The Confession of the Church 6

The Confessing Church of Germany found that to declare the Declaration of Barmen they also had to declare they were indeed the true Church in Germany. Arthur C. Cochrane, in his book The Church’s Confession Under Hitler, in the chapter on the nature of a Confession, emphasizes this with his 6th point.

“6. In and with its Confession of Faith the Church claims to be the one, true Church. Outside this Church, there is no salvation for one who willfully and knowingly separates himself from it. Of course the extra ecclesiam nulla salus does not imply that the one, true Church in which salvation may be found has not existed in other times and places. Nor does it mean that the Church is the indispensable mediatrix of salvation or a ‘redemptive society.’ It means that outside the Church that confesses Jesus Christ there is no revelation, no faith, and no knowledge of salvation. However, where Christ and his salvation are present in the Church’s Confession of him, and where a man has encountered Christ in it and then has deliberately and consciously separated himself from that Church, for that man there is no salvation. For him there remains the threat of damnation.”

Cochrane goes on to state that, “The genuineness of a Confession is reflected in the willingness of its confessors to venture and to stand by this stupendous claim.” Interestingly enough it is his view that, “Throughout the Church Struggle the Confessing Church did not take its stand upon the Reformation Confessions but upon the Barmen Declaration as the only legitimate interpretation of the Reformation symbols. For this reason it claimed to be the true evangelical Church in Germany.”

In several long pages Cochrane gives a history of the struggle for Barmen with the Lutheran Confessionalists, (Not the same as the Confessing Church), lead by Hermann Sasse, Werner Elert, Paul Althaus, and Biship August Marahrens. A part of their argument was that the Synod of Barmen had no authority to declare what was true doctrine and what was heresy.

At the same time the Confessing Church was assailed by the Reich Church Government. Cochrane notes that, “The method was to explain that an emergency situation prevailed in a certain provincial Church which necessitated the intervention of the Reich Bishop. Ministers were dismissed or suspended from their parishes, and many were placed under ‘house arrest.’”

In later moves beyond those taken by the Bishop the church endured, “the alarming growth of paganism in the press, radio, theater, and schools,” and the “secularization of public life.” The state placed “hundreds of pastors in jail or under house arrest.” “Professors were dismissed from their chairs, notably scholars like Otto Schmitz, K.D. Schmidt, Gunther Dehn, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans Iwand, Edmund Schlink, and Karl Barth.”

Out of all of this turmoil, which included the Reich Church Government officials setting up committees that continued to advocate false teaching, the Confessing Church was forced to claim the position of True Church. They were also forced to insist that “Church administration is an office of the Church. Therefore it can be called and installed only by the Church. Its office-bearers must be obligated to be obedient to God’s Word in keeping with the Church’s Confession.”

The important point here is that a Confession of the Church can only be made by the True Church which will itself become a dividing point between many. It does not come as a great political maneuver to pull the whole Church together nor is its focus meant to solve simply a social problem but rather it speaks to that problem which is tearing apart the faith and unity of the Church. That will be the subject of the next post.