DET

One of the recurrent points of discussion during the 20th century conversations between Marxists and Christians in German-speaking Europe had to do with the character of Prometheus – the titan from Greek mythology who stole fire from Zeus and the Olympian gods in order to give it to humanity. Within Marxist thought, Prometheus came to represent the Marxist criticism of religion and the conviction that humanity must reject religious authority and deity since it served only to keep humanity in servitude. Prometheus became the hero of human actualization and freedom. It isn’t hard to see how Prometheus would become a focal point when Marxist and Christian theologians got together to chat. Jan Milíč Lochman was a Czech theologian who, after 1968, taught at the University of Basel. He was active in the late heady days of Marxist/Christian dialogue in the 1960s. The engagement was driven, in no small part, by interpersonal and intellectual encounter in Czechoslovakia, which came to an ab...