Re: Hermann Kutter and the Social Issue

Adam wrote:

> Eberhard first began incorporating thoughts and themes from Herman
> Kutter into his lectures during the late fall and winter of 1910. Now
> he testified that personal faith in Jesus Christ gives strength for a
> new life, for overcoming egotism, for love - and thereby for a change
> in social conditions. Faith demands action on behalf of social
> justice, and can have nothing to do with capitalism and mammonism.
> Bible passages such as James 5:1-5 (about the rich who withhold wages
> from the workers) suddenly became intensely relevant to Eberhard. Like
> Hermann Kutter and the Blumhardts, Eberhard spoke of the kingdom of
> God as a reality on earth - something that has already been here for a
> long time and does not first come into being in some distant future or
> some other world. 
> 

Particularly in this regard, however, it becomes clear that Eberhard did 
not simply rely on other people’s ideas. He did not share Kutter’s 
admiration of the Social Democratic party, and he criticized the 
superficiality of socialism and its band-aid remedies for outward
symptoms. 
Unable to ignore the atheism of the communists, Eberhard quoted Karl 
Liebknecht: "If there is a living God, then we are the ones who have been 
duped." He agreed with Schopenhauer’s view that an optimistic belief in 
progress is a "wicked way of thinking," because it shows "bitter contempt 
for the nameless sufferings of mankind." Eberhard took Kutter more 
seriously than Kutter took himself: Jesus is the pivotal point. Through 
Jesus, problems will be solved. Only the crucified one gives strength for
a 
new life. Eberhard never left this standpoint, and he made no exception
for 
"religious-socialism."