II: THE DUNKERS AND THE DANE (Continued)

IV. The World Well Lost

A. Nonconformity to the World

To keep oneself pure and unspotted from the world
is the task and doctrine of Christianity--
would that we did it.1

What was said in paganism and Judaism,
that to see God is to die,
or at least to become blind or dumb
and the like, is expressed ethically in Christianity as a task:
to die to the world
is the condition for seeing God.2

Woe, woe to the Christian Church
if it would triumph in this world, for then it is not
the Church that triumphs, but the world has triumphed.
Then the heterogeneity of Christianity and the World
is done away with, the world has won, Christianity lost.
... And the day when Christianity
and the world become friends
Christianity is done away with.3

The actual phrase "nonconformity to the world" (based on Romans 12:2) is not Kierkegaardian nor is it found in eighteenth century Brethren literature. In the nineteenth century it became the technical term by which the Brethren identified their doctrine, although by this time the doctrine itself had deteriorated until its primary emphasis was a legalistic prescription of a standard mode of dress and its secondary emphasis the legalistic prohibition of such things as jewelry, dancing, and card-playing. However, eighteenth century writings do not display this narrow moralism and do not so much as mention the wearing of a peculiar garb. The nineteenth century had the term, but the eighteenth century had much the better understanding of its meaning.

The closest the eighteenth century Brethren came to using the phrase itself was in a "big meeting" (probably the regular Annual Meeting of 1791) reported in the diary of Mack Junior. The principal query brought to that gathering was: "How could one, here in Germantown, resist by a united effort the very injurious evil which by conformation to the world is wrought upon the minds of the young, as we are living so near to the capital of the country."4 Yet it is plain that the doctrine itself was part of Brethrenism from the beginning. Mack Senior had written: "This body or church is separated from the world, from sin, from all error, yes, from the entire old house of Adam-that is, according to the inner part of faith.... However, this body or the church of Christ still walks outwardly in a state of humiliation in this wicked world."5

A prominent corollary of nonconformity--mentioned here by Mack and to be closely paralleled by S.K.--is that in contrast to the life of the world the life of the Christian is a state of humiliation." This point was made with more emphasis in a hymn by John Price:

Let us, with lot, flee "the Sodom of this world."...
	Let us not act as does the world
But seek only to he despised.
	Let us not question this;
Let us look to heaven
	And despise the tumult of the world,
Accepting all the disgrace.6

Nonconformity was a particularly strong theme with Michael Frantz.7 But it was Sauer Junior who picked up a little different facet of the belief, this dealing with the Christian's relationship to worldly government. The Sauers felt obliged to include in their almanacs the court calendar for the year; they also felt obliged to accompany that calendar with a little poem making it plain that the courts were no place for a Christian to be found. We presume that Sauer Junior himself was the author of the one for 1767:

[Christians] must, as [Christ's] servants,
	Proceed here according to His example
And highly honor His practices
	And claims, and stand within them.
Therefore they cannot become citizens
	Here in this vale of misery,
Because they are ransomed from the earth
	Through a great election of grace....
They let cloak and mantle go,
	And rather do without clothing
Than in their years as pilgrims
	Mingle in the quarrels of the citizenry....
They have never in anything opposed
	The authorities who are appointed....
They will not readily sue anyone....
	In poverty, shame, ridicule, and derision,
[The Christian] is known for his patience.
	The citizens of this world and time
Can never he peaceful for long;
	Their self-interest teaches them to fight and quarrel;
They will have their rights and splendor.8

There are here several ideas that merit comment. Nonconformity follows as a direct corollary of Nachfolge, the imitation of Christ; this connection will show up as clearly in S.K. as in the Brethren. The Christian's life on earth customarily is typified in some such terms as "this vale of misery"; this is as true with S.K. as with the Brethren, although in neither case is it accurate to assume that this judgment leads to a "joyless" concept of the Christian faith. The note about the Christian not opposing appointed authorities is a very typical Brethren theme, actually an emphatic ingredient of the very doctrine of nonconformity. The Christian is to live above the law, and when the law would require him to do something contrary to the will of God he is to defy that particular law, but he has absolutely no intention of undermining the principle of law itself or questioning the right of secular authority to govern the world and to govern him to the extent that he is in the world. But the principle of the world is "self-interest," the struggle for one's own rights and privileges, and of this the Christian wants no part.

It was Mack Junior who picked up another basic point of contrast between the Christian and the world, the complete divergence as to what is valued as "treasure":

Say, what is richer
	Than the poverty
Which an the cross in Jesus' wound.
	By the thief was found?
Christ's poverty
	Makes us rich and free!
But whoever still tarries
	With the treasure of the world,
He cannot find this treasure.9

And Jacob StoIl put the thought into stark and eloquent terms when he wrote:

Nothing is the lust of the world; nothing is the world;
	Nothing is honor; nothing is gold;
Nothing are the dazzling things of this world--
	Often they make the eyes dark.10

Kierkegaard, for his part, drove deep the cleavage in terms as intransigent as any used by the Brethren:

'He must either hate the one and love the other, or he must hold to the one and despise the other.' Consequently love to God is hatred to the world, and love for the world is hatred toward God; consequently this is the tremendous issue--either love or hate. Hence this is the place where the world's most terrible conflict is to be fought. And where is this place? In a man's heart.11 [Cf. Cf. S.K.'s words quoted above]

But, it immediately will be objected, there is a great difference. No matter how S.K. be quoted, it is quite obvious that, in sharp contrast to the simple Brethren, he was in many ways a prime example of worldly sophistication, as he said of himself, possessing "intellectual gifts (especially imagination and dialectic) and culture in superabundance."12 There is no denying that S.K. was such a person. His everyday mode of life was what men of the world would call "gracious," what the Brethren would have called "luxurious." In matters of art, music, theater, philosophy, learning--culture, in short--he was a crowning achievement of Society, a "humanist," a Christian humanist par excellence. This aspect of S.K. is conspicuous, and it is clearly the case that many students have been drawn to him precisely because of his urbanity and sophistication: here is a model of culture and Christianity united in an attractive combination where each complements and enhances the other.13 Walter Lowrie--who at this point definitely seems to be creating Kierkegaard in his own image--waxes eloquent about S.K.'s culture, concluding:

He remained a Humanist when he became a serious Christian, and for this reason, he was essentially a Catholic, as Father Przywara recognizes. And for this very reason Barth rejected him. It was owning to his Humanism that he disdained every sectarian movement however zealous.14

Whether Lowrie fully understood Przywara and Barth is a question that need not detain us, and for the high Anglican Lowrie to find both humanism and Catholicism attractive in S.K. is not particularly surprising, but the question as to whether S.K. actually was a "humanist" demands the most careful consideration.

The very concept "humanism" is an ambiguous one and needs to be defined. Humanism can imply simply a deep concern for human welfare. In this sense Christianity is itself "the true humanity," as S.K. suggested; and he, along with every other Christian, was essentially a humanist. This, obviously, is not what Lowrie has in mind. In another sense, humanism is a faith, an alternative to Christianity that finds life's ultimate values not in God but in human achievement. In this sense neither S.K. nor any other Christian could be a humanist. Finally, and this certainly is what Lowrie intends, Christian humanism is the position of those who value human culture along with their Christian faith, who see cultural values as integrally related to the faith, indeed as a vital part of the faith. It is in this sense that S.K. is identified as a humanist and in this sense that we are concerned to deny the attribution.

Part of the difficulty arises through an illegitimate identification of S.K. with his pseudonyms. The pseudonyms were humanists, openly and avowedly such, and for that matter not even Christian humanists. But S.K. was not his pseudonyms; in fact the pseudonyms were designed for the express purpose that S.K. might delineate a position qualitatively lower than that with which he personally would identify. The humanism of the pseudonyms is beside the point as to whether Søren Kierkegaard was a humanist or not.

More of the difficulty stems from a too-easy reading of the fact that S.K. was cultured--without inquiring about the attitude in which he held that culture. A careful study will show that S.K. had these things "as though not," as though he had them not.15 And because S.K. had these things "as though not," because he attributed no real value or significance to them, he stands ideologically much closer to those who have them not than to those who do have them. The fact that he had all these "advantages" was, in S.K.'s own eyes, entirely incidental, worth nothing. As he saw it, the only real value of these gifts was that they enabled him to capture the attention of actual humanists that he might lead them out of humanism into Christianity. S.K. called himself "a spy in a higher service,"16 and he meant it with the utmost seriousness. He was not what he appeared, a man of the world; and it is tragic that the disguise has been taken for the real man.

S.K.'s most revealing statements in this regard cannot he fully appreciated unless one senses what Socrates meant to him. For S.K., Socrates represented the highest achievement of the human spirit; he stood as a symbol of the world at its best, the finest and noblest the world could offer. Kierkegaard was too modest to claim the following statement as his own) so he put it into quotation marks with a "so might the individual speak." However, the translator Lowrie (undoubtedly correctly) identifies it as a personal profession of faith--yet ultimately it militates against any identification of S.K. as a humanist:

I have admired that noble, simple wise man of ancient times [Socrates]; ... but I have never believed on him, that never occurred to me. I count it also neither wise nor profound to institute a comparison between him, the simple wise man, and Him on whom I believe--that I count blasphemy.

Would S.K. appreciate being treated in a volume entitled The Hemlock and the Cross?

As soon as I reflect upon the matter of my salvation, then is he, the simple wise man, a person highly indifferent to me, an insignificance, a naught.17

And what of the hemlock, specifically?

Lo, to be executed, humanly speaking, innocently, and yet die with a witticism on his lips, that is a proud victory, that is the triumph of paganism; and it is also the highest victory in the relationship between man and man, that is, please note, if God is left out, if all of life and its greatest scenes are still at bottom a game, because God does not participate; for if He is present, then life is earnest.18

When he deeply and seriously calls Socrates "a naught," calls his heroic death "at bottom a game," it seems apparent that culture in general never could stand high enough with S.K. to justify his being called a "humanist," whether Christian or otherwise. "... Among those born of women no one has arisen greater...; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (Mt. 11:11)--this is not the stance of humanist.

The real Kierkegaard was an antihumanist, staging the most effective critique of humanism ever made--and that directed particularly against so-called Christian humanism. He declared in so many words that his own aesthetic accomplishments were a feint19 and evaluated the greatest of these in terms of the light it threw upon Christianity by way of contrast.20 His considered judgment of Christian humanism was stated with utmost clarity: "It is not difficult to see that culture makes men insignificant, perfects them as copies, but abolishes individuality."21 "[The] culture and civilization [which Christendom has produced through the centuries] has at the same time produced a development of rational understanding which is in the process of identifying being a Christian with culture, and with intelligence, desirous of a conceptual understanding of Christianity. This is where the struggle must come, and will be fought in the future."22 "Fought in the future," S.K. said. Could it be that his critique has relevance when, under the aegis of an avant-garde concept of "secular Christianity," there is a theological movement which rather consciously is feeling after a new liaison with sophisticated culture? And if so, is it not ironic that one of the names often invoked in this movement is that of Søren Kierkegaard?

S.K.'s concern hegan to show itself as early as Either/Or, not too appropriately in the very mouth of "A," the aesthete:

This is part of the confusion which in our age asserts itself in so many ways: we look for a thing where we ought not to look for it, and what is worse, we find it where we ought not to find it; we wish to he edified in the theater, aesthetically impressed in church, we would be converted by novels, get enjoyment out of books of devotion, we want philosophy in the pulpit, and the preacher in the professorial chair23

S.K.'s later analyses were even more powerful:

In established Christendom the natural man has managed to have his own way. There is no endless contrast between the Christian and the worldly. The relation of the Christian to the worldly is conceived, at the most, as a potentialization (or more exactly under the rubric, culture), always directly; it is simply a direct comparative, the positive being civic rectitude.... One starts with the worldly. Keeping an eye upon civic rectitude (good-better-best) one makes oneself as comfortable as possible with everything one can scrape together in the way of worldly goods--the Christian element being stirred in with all this as an ingredient, a seasoner, which sometimes serves merely to refine the relish.... Christianity is related directly to the world, it is a movement without budging from the spot--that is to say, feigned movement.24 Men have confused Christianity in many ways, but among them is this way of calling it the highest, the deepest, and thereby making it appear that the purely human was related to Christianity as the high or the higher to the highest or the supremely highest. href="notes8a.html#f25">25

It is a little difficult to understand why the author of such lines should be classed as a Christian humanist.

S.K. was concerned to condemn not only the coarse, blatant, repulsive sort of worldliness, but concentrated upon it in its most attractive and elegant forms--which he was convinced actually were the more sinister. Indeed, his critique would seem to constitute a blanket indictment of the world. In a sense it becomes that, but only because Christian values are so preeminent that all other values--which precisely is to say worldly values--come to be of evil in their tendency to attract or distract the ultimate loyalty of men. As S.K. put it:

[The world] is not absolutely evil, as it is sometimes passionately represented, nor is it untainted, but to a certain degree is both good and evil. But Christianly understood, this 'to a certain degree' is of evil.26

S.K.'s was not a blind rage against the world; he saw clearly that the issue was one of ultimate loyalty, and he pointed his charges at specific evils. Interestingly enough, some of the qualities he attacked are the very ones that many readers value highly in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard.

For one thing, the entire tenor and mood of polite culture is opposed to that of Christianity:

Christianity should never be communicated in the medium of tranquillity (unless the person who does it would dare to affirm that now all and every one are Christians). That is why being busy with art, poetry, philosophy, science and lecturing constitutes a sin in the Christian sense--for how dare I indulge myself pottering about with such things in peace and quiet?27

For another, S.K. would not be among those who in our day are so eager to look to the artists and literati as being unconscious, or at least incipient, prophets and theologians:

If, therefore, one occasionally presumes to understand his life with the help of the poet and with the help of Christianity's explanation, presumes the ability to understand these two explanations together--and then in such a way that meaning would come into his life--then he is under a delusion. The poet and Christianity explain things in opposite ways.28

And for still another, S.K. despised the quality which shows signs of becoming dominant in some sectors of contemporary theology:

What the world most highly and unanimously honors is cleverness or acting cleverly. But to act cleverly is precisely the most contemptuous of all... To act cleverly is basically compromise, whereby one undeniably gets farthest along in the world, wine the world's goods and favor, the world's honor, because the world and the world's favor are, eternally understood, compromise. But neither the eternal nor the Holy Scriptures have ever taught any man to go far or farthest of all in the world.29

The forthrightness, deliberate naivete, and simple honesty prized by the early Brethren would have appealed to S.K.

A very important element in S.K.'s thought was his social criticism, his insight into the dangers of technological and urban depersonalization, mass man, the tyranny of mob culture, etc. This part of S.K.'s message generally has been well heard and appreciated, and we need here note only that these insights grew out of his nonconformist viewpoint. But his basic position was thoroughly religious and Christian in character, and it is this aspect that is particularly germane to our study.

At heart, nonconformity to the world is simply the obverse of the doctrine of den Enkelte, for it is a person's incorporation into the world crowd that prevents him from existing singly before God.30 Even so, although it is the world that keeps him from becoming den Enkelte, this is only because the man himself would have it that way.31 And thus the choice of refusing to be conformed to the world and the free venture of faith in which den Enkelte chooses himself before God--these two are one and the same choice. S.K. put the matter in one of his most moving passages:

A choice between God and the world. Do you know anything greater to set together for a choice! Do you know any more overwhelming and humbling expression for God's indulgence and pardon towards man, than that He sets Himself, in a certain sense, on an equal line of choice with the world, merely in order to allow the man to choose? ... If God has condescended to he that which may be chosen, then man must also choose--God will not suffer Himself to be mocked.... No one is to be able to say: "God and mammon, since they are not so unconditionally different, one may in his choice combine both"--for this is to refrain from choosing.... If anyone does not understand this, then it is because he will not understand that God is present in the moment of the choice, not in order to look on, but in order to be chosen.... But the right beginning begins with seeking the kingdom of God first; it begins therefore precisely with letting the world be lost.32

No matter how harsh S.K.'s diatribes against the world, no matter how complete his indictment of it, these proceed not from any sort of sadism, not from his melancholy, not from any judgment about the inherent evilness of the created world as such, but from a positive valuation of what God has offered in offering himself to man, then from a realization of the sort of absolute commitment and loyalty such an offer demands in response, and thus, finally, from the passionate hatred of anything that would obstruct such response. S.K.'s doctrine of nonconformity, when seen for what it is, shows up as highly positive rather than negative in its total impress.

Also, this consideration explains why having something "as though not" can be as effective as actually having it not. In many cases the thing is not evil in itself but only in the allegiance it attracts; thus to hold it "as though not," as a thing of no value, is effectually to depotentiate it as a threat to the God relationship. And for that matter one easily can love the world even while possessing few if any things of the world; "as though not" truly may he a more radical solution than "having them not." Thus "nonconformity to the world" is a much more accurate designation for S.K.'s position than would be "renunciation of the world."

Admittedly, nonconformity is a much more demanding and a much less stable position than renunciation; it requires a fine balance that is anything but easy to maintain, as is the case with every dialectic. But, for instance, what qualities and things can be retained "as though not" and what must be renounced as absolute evils? To what extent can one "have" and continue to "have" these things without coming to them? At what point does honesty compel one actually to take leave of the thing in order to avoid its snares? Nonconformity, as all dialectic, can deteriorate so easily--and without it immediately becoming apparent what has happened. Thus, in the one direction, as S.K. contended was the case with his own church, everyone could and did "have" to his heart's content as long as he gave lip service to the principle of having "as though not." In the other direction, as was the case with nineteenth century Brethrenism, the demands of nonconformity could be met by the outward renunciation of a certain well-defined list of "things." S.K. and the eighteenth century Brethren, we suggest, represented the dialectic in its true character of tension and balance.

S.K. did not give a great deal of attention to following out his conception of nonconformity as it regards the Christian's relationship to the state. However, what he did say was very much in line with the sectarian Brethren position. In the first place, "Christianity has not wanted to hurl governments from the throne in order to set itself on the throne; in an external sense it has never striven for a place in the world, for it is not of this world."33 Second, nonconformity in regard to government necessarily involves the issue of freedom of conscience. This need not, however, imply a pleading before, or bringing pressure upon, government in an attempt to win the concession, as though this freedom were in the hands of the state to give rather than being the innate possession of the individual. Twentieth century Brethrenism has tended to misinterpret its sectarian heritage at this point. But S.K. delineated the posture precisely when he said:

Ideally speaking it may be perfectly true that every man should be given freedom of conscience and freedom of belief, etc.... [But] the truth is that anyone who is so subjective that he only deliberates with God and with his own conscience, and is able to persevere, does not care a fig whether there are laws or regulations or not; to him it is only so much cobweb.... If it is really conscience, conscience alone, then your regulations be blowed--I should only laugh at them.... Ultimately no force can compel the spiritual, at the most it can oblige them to buy freedom at a higher price.34

This is exactly what it means to live above the law, submitting to it as an ordinance of God and a work becoming us to fulfill all righteousness--until a matter of conscience arises, a command of God--then "regulations he blowed," the Christian takes freedom of conscience whether the state sees fit to grant it or not.

In this connection one of the almost infallible hallmarks for distinguishing the sectarian view from the churchly is the interpretation of the Gospel incident in which the Pharisees asked Jesus about the tribute money. S.K. diverged radically from the Lutheran conception of the two realms and stated the sectarian understanding as well as it has ever been stated:

blockquote>'Then give to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor, and to God what is God's.' Infinite indifference! Whether the Emperor be called Herod or Shalmanezer, whether he be Roman or Japanese, is to Him the most indifferent of all things. But, on the other hand--the infinite yawning difference which He posits between God and the Emperor: 'Give unto God what is God's!' For they with worldly wisdom would make it a question of religion, of duty to God, whether it was lawful to pay tribute to the Emperor. Worldliness is so eager to embellish itself as godliness, and in this case God and the Emperor are blended together in the question, as if these two had obviously and directly something to do with each other, as if perhaps they were rivals one of the other, and as if God were a sort of emperor--that is to say, the question takes God in vain and secularizes Him. But Christ draws the distinction.35

Alongside the state, of course, stands the established church. S.K.'s position toward it forms the theme of a later chapter, but there is an interrelationship with his doctrine of nonconformity which can better be noted here. In the first place he was critical of the church for failing to promulgate nonconformity.36 But in the second place, and much more fundamental, the very constitution of an established church makes impossible any real concept of nonconformity to the world, for "if every baptized person is a Christian and baptized Christendom is pure Christianity, then the world does not exist at all in a Christian country."37 The logic is unimpeachable; where the churchly ideology is followed consistendy there is simply no way to define "the world," let alone produce an effective doctrine of nonconformity to it.

The interpretation of S.K. as a humanist, a man of the world, cannot be sustained; there is, however, a charge often leveled against him from the opposite quarter which also demands consideration--this the attribution to him of monastic asceticism. The problem is well posited in a statement by H. Richard Niebuhr, made in the course of his giving examples the "Christ against culture" ideology: "Monastic characteristics reappear in Protestant sectarians; and a Lutheran Kierkegaard attacks the Christendom of post-Reformation culture with the same intransigence that marks a Wiclif's thrust against medieval social faith.38

We, of course, concur heartily in this alignment of S.K. With the Protestant sectaries; we object just as heartily to the identification of S.K. and the sectaries with monasticism. Niebuhr's suggestion is much more adequate than calling S.K. a Christian humanist; and even his phrase "monastic characteristics" might be acceptable enough, if he would be quick to allow the very basic distinctions between monasticism and the Kierkegaard-sectarian position. That difference amounts to our earlier distinction between "renunciation of the world" and "nonconformity to the world": renunciation implies a leave-taking from all possible uses of the world; nonconformity, rather, a change of attitude toward, or evaluation of, the world. The difference is a very important one.

In the first place, nonconformity is in no way conceived as an act of merit or a work of supererogation. This aspect of Catholic monasticism simply was not in the thought of S.K. or the Brethren. In the second place, nonconformity is not asceticism in the customary sense of the word. There are no implications of dualism, of an evil (or at least, lower) realm encompassing physical reality, the body with its earthly needs and desires, which is then set over against the higher realm of the spirit. There are no suggestions about chastising the body for the good of the soul, about valuing punishment and deprivation for their own sakes, about giving up the comforts of life as a sacrifice to God. Nonconformity is not conceived as a sacrifice at all--any more than it is a "sacrifice" for a swimmer to shed his clothing before going in the water. He is merely doing what he can to make possible and to enhance the enjoyment of what he wants to do.

Thus, in the third place, the most significant distinction is that the nonconformist, even while struggling to he "not of" the world, is equally determined to remain "in" the world. Although completely opposed to adopting the world's standard of values, S.K. did not so much as imply any leaving of the world. Certainly he did not renounce the world of other people, advocating any lessening of the responsibility to love, serve, share, and live with them--and in a chapter to come we will see that he made this a positive duty. Neither did he renounce man's life in the natural institutions of society: family, business, community, state, or church. He made it clear that none of these dare be organized or valued so as to compete with one's unconditional allegiance to God, but he did not say that any and every participation in these institutions constitutes illegitimate evaluation.39

Kierkegaard, both through the pseudonyms and in his own name, was explicit in discounting monasticism for its tendency to desert the world.40 As we have noted he even brought this criticism against the Moravians, whom he otherwise credited with the purest Christianity he had seen. [See S.K.'s own words quoted above]. He was, however, adamantly against the way in which the church strove to justify its worldliness by making invidious comparisons with these:

And [Christ] remained in the world, He did not retire from the world, but He remained there to suffer. This is not quite the same thing as when in our age preachers inveigh against a certain sort of piety... which seeks a remote hiding-place, far from the world's noise and its distractions and its dangers, in order if possible in profound quiet to serve God alone.... Nowadays we do differently and better, we pious people, we remain in the world--and make a career in the world, shine in society, make ostentation of worldliness just like the Pattern, who did not retire cravenly from the world! ... No, it certainly is not the highest thing to seek a remote hiding-place where it might be possible to serve God alone; it is not the highest thing, as we can perceive in the Pattern; but even though it is not the highest (and really what business is it of ours that this other thing is not the highest?), it is nevertheless possible that not a single one of us in this coddled and secularized generation is capable of doing it.42

So S.K.'s position is equally distinguishable from churchly, humanistic world conformity on the one hand and monastic, ascetic world renunciation on the other; it would seem to be at one with the nonconformity of classic Protestant sectarianism.

The evidence is that the eighteenth century Brethren shared S.K.'s ideal and approximated it in practice. True, the nineteenth century Brethren did retreat to the "cloister" alternative, moving to the sequestered communities of the frontier to form what amounted to cultural and religious enclaves, although even this is not to imply that they thereby took up the total pattern of Catholic monasticism. But there is little indication that their eighteenth century predecessors had sought out seclusion. Admittedly they had fled Europe, although that was a case of persecution as much as forcing them out; and in America their rural situation and the language barrier did contrive to make them somewhat isolated. But if the examples of the Germantown leaders can be taken as a indication of their ideology, then the careers of men like Mack Junior and particularly the publisher Sauer Junior are evidence enough that these Dunkers had no intention of deserting the world.

"In the world but not of the world"--and the bond which most strongly ties the Christian into the world is the command to love. The positive explication of this theme will be the work of a succeeding chapter, but at one point S.K. stated the relationship so concisely that his words can be used both to sum up the discussion of nonconformity and to point ahead to its positive counterpart:

[The Apostles] had the frightful experience that love is not loved, that it is hated, that it is mocked, that it is spat upon, that it is crucified, in this world.... So surely, they swore eternal enmity to this unloving world? Ah, yes, in a certain sense, but in another aspect, no, no; in their love for God, in order that they might abide in love, they banded themselves, so to speak, together with God to love this unlovngg world.... And so the Apostles resolved, in likeness with the Pattern, to love, to suffer, to be sacrificed, for the sake of saving the unloving world. And this is love."43

Copyright (c) 1968