Karl Barth. Paul S. Chung
Читать онлайн книгу.
the most offended and the most miserable are. There the kingdom of God comes.”143 For Blumhardt, God is directed toward the world in spite of its sinfulness. With a social turn Blumhardt found the effect of the kingdom of God in the socialist movement in which he sees the life of humans occupying a place of utmost importance. Without falling into replacing the kingdom of God with socialism, Blumbhardt discerned a sign of God’s in-breaking reality in the socialist movement for the sake of humanity. “The purpose of God is this-worldly” makes Blumhardt’s direction so explicit that God is the starting point and the ground for the redemption of the world, not the other way around. God is related to the this-worldly dimension (that is, to the material realm) so radically that according to Blumhardt, revolution can become a word of God.144
In 1899 Blumhardt arrived at a practical consequence from his understanding of God’s kingdom. In protest against Wilhelm II, he joined the SPD. His entrance into the Social Democratic Party in Germany was not meant to be a sign of his interest in the politics of the party but an expression of his fundamental solidarity with the poor and a practical performance of his idea of the kingdom of God. After Blumhardt’s speech in Göppingen (in June 1899), Eugster-Zuest founded the textile union (Webeverband) in Apenzell, Switzerland. In December 1900, Blumhardt was elected to the Social Democratic Congress in Württemberg. Then in 1889 Kutter came into contact with Blumhardt and paid visits to Bad Boll.
Hermann Kutter
In December 1902 when Hermann Kutter (1863–1931) published his work Das Unmittelbare: Eine Menschheitsfrage, he was a pastor at Neumunster in Zurich (between 1899 and 1926). Under the influence of Blumhardt, his work appeared as a philosophical interpretation of Blumhardt’s thought. He characterizes the new life as the living God revealed in Jesus Christ. A turning away from the pure speculative theology to immediacy is identical with a return to the living God or, in the sense of Blumhardt, to the kingdom of God. In this light Kutter noticed in Social Democracy a will to social change, an in-breaking reality of immediacy into an incomplete and deficient society.
In his book Das Unmittelbare, there is a positive evaluation of the socialistic movement inspired by Blumhardt. The protest of Social Democracy against the old authority, its struggle for a better social order, and its utopia of a new community are, for Kutter, signs of the living God. In a sense, the work of Ragaz was connected to the emergence of Kutter’s theology. In April 1903 Ragaz preached a sermon that came to be known as the “Bricklayers’ Strike Sermon.” In December of the same year, Kutter’s prophetic voice was manifest in his book Sie Müssen! Ein offenes Wort an die christliche Gesellschaft (They Must! An Open Word to Christian Society) (1905).
In September 1906 Ragaz gave his important speech “Das Evangelium und der soziale Kampf der Gegenwart” (“The Gospel and the Current Social Struggle”) to a gathering of Swiss pastors. In it Ragaz scrutinized the social class struggle and challenged Christians to get involved in the movement of social justice. In October 1906 the first conference of Swiss religious socialism in Degesheim occurred. Finally, in November of the same year the first issue of Neue Wege was released.145 Given this fact, the religious socialism of Switzerland was developed first of all through the influence of Kutter and Ragaz (1868–1945) in 1906. Their journal Neue Wege appeared, bearing the strong influence of Ragaz, its founder and editor. The Freie Schweitzer Arbeiter, edited by Gustav Benz and Otto Lautenburg, was the other voice of religious socialism. Although a socially and politically liberal pastor in Basel, Benz rejected Social Democracy, unlike Ragaz, who had already joined the SPS in 1913.
At any rate, the religious socialist movement in Switzerland was greatly indebted to Kutter’s books, Sie Müssen! (1905) and Wir Pfarrer (1907), in which the message of Blumhardt played an important role. Although Das Unmittelbare remained—because of philosophical language—without great effect to the readers, Kutter’s book Sie Müssen! aroused great public attention. He argues that God takes sides with Social Democracy, not with the church. In his analysis of society, Kutter defended the political interest of Social Democracy against charges and attacks from the side of church. What is to be fought against is not Social Democracy but the Christian society that had abetted social injustice and misery. “The Social Democrats are revolutionary, because God is there. They must be forward, because God’s kingdom must be forward. They are people of revolution, because God is the great over-thrower.”146 The atheism, materialism, and internationalism of Social Democracy are no less than a protest of Christian society and conventions that have fallen into mammonism. The kingdom of God breaks in with the social democrats into the society. “Class struggle is a necessity provoked through mammon . . . The contradiction of classes is such that fighting has become not only necessary, but also the essence of humanity.”147 Social Democracy becomes God’s instrument that denies the existing social order. They must. They cannot do otherwise. “The most violent revolutionary is the living God.” He is the overthrower without reservation at all.148
Be that as it may, Kutter remained a pastor and a prophetic voice throughout his active life. “We must meet ourselves in our life and struggle, in our morality and religion toward God. The Bible starts out of him . . . For the Bible God is the single reality that is taken in earnest.”149 Furthermore, at the center of Kutter’s work is the insistence that the Social Democrat carried out the will of God. The atheism that was so frequently blamed by Christian conservatives (such as, for instance, Stoecker and Naumann) bears in it the stamp of the living God.
For Kutter God used Social Democracy as an instrument to awaken the church. It is to be seen as the hammer of God. The socialists must serve God’s purpose. What Kutter saw behind the hope of the Social Democrat is an unconscious Christianity. Therefore, the society has no right to complain about revolution. “The salvation becomes, at first, full in the material thing. Sin means a faulty placement of the spirit against the material. On the contrary, the spirit must direct itself again to the material.” “God’s promise fulfills itself in the Social Democrats: They must!”150 However, Kutter believed that pastors are confronted with a different kind of work in which they are to shape the conditions for the new society by being faithful to the living God. They are to proclaim a prophetic call to Christians in accordance with a life in immediacy with this living God. Kutter was more restrained about involvement with politics. He did not join the Social Democracy Party. Kutter’s prophetic call had more to do with theology and the church than with politics. Among his books, Sie Müssen! maintained a lasting influence as the founding document of the religious-social movement in Switzerland.
Unlike Blumhardt’s entrance to Social Democracy as a sign of solidarity with the poor, Kutter’s contribution to the social question meant a new form of preaching. Such an approach gave rise to the following question: to what degree does a Christian take part in the socialist movement in a practical-political way? This question remained an issue of conflict between Kutter and Ragaz. Finally the environment of the general strike in Zurich in 1912 fostered a break between Kutter and Ragaz.
Leonhard Ragaz
Unlike Kutter, Ragaz was a political activist. Ragaz was born on July 28, 1868, in Tamin, a small mountain village in Canton Graubünden in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. He grew up in the democratic atmosphere of a Swiss village and remained a strong believer in democracy all his life. Impressed by the cooperative forms of economic life among Swiss mountain farmers, he was concerned with a decentralized form of socialism. His father was active in a number of offices in the community, and his father’s interest in politics passed over to Ragaz. Because his family was constantly surrounded by financial difficulties, Ragaz was well aware of social problems from his personal experience. After graduation from high school in nearby Chur, he decided to study theology, enabled by a scholarship. He enrolled at the