Wolterstorff on Kuyper and Solidarity; Volf on Solidarity and Repentance

Following his review of some of Calvin’s thoughts on the poor in Chapter 4 of Until Justice and Peace Embrace (to which the page numbers in this post refer, unless noted otherwise), Wolterstorff turns to the restating of some of the same themes by Dutch Christian statesman Abraham Kuyper. In 1891, early in the neo-Calvinist movement in the Netherlands, Kuyper declared in a speech to the Christian Social Congress that

God has not willed that one should drudge hard and yet have no bread for himself and for his family. And still less has God willed that any man with hands to work and a will to work should suffer hunger or be reduced to the beggar’s staff just because there is no work. If we have ‘food and clothing’ then it is true the holy apostle demands that we should be therewith content. But it neither can nor may ever be excused in us that, while our Father in heaven wills with divine kindness that an abundance of food comes forth from the ground, through our guilt, this rich bounty should be divided so unequally that while one is surfeited with bread, another goes with empty stomach to his pallet, and sometimes must even go without a pallet.[1]

Kuyper, Wolterstorff notes (p. 80), goes beyond Calvin in his diagnosis of the root of social misery, which he located in ‘a laissez-faire political system arising from the Enlightenment, coupled with an economic system motivated by profit seeking’, and his prescription for its alleviation. ‘Piety and charity are not sufficient, for it is a social question we are dealing with; and furthermore,

this one thing is necessary if a social question is to exist for you: that you realize the untenability of the present situation, and that you realize this untenability to be one not of incidental causes, but one involving the very basis of our social association. For one who does not acknowledge this and who thinks that the evil can be exorcised through an increase in piety, through friendlier treatment or kindlier charity, there exists possibly a religious question and possibly a philanthrophic question, but not a social question. This does not exist for you until you exercise an architectonic critique of human society itself and hence desire and think possible a different arrangement of the social structure.[2]

Kuyper’s analysis of social dynamics, it will be noted, has clear affinity to that of Marx. Earlier in Until Justice and Peace Embrace, Wolterstorff writes of liberation theology (but with words that could broadly apply to Kuyper) that its practitioners ‘are simply trying understand what it is that perpetuates the social misery of their people. They find Marxist analysis, in its general contours, to provide the most plausible explanation of their situation. They are not committed to Marxism as an ideology by which to live and die; if someone offers them an alternative analysis, they will consider it.’ (p. 45) What is common to the Marxist, to the liberation theologian, and to early Neo-Calvinists such as Kuyper is the conviction that there are those who are wronged by systemic evil in the social order: ‘Both (liberation theologian and Neo-Calvinist) find the culprit in the structure of modern society and the dynamics underlying that structure rather than in acts of individual waywardness. Both offer architectonic analyses of the ills of modern society, and both locate the crucial dynamic in the economic sphere - and in the political sphere insofar as it supports the economic.’ (p. 65)

There are, of course, important differences between the response to such evil on the part of the Marxist[3] and that of the Christian (in addition to typical theistic stance). I wish to highlight just two among many - one that Wolterstorff draws out, and one that, I feel, he misses.

The first is that, for all its differences with capitalism regarding how economic control is to be allocated, Marxism and capitalism are in essential agreement that power, freedom, and success are defined in terms of economics. Thus Wolterstorff criticizes the ultimate conclusions of liberation theologians, who

typically conclude from their analysis of the predicament of their people that they must work for the formation of a socialist society in which there is no longer private appropriation of the surplus of production. [The Neo-Calvinist] also decries the arrangement whereby only the owner of capital and not the worker has voice in the operation of, and title to the proceeds from, the enterprise to which they jointly contribute; but his analysis makes clear that the members of a socialist society - whether defined as a society in which private ownership of the means of production has been abolished or a society in which labor and capital have co-responsibility in the enterprise - can also treat growth as an autonomous and ultimate good, with results scarcely better than what we witness under capitalism. Our ills are deeper than such restructuring can cure. (p. 67)

Whether capitalist or socialist, ‘We do in fact live in a world-system shaped by the practice of treating economic growth as an autonomous and ultimate good. What is that but idolatry?’ (p. 66) Against both, the Church must bear witness to the God who commands that there be none other before him.

But how does the Church do so? Here Wolterstorff does not distinguish sufficiently between Christianity and (normative) Marxism:

The sorrows produced by our world-system are many. … In such a situation one cannot simply say that we all suffer from the idolatry of growth. … One has to say that one human being is being wronged by another, and to say that is to take sides with the former. It is to declare solidarity with him or her in opposition to the oppressor. … And if one’s declaration of solidarity is serious, the actions of liberation will flow forth. On all this the liberation theologian is right.

Moreover, not only will Christians thus take sides as they concern themselves with the miseries of contemporary mankind, but this taking sides will be a priority for them. The exploitative domination experienced by many threatens their very livelihood, their very sustenance. The elimination of starvation, and the alleviation of the tyranny that supports it, has priority over, say, relieving the boredom of the well-to-do in a society devoted to growth. (p. 67-68 )

My quibble is not with what Wolterstorff says here. Indeed, to the extent that Marx called his contemporaries to take sides with the poor, one must acknowledge that he was preceded by several centuries by an author, as Harry Frankfurt would say, with rather greater moral authority:

When you spread out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
plead the widow’s cause. (Isaiah 1:15-17)

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? (Isaiah 58:6-7)

My soul magnifies the Lord…
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty. (Luke 1:46, 52-53)

He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:17-19)

The problem is not with what Wolterstorff says, but with what he does not say, for taking sides is not enough. Here the analysis of Miroslav Volf is richer, who has this to say about Jesus’ proclamation of good news to the poor:

Truly surprising and new in Jesus’ ministry… were neither the political overtones of his message nor the special interest he displayed toward ‘the poor’. … No doubt, he kindled hope in the hearts of the oppressed and demanded radical change of the oppressors, as any social reformer would. But he also built into the very core of his ‘platform’ the message of God’s unconditional love and the people’s need for repentance. From the perspective of contemporary Western sensibility, these two things together - divine love and human repentance - addressed to the victims represent the most surprising and, as political statements, the most outrageous and (at the same time) most hopeful aspects of Jesus’ message. …

Jesus’ claim that the kingdom belongs uniquely to the poor notwithstanding, his talk of them as sinners triggers in us an eruption of suspicion. … Instead of calling sinners to repentance, should Jesus not have demasked the ideological construals of ‘the poor’ as sinners and challenged the oppressive practices these construals served to legitimate?

Note that Jesus did not fail to do precisely that: he lashed out at religious mechanisms that produced sinners where there were none. … Moreover, he showed an extraordinary sensibility to the fact that people suffer not only because they commit sin, but because sin is committed against them. His programmatic sermon [in Luke 4], for instance, mentions explicitly ‘captives’ who need to be released (because they were wrongly incarcerated) and ‘oppressed’ who need to be let go (because they were treated unjustly). …

Yet Jesus called to repentance not simply those who falsely pronounced sinful what was innocent and sinned against their victims, but the victims of oppression themselves. It will not do to divide Jesus’ listeners neatly into two groups and claim that for the oppressed repentance means new hope whereas for the oppressors it means radical change. … The truly revolutionary character of Jesus’ proclamation lies precisely in the connection between the hope he gives to the oppressed and the radical change he requires of them. Though some sins have been imputed to them, other sins of theirs were real; though they suffered at the sinful hand of others, they also committed sins of their own. It is above all to them that he offered divine forgiveness. Significantly enough, it is also they, not the self-righteous members of the establishment, that responded to his offer. For as a rule, the kingdom of God enters the world through the back door of servants’ shacks, not through the main gate of the masters’ mansions.[4]

In the end, Volf writes, ‘victims need to repent because social change that corresponds to the vision of God’s reign - God’s new world - cannot take place without a change of their heart and behavior.’[5] For the Church to take sides with the oppressed without simultaneously calling them to repentance in witness to her Lord would inevitably be to assist the oppressed in becoming, or seeking to become, the oppressor. ‘The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn.’ (Albert Camus) The Church must indeed declare solidarity with the poor - which, I would argue, does indeed mean architectonic social analysis and an outright struggle against systemic evils. But it must never do so in a way decoupled from the call to faith and repentance, lest we lift up an idol of economic gain or power or freedom in place of the one who was himself lifted up - in the ultimate act of solidarity and, of vastly more importance, reconciliation between God and man - in order to draw all people to himself (Jn. 12:32ff).

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[1] Abraham Kuyper, Christianity and the Class Struggle, trans. Dirk Jellema (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Piet Hein, 1950), pp. 27-8, 50.
[2] Ibid., p. 40.
[3] Here I am assuming the popular meaning of ‘Marxist’, with all that it connotes, including certain prescriptions for entering into class struggle. Strictly speaking one may be a Marxist in one’s positive analysis - characterizing certain socioeconomic phenomena in terms of class struggle with a historical trajectory, etc. - without making any normative claims at all. But I suppose this is somewhat rare.
[4] Miroslav Volf, Exclusion & Embrace (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1996), pp. 112-114. Emphasis original.
[5] Ibid., p. 114.