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REVOLUTIONARY THEOLOGY AND POLITICAL THOUGHT T:HE EXTENSIVE literature on alienation and liberation has been characteristically and intentionally centered on man. Ernst Cassirer some time ago captured this essential ingredient when he spoke of the "new anthropology " whose " first postulate ... was the removal of all the artificial barriers that had hitherto separated the human world from the rest of nature." What is removed, according to Cassirer, is the notion that "there is a general providence ruling over the world and the destiny of man." 1 Certainly Marx and Feuerbach are part of this tradition and twentieth century expressions of their thought do not alter this fundamental character. So too, most of the recent literature related to liberation and alienation, as in Marcuse or Fromm or others, maintains the same point, namely, that the described character of the human problem of alienation and its solution is to be examined in human terms alone.2 It is as if, to borrow a phrase from Cassirer, "neither classical metaphysics nor medieval religion and theology were prepared for this task," 3 the task of resolving the problem of man. There is little doubt then that the emancipation of the social world from the thought and need of God characterized the new anthropology's approach to the problem of man. Cassirer as well as Sabine credit Grotius's celebrated hypothesis, that 1 Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944), p. 13. 2 Herbert Marcuse, cf. especially Reason and Revolution (New York: Beacon Press, 1941), An Essay on Liberation (Boston, 1969), "Repressive Tolerance" (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970); Erich Fromm, cf. especittlly Marx's Concept of Man (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1961), Man for Himself (New York, 1947), Beyond the Chains of Illusion (New York: Pocket Books, Inc., 196~). a Cassirer, op. cit. 847 848 JOHN J. SCHREMS natural law would be the same even if there were no God, as an historical turning point marking the beginning of this liberated tradition.4 At other times Machiavelli is cited as the principal instrument beginning the empirical trend.5 The precise time or person marking the turning point is less important than the fact of the acceptance of the thesis that the examination of man could, and should, proceed strictly in human terms, based on " empirical observations and on general logical principles," as Cassirer phrased it.6 Later, indeed, Feuerbach and Marx were to argue that the very ideas of God, religion and theology, are themselves alienations from which man is to be liberated. While most recent theorists, save perhaps for Cassirer, do not address themselves to either the thesis of Grotius or of Marx they all nonetheless operate within this " liberated " tradition by either accepting it, as does Cassirer, or by not addressing themselves to it. The point of operating within the tradition by not addressing it will be examined later, but at the present suffice it to say that the arrival on the scene of a genre of liberation literature arguing a solution to the problem of man in terms of religion and God appears to be an altogether new dimension which should be examined. In other words the liberation tradition up to now has regarded theology as a source of alienation, for others at least theology has been understood to be a concern of which political theory had no need, and consequently such considerations were never a part of any political solution. Such a contrapuntal dimension in liberation thought is offered in the recent discussions on a " theology of liberation." To this time the great hulk of discussion of this topic has been confined to religious studies circles even though its intentions and consequences are quite political. The question arises as to 4 Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), p. 172. Goerge H. Sabine, A History of Political, Theory (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1950), p. 4:1~.°Cassirer, op. cit., p. 140. Cf. John J. Schrems, "Ernst Cassirer and Political Thought," Review of Politics Vol. 29 (1967), pp. 180-208. 6 Cassirer, An Essay on Man, op. cit., p. IS. REVOLUTIONARY THEOLOGY AND POLITICAL THOUGHT 349 whether the new religious-politics...

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