Community, State, and Church - Karl Barth

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theme during Barth’s World War I writings is the obvious reminder that God is God and we are not! By 1916 he wrote essays on God’s righteousness and the “Strange World of the Bible,” both of which reveal a significant diastasis between God and humanity, between the world of the Bible and our world.19 If we are to be true to ‘God’s otherness’ as revealed in the strangeness of the Bible, we must go beyond allowing it to provide answers—as was the case in liberal theology and Religious Socialism—and allow it to provide the questions we seek to ask. These early writings culminate in his 1918 commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Der Römerbrief), where he further challenges liberal anthropocentrism, Pietism, Religious Socialism, Idealistic ethics, and established religion (including Christianity, or preferably Christendom).20 Although he continued to support the Swiss social democratic movement, he denounced the self-divinization of Religious Socialism, and its apparent blending of divine and human action in and through the socialist movement. Christians were to remain committed to social democracy but not ‘Religious Socialism.’ In the revolutionary year of 1918, Barth called Christians to remain committed to the otherness and radicalness of God’s kingdom, which cannot be ushered in through human action, nor verbalized and actualized in any human ideology. If there is a legitimate form of politics, it must be theological and non-ideological.

      These themes continue in Barth’s 1919 ‘Tambach lecture,’ which served as a bridge between the theology of the first and second editions of Der Römerbrief. This speech redirected his Religious Socialist audience away from a strict identification of their action with God’s divine action, and toward Christ, who is and remains the source of both the Christian’s “affirmation” and “criticism,” both the Yes and No, of the social order.21 Since Barth views moral action as an analogy or parable of divine action, the Christian view of society should neither be entirely culture-affirming nor culture-denying, but a mixture of both and seen in light of God’s Yes and No. Nevertheless, by this time Religious Socialism in Switzerland was in disarray. In 1919 it had split into two groups, with the more radical wing joining the ‘Third Communist International’ and forming the Swiss Communist party, and the more moderate wing continuing to support earlier platforms of the Social Democratic party. Belonging to this latter group, Barth rejected Bolshevism as well as the moderate-capitalism of the Weimar republic in Germany. Both movements failed to take true democratic socialism seriously, so neither provided any future example for Swiss politics. So, although Barth denounced the theory of Religious Socialism, he continued to remain active in practical politics. God’s No against ideology provides an opening for the Yes of political action! This subtle shift toward the Yes of political responsibility is evident in Romans, 2nd edition, published in 1922. Barth continues his attack on ideologies that underlie power politics, whether left or right. Unlike Romans I, however, which was more critical of the principle of legitimation linked with the conservative/nationalist establishment, the second edition, written in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, is more critical of the principle of revolution liked with the idealistic hope for a new regime. This disparagement is counterbalanced by a more extensive discussion of Christian ethics grounded in love, which provides the basis for a more positive political ethic. Barth sees the love ethic as a “parable” or analogy of God’s actions of love, which can lead to “an unconditional, genuine preference for the good of the other.”22

      Barth left Safenwil and was appointed Professor of Reformed Dogmatics at Göttingen in 1921, where he immersed himself in the historical tradition of theology and proclaimed its importance for the contemporary church. In this way, Barth began seeing himself as standing within the church rather than as a critic or prophet on the margins of the church, or worse yet outside the church. Although he continued to support democratic socialism throughout the 1920s, his journey into dogmatics sealed his fate with the Religious Socialists. By turning to dogmatics as the way to speak about ethics, he continued to demonstrate his desire for a theological politics rather than a political theology. Barth began seeing that theology offers a distinctive viewpoint for ethics and politics, which cannot be found in philosophy or the sciences. This is not a radical departure from his earlier period, but in fact the logical outcome of his Romans period; it was an attempt to provide a theology that can bear witness to God’s revealed truth. Barth’s dogmatic theology was further refined while serving as professor at Münster in 1925 and at Bonn in 1930. It was during this time that he gave his Ethics lectures.23 These lectures set in motion the basic themes that would occupy him throughout his career, including the revelation of the Word of God, its threefold embodiment in God’s actions of creation, reconciliation, and redemption, and the divine command that emerges within these relational spheres. In these lectures, we see a culmination of his early thought, where the No of God’s judgment is matched by the Yes of God’s commanding Word; where the vertical diastasis is matched by horizontal responsibility for the good of the other. Despite the fact that God’s Word stands in judgment of all human ethical speech, it also provides the opportunity to encounter the good, through the divine command, which draws us toward hearing and then responding to God’s Word. Barth’s No to ideology, whether left or right, is also supplemented by the Yes of responsible action within civil society and the state. He endorses neither revolution nor the political status quo, but calls for a democratic movement for a more peaceful and just society. In themes that go back to the Romans period, Barth develops a view of society, culture, and the state in which they are neither demonic nor divine, but are affirmed through the relationship of humanity (and the world) and the Word of God, revealed in creation, reconciliation, and redemption.

      Beginning in the tumultuous years of the early 1930s, Barth’s life seems to accelerate in constant movement. He was not only conducting his normal duties of teaching and writing, but actively organizing and consolidating the Christian response to the emerging church conflict over the rise of Adolph Hitler and National Socialism in Germany. Remaining somewhat practically aloof from German politics during the Weimar era, in 1931 the Swiss professor joined the German Social Democratic Party—like he did the Swiss party years before—because he believed this was the most hopeful and practical means by which society could maintain a healthy political system. Barth’s worst fears were realized when Hitler rose to power in 1933 and began dismantling the Weimar Republic and religious freedom in Germany. The nationalist ideology of the German Christian movement began to spread into the Lutheran and Reformed (Evangelical) churches. In the spring of 1933, a constitution was created that established a united German Evangelical Church, with a strong hierarchical polity including the new office of ‘Reich bishop.’ This shift in ecclesiastical polity proved to be not only a victory of the Lutheran church over less numerous Reformed, but a specific branch of Lutheranism, including the German Christians, that desired to strengthen the office of bishop within the church and develop a closer relationship to the state. The German Christian movement was the offspring of liberal theology and German nationalism; theologically they were anthropocentric and immanentist and ideologically they supported the National Socialist party, including its rejection of Marxism, Jewish German nationality, internationalism, interracial degeneration. When Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, the German Christians were already well organized into a substantial movement and thus would have considerable influence on the Evangelical church. Yet after the constitution of the new national church was written in the spring of 1933, to the dismay of the German Christians, their principle candidate for the office, Ludwig Muller, was not elected. Nevertheless, Hitler’s government in July had taken significant action by meddling in church affairs with the replacement of church and state administrators, seeking to control local synods and consistories, which led to a rewriting of the constitution and the elevation of Muller into the office of Reich bishop in 1934.

      In response to these events, Martin Niemoller, a friend of Barth’s, formed the Pastor’s Emergency League in 1933, which later became the basis for the Confessing church. Although largely conservative and patriotic (many supported Hitler’s regime), this group of pastors and some academics stood against the emerging Nazification of the church. Their main concern was the state’s infringement upon the church. Barth’s uncompromising No to Hitler and the German Christians made him a target for both admiration and disparagement.24 He became the principal theological voice of the Confessing church movement principally through his contacts and the publication of a new pamphlet series, Theologishe Existenz

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