Part 4
shreds. This worship of idols - the worship of money and property - is the curse of our century.
People defend their collective egotism by explaining that they don't want their property for themselves, but for their wives and children. They say they don't fight wars to protect their own personal property, but to protect their neighbors or village or country. But a man who loves wife and child loves his own flesh. And love for one's own family or clan, as well as loyalty to one's tribe or nation or state or even social class, is nothing other than collective egotism.
Let me speak frankly: I oppose nationalism and patriotism; I oppose the laws of inheritance. I oppose the class rule of the property owners and the class war of the proletariat. I oppose the party system. Why are there armed forces? Why are there courts of law? Why is there a militia? These exist simply for the sake of protecting property, that isolated thing which is detached from all else, and which is doomed to death.
We have fallen into a state of disintegration; we have fallen from God. And we will remain lost as long as the deciding factors in our lives remain the covetous will, E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D its struggle for existence, its selfish claims and rights and privileges. The curse that lies over us - this ruined life - has been accepted as normal and even tolerable.
We must be freed from the curse of life without spirit and without God!
The natural world around us shows the way to relief.
All of life is maintained by the sun, by the air, by water, by the earth and its resources. And to whom was the sun given? To everyone. If there is any one thing that people do have in common, it is the gift of sunlight. But as the early Christians said, "If the sun were not hung so high, someone would have claimed it long ago."
And the desire to own property, to take for ourselves things which in no way belong to us, does not stop short at the sun. The air is already bought and sold as a commodity, by health resorts. And what of water? Or waterpower? Why should the earth be parceled out into private hands? Is it any different from the sun? No; the earth belongs to the people who live on it. God intended it for them, but it has been taken over by private individuals. Privare means to steal. Thus private property is stolen property - property stolen from God and from humankind!
Jesus is the friend of humanity and therefore the enemy of private property. He wants people to have true life.
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
He attacked the urge to self-preservation and privilege.
He gave up everything and became not only the poorest but also the lowest, for he was classed as a criminal. He kept nothing back for himself. He had no money of his own: his wandering community had a common purse.
He said quite plainly that those who follow the urge to self-preservation are lost. He who tries to keep his life will lose it. He who does not leave all that he has cannot come with me. Sell all that you have and give it away. Keep one coat only, and give anything beyond that away. If a man asks one hour of work from you, give two. Do not gather possessions. Do not hang on to rights and privileges.
Even Nietzsche said that Jesus confronts the false life with a real life. But what is life? And what is the true life that we should lead? A body is alive only when all its organs function as one unit. Life is coherent unity in movement. Life is inseparable from unity, unity of will, of feeling and of thought, and cannot exist apart from it.
And humanity will be united only when it is directed by the spirit of community - when each individual works for the good of all.
If we want community we must want the spirit of com munity. For this reason I reject the so-called Communist society. My faith rests solely in that communism that has faith in the Spirit. The collective soul of community is the E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
Holy Spirit. In this spirit the church community is unanimous and united, rich in gifts and powers.
We must remember, however, that just as the unity of the body cannot be maintained without sacrifice, so the unity of fellowship demands sacrifice if it is to be maintained. If this community could endure without any sacrifice on the part of its members, it would be nothing other than the gratification of self.
Individuals in the community must be prepared to sacrifice themselve and all their powers.
This is true love: that we lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. And it is the only way to belong to the church. If we grasp this, we will understand the message that is the affirmation of life: not renunciation for the sake of renunciation, but liberation for the sake of new birth - liberation from illusion to reality, from the non-essential to the essential. Then we shall be united at the communal table, as guests at a wedding feast.
Lecture at the Tolstoy Club, Vienna, November 1929
Regarding our relationship to the Religious Socialists: we are very much concerned that the objective proclamation of the Kingdom of God not degenerate
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D into some new theoretical orthodoxy. Therefore we agree with you that we must take a lively interest in the socialist and pacifist movements of our day, and we affirm the global conscience they represent - without resorting to their false methods. What we share with them is simply the view that the community of the future will be a life in which all goods are shared freely and lovingly.
Letter to Professor Evert, Hillsboro, Kansas, 1920
We are not simply a society for colonizing, for forming new settlements or villages (as if there weren't enough villages already) where people live as close together and yet as far apart as anywhere else. Nor is it our aim to create a community of the human race or to bring people together for communal living just as they are.
That would be a complete failure. All attempts based on the present state of humanity will be unsuccessful.
Right from the beginning, they are doomed to go bankrupt.
Address, October 1933
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
Unless our justice is better than that of the moralists and theologians - and that of the Bolshevists - we cannot enter the kingdom of God. The justice of Bolshevism is inadequate because it does not come from the heart, nor from spiritual fellowship; it is forced down people's throats. And that is no way to build community.
Bolshevism and political communism are based on an ideal of centralized government and economy. They force a way of life on people. They approach things from without. They tackle the outward problems of economics in the hope of improving inner relationships. But murder is not the way to peace. Killing is not the road to love.
Thus Bolshevism is a dangerous abyss; it is anti-
Christian. And yet it can point us to something better and purer: Christ and his perfect love.
Talk, July 1933
The basis of our communal life is God and God alone.
But we cannot ever say we have acquired this basis, that we now own religion as one owns property. What we have must rather be given to us again each day. It is a dreadful thought, but we can lose it at any time. We are placed on this foundation only by God's grace. Our faith
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D does not result from our natural abilities or wishful thinking. It must be given to us by the Holy Spirit.
Address, July 1932
Why We Live in Community
Arnold's own words sum up this essay best: community is not a choice or ideal, but an imperative. And community must be built by the Holy Spirit, or it will fail. Our best instincts may lead us to community, but we will remain in capable of living in community as long as we try to build it with sentimental love or on social ideals. What we need is work - love in action - and faith in God. Work will bring us true joy, and faith in the Spirit will bring us victory over sin.
Life in community is no less than a necessity for us - it is an inescapable "must" that determines everything we do and think. Yet it is not our good intentions or efforts that have been decisive in our choosing this way of life.
Rather, we have been overwhelmed by a certainty - a certainty that has its origin and power in the Source of everything that exists. We acknowledge God as this Source. We must live in community because all life created by God exists in a communal order and works toward community.
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
God is the source of life. On him and through him our common life is built up and led time and again through cataclysmic struggles to final victory. It is an exceedingly dangerous way, a way of deep suffering. It is a way that leads straight into the struggle for existence and the reality of work, and into all the difficulties created by the human character. And yet just this is our deepest joy: to see clearly the eternal struggle - the indescribable tension between life and death, man's position between heaven and hell - and still to believe in the overwhelming power of life, the power of love to overcome, and the triumph of truth, because we believe in God.
This faith is not a theory for us; neither is it a dogma, a system of ideas, or a fabric of words, nor a cult or an organization. Faith means receiving God himself - being overwhelmed by God. Faith is the strength that enables us to go this way. It helps us to find trust again and again when, from a human point of view, the foundations of trust have been destroyed. Faith gives us the vision to perceive what is essential and eternal. It gives us the eyes and hands to see and grasp things which, though everywhere, cannot otherwise be seen or touched.
If we possess faith, we will no longer judge people in the light of social custom or according to their weaknesses, for we will see the lie behind the many masks of our mammonistic and murderous society. Yet we will not E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D believe either that maliciousness and fickleness, however real, are the ultimate nature of the human character.
Admittedly, in our present nature, without God, we humans are incapable of community. Temperamental mood-swings, possessive impulses and cravings for physical and emotional satisfaction, powerful currents of ambition and touchiness, the desire for personal influence over others, and privileges of all kinds - all these place seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the way of true community. But if we have faith we cannot be deluded into thinking that these realities are decisive: in the face of the power of God and his all-conquering love, they are of no significance. God is stronger than these realities. The unifying energy of God's Spirit overcomes them all.
It is abundantly clear that the realization of true community, the actual building up of a communal life, is impossible without faith in a higher power. People try again and again to put their trust in human goodness, which really does exist, or in the force of law. But all such efforts are bound to come to grief when faced with the reality of evil. The only power that can build true community is faith in the ultimate good, faith in God.
We must live in community because only through this positive venture will it ever become clear to us how
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D incapable of life man is without the life-giving and community-building power of God.
There are political organizations that stand, as we do, for international peace, the abolition of private property, and full community of goods. Yet we cannot simply side with these organizations and fight their battles in their way. We do feel drawn, with them, to all people who suffer need and distress, to those who lack food and shelter and whose very mental development is stunted through exploitation. With them, we stand side by side with the underprivileged, with the degraded and the oppressed.
And yet we cannot support the kind of class struggle that employs violent means to avenge exploitation. We reject the defensive wars of the oppressed just as much as we reject the defensive wars of nations.
We must live in community because we have taken our stand in the spiritual fight on the side of all those who fight for freedom, unity, peace, and social justice.
All revolutions, all communes and idealistic or reformoriented movements, force us to recognize again and again that only one thing can arouse faith in the good: action born of truth. We have only one weapon against the depravity that exists today - the weapon of the Spirit, which is constructive work carried out in the fellowship of love. We do not acknowledge sentimental
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D love, love without work. Nor do we acknowledge dedication to practical work if it does not daily give proof of a heart-to-heart relationship between those who work together, a relationship that comes from the Spirit. The work of love is a matter of the Spirit. The love that comes from the Spirit is work.
When working men and women voluntarily join hands to renounce everything that is self-willed, isolated, or private, their alliances become signposts to the ultimate unity of all people. The will that works toward this unity comes from God. Work as spirit and spirit as work
- that is the fundamental nature of the future order of peace, which comes to us in Christ. Work alone makes it possible to live in community, for joy in work means joy in those with whom we work. Such joy is given to us only to the extent that we sustain a consecrated relationship to the eternal, even when performing the most mundane tasks. For everything that is material and earthly is, at the same time, consecrated to God's future.
We must live in community because God wants us to respond to the unclear longings of our time with a clear answer of faith.
The life of love that arises from faith has been witnessed to over the centuries, especially by the Jewish prophets and later by the first Christians. We acknowledge Christ, the historical Jesus, and with him his entire message as E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D proclaimed by his apostles and practiced by his followers.
Therefore we stand as brothers and sisters together with all those who have lived in community through the long course of history: the Christians of the first century; the Montanists in the second; the monastics and Arnold of Brescia; the Waldensians; the itinerant followers of Francis of Assisi; the Bohemians and Moravians and the Brothers of the Common Life; the Beguines and Beghards; the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century; the early Quakers; the Labadists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and many other denominations and movements down to the present day.
We must live in community because we are compelled by the Spirit that leads to community again and again, over the centuries.
We acknowledge Jesus and early Christianity. The early Christians dedicated themselves as much to people's outward needs as to their inner ones. Jesus brought life: he healed sick bodies, resurrected the dead, drove out demons from tormented souls, and carried his message of joy to the poorest of the poor. His message means the realization of the future invisible kingdom now. It is the promise that ultimately the earth will be won wholly for God.
It is the whole that matters here. The love of God does not stop at boundaries or barriers; neither does Jesus
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D stop in the face of property any more than he does in the face of theology, moralism, or the state. Jesus saw into the heart of the rich young man, whom he loved, and said, "One thing you lack: sell all you have, give it to the poor, and come with me!" It was a matter of course for Jesus that his disciples should hold no personal possessions but rather keep a common purse. Only one man was entrusted with the hateful responsibility of managing the disciples' money, and he broke under it - a lesson with no little significance for our mammonistic society today.
Yet even Christ's betrayal and execution did not mean defeat. The Spirit with which the Risen One endowed his itinerant disciples brought forth communal life on a much larger scale. The first church became a community of several thousand people who, because love was burning in them, simply had to live together. In all questions regarding communal life, the forms that emerged were in keeping with an understanding of life as one unified whole.
The first Christians in Jerusalem held everything in common. Whoever owned property felt compelled from within to share it. No one possessed anything that did not belong to the church. Yet what the church owned was there for all. Its generous love excluded no one; its door and heart were closed to no one. At the time of its E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D flowering it found ways to reach all people. And though its members were bound to become the target of hatred and hostility, they still won the love and trust of those closest to them.
The early Christians lived in the Spirit. The Spirit blows like the wind - it is never rigid like iron or stone.
The Spirit is infinitely more sensitive and delicate than the inflexible designs of the intellect or the cold, hard framework of governmental or societal structures. The Spirit is more sensitive even than all the emotions of the human soul, more sensitive than all the powers of the human heart, on which people so often try - in vain - to build lasting edifices. Just for this reason the Spirit is also stronger and more irresistible than all these other things. It can never be overcome by any other power, for it is the breadth, depth, and height of being. And it lives on powerfully in Jesus as the inner voice and inner eye that leads to community.
The light of the early church illuminated the path of humankind in only one short flash. Yet its spirit and witness stayed alive even after its members had been murdered and scattered. This happened again and again through history, as various groups of people formed new expressions of the same living Spirit. Witnesses were killed, but new ones were - and are - born to the E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
Spirit again and again. Communities pass away. But the church that creates them remains.
Efforts to organize community artificially can result only in ugly, lifeless caricatures. But when we are empty, when we open ourselves to the Living One - to the Holy
Spirit - we will experience the same life as did the early
Christians. This Spirit is joy in the Living One, joy in God as the only real life. It is joy in all people, because all people have life from God. This Spirit drives us to all people and brings us joy in living and working for one another, for it is the spirit of creativity and love.
Community life is possible only when we surrender to this Spirit. This is such a powerful experience that we may never feel equal to it; in truth, we never will. But our energies can be quickened by its white-hot heat, and if we allow it to burn us to the core -to the point of sacrificeits flames will radiate far and wide. Community life is martyrdom by fire: it means the daily sacrifice of all our strength and all our rights, all the supposedly justified claims we commonly make on life. As individual logs we must be burned away - must be united in glowing flames - if we want to send warmth and light out into the land.
We must live in community because the spirit of joy and love gives us such an urge to reach out to others that we wish to be united with them for all time.
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
The whole of natural life is a parable of God's future community. Just as the air surrounds us, or as a blowing wind engulfs us, we need to be immersed in the blowing
Spirit who unites and renews everything. Just as water washes and cleanses us every day, so in baptism we must witness to our purification from everything that is of death. This "burial" in water must signify a complete break from the status quo. It must be a vow of mortal enmity toward all evil within us and around us. And the raising of ourselves up out of the water must proclaim resurrection in vivid imagery and unforgettable clarity.
The resurrection we see everywhere in nature is no different: after the dying of autumn and winter comes the blossoming of spring and the fruit-bearing of summer; after seedtime comes harvest. In fact, the whole course of human history, from man's origins to his final fulfillment, is symbolized by the cycle of nature.
Symbolism can be found in the trivialities of existence, too: when approached with reverence, even daily rites such as mealtimes can become consecrated festivals of community. On a deeper level, we can find expression of community in the symbol of the Lord's Supper: the meal of wine and bread. The Meal of Remembrance not only witnesses to the catastrophe of Christ's death and to his second coming, but also to the fact that we receive
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D him in ourselves. It witnesses to his church, his body, as the ultimate unity of life.
In the human body, community is maintained only by the constant cycle of cells dying and being replaced by new ones. In a similar way, a life of full community can exist only where there is heroic sacrifice. Because it is an educational fellowship of mutual help and correction, of shared resources, and of work, true community is a covenant made in voluntary surrender and sacrifice. As such it fights for the existence of the church.
In the context of church community, justice has nothing to do with satisfying even reasonable demands for personal rights; on the contrary, it consists in surrendering everything to God. This cannot come about through hard demands made on others, however, but in joyous self-sacrifice - for God's Spirit comes to expression as cheerful and voluntary work.
We love the body because it is a consecrated dwelling place of the Spirit. We love the soil because God created it to be cultivated by the communal work of man. We love physical work - the work of muscle and hand - and we love the craftsman's art, in which the spirit guides the hand. We see the mystery of community in the way spirit and hand work through each other.
We love the activity of mind and spirit, too: the richness of all the creative arts and the intellectual and spiritual
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D exploration of history and humanity. Whatever our work, we must recognize and do the will of God in it.
And God has entrusted the earth to us not only as an inheritance but also as a task: our garden must become
God's garden, and our work must further God's work.
We must live in community because we are stimulated by the Spirit who calls nature, work, and culture to unity and community with God.
No less significant than the symbol of the body is the symbol of community as the harbinger of God's kingdom.
Where God reigns there will be joy and peace and justice.
In the same way that every body consists of millions of independent cells, so millions of people will become one organism. This organism exists already today as the invisible church.
When we acknowledge as reality the unity and order of this invisible church, we acknowledge at the same time the freedom of the Spirit within it. The more clearly a community defines its unique task, the more deeply conscious it must be of belonging to the una sancta, the One Church. Because it is part of a larger organism, it needs the give-and-take that comes from serving the whole body, and it needs to be instructed and guided by the united witness of all those who believe in the church.
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
The secret of community is to be found in the freedom of self-determination, in the personal decision of the individual member to surrender to the whole and, at the same time, to exercise their will for the good. This free dom, without which communal life cannot exist, is not a matter of power exercised by human self-will, nor is it a matter of spinelessness or unrestraint. In a community of deeply moved people who believe in the Spirit, the freedom of an individual lives in their free decision for the will of the Spirit. Working from within each member as the will for the good, freedom becomes unanimity and concord. The will of a person liberated in this way will be directed toward the kingdom, toward God's unity, and toward the good of the whole human race. As such it will be vital and intensely energetic.
Standing as it does in a world of death, an active will must constantly assert itself against the destructive and enslaving powers of lying, impurity, capitalism, and military force. It is engaged in battle everywhere: against the spirit of murder, against all hostility (including the venom of the taunting, quarrelling tongue), and against all the wrong and injustice people do to each other. It must fight in public as well as in private life against the very nature of hatred and death, and against all that opposes community.
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
The call to freedom is a call to battle without pause.
Those who are called to it must be continually alert.
They need not only the greatest willpower they them selves can muster, but also the aid of God, in order to meet the plight of the oppressed, to stand with the poor, and to fight against all evil in themselves and in the world around them.
This fight must be waged more strongly against the evil within a community than against the evil of the world outside. Most importantly, it must be fought within each individual, who must take up the fight against the old Adam from the position of the new. In this way all softness and all flabby indulgence will be overcome by the burning power of love.
We must live in community because the struggle of life against death demands united ranks of souls and bodies.
Community of goods presupposes the willingness of each individual member to turn over unconditionally to the common household whatever he acquires in the way of income or property, large or small. Yet even the community does not regard itself as the corporate owner of its inventory and enterprises. Rather, it acts as a trustee of the assets it holds for the common good of all, and for this reason it keeps its door open to all. By E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D the same token it requires for its decision-making undisturbed unanimity in the Spirit.
The struggle for unity and for love is fought on many fronts with many different weapons. So too, the work of community will find expression in many different ways.
But we must have certainty of purpose for every stretch of the way we are called to go, and when we possess this certainty we will be given the strength for loyalty and unerring clarity - even in small things - to the very end.
There can be no great commission without a clearly defined task. Only those who stand firm can bear the standard. Nothing can be entrusted to the person who cannot hold out.
It is of decisive importance that our work lead only to Christ, that it serve the whole, the church, the coming kingdom. When a person sees his task as something special in itself, he will go astray. But when he serves the whole, he serves God and the community. Before our human service can become divine service, however, we must recognize how small and limited it is in the face of the whole.
A special calling - living in community, for instance must never be confused with the church of Christ itself.
Life in community means discipline in community, education in community, and continual training for the discipleship of Christ. Yet the mystery of the church is E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D something different from this - something far greater.
It is God's life, and coming from him it penetrates community. This penetration of the divine into the human occurs whenever the tension of desperate yearning produces an openness and readiness in which God alone may act and speak. At such moments a community can be commissioned by the invisible church and given certainty for a specific mission: to speak and act in the name of the church - albeit without mistaking itself for the church.
The church we acknowledge lives in the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit in which we believe bears the church within itself. This church of the Spirit will give life to the future unity of humankind. It gives life already now to all truly living communities. The foundation and basic element of every community is not merely the combi nation of its members but simply and solely the unity of the Holy Spirit, for the true church is present there.
An organism becomes a unit through the unity of consciousness brought about by the spirit that animates it. It is the same in a believing community. The future unity of humankind, when God alone will rule, is ensured by the Holy Spirit. For this Spirit is the coming leader and Lord himself. The only thing we can hold on to here and now, the only thing we can already perceive of this E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D great future of love and unity, is the Spirit. Faith in the Spirit is faith in the church and faith in the kingdom.
In the life of a community, several decisive questions will need to be confronted again and again. How are we called? To what are we called? Will we follow the call?
Only a few at a time will be called to the special way that is ours. And those who are called must hold to the common task shown them by God for the rest of their lives. They must be ready to sacrifice life itself for the sake of unity.
People tear themselves away from home, parents, and career for the sake of marriage; they risk their lives for the sake of wife and child. In the same way it is necessary to break away and sacrifice everything for the sake of this way. Our witness to voluntary community of goods and work, to a life of peace and love, will have meaning only when we throw our entire life and livelihood into it.
It is now [1925] over five years since our tiny fellowship in Berlin decided to venture, in the sense of this confession, to live and work together in community on the basis of trust. With time, a life of total community came into being. We are small in number, and we come from the most diverse backgrounds and walks of life, but we want to place ourselves as one movement in the service of all people. Given our basis of faith, we cannot approach the development of our community from a purely economic point of view. We cannot simply select the most capable
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D people for our various work departments. We aim for efficiency in all areas; but far more important, we seek faith. Each of us - whether committed member, helper, or guest, and no matter what his task - must ask himself daily whether or not he is growing into the coming community ruled by Christ.
Our work, then, is a venture dared again and again. Yet we are not its driving force - rather, it is we who are driven and who must be urged on. The danger of exhaustion and uselessness is always present, but it will be continually overcome by the faith that underlies mutual help.
Essay, 1925
It is certainly true that God works in people, in men and women. But when this truth is exaggerated to the point where we believe solely in ourselves and other human beings, we are on the wrong track. We must believe in God in such a way that not we but God is in the center. Only then can God work in us and through us. We must become so transparent that what other people see is no longer us, but God. Community can come into being in no other way.
No matter how humble, dedicated, or unassuming we may be, we cannot build community in our own strength.
Talk with visitors, June 1933
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
We have nothing. If we ever thought we had community, we have now seen that we do not have it. And it is good for us to have seen that. Community exists exclusively in Christ and his life-giving Spirit. If we forget him and are left without his influence - if we forfeit his working among us - it is all over with our community.
Address, November 1935
Our communism of goods, of table, of work, and of life should never take the place of what is essential - even if all these things have sprung out of the essential. The only essential is God himself: his will for complete love, his power for renewed life, and his Spirit for active brotherhood.
Letter, 1927
The Fight Against Mammon
All his life, Arnold fought against mammonism, that is, "the enslavement of the soul to circumstance." This fight was not lessened even by a life of poverty. His children remember that their mother would occasionally bring up her worries about financial debts at breakfast - the one time of day when the family might have relaxed. Arnold's response was predictable: "Emmy, worry is also mammonism. Let's spend time with the children."
God or Mammon
"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and look down on the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." This great and dynamic struggle of which E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
Jesus spoke is still raging today. Mamona was the Aramaic word for wealth, and with it, Satan tempted even Jesus: "I will give you all this if you will fall down and worship me."
In the early Christian era, some scholars interpreted "Mammon" as a name of the devil Beelzebub. Others interpreted it as the name of a demon particularly connected with money. Any attempt to combine service to God and service to mammon will end in failure. We must cleave to God alone and despise mammon!
God and mammon are the two masters between whom we must choose. They are two goals that cannot be reconciled. The pursuit of money, the preoccupation with outward things, is incompatible with all other goals and purposes. Devoting ourselves to a life of ease and pleasure means letting outward things become the determining force in our lives. Serving mammon means secretly worshipping things, clinging to them and loving them to the exclusion of God.
Materialistic people demand everything for themselves.
They are carried away by their senses and seek nothing but bodily ease, comfort, and pleasure. They value things and not people, and are dominated by their power. They have been made a slave to them and has been deprived of the wealthy life that gives and bestows. They ask only what life can give to them; they know only rights and E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D not responsibilities. Their uppermost goal is payment and gain. They strive to secure property and comfort at the expense of others. Believers, however, see in this love of money the old - and ever new - danger that threatened even the first Christians.
Nothing but overcoming the self can rid us of the false, debasing life that serves mammon. Even nonbelievers recognize this. Nietzsche said, "Consume yourself in your own flame; how can you become new unless you first turn to ashes?" And Goethe wrote, "As long as you've not learned / to die and live again, / you're just a gloomy guest / here on this dark earth."
But how is it possible to "re-become," as the mystic
Eckhart demanded; how can one, in Goethe's words, "de-self oneself" when one is bound and fettered as mammon's slave? How can one enter a strong man's house and steal his goods, unless the strong man is bound first?
When a strong man guards his own dwelling his goods are left in peace; but if someone stronger comes and conquers him, the spoil is soon divided. And Jesus is stronger than mammon: he has overcome, disarmed, and bound the enemy. The cross is stronger than the devil.
Its victory is deliverance from mammon, from the deadness of a debased life. If we die with Christ, we
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D shall live with him. Therefore, "Set your hearts on what is above, not on what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is now hidden in Christ."
Essay, 1915
The Fight Against Mammon
If life is love, and love means fellowship; and if all living things interact to promote life and unity and freedom, then how is it possible that death, destruction, and murder are so rampant in the world today?
Two powers are at work in the world: the power of love that leads people to associate with each other, and the power of death that separates people and destroys the fellowship of love. This power of death poisons the organism of humanity, making it sick and corrupt. It murders and kills. It covets and isolates. It attacks all that holds life together. It destroys the coherence of all living things. But alongside this power that murders and enslaves, a constructive and creative power is still at work.
This tension between opposites is a reality of life.
People who try to consecrate their lives or devote themselves to a cause must face this either/or, this question of God or mammon. And it is not true that E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D everything religious is united against everything irreli gious. It would be nearer the truth to draw the dividing line through both.
Not all who call themselves Christians are connected to the same center, nor are they motivated by the same thing. The religion of many who confess to the name of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with God or the coming kingdom. Their religion is really that of the Anti-god; it is permeated by the demonic powers of the abyss that cause the disintegration of human solidarity.
Is not the great world organization that names itself after Christ serving a god other than the God whom Jesus confessed? Has not the institutional church sided with wealth and protected it; sanctified mammon, christened warships, and blessed soldiers going to war?
Has not this church in essence denied him whom it confesses? Is not the Christian state the most ungodly institution that ever existed? And are not the state and the organized church, which protect privilege and wealth, diametrically opposed to what is to come: God's new order?
Nobody can serve two masters. Nobody can serve
God and mammon. The message of Christ had to do with the "trans-valuation of all values" - the coming kingdom of God. His first witnesses testified to a radically new order, an order concealed from those blinded by the E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D god of this world. This god - the god of greed and murderous possessiveness - stands opposed to the kingdom of justice, unity, and love. Jesus defined its nature with utmost sharpness. He called Satan the "murderer from the beginning."
Even the blind can see that economic development means the murder of thousands of people - that big business rules through the power of the lying spirit, and that governments wage war by means of deception. A capitalistic society can be maintained only by lies; if people were to recognize this, there would be a total revolt against the greatest deception in the history of mankind. But we are a long way from revolting. Most pious and even many working people think, "Rich and poor have to be." They ignore the fact that it is impossible to amass any kind of fortune without cheating, without depriving and hurting others and destroying their lives.
They fail to realize that big business, concentrated in a few hands, can steer hundreds of thousands toward certain ruin through unemployment.
Why do these facts remain hidden from us? How is it possible to be cheated of justice and be blind to it? It is because we ourselves are also under the rule of this god, mammon.
Mammon is the rule of money over people. It means dependence on income and finances instead of on God.
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
We recognize that mammon is the enemy of God, but we cannot apply the lever that lifts it off its hinges: we ourselves are so dominated by it that we lack the strength to rebel.
The deepest human relationships are based not on mammon, but the spirit. No one of us can live in isolation; we are all interdependent. All of us are interrelated in groups, families, classes, and trade unions; in nations, states, churches, and all kinds of associations. And through our humanity we are interrelated in an even deeper way: through the love of God that flows from spirit to spirit and heart to heart, leading to organic, constructive fellowship.
But there is a devilish means that seeks to rob us of heart and spirit and God. This means is money. Money reduces human relationships to materialistic associations.
It destroys the highest human goals. At first it may be just a means of barter, but later it becomes a commodity in itself. It becomes power. In the end, it destroys all true fellowship.
Money and love are mutually exclusive. Where mammon rules, the possessive will is stronger than the will to community. The struggle to survive becomes stronger than the spirit of mutual help. Where mammon rules, matter is stronger than spirit, and self-assertion stronger than solidarity. Mammon never motivates
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D people to work in a creative way for a life of fellowship.
Instead, it engenders the enslavement of the soul to circumstance. It is the spirit of lying, impurity, and murder, the spirit of weakness and death.
Jesus, the prince of life, declared war on this spirit, and we must declare war on it too. When our inmost eye has been opened to his light, it can no longer respond to what mammon demands. When our hearts are set on the future when we expect God's kingdom - we can no longer accumulate property. We will turn our backs on everything present and live instead for freedom, unity, and peace.
Jesus entered the temple with a whip not to strike people, but to show his contempt for money: his father's house belonged to God, not to mammon. In the Gospel of Mat thew, he exhorted the otherwise blameless rich youth to confirm his love by selling everything: "Give all you have to the poor, and come follow me." And when he was shown the coin of the emperor, he answered, "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God."
This attack on the order of mammon resulted in his death. Yet life had the final victory. The men and women who had gathered around him in life waited for something new after his death. They waited for the Spirit. They knew that the spirit of love, order, and freedom was the spirit of God's kingdom. And this Spirit came upon them, bringing about a church: a fellowship of work and E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D goods in which everything belonged to all, in which all were active to the full extent of their powers and gifts.
This church succumbed to the process that destroys life. Just as individuals die, so this church also died. But in the course of the centuries a new church rose. Time and again small communities were formed in which men and women declared war on mammon and took upon themselves the poverty of generosity. In choosing this poverty, they chose the richest way.
Simple communism existed among primitive people.
And throughout history the revolutionary struggle, the fight against materialism, has continued. We who see the appalling results of capitalism today stand at the point where the uprising against capitalism begins. The words of Jesus - "He who is not with me is against me"
- hold true also for us. We are on the same side as all revolutionaries who fight against mammon.
There are two ways to fight against mammon. One holds to the ideals of socialism and communism. The other is the way of communal work and fellowship in all things spiritual and material - the voluntary gathering of those who are free of private property and capital.
This is the seed that sprouts in the stony field.
At first, just a little tip of grass shows. After a few days of sun and rain, there are patches of living green.
And then, only weeks later, the whole field is flourishing
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D with life. In spite of weeds and stones, the young crop has broken through. What the individual blade of grass cannot achieve, the whole field can. The harvest is there!
But wheat and weeds cannot be separated before the harvest. We must wait for harvest time, otherwise the wheat will be torn out and the weeds left standing. It would be completely contrary to the spirit of Jesus to hang the servants of mammon on lampposts in bloody revolution. We can have no part in violent revolution because it allies itself with the father of lies.
It is self-deception to think we can overcome mammon by violence, for violence is of the same evil spirit as mammon. We cannot drive out poison by means of poison.
The new can be born only of the new; only out of life comes life; only of love can love be born. Only out of the will to community can community arise.
And community is alive wherever small bands of people meet, ready to work for the one great goal, to belong to the one true future. Already now we can live in the power of this future; already now we can shape our lives in accordance with God and his kingdom. The kingdom of love, which is free of mammon, is drawing near. Change your thinking radically so that you will be ready for the coming order!
Lecture, 1923
God With Us
How do we come to Jesus? To experience the heart of God we need Jesus; to experience Jesus, we need to experience that moment in which he sacrificed his heart.
And that was the moment when he sealed the surrender of his life with the last drop of his blood, when his eyes dimmed and his heart broke - the hour when he also comforted a criminal. It was Golgotha: that time and place in which we enter into pure, unclouded fellowship with God's eternity, God's heart, God's love. Golgotha is the window through which we can look from this darkened earth into the radiance of God's heart.
"If Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem but not in you, you would still be lost eternally." That is E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D what the mystery of religion witnesses to: the uniting of the individual soul with Jesus Christ; the uniting of the individual spirit with the universal Spirit at one moment in time.
Lecture, March 1921
The Experience of God
In this excerpt from Innerland, Arnold stresses Christ as a person, not a concept or a merely historical figure. Jesus did not bring a new religion, but new life. And his message is meaningless if it does not affect the way we live.
The kingdom of God is the will of God made real. And God's will is unconditional; it cannot be restricted. It does not acknowledge any other will, and tolerates no rival authority. Nor does it ally itself with anything that curtails, restricts, or limits love. The kingdom of God is power: it is the righteousness of God, the peace of Jesus
Christ, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
And God's kingdom can begin already now, in our time, wherever the peace of Christ reigns. For God sends the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. This brings both obligation and authority: those gripped by this spirit must drive away all other spirits, and must establish as E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D valid the spiritual laws of the kingdom even in the outer spheres of life.
God's peace within our hearts will enable us to become builders and bearers of outward peace. For God fills the believing heart with such overflowing joy that it must go out in love to all, driving away the spirits of war and strife, of competition and private property. Those who receive this joy will be drawn, one after the other, into the circle of love and complete community. The spirit of the church is the spirit of God's kingdom - the spirit of justice, peace, and joy. And it is the church of Jesus Christ that brings this kingdom down to earth here and now.
The spirit of God works within our hearts, but it brings about outward consequences as well. It wants community in everything, and so it tears down all existing human relationships and builds them up anew. This spirit does not originate with people, but is poured into believing hearts - hearts which, when filled with God, radiate a faith that strengthens life and increases works a thousandfold. This faith is something personal, and yet it is also objective: it is the confident trust with which Paul declares: "I live, yet it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; the life I live now in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God." There can be no life of faith other than that lived in unity and community with Christ.
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
Faith is made alive in Christ. We live in Christ, and Christ lives in us; it is he who transforms our lives from within. Luther experienced this mutual relationship only after years of struggle; for this reason, his experience of God is of historical importance. His consciousness of sin and his fear before God's justice threw him into such agony that he did not know which way to turn. He could find no consolation, either from within or from without, and felt he must perish utterly.
Only through the grace of Christ's love could he later affirm, writing to his friend Spenlein, that Christ justifies us without our own efforts or works - and that without this justification, we cannot live before God, before ourselves, or before others: Learn to know Christ, that is, the crucified Christ... Say to him: "You, Lord Jesus, are my righteousness, but I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what was mine and given me what was yours; you have accepted what you have not been, and given me what I have not been." Yes, you will learn from Christ himself that, in the same way as he has accepted you, he has made your sins his and his righteousness yours.
This mutual relationship, this receiving and giving of one to the other, is Luther's understanding of the words: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."
And the certainty of this oneness depends not on us, but E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D on him; we die to ourselves only when our will becomes one with his will to die. Everything we have ever been or experienced or achieved must die at the cross. Only from Christ's grave can the will be resurrected into freedom.
It is the loneliness of the Crucified One that gives us freedom from self-importance. It is the step taken by faith, into death and through the grave, that leads to certainty of life. Christ accepts us so completely that he says, "I am this poor sinner; his sin is my sin, and his death is my death." This unity in death frees us from sin, despite the most terrifying consciousness of it. We have life in the Risen One!
Now Christ is in us: he has taken our lives upon himself.
Our old lives are taken away; through his life, we now share all that he is. Everything he possesses he now offers to us. The same Jesus who says, "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me" now gives us his authority.
The same Christ who takes as his own the seat at the right hand of the Father makes us partakers in his divinity.
He, the Son of Man, the last Adam, has made us his brothers and sisters.
People often forget that for Luther, faith meant taking hold of the precious and costly treasure itself, that is, Christ. Only Christ himself could give substance and content to Luther's faith. But we need not define faith; E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D what we need is simply Christ. Christ comes down to us and becomes our life. His coming is faith; what he does is faith. With all their understanding and good intentions, the human forces of piety, wisdom, and religion have no faith. Their efforts to rise up to God are futile. Believing in Christ means quite simply that Christ becomes one with us. It means that he abides in us. The life we have in faith is Christ himself.
And where Christ is, the law that condemns us is forever canceled. Here is Christ, who condemns sin and throttles death! Where he is, everything that destroys life must withdraw. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Christ is here! No power can sever us from the love of God as long as he, the most powerful, is our master.
If we lose him, there is no help, no consolation, no counsel anywhere. The terror of death will be all there is to know. But to be with Christ means life and peace, within and without.
The life of Christ is energy, for God is dynamic power.
Luther says expressly that the Holy Spirit does not leave a believer idle, but impels him to "all manner of good, in which he can exercise his faith and prove his Christian character." But here we must go beyond
Luther, for here he goes no further.
If Christ lives in us, he will unfold his powers in us.
The justice and righteousness of his Father will become
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D our justice and righteousness. Christ in us means serving others and working for others, for our faith must be as active in love as was his. What he accomplished, we must represent in deed as well.
The unity of Jesus with the Father is so complete that he says, "What is mine is thine, and what is thine is mine." In the same way, the believers are so united with Christ that they too can say, to Christ and their brothers and sisters, "Mine is thine, and thine mine." The love of Christ impels them to act and live in this way. The justice and righteousness of Christians is Christ and his life. The Holy Spirit urges them toward the same good deeds that Jesus did.
Those gripped by Jesus have, like him, a love that relinquishes all privileges. When they confess that Christ is their life, like Christ they choose voluntary poverty for the sake of love; like Christ they sacrifice their lives unconditionally for friend and foe, with all they are and have.
Jesus was given all power and might. His love, therefore, must rule unconditionally and unhindered in the lives of those who receive his authority. Only then can he give them his commission. And this commission must fill the whole of life. It must transform all circumstances and relationships in accordance with its objective demands.
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
We should not say that we believe in Christ and his kingdom - or in unity and community with him - if we do not sacrifice everything and share everything with one another, just as he did. We should not claim that his goodness and his righteousness have become our goodness and our righteousness if we do not give ourselves to the poor and oppressed just as he gave himself to them. We should not think we have experienced the Strong One, who exercises all authority at the right hand of the Power, if his works of justice and community are not fulfilled in our lives. If we have faith, the working of this faith must become obvious in works of perfect love.
If Christ rules in us, his rule must go out from us into all lands. If his spirit is in us, streams of his spirit must transform everything around us in accord with his promises about the coming kingdom.
Innerland
Deeds reveal the character of the heart. If the heart is not clear and undivided - "single," as Jesus puts it - then it is weak, flabby, and indolent, incapable of accepting
God's will, of making important decisions, or of taking strong action. This is why Jesus attached the greatest significance to singleness of heart, to simplicity, unity, solidarity, and decisiveness. Purity of heart is nothing
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D else than absolute integrity, which can overcome desires that enervate and divide. Determined single-heartedness is what the heart needs in order to be receptive, truthful and upright, confident and brave, firm and strong.
Innerland
The Spirit of the Risen One
Christian circles have often been attacked on account of their call to repentance. They are told that the unceasing accusation of the conscience paralyzes initiative, takes away freedom, and destroys personality. Certainly one would have to come to this conclusion if one were to experience only the consciousness of sin by itself. But those who proclaim Christ cannot separate repentance from faith. The message of the Cross is inseparably one with the proclamation of the Risen One.
Luther called for daily remorse and repentance because he experienced again and again the unconditional certainty of possessing the gift of salvation. He knew that no one could accuse or condemn God's elect, and he knew himself to be justified by God himself. He had experienced the presence of the Christ who intercedes for us with the very powers of his resurrected life.
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
One of the things that cannot easily be explained is that for a Christian, the deepest recognition of sin and absolute freedom from all condemnation must become completely one. The source of inner freedom and faith lies in God and Christ, while the murky depths of remorse and repentance are found only in ourselves.
It is the soul's instinct of self-preservation which holds us back from complete honesty about our own moral condition. Without the strength of the Gospel, unrestrained insight into our own helplessness and depravity would lead us to despair, for it is just when we attempt to apply the strictest self-discipline and the firmest moral code that we are faced with the absolute impossibility of justifying ourselves in the eyes of God.
The Gospel wants the truth about our condition to come completely out into the open. At the same time, it offers us the possibility of a clear and joyful conscience - a merciful God in the midst of deepest self-recognition.
What we are unable to do by our own efforts, God has done: He sent us his Son.
Faith in this fact cannot be shaken by anything. Even though all men speak against us, even though they accuse and condemn us, we believers in God and in Christ still cannot be discouraged. However hard the times, however low the ebb of moral and religious power, this one fact remains: God gave his own Son for E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D us. And even if we cannot find other people who in their actual lives reflect God's nature, still Jesus remains the redemption for every person.
This historical fact must become the spiritual experience of the present. It means that God, in giving us Jesus, gave us everything. Perfect love became flesh, and this means his love will become life and reality everywhere.
Once we grasp this we can no longer despair of God's love, or question his intervention on our behalf.
However, we misuse and belittle the certainty of this love if we accept it without at the same time destroying our own vanity and self-will. The collapse of national pride, self-accusation and guilt, the disintegration of cultural values in state and church, and the repeated evi dence that it is impossible to produce with purely human powers the conditions of peace and justice we long for: all these experiences convince us that we need grace.
Grace is a sovereign gift; we can do nothing to acquire it.
That inner state in which it seems everything is breaking down is the preparation we need to receive Christ. Only when everyone accuses us - only when we condemn our selves in the sharpest way - are we in a condition of inner readiness for the message of salvation.
The invincible power of the first Christians sprang from the fact that they believed in the presence of that same Christ who had ascended to the Father. We, too, E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D can believe in the powers of Jesus' death and the strength of his resurrection only when we experience the immediate presence of Christ.
The first Christians lived by the promise of the Risen
One: "I am with you always, even to the end of the world."
All their meetings were permeated by this certain faith; they believed in and experienced his personal presence so strongly that they lived entirely under his influence. The awareness of Jesus' presence was the secret of their strength. They experienced the Risen One as the Spirit present among them. Through him they were freed from all bondage, and through him they were freed to use all their human gifts and powers.
For us, too, faith in the Risen One and in his spirit must lead to a new attitude in everyday life. And faith unlocks the spiritual powers at work in Christ. The Lord is Spirit, and he molds our lives according to his image. How we actually live - how we put love into action
-depends not on moral conviction but on faith. Everything depends on whether we know the resurrected Christ and whether we have his Spirit. It does not help us to long for Christ to appear from heaven. The only way to truly experience his presence is to know and feel in our hearts that the Christ, who was raised from the dead by God, has come to us as the living word.
Essay, 1919
E B E R H A R D A R N O L D - W R I T I N G S S E L E C T E D
The call to repentance by the prophets and by John the