CHAPTER V

The unity and coordination of religion and society, of religious and societal existence, in former times acknowledged as an unquestionable reality, shattered as early as the beginning of the Enlightenment in France. This was the first time that the Christian religion appeared to be a particular phenomenon within a pluralistic milieu. Thus its absolute claim to universality seemed to be historically conditioned. This problematic situation is also the immediate foundation of the critique developed by the Enlightenment and, later, by Marxism. From the beginning this critique took on the shape in which it still appears today. It approaches religion as an ideology, seeking to' unmask it as a function, as the ideological superstructure of definite societal usages and power structures. The religious subject is being denounced as a false consciousness, that is, it is viewed as an element of society which has not yet become aware of itself. If a theology seeks to meet such a critique, it must uncover the socio-political implications of its ideas and notions. Now—and here I am conscious of daring simplification—classic metaphysical theology failed to discharge its responsibilities in this quarrel. The reason is that its notions and categories were all founded upon the supposition that there is no problem between religion and society, between faith and societal practice. As long as this supposition was true, it was indeed possible for a purely metaphysical interpretation of religion to be societally relevant, such as was the case, for instance, in the Middle Ages with its great theologians. However, when this unity was broken, this metaphysical theology got itself into a radical crisis as the theoretical attorney in the pending case between the Christian message of salvation and sociopolitical reality.

The prevailing theology of recent years, a theology of transcendental, existential personalist orientation is well aware of the problematic situation created by the Enlightenment. We might even say that, in a certain sense, it originated as a reaction against this situation. Still this reaction was not direct and sustained: the societal dimension of the Christian message was not given its proper importance but, implicitly or explicitly, treated as a secondary matter. In short, the message was "privatized" and the practice of faith reduced to the timeless decision of the person. This theology sought to solve its problem, a problem born of the Enlightenment, by eliminating it. It did not pass through the Enlightenment, but jumped over it and thought thus to be done with it. The religious consciousness formed by this theology attributes but a shadowy existence to the sociopolitical reality. The categories most prominent in this theology are the categories of the intimate, the private, the apolitical sphere. It is true that these theologians strongly emphasize charity and all that belongs to the field of interpersonal relations; yet, from the beginning, and as though there were no questions, they regard charity only as a private virtue with no political relevance; it is a virtue of the I-Thou relation, extending to the field of interpersonal encounter, or at best to charity on the scale of the neighborhood. The category of encounter is predominant; the proper religious way of speaking is the interpersonal address; the dimension of proper religious experience is the apex of free subjectivity, of the individual or the indisposable, the silent center of the I-Thou relation. It seems clear then that the forms of transcendental existential and personalist theology, currently predominant, have one thing in common: a trend towards the private.

I should like to cast further light on this tendency which 1 have called a privatizing tendency. Let, us look at the result? of modern Formgeschichte and the way they are interpreted by modern theology. It is well known that the Gospels' intention is not to present a biography of Jesus in the current sense of the word; their account of Jesus does not belong to the genus ot private biography, but to the genus of public proclamation— of kerygma—which is the form in which the Christian message of salvation couches its assertions. The exegetical studies in socalled Formgeschichte have shown that the Gospels are a multilayered text in which the message is proclaimed in the aforesaid way. Now it seems to me that it was, in a certain sense, a fateful event when the discoveries and conclusions of Formgeschichte were at once interpreted in the categories of theological existentialism and personalism. This meant that the understanding of the kerygma was immediately limited to the intimate sphere of the person; briefly, it was privatized. Its word was taken merely as a word addressed to the person, as God's personal self-communication, not as a promise given to men, to society. The hermeneutics of the existential interpretation of the New Testament proceeds within the closed circuit of the I-Thou relation. Hence the necessity to deprivatize critically the understanding of the datum of our theology. The deprivatizing of theology is the primary critical task of political theology.

This deprivatizing, it seems to me, is in a way as important as the program of demythologizing. At least it should have a place with a legitimate demythologizing. Otherwise there is a danger of relating God and salvation to the existential problem of the person, of reducing them to,the scale of the person, and so of downgrading the eschatological kerygma to a symbolic paraphrase of the metaphysical questionableness of man and his personal private decisions.

No doubt there is an emphasis on the individual in the message of the New Testament. We might even say that it is the gist of this message—especially in its Pauline expression—to place the individual before God. When we insist on deprivatizing, we do not in the least object to this orientation. On the contrary, for it is our contention that theology, precisely because of its privatizing tendency, is apt to miss the individual in his real existence. Today this existence is to a very great extent entangled in societal vicissitudes; so any existential and personal theology that does not understand existence as a political problem in the widest sense of the word, must inevitably restrict its considerations to an abstraction. A further danger of such a theology is that, failing to exercise its critical and controlling function, it delivers fa'th up to modern ideolog^'es in the area of societal and political theory. Finally, an ecclesiastical religion, formed in the light of such a privatizing theology, will tend more and more to be a "rule without ruling power, a decision without deciding power. It will be a rule for those who are willing to accept it, so long as no one gives it a knock; it will not be a rule inasmuch as no other impulse will proceed from it but the impulse to selfreproduction."¹

2. With this, the positive task of political theology comes to light. It is, to determine anew the relation between religion and society, between Church and societal "publicness," between eschatologral faith and societal life; and, it should be added, "determine" is not used here in a "pre-critical" sense—that is, with the intent-'on of a priori identifying these two realities—but "post-critically" in the sense of a "second, rejection" "Theology, insofar as it is political theology, is obliged to establish this "second degree reflection," when it comes to formulate the eschatolog-'cal message under the cond irons of the present situation of society. Hence let me briefly describe the characteristics both of this situation, that is, how it should be understood, and of the biblical message, which is the determining fa.-tor of this theological political reflection.

(a) I shall explain the situation from which today's theological reflection takes its starting point, by referring to a problem raised by the Enlightenment and which, at least since Marx, has became unavoidable. This problem may, in an abbreviated

1. A. Gehlen, quoted from H. Schelsky, Auf ier Suche nach Wirklichkeit, Dusseldorf, 1965, p. 271. formula, be presented thus: according to Kant, a man is enlightened only when he has the freedom to make public use of his reason in all affairs. Hence the realization of this enlightenment is never a merely theoretical problem, but essentially a political one, a problem of societal conduct. In other words, it is linked with such socio-political suppositions as render enlightenment possible. Only he is enlightened who, at the same time, fights to realize those socio-political presuppositions that offer the possibility of publicly using reason. When, therefore, reason aims at political freedom and, consequently, theoretical transcendental reason appears within practical reason, rather than the reverse, a deprivarization of reason is absolutely necessary. Every "pure" theory, whether it be stressed or even over-stressed, is nothing but a relapse into a pre-critical consciousness. For it is clear that the subject's critical claims cannot be sustained as "mere" theory. A new relation between theory and practice, between knowledge and morality, between reflection and revolution, will have to be worked out, and it will have to determine theological thought, if theological thought is not to be left at a pre-critical stage. Henceforth, practical and, in the widest sense of the word, political reason must take part in all critical reflections in theology. More and more, practical political reason will be the center of the classical discussion of the relation between fides and ratio, and the problem of the responsibility of faith will find the key to its solution, again, in practical public reason. Properly speaking, the so-called fundamental hermeneutic problem of theology is not the problem of how systematic theology stands in relation to historical theology, how dogma stands in relation to history, but what is the relation between theory and practice, between understanding the faith and social practice. If the task of political reflection in theology, as emerging from the present situation, is to be characterized summarily, it might best be done in the way we have just indicated. This also shows that our intention is not, once again, to mix faith and "politics" in a reactionary manner. Rather, it is to actualize the critical potential of faith in regard to society.

(b) Biblical tradition, in its turn, obliges us to undertake this "second reflection" on the relation between eschatological faith and societal action. Why? Because salvation, the object of the Christian faith in hope, is not private salvation. Its proclamation forced Jesus into a moral conflict with the public powers of his time. His cross is not found in the intimacy of the individual, personal heart, nor in the sanctuary of a purely religious devotion. It is erected beyond these protected and separated precincts, "outside," as the theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us. The curtain of the temple is torn forever. The scandal and the promise of this salvation are public matters. This "publicness" cannot be retracted nor dissolved, nor can it be attenuated. It is a recognizable fact attending the message of salvation as it moves through history. In the service of this message, Christian religion has been charged with a public responsibility to criticize and to liberate. "All the authors of the New Testament"—I am quoting the well-known biblical scholar, H. Schlier²—"are convinced that Christ is not a private person and the Church is not a private association. They tell us of Christ's and his witnesses' encounter with the political world and its authorities. None of them has given more fundamental importance to this aspect of the history of Jesus than the apostle John. To him it is a lawsuit, which the world, represented by the Jews, brings against Jesus and his witnesses. This suit was brought to its public judicial conclusion before Pontius Pilate, the representative of the Roman Empire and the holder of the political power." Provided it is not read with the eyes of Bultmann, John's account of the passion is organized around this scene. The scene before Pilate is heavy with symbolism.

Political theology seeks to make contemporary theologians

2. Besinnung auf das Neue Testament, Freiburg, 1964, p. 193; this theme is developed further by Schlier, Die Zeit der Kirche, Freiburg, 1956, p. 310. aware that a trial is pending between the eschatological message of Jesus and the socio-political reality. It insists on the permanent relation to the world inherent in the salvation merited by Jesus, a relation not to be understood in a natural-cosmological but in a socio-political sense; that is, as a critical, liberating force in regard to the social world and its historical process.

It is impossible to privati2e the eschatological promises of biblical tradition: liberty, peace, justice, reconciliation. Again and again they force us to assume our responsibilities towards society. No doubt, these promises cannot simply be identified with any condition of society, however we may determine and describe it from our point of view. The history of Christianity has had enough experience of such direct identification and direct "politifications" of the Christian promises. In such cases, however, the "eschatological proviso," which makes every historically real status of society appear to be provisional, was being abandoned. Note that I say "provisional," not "arbitrary." This eschatological proviso does not mean that the present condition of society is not valid. It is valid, but in the "eschatological meanwhile." It does not bring about a negative but a critical attitude to the societal present. Its promises are not an empty horizon of religious expectations; neither are they only a regulative idea. They are, rather, a critical liberating imperative for our present times. These promises stimulate and appeal to us to make them a reality in the present historical condition and, in this way, to verify them—for we must "veri-fy" them. The New Testament community knew at once that it was called to live out the coming promise under the conditions of what was their "now," and so to overcome the world. Living in accord with the promise of peace and justice implies an ever-renewed, ever-changing work in the "now" of our historical existence. This brings us, forces us, to an ever-renewed, critical, liberating position in face of the extant conditions of the society in which we live. Jesus' parables—to mention another biblical detail in this context—are parables of the kingdom of God but, at the same time, they instruct us in a renewed critical relationship to our world. Every eschatological theology, therefore, must become a political theology, that is, a (socio-) critical theology.

We come now to the second part of this paper where we shall consider the concrete relation between the Church and the world in the light of political theology. The scope of this theology does not allow "world" to be understood in the sense of cosmos, in opposition to existence and person, nor as a merely existential or personal reality. It requires it to be understood as a societal reality, viewed in its historical becoming. In this context, "Church" is not a reality beside or over this societal reality; rather, it is an institution within it, criticizing it, having a critical liberating task in regard to it. Let me explain in detail the implications of this statement.

1. If formed by the eschatological promises, faith again and again takes on a critical task with regard to the society in which the faithful live. This was the conclusion of our considerations on political theology. The question now is: Can this task be left to the individual believer? Will he be able to perform it authoritatively and effectively? Is it not, therefore, precisely this critical task of faith which, in a new way, raises the problem of institutionalizing faith? It is easy to admit ideas, even to propagate them, when they agree with the needs of the time, or a certain order of culture and society. But what if they are critically contradicting these needs and, at the same time, left to the judgment of the individual?³ It should be noted that the institution

3. See A. Gehlen, Anthropolos'sche Forschung, Hamburg, 1961, p. 76. and the institutionalization considered here are in no way repressive; on the contrary, they are assisting the formation of a new critical consciousness. It is to be asked whether it is not necessary for faith to be institutionalized so that the faithful take on their responsibility of critical liberty in the face of today's society. If this is necessary, are we not obliged to work out a new understanding of the ecclesiastical institution? Would the Church not then be necessary as the institution of the critical liberty of faith?

1. If the Church is tentatively so denned, then two objections come immediately to the fore.

(a) There is, first, the question of principle: Can an institution as such have the task of criticism? After all, would not "institutionalized criticism" be like squaring the circle? Is not institution by its nature something anticritical? Hence it is not going to Utopian limits to postulate this "second order institution," which is not only the object but also the subject of critical liberty and which, therefore, has to make possible and to secure this criticism? In this context, I can only answer briefly by posing a question in reply. Is it not, on the contrary, the specific note of the religious institution of the Church to be, and even to have to be, the subject of this critical liberty? As institution the Church herself lives under the eschatological proviso. She is not for herself; she does not serve her own self-affirmation, but the historical affirmation of the salvation of all men. The hope she announces is not a hope for herself but for the kingdom of God. As institution, the Church truly lives on the proclamation of her own proviso. And she must realize this eschatological stipulation in that she establishes herself as the institution of critical liberty, in the face of society and its absolute and self-sufficient claims.

(b) But, granted that in this way our first objection is answered, there is still one additional critical question addressed to the Church: What is the historical and social basis of her critical task? When was the Church truly an institution of critical liberty? When was she in fact critically revolutionary? When was she not simply counterrevolutionary, resentful, and nagging in her relation to the societal world? Did not the Church often neglect to speak her critical word, or come out with it too late? Did she not again and again appear to others as the ideological superstructure of societal relations and power constellation, and has she, indeed, always been able, with her own strength, to confound such accusation? Take recent centuries: is it not true that, more and more, religious institution and critical reflection have become incompatible things, so much so that, today, there is a theological reflection that ignores institution and an institution that ignores reflection? Where, then, is the historical and social basis of the claim made when defining the Church as a critical institution in the face of society? This objection is valid. There is hardly one idea of critical societal importance in our history—take Revolution, Enlightenment, Reason, or again— Love, Liberty—which was not at least once disavowed by historical Christianity and its institutions. No theory, no retrospective reinterpretation is of any help. If anything is to help here, it will be new ways of thinking and acting in the Church. May we hope for this? I think we may. All that follows is supported by this confidence.

3. In what does the critical liberating function of the Church, in view of our society and its historical process, now consist? Which are the elements of that creative negation which make the progress of society to be progress at all? I should like, without pretending to either a systematic or a complete presentation, to specify a few of these critical tasks of the Church.

(a) In virtue of its eschatological proviso in the face of every abstract idea of progress and of humanity, the Church protects the individual man, living here and now, from being considered exclusively as matter and means for the building of a completely rationalized technological future. The Church contradicts the practice that would see individuality only as the function of society's progress technically directed. It is true that even our societal Utopias may contain a positive notion of the individual;

still he is of value only inasmuch as he is the first to inaugurate new societal possibilities, in other words, inasmuch as he in himself anticipates the revolutionary social change that is to come, and inasmuch as he now is what everybody will have to be later. But then, what about the poor and the oppressed? Are they not poor because they are unable to be first in the sense just explained? In this case, it is the Church's task, in virtue of the eschatological proviso and with all her institutionalized, sociocritical power, to protect the individual against being taken as a number on a human-progress-computor-card.

(b) It seems to me that a further point in this criticism is the following: today more than ever, when the Church is faced with the modern political systems, she must emphasize her critical, liberating function again and again, to make it clear that man's history as a whole stands under God's eschatological proviso. She must stress the truth that history as a whole can never be a political notion in the strict sense of the word, that for this reason, it can never be made the object of a particular political action. There is no subject of universal history one can pdint to in this world, and whenever a party, a group, a nation, or a class sought to see itself as such a subject, thereby making the whole of history to be the scope of its political action, it inevitably grew into a totalitarian ideology.⁴

(c) Lastly, it seems to me that, especially in this day, the Church must mobilize that critical potency that lies in her central tradition of Christian love. Indeed it is not permissible to restrict love to the interpersonal sphere of the I-Thou. Nor is it enough to understand love as charitable work within a neighborhood. We must interpret love, and make it effective, in its societal dimension. This means that love should be the unconditional determination to bring justice, liberty, and peace to the others. Thus understood, love contains a socio-critical dynamism that can be viewed in two ways.

4. On this matter. See H. Lubbe, "Herrschaft und Planting," Die Prage nach dem Afenschen, Freiburg and Munich, 1966, pp. 188-211.

First: Love postulates a determined criticism of pure power. It does not allow us to think in the categories of "friend-enemy," for it obliges us to love our enemies and even to include them within the universal orbit of hope. Of course the Church, which calls herself the Church of love, will be able to express a credible and efficient criticism of pure power only if, and to the extent that, she herself does not appear in the accoutrements of power. The Church cannot and must not desire to press her point by means of political power. After all, she does not work for the affirmation of herself, but for the historical affirmation of salvation for all. She has no power prior to the power of her promises; this is an eminently critical proposition! It urges the Church on, again and again, to a passionate criticism of pure power; it points an accusing finger at her when—and how often has this been the case in history—her criticism of the powerful of this world was too weak, or came too late, or when she was hesitant in protecting all those, without distinction of persons, who were persecuted or threatened, and when she did not passionately stand up and fight whenever and wherever man was being treated contemptuously by man. This criticism of power would not oblige Christians to withdraw from the exercise of political power in every case. Such a withdrawal, if it were a matter of principle, could be a sin against love, for Christians possess in their very faith and its tradition, a principle of criticism of power.

Second: The socio-critical dynamism of love points in yet another direction. If love is actualized as the unconditional determination to freedom and justice for the others, there might be circumstances where love itself could demand actions of a revolutionary character. If the status quo of a society contains as much injustice as would probably be caused by a revolutionary upheaval, a revolution in favor of freedom and justice for the sake of "the least of our brothers" would be permissible even in the name of love. Therefore, we should not underestimate the seriousness of Merleau-Ponty's remark that no Church has ever been seen supporting a revolution for the sole reason that it appeared to be just. At this point it becomes clear once more, that the socio-critical task of the Church becomes the task of criticizing religion and Church as well. The two go together like the two faces of a coin.

4. The socio-critical function brings about a change in the Church herself. Ultimately, indeed, its objective is a new selfunderstanding of the Church and a transformation of her institutional attitudes towards modern society. Let me say a few words about this point of political theology. We started by considering that, not only the individual, but the Church as institution is the subject of a critical attitude with regard to society. There are several reasons for this. One of these springs from the general philosophy and sociology of modern critical consciousness. It points to the aporiae in which the critical individual finds himself when faced with this society and its anonymous structures. Criticism, therefore, must be institutionalized and a "second order institution," which can be bearer and guardian of critical freedom, is necessary. But there is a question: Is the Church such a "second order institution"? In her present form she is not; but I dare to say, she is not yet. How, then, and under what conditions will she be such an institution? Are there signs that she will be such? I shall add a few remarks on this point.

(a) What happens—this is our first question—when the Church today makes a concrete socio-critical assertion? She has attempted to do so, for instance, in some passages of the pastoral constitution of the last Council and, even more clearly and decidedly, in the encyclical Populorum Progressio. What exactly did happen when these assertions were made? At this point the Church was obliged to take into account and to elaborate data which did not simply result from inner ecclesiastical theological reflection. Hence these socio-political pronouncements bring to life new, non-theological resources. The Church must receive such data in order to fulfill her mission to the world, which is not merely, not simply, to reproduce herself. All this will not fail to dissolve an uncritical, monolithic consciousness within the ecclesiastical institution. Moreover, the novelty of these data, which indeed are the foundation of new ecclesiastical pronouncements, requires a new mode of speaking in the Church. Assertions founded on such data cannot be expressed simply as a doctrine. The courage is needed to formulate hypotheses suitable to contingent situations. Directives have to be issued which are neither weak and vague suggestions nor doctrinal-dogmatic teachings. This necessity of today's Church to speak out concretely and critically brings about, at the same time, a sort of demythologizing and deritualizing in her speech and conduct. For it is evident that the ecclesiastical institution is now undergoing a new experience: it must bear contradiction. Its decisions cannot avoid taking one side and therefore being provisional and risky. If this institution learns the new language, it will no longer encumber the societal initiative of individual Christians with doctrinal rigidity; although, on the other hand, it will also remove arbitrariness from their initiative.

(b) A further point comes to mind immediately. Ecclesiastical criticism of society can ultimately be credible and efficient only if it is supported more and more by a critical public opinion within the Church herself. If not this public opinion, what else is to be on guard, lest the Church, as institution, become an illustration of the very conditions which she criticizes in others? It should be noted, however, that, because of lack of data, it it difficult today to give a detailed account of this critical public opinion. I shall at least enumerate some of its tasks. One of them is to interpose a veto, whenever the ecclesiastical institution oversteps the boundaries of its competence. Here I have in mind the case where the authorities attempt by institutional measures to carry through their own decisions in a matter of socio-political or economic relevance. Another of these tasks is the criticism of the inner ecclesiastical milieu: I am thinking of the fact that, within the Church, certain mentalities prevail—usually, middle class mentality—while others are thought to be irrelevant and, as it were, pushed to the background, out of the glare of the spotlight. A criticism of these uncontrolled yet powerful prejudices should be the object of public opinion. A further critical task is to show the historical conditioning and the change of the societal notions in the Church herself; the change of ideas is not always synchronous, with the facts, it is less easy to see but, nonetheless real. It is also important—this is still another example of public criticism—to denounce the Church's struggle on wrong battle fronts, if necessary. The skill sometimes spent in the defense of certain social positions would, indeed, be sufficient for radical and courageous change. And again, why is it that Christianity seems to have relatively little to say in matters of reconciliation and toleration? Finally, why is it that the Church does not appear unmistakably and effectively as the one institution in which certain sociological prejudices are not admitted: for instance, racism, nationalism, and whatever ways there are to express contempt for other men? These indications may suffice here. The courage to build up such a critical public opinion can, no doubt, be drawn only from the confident hope that there will be a certain change of the institutional customs of the Church. But this confidence is perhaps one of the most important concrete features of membership in the Church today.

(c) One last remark: In the pluralistic society it cannot be the socio-critical attitude of the Church to proclaim one positive societal order as an absolute norm. It can only consist in effecting within this society a critical, liberating freedom. The Church's task here is not the elaboration of a system of social doctrine, but of social criticism. The Church is a particular institution in society, yet presents a universal claim; if this claim is not to be an ideology, it can only be formulated and urged as criticism. Two important aspects may be pointed out on this basis. In the first place, it is clear now why the Church, being a socio-critical institution, will not, in the end, come out with a political ideology. No political party can establish itself merely as such a criticism;

no political party can take as its object of political action that which is the scope of the ecclesiastical criticism of society, namely, the whole of history standing under God's eschatological proviso. And in the second place, one can see now, again on the basis of the Church's critical function with regard to society, how cooperation with other non-Christian institutions and groups is possible in principle. The basis of such a cooperation between Christians and non-Christians, between men and groups of even the widest ideological differences, cannot primarily be a positive determination of the societal progress or a definite objective opinion of what the future free society of men will be. In the realm of these positive ideas there will always be differences and pluralism.

This pluralism in the positive design of society cannot be abolished within the conditions of our history if complete manipulation is not to replace its free realisation. In view, therefore, of the afore-mentioned cooperation, there is a negative, critical attitude and experience to which we should pay our chief attention:

the experience of the threat to humanity, that is, the experience of freedom, justice, and peace being threatened. We should not underestimate this negative experience. There is to it an elementary positive power of mediation. Even if we cannot directly and immediately agree as to the positive content of freedom, peace, and justice, yet we have a long and common experience with their contraries, the lack of freedom, justice, and peace. This negative experience offers us a chance for consensus, less in regard to the positive aspect of the freedom and justice we are seeking, than in regard to our critical resistance against the dread and terror of no freedom and no justice. The solidarity which grows out of this experience offers the possibility of a common front of protest. This must be grasped; this must be exploited. The danger of new wars is too close. The irrationalities of our actions in the social and political field are too manifest. There is still with us the possibility that "collective darkness" will descend upon us. The danger of losing freedom, justice, and peace is, indeed, so great, that indifference in these matters would be a crime.

APPENDIX III

The Gospel as Information? Theological Aspects of the Word in Relation to Society

In the light of political theology as a theology critical of society, "informatory speech," that is, the word in relation to society, appears not only as a subsequent and instrumental, but also as an essential and fundamental element of Christian self-expression. Hence it is not only an object of the pragmatic public work of the Church, but an object of central theological reflection. Thus an attempt at a political theology leads to the postulate of a theological hermeneutic of this kind of public word that is related to society and has an effect on it. Let us venture to give some explanation of this postulate.

(1) The Church itself has to pass on "a piece of news," namely, the proclamation of eschatological salvation. The limiting of this process of informing and proclaiming strictly existential and purely interpersonal speech in the style of intimate "address" comes from an a priori assumption—predominant today, but by no means unquestionable—that the kerygma of the New Testament has to be radically transcendentalized, existentialized, and personalized. Criticism of this theological a priori does not involve a return to the objectivism of metaphysical discourse about salvation, nor a return to the archaic stage of premetaphysical discourse, but—if this is the category of language we are to use—a turning to what I should like to call "postmetaphysical discourse." This, however, is only to name a category. Of the hermeneutical program that is contained within it I can give a brief account of only one demand: the de-privatization and de-existentialization, or, to put it positively, the "new objecnvization" of the Christian message. The purely metaphysical discourse of theology owed its existence to the unproblematical nature of the relationship between truth and society. It provided a homogeneous social structure with a unified world view. As long as this condition applies, this way of speaking can be socially relevant. But when this unity breaks up—as in our situation since the Enlightenment—this metaphysical discourse can itself be faced with a radical crisis. Transcendental and existential theology entirely took account of this new situation. In fact, it emerged, in a certain sense, as a reaction to it. But this reaction showed itself in the fact that it declared the social dimension of the Christian kerygma, tacitly or openly, to be inessential and made the kernel of the Christian message something private, radically existentializing it. This reaction, which basically fails to deal with the problem of the saving word and society, which seeks rather to solve it by making it appear unimportant, must be critically approached. This critical intention is expressed in the postulate of deprivatization, which seeks to show that the antithesis between existential address and objective information is unreal and at the same time to reveal again the inner multivalence of the language of faith. Only where this takes place will theological language itself again acquire new content and not contradict itself constantly as a theory of the existential about which it is impossible to theorize. It will radically formalize itself as a constant abdication of human language before the inexpressible—as is not seldom the case in present-day theology.

(2) It seems to be precisely the excessive privateness and intimacy of our talk about God, our persistent contrasting of spiritual and social existence, which widens the gap we see existing everywhere between what is stated by theology and the kerygma to be important and what the Christian actually lives from and what concretely appeals to him. The crisis of the "spiritual word" may be considered as a symptom of this state of affairs. I shall here consider the religious book only briefly because I have already treated the current situation in regard to it in another context.¹ The decline of the religious book is not, in my opinion, due to an increasing lack of public interest in religion, but to a crisis of religious language. Has not another kind of writing taken over the function of the religious book for many people who are undoubtedly open to religion? Has not modern literature and poetry, the drama, and especially tlie novel become the breviary for the problems of life, the vade mecum to help one understand its fundamental and critical situations? And if so, why has this change-over come about? Because in this literature there is no simple jargon, but objectively conveyed provocation and alienation. Because here the pure existential ity of the individual is taken seriously, both regarding his need for introspective intimacy on the one hand, and the interweaving of life within the mobile forces of society on the other. (Consider, for example, the "theatre of documentation" in Weiss or Hochhuth.) Writers have moved, like migratory birds, into a new climate of mind, and we should take serious note of the direction in which they are travelling. Their aim is to de-privatize the problems of existence, giving them a new objective grounding. If we want to deal with existence we cannot today speak purely existentially.

(3) The individuality and existentiality that we assume in our language of existential theology is highly abstract. The concrete individuality and "loneliness" of contemporary men is not at all identical with the celebrated form given to it by existentialism. It has, rather, a social substructure and is conditioned and actual-

1. See the short essay by the author in "Das religiosc Buch: Krise und Kriterien," in Stimmen der Zmt (1965), pp. 713-718. i2ed by it: the unlimitedness and mobility of society, the variety of human situations in which he is involved and acts, cause man today to be, in a qualified sense, a lonely individual. "Once man was what he was according to his class, his social order; his class and order were his existence in the world, they placed him with already fixed attitudes in similarly recurring situations. The organizational world of today has placed man in open, changing situations and hence in a course of life that is always special."² This specialness of his life is, therefore, not at all individualistic, but can be experienced only in the context of society. Thus deprivatization is not a depersonalization of language, but rather the means by which the very condition for a person and an individuality can be grasped in all their concrete complexity. Purely existential language has not enough imagination to catch hold of existence.

(4) The deprivatization of the Christian message naturally has consequences for style: not persuasion, but conviction, not a demand but an offer and hence always also information, not a dialogue of the soul but a clear argument about truth—these are the key things here. In content, deprivatization is aiming at a new objectivization—not in the metaphysical, but in the social and political sense. It wants to make the Christian word a socially effective word. It seeks categories which serve not only to enlighten the mind, but to shape and alter it, for the truth of the promise which the Christian word has to convey cannot be revealed only in the sense of aledia, but must be "performed." The world in which this truth is to be present must also be transformed by it. Deprivatization aims at providing a language that is able to do this. Dietrich Bonhoeffer prophesied it in his own way: "The day will come on which men will again be called to speak the word of God in such a way that the world will be transformed and renewed by it. It will be a new language, perhaps quite unreligious, but liberating and redemptive, like the language of Christ, so that men will be terrified by it, and yet overcome by its strength, the language of a new justice in truth, the language that proclaims the peace of God towards men and the approach of his kingdom."³

2. D. von Oppen, Das'personals Zeitalter, Stuttgart, I960, p. 175.

3. D. Bonhoeffer, Widerstand und Ergebung, Munich, 1966, p. 207.

(5) As language that is objectified, related to society, and concerned with social effect, deprivatized language is naturally subject to quite new and special laws and dangers. Thus socially effective utterance is not simply identical with utterance that is directly successful socially.⁴ Utterance is socially successful if it accords with the latent taste of the public. We know that this is not so easy. But is this kind of utterance also "effective"? Is it able to change the awareness of society? Or is it not simply aimed at that sunken, pre-individual general consciousness that has been hardened into particular opinions and ideas, to which public utterance adapts itself? Here we are still lacking in observations and categories within the field of theological hermeneutics. Nevertheless, religious language related to society must never be simply the reproduction of a pre-individual general religious consciousness. It must, rather, seek to discover and analyze the structures of the sunken consciousness. Theology touches here again on the sociology and psychology of language and hence—at the moment—on its limits.

Perhaps what we have said here can be further clarified by a critical comparison of different forms of utterance related to society. Thus both the theological language of information that is sought and demanded by us here and the language of propaganda are related to society. But while theological information is concerned to alienate the consciousness it encounters,⁵ propaganda is oriented to fit in with the consciousness it encounters. Propaganda does not alienate, nor does it seek to. It is directed at latent wishes, without wanting to change the wish and situation itself. It adapts itself. This adaptation is the opposite of alienation. For alienation induces a critical attitude towards the consciousness it finds, the directness of its taste and ideas it has of its wishes: it aims at transforming this consciousness. In this sense it is possible to say that the "news," the information that Christianity has to deliver, has an alienatory character. It is not an offer made to the ideas we have of what we know and what we want. It is concerned rather with dissolving our automatic assumption, with alienating our latent wishes and hopes. In this way it brings us into a new critical position in relation to ourselves and our environment. We cannot, unfortunately, go into this area in further detail here.

4. See the two essays on the subject of television in T. W. Adorno's Eingriffe, Frankfurt, 1963, pp. 69-80, pp. 81-98.

5. See H.-D. Bastian, Verfremdung und Vffkundigung, Munich, 1965, p. 127.

(6) Finally, deprivatized utterance finds its particular concrete form and modification in the modern mass media, in the press, radio, and television. These media are not chance, arbitrary inventions. They are themselves the expression of our social situation and are part of its definition. They are not, therefore, pure instruments of social communication. In them there takes place the communication that actualizes and expresses the concrete life together of men today.*

If the process of the deprivatization of the language of faith is successful, then the Church will be able to take part in this exchange with the world not just with surrogates, with means of expression that are adapted after the event, but with its very own word: not for the sake of its own self-assertion in power (the Church, by definition, does not exist for itself), but in order to pro-voke (that is, call forth) salvation.

6. See О. В. Rogele and G. Bauer, "Kirche und Massenmedien," in Handbuch der Pastoraltheologie, Vol. II, Freiburg, 1966, pp. 284-308, esp. pp.296f.

APPENDIX IV

On the Institution and Institutionalization

The attempt to define the Church in the light of political theology as "the institution of a freedom that is critical of society" involves the question of a theological theory of the institution and of institutional ization. But we are unable to give an account of this separate problem here. We should have to consider, on the one hand, the different uses of the word "institution" (an institution as organization, as a legal institution—such as marriage, the state, the Church—, as institutionalized mind, and so forth); on the other, we should have to elaborate the problem in a constant dialogue between various disciplines, that is, in critical debate (hitherto scarcely elaborated) between the theological theory of the institution on the one hand and the theses of the institution and the institutionalization of other disciplines on the other. Here it is our intention only to point out, in a general form, a particular aspect of the theme of the institution and institutionalization that appears in our attempted definition of the Church as the institution of social-critical freedom.

(1) This aspect is that the relationship between the institution and the critical freedom of the mature individual, a relationship which has been discussed aporetically since the Enlightenment, is today changing into the question of the institutionalization of this critical freedom itself. Let us here briefly use the question of the form and the bearer of the criticism of social practice to clarify this new dimension to the problem of the institution, which could also, in my opinion, throw new light on the understanding of the Church as an institution.

Let us consider first science and philosophy in their character of critics of society. If a social practice is instituted or a political decision made without the previous decisions that are contained within it being critically illuminated, we can speak of an irrational or of a purely ideological practice. But this kind of irrationalism and, as it were, primary ideology, is not the problem of present-day social criticism. Social practices and political decisions, like the institutions that support them, are now being critically considered, scienrifically informed, and technologically rationalized. But modern scientific theories of decision, which operate with mathematical and cybernetic, sociological and economic (as well as other) models, can rationalize the social and political practice within a particular nexus of ends and means, but with their methods they are not able to decide about the so-called "preferences" of the ends to be pursued. Here, rather, scientific rationalization again liberates social practices and political decisions, and we have only a veiled secondary irrationalism, if the scientific theories of decision and technological planning seek to create the impression that they could—at least under our present conditions—achieve an adequate critical definition of social practice.

Philosophical criticism of social practice, to which we might perhaps want to appeal in this situation, can also be threatened by this kind of "secondary irrationalism," an irrationalism that does not come about through lack of reflexion, but because what the individual philosopher has reflected on and critically thought through itself seems to disappear again into the realm of the unbinding and the arbitrary. That is why there are modern philosophical tendencies which aim at the elimination of socalled "critical subjectivity." Others seek to preserve the efficacy of philosophy as a tool of social criticism and to escape the threatening arbitrariness of philosophizing subjectivity in our society by indirectly institutionalizing their position. They speak a language which "exists," as it were, independently of individual critical reflexion, which like a trademark is recognizable to the extent that it imposes a consistency which lies beyond philosophical subjectivity. Precisely this indirect self-institurionalization of socially critical philosophy seems to me symptomatic of the fact that we live in an historical phase in which institutions are again acquiring a whole new meaning: institutions not only as antitheses to the critical freedom of the individual, not only as a constant object of critical attention and protest by the freedom of the mature man, but as the desired bearer of critically responsible social action. The social criticism initiated by the Enlightenment and provoked by Marx in a revolutionary way, as a criticism of existing institutions and their political power relationships, is today transformed into a criticism of society that is again, in a special form, in need of an institution.

Thus the classical problem of the relation between the institution and critical freedom acquires a quite new point today. It is not only a question of whether and how critical freedom and constant enquiry can maintain itself permanently within the existing institutions, but rather whether and how critical freedom is at all possible without institutionalization, if it is to gain the maximum force and efficacy for its task of criticizing society. Helmut Schelsky's well-known question "Can constant enquiry be institutionalized?"¹ does not take its meaning only from the institution, that is, only in the sense of the question of whether an institution permits within it such a thing as critical enquiry into itself. It takes its meaning precisely from the situation of criticism and of critical freedom, so that it finally acquires the sense, "Is constant enquiry possible without an institution?"

The institutions that are sought for this institutionalization of critical freedom are, as it were, secondary institutions, the significance of which does not already exist before critical reflexion about social practice, but shows itself in this very reflexion, institutions which do not suppress critical social action, but make it possible because it seeks to do away with the arbitrariness of such action.

1. See H. Schelsky, "1st die Dauerreflexion institutionalisierbar?" in Auf der Suche nach WirkUchkeit, Dusseldorf, 1965, pp. 250-275.

Perhaps one could, as an experiment, speak even of "secondary ideologies," of "enlightened ideologies," which are not simply ready-made for the socially critical mind, but are part of the will of an effective criticism of social practice, the will that makes committed social action possible.

It follows directly from the foregoing that these "secondary institutions" must in themselves ensure freedom and make it possible. They must not be opposed to enlightenment and enquiry. In them the public itself must be able to exercise a critical function. And here the place and task of the Church as the institution of a socially critical freedom would be more fully discussed (as we did, in outline, in the chapter on "Church and World in the Light of a Political Theology").

(2)One of the essential conditions for the Church seeing itself as this kind of "secondary institution" is the creation of a critical public within the Church. Although the concrete 'historical and social bases for the creation of this kind of critical public within the Church is very difficult to determine in detail,² the theological basis is ultimately clearly the difference, consciously accepted in Christian hope, between the institutional Church and the eschatological "kingdom of God" proclaimed by it. Where this difference or this gap is retained, that is, where the

2. Here we should speak of the effect of (modern) society as critical of the Church, in antithesis to the socially critical function of the Church elaborated in political theology. In my view, more would be known about this if we undertook some exact research into the historical genesis of the idea of religious freedom in the Church, as proclaimed in the appropriate decree of the Second Vatican Council.

Church itself is consciously perceived in its own eschatological provisionalness, there is always present a critical element to question and destroy all those tendencies to which the Church, in ir< irTititutinnfll гпягж-ггг, i") p»!"'"'""^ ^яг1^ ^1Я rrirntnntly in danger of succumbing; for example, the tendency to mere preservation and stabilization, to accept only what has grown up and now exists, to keep only to what is well tried and to have a fundamental distrust of what is new and has never before existed, to canonize a custom and then see it as an image of one's own invincibleness; the tendency, on the other hand, of seeing an assumed consensus of the faithful as a unified, graspable entity which is adequately expressed in the utterances of the institution; the tendency to describe all (partial) identifications with the institutional Church purely negatively—as forms of "marginal Christianity," without examining these attitudes to see whether and to what extent they do not stem from that critical sense of the "abundance" and "excess" of eschatological truth that does not find expression in the one Church institution. In this sense there arises out of the difference between the Church and the "kingdom of God," thematized in hope, the impulse towards creating a critical freedom within the Church. The Church that sought to remove the tensions which this involves within its institutional framework, banishing them as heterodox, would not appear more unified. It would only have the graveyard peace of dead life.

For a long time the religious orders had the task of embodying within the Church this critical freedom of the eschatological conscience, of bringing the Church and its established orders beneath the eschatological provision of God and from here to criticize concrete manifestations of the Church's life and counter any signs of the ideological self-enthronement of the Church on earth. We might ask whether the great orders, which seem today all more or less to be going through a crisis of meaning, should not again more vigorously pursue this, their original task of criticizing the Church, which has become theirs within the framework of the whole Church because of their markedly eschatological orientation. Today the attempt must also be made to build up a critical public within the Church, a critical public having the most various official outlets and making way for the charismatic impulse in the Church. (The tasks of such a critical public within the Church have already been described.)

APPENDIX V

The Christian's Participation in Political Peace Work

(2) Christians serve the social and political work of peace by warning against any romanticism of peace and critici2ing any idea of peace without conflict as an ideological Utopia. In its teaching on concupiscence—of the permanent division within man and between him and other people—theology emphasizes the dialectic of peace and conflict in human life (and there is a social and political dimension of this concupiscence—not just a private and individualistic one). A peace entirely without conflict could be achieved only by enthroning an absolute power, and this peace would then be only the pseudonym for the complete self-alienation of man. Hence the work of peace can aim not at eliminating, but at transforming and gradually humanizing conflicts. This realistic attitude towards peace helps us then to criticize war passionately and to prevent it from arising—not because every fight and every conflict could be avoided, but because modern war is seen to be an inhuman and totally inappropriate means of resolving conflicts. This realistic attitude will also teach people to overcome war not just for emotional reasons, but out of reasons and exigencies that are quite objective. The encyclical Populorum Progressio points in this direction when it sees peace as a problem and a task where "development" is required.⁸ And this encyclical contains the Pope's thanks to all those nations in which "military service can be replaced at least in part by social service or some other kind of service."⁴ This is where Christianity must mobilize its social and political imagination in order