Thursday, May 23, 2019

"a critique of society can be described as specifically Christian only if its authorization comes from this Jesus Christ" - Hate Mail

As I'm finding so often this year as I read the work of Hans Kung in depth, he has already answered the accusation of the depraved history of people who profess Christianity.  I'll get to the specifics of your accusation in light of this passage from "Being Christian As Being Radically Human" from "On Being A Christian."  

If Christians with their theology wish to undertake a critical function in society - in certain respects and within certain limits - they must know and be able to explain the basis of their criticism.  If both their negative and positive criticism amount to no more than what society itself is constantly saying, then their specifically Christian criticism is superfluous. It is not sufficient to call for justice, peace and freedom, like all the rest, merely using a biblical label like "Kingdom of God."  After all that has been and it is clear that a critique of society can be described as specifically Christian only if its authorization comes from this Jesus Christ.  

The author of the best book on Jesus from the Marxist-atheist standpoint, the Czech Milan Machovec, rightly draws attention to the fact -typical of the situation- that "polemicists and critics practically never reproach Christians for being followers of Christ, but on the contrary, for not being such, for betraying the cause of Jesus, for showing all the characteristics which Jesus attributed to the Pharisees, for falling under the condemnation:  'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.'  This may be a criticism of Christianity at any particular time, but not of the real ideals of Jesus."  And at the same time he recalls in particular the charges laid by Karl Marx against bourgeois Christianity with the slogan:  "Does not every moment of your practical lives give the lie to your theories?"

To Marx, after a century and two years of seeing Marxist governance, I'd say look who's talking.  To an atheist using the sketchy history of putative Christian governance as a refutation of Christianity, the uniform history of officially atheist governance being bloody, oppressive dictatorships giving rise to oligarchies and economic elites which, in the fullness of time either turn from a nominal socialism (though inevitably state-capitalism of some form) to overt gangster-capitalism  and - unlike the point in that passage - there is nothing in atheism that can be used to say that such atheists are violating the principles of atheism.   

That tactic, one constantly used against Christianity by atheists from before Voltaire, has been proven to work against the moral character of atheism far better than it does against Jesus, the Gospels, the Epistles, and much of the theology that forms the secondary and tertiary literature of Christianity.  That started to become clear soon after the death of M. Arouet in the Reign of Terror, it has been confirmed in every instance of officially atheist governance since then.  Though I wouldn't go too far with it, especially in  the modern period, many of those countries with officially established Christian state religions have proven that that identification is not, inevitably, depraved in the same way.  That is, I wouldn't push it unless responding to the kind of claim contained in the comment. The closer nominal Christians, individually and in institutions,  hold to the teachings of Jesus, the authoritative and definitive definition of what could be called genuine Christianity, the less susceptible to that polemical criticism they are.  The farther from the teachings of Jesus, the more liable it is to that criticism.   To hold that those who violate the teachings of Jesus while pretending to be Christians discredits Christianity makes about as much sense as claiming that those who get the wrong answer when they're adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing debunk the facts of arithmetic.  

I'm sure there are other authors who have made similar points but, as I say, I've been reading Kung this year. 

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