Incitement to dialogue: Josef Hromádka’s call for Christian–Marxist dialogue in Gospel for Atheists

Abstract

Josef Lukl Hromádka (1889–1969) was a controversial theologian and professor, whose support for the socialist government in Czechoslovakia caused many Western theologians to condemn him, but challenged others to reexamine their understanding of the relationship between Christianity and political ideologies. In 1958 Hromádka contributed Das Evangelium für Atheisten, later published in English as Gospel for Atheists, to a series of small theological books being published in West Berlin. Gospel for Atheists contrasts with Hromádka’s earlier work, while retaining continuity of thought, because the author’s motivation was to promote dialogue between Christians in the West and Marxists in the East. The audience to whom Hromádka directed Gospel for Atheists, the manner in which he reiterated the motifs that he first addressed in Doom and Resurrection, and the more controversial aspects of his theology that he excluded from Gospel for Atheists, demonstrate Hromádka’s goal of promoting respectful dialogue.