Down the Marxist Road with Harvey Cox

Harvey Cox, probably the most influential Protestant theologian living in America today, has been a pioneer in Marxist-Christian dialogue. His theology is basically secular and political, which is abundantly amenable to Marxism. He places himself in the tradition of such pre-Reformation and Reformation sectarians as Joachim di Fiore and Thomas Muentzer, for whom Marxists have shown great respect.

We need to recognize three heresies held by Cox to understand his dialogue with Marxism. First, he rejects the doctrine of original sin. Cox’s God is humanistic, and calls man to freedom, responsibility, and control of the natural and social environment. He views original sin as no impediment to man’s ability to master the world; in fact, he regards the Resurrection as the event that marked the dissolution of the power of original sin over man’s Promethean ambitions. According to this novel view, mankind has been liberated from sin, “whatever chains people to the past,” and death, “whatever terrifies them about the future.” Because man has been freed from original sin, he can tame the powers that challenge his ascent to mastering of the world. Cox does recognize that evil still exists, but when looking to the future Cox rejects the orthodox view of the provisional and finite nature of man’s efforts.

Second, with such an unorthodox view of sin, it is natural that the building of the Kingdom of God on earth is central to Cox. Earlier, he identified the coming of the Kingdom with his view of the secular city. He thought that the secular city was a modern equivalent of the “ancient symbol of the Kingdom of God” and that the secular city has some “elements of the promised Kingdom.” For Cox, secularization is associated with the coming Kingdom. It rids us of religious attitudes and destroys any supernatural symbols we have.

Third, Cox regards truth about God to be whatever conforms to his private or political ideas, and he ignores biblical revelation. His God is not the God of Christianity, but the Zeitgeist of the modern era, a “politician-God” active in secular society. This God is not supernatural. Cox offers us a secular God to match secular humanity. Nevertheless, this God does act in secular political history to help people realize the Promethean dream.

What Marxists call the Spirit of the Age Cox calls God or the Holy Spirit. Is this Spirit an active ontological force or merely a collection of ideas that does not interfere with human initiative? Is man free or controlled by an outside force? Does Christianity allow people to be truly free? The issue of freedom is vital to both Christians and Marxists. Christians have repeatedly charged that Marxism is not humanistic because it subordinates man to the inexorable laws of history. Although these laws may be benign and may guarantee man’s success, they deny man his freedom. Marxists have tossed back this argument by suggesting that belief in God leaves little room for freedom. From the moment of creation man is subordinate to and dependent upon God. Christianity stresses that man can do nothing to save himself. To Marxists the God of Christianity is at best a benevolent tyrant. Man may be free to go to hell, but to go to heaven he must submit to God and renounce his freedom. Marxists claim that this is too high a price to pay for salvation. Orthodox Christians claim that enslavement to Christ is perfect freedom. Non-Christians have a hard time understanding that. Cox and others have tried to answer the Marxist objection to the Christian view of freedom. They have sought to dispel the notion that man is merely God’s underling, without discarding the notion of a providential God.

To do this, Cox claims that man is God’s partner and co-worker. Cox’s God is, of course, always on the side of man; in fact, God is man’s servant. Cox thinks that through Jesus God showed his willingness “to become the junior partner in the asymmetric relationship [between man and God].” According to him, the task of the Church and its people is “to discern the action of God in the world and join in His work.” But how do we find that out? How do we distinguish between working with God or in God working for us? Cox answers these questions by saying that whatever supports liberation is the work of God. If this servant-God would not satisfy orthodox Christians, he would not satisfy Marxists either.

Some Christians are so committed to a politician-God who acts that when they seek to heed the Marxist’s demand for human freedom, they get trapped in their own rhetoric. The result is a studied ambiguity. On the one hand they insist on a God who, in some sense, acts as man’s partner; on the other hand they insist that man is totally free and totally responsible for the future of the world. This is obviously contradictory. Any action of God entails a limitation of human freedom. Otherwise, if man truly is free, all talk of God’s action must be figurative. But if God does act, then man is not completely free.

Cox developed this studied ambiguity over a ten-year period. In God’s Revolution and Man’s Responsibility (Judson, 1965) he emphasizes man’s response to God’s initiative. Historical and political initiative lies with God, not man. Man may cooperate with God, but he is the author of change, from which man may benefit. But Cox quickly shifts his ground and stresses human initiative: “Man is that creature who is created and called by God to shape and enact his own destiny. Whenever he relinquishes that privilege to someone else, he ceases to be a man” (p. 48). Man, then, is fully man only when he does not relinquish his destiny to external forces.

However, Cox does not recognize the full force of his claim because the “someone else” he has in mind seems to be, not God, but such powers as fate. The picture that emerges is one where God compels man to be free. God is no longer responsible for what man does with his freedom; man’s destiny is in his own hands. This is a kind of procedural freedom; God does not give man substantive freedoms, such as freedom from war, injustice, and poverty. Rather, he forces man to be responsible for war, injustice, and poverty, and gives man the freedom to work out solutions if he chooses to do so. God does not give man utopia; he merely gives man the freedom, hence the power, to achieve it if he is willing. Yet later it appears that the freedom God bestows on man is substantive after all. Cox claims that God is involved in the various secular, racial, and scientific revolutions of history. And he hopes that God will remake the world. Man remains passive as God thrusts utopia upon him. This may be an attractive vision, but it certainly carries with it an anemic understanding of human freedom.

In The Secular City (MacMillan, 1966), Cox analyzes communism: “For the orthodox Communist there is an inner logic in history which is not dependent on man, a meaning to which man must adjust his personal projects or suffer the consequences” (p. 59). Cox calls this fatalism, that from which God has liberated man. He says that communism is not a “vulgar” materialism that turns man into a robot. No, communism allows man freedom to reject the logic of history, but only at his peril. Cox denies that his own views are fatalistic. But his description of communism is similar to his description of Hebrew prophecy, which he takes as his model for understanding history. Cox says that prophesy provides man with responsibility for his future. But even if the future is not predetermined clearly Yahweh, who sets the rules for the game, so to speak, and not man is the free player here. Cox actually grants man a qualified moral responsibility and a conditional freedom. What Cox means is that people will find fulfillment if they conform to God’s standards; if they do not, then disaster. Structurally, this is analogous to the communist view that people will find fulfillment if they conform to the laws of history. If they do not, then they will continue in their bondage and perhaps destroy themselves. Both views can be seen as benevolent determinism.

Cox’s view of human freedom is exceedingly vague. He says that “the elements of divine initiative and human response in the coming of the Kingdom are totally inseparable” (p. 96, italics added). Note that the initiative here is still divine. Since God works in history, “the issue is whether history, and particularly revolution, is something that happens to man or something that man does.… Is man the subject or the object of social change?” (p. 96). Cox answers that he is both: “the secular city … stands for that point where social movement and human initiative intersect, where man is free not in spite of but because of the social matrix in which he lives” (p. 97, italics added). The initiative has passed from God to man. God merely facilitates man’s initiative.

There is some telltale evidence that Cox is unsure about God’s action in history and that Cox really has no idea whether historical initiative is God’s or man’s. In an article on the church in East Germany, he concluded that “God is doing something in East Germany today …” (Christianity and Crisis, July 22, 1963). But when he revised the essay he altered the phrase to read: “something important is happening in East Germany today.” The word “God” seems to function in Cox’s vocabulary as a metaphor for “something important.” Is God doing something, or is it just that something important is happening?

In his post-Secular City phase, Cox deemphasizes God’s initiative and man’s response, and places exclusive emphasis on the unconditional freedom of man and the unconditional “openness” of history. He still believes in the possibility of speaking in a secular or political fashion about God; however, he warns that such speech about God “has theological dimensions far more baffling than those indicated in The Secular City.” Cox talks of a God of the future who is located not above history but ahead of history, and who anchors or guarantees the possibilities (“openness” in Cox’s vocabulary) of history and human freedom. Although God is responsible for the possibilities of the future, man is responsible for its content. Since God keeps man’s future undetermined, man really has no choice but to take responsibility for it.

Cox argues that the belief in God’s omnipotence must be transformed into a belief in the radical possibilities of history. He correctly perceives that this would meet a major Marxist criticism of Christianity, namely that Christianity does not allow man to take full control of his future. Cox concludes that Christianity “must break its ties with any belief in a fixed plan being worked out in history,” and must understand God as “that unconditionally open future which elicits man’s unreserved freedom in shaping his own future” (On Not Leaving It to the Snake, MacMillan, 1967).

It is curious that Cox should emphasize his hope for the future when he can offer no reason for having any. In The Feast of Fools (Harper & Row, 1969) he admits that hope and fantasy are directly related. He calls for a theology of political fantasy, of a utopian politics. He urges religion to contribute to society’s capacity for self-transcendence. Cox is convinced that religion is not only an opiate but also a cry of the oppressed, a protest, and a potent stimulus for insurrection. When he says that the truth of religion is its capacity to facilitate human liberation, he does not mean truth in its cognitive sense. Rather, religion manifests a pragmatic or instrumental truth, an emotive or noncognitive truth. Its truth is really its ability to motivate: “A ‘religious symbol’ is defined not by its content but by its relative degree of cultural power” (The Seduction of the Spirit, Simon and Schuster, p. 283).

Cox wants to unmask the way religious myths have repressed people and then proceed to reconstruct these myths so they can be used to incite credulous people to insurrection. It goes without saying that orthodox Christians would be insulted by this attempt to use their beliefs as mere tools to mobilize people for political ends.

In the meantime, however, Cox lapses back into his studied ambiguity on the question of human autonomy. In The Seduction of the Spirit he continues his theology of fantasy and hope, but he drops his emphasis on unfettered human freedom and an inactive God and subordinates freedom to his concept of liberation. Liberation does not mean the freedom to create or not create the New Jerusalem; it is the New Jerusalem. It is “paradoxically … both a task and a gift.” What man does with his freedom, whether he builds the New Jerusalem or not, ultimately depends on man: “Man’s only destiny is to use his God-given freedom to shape and achieve his destiny for himself. If he refuses this destiny, then nothing can save him … nothing at all” (p. 38, italics added). Indeed, salvation is not guaranteed, either by grace or human freedom and destruction is a possibility. Salvation is neither otherworldly nor individualistic. Either everyone is saved in this world or no one is.

Whether Cox flounders in a studied ambiguity or makes a clear decision in favor of human freedom, man’s building the Kingdom of God on earth as a means of salvation remains constant. Cox is consistently anti-supernaturalistic. Although he talks about transcendence, it is always a this-worldly transcendence, and he remains a secularist.

Harvey Cox’s dialogue with Marxism is doubly disappointing. From the Christian point of view, he ignores traditional Christian categories, thereby nullifying his desire to speak to Marxists as a representative of Christianity. And from a logical point of view, much of his thought on human freedom is so riddled with ambiguity that he forfeits his claim to significance.

Paul D. Steeves is assistant professor of history and director of Russian studies at Stetson University in Deland, Florida. He has the Ph.D. from the University of Kansas and specializes in modern Russian history.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.