Hermann Kutter (1863–1931) was a Swiss Protestant theologian. Together with Leonhard Ragaz, he was one of the founders of Christian socialism in Switzerland. He was heavily influenced by Christoph Blumhardt. He combined Blumhardt's expectation of a coming Kingdom of God with a belief in socialist progress. He saw social democracy as a "tool" of the living God, and its followers as unwitting servants of God. He authored 11 books.

Biography

Early life and academic pursuits

Hermann Kutter, born on September 12, 1863, in Bern, Switzerland, was the son of Wilhelm Rudolf and Maria Albertine König. Raised in a pietistic household, Kutter's formative years were deeply influenced by the religious atmosphere of his family. His academic journey led him to study theology in Basel and Berlin, culminating in a Licentiate in Theology earned in 1896. Ordained in 1886, Kutter commenced his pastoral career, beginning in Vinelz in 1887 and later serving at Zürich's Neumünster from 1898 to 1926. His early inclination towards academia was evident, driven by a desire for a broader understanding of faith and spirituality.

Theological contributions and social engagement

Hermann Kutter's theological outlook was molded by encounters with thinkers like Christoph Blumhardt and philosophical influences from Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. Notably, his work "Das Unmittelbare, eine Menschheitsfrage" (1902) challenged prevailing theological intellectualism, advocating for a direct experience of the divine. Kutter's engagement extended beyond theology; in "Sie müssen" (1904), he expressed support for social democracy as a divine instrument. His publication "Wir Pfarrer" (1907) cautioned against narrow social pastoral activities, emphasizing the preaching of a living God. However, political differences emerged, leading to a distancing from Leonhard Ragaz during World War I. Despite this, Kutter's lasting impact on dialectical theology and his role as a prominent figure in Swiss religious socialism endure as key aspects of his legacy. In recognition of his contributions, he received an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Zurich in 1923.

Philosophy

Under the impression of a combination of the Christian expectation of the Kingdom of God, the life philosophies of the time, and the socialistic faith in the future of the younger Blumhardt, as well as the philosophy of German idealism, Kutter reached a dynamic view of God: God, who through Christ penetrates humankind and the world in eternal reality is the only reality of life. With this theocentric theology Kutter paved the way for so-called "dialectical theology" (Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Eduard Thurneysen). For Kutter, the return to "direct life" is completed in the history of humankind; socialism is a sign of this. But for Kutter this return to the direct is at the same time the meaning and goal of Christendom. For him, social democrats are instruments of the living God; "they must" proclaim to the world the judgment and the great turning point in their service to God, without realizing it themselves. Nonetheless, Kutter never joined the Social Democratic Party (as Leonhard Ragaz and Karl Barth did); neither did he identify the gospel with socialism. He was a pacifist.

<!-- (translated from http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/k/Kutter.shtml) Translation of article by Otto Herpel, published in "Das neue Werk" 1919: The Religious-Social Movement: HERMANN KUTTER Hermann Kutter, the actual founder of religious socialism and its most prominent and ruthless prophet, launched his compelling words shortly after 1900. The atmosphere which surrounded this challenge came from several different sources: a reformed Christianity in action, which had received its impulse from the young Neumann; the strong influence of Blumhardt's faith and active example; and the earliest pioneering work of the Swiss liberal theologians in promoting a positive view of social democracy. Hermann Kutter, born 1863 in Bern, the son of an engineer, was pastor in Vinelz in 1887 and pastor in the Neumünster in Zürich from 1898 on. His first book was published in 1897. Like his following work it was a scientific study on early Christian piety. Yet already in these books traces of his future message can be found. This comes more clearly to expression in the volume of sermons of 1901, Die Welt des Vaters [The Father's World], with its subtitle Geld oder Gott, Christentum oder Christus [Money or God. Christianity or Christ]. In 1902 he published Das Unmittelbare, eine Menschheitsfrage [What Lies Before Us, a question for mankind], where his message is intensified. But the actual religious-socialist point of view comes explicitly to the fore in his following main works. Sie Müssen [You Must] (1904) is a passionate defense of social democracy drawn from the experience of Christian faith. Gerechtigkeit, ein altes Wort an die moderne Christenheit [Righteousness, an old word to the modern Christian World] (1905) is an interpretation of Romans 1-8, from our time and for our time with its tangle of social problems. Wir Pfarrer [We Pastors] (1907), in the same vein as his previous writings, is an accusation against pastors and a prodding of their consciences that verges on injustice. Die Revolution des Christentums (1908) [The Revolution of Christianity] is a most brilliant explanation of his great, wonderful, and fundamental conviction that love is the only truly revolutionary power in the world. Reden an die deutsche Nation [Address to the German Nation] (1916) contains basic warnings to the German nation at war. From time to time other articles were published in Neue Wege [New Ways]. What does Kutter say in all these writings? The central recognition that gave him his starting point is genuinely prophetic--a new experience of God. A thousand times he puts it into expression: "The living God." In this he is very aware of a great and sharp contrast between the living God and the traditional church of present-day Christianity, which does not know this God. The living God used to be there earlier, in the early Christian and Reformation times, but the church did not hold on to him as a living God and made him little by little into an idol. God became a mere devotional object, a matter of frequent crooked dealings with sin, redemption, and grace; the servant of egoistic interests for the salvation of one's own soul; a general excuse for the need of the destitute: a bogeyman making inexplicable decisions; a comfortable cushion for our inadequacy in the fight that Christ demands against sin, suffering, and misery in this world. Therefore the God of today's Christianity is a dead God. "We repeat, Christendom does not know the living God!" All its worship of God is false. For in truth, God is a living God. "Should not the same God, who works in the inner life, also change the outer form of the world? Should not the One who through the sharpness of his word cuts the root of sin in our hearts, also use his sharpness where sin has spread its rank growth into our economic life? Does God make a distinction between inner and outer life? Does not his energy exist in every corner of His boundless creation? Is not everything inspired by his invisible Word? Yet you want to prevent shattering the community of men when sin leads them to a false unity, and from building up a new united mankind in which justice dwells? "Should God inactively and idly look on, while helpless masses go under and criminal imposters set their feet on the necks of the poor? Should he placidly allow land and soil-- this inexhaustible earth which God has given for men's delight and joy--to be a monopoly, of a self-indulgent class, while other people have to beg bread? Should this madness, plotted by the cunning of mammon, go unpunished on its predatory rampage from one part of the earth to another? Why do you avoid these questions? Why do you say they have nothing to do with the Gospel? Does not the same fire that blazes at the root burn the branches and twigs to ashes too? Shouldn't the same lips that denounce greed, attack what arises from it? Can he who condemns greed as sin, let our conditions of economic production pass?"--'But', you say, 'greed rules the world in any case. Sin and destruction cannot be banished from this world. Only when the last day breaks will these conditions change and be made new? I have often heard you talk like that. Allow me to answer: 'Such talk, is a sign of nothing but faithlessness and godlessness.' "Does faith in Jesus mean nothing more than consolation when we have sinned and hope for the heavenly home? Are not all the powers of heaven revealed in him? Doesn't he say that he has come to give life in all its fullness? Doesn't he want to redeem the world? Doesn't he show mammon, the prince of these earthly conditions, as the opponent of God? Is his love only a gentle breeze--or is it a blazing fire which John the Baptist foresaw and which consumes the chaff?" "In Jesus is the living God!" "Believing in Jesus means saying to sin, 'You have to stop;' and to evil, 'You must disappear.' Believing in Jesus means protesting against the powers which oppose him. Believing in Jesus means being grounded in the strength of the living God,--God who is coming, and is leading all eras toward his justice. Believing in Jesus means being on fire for justice and against injustice, embracing suffering to its depths, not regarding it with cool consideration. It means we cannot do anything else than give witness and cry out against evil. It means to make what is impossible become true, to bring the unattainable within reach, to give what has never existed a present reality. For Jesus, and only Jesus, makes everything new. Jesus, and only Jesus, has instilled into men belief in the kingdom of heaven on earth! What kind of Jesus would he be if he acknowledged the ideals of our presentday churches as his final word? To believe in Jesus means to love. But love burns and illumines. God is love, and God is a consuming fire." It is clear, that this living God demonstrates his life in continually creating something new, continually waging a fight. He is always drawing near; he is always creating anew. All who follow him are fellow fighters and fellow creators, never satisfied or at rest in present conditions. The church holds fast to the present ungodly conditions, and this by itself proves that it has a dead God. Even Naumann--and this typifies Kutter's vigor in a flash--falls under this verdict. "The shortcoming in Naumann's Christianity is his complete ignorance of the apocalyptical in the coming of Jesus, and the efforts to fit Jesus into a world which he (Naumann) knows is in sharpest contrast." The question arises, where did Kutter find and discern this very living and "zealous" God? He can supply his own answer: "Everything depends on an understanding of the living God in the social problem. Here we perceive the importance and centrality of Kutter's concern for society in his whole experience of God. This is because social problems have a very special significance for him: They are not simply a combination of independent economic movements. "In social problems we are not dealing with something materialistic but with immortal souls, with human beings enslaved by material things, and therefore with the highest interest of mankind" It is a matter of fighting against the dominating power of material things, "against enslavement of free individuals under the materialistic power, against the power of possessions, which drives men apart in irreconcilable animosity. It is a matter of fighting against class distinction and casts, which have risen from the false evaluation of material goods, from judging and rating people according to how much money they have. It is a matter of fighting against everything which has forced itself as a dead and deadening power between God and men, and between one man and another in our human fellowship:" What causes this fight? What makes it fundamentally necessary? The root cause is that God himself took up the fight against mammon, sin, and misery--he, the living God, who is life and love. Therefore social problems cannot be solved without God. Have this clearly in mind, however: we cannot do it without the living God, but we can leave aside the God of the churches. For the God of the churches is a dead God, a God preserving things as they are, and, by submitting to the lies of this world and its misery and sin, avoiding any change. Instead of this we say, "If there is a living God,--if, rather than a God enthroned above the stars, unconcerned about men's toil and struggle and satisfied by the homage regularly offered in church services, there is a God who takes the world and its destiny into his almighty hand, and transforms it according to his purpose--then everything will have to change. The crooked shall be made straight; what is high shall be made low; what is low shall be raised up; mountains have to fall and valleys to be lifted. Official worship services, led by priests and pastors according to set forms, are of no help. Public life, the state and society, nations, and all humanity will be reborn to new life. "Need and misery will disappear from among men; injustice will end; mammon, the lord of this world, will pale with terror and plunge from his golden throne to the dust.... Then streams of truth, light, and love will be poured out. Then hired pastors will no longer, in their embarrassed way, murmur little lectures about God in front of a scanty congregation. Not at all. God himself will speak to us in the stormwind of his judgements, in the spirit of his eternal truth." It goes without saying that the religious fire which strikes home to us in such words, must correspond to a definite living moral power-- a power which devotes its full energy to carrying out in action the recognition received from religious terms, to actively fulfilling the will of the living God. In fact this prophetic aspect does not fall short in Kutter's proclamation. You can gather this from the strength of the following words, "Suffering is not to be understood in a higher context. It is not to be understood at all. It must come to an end!" "We carry in our own bosom the revolution which will make everything new. In us slumbers the love to which nothing is impossible. The only impossibility is that this love should remain hidden forever and is never be raised to victorious power from out of the temporal grave." Following the ideas of the reform movement, Kutter finds in the concept of the kingdom of God the tangible form for all he understands and represents with so clear a view of his goal, all he hopes to attain through his labors in the service of the living God. Certainly, it will not be possible to present the inner structure of the kingdom of God in greater detail. We are too lacking in the living Spirit and therefore in the appropriate and meaningful language to express our recognitions. First and foremost is the tremendous demand made by the kingdom of God.... It is a matter of facing right around: not simply a few improvements here and there, but a new Spirit for Christianity as a whole. Just as the Spirit of former times runs through everything that is valued and in power today and the concrete examples are not important here, so the Spirit of the kingdom of God must express itself by creating from within ever new conditions--revelations of its intrinsic character and not always of principle importance in themselves...."Just as today selfishness permeates the whole of Christianity, so the new Spirit shall pour the life of God into our hearts and circumstances." Accordingly Kutter has no clearly outlined program; for him the kingdom of God does not depend on new settings, but on the right leading of the Spirit. Therefore he warns with good reason: "Do not be impatient and try too early to set up something that will happen only in its own time." But when at last the time comes, the whole world will experience a transformation; "love will be raised to the guiding principal of human existence on earth" and "justice will reign in all levels of creation." Everything we now see as a social concern for society is nothing other than the living God approaching to fight in the spirit of love for this complete justice. And here is the starting point for Kutter's positive evaluation of social democracy. It is the obvious consequence of this interpretation of the historic present. If the whole concern about social problems is nothing other than a result of God's fight for the kingdom of justice, then inevitably the living God will be seen most forcibly, and in the final analysis, only, where the fight for social justice is waged most vigorously and consistently. And this is the case in organized social democracy. So for Kutter's religious experience, God and social democracy are closely interconnected: for the present day the living God manifests himself in social democracy. It is unique, even ingenious, in what a simple, yet forceful way Kutter proves this point in the introduction of his book, You Must--a work that conveys with amazing power his conception of God in social democracy. He says; "The social democrats also hunger and thirst for just conditions--and are supposed to be godless! They fight for mercy--should they not obtain mercy? They hate what is mean, common, dirty and lustful--and why should they not be called God's children? They are abused and persecuted from all sides--and should God push them into hell? They don't gather treasures for themselves...,they declare war on mammon--why should they not belong to God and serve him? They are doing what God has demanded through his witnesses from the beginning: They actively take up the cause of the poor and enslaved--take it up as their one and only concern yet they are supposed to be without God! In fact, nothing throws a more glaring light on the godlessness of Christians than the attacks they make against social democracy."-->

Pastoral visionary

Beyond Hermann Kutter's academic pursuits, his pastoral career and social advocacy were integral to his life's work. Ordained in 1886, he began his pastoral journey in Vinelz in 1887, cultivating a reputation for connecting with congregants. His subsequent move to Zürich's Neumünster in 1898 marked a significant chapter in his pastoral service, where he continued to impact the lives of those he served. Kutter's approach to pastoral care was characterized by a balance between spiritual guidance and a commitment to addressing social issues. In the early 20th century, his work "Sie müssen" (1904) notably expressed his positive stance towards social democracy, framing it as a tool aligned with divine intentions. Additionally, his active involvement with organizations like the Knights of St. John and YMI, along with volunteering for Meals on Wheels, underscored his dedication to community well-being.

Theological pioneer

Hermann Kutter's intellectual legacy extended far beyond his immediate pastoral and social engagements. Inspired by the eschatological ideas of Christoph Blumhardt, Kutter's theological approach emphasized a clear distinction between the Kingdom of God and the worldly realm. His writings, such as "Das Unmittelbare, eine Menschheitsfrage" (1902), were instrumental in shaping early dialectical theology, influencing subsequent theologians like Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Eduard Thurneysen. Kutter's commitment to theological renewal and his insistence on the immediate experience of God left an indelible mark on the theological landscape of his time. Despite political differences and theological debates, Kutter's enduring influence is evident in the continued exploration of his ideas by scholars and theologians in the realms of religious socialism and dialectical theology.