Albert Schweitzer: Repentance, the Beatitudes and Anti-Nationalism

Stan Moody:

Something is tragically missing in the faith life of American Evangelicals. Little by little, it is beginning to creep into the social network. Little by little, men and women of the Orthodox Christian faith are beginning to question a sect that believes in the Kingdom of God but has shoved it wholly into the future, permitting the unhindered co-worship of God and the American Dream of prosperity and success. 

Pride Leading to Lack of Faith in the Sovereignty of God:

It has been building for decades – maybe for even a century or more. Pride in having the unchallenged “Truth” about God and redemption has given rise to measuring God’s love by the size of the offerings, church attendance, and political polls in the quest for majority rule.

As a kid, Billy Graham-type evangelists were competing for converts: “If you died tonight, where would you wake up?”. Down they came by the millions to repeat the Sinner’s Prayer, being assured that they were safe for the rest of eternity. Some were, I suspect; most, I fear, were not. My friend, Buddy Spaulding, refers to this as “flannelgraph Christianity.” 

The Age of the Church Growth Movement:

All of this might have been salvageable had it not been for the emergence of the Moral Majority movement of the ‘80s, quickly followed by the Church Growth Movement. While evangelicals will readily deny any interest in politics, an objective observer would find inconsistency in the resultant drive to save souls by building a political base. 

Fading is our self-awareness as sinners saved by grace alone and the belief in the transformational power of God to make sacrificial lovers of His people. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7) fades off into the eschaton. 

Hope Emerges in the Unexpected Places:

Seeking a more rational path to Christian hope, theologian/physician/organist/medical missionary Dr. Albert Schweitzer surfaces, justly condemned by American Evangelicals for his rejection of the deity and resurrection of Jesus. I get that! He violates the biblical conditions for salvation summarized in Romans 10:9,10. Especially troubling has been Schweitzer’s portrayal of Jesus as a failed apocalyptic prophet who, 

…lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and he throws himself on it. Then it does turn, and crushes him.1  

In Schweitzer’s theology, Jesus attempted to wrench history into an awareness of the Kingdom of God, an amorphous reality necessary to open to humanity success at living. Schweitzer’s Jesus emerges as super-human with an apocalyptic mission which, while reflecting belief in the sovereign plan of a creator God, leaves its execution in the hands of enlightened humans.

The Kingdom as the Godly Alternative to Self-Righteous Chaos:

Schweitzer discovers the Kingdom of God as both a present and future reality, largely rejected by an evangelical community that places the Kingdom in the wholly-future. Sadly, while he sees the Kingdom to be of divine origin, he rejects the resurrected Jesus as God’s instrument of access to hope and citizenship in that Kingdom. 

Despite all that, Schweitzer’s Kingdom of God differs from that of American Evangelicals as the present, dynamic, victorious alternative to national government here and now:

Earthly rule, because it depends upon force, is an emanation of the power of ungodliness. Authority in the Kingdom of God, where the power of this world is destroyed, signifies emanation from the divine power. Only he can be the bearer of such authority who has kept himself free from the contamination of earthly rule.2

It would seem that Schweitzer’s vision of the Kingdom derives from a belief in the inherent goodness of mankind awaiting recovery. American Evangelicals, on the other hand, while adhering to a belief in our inherent sinfulness, offer little hope beyond the either/or world of politics and the Sinner’s Prayer. 

Enter the Sermon on the Mount: 

For Schweitzer, the Kingdom of God was to be established on earth as an “ethical society”, whereby self-sacrifice through the Passion of Jesus would be the inaugural act. The result was to initiate a new morality of “self-humiliation and meekness of service”3 as set forth in the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount4 (Matt 5:1-12). His explanation of the new morality:

The ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is therefore repentance. The new morality, which detects the spirit beneath the letter of the Law, makes one meet for the Kingdom of God. Only the righteous can enter the Kingdom of God.5

The Beatitudes, then, set forth the moral parameters of the holiness that it takes to achieve admission into the Kingdom, chief among which is “poverty of spirit.” The ethics of Jesus mark the beginning of a process of perfection that “is to be supernaturally brought about.”6 

It amazes that such a contortion of events might be construed through rejection of the deity of Christ and yet be so close to the biblical doctrine of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. While I am an ardent fan of Schweitzer, we have no other choice than to view his life of missionary service as a self-sacrificial attempt to earn admission to the Kingdom. We are reminded of how much easier it would have been to enter the Kingdom of God through the God-man, Jesus.

Final Thoughts:

We have Schweitzer with a riveting perspective on the Kingdom of God, but without a Savior. He replaces the person and work of Jesus with self-humility and meekness of service, character traits that are consistently portrayed in the Scriptures as humanly unattainable.

We have American Evangelicals with a Savior, Jesus, but with a wholly-future Kingdom. Citizenship in the Kingdom devolves into a future hope, which renders Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount irrelevant, other than as a code of ethics incapable of being honored.  

Combine the evangelicals’ deity of Jesus with Schweitzer’s Kingdom of God and anti-nationalism, and you are left with a people wholly dependent on God for transformation into the image of His Son. 

Schweitzer depends on super-humanity for salvation; American evangelicals depend on American government for earthly hope. Is it possible to slide a sheet of paper between the two? 

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1 Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1948), p. 370-371.

2 Albert Schweitzer, The Mystery of the Kingdom of God (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985, p.41.

3 Ibid., p. 38

4 Ibid., p. 30.

5 Ibid., p. 54

6 Ibid., p. 57.