Resumo da Lecture "Christianity, Marxisn - Liberation Theology", apresentada pelo teologo luterano Wolfhart Pannenberg, nos USA em 1987. As razões contrárias ao marxismo, por ele apresentadas, ainda me parecerem validas e, importantes, principalmente, devido a atual crise econômica que pode dar novo alento aos defensores desta controversa união.
"Pannenberg contends that there are two basic reasons why Christians cannot use Marxism as a scientific, sociological tool in the task of understanding the dynamic of oppression in contemporary societies. First, building on the work of the Polish philosopher Adam Schaff and the Swiss theologian Fritz Lieb, Pannenberg; declared that Marxism harbors a flawed understanding of the person, an understanding that is irreconcilable with Christianity. Marxism declares the person to be a function of society. Each individual is the product of social interaction and therefore thoroughly dependent on social context. This idea gives rise to the Marxist rejection of religion. The religious claim that each person is endowed with dignity from his or her relation to God alienates the person from his or her true nature. To the Marxist, therefore, the church's existence testifies to the continuing presence of alienation in the social system, an alienation that ought to vanish after the socialist revolution.
That Pannenberg himself understands the social context's significant role in the development of the person is evidenced in his Anthropology. However, he concluded in his recent lecture that from the perspective of Christian personalism, it is actually the Marxist proposal that results in alienation. By suggesting that the individual is exclusively social, Marx alienates the individual "from the constitutive center of his or her human life, i.e., from God." In so doing Marxism deprives persons of autonomy and human dignity.
Further, the Marxist understanding of human nature views social history as the process of the human species' selfcreation. Christianity sees in this proposal a disastrous attempt to emancipate humanity from divine providence by setting the creation above the Creator. This Marxist proposal is too optimistic concerning human nature, for it fails to recognize the problem of sin as pride.
According to Pannenberg, this atheistic orientation "is not an accidental element in Marxist thought," but is intimately connected with the anthropology underlying its social theory. For this reason one cannot "use Marxist economic descriptions without buying their atheist implications. "
[...]
Pannenberg's second point, although not as significant theologically and philosophically as the first, is also formidable. He claims that as an economic theory Marxism is an unscientific oversimplification of complex realities. Contrary to Marx's theory, labor is not the only source of economic value, especially in the current technological age. On the basis of this observation, Parmenberg asserts that the question of economic and social justice is far more complex than Marxist categories would indicate. Marxism, therefore, is not an ideologically neutral, analytic instrument, as liberation theologians claim. Nor is it scientific, as its historically false prediction of the demise of the middle class has shown.
In spite of its flaws, Marxism, Pannenberg admits, is undeniably appealing to both Western and Third World intellectuals. He maintains that this is probably so because the system imparts moral value to political involvement in the class struggle. But in the end those who engage in this movement "turn out to be victims of the seductive power of an ideology."
Although he is sharply critical of Marxism and any theology that appeals to Marxist categories, Pannenberg is not unconcerned about social justice in Third World countries. In the closing section of his lecture, he affirmed recent Vatican statements on social justice. He also called for involvement in the struggle against "examples of clear injustice" in the world. He admitted that his proposal appears modest compared with "the quest for justice in the full and complete sense of the word." But in its defense he cited Alasdair MacIntyre's conclusion in After Virtue (University of Notre Dame Press, 1984) that no generally accepted concept of justice is available therefore, "even justice can only be provisional this side of the eschatological fullness of the kingdom of God."
Fonte:Stanley J. Grenz, Pannenberg on Marxism: Insights and Generalizations.
