Facs
Transcript
Lecture XLV, May 1, 1956
Now this last hour shall answer in some way the question which was developed in connection with my description of religious socialism. My last word last Thursday was that we didn't consider religious socialism as a matter of the church as such, but as a matter of Christians who dare to be in error, if they give judgments about the concrete issues of the day, and I emphasized especially that in no relationship of Christianity and politics should Christianity be used as the support of a special solution, in the political, social and economic realm. What religion can do and must do is to state the principles – for instance love, power and justice – and to criticize, in the light of these principles, the concrete situation. But in the moment in which the minister goes beyond this, for instance, then he speaks as a Christian layman – which he anyhow is also – who is responsible for the cultural realms with which he deals, and who speaks then in the name of a Christian movement which believes that it comes nearest to a concrete actualization of the principles. But this is not a matter of de fide.
Now after I said this, I finished with the statement that religious socialism has experienced that its judgments were the more true the nearer they were to the ultimate principles, and the less true the nearer they were to an analysis of the concrete situation. History was a very harsh judge about this movement, as about many other movements, some also in this country, who in the name of the ultimate, raised demands for the concrete situation.