were present too. The theoretical discussion and the comparison with today can be found on page two of this edition.”83
In Safenwil Barth was introduced for the first time to the real problem of social life. Before his very eyes, class warfare occurred in his parish. This forced him to study factory legislation, insurance, trade-union affairs, and so on. In Safenwil Barth no longer asked about the praxis-relevance of theology in general as we see in his Moderne Theologie und Reichgottesarbeit. Instead he concretized the question of the practical-political relevance of Christianity. “One might well say that for eighteen hundred years the Christian church, when confronted by social misery, has always referred to the Spirit, to the inner life, to heaven. The church has preached, instructed, and consoled, but she has not helped, in the face of social misery she has always commended help as a good work of Christian love, but she has not dared to say that help is the good work.”84
From this assertion we see that, on the one hand, Pastor Barth was deeply disturbed by social misery that brought human life to degradation and moral collapse. On the other hand, he sought a responsible reaction of Christian community toward the material and moral plight of workers. Barth’s contact with socialism materialized primarily through his practical confrontation with the real situation of Safenwil workers. It does not ignore his theoretical or social philosophical reflection. Therefore, we need to pay attention to the socialistic influence upon his theological development in the sense of a correlation. For instance, Barth’s turning away from the individualism of liberal theology and constructing universalism in his thought shows the primacy of the social/political dimension over the individual/particular dimension in Barth’s thought and theology
What is characteristic of Barth’s practical concern is articulated in the following: “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. . . . 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.”85 What Barth intends to demonstrate is “the inner connection” between social democracy or socialism and the eternal Word of God that became flesh in Jesus, namely “the inherent connection between Jesus and socialism.”86 According to Barth, Jesus is not the representative of the Christian church, worldview, or ideas. For the bridge between Jesus and socialism, Barth introduced Jesus’s way of life in which “as an atheist, a materialist and a Darwinist, one can be a genuine follower and disciple of Jesus.”87
In Barth’s view, what connects socialism with Jesus is a movement from below. If socialism is “a movement from below to above,” “the movement of the economically dependent,” “the movement of the proletariat” who is “always dependent in his existence upon means and the goodwill of the factory owner,” Jesus himself came from the low social class of the Jewish people at that time. Jesus was also a worker, getting along with the poor and the lowly. His message was good news to the poor, to those who were dependent and uneducated. This was the eruption of a volcano from below to above. A liberation theology in Barthian fashion has its foundation in the belief that “the kingdom of God has come to the poor.”88
Barth did not forget to differentiate between the kingdom of God for social democracy and the kingdom of God for Jesus. In agreement with Sombart (who says “the quintessence of all socialist doctrines of salvation” contained in a poem of Heinrich Heine—“to build the kingdom of heaven even here upon the earth”—), Barth introduced the message of Jesus for the poor. Socialistic passion and praxis for building up the kingdom of heaven on earth need not be diametrically opposed to Jesus’s good news of the kingdom of God for the poor. A church’s transformation of Jesus’ social and material concern into cultivating the inner life and preparing candidates for the kingdom of heaven is “the great, momentous apostasy” from Christ.89
The fundamental contention is that God’s kingdom comes to us in matter and on earth because the Word became flesh. In light of God’s movement from above to below, wholly and completely, the gospel is a movement from below to above. In Jesus there is no dualism between spirit and matter, between heaven and earth. In keeping with Matt 25:32–46, Barth stressed that the spirit having value before God is the social spirit. Jesus opposed material misery and created new people in order to create a new world. “Regarding the goal, social democracy is one with Jesus.”90 Herein Barth cited a famous statement of Oettinger: “The end of the way of God is the affirmation of the body.”91
Barth’s critique of capitalism is along the lines of socialistic critique: “The class contradiction” is “the daily crime of capitalism.” Private property as a means of production belongs to the factory owner. However, in the account of the rich man and the poor Lazarus, Jesus wanted to say that a rich person does not enter into the kingdom of God (Luke 16:19–31). A Marxist theoretician, Joseph Dietzgen, who was a despiser of Christianity, was right in saying that the original sin of the human race is self-seeking. The similarity between Barth’s argumentation and that of a more Marxist approach is shaped in his passion for the socialistic spirit of solidarity. In view of The Communist Manifesto of 1848, Barth argued that socialism proceeds from solidarity and it emphasizes solidarity “as the source of his power and progress” to the social consciousness of the worker. Furthermore, he argued, “Solidarity is the law and the gospel of socialism.” As a socialist, one ceases to be an individualist and thus ceases to think, feel, and act as a private person, so he or she should become a class-conscious worker. “To be a socialist means to be a ‘comrade’ in consumer’s unions, in labor unions, and in political parties” “as a member of the forward-striding, fighting totality.”92
Dietzgen has argued that “conscious and planned organization of social work is what the longed-for savior of the modern period is called.”93 Therefore, should the socialist call to solidarity and Jesus’s gospel stand in contrast to one another? By no means, because there was only “a social God, a God of solidarity” for Jesus. “There was also only a social religion, a religion of solidarity.”94 On the basis of the “awareness of the collective, solidarity, communal, social God” Jesus’s call to discipleship, namely, the rule of corresponding action follows. As Barth said passionately and convincingly, “Let him take it in who can, that one must lose one’s life in order to find it, that one must cease being something for oneself, that one must be a communal person, a comrade, in order to be a person at all.”95 Jesus is the partisan of the poor. “Real socialism is real Christianity in our time.”96 Certainly the correct socialism for Barth is not that which the socialists now do, but rather what Jesus does—and what the socialists want to do. At a minimum, the demands of the socialists cannot be realized without the gospel. The kingdom of God was close to the poor, and Jesus identified himself with them.
Be that as it may, Barth would be hesitant in terms of the manner