In response to this expanded version of my post on radical hope, my friend Conor Williams lays out what he sees as the fundamental difference between Marxism and Christianity:
I’d differ from Sessions (and Terry Eagleton) on one point: while it’s true that both Marxists and Christians sustain themselves with hope for a better world, there’s an important difference in the content of that belief. In The Nature and Destiny of Man, Reinhold Niebuhr (a minister and former Marxist) noted that Marxism’s brilliance consists in highlighting the universal presence of human self-deception across history—but that its great folly is to imagine that this ever-present problem is soluble within the realm of human history. In other words, Marxists are highly attentive to how ancient, feudal, and capitalist regimes betray their promises to their citizens. The trouble is that they believe that these betrayals can be fixed by adjusting the constellation of institutions. …
Christians—in many cases, though not all—recognizes human exploitation as a permanent problem, a daily problem, a problem that can’t be wished away by abolishing private property or nationalizing particular industries. Christians recognize humans as simultaneously historical and transcendent beings. We grasp the possibility of universal ideals and perfect unity, but our wills are permanently vitiated by pride. We are both earthly and divine, but we are always prone to sinful self-deception. While Marxists seek final human fulfillment within the historical world, Christians—again, not all—look to a world beyond. Christians know that “there is no better world without belief,” but also that there may not be a better world with it, either.
That last line there was basically the crux of my essay; in fact, I was not at all saying leftist hope (or belief) and Christian hope have the same content. My goal was to describe a condition of sitting on the fringe of two similar but very different ways of explaining the world’s evil and looking to a better future, two “worldviews,” if you will, that I see as equally implausible. Christianity may provide the most coherent explanation of meaning and the future, but its promises of redemption and afterlife are still ultimately, alas, implausible. Marxism may deliver an incisive, indisputable critique of capitalist regimes, but its promises of a world without alienation, greed and self-interest are also, alas, implausible. I was driving at what is perhaps the darkest reality of all, which is that none of the available metaphysical narratives of meaning and future are plausible; thus, unless we are to perish in despair, we probably have to pick one without deluding ourselves that it’s true. As Madeleine L’Engle said, beautifully: “Far too often in this confused world, we are faced with choices, all of which are wrong, and the only thing we can do, in fear and trembling, is to choose the last wrong, without pretending to ourselves that it is right.”
My point about radical hope, i.e. believing and working toward a post-capitalist world, is that maybe, just maybe, it’s a little more satisfying than believing you must wait until the end of your life for a better world. Not that you’ll ever know the better world wasn’t there after all if you were waiting for it in the afterlife. But if by some wild chance a better world was possible on this earth, there’s also the chance that, as a leftist, you might live to see it. For all we know, the collapse of capitalism could be ten years or ten months away. But the Christian heaven or redeemed earth will always be shrouded in mist, whether we believe in it or not. I can’t be an orthodox Marxist any more than I can be an orthodox Christian, but I think it’s slightly better to believe that we might live to see something better than this capitalist mess than to believe that we most certainly will not.
Update: Conor replies here. The only thing left to say for me is that whether you find Christianity’s transcendental eschatology or Marx’s humanistic materialism more hopeful is a highly personal and subjective matter, so much so that I can hardly argue my own position with much conviction. Because it’s on one side one day and on the other the next.
David Sessions
David Sessions is the founding editor of Patrol. He covers religion for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, and is a graduate student in the Draper Program for Humanities and Social Thought at New York University. He can be reached at hdavidsessions at gmail dot com.
4 Responses to Believing and Occupying, Continued
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i think the problem is in assuming there’s such a huge dichotomy between these eschatological visions. the gospel is about god setting the whole universe right, beginning with Jesus’ death, and his resurrection being the prototype of the new creation we’ll one day see in finality.
when a lame man is healed in Acts, Peter says that that sort of salvation comes through the resurrected Jesus, and no one else. he sees the healing as god’s breaking into the present with restoration from the future. Paul, arrested after preaching resurrection, says he is on trial because of the hope of Israel. the fact that the racial superiority of the self-righteous Jew can be anathematized is because in Christ, everyone is welcome at the table. there is no Jew, Greek, male, female. racial harmony, physical healing, the death of earthly passions – all these are because Jesus is alive and has united people to him. we can stop coveting, and we can topple oppressive institutions.
the new testament hope is of the setting-right-of-all-things, begun in Jesus, is experienced now in part with the eager expectation and hope of its future coming and completion. death, and Marxism, will be swallowed up in life.
At the risk of sounding stupid compared to such thoughtful writing exchanged between two friends (I’m serious, these are all really poignant thoughts), I’d say you’ve missed a big element that was quite stirring in your original piece: the fact that there are quite a few people who have put their money where their mouths are.
Marxists and Christians alike are actively working to bring about that better world that they so fervently believe in, confident that it will arrive. This ranges from the very practical “handing out sandwiches and prescribing antibiotics” sort of work to the “let’s force the government to tax people more heavily so that the government can pay for more people to hand out sandwiches and prescribe antibiotics” and everything community development in between. It’s all good and important. And without faith, as you note, there is no motivation to do good works, at least the sort of good works that are sustained & meaningful– since these usually require significant personal sacrifice.
I will allow my rampaging subjectivity to suggest two more reasons why Christianity’s hope is superior to Marxism’s.
#1: Marxist hope is still infinitely incomparable to Christian hope, because Christian hope is eternal and comprehensive. Marxism could achieve everything it promises in 10 years and then get violently overthrown 5 years later. Or Marxism could achieve everything it promises in 10 months and you still get cancer. Christian hope always wins in the end, no matter how dire the circumstances seem. Marxism, from my limited understanding, is an economic-political-social hope that does not promise redemption for families, individual relationships, or even our bodies. It only ameliorates the problems caused by lack of resources, and while certainly rich people are less likely to die of preventable diseases or neglect their infants, it’s still not all that much compared to the exquisitely comprehensive sense of wholeness that Jesus’ death accomplished for us. The implausibility of this is big, so big, in fact, that the only thing that exceeds it is the potential. Why long for universal health care and a living wage when you could be a kingdom of priests?
#2: Christian hope provides us with a much clearer power to act. Again, this echoes your discussion above wherein Marxism/atheism looks within for solutions and Christianity looks without. To go face-forward to evangelical absurdity, Marx didn’t die on the cross for you, but Jesus did. And then He rose again. And if you can fix your eyes on that love for you, it’s absolutely transforming. And it has transformed millions of people to places where they can overcome their inner brokenness and pour themselves out in love like Jesus did (see, for example, http://www.medicalmissions.com/institute/tags/academic-areas/global-health-issues).
Christian hope and the redeemed earth it promises isn’t shrouded in mist. It’s being proclaimed and made real every day in clinics, shelters, homes, churches, and streets. It’s an awful bloody struggle, every last minute of it, and it’s victories are almost matched by the consistent failures of God’s people to act. But it’s happening.
This is, of course, just my experience as someone who is very passionate about issues of global health & justice mediating through Christian redemption. Do you need Christian hope to do good things for others? Of course not. Does Christian hope speak more powerfully to action with a much bigger payoff? Hell yes.
[...] Sessions responds to my response: That last line there was basically the crux of my essay; in fact, I was not at all [...]
David (or anyone), could you please tell me where capitalism is anti-Christian? Specifically, what principles, that are intrinsic to capitalism, are unbiblical? Please defend your statements with chapter and verse of what the Bible teaches (ergo what authentic Christianity teaches).
Capitalism is a loaded term in our day. Much of what is called Capitalism is in fact NOT Capitalism. For our purposes please frame Capitalism in its correct intellectual context. To do this you can work from either Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, Mill’s “On Liberty” or “Priciples of Political Economy”, Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”, or Von Mises’ “Human Action”.
Thanks