The Church within a Church: declaring for the Confessional Church 6

I have so far covered four faith statements and/or declarations written by Free Confessional Church Synods in Germany during the time of Hitler. There were other statements written as there always are during stressful times in the Church.

Likewise, in just the last few months various presbyteries and elders have offered statements concerning the extreme problems connected with the 218 General Assembly. For Instance San Diego Presbytery, or An Open Theological Declaration by some Elders of the Beaver Butler Presbytery or A Response by the Presbytery of San Joaquin.

Likewise various renewal groups, pastors and theologians have been writing about solutions. For instance see Michael Walker’s "What Way Ahead?"and What Way Ahead? Part Two: Initiating the Case for Realignment, or Pastor Mark Robert’s series.

Now I want to move toward the declarations passed by the Barmen Synod after they affirmed the Declaration of Barmen. With the additional declarations the members of the Synod shaped the life of the Confessing Churches in very practical ways.

But first they affirmed who they were as members of the Church. They, with the beginning of the Barmen Declaration and the 4th declaration, adopted May 29-31 1934, averred themselves the true Church under the Constitution of the German Evangelical Church. The constitution had been accepted by the whole Reich Church on July 14, 1933.

There was an attempt to change the constitution for the benefit of the German Christians. The Confessional Churches fought this move. They were, however, very clear about their reasons for declaring themselves the “legitimate German Evangelical Church.” And at this time it was the “Reich Church Administration” which they rejected. They would later, when the constitution had been effectively ruined, insist the Confessional Church members not obey any command of the administration.1

But their stand as the legitimate Church was based on their acceptance of the Holy Scriptures and the Confessions of the Reformation. The members of the Barmen Synod wrote:

“Only those who are called and who desire to hold fast to Holy Scripture and to the Church’s Confession of Faith as its inexpugnable foundation, and who desire to make both the authoritative standard of the German Evangelical Church again, may legitimately speak and act in the name of the German Evangelical Church.”

It was in this part of the Declaration, IV, that they insisted that the Church could not in its structure be hierarchical since that would be contrary to the “Reformation Confession of Faith.” Along side the denial of a hierarchical structure they insisted on the independence of the churches declaring that they should be free from harassment by either a Church administration or “external compulsion.”

I will, with my next posting, look at Declaration V. “Concerning the Practical Work of the Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church.


1 With this link as you read you will find that in the coming years the Confessional Church would be greatly weakened as an institution. However to think about it in a different way read my posting Paul Schneider: A Chestnut Tree and the Confessing Church