Roland Boer - Criticism of Earth: On Marxism and Theology

I initially picked up Roland Boer's Criticism of Earth because I wanted to read what he said in it about Martin Luther and the Reformation, or perhaps rather what Marx and Engels said about this subject. However I quickly found myself pulled into the whole work which is a painstaking study of what theology (not just religion) meant for Marx and Engels.

This study is very detailed. Several of the early footnotes are mindboggling lists of the times Marx or Engels referenced the Bible in their works. This is, however, more than just Marxology for the sake of it. Boer is making an argument that both Marx and Engels were so seeped in the Bible that their use and reference of it was almost natural - a touchstone for both of them, albeit for different reasons. It was also because, as he points out, the "context in which Marx and Engels began their critical explorations" was theology:

Due to the proverbial tardiness of German economics and politics, as well as the Lutheran doctrine of sola scriptura [by scripture alone] and the long history of struggles between Protestants and Roman Catholics, the debates over reason, secularism and politics took place on the territory of theology and the Bible.

Boer illustrates one example of this, through a discussion of an exchange of letters between a young Marx and his friends as he begins to break from established interpretations of the Bible, and then his own religious background. It was to lead Marx into trouble, his polemics against the Church, was part of "breaking open the seamless connection between theology and the ruling class" and within these arguments the Bible itself was to provide plenty of material for Marx's polemics. Interestingly, Boer argues that "despite Marx's ability to claim such [biblical] symbols for the poor, or even to note the appeal of religion to the poor, he usually does not see that resistance of the poor is often couched in biblical language."

Boer shows however that religion for Marx was more than simply a selection of quotes to use against the ruling class. In a fascinating chapter on the question of "idols, fetishes and graven images", Boer concludes that for Marx,

There is a material reality to the illusion of the fetish, a point that emerges from Marx's dialectical effort to show that he fetishes of commodities, wealth, labour power, interest, rent, wages, profit and so on, are both materially grounded and illusory, mysterious and concrete. These fetishes and the powers they hold are all to real, yet the way we understand them is problematic, for they are inverted and appear perfectly natural.

While this is interesting and exposes some fascinating aspects to Marx's thought process, I wasn't completely convinced of the approach as a tool for understanding Marx. Boer seems to be arguing that what people (and indeed Marx) take from religion is a set of ideas constantly in tension with their surroundings that match their own reality.

Since one can argue (as Engels would) that these revolutionary movements use religious language as a way of expressing distinctly political purposes. But then the question must be: why this language and not another. Or rather, out of a range of possible languages why does theology remain on the agenda? Quite simply, theology as doctrine, as a system of thought, is torn with such tensions as well. I do not mean the proverbial paradoxes of theology that remain intellectual affairs, but the way in which those paradoxes arise form and articulate political and economic tensions.

Boer illustrates this with a discussion of the Letters of Paul. These allow "radical challenges to vested interest and power" for some readers because they argue that man [sic] gets justice through grace, not the law. There are many such examples, and Boer knows his Bible very well indeed. But I remained unconvinced as it seems to me more natural that those entering into criticism of their existence will reach for the examples and language they know best. 

Whether you agree or not with all of Boer's writing here, there is plenty of material to get to grips with, some lively discussions, plenty of humour and some interesting personal reflection from the author. Boer's conclusion in "revelation and revolution" however is worth quoting, along with the Engels he clearly celebrates:

Engels observes: 'But all this shows only, that these good people are not the best Christians, although they style themselves so; because if they were they would know the bible better, and find that, if some few passages of the bible may be favourable to Communism, the general spirit of its doctrines is, nevertheless, totally opposed to it, as well as to every rational measure'. For my purposes [Boer says], this is a crucial observation, since it marks Engels's recognition of political ambivalence in both the practice of Christianity and in the Bible. Oppression may be the dominant theme, but every now and then another, revolutionary line emerges.

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Wilson - The People and the Book: The Revolutionary Impact of the English Bible 1380-1611
Foster, Clark & York - Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism, From Antiquity to the Present
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