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THEOLOGICAL EXISTENCE TO-DAY!

FOR a good while back I have been frequently asked if I had nothing to say about the concerns and problems affecting the German Church nowadays. I can no longer ignore these requests, coming as they do from many of my former pupils and others who share my theological outlook. But I must at once make clear that the essence of what I attempt to contribute to-day bearing upon these anxieties and problems cannot be made the theme of a particular manifesto, for the simple reason that at Bonn here, with my students in lectures and courses, I endeavour to carry on theology, and only theology, now as previously, and as if nothing had happened. Perhaps there is a slightly increased tone, but without direct allusions: something like the chanting of the hours by the Benedictines near by in the Maria Laach, which goes on undoubtedly without break or interruption, pursuing the even tenor of its way even in the Third Reich. I regard the pursuit of theology as the proper attitude to adopt: at any rate it is one befitting Church-politics, and, indirectly, even politics. And I expect that this communication, without “particular messages,” will be heard and interpreted by the students committed to my charge, as well as may be, amidst the stirring happenings of our time.

In the matter of speaking and having an audience I have ample reasons for being content to keep within the limits of my vocation as a theological professor. I did not pass beyond these bounds when I accepted an invitation to collaborate with other members of the Reformed Church persuasion when recently issuing two theological manifestos. The part I took in this affair has been rightly interpreted, and I think those manifestos received the finest compliment, for they were blamed as lacking. It was said that they did not face actualities and the facts of life, they did not tackle the problems of the day. If, dear friends at home and abroad, I have now been persuaded to speak “to the situation,” as it is expected of me, it can only be in the form of a question. The question is: “Would it not be better if one did not speak ‘to the situation,’ but, each one within the limits of his vocation, if he spoke ‘ad rem’?” In other words, to consider and work out the presuppositions needed every day for speaking “ad rem,” as it is needed to-day*—not to-day for the first time—and yet it is needed to-day! A slight elucidation of this question can alone be my theme, if so be anyone wants to hear me on the stirrings now afoot.

WHAT THEOLOGICAL EXISTENCE PRESUPPOSES

The one thing that must not happen to us who are theological professors, is our abandoning our job through becoming zealous for some cause we think to be good. Our existence as theologians is our life within the Church, and, of course, as appointed preachers and teachers within the Church.

There are some things about which there is unanimity within the Church. One is, that there is no more urgent demand in the whole world than that which the Word of God makes, viz. that the Word be preached and heard. At all costs this demand has to be discharged by the world and the Church itself, cost what it may. Another thing there is agreement about is, that the Word of God clears out of the way everything that might oppose, so that it will triumph over us and all other opponents, for the reason that it has triumphed already, once for all, over us and on our behalf, and over all its other opponents. For the Word, “was crucified, dead, buried, raised again the third day, sitteth at the right hand of the Father.” Within the Church it is agreed that God “upholds all things by the Word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3): that He supplies answer to every question, that He allows righteousness to experience all anxieties, that He sustains all that He has made, and leads it to its truest end, that no thing can subsist and flourish without His Word. Again, within the Church it is agreed that it is good for man to depend upon the Word of God, and that this is his only good in time and eternity, to rely upon it with all his heart, all his mind, soul and all his powers. Further, it is the unanimous opinion within the Church, that God is never for us in the world, that is to say, in our space and time, except in this His Word, and that this Word for us has no other name and content but Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ is never to be found on our behalf save each day afresh in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. One is not in the Church at all if he is not of a mind with the Church in these things.

And, particularly as preachers and teachers of the Church, we are at one in fear but also in joy, that we are called to serve the Word of God within the Church and in the world by our preaching and our teaching. We agree, too, that with the fulfilment of our calling we not only see ourselves stand or fall, but we see everything that is important to us in this world, however precious or great it be, standing or falling. So that to us no concern can be more pressing, no hope more moving than the concern and hope of our ministry. No friend can be dearer than one who helps us in this ministry, no foe more hateful than he that wants to hinder us in this ministry.

We are agreed about this too, that alongside of this first business, as the meaning of our labour and our rest, our diligence and relaxation, our love and our scorn, we brook no second as a rival. But we regard every second or third thing that may and should incite us as included and taken up in this first concern, and condemned or blessed thereby. On these things we agree or we are not preachers and teachers of the Church. And this is what is meant by what we term our “Theological existence,” viz. that in the midst of our life in other aspects, as, say, men, fathers and sons, as Germans, as citizens, thinkers, as having hearts ever in unrest, etc., the Word of God may be what it simply is, and only can be to us, and taxes our powers, particularly as preachers and teachers, to the full as the Word alone can and must do.

THE MINISTER’S TEMPTATION TO-DAY

To-day we can lose our existence as theologians and teachers, which consists in our attachment to God’s Word and plying our calling particularly to the ministry of the Word. To put it in other words, to-day, more than ever, we can neglect to affirm our life’s calling. Or, better expressed still, it is possible for us to find that our theological life will no longer be allowed to us, as it ought to be granted us anew every day, just because we forget to pray and reach out for it, and now to-day, more than ever, we should do our part so that it may be given to us. For the mighty temptation of this age, which appears in every shape possible, is that we no longer appreciate the intensity and exclusiveness of the demand which the Divine Word makes as such when looking at the force of other demands: so that in our anxiety in face of existing dangers we no longer put our whole trust in the authority of God’s Word, but we think we ought to come to its aid with all sorts of contrivances, and we thus throw quite aside our confidence in the Word’s power to triumph. That is to say, we think ourselves capable of facing, solving and moulding definite problems better from some other source than that from and by means of God’s Word. By doing this we show that we do not esteem God to be a working factor in anything as Creator, Reconciler, and Redeemer. That our hearts are thus divided between God’s Word and all other sorts of things which, avowedly or tacitly, we invest with Divine glory. By so doing we demonstrate that our hearts are not in contact with God’s Word. And this means that under the stormy assault of “principalities, powers, and rulers of this world’s darkness,” we seek for God elsewhere than in His Word, and seek His Word somewhere else than in Jesus Christ, and seek Jesus Christ elsewhere than in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. And so we become as those who do not seek for God at all And all this, though the very opposite is what is agreed upon within the Church!

How, then, ought we to be in the Church? The special form of this temptation to us, the Church’s preachers and teachers is, that possibly and actually there can be something like rivalry between our vocation within the Church and this or that other calling which is different: in such a way that we feel driven and forced to let this or that different calling be played off against or parallel with our Church vocation, or let that other interpret and shape our proper Church vocation. That we see ourselves and the men to whom we are appointed standing and falling under utterly different conditions from the condition that rightly directs our ministry. So that the secondary or the third thing, which we well know ought to be absorbed in the first concern, as an operative factor, comes to be first, coincides with it, and finally steps into the place of the first. And thereby, the really first concern, and our particular vocation, become hopelessly lost. Although we, as preachers and teachers within the Church, in a quite different sense were in accord! We are then no longer preachers and teachers of the Church; we are politicians, and Church politicians at that! It is no disgrace to be a politician or even a Church politician; it holds a special esteem: but it is something else to be a theologian. It can always denote damage to the theologian’s existence as such, when he becomes a politician or a Church politician. To-day this seems to be pre-eminently the case. And therefore it is time to say, that under no circumstances should we, as theologians, forsake our theological existence and exchange our rights as “first-born” for “a mess of pottage.” Or, said positively, that now, one and all, within the Church as she has borne us by means of the Word, and within the incomparable sphere of our vocation we must abide, or (if we have left it) turn back into the Church and into the sphere of our vocation, at all costs, by putting all regards and concerns behind.

THE PROBLEMS DISCUSSED

While I am writing this on the eve of June 25th, 1933, I will try to illustrate what I mean by taking as examples three of the problems that occupy us to-day. It happens quite fortunately that these problems, severally and collectively, deal preeminently with the decisions reached to-day, viz. the establishment of a State-Commissioner for the Church, and his first orders, have entered upon a quite different stage. My remarks may not be actually “to the situation,” i.e. the attendant circumstances, but “to the business,” ad rem. I may perhaps be better understood according to the problem by which I illustrate my thesis. The problem, certainly, has not been solved by those decisions which, however, in its form hitherto has, so to speak, become an historical problem.

I—THE CRIES FOR CHURCH REFORM

When the political movement of this year had already passed beyond the first decisive steps of its triumph, there was taken up from different quarters at once, the cry that the German Evangelical Church must now proceed to a far-reaching new-ordering of its external relationships. Corresponding advances have been made which were accompanied by a varied taking part by theologians and Church members in speeches and counter-speeches. The initiative and leading in this new ordering, judging from what has happened to-day, was taken out of the Church’s control. In order to discuss and analyse the situation now arisen, it is necessary to raise the question: “How did those outcries for reform of the Church comport with legitimacy, particularly at that time?”

This statement may be ventured, that even a reform of the Church, chiefly affecting its external aspect, ought to spring from the internal requirement of the Church’s life itself: it ought to issue from obedience to the Word of God, or else it is no reform of the Church. In any case, we shall have to admit, that all of us who have any share in the life of the Church, were well aware of the most serious need for improving so many Church relationships, and aware too, of the projects in the air everywhere from of old and from recent times. But still, at the commencement of this remarkable year we had no inkling of such an acute necessity for proceeding to action. That is to say, on the one hand, aware of the existence of problems and requirements of Church life which had been so burning, and on the other hand, aware of the existence on the spot of the deep insights, and of the great forces, which would seem to have made this undertaking now to be our own responsibility, and one full of hope. At that time, at any rate, we did not think of or know of any command to act in this way issuing as God’s Word to us. If a change has come over what existed in the early part of the year, and since, how did it happen?

The proceedings since then, as regards the so-called Church of the Reich and what is connected therewith, have neither been settled speedily, nor been carried through with purpose, decision and unanimity, nor (as this has been glaringly illustrated by the event of to-day, June 24th) has it been very successful. If, on account of a burning necessity, and consequently with adequate force, a Reform of the Church had been undertaken, a Reform under the constraint of the Word of God, then would it not have worn a different look, in its development during the past few months? I might attribute this defect to the fact that it was not so: not at all due to the personalities of the Churchmen who took part therein! But let it also not be said too hurriedly, that in the Evangelical Church, as a “Church under the Cross,” that it is impossible for it to be otherwise than obviously human, all-too-human, even in its palmiest ages, and that, in consequence, the manifest weakness of what has been done up till now, may be regarded, so to speak, as a normal phenomenon. The real Church under the Cross is the Church of the Holy Ghost whose activities must still in themselves, amid all the feebleness and foolishness of men, possess something profoundly gladdening and peaceful, something Sabbatical, reverential. An invisible yet subduing light never really altogether departs from the spiritual decisions of the Church—the light of a good conscience and the promise of the forgiveness of sins amid the weakness of the flesh. This light has not been perceptible at all in the proceedings so far of Church Reform. Nobody could have derived any satisfaction, even in a moderate degree, from what has been done at Loccum and Berlin. But this affirmation points to the fact that then, in spring, if reform had been thought to be necessarily called for, it has not taken place entirely in a legal manner with the proper matters.

DID THE CHURCHES DECIDE THIS REFORM?

If, however, the question be asked, to what extent at the time the resolution was taken “to build this tower,” it could have happened, that things were not done in quite an adequate manner, then it seems to me that one comes up against a remarkable and dangerous lack of clarity, because one most fundamental, at the critical place. I mean the lack of clearness as to the relation between the Revolution, now a political fait accompli, and what the Church thought it had to plan and do in view of this event. We ask, Did the decision for this purpose and action issue from the Church itself? Or, in other words, From the Word of God heard by the Church? Or, was it a suggestion not inwardly necessary, but one arising from political enthusiasm, or, perchance political scheming: a decision not essentially of an ecclesiastical character, though embraced within and by the Church? If the first question cannot be answered in the affirmative, plainly, and with a good conscience, then the dissatisfaction and discord of the previous proceeding can be no puzzle. Rather, the first question cannot be affirmed outright and with a good conscience.

When I look directly at the most important official and private proclamations, issued at that time of the resolution and after it, I am continually brought up against the very strange phenomenon of certain political preambles in which, with an insistency surprising in a Church business, with a more or less openness and explicitness, the writers feel called upon, first and foremost, to give their positive judgment for, and appreciation of, the Revolution which took place in March, and also of the State thus formed. As one example out of many I cite the Appeal of the so-called “Committee of Three”* of date April 28th, 1933:—

“A mighty National Movement has captured and exalted our German Nation. An all-embracing reorganisation of the State is taking place within the awakened German people. We give our hearty assent to this turning-point of history. God has given us this: to Him be the glory.

“Bound unitedly in God’s Word, we recognise in the great events of our day a new commission of our Lord to His Churches.”

In accordance with this proclamation there was often heard—from the Church side, mark you—such cries as, “The New State needs the Churches,” and “The Church is ready to ‘co-operate’ with the New State”: (a very competent writer added, “with its mighty forces.”) On the background of this Proclamation of the Fundamental Article of the newly-to-be-constituted Church, written afresh or in terms very similar, were then placarded the various proclamations, demands, programmes, and even confessions of faith, which were the object these announcements had in view.

What is to be said of all this? Above all, this:—that what has happened must not be set down to an irresistible pressure from outside, to which the Church had to subject herself in order to salvage what she could in the new situation. The new Government, by the mouth of the Reichs-Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, declared on March 23rd:—

“The rights of the Churches will not be diminished, nor their position as regards the State be altered.”

On the same occasion he spoke of “an honourable joint-life in common between State and Church,” but no mention was made of any “Gleichschaltung” (“assimilation”) whether from within or from without, on the part of the Church on behalf of the State. On the basis of this declaration of Hitler’s, which has even been called the Magna Carta of the new Church within the new State, the Church was not asked to found itself upon this Fundamental Article. And, apart from isolated attacks and mistakes, the State, or the Government of the State till now (i.e., June 25th) has nothing to be blamed for in this respect. Here I may recall the very precise declaration of Dr. Rust, the Prussian Minister for Education, in the “Kreuzzeitung,” No. 125, for May 7th, 1933:—

“For Prussia at any rate there exists no ground for anxiety that the State will interfere in the Church’s inner life. Not even with its little finger will the State poke into those corners of the Church which are solely within her province to settle.”

To-day one cannot disregard to what extent the latest events indicate only a very peculiar interpretation of these utterances and declarations, or that their repeal has become necessary in the eyes of the Government. But at the time when these statements were being made they pointed to an opportunity supplied to the Church, in view of which perhaps she durst not make herself responsible for the conduct of State Government, lest once more she should be untrue to herself.