User Profile

Man’s world is manifold, and his attitudes are manifold. What is manifold is often frightening because it is not neat and simple. Men prefer to forget how many possibilities are open to them. They like to be told that there are two worlds and two ways. This is comforting because it is so tidy. Almost always one way turns out to be common and the other one is celebrated as superior.

Those who tell of two ways and praise one are recognized as prophets or great teachers. They save men from confusion and hard choices. They offer a single choice that is easy to make because those who do not take the path that is commended to them live a wretched life.

To walk far on this path may be difficult, but the choice is easy, and to hear the celebration of this path is pleasant. Wisdom offers simple schemes, but truth is not so simple.

— I and Thou by Martin Buber, Walter Kaufmann

History is made by conscious acts, which involve decisions … which are not based on free will. It would be pointless to replace nineteenth-century determinism (based on a widespread belief in progress, shared by bourgeois and socialists alike) by contemporary undeterminism (influenced by the cultural pessimism of a self-doubting society).

— From Crisis to Communisation by Gilles Dauvé (Revolutionary Pocketbooks)

Revolution is neither the fruit of long-cultivated undermining action, nor of will power. It was off the agenda in 1852, in 1872, or in 1945 (although some comrades mistook the end of World War II for the dawning of a new Red October). Not everything is possible at any given time. Critical moments give opportunities: it depends on the proletarians, it depends on us to exploit these capabilities. Nothing guarantees the coming of a communist revolution, nor its success if it comes. A historical movement keeps developing because its participants make it do so. A revolution withers when people stop believing in it and no longer rise to the challenge they have initiated. History is not to be understood with the mind of the chemist analysing molecular reactions. The closer communist theory gets to “science,” the less communist it becomes. Communism is not to be proved.

— From Crisis to Communisation by Gilles Dauvé (Revolutionary Pocketbooks)

This isolation must be endured and borne, and it cannot always be easily borne with dignity and cheerfulness. Such isolation is hard to bear because fundamentally it seems not to correspond to the essence of theology. Indeed, to assume a theological post in some remote place from which the public is all but excluded seems strikingly to contradict the character of theology. Religion may be a private affair, but the work and word of God are the reconciliation of the world with God, as it was performed in Jesus Christ. The object of theology, therefore, is the most radical change of the situation of all humanity; it is the revelation of this change which affects all men. In itself, revelation is undoubtedly the affair of the general public in the most comprehensive sense. What it has spoken into human ears demands proclamation from the housetops.

— Evangelical theology by Karl Barth (Page 111)

Whoever takes up the subject of theology discovers himself immediately, recurrently, and inevitably banished into a strange and notoriously oppressive solitude. In our old church hymnal we used to sing with emotion a song by Novalis containing the line, "Be content to let others wander in their broad, resplendent, teeming streets.'’ These words might sound very appropriate as a slogan for theology; however, they would not be altogether honest, for who at bottom would not really like to be an individual in a greater crowd? Who, as long as he is not the oddest of odd fellows, would not like to have his work supported by the direct or at least indirect acknowledgment and participation of the general public, and understood by all men or at least as many as possible? As a rule, the theologian will have to put up with pursuing his subject in a certain isolation, not only in the so-called ''world," but also in the Church (and behind a "Chinese wall," as will soon enough be said).

— Evangelical theology by Karl Barth (Page 110)

Any environment that measures itself by its own yardstick will find the minority view of theology and the theologian seriously suspect. In such a situation a person may easily become desperate, bitter, skeptical, perhaps even bellicose and mean; he may become inclined, as an accuser, to turn permanently against his fellow men on account of their lifelong folly and wickedness. Precisely this, of course, may not be permitted to happen. If the ethics of evangelical theology does not wish to convict itself of falsehood, it must be represented, for all its definiteness, only by the greatest serenity and peaceableness. Admittedly, its voice will be that of the ''lonely bird on the housetop, resounding pleasingly only in the ears of a few, and constantly exposed to the danger of being shot down by the first comer— a risk that is perhaps not always insignificant. It is likely that theology will scarcely ever become popular, as little with the pious as with the children of this world, precisely because of the ethical and practical disturbance that issues from it directly and indirectly. Whoever involves himself in theology, if he does this seriously, must be ready and able, in a given situation, to endure and bear loneliness just in respect to his practical ethics.

— Evangelical theology by Karl Barth (Page 119 - 120)