Karl Barth: The Church's Struggle in 1933, Theology for Today 4

The great images of the book of Revelation can almost be seen in the later part of 1933 and beyond in German Church history. Here I am thinking of the great whore who is drunk with the blood of saints and who in the end is destroyed by the beast. Only this time it was the Nazi State and the Confessing Churches who at least partially killed the whore.

The ‘German Christians’ over played their hand. Arthur C. Cochrane in The Church's Confession Under Hitler, writes of a ‘monster’ rally held by the German Christians in the Berlin Sport Palace on November 13 of 1933. He writes of the speech given by Dr. Reinhold Krause. Cochrane’s description of the speech and the rally is instructive for the Church today. His words:

“He [Krause] declared that the German Reformation begun by Luther would be completed in the Third Reich by the formation of a new Church— … [a] new all-embracing German Church.’ It would not be a clerical Church bound to Confessions, but a people’s Church. The first step in the creation of an indigenous Church must be to get rid of ‘the Old Testament with its Jewish morality of rewards, and its stories of cattle dealers and panders.’

The New Testament had to be expurgated of all perverted and superstitious passages, the whole scapegoat and inferiority complex theology of the Rabbi Paul had to be guarded against. …

Finally a resolution was passed, with but one dissenting voice, which expressed the special demands made by Krause and his friends—the discharge of ministers who are not willing to co-operate in the completion of the Reformation in accordance with the spirit of National Socialism; swift execution of the Aryan paragraph [No Jews in the German Church] without any weakening of it; the placing of all Christians with alien blood in a Jewish Christian Church; removal of anything un-Germanic from the Church service and the Confession, especially the Old Testament; freeing the gospel of its Oriental distortions and the presentation of a heroic picture of Jesus as the basis for a Christianity in which the proud man who is a child of God is conscious of the divine in himself and in his people takes the place of broken and servile souls; a single true Church service that is a service to one’s fellow countrymen and which completes the German Reformation of Martin Luther and alone does justice to the totalitarian claims of the National Social States. (112-113)”1

There was, of course, a great outcry from the Evangelical German Church. In the end, for the sake of peace in the State, both Muller and Hitler had to disassociate themselves from the Faith Movement of the German Christians. Hitler could hardly afford to prepare for war and at the same time fight an internal battle with the Church.

But this was of course no true victory for the Confessing Church. Manipulation never ended and although there were no longer loud drumming demonstrations against the Confessing Church, nonetheless, church authorities, aligned with the Nazi State began to squeeze out all freedoms even banning all youth groups except the Hitler Youth Movement.

Some of the problems with the German Christians, listed by Barth in Theological Existence Today, have to do with issues equated with both conservatives and liberals of today. For instance the German Christians denounced pacifism which is actually as legitimate a position, for Christians, as is the just war position. There was also a call by the German Christians to expand the confessions in order that they might be a defense against “Bolshevism” [Communism] and “Mammonism” [Capitalism].

Not only were the German Christians anti-Semitic, they were also anti-Masonic believing there to be a conspiracy between the Masons and the Jewish people. But Barth cut through all of this.

His concern was always with the underlying heresy that fed the German Christian Movement which he felt would live on even after their thuggery. (They had threatened physical violence on the members of the Confessing Church.) He suggested that their theology was the real problem. “My belief is that at not too remote a time the Church will have finished with the public, savage heretics; but who will have saved her from the blandishment of those who seem to be correct as to the standards of the Church, Bible and Reformation, and yet, in principle do not think differently from those heretics?” Theological Existence Today, (71)

Barth’s words against the program of the German Christians are instructive to the Church today. He writes:

From: Theological Existence Today

"1. The Church has not ‘to do everything’ so that the German people ‘may find again the way into the Church,’ but so that within the Church the people may find the Commandment and promise of the free and pure Word of God.

2. It is not the Church’s function to help the German people to recognize and fulfill any one ‘vocation’ different from the ‘calling’ from and to Christ. The German people receives its vocation from Christ to Christ through the Word of God to be preached according to the Scriptures. The Church’s task is the preaching of the Word.

3. Speaking generally, the Church has not to be at the service of mankind, and so, not of the German people. The German Evangelical Church is the Church with reference to the German people: she is only in service to the Word of God. It is God’s will and work, if by means of His Word mankind, and of course, the German people, are ministered unto.

4. The Church believes in the Divine institution of the State as the guardian and administrator of public law and order. But she does not believe in any State, therefore not even in the German one, and therefore not even in the form of the National Socialistic State. The Church preaches the Gospel in all the kingdoms of this world. She preaches it also in the Third Reich, but not under it, nor in its spirit.

5. If the Church’s Confession of Faith is to be expanded it must be according to the standard of Holy Scripture, and not al all according to the examples, positive or negative, of a view of things existing at some one particular period of time, be it a political philosophy, or otherwise. Therefore, she must not widen the Creed to include the National Socialists’ ‘world-view.’ Nor has the Church to ‘provide weapons’ for ‘us’ or anyone whatever.

6. The fellowship of those belonging to the Church is not determined by blood, therefore, not by race, but by the Holy Spirit and Baptism. If the German Evangelical Church excludes Jewish-Christians, or treats them as of a lower grade, she ceases to be a Christian Church.

7. If the office of a Reichs-Bishop should be possible at all, than that office, like every other Church office, must not be established according to political programmes and methods at all. That is to say… by the representatives of the regular administration within the Churches, from the point of view of what exclusively empowers him for a Church office.

8. Not ‘in the sense of a closer approach to life and connection with the community’ is ‘the training and leading of the ministry to be transformed’ (As the Faith-Movement declares), but on the lines of a stricter, broader education, with pith and substance for the development of the work solely charged upon pastors, viz. the work of preaching the Word According to Scripture.” (51-52)

Barth goes on to add one more number without putting anything there explaining that the list is not complete. He also explains that he is not advocating against the German Christians because they are offering some new heresy. In deed, he explains, using another’s quote, that their heresy is a “small collection of odds and ends from the theological dust-bins of the despised eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” Rather he is speaking up it because of their mass demonstrations and threats of violence against members of the Confessing Church.


1 I have divided Cochrane’s long paragraph for easier reading.