4. TRANSCENDENCE AS FUTURE

Ernst Bloch, George Lukàcs, and Erich Fromm are revolutionaries who go for the young Marx (Philosophical and Political Manuscripts, 1844). They see in the young Marx a protagonist of the total liberation of the human spirit from the domination of economic pressures: a man in the world in which he is "at home" with himself, with his neighbor and with a "resurrected nature". Bloch gives emphasis upon the eschatological and utopian elements of Marxist humanism.

Bloch accepts Marx's statement that "religious suffering is the expression of real suffering and at the same time the protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions." However, Bloch contends that religion is a fundamental part of the human essence and is not expressive of man's alienation from his true humanity. The religious consciousness expresses a dimension of man's humanity which cannot be described solely in the economic level and by political categories. Real social revolution cannot come, Bloch argues, without an acknowledgement of the "spiritual maturity" of revolution itself.

Bloch's concept of transcendence is tied up with his analysis of the religious man. His concept of "S is not yet P" offers a clue to his concept of transcendence. This means that no subject already has its adequate predicate; that man the subject is never totally fulfilled; is always surpassing himself; that reality is not yet actuality.

Religion is that awesome abyss between what is and what is to come. Religion describes the hopes and longings that man has for the future which has not yet come into being. The religious man is the man who hopes, the man who can peer into the future with confidence not because of a certainty of what will occur but because of what there is yet to be accomplished. He is the man who, in the process, grows increasingly aware of himself and of what he can become. Transcendence is that experience which has not yet fully come into being.

Though Bloch cannot be thought of as a theologian, he has had a profound impact upon contemporary developments in Christian theological thought and ecclesiastical reformulation. The truly religious man rejects the self-satisfied institutions but rather projects himself with hope toward the unrealized future. Man hopes for the transcendent (the ideal) in the midst of the actual (the real). The main proponents of Theology of Hope are Harvey Cox (The Secular City) and JÜrgen Moltmann (Theology of Hope).

  In the first chapter of Man on His Own, Bloch argues that the state exists to provide for the people their economic needs. If it cannot perform this function it becomes obsolete. In the modern state there is no concern for individuals. Private property is the culprit. Legal protection is a fiction; law becomes the instrument of the ruling classes. The economic order can be regulated by means of legal formalisms. The operations and functions of the law protect the interests of the ruling class. If there were no property, then there would be no need for this kind of arbitrary functioning of the law in society.

The agent of revolution is the oppressed wage earner who looks at revolution as a means of economic upliftment. The motive for revolution is the proletariat's private interest. His ambition to live a better life is the motivating force behind the revolutionary goal of the dissolution of the capitalistic society. This revolution, Bloch contends, necessitates an alliance between the poor (those individuals who have nothing to look forward to) and the philosopher (who may be the ideological architect of the future). For Bloch, philosophy must be dialectical and materialistic and dialectical materialism must be philosophical, that is, it must proceed toward broad and open horizons. Philosophy adds an ideology to the self-interested ambitions of the proletariat class ("egotism" in Marxist terminology). That ideology is characterized ultimately by the moral purity of communism. There is historically an invariable contradiction between the interests of the individual and the concept of the common good. Bloch insists that the problem of the "subjective" will of the proletariat and the "objective" ideal of the philosopher and the relationship between the two must be soberly thought out. Marx failed to do this; Bloch attempts an alliance.

Marx conceived of the evils within capitalism as derivative of its economic base. He separated the economic from the psychological. It is not man's consciousness that determined his existence, but it is the other way round: it is his economic existence that determined his consciousness. Bloch believes that this fundamental Marxist idea, the basis for Marxists scientific socialism, is fundamentally wrong:

Bloch wants to make room for the soul and religious faith within the Marxist dialectic. This means to restore the utopian dimension within Marxist ideology. Bloch believes that a utopian perspective would give a moral and cultural dimension to the new socialist society. He opposes the Marxist atheistic position which offers nothing more than a pleasure-filled heaven on earth and the ideals filled with heart, conscience, mind, and spirit, the communion of all living, the brotherhood of man -- all realizable on this earth. Bloch's historical ambition is "to make room for life, to attain the divine essence, to integrate man into the a millennium with human kindness, freedom, and the light of the telos." (Ibid., p. 39) Basic to Bloch's anthropology is that description of man as a being who is not yet what he might become. Man, therefore, is the "one who hopes". His essential nature is that of creative expectation of that which has not yet come into being. The content of the "not yet" is that future which allows man to be free.

Bloch uses the language of religion , especially the eschatological language of Judaism and Christianity, to describe the political character of Marxism. He sees Marxism as an essential part of the eschatological development of the great religious traditions of the West; but wants eventually to rescue religion from the idolatry of its institutional practioners. Marxism gives the theory and religion provides its practice. Together they form two independent but complementary parts of the total humanizing process which only together can become historically realizable.

Bloch wants to effect a unity of the Marxist socialist economic ideal with the historical realization of the society of the new church. Such a combination can effect a new social economy organized along community lines, a classless and non-violent society.

Incipit Vita Nova ("A New Life Begins")

The second section of Man on His Own elaborates another dominant theme in Bloch: that every moment of history is a new beginning, a starting afresh. The conception of the new life as a historical event came into the world through the Bible. Bloch speaks about the biblical concept of the miraculous actions of God within history to effect the new in the midst of the old, to bring about the renewal of creations so that "not one stone would be left upon another." Bloch is conscious of the decidedly historical events of the Creation and Incarnation and conceives of them as essential events in man's deliverance from bondage.

The contrast of the cyclic world view of the Egyptian-Babylonian messianism and the linear view of history of the Jews and Christians provides the framework. The Egyptian and Babylonians looked forward to the miraculous ruler who would come at the end of time. Persian Zoroastrianism, for example, conceived of salvation in terms of the return of Zoroaster. On the other hand, the Jews and Christians were waiting for the new life that would mean an end to bondage on this earth. This new life would be a breakthrough: a totally new kind of life would be brought into being. But that new life was established as a classless society; and it was this society which was such an integral part of the utopian dreams of Judaism and early Christianity: "Behold, I make all things new."

Bloch sees the messianic promise of the new age, fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, as containing the authentic ingredients of the communist revolution: the emergence of a classless society and the creation of the commune of the liberated. This would mean the cataclysmic destruction of all tyrannical powers and the new creation of the truly human being.

Bloch makes an exegesis of the Old and New Testaments and concludes that the teaching about resurrection and the kingdom introduced a utopian ideal into the consciousness of man, an ideal of the transformed life within history. The new life will come at the end of history, at the time when the kingdom will be established, when the utopian ideal shall be historicized. The perversity of the Church made heaven an impossible ideal beyond history. "Behold, I make all things new" refers to the practical realization of the dreams of a people imprisoned by the barbarity of past oppressions.

Bloch's basic understanding of the biblical idea of community is that of a utopian kingdom where an enslaved people are released from bondage. But it is a historical kingdom which is realized in time, even though it is in projected time, as a future event. In this connection, Bloch considers the life of Moses. Moses is called by Yahweh to lead an enslaved people away from Egypt and into the promised land. Moses killed an Egyptian and therefore had to leave the country. The first act of the founder of the Jewish community precipitated his departure from the country. For Bloch, that fact is decisive. The world was turned upside down: the normally anticipated human relationships were radically altered. Moses' God became the God of a liberated people. The exodus was therefore an exodus from bondage to liberation. Bloch further indicates that the liberated people was a primitive, communistic type of society, in which there was no private property. Private property becomes possible only in the land of Canaan. It was there where nomadic communal life came to an end. It its place came the wonders and agonies of the agrarian and city-dwelling stages of economic and social development. Crafts and trades emerged, but also slavery and class distinctions, and prosperity and poverty. The prophets appeared in the midst of all this, denouncing the exploitation and injustices of the ruling class.

Yahweh is against capitalism and the class distinctions and the conspicuous consumerism it promotes. Yahweh is for the primitive bedouin type of community, in which there are no private property and no distinctions in class. The prophet, as God's representative, must call an apostate people back to the justice that prevailed in the primitive community (cf. Amos 5:21,24; Is 5:7ff; Is 13:11ff; Is 42:22). The prophet calls upon Yahweh to punish the evil accumulators of capital. Yahweh promises that he will bring about the time of universal happiness and wealth, which Bloch conceives of as "socialist wealth": "Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price" (Is 55:1). This socialistic society will also be a society of peace in the international level:

The New Testament then begins with a distinctive messianic tone. The promised land appeared less that it was supposed to be. Class distinction still remained. Roman society, with its rampant disregard for the sufferings of the lower classes, prospered. The prophets became "agitators". The God of the prophets became an ancient tribal deity, no longer related to modern society. John the Baptist and Jesus preached to the lowest classes of people and promised them an end to their miseries.

Bloch refers to Matthew who announces the messiah-king who will terminate all forms of suffering on earth (Mt 11:25-30). He argues that the terms "this world" and the "other world" were never meant to be geographical designations dividing this world from the next; rather, they referred to the present time and the future time, a succession in time on the same stage, on this earth. (Man on His Own, p. 123)

The eschatological character of Jesus' preaching is dominant in the New Testament. The whole state, including the temple and everything which presently existed, would be brought down. The eschatological character of Mark 13 must be read in relationship to the Sermon on the Mount. Once the eschatological character is established, then the moral teachings are credible. When Jesus referred to the two kingdoms, that of God and that of Caesar, he did so out of contempt for the state, anticipating its imminent downfall. The disasters which would destroy the state at the end meant for Jesus a revolution, an entirely new form of social existence which was to come into being. Jesus became the organizer and power behind that new kingdom. The passage from Mt 25:40: "Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me" is interpreted by Bloch in terms of a love community to which Jesus called his followers. But that community was the prototype for an international community, in which the poor were especially regarded and in which the constituent feature of community was demonstrable concern for the human being.

Bloch translates the concept of the Son of Man into humanistic concerns of the New Testament utopian community. Jesus came to free man and to enable him to participate in the new exodus, so that he could live in a liberated society (new kingdom).

Transcendence as Open Future

Bloch argues that Christianity's contribution to the Western mind is the "principle of hope" (the title of his main work). He sees a connection between what he conceives of as the origin of all religions as "the dichotomy of man between his present appearance and his non-present essence" and the authentic Christian hope for a new heaven and a new earth. He further believes that Christianity fulfills the demands of the essential characteristics of religion better than any other historical religion. Christianity's messianism and utopianism dramatize more accurately man's situation between "that which is" and "that which can be." It is the Christian's ability to see things from the perspective of the future, of that which might become, which gives to Western society its revolutionary and utopian motifs. But the future for Bloch is unconditionally open ended. He guards against all historical schemes, both Marxist and Christian, which want to fill in the content of that future. It is an open future and its content is to be filled in by impulses of that radically open future.

History is comparable to matter seeking form or to man seeking essence. But it is never ending. The movement toward the future, prompted by the future itself, can never be absolutely completed. The hopes of mankind have a material and mundane content and are real possibilities in the historical process. But the unconditional character of the future insists upon the unknowability of that content The socialist transformation of the world and the coming realm of freedom are historical objectives, goals that men dream of and scheme about, and historical prognoses can be made about the future. But neither the objective nor the prognosis can be given an absolute character. The future remains radically open, and Bloch will not fill it up with clues to the successive stages of historical development. But his view of the future is essentially optimistic. It is this conviction that allows Bloch to develop his basic eschatological categories. Man can be loyal in hope, to the hope that a utopia can be created in time. Bloch calls this hope the "eschatology of the present" which for him suggests creative expectation.

St. Paul's words (1 Cor 2:9) are the classic expression of the utopian expectations of Jews and Christians: "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him." This is the expression of the historic movement from possibility to actuality, of the historic completion of that which is only posited as historic possibility.

What Bloch means is that the biblical notion of transcendence is that of a future transcendence. It is not a metaphysical or a spatial transcendence but a transcendence in which the historic goal is a redeemed humanity. God appears in man's history as the "hypostatized ideal of the human essence which has not yet come to be." Transcendence is always of what is not yet, the unity of all reality, the kingdom of God, the possibility that utopia can be created here on earth.

(1) Bloch's concept of transcendence as future is instructive to the Jew and Christian. To suggest that "we are not quite there, we are always and deviously on the verge of being there" is a constructive way to introduce movement and dynamism into the Judaeo-Christian view of history. Further, to argue that the future is the transcendent and that transcendence is not an ontological being "up there" is to introduce provocative categories for the Jew and Christian whose God too often seems fixed in some far-off land where angels fear to tread.

Bloch's "ontology of the not-yet-being", filled with the categories of possibility for the new and the future, prompt biblical interpreters to look again and to discover what their God is doing. Moltmann's Theology of Hope could not have been written without Bloch's insight into history as positing a definable and humanistic future. Moltmann argues that all of Christian theology is eschatological. Eschatology is not one doctrine among many; it is the fundamental one that underlies all of the others and gives to the Christian faith its basically hopeful character.

Hope redeems the present and makes it significant by relating it to a certain future. Hope then becomes the possibility of human and social fulfillment. Transcendence is conceived of in terms of the realization of that fulfillment. Hope opens vistas to man which did not exist before he opened his eyes with the anticipation that the present was being pulled towards the future and that the future was secure.

(2) Bloch is a disturber of the peace within Christian ecclesiastical circles. He is an avowed atheist, who denounces the Church because for two thousand years it has attempted to domesticate God. The result is that the transcendent dimension within Christianity has been shockingly shattered. But Bloch comes to the Christian and invites him to look again at the future, that historical future in which there will be a new heaven and a new earth. He calls upon the Christian to acknowledge that it is his proper function to announce its coming and enter into alliance with those secular institutions that are striving to bring about its realization.

For Bloch, the future is the only real category of historical thinking. Too often in Christian history it has been only the past because the past assured the veracity of the revelation and provided the institutional framework for its perpetuation. Bloch sees the event that God will bring about in the future more creative for the present than those he achieved in the past. For the Christian, this notion of hope means that the possibility of meaningful existence rests upon the prior notion that reality itself is in a state of flux and that reality itself has room for new possibilities ahead.

(3) Bloch's view of transcendence as future poses a number of theological problems. It is highly problematic that one can interpret the Old and New Testaments in the way that Bloch has done, that is, to make them revelatory solely of a utopian messianism. Of course this is present in the Bible, and motifs of revolution, love-communism, and a kingdom on earth appear from time to time. But to understand the OT and NT only in this way is to impose an interpretative formula upon the Bible which destroys the multiplicity of meanings found there. Surely the history of post-biblical Christianity (and Judaism) reveal the diversity of modes of understanding of the content of the Gospel. The history of heresies is instructive of the fact that so-called normative or essential Christianity is difficult to come by. But then if Bloch imposes his own interpretation upon the Gospel, so that the Gospel fits into his revolutionary schema, he cannot claim more than tentative authority for the Bible.

Bloch of course in not interested in determining which parts of the Bible are authoritative and which are not. However, he is going to the biblical material and eliciting from it a validation for his revolutionary socio-political program. If the Bible "brought eschatological conscience into the world" and made the conception of incipit vita nova constitutive for reading human history, the Bible also brought bishops and priests into an ecclesia, whose master and lord was Jesus Christ himself.

Apprehension comes when the eschatological dimension becomes equated with the totality of the content of the OT and NT. Bloch's reading of the Bible is selective. The "human-eschatological messianism" is one possible way of conceiving of the revelation of God through Moses to Christ, but it remains one possible way of conceiving of that revelation. Bloch explored on the "either Christ or Caesar" alternative ("Aut Christus aut Caesar" is a section of Atheism in Christianity). However, there are many other alternatives as well: either God or Satan, goodness or evil, fellowship with Christ or rejection of Christ, the spirit or the body, Creation or the Eschaton, among others.

Bloch fixes his attention on the left-wing Christians, the so-called underground Christians, attempting to create utopias on earth. He makes that tradition normative for all Christianity. He focuses upon the freedom which shall come to the people of God in the age of the spirit, the age disestablished institution, when man shall know God immediately and not through the mediation of institutions. That is his theology of revolution. But it ought not to be equated with the totality of the Gospel. The Gospel is more complex than that. It contains a multiplicity of meanings and imperatives, and they cannot be comprehended solely in terms of a utopian messianism.

(4) No one particular historical development, including Marxist communism however revisionary one may want it to be, can be equated with the eschatological dimension of the Bible. The biblical hope for a new society and the means by which that society can come into being cannot be equated with the Marxist historical dialectic. This lesson can be learned after the failures of the Social Gospel to bring about the kingdom of God. Man does not build the kingdom. God alone can bring it into being. Man works to create an environment in history in which man can live as a human being with real concrete indices of what it means to be human. And this is the humanistic and historical counterpart: to create a world in which there are concrete signs that God has come into that world to redeem it and to make human life more human.

Man must never be confident as to believe that he can create a society, either by imaginative social planning or by violent revolution, that can in any way be identified with the eschatological notion of the kingdom of God. If so, God becomes identified with one particular epoch in history and thereby loses his historical transcendence. God is involved in history as its Lord, not as its dialectical agent. What this means simply is that God can never allow what Bloch wants him to do, that is, to affirm the glorious socialist revolution. That revolution may be the means by which society achieves a historic humanism, but it cannot be identified with what the sovereign God has in mind ultimately for human society.