3 Foundational Differences Between Critical Theory and Christianity

An Engagement with Critical Theory

I suggest that critical theory can be understood rightly in light of three key theological categories:

1. Creation and reality
2. Sin and the human dilemma
3. Redemption, history, and eschatology

I argue that critical theory has its own understanding of creation and reality, its own understanding of sin and the human dilemma, and its own understanding of redemption, history, and eschatology.

Creation and Reality

At the heart of a Christian vision of things is an affirmation that we live in a created world. I want to suggest that critical theory offers its own understanding of creation, or reality. I am not suggesting that critical theory pondered and reflected on the world as created or that the critical theorists were interested in a theology or philosophy of the origin of the cosmos or the like. Rather, I offer a simpler argument: the critical theorists had their own explicit or implicit understanding of the nature of reality.

We should note here at the beginning one key difference between critical theory and a Christian understanding of things. Whereas the Christian faith posits a period in history that existed prior to sin or the fall, one seeks in vain for such an era in the view of critical theory. That is, in critical theory the problems or dilemmas that man faces have virtually always been around. In that sense, we might say that critical theory has a kind of conceptual link with gnosticism—for in gnosticism the world (or reality) as given (i.e., from the very beginning) is rife with problems, tensions, and conflict. For the Christian, however, such problems, tensions, and conflicts—including death and suffering—enter the scene after the entrance of sin into the world.

Herbert Marcuse and the Nature of Reality

Herbert Marcuse is one of the most fascinating of the critical theorists and, on my reading, one of the easiest to understand. He was born in 1898 and died in 1979. His reputation among American activists in the 1960s is legendary—something of a rock-star philosopher.

Marcuse wrote that civilization itself is foreign to and hostile to the nature of man. And bound up with civilization is work. Marcuse seemed to assume that without civilization and work, man could meet his deepest needs and be happy and satisfied. Here we see most likely the Marxist-inspired utopianism in which, in some mysterious way, food will be supplied, shelter will be found, and crime will be abolished.

Marcuse wrote, “Civilization is man’s subjugation to work”— and this is inherently a bad thing.¹ Indeed, “society” is intrinsically hostile to the good of the individual, since it imposes work (through what Marcuse described as an antihuman “reality principle”) on individuals who are naturally inclined toward peace and rest; Marcuse referred to this as “the very principle of repression.””²

What Does It Mean to Be Human?

Central to critical theory is its anthropology—its understanding of man or of what it means to be human. Critical theory tends to see man as something of a cog in a vast machine. This vast machine so shapes and controls and influences people that man has lost any real sense of freedom or individuality.

Critical theory has a view of metaphysics (or ultimate reality) that runs deeply through the thought and writings of the critical theorists. While Marcuse claimed to reject metaphysics, he nonetheless spoke repeatedly about reality. The critical theorists were somewhat agnostic about whether reality itself is “good.” But they were quite confident that “society,” on the whole, is generally a bad thing and tends to subjugate the individual. Because society and civilization “condition” individuals, they are really a net loss. There is no Edenic realm or era that has now been corrupted. Rather, the various problems and pathologies of life are simply a part of the structures of reality, suggesting something of a gnostic element in critical theory.

A Christian Critique

On a theological level, the frustration, nervousness, skepticism, and hostility toward “society” might be what emerges when one notices or recognizes the pain, unfairness, and awkwardness that exists in so many social relations but does not have an understanding of the goodness of creation, combined with the reality that sin has tainted, corrupted, and marred this world and life in this world. In short, critical theory does not have a larger theological framework of creation–fall–redemption– consummation against which to interpret and make sense of life in the world. The doctrine of sin helps the Christian realize that life is not heaven yet, and it is understandable—if nonetheless tragic—that much of our current existence is lived behind our own veil of tears, as we await the face-to-face vision Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 13:12.

Rather than seeing civilization as inherently hostile to human well-being, the Christian faith posits a prefall era, in which “civilization” (the union of the first human pair) is a good thing and in which this union of man and woman is pictured—at least in Genesis 1 and 2—as a part of the good order created by God.

Sin and the Human Dilemma

Critical theorists most certainly had their own particular way of construing and articulating the problems of modern man. Let us return to Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse’s magnum opus is his 1964 book One-Dimensional Man.³ While the book is often difficult to grasp, the central thesis is repeated numerous times in various ways. Essentially, twentieth-century man, who in 1964 was working and living in what Marcuse called “advanced industrial society,” was so shaped and marked by this industrial society that he often did not grasp his own servitude and slavery. In the present age, technological society has been so successful (wildly successful) that it has created the conditions under which the typical working man and woman no longer see or grasp the myriad ways they are oppressed.

According to Marcuse, while man is oppressed, the technological advance has been so successful that many people really do not grasp the oppressive condition in which they live. We have been “conditioned” so thoroughly that we do not recognize our dilemma: We are, at some level, unaware of “the depth of the preconditioning which shapes the instinctual drives and aspirations of the individuals and obscures the difference between false and true consciousness.”⁴

In short, modern man is stuck—and stuck in a serious way. People have been so conditioned by the surrounding culture that they do not even recognize that they are oppressed. But this leads to a key question, which Marcuse asked: “How can the people who have been the object of effective and productive domination create the conditions of freedom?”⁵ For Marcuse, the goal was autonomy (being a law to oneself) rather than heteronomy (being subject to a law outside oneself).

A Christian Critique

In Romans 1 Paul argues that all people know God. What can be known about God “is plain to them” (Rom. 1:19); God “has shown it to them” (Rom. 1:19); even God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived” (Rom. 1:20); indeed, “they knew God” (Rom. 1:21). But in their suppression of this knowledge, “they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Rom. 1:21). Thus, self-deception is a reality and a category the Christian can and should affirm, but it must be construed, understood, and conceptualized within an overarching biblical-theological framework that takes into consideration a biblical theology of God, man, sin, the person and work of Christ, redemption, soteriology, the church, and last things.

But critical theory’s conception of self-deception seems to misfire at a number of points. The heart of man’s problem, it seems, is that he is conditioned by “society” or “the market system.” Man is the innocent creature, caught in a conditioning world in relationship to which he seems to have virtually no ability to exercise any true agency. Is this a kind of Manichaean world in which reality is by nature evil and over which man has no real redemptive solution besides revolution? In an odd way, man seems absolved of any responsibility for his current dilemma. Man may play a role in the regenerative work of revolution, but man is not fundamentally guilty or culpable for the dire situation in which he finds himself.

The Christian, like the critical theorist, looks at the world and laments the suffering and the state of things. But the Christian, in seeking to understand the world and its various sufferings and decay, knows that the human heart with its deceitfulness is at the root of the human dilemma.

The Christian, in seeking to understand the world and its various sufferings and decay, knows that the human heart with its deceitfulness is at the root of the human dilemma.

Redemption, History, and Eschatology

There are a number of points at which critical theory addresses redemption, the future or a future hope, and some kind of eschatological goal it is seeking in history. Generally, when it is looking ahead to what it aspires to, it speaks in some kind of utopian or even revolutionary terms. To start, let us turn again to Herbert Marcuse.

Marcuse envisioned a situation in which there would be such an increase of material prosperity that there would no longer be a “struggle for existence.”⁶ At that point, he imagined, it would no longer be necessary (if it ever really was) for the reality principle—where people suppress their own deeper (generally sexual) desires so that there might be some kind of social order—to, in effect, trump the pleasure principle—or for the sensuous to bow to reason. In this projected situation of material abundance, a new reality would be able to emerge in which the impulse of “play” (including the ubiquitous nature of sensual or sexual pleasure) could be the central impulse. Even in this future realm, however, where the “struggle for existence” had been overcome, there would still be some need for work, to produce.⁷

To Marcuse, a new kind of knowledge is necessary, a knowledge that has been pushed to the side or repressed by civilization and the reality principle. This new knowledge or new state of being can generate “lasting erotic relationships among mature individuals,” as well as a kind of “libidinal rationality,” a rationality “which is not only compatible with but even promotes progress toward higher forms of civilized freedom.”⁸

While it can be a bit unsettling to read Marcuse, it is clear that he was seeking a new kind of social order that is highly sexualized. Thus, now that there is (ostensibly) such a high level of material well-being in the West, there is no real reason to allow the reality principle to continue to trump the pleasure principle. In short, civilization might move along just fine without the kind of sexual constraint seen as (perhaps?) necessary when one is simply trying to put food on the table. In the future situation, sexual libido can have a kind of unrestrained life. While the details are not clear in Marcuse’s vision, the desired (and hoped-for) outcome is quite clear. A new type of existence, a new “permanent order” in which Eros (the pleasure principle) is central to all reality, pervades all reality, and is given (virtually?) free rein.

A Christian Critique

Traditional Christianity has insisted that God’s kingdom is something that must come from outside us, but it really can come near, and we can live and dwell in it—at present in an incipient and preliminary way, while we anticipate the full flowering and growth and success of God’s kingdom over time.

If biblical Christianity proclaims that God accomplishes his redemptive purposes through the blood of his Son, critical theory teaches that all will be made right through revolutionary activity. And in the case of at least Marcuse, this revolutionary activity is tied inextricably to erotic pleasure. Thus, we are left with a kind of deracinated redemption through sexual activity and pleasure.

While recognizing that a non-Christian’s use of eschatological, and even messianic, imagery may in fact be driven by animus and a desire to mock, this does not annul the theological significance of the fact that unbelievers do indeed run into explicitly Christian theological verities, images, tropes, and concepts in their intellectual deliberations and reflections. It is also worth noting that critical theory is not bumping into this or that Christian theme and offering some vague affirmation of something Christians also believe. Rather, critical theory is reconfiguring—indeed, corrupting or perverting—central Christian truths, such as the nature of redemption.

Conclusion

To summarize, first, since critical theory appears to posit “sin” as something that has always existed (there is no prefall state), critical theory has no (or little) echo in its system of how things ought to have been. Second, since man’s problem is primarily economic, critical theory demonstrates a narrow and inadequate grasp of what needs to be done to set things right. Third, since critical theory is by definition atheistic, it denies any good, holy, loving, and righteous God who is reconciling people to himself and to one another. Even though critical theory cooled somewhat to traditional Marxism as it developed as a school, the reality, force, and power behind revolutionary redemption could almost not help but be some form of human-generated revolution. Nonetheless, historical materialism remained lurking in the background as critical theory developed. Critical theory ultimately appeals to revolution as the hope or means of redemption, but “redemption” appears to bow the knee to the prior commitment of critical theory or revolution.

This article is adapted from What Is Critical Theory?: A Concise Christian Analysis by Bradley G. Green.

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