by Joshua Shaw

Karl Barth (1886 – 1968) is a controversial and, as seems these days all too common, a polarizing figure; for some he was an outgrowth of the 19^th century’s decadent theology, for others the greatest of modern theologians. This fact alone (his polarizing character and the subsequent polarized characterisations) suggests to me the importance of meeting the man on his own terms and in his own words. Secondary summaries of his teaching will not help us much until we have already made a principled judgement of our own based on observation and reflection. (To redress this, the Davenant Hall offered a tantalizing course for this Fall semester). The answer is simply, as the great Tübinger Adolf Schlatter used to say, “Observation, observation, observation” (Beobachten, beobachten, beobachten).

And in a spirit not alien from our own endeavour at TRF, Flannery O’Connor once quipped, “I distrust folks who have ugly things to say about Karl Barth. I like old Barth. He throws the furniture around” (here p. 10 note 7).[i]

In this post we will look at the way in which old Barth heaved and chucked some furniture around in the lecture halls of the Third Reich.

Too Stupid to Grace with an Answer?

In 1933 Karl Barth finally answered calls, which he could “no longer ignore,” that he “speak to the [current] situation” (3).[ii] Before he had simply made every effort “to do theology and only theology.” This is in fact, he insists, a “position, not only ecclesiastical but political.” He took it indeed as “most beautiful praise, when people imputed to [his] declarations a lack of ‘relevance’, or in other words, ‘existential relevance,’ that is, a concrete reference to the problems of the day.” This leads him to the question, whether it would not be better in fact to speak to the “substance” (Sache) and not to the “situation” (Lager, 3-4). His highest priority, however, remains “theological existence,” that is, existences as pastors and theologians for the church under the Word.

Throughout the 1933 university lecture (Supplement #2 of Between the Times, printed by the Christian Kaiser Verlag (Munich) in the series “Theological Existence Today,” n.2), one clear point of contact between Barth and historical Protestantism is his total disregard for “cultural relevance” in lieu of heeding God’s word:

We [preachers and teachers of the Church] are called … to serve the Word of God in the Church and in the world; with the fulfilment of this calling not only do we see ourselves stand and fall, but indeed everything that is for us important, dear, or great in this world – that is, for us no worry is more urgent and no hope is more stirring than the worry and hope of our (ministerial) service.” (5)

Furthermore, if we ever, under the pressure of the powers of this age, seek God “Somewhere else than in his Word and his Word somewhere else than in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ somewhere else than in the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments,” we become thereby “such who do not seek God at all” (6). This outlook gives the entire lecture its shape.

In the light, therefore, of this call to serve the Word and not the World, he puts into perspective certain ecclesiastical-political changes that were undertaken within the church during the time, the most important of which was the creation of the Bishopric, apparently under the guise of the Church’s need for reform, improvement, accountability, but in actual fact underpinned by hidden factors related to the rise of the Third Reich. Indeed, this was an attempt to institutionalize the church in such a way that it could be controlled, or at least influenced, by the Nazi party.

For this so-called “reform” Barth has only sharp words of reproach: “even a church reform which in the first place only affects the outer form [of the church] must arise from the inner necessity of the life of the Church itself, it must arise from obedience to the Word of God – it is otherwise no Church reform at all” (8).

He goes on to cite a frightening (but to us after the fact no longer surprising) example of a lead “Reformer” led by the Zeitgeist (‘spirit of the age’) rather than the Spirit of Christ: “A powerful national movement has gripped and exalted this our German people (Volk). A comprehensive reshaping of the Reich in the awakened German nation is making itself room. To this turn of History we speak a grateful Yes. God has granted us this; to him be the glory. Bound together in God’s word we recognize in this great Happening of our Time (lit. days) a new assignment of our Lord to his church…” (10) [iii]. Despite the great claims and the promises of Hitler himself that “the rights of the Church will not be hemmed in, her position over against the State in no way modified,” this is of course exactly what happened.[iv] This was, for Barth, not Hitler’s but the Church’s fault for being “unfaithful to herself” (11). It was because the Church recognized its calling “in this great Happening of our Time” rather than in the Scriptures, that it listened to the “voice of a stranger” and was not “bound together in the Word” (12). The Scripture “did not in fact remain Master in this work.” To all of this Barth says, “I know of no way out of this dead-end alley except an about face” (19).

He goes on to bust up the “Leader principal” (Führerprinzip) with admirable ferocity. In contrast to this strange political ideology, only where Christ is “leader” (Führer) can there be theological existence (21). To the “letter and the spirit” of the doctrine of “the German Christians” (Die Deutschen Christen), he says a “definite and unreserved No.” Among the eight principled reasons which he gives for this unequivocal rejection of the blend of Nazi ideology with Christian theology, a few stand out:

• The Church must “serve the Word of God,” not the German people, and certainly not the Third Reich (24).
• The Church, says Barth, was to preach the Gospel “in the Third Reich, but not under it, and surely not in the spirit of its time.”
• “The Church needs a Confession under the Word, not ideology, not a set of propositions and negations according to a social, political, and certainly not the social-political (I.e. Nazi) Worldview.”
• The Church does not need to reform pastoral training “in the spirit of greater closeness of life and community interconnection,” but in the spirit of “greater discipline and orientation to substance in the carrying out of the single entrusted task of preaching the Word according to the Scriptures” (25).

In sum, Karl Barth spoke at this event – over against Die Deutsche Christen and the Young Reformers – a word of rebuke and courage to an orthodox and reformed word to leave the worldliness behind and to obey God’s Word. Someone who understands the real purpose of resistance in the Third Reich “won’t put some sort of Struggle (Kampf) on his program, but something very simple: work and pray!” (36). [v] No amount of screaming on or at or in or over the church will do anything to save her. “Where the Church is church, there she is already saved” (36).

To those screaming for reform and relevance and movements, Barth has only one word: “The Holy Ghost needs no ‘movements.’ By far and away the vast majority of ‘movements’ were started by the Devil” (37).

In its work, the Church can expect no “thanks nor honor,” but it must nevertheless gladly shoulder the load of loneliness in the world precisely for the common good (39).

That 1939 – and the Genocide and War it brought with it – followed this talk in 1933 is only proof that Barth’s reprimand was not taken seriously enough, not that it was an empty word. Other evils stand before our own door and will have their way if we do not now heed this call. Barth’s final exhortation is thus as “relevant” now as then:

“Each and every day is hastening on to eternity” (40). Therefore, “work and pray!”

[i] She also, it should be said, thought that he gave Protestant Christendom a good “boot” away from Schleiermachean subjectivism toward the objective realities of God, the soul, and the world. In other words the furniture he threw around was that of 19^th century liberal Protestantism, not orthodoxy.

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[ii] All following quotes come from Karl Barth, Theologische Existenz heute (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag , 1933). It seems to me incredible that such a pamphlet should not have already been translated, yet some Google searches brought me no such news (should the reader find something, please forward it on!). The translations are all mine.

[iii] This is a quotation from the “triumvirate colloquium” (Dreimännerkollegium) of 1933, in which Konrad Adenauer tried to leave the room to prevent the takeover of the Nazi party, but, alas!, to no avail.

[iv] “Die Rechte der Kirchen werden nicht geschmälert, ihre Stellung zum Staat nicht geändert.” From a speech of Hitler on March 23^rd of 1933.

[v] “…der wird heut nicht irgend einen Kampf, sondern ein sehr schlichtes: Bete und arbeit! auf sein Programm setzen.” This seems to me a (scornful) allusion to Hitler’s famous book, Mein Kampf.