Facs
Transcript
to anticipate the transcendent fulfillment of the kingdom of God, in terms of a law of negating the war in any case – of course only that is a decisive thing for principle[d] [?] thought.
Now I would say this was just as some of the religious socialists who made socialism a law for every Christian: “Christanity [sic.] is socialism,” one could hear at that time; “the demand of Christianity is to be a socialist.” This was then demanded of everyone in the name of Christ, or in the name of Christianity, or in the name of religion – in Germany there were many Jews and humanists of non-Christian character in the movement. But for all of them, these people put the law upon them: “You have to be, in the name of your ultimate concern, a socialist!”. And here, “You have to be, in the name of your ultimate concern, a pacifist!” I mean now, the political pacifist. This brings me to a distinction:
I distinguish three different forms of thinking about peace and war. The first form is the ultimate form: the ultimate principle, which certainly includes the symbol of the peace of the kingdom of God, and the unity of everything that has being in the creative ground out of which it comes, and therefore the acknowledgment that war is an expression of human estrangement, of man's predicament in conflict with his true being. This is the one statement; this is the ultimate statement. And if, as for instance in Nazism and in some biological theories of politics, this is forgotten, if war is made into something essential which belongs to human essential nature, instead of saying that it belongs to distorted or existential nature, then this principle has to be maintained with great power – and I can speak about this: there was a