[602]

dimension of artistic^a creaivity^b [sic.], or cognition^c, or ethical ^dorganization, or political^e form-- they see at the same time^f the ultimate concern^g and are for that very reason able to produce, out of the depth of this vision, symbols ^hof the ultimate concern which are not imposed from outside upon them but which express their actual life. Now of course, if this were completely fulfilled, we would be in the kingdom of Godⁱ, and this is not the case and is not a possibility in time and space. But the approximation to it is more, or less, in the different periods of history^j. And I believe that in one thing we were VERY right, in our religious-socialist movmeent ^k[sic.]: it was NOT a movement which tried to give higher wages to labor, or to organize a centralized economy^l--these things were very much in [the] periphery, or lacking it completely; perhaps we even rejected them. But the question was: what does a theonomous^m cultureⁿ, in the Western world, mean, on the basis of the autonomous^o development, its emptiness, and its self-destructive tendencies? This was the meaning of our movement. And in THIS sense, it was en kairo, it was in the kairos^p, ''in the right time,'' in the moment in which eternity^q breaks into time. In relating it to the special problems of the proletarian revolution^r, it was already too late, from the point of view of the kairos, and today it is NOT that which, in my opinion, can be the symbol of transforming reality.

After the Second World War,^s I gave a lecture at Chicago, which is printed in The Protestant Era, on ''Religion^t and Secula^ur Culture.^v'' There I described briefly the development, from the situation after the First World War^w to the situation after the Second World War,