In Front | Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler’s Biblical Response to Atheistic Communism

Sometimes the New Testament has an indirect impact, but one that can be deep and long-lasting. 

Though most people have never heard of Bishop Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, the New Testament’s impact on Ketteler led him to have a long-lasting impact on the social and political life of Europe. His time was the time of industrial revolution, with all its social problems and abuse of the working course. While atheistic communism was being promoted by the likes of Marx and Engel, von Ketteler was looking to the Bible and the western tradition of Christian thought (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) to answer these new challenges.

First, Ketteler called for Christian engagement in the issues and not isolation:

It would be a great folly on our part if we kept aloof from this movement merely because it happens at the present time to be promoted chiefly by men who are hostile to Christianity. The air remains God’s air though it be breathed by an atheist, and the bread we eat is no less the nourishment provided by God though kneaded by an unbeliever. It is the same with unionism: it is an idea which rests on the divine order of things, though the men who favour it do not recognize the finger of God in it, and often turn it to a wicked use.

Ketteler called attention to many New Testament passages. Fundamentally, he called for transformation of the human heart to lead the way in social change. As a guide for this kind of inner transformation, he cited New Testament works, including the Good Samaritan, to stress the social responsibilities human beings ought to embody. Ketteler cited Paul’s New Testament writings to impress on employers their responsibility to treat their workers with dignity and respect. He also appealed to biblical standards and principles of justice as a basis for human decisions about how to order human society:

The case is different with those who believe in God and Christ and are therefore convinced that men do not make laws arbitrarily, but ought to find them in the principles of right based on the order established by God … that laws receive their binding force not from the will of men, but from the eternal will of God.

Ketteler’s writings went on to inspire Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum (1891). Indeed some claim Leo’s encyclical was a slightly revised version of Ketteler’s Christianity and the Labour Question. Leo’s teachings in Rerum novarum went on to have a significant influence on the guiding principles of Christian democratic parties in Europe. 

Christian democratic parties have had significant influence throughout the 20^th century and into the 21^st. Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (Germany) is just one example of a Christian democratic party. Predominantly centrist parties, Christian democratic parties’ rejection of both socialism and unrestricted capitalism have shaped politics in many European nations as well as influenced the development of the European Union. 

Source: Wilhelm Ketteler, Christianity and the Labour Question, pp. 102, 112, 161.