"God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. I appeal to you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no dissensions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgement. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brethren. What I mean is that each one of you says: 'I belong to Paul' or 'I belong to Apollos' or "I belong to Cephas' or 'I belong to christ.'"
"Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I am thankful that I baptized none of you except Chrispus and Gaius; lest anyone should say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:9-18; emphasis added).
I am going through the last chapter of Hans Kung's book, as published in English which contains two unnumbered chapters after the last chapter of his essay Why I Am Still A Christian. It asks the question St. Paul asked, Is Christ Divided?, based on this text of First Corinthians, often considered the earliest of the books of the New Testament,
Paul's letter is the first major document of the New Testament, written in Ephesus some twenty years after the death of Jesus to the Christian community in the great city of Corinth. Already, even then, there is talk of tensions, divisions, schisms, and different denominations - in the names of Peter, Paul, Appolos, and even Christ. And although we have to accept a certain anachronism, are there not parallels between this and our situation today?
First there are the Catholics, the denomination of Peter, [Cephas] who seems, because of his primacy, his power of the keys, and his pastoral authority, to put them in the right as opposed to all other Christians.
Then there are the Orthodox, the denomination of Apollos, who has the great tradition of Greek thought on his side and has provided a more brilliant, clear and "correct" or "orthodox" explanation of revelation than all the others.
Then the Protestants, the denomination of Paul, who is the father of their community, the Apostle pure and simple, the unique proclaimer of the cross of Christ who has worked harder than all the others.
Finally, we should not forget the Free Churches, the denomination of Christ himself who aim to free themselves from the oppression of the great churches with their authorities and professions of faith, to rely only on Christ as their Lord and master and to let the life of their communities be fashioned only on that basis.
And for what denomination does Paul opt? There is no doubt that Catholics would expect an allusion to Peter, who is, according to Matthew, the "rock" on which the Church is built. But Paul passes over the name of Peter in silence, as he also tactfully passes over the name of Appolos.
What is quite astonishing, however, is that Paul also disavows his own supporters. Why? Because he does not want groups to gather around a man and make into an ideal a man who was not crucified for them and whose name they were not baptized. They were, after all, not baptized in his name, but in the name of Christ, the one who was crucified. So even the name of Paul, who founded the community, is not permitted to be used in a denomination.
If this text contains something quintessential for ecumenical thought today, it is this; No name, no office, no authority, and no specialty of any one Church should be permitted to divide the Church, What does this mean in practice?
I will continue with this chapter but here I want to stop to go farther than Paul did. How can any one Church, any one of the groups of denominations, mentioned in Kung's elucidation in contemporary terms, any nation or "race" of human beings, even the entirety of the human species contain the all of God?
How can all of the species on Earth, now and in the past and, if we don't destroy life on Earth with the poisonous mixture of science, technology and gangster politics, in the future contain God, the Creator of all of it? Or the universe, itself? Or, in the atheist conjecture of an infinity of universes (created solely for the purpose of getting rid of some logical conclusions drawn from the Big Bang theory and other such consequences of 20th century physics) an infinity of universes? Including all of those species, all of those times, all of those human categories and our thoughts based in empirical experience and conjecture? I think that is a question worth asking, all I can do is say that I don't believe that God can be contained in all of them put together.
How, then can I advocate for the one religious orientation I am asserting is the best hope for people to have egalitarian, democratic government with social and economic justice?
I can advocate that for the United States in the West because I think those can only come through the view that we are told those, or their moral prerequisites are willed by God, I don't think anything weaker than that belief by a sufficient percentage of the population will do it.
I will repeat if secularism were going to do it, as has been enforced in the United States in the post-war period, we would have seen some greening of egalitarian democracy under that secular order instead of the steady descent into fascism which we have seen since 1968. Or, as I would argue, from the highest point of legal egalitarianism in the Johnson administration in the 1960s, the second wave of feminism, the struggle for LGBT rights being a result of that period of the assertion of equality.
Like Marxism, secularism is an experiment which has run its course, here and in Europe and Europe had the direct lessons of the Second World War which could, to some extent urge them from repeating the horrors of gangster government, lessons which have died out with the generation that experienced the Second World War.
I don't think it will be the same in other places, though I think there is a chance that other places, in Asia, in Africa, might be able to improve on the record of Christianity in Europe and North America. I think if the enormous number of people who live in Islamic societies are to have egalitarian democracy and economic justice, they will have to find those same bases in the religion of Islam, those in India will have to find it in their traditions.
They will have to include that most difficult of human practices, not the mere tolerance of diversity, but the enthusiastic inclusion of those of other faiths, other beliefs, other nationalities, other groups, even those they might not want to treat equally. There are commandments in the Jewish scriptures, in the New Testament that encourage and command that. How hard it has been for Christians to carry those commandments out is a good part of the history of their scandalous failures, the list of charges presented against Christianity by its enemies. No less is the same list of charges presented BY CHRISTIANS AGAINST THEIR OWN HISTORY, examination of conscience of that kind is a tradition which we inherit from the Old Testament which contains the critical self examination of the Children of Israel. Something which secularism, atheism, doesn't much do. Something which science practices as much in the breech as in the observance.
Perhaps they can do that, perhaps they can't. I can only speak from my experience living in the United States, informed by the thinking, not only of Christians but, ironically from atheists such as positively, Habermas, negatively by such writers as Nietzsche, Hobbes, Mandeville, and a myraid of other anti-Christian and secularist promoters. I will say that nothing has had as big an influence in convincing me of that as the advocacy of the ACLU and that ideological camp's effect on the law of the United States. A variation of a title from last week, what such champions of the "Constitution" have given, they've taken away far, far more.
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In my political analysis of Kung's book, I have to say that I believe that many other religious traditions COULD serve to reach the same ends, they could but in my lifetime, in the history of my country, Christianity is the one that has the best chance.
It will have to deal with divisions that are inevitable because, in contradiction to what Hans Kung says, there are very large, nominally Christian denominations and movements which are exactly pointed in the other direction, who either yearn for the feudal corruption of Christianity with all of its dictatorial violence, class division, history of violent wars of conquest and genocide.
There are heretical groups which are run more like organized crime than a church such as Paul was addressing, small house churches of people marginalized and oppressed whose divisions were of a different kind and a different order. I could no more hold his call for ecumenism to include those who support Trump from a stage gilded with idols of Christianity than I could those who would support him from one of the economics of piracy, theft and as much oppression, violence and crime as it takes to wring as much money out of the world for the billionaires as possible.
I think there is everything in the world different about an ecumenical coming together of the followers of Jesus and the followers of Trump (or Falwell, or Robertson, etc.) and the kind of thing we normally consider ecumenism. Catholics and Orthodox (they would have to overcome the nationalistic features of the various Orthodox churches, which divide them, internally) and mainline Protestants. Don't worry, Kung is extremely critical of the Catholic impediments, especially those put up by John Paul II and the one who would, after the book was written, become Benedict XVI. The neo-fascists among the bishops and Cardinals, appointed by John Paul II and Benedict XVI are a manifestation of this anti-Christianity within the Catholic Church. That i not honestly deniable as we see them making common cause with the likes of Steve Bannon. If you look up "Hans Kung" on google or Youtube you can find their attacks against him come up, very heavily on the top of the searches. I believe that the fascists and neo-Nazis have copied Dan Savages googlebombing to far more dangerous effectiveness than Dan Savage managed in his anti-Santorum stunt.
Ignoring this massive, billionaire and millionaire financed, clericalist manifestation of the anti-Christ because these people call themselves and their outfits "Christian" will do nothing to make things better. I doubt that is what Hans Kung meant in this essay, which was obviously meant for people of good will. Ignoring that there are people of malicious will who have power, money, control of media and enormous support from the worst of gangster governments is not a good idea in any way.
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