Chapter 3: Images of man and experiments
[Note: This chapter could be an examination and critique of
high-profile concrete utopias for the anthropological models they represent.]
Having examined environmental factors that affect human
anxieties and hopes, Moltmann now turns to ask about anthropological models
that people employ to understand the self.
He notes, too, that models always contain a salvific program for
wholeness and liberation. Stretched over
a Christian schema of creation, fall and restoration, modern anthropologies
beget images of human identity, alienation and the restoration of true
character. Some, of course, dismiss such
hope as childish fantasy and set themselves to making use only of the tools at
hand. Yet, these ignore the truth that
human beings cobble their own futures, improving or condemning themselves. To ignore this is to treat human persons like
lab specimens and not like creatures who both interrogate themselves and live
by the results of such interrogation.
Therefore, in studying anthropological models, care should be taken to
realize that a kerygma always hides under the surface of so-called objectivity.
A. The Utopia of the total man
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was the first to ask of capitalist
industrial society what sort of anthropology it made. “What men are,” he reasoned, “coincides with
what they produce and with how they produce.” (Marx) “There is no nature of man
which precedes the existence of man; on the contrary man is what he makes of
himself. He is the producer and product
of his work.”(48) What does capitalism,
then, mean when it makes of human beings consumers? What does it say of human beings when their
work is the narrowest of contributions upon an industrial or technological
assembly line? What does it mean for the
nature of humanity when its labor is sold for the purposes of others? “Man has lost his true nature and become
alien to himself.”(49) Thus, human
beings must win back their identities.
Moltmann diagrams the threefold matrix of relationships from
which Marx assembles his thoroughly secular doctrine of alienation.
(1) The product of work is an alien object which belongs to
someone else. This is a consequence of
capitalism.
(2) The work itself is not determined by the worker but by
those who own the means of production.
This is a consequence of industrial methods of production and is,
essentially, the incarnation of a new class structure which calls one’s job
title who one is.
(3) The new class structure created by (1) and (2) narrow
the range of possibility capable of human beings to one thing: having. “Private property has made us so stupid and
partial that an object is only ours when we have it.” (Marx)
Having listed these, Moltmann attacks them with the same
critique brought against all those who would deny any hope to
anthropology. He teases the kerygma of
harmony and peace, the concept of totality, from underneath Marx’s industrial
protestations. Marx, he says, always ascribed
to the romantic ideal of the total man.
If alienation is best revealed in the proletariat, then the liberation
of the proletariat would begin a realization of the ideal of humanity. Private ownership of the means of production
allows the hitherto alienated to enjoy the production of their labor. Specialization is removed through
cross-training, so that each person has multiple abilities, “each can become
accomplished in any branch [of activity] he wishes, society regulates the
general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and
another tomorrow.” (Marx) With the
overthrow of capitalist industrial models, the society of having will be
replaced by a “free association of individuals”, “the [concrete] Utopia of a
society of authentic human existence.” (53)
Though not endorsing Marxism, Moltmann goes on to say that
some course of action must be taken to reduce misery and raise the humanity of
society. “It is therefore entirely to
the point to examine the Utopia of the total man critically, without thereby claiming
to be examining the whole of Marxism.” (54)
What he finds is that Marx’s program for the elimination of alienation
is doomed to failure because it never addresses anything but bourgeois
alienation. It never addresses the
existential alienation forever present in humanity itself. Human programs, he concludes, can never
achieve the messianic vision of the total man.
Human history cannot free itself from its own historicity. The failure of attempts to do so is obvious
when it is realized that human beings are never identical with themselves. If they could be brought into such an
identical relationship with themselves and with nature, he would be infinite
(re: Moltmann’s criticism of “direct encounter” in the introduction to Chapter
1). This is not to condone alienation, but to say that Marx’s programmatic
method cannot provide a satisfactory solution.
Marx’s atheism, together with Feuerbach, holds that human beings are
their own highest being; there is no need for humble subordination before a divine
power. Except this usurpation, says
Moltmann, merely places a human rump in the seat of power, it does not abolish
power altogether. “That which previously
had an authoritarian effect by the authority of the absolute will now become
totalitarian in the claim to totality of the total society and of its total
man.” (56) The Party is God. The Party is now the context of all
meaning. Everyone involved knows this to
be a lie, “Man is … not a being in a species, like the animal.” (57) History, rather, open and uncompleted with
its possibilities for humanization and freedom, is the species to which human
beings belong.
“The hope for the future which the Christian faith holds is
not the ‘solution of the riddle of history’ in a unity of being of man, nature,
and God, but a new creation of man in his world, in which the contradictions of
the present are raised to a new and lasting response to God. . . . Christian
hope is directed not toward the ‘total man’, but towards the ‘new man’.”(57)
Furthermore, “It is not as the authority of
authorities that God’s reality is experienced, but as the power of the release
of the bound and the power of the future for the hopeless.” (57) Faith in the crucified Lord brings this-worldly
solidarity with the alienated, but it never forgets the future of God, and so
is always able to hope, and even in darkness.
The missionary call of God’s future enervates those tempted to a
religious contentment with the present, yet the grace of God’s identification
does not thus deny concrete circumstances.
Christianity challenges Marxism with the narrow limits of its
anthropological definition. Where is the
humanity? Marx’s challenge to
Christians, says Moltmann, is whether they do, in fact, forget the social and
political consequences of their confession. Do you, too, forget your fellows? Christianity and Marxism, he suggests, each
profit from the question of the other.
“The criticism of the ‘Utopia of the total man’ which we
have set out here is not intended to assist in a rejection of Marxism, but to
forward its release to be itself, and to achieve the humanity which is
contained in its humanistic traditions, but is also concealed by these."
(59)
B. The Revolution from the Right
The world of the bourgeoisie was an idyllic dream. Its apex position in the universe, gained
through increasing industrialization, is now threatened by conflicts resulting
from that same industrial process. The
economic power of the middle classes has grown inversely with their political
power. Thus, they are insecure and, even
while hating themselves for doing it, purchase security at the cost of their
own social position. The bourgeois
embraces its own protest.
“While the bourgeois world was originally committed to a
universal society of the citizens of the world … the reaction against the
international involvement and responsibilities of the modern world leads men to
creep back into the nest which is called in Germany ‘holy fatherland’ or in
America ‘God and my country.” (65)
The sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies gave such desire a voice
in his book, Community and Society (1887).
In Community and Society, Tönnies outlines two basic
possibilities human social life: community and society. The former is a living thing, a lasting
thing, bound together by natural processes: marriage, family, nation. The latter, society, is a mechanical
aggregate bound ideologically but not naturally together. Societies unite for a purpose, for some
practical advantage in which investment yields return. They are limited constructions, and require
from their members only what is needed.
Tönnies’ prejudice against the latter is no secret. His dialectic can be forced onto society from
any vantage point, and always the original community of genuineness begets a
society of organization; culture over and against civilization. What is needed, then, is a restoration of
community the rootless, uncreative alienation of society. Ironically, “A ‘restored’ community is a
man-made community, and lacks all that which is praised as constituting its
natural growth” (62)
Moltmann then traces the “community” idea of “people, nation
and fatherland” in the political transitions of Germany, from the First World
War, through the period of the Weimar democracy and into Hitler’s Reich. In all of these, he identifies a “folk
community” of the radical right, including the Evangelical church, which
understood itself to be the protector of true community. “’The People” in opposition to all
industrialization: Community vs.
Society. History is on the side of the
right, this Revolution from the Right, “unfulfilled history is stores up in the
village against the big city.” (64) The
state is the battleground, and, once in power, the Right will use the state to
bring freedom. The middle-class
declaration that faith is a private matter now declares a new and altogether
patriotic religion, a “hallowing of the national character by God” becoming a
“substitution for God of the idol of the nation, to which the pious due of
patriotism was owed." (66). Minorities and outcasts need not convert.
“What,” asks Moltmann, “does the Crucified Jesus to do with
the gods of the fatherland?” (67) He
makes it plain that Christianity names no national religion, nor can it without
denying its own nature. Thus:
“Christians who find the identity of their Christian faith
in the crucified Jesus are bound to be aware that they form strangers in their
own nation and in their own people. This
is the price of their freedom. Having
this freedom they will not despise their own country, but support the
institutions and movements which lead to greater democratic and social freedom.
. . . The religion of anxiety can only be effectively overcome by the religion
of freedom.” (67)
C. The law of the ideal man
Moltmann, having examined the concrete utopias arising from
class and tradition, turns to examine another ideology existing within the
legal system of nations: the lawful Citizen (Moltmann uses just ‘man’, but
‘Citizen’ is preferred for the purpose of this summary). The Citizen, as a projection of the communal
humanity of a people, is the yard stick of fairness and justice. It is flexible in definition, its justice
changing only so quickly as migrating demographics will allow. No one person enjoys a private ideal. The Citizen is an amalgam of all. “Even the modern ‘pluralistic’ society exists
only on the basis of a conformity attained through agreement on what is in
common.” (68) Yet, asks Moltmann, when
each nation’s ideal Citizen is considered alone, does it withstand the test of
humanity? Is each paragon of legal
justice just? Is a truly valid legal
ordinance even possible?
“Is there a higher court of appeal, before which the law in
force must be justified, or can anything count as law which has been established
by agreement? Can men come to agree on
just any image of man they like, or is there (at least in theory) a humanity on
which these images of man must be patterned in different societies? And if anything like this higher court of
appeal exists, who is responsible for this court of higher responsibility, and
who is authorized to put what it says into words?” (69)
Moltmann then lists a few legal examples taken from German
reforms in the early 1970s. These
include statements on marital monogamy, legal protections for human life vs.
any individual’s decision to die and the proscription of general
lawfulness. His purpose in listing these
reforms is to demonstrate that underneath such legal categories exists a central
standard of moral self-determination, a standard which rests in pure
anthropology and not legal definition.
“Moral self-determination is asserted to be an elementary part of the
constitution of man.” (70) Aha! An a priori kernel of free and responsible
decision making constituting an idealized (legalized) image of man.
Yet, what of the social human being? Can we really isolate out the “I”, cut away
all interconnections, and hang justice upon the remainder? Such abstraction, Moltmann maintains, is the
assumption behind verdicts which emphasize punishment-for-retribution rather
than, he says, punishment-for-resocialization.
(How far, I wonder, does this criticism parallel Moltmann’s construction
of a purely social model of the Trinity in protest against the authoritarian
(monotheistic) Trinity of the ‘Wholly Other’ postulated by Karl Barth?)
And what about objective moral law? Didn’t the Third Reich exploit the changing
ideology of the Citizen in order to subject justice itself to the sovereign
control of their Führer? “Is there … a
‘nature of man’ which can be used as a criterion of the rights of citizens in
all societies? … Who decides what belongs to it and what does not?” (72) Moltmann begins tracing the historical basis
of natural law.
His search ends with the Stoic understanding of the
one-to-one relationship between the laws of the State and the logos of
God. The divine order of being is the
measure of the moral order. “Not
everything is right therefore which is decided upon by the agreement of the
citizens, but only that which corresponds to the nature of man, and to the
divine order of being.” (73)
Moltmann’s judgment is that both the legislative ideas of
human nature and of a divinely sanctioned moral law are pleasant ideals with no
real connection to the historic existence of human beings. Natural law, or other labels for sole and
authoritative legal principles, can be interpreted to any end for the advantage
of the powerful. Human beings are
constantly messing with what is biological about themselves; human biology is
not a mirror for essence. Furthermore,
natural law itself can be shown by research to have changed over time. Unfortunately, the cry for proper governance
cannot be shirked. Some agreed-upon
definition of the lawful Citizen is required for legal systems to exist.
Moltmann attempts to find a solution through invocation of a
future hope for humanity. “The contents
[of the agreed definition of moral law and human nature] may be historically
conditioned and changeable, but the intention which is contained in it is
unconditioned and invariable.” (74) The
future is a powerful idea in the moral purposes of any civilization. Human beings do aim at ‘future rights’ as
they anticipate the development of their common life. It is the “unavoidable task of altering the
world, of healing it, of bettering it, of making it more worthy of man and more
worth living in, that can be regarded as the norm of justice.” (75) Approaching questions of justice from this
perspective, he says, removes ideological fantasy and replaces it with a
“concrete Utopia of the rights of man and to a legal system which is intended for
citizens of the world.” (75)
Christian churches are partly to blame for clinging to the
ideology of the lawful Citizen. They
have baptized legal systems with categories of divine law and the God of
law. Such a God, however, is a
punishing, authoritarian judge handing down punishment upon sinners and the
guilty of the world. That is why, he
says, the religious typically support the death penalty. It is not a leap made necessary by the Bible.
The God of the Bible, says Moltmann, is a God of
freedom. “Righteousness in respect of
the covenant is founded on the free self-determination of God and on his
promise of fidelity, in which he gives sureties for the future of his people.”
(76) (If developments from Moltmann’s Crucified
God can be brought to bear, his meaning becomes a little clearer. God himself suffered his own punishment in
the surrender to death of the Son and in the giving over of the Son to death by
the Father. There is simply no judgment
left, but only the life-giving benefits of the resurrection through the Spirit
of the Crucified. This is why Moltmann
can say, “It [God’s righteous law] demands nothing therefore that it has not
itself previously given.” (76) which can only be an allusion to Augustine’s glorious aphorism:
“Command what you will, Lord, and then give what you command.”)
Christians should then cease equating national law with
divine retribution, and should, instead, attempt to encode love into the fabric
of their national legal character. Love,
he writes, is found in seeking the rights of one’s neighbor. “Love, as a
category of law, does not give any man up, but has regard for his
possibilities, including the as yet unrealized possibilities God has for him.”
(77) what is needed, he continues, is an
understanding of legal punishment which, rather than further institutionalizing
a lex talionis, seeks to meet evil with good and thus usher in a better world.
“The ‘law of the ideal man’ can easily change into inhuman
demands. It seems to make more sense to
give practical expression to hope for really human men by means of love for
other men, and especially by love for guilty man.” (78)
(This reviewer has to wonder if there is not the hint of a
post-millennial eschatology of the Kingdom of God in Moltmann’s enthusiasm for
love as a national category of law. For,
after all, Moltmann himself has said that one’s eschatology is one’s politics
and vice versa.)
