Religion: Battle of the Theologians?

Two of Protestantism’s biggest names found themselves in a hot-collar controversy last week. One was Basel’s bearlike Karl Barth, the most influential Protestant theologian of his time; as a professor at Bonn University, he defied Hitler early in the Nazi regime, but since World War II Barth has angered many by his live-and-let-live attitude toward Communism, his sharply anti-U.S. attitude. His antagonist last week was U.S. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, himself a sometime left-of-center critic of U.S. policy. The issue for which Niebuhr takes Barth to task in the pages of the Christian Century: Barth’s failure to raise his voice against Russia’s bloody suppression of the Hungarian people.

The Fresh Look. Niebuhr holds that the theology underlying Barth’s political judgment is defective on two counts. First, it is too eschatological, too concerned with the second coming of Christ at the world’s end to be able to see the relevancies and relativities of politics here and now. Second, says Niebuhr, it is devoid of principle. Barth once answered his colleague Emil Brunner, who had asked him why he did not oppose Communist totalitarianism as he had the Nazi variety, by saying: “The church must concern itself with political systems not in terms of principles but as seen in the light of the Word of God. It must reject every effort to systematize political history and must look at every event afresh.”

In relation to Hungary, Barth has been what Niebuhr calls “a kind of unofficial Pope of the Hungarian Reformed Church.” Called upon in 1948 by that church for advice in its relations with the Communist regime, Barth encouraged collaboration with the Reds, and urged the church not to let opposition to the Communists guide its affairs. Niebuhr concedes that Barth is no Marxist and grants that in East Germany Barth’s “eschatological emphasis has inspired a kind of religious resistance which has permitted the East German Christians to bear witness to their faith.” But why has Barth not confessed that he was wrong about Hungary, when even “the godless Existentialist Jean Paul Sartre has broken with Communism and denounced its actions in Hungary,” and “lowly party hacks in the Communist parties of Britain and France have been shocked?”

Word of Advice. A team of five English-speaking students of Barth promptly rallied to defend their master. His silence during the Soviet suppression of Hungary, they said, was to avoid pouring fuel on the blaze of “crusading fervor” that flared up in Switzerland at the time. And why, they ask, should Barth have “to speak to every significant event”? They deny that Barth rejects all political principle—pointing out that he told the Hungarians it was not permissible to join the Communist Party merely to keep one’s job.

But Barth’s silence, Niebuhr replied, was still not satisfactorily explained. “Events in Hungary were ample proof that we must have enough regard for ‘systems’ and ‘principles’ to recognize that an absolute monopoly of irresponsible power creates grievous injustices under any system. My point was that ‘looking at every event afresh in the light of the Word of God defrauds us of the lessons of history.” In other words, concludes Niebuhr, “there is no substitute for common sense, even for theologians.”