Re: Hermann Kutter and the Social Issue

Bruderhof wrote:

> Sometime during 1910 Eberhard got his hands on the book They Must! by
> the Zürich pastor Hermann Kutter. This work impressed him to an
> extraordinary degree. At first glance this is surprising because They
> Must! is a positive evaluation of socialism and its agenda from a
> Christian viewpoint. Nothing in Eberhard’s background or development
> had yet indicated any particular affinity with the Social Democratic
> party or explained his attraction to such a book.
> 

But Kutter’s method of critical analysis must have aroused Eberhard’s 
curiosity. He recognized in it his own thought processes and hypotheses.
In 
his doctoral thesis Eberhard had proved that although Nietzsche denied the

existence of God and opposed Christianity, the philosopher’s greatest 
thoughts expressed admiration for early Christianity. In a similar way 
Hermann Kutter did not let himself be repulsed by the aggressive atheism
of 
the socialists but recognized that social democracy shared the same goals 
as did Jesus’ commandments - commandments that in Kutter’s view had been 
watered down and misinterpreted by the churches: "They have turned the 
living word of God into self-righteous piety, ceremonies, and statutes." 
Others, Kutter concluded, now had to preach what the church ought to be 
preaching and had to carry out the tasks that the church should have been 
doing. Reading Hermann Kutter did not convert Eberhard into a religious-
socialist overnight. Kutter had not yet provided him with the final answer

to the question of social injustice. All the same Eberhard found in Kutter

an indication of where an answer might be sought. In Kutter’s They Must! 
Eberhard discovered the vocabulary to express what he had long recognized.

The book provided him with important catchwords for the following years: