God and Caesar: Troeltsch's Social Teaching as Legitimation. - Review - book review

Ecumenical Review, The, April, 2001 by Duane K. Friesen

Constance L. Benson, God and Caesar: Troeltsch's Social Teaching as Legitimation, New Brunswick (USA) and London (UK), Transaction Publishers, 1999, US$44.95.

Constance L. Benson places Troeltsch's landmark work, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, within the context of late 19th and early 20th century German politics. In particular she argues that Troeltsch's point of view in The Social Teaching is a polemical response to Karl Kautsky's Forerunners of Modern Socialism, published 17 years earlier. She argues that Troeltsch scholars (including political liberals like Reinhold Niebuhr and James L. Adams) have overlooked the impact on The Social Teaching of Troeltsch's German neo-conservative politicial views, and his opposition to social democracy. She argues that Troeltsch's claim "to be defending the true spiritual character of Christianity from Kautsky's Marxist reductionism obfuscates the real nature of their dispute, which was overwhelmingly political" (p.5).

The most controversial issue which she raises is the implications of Troeltsch's dedication of the second volume of The Social Teaching in 1913 to Paul de Lagarde, who proposed "a mystical Germanic religion of the German Volk [and] who was the most notorious anti-Semite and racist of late nineteenth-century Germany and a major architect of [what] later became Nazi mystical ideology" (p.7).

Both Troeltsch and Kautsky are responding to modern socialism, which had become significantly more popular in Germany. Both Kautsky and Troeltsch write in the context of the modern social problem of the suffering of masses of urban poor, which was one of the consequences of the industrial revolution. This created a serious political crisis for the German industrial-military state. Kautsky was part of a movement (which included Christian socialists like Leonhard Regaz) to challenge fundamentally the established political order. He believed in equality and economic justice, popular sovereignty and democracy. He saw economic exploitation as being grounded in historical circumstances, not natural necessity, and thus as a system that must be delegitimized and transformed. Benson summarizes Kautsky's view of early Christianity as follows:

"It was the radical commitment to a community of equals sharing equally of their possessions that provided the dynamic spark to early Christianity. The apocalyptic expectations of the kingdom of God coming to earth inspired the early Christians to believe that these radically altered social arrangements were the harbinger of the future" (p. 133).

Benson argues that Troeltsch, by contrast, emphasizes (in reaction to Marxist reductionism) that the root idea of the Christian faith is "religious individualism" rather than communism, Jesus is "purely religious," in calling for the soul be united with God. Jesus has nothing to do with correcting social injustice. Jesus announced the coming of the kingdom of God, and because the end was believed to be near at hand, Jesus was indifferent to social concerns. Though Troeltsch did agree with Kautsky's view that the early church practised communism on a small scale, for Troeltsch the heroic figure of Jesus -- Ritschl's hero -- "was too lofty a figure to be addressing workaday concerns of social reform" (p. 159). Though Troeltsch argues that the Christian idea emphasizes an equality of human beings before God, the gospel does not address fundamental natural social inequalities. Through this interpretation of Jesus and Troeltsch's own "individualistic mysticism", Benson argues, Troeltsch legitimates a neo-conservative tire political ethic of fundamental inequalities which are built into the world order, with the state playing a critical role in preserving that order.

I agree with Benson that Troeltsch's interpretation of Jesus and early Christianity as "otherworldly" ignores the Jewish prophetic context and the political dimensions of the gospel. Furthermore, because of Troeltsch's theological bias the typology in The Social Teaching does not adequately illuminate the more radical sectarian traditions (since, by definition, those that follow Jesus' radical ethic are drawn "out of" the world). Certainly New Testament scholarship since Troeltsch -- locating Jesus clearly within his Jewish context -- has made us much more aware of the "politics" of Jesus, and the engagement of the New Testament church with the "principalities and powers". Furthermore a "political" reading of the gospel (as is evident in Gandhian non-violence, the civil rights struggle and peace movement, and liberation theology) is essential if we are to address the problems we face today.

Benson's contribution to scholarship on Troeltsch is to illuminate the correlation between Troeltsch's theological orientation and his conservative political agenda. I believe Troletsch's position is rooted in his continuation of a "Constantinian" commitment to the collaboration of the church with the dominant social and political institutions of society.