Advent, a Christmas sermon by Dietrich Bonheoffer and the battle for orthodoxy

Christmas in Nazi Germany, for the Confessing Church members and pastors, must have been a time when Advent took on a deeper sense of reality, not only the birth of Christ but the second coming had significant meaning. The promises, one fulfilled the other coming, were full of hope, the only hope. picture by Stephen Larson

Simple parish political battles, in the midst of the ideological confusion of the era, were overlaid with deep theological rifts. The battle was between members of the Confessing Churches and the German Christians whose members ranged from pagan to moderate. When a church lost a pastor the battle was between church authorities who were often German Christians and church members and other pastors who belonged to the Confessing Church.

Kyle Jantzen in his book Faith and the Fatherland: Parish Politics in Hitler’s Germany writes of the Nauen Parish and the need for a pastor there. The new candidate, Gustav Gille, preached a rather political sermon but included “the Trinitarian version of the invocation and the Apostle’s Creed.” Later it was found that he did not accept all of the Apostles Creed and in his past church made use of syncretistic services. It turned out that Gille was a German Christian activist.

There were many protests against him most from those who had some connection to the Confessing Church. Some of the protest consisted of concern that he neglected to preach about Jesus, that he taught that Jesus was only a model teacher rather than the one who saved by his life and death. After four years of battle this particular parish won and they were appointed a pastor who would simply preach that salvation was in Jesus.

The parish conflicts were not consistent across Nazi Germany, but many of the concerns were the same. Many church leaders were aligned with the Nazi political system. Their ideology which above all else defined “racial superiority” in an extremely “narrow sense” was inconsistent with Christian orthodoxy. As Jantzen puts it:

“… Nazi Ideology violated many core Christian doctrines, such as the common sinfulness of all humanity, the universal judgment of God, the salvation of all humanity through the sacrificial death of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and the mission of the church to live as a unified body of Christ on earth.”

Looking at the sermons of some Confessing Church members is helpful in understanding that this was a battle between basic Christian doctrine and an imposed ideology which was partly right wing (nationalism) partly liberal and partly pagan. I was thinking as I began this post of Advent and an Advent sermon by Dietrich Bonheoffer given sometime between 1938-1940.
My intention was to copy out some of the sermon. It has four parts; I will copy the first two. It is on the second coming of Jesus and uses the text, Luke 21:25-36.

“Johann Christoph Blumhardt (nineteenth-century Pietist in Wurttemberg) relates how he kept a new carriage in his parish grounds, which would be used for the first time by the Lord Christ when he comes, ‘then I will drive him in it.’ How certain the waiting Blumhardt was about the coming of Christ! How he planned his daily life so that he would be ready for that moment! His mind was fixed upon how he would fare at that moment when he stood before the Lord Jesus. Such certainty is something unknown to us. There is nothing certain, not even our death is certain. Only the second coming of Christ is certain. This faith of Blumhardt is great, but it is too small for the second coming of Christ. For when it happens, the world will not appear as it now appears. The whole creation will be shaken and changed. Sun, moon, and stars will be displaced in their orbits. When God comes to earth, the stars must lose their light before him. The earth itself will be shattered. Creation reaches out towards him. It feels itself dissolving before him. The sea roars and tosses in anguish and joy. And if the universe knows him, how much more will human beings whose Savior and Judge he is. They will in the same manner be aroused when he comes, fearful of the things that are about to happen. Judgment will be over the whole of humankind when he comes to bring the old world to an end.

Only on one place in the earth will it be quite different. There will not be anguish at that place, but joy, not fear, but heads will be held high: that place is the congregation of Christ’s people. They know he comes to redeem them. They are like miners who have been trapped in the depths of the mine, who have suffered, long shut up in the dark, who hear the knocking and the breaking down of walls coming closer. Is it the final caving-in of the mine or the rescuer coming? ‘Lift up your heads because your redemption is drawing near.’ For Christians this world is like a fetter, it is too narrow for them. ‘Dearest Lord Jesus, why do you wait so long? Come, Lord! Here on earth, I am so frightened.’ The earth, its suffering and temptation makes us anxious, but Christ makes us glad, he brings redemption.[1]”

Come Lord Jesus.


[1] Edwin Robertson, Editor, Dietrich Bonheoffer’s Christmas Sermons

Martin Niemoller and Christmas in Moabit Prison

This is the last posting I will place here until several days after Christmas.

Just last night I was reading a book that contains letters Martin Niemoller sent to others, mostly his wife, while in Moabit Prison. The book is entitled, Exile in the Fatherland: Martin Niemoller's Letters from Moabit Prison.

Christmas Eve and Christmas day of 1937, in his letter to his wife he outlines the steps of his days by what he understands his wife, children and Church are doing during the holy days. For instance he writes on Christmas Eve:

"The Christmas bells were ringing outside a half hour ago as I wanted to begin this letter. In the meantime they have become silent and I have had another lovely visit from Rev. Klett, who has difficult duties today. Now it is five o'clock and all of you will be coming home from Christmas vespers, preparing yourselves for the celebration."

His concern for wife and children as well as the Church are intertwined as he writes:

"The bells are beginning to ring outside now again (it is 5:30) and you will be proceeding to opening the 'gifts.' ...Who will recite the Christmas gospel? 'But there happened at the time ...' Thank God that Rosenberg has not been able to undo this and that these tidings will still live on when no one knows the 'general's' name anymore. 'The eternal light goes in here to us.' He comes to the troubled, the poor, the oppressed, to those who know 'no other gods,' - let us believe. He comes for our sake ..."

And so the promise of safety in Christ in the midst of oppression (though cloaked in careful language) is there to read. Christmas, the Incarnation the birth of the baby, the Lord of heaven and earth is that safety. Niemoller at one point writes about a Christmas newspaper; it is a very telling part of the letter. And for all historians and theologians interested in that era it confirms the paganism then mixed with Christianity.

Niemoller writes:

"Just now I was handed the Christmas newspaper. My eyes fell on the caption 'Sons of God.' I begin to read and am informed that the Galatians are supposed to have been Teutons. Up until now science said they were 'Celts.' But perhaps both or neither, so what! I am reading the close of the two columns.'That is ... the historical foundation for the exalted song that begins with Thor's hammer and sings the praise of an eternal life in this world by a child, that extends beyond the life in this world, and into which German man has has joined in from the first sound on.'

What did Jesus say to John 5:44: 'How can you believe, you that take honor from one another? And the honor that comes from God alone, you do not seek.' And Paul writes to the Romans in 1:24-26: 'Thus they have forsaken God, ... they who transform God's truth into lies and have honored and served the creature more than the creator who is praised in eternity.'

So we need not be surprised at this 'forsaking.' When God is robbed of the honor that belongs to to him, big words come of their own accord, masking naked fear and cowardice!"

Niemoller goes on to encourage his wife and all other Christians not to have a Pharisaical attitude when others are forsaking Christ and his honor. He writes:

"The great temptation for us Christians now is the Pharisee: I thank you, God, that I am not like ..." So may the child in the manger preach to us about the simplicity befitting those who receive peace from God purely through mercy. ...

Because we have not freed ourselves from fear and judgement through our faith, but instead have been taken with him 'out of fear and judgement' (Isaiah 53: 8) through the suffering of God's servant so 'that saved I can glorify joyously' (Psalm 32). and this glorifying of God should preach to those who have heard nothing thus far."

"By oppression and judgement He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due."




May you all have a merry and Holy Christmas

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

The Church within a Church: manipulation versus peace and unity 5

How do members of a Church, who are trying to bear a faithful witness to Jesus Christ, react when higher authorities use their positions to manipulate the situation in the Church? Does this scatter the sheep or draw them together? Is the Confession torn apart or lifted up by faithful witnesses?

In my last posting, The Church within a Church: The Church's message and form 4, I wrote about the “The Declaration Concerning the Right Understanding of the Reformation Confessions of Faith in the German Evangelical Church of the Present,” a statement written by Karl Barth and confirmed by most of the Free Synods. In this posting I am writing about “The Ulm Declaration” written in 1934.

This declaration was the Confessing Church’s answer to the hierarchical manipulation of the Churches in Germany. In this case it was the attempt by the German Christians to bring the “southern provincial churches of Baveria and Württemberg” into the Reich Church which was under the control of the German Christians. The attempt was manipulative, dishonest and included an attempt to remove a Pastor from his Church.

Dr. August Jäger, the “Legal Administrator” stepped into a conflict between the German Christians in “the Standing Committee of the Church Council” and the Bishop of the Württenburg Church, Theophil Wurm. He attempted to use the conflict as a way of influencing the Church to dispose of their Pastor. The attempt included a radio broadcast which lied about the Pastor and his Church.

This drew the churches of Baveria and Württemberg into the Free Synod movement. Arthur Cochrane writes of the Ulm Conference, “It was the most representative gathering of ‘Confessionals’ that had been held, bringing together delegates from Bavarian and Württenburg Churches, the Free Synods in the Rhineland, Westphalia, and Brandenburg, as well as many ‘confessing’ congregations throughout Germany.”1

The Ulm Declaration is the beginning of the Confessing Church’s insistence that they represented the true Church within the Evangelical Church of Germany. At the same time they understand that the German Christian’s call for peace and unity in the Church was totally political and had broken the peace of the Church.

So, one important action of this particular declaration was to tell the truth. The German Christians’ call for peace and unity was deceptive. The authors of the declaration wrote:

“It is not possible to preach peace and then immediately do violence to a Church that is bound to a Confession of Faith such as the Württenburg Church.”

The next action was to call for a true unity connected to the Church’s faithfulness to the Confessions. The authors wrote:

“Because of a constant endangering of the Church and its Confession and also in the interest of the truth, we exhibit, before Christendom and all who are willing to hear, a unity in which we intend, with the help of God’s strength, to remain faithful to the Confession, even though we have to expect that in doing so we will incur much trouble.”

After this the authors of the declaration confront some of the errors perpetrated against Bishop Wurm, and finally they give a call to faithfulness and offer a prayer, parts of which could be prayed by many in the PCUSA today.

“As a fellowship of determined fighters obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ, we pray Almighty God to open the eyes of all Christians to the danger that threatens our beloved Church. May he not let us waver in remaining faithful to his honor and in his service.”


1 This is just a small part of the incident for more information read, The Church’s Confession Under Hitler by Arthur C. Cochrane 137-139.

The Church within a Church: The Church's message and form 4

The Confessing Church in Germany, during the time of Hitler, was in many ways a Church within a Church. This is because the denominational institutions of the day were gathered under an artificial structure lead by a political bishop. It is also because its ideology and theology were attached to the German government‘s ideology.

Only those who resisted the artificial structure and denied the prevailing ideology and theology existed as the body of Christ. They became a Church within a Church.

Sinful and often failing, yet hid in the righteousness of Christ, they, from our historical perspective, can be seen as the faithful body of Christ.

The ideology of the compromised German Church was racist and nationalistic, the theology was liberal, denying the unique Lordship of Christ and the revelation of God found only in the Holy Scripture. By merging the two positions the German Christian’s provided themselves a basis for revering Hitler while rejecting both the Hebrew Bible and its Jewish people.

In the last posting of my series the “Church within a Church,” I wrote about two confessional statements that were written by the Confessing movement before the Free Synods were called. In this posting I will write about one of two statements that were written during the time of the “synodical movement.” In my next posting I will write about the second one which also entails the manipulative actions of the German Christians toward their brothers and sisters in the Confessing Church.

All of the statements, before and during the time of the Free Synods, are concerned with the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the form or structure of his Church.

The very first Free Synod, held in Barmen, produced a declaration that was the closest of all the statements to the Barmen Declaration. Like the Barmen Declaration, its author was Karl Barth. It was “The Declaration Concerning the Right Understanding of the Reformation Confessions of Faith in the German Evangelical Church of the Present.”

The Declaration first addresses an error. The error:

"It consists in the opinion that beside God’s revelation, God’s grace, and God’s glory, a justifiable human arbitrariness also has to determine the message and form of the Church, that is to say the temporal way to eternal salvation.”

Here the Declaration uses both the picture of the medieval Pope and the “fanatics” that the Reformation Confessions rejected. This is about the structure of the Church and its unity which is found in its confession of Jesus Christ as Lord. In other words rather than a unity that is demanded by human institutions (the Pope)or human ideals (the Fanatics), unity would be found in the Church’s confession of Jesus Christ as her unique Lord.

Next the Declaration speaks of “The Church Under Holy Scripture.” After insisting that the Old and New Testament are a unity, the Old witnessing to “the coming of Jesus Christ,” the New to “Jesus Christ who has come,” the Declaration defines for the Church those events that count as God’s activity. That is, God’s activity is seen in his action in Jesus Christ “testified to by Holy Scripture,” rather than God’s activity seen in current events.

Under “The Message of the Church,” the Declaration speaks of God’s grace and mercy in Jesus Christ. It is a rejection of any kind of justification or sanctification accomplished by doing good works.

The last part of the Declaration is about the “Form of the Church.” Here once again is an insistence that the form of the Church flows out of its head which is Christ. The Church is “called, assembled and upheld, comforted and ruled, by the Lord himself through the ministry of proclamation.”

The Church’s message and form is “one and the same in different times, races, peoples, states, and cultures. The justification for differences in Churches in this or that place depends upon whether they are consistent with the unity of the Church’s message and form.”

This meant that the German Christians’ insistence that there be a German Church aligned with German culture and a rejection of the Hebrew Bible and its Jewish authors was not consistent with the Church’s message. This meant that the German Christian’s insistence on a human authority along side Jesus Christ was not consistent with the Church' form and was rejected.

Differences in Churches are justified when they are consistent with the Church’s message which is the gift of grace. As Barth puts it under “The Church’s Message":

“The gift of grace is our membership in Jesus Christ: in him we are justified by the miracle of faith which ever again excepts the forgiveness of sins, which has taken place in him. And in him we are sanctified by the miracle of obedience that ever submits itself to the judgment and direction of the commandment, which comes from him.”

All quotes taken from The Church's Confession Under Hitler, Arthur C. Cochrane.

The Church within a Church: The Lordship of Christ and the form of the Church 3

Some Churches in the Presbyterian Church (USA), who have gone to court to keep their property, are losing court cases around the issue of whether or not the denomination is a hierarchical institution. Whether one agrees or disagrees with going to court over property, the issue of the Church being hierarchical is also a part of the history of the German Church struggle.

The Lordship of Jesus Christ, the form of the Church and a hierarchical view of the Church were all intertwined in the confusion that existed before and during the rule of Hitler’s Nazis.

It was for this reason that many of the confessional statements written in the few years before the Declaration of Barmen had as their concern how the form of the Church must grow out of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And it was for this reason that during the synod that produced the Declaration of Barmen a resolution was also approved that contained this statement about the Church:

“It is impossible to divorce the Church’s outward order from the Confession of Faith. …

The unity of the German Evangelical Church is also not achieved by recklessly setting up a central authority that is based upon a worldly Führerprinzip foreign to the Church. A hierarchical structure of the Church is contrary to the Reformation Confession of Faith.” (emphasis mine)1

As has been stated this statement grew out of a dispute about the Lordship of Christ over the Churches. In Germany it was a dispute about placing a Reich bishop along with lesser bishops over the Church.

The writing of faith statements and confessions of faith began before the free synods and accrued until members of the Barmen Synod wrote and accepted the Declaration of Barmen. In this posting I deal with two statements written before the beginning of free synods and in the next I will look at two that were written during the free synod meetings. They are all concerned with the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the form of his Church.

There is not an English translation of the first one but Arthur C. Cochrane explains its content in his book The Church’s Confession Under Hitler. The “Altona Statement,” or “A Word and Confession to the Need and Confusion in Public Life” was written “a few weeks before Hitler assumed power.” One of its authors, Hans Asmussen, would later give the sermon that explained the Declaration of Barmen to the members of the Synod of Barmen.

This statement simply explained what the Church was, how Christians were to function in the public forum and the relationship between the Church and the State. It stressed the sinfulness of humanity and the forgiveness given by Jesus Christ to his people.

The second statement is the “Düsseldorf Theses,” written in May 1933. It began with a statement from the “Ten Theses of Berne,” written in 1528. “The holy, Christian Church, whose only head is Christ, is born of the Word of God, abides in the same, and hears not the voice of a stranger.”

The Theses emphasized that Jesus Christ was the head of the Church and that the ministries within the Church are “ordered by him." The statement speaks to each ministry, preachers, elders, teachers, etc., explaining what the duties are and that it is only in the grace of Jesus that they have their usefulness. The offices are always referred to as ministries and their authority is grounded in the grace of Christ.

Number 12 of the Theses is “Jesus Christ is the only ‘spiritual leader’ of the Church. He is its heavenly King who lives on earth through his Spirit in every one who is obedient to his commission in serving him in the Church.”

Only Jesus Christ has ultimate authority, any other ministry is just that a ministry. The authority of each ministry is established as it functions in the Spirit through the grace of Jesus Christ.

The Confessing Church appealed to the Reformation Confessions and declared that any other form of the Church grew out of arbitrary human ideals and was an unacceptable way of ordering the Church. Within the free synods a hierarchical Church was denied on the ground that Jesus Christ alone was head of the Church. It is with this denial that they stood against a corrupt German institution, a heretical Church.

1 “Declaration Concerning the Legal Status of the German Evangelical Church,” in The Churches Confession Under Hitler by Arthur C. Cochrane, 242. It seems to me that since we have the Declaration of Barmen in our Book of Confessions and since this statement is based on that and other Confessions that should be proof enough that we are not a hierarchical Church.

The Church within a Church: Free Confessional Synods as Witness 2

Over the weekend my husband and I re-watched the movie “Witness.” The movie centers on an Amish community and a little boy who is the only witness to a murder in a train station. As I was watching the movie I realized that not only was the boy a witness to the evil of a corrupt police department, but the whole Amish community was a witness to the invasion of the corrupt officials as they invaded the peaceful community.

Because of the community’s witness, as a group, the murderers were not able to complete their unspeakable deeds.

I am reminded of this as I write on the witness of the free synods of the Confessing Church in Germany during the time of Hitler. I am also reminded of this as I think about those in the PCUSA who hold an orthodox view of the Christian faith and choose, out of obedience to Jesus Christ, to stay in the denomination. Often, all that is required of a witness is to observe and state the truth. Or conversely to state the truth and observe.

Beginning very early, in 1934, the Reich bishop, Ludwig Müller, committed many “dictatorial acts” by eliminating many pastors from their positions. “Over two hundred ministers were subjected to disciplinary measures, suspensions, and dismissals.” Martin Niemöller was the first of this group to lose his position. This was the beginning of the call for free synods which were not official synods of the Church in Germany, but rather began with local meetings of those who had protested but now needed to simply stand in faithfulness.

The first free synod was a Reformed synod. It met in Barmen-Gemarke on January the 3- 4th. 1 There were “320 elders and ministers representing 167 congregations.” The next meeting was in “Pomerania on February 4.” The third free synod was held again in Barmen and was a Free Evangelical Synod consisting of Reformed, Lutheran and United ministers and elders. That was in February the 18 and 19th.

Next, members of the Council of Brethren of the Pastor’s Emergency league meeting on February 20 asked to become members of the free Evangelical Synod of the Rhineland and brought with them the congregations of the league. On March the 7th, congregations from Berlin met for a “Free Evangelical Synod for Berlin and Brandenburg.” Arthur C. Cochrane, author of The Church’s Confession Under Hitler, gives some interesting statistics here. He writes that four laymen and two ministers from each Church attended; “four hundred men and forty women altogether.” (My emphasis; a new history project for someone!)

The next meeting also has an interesting piece of data beside it. In March the 16th “the day the Secret Police dissolved the regularly called [official] Synod of Westphalia,” the First Westphalian Confessional Synod was held in Dortmund. On April the 29th the Free Evangelical Synod of the Rhineland met with the Westphalian Confessional Synod.

With further manipulative actions by official Church leaders in takeovers of Churches and dismissal of pastors many more congregations in Germany joined the Free and Confessional synods. By April 22 the Ulm Conference was held which had delegates from, “Bavarian and Württenburg Churches, the Free Synods in the Rhineland, Westphalia, and Brandenburg, as well as many ‘confessing’ congregations throughout Germany.”

Of course the most important meeting was held in Barmen on May 29-31 when the "Declaration of Barmen" was formulated, presented and accepted.

Several actions occurred within these free synods. The first was the formulating and acceptance of several confessional statements. The first statement was the “The Declaration Concerning the Right Understanding of the Reformation Confessions of Faith in the German Evangelical Church of the Present.” This, like the later “Declaration of Barmen” was written by Karl Barth. Another Confession was the “Ulm Declaration.” I will write about these statements in my third posting on this subject.

The Second action was the formation of leadership groups in the form of councils of brethren. The third inevitable action happened in the midst of severe crisis and persecution. Members of the synods came to the conclusion that they were the “legitimate” Church in Germany. This recognition of their own legitimacy can be traced to their stands on the faith and confession of the Church rather than any political viewpoint.

The members of the free synod and confessional gatherings were certainly witnesses to the German Church, the German people and later to the worldwide Church. They shared a witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in the midst of a Church which wanted to share his Lordship with other gods. In gathering together they stood as one against an egocentric culture within Germany. And they spoke truth when everywhere lies and manipulation were the norm. Because of their witness paganism never totally engulfed the whole Church.

But, most important, it was the unique act of calling together "free synods" as a way of addressing the crisis within the official Church which allowed the confessing Christians and congregations to bring orthodox teaching and structure to the churches while speaking confessional truth to the German people.

1 All of the material about the free synods is taken from The Church’s Confession Under Hitler by Artur C. Cochrane.

The Church within a Church: a possibility 1 A revisit of the subject

Over at A Classical Presbyterian we have been having an interesting discussion on the Church, and various groups within the Church. Exploring Covenanted Fellowships, Part Four: The company we keep. As I was writing my last answer I remembered this series of postings and have decided to re-post them. Besides I noticed I didn't finish them-has anyone else ever done that? Anyway I hope this will contribute to the conversation.


This series will deal with how the Confessing Church in Germany, during the Nazi years, dealt with its position as a Church within a Church and how that is relevant to the orthodox in the PC(USA) today.

The official Church was a combination of the Lutheran, Reformed and United Churches gathered together under a Church government shaped, promoted and used by the Nazi Government. Many will see this as a non-relevant subject for the orthodox within the PCUSA today, and clearly the differences are vast. But surprisingly the most basic issues, the Lordship of Jesus Christ, revelation, atonement and ideas about the form and nature of the Church are the same.

With this beginning post I lay out the vast differences, the similarities, and the Confessing Church’s path of resistance that I believe offer some clues toward the future.

Certainly the most serious differences were the dictatorship the Church struggled under and the real issues of life and death. The most serious symptom of the real theological issues within the Church was the German Church official’s refusal to allow Jewish Christians a place within the Church as well as the end of missionary activity to the Jewish people.

Confessing Church pastors and officials faced loss of their ordination; they faced prison and death. All of those involved in youth ministry faced the despair of watching their organizations be dissolved into Hitler’s youth organization. Theological professors lost their university jobs. But one Professor, in particular, noted that the problem was much deeper than the militant dictatorship that existed in his day.

Karl Barth understood that the Church's theological problems began in Germany two-hundred years before and stated that after the, “Church will have finished with the public, savage heretics [the German Christians],” …”who will save her from the blandishments of those who seem correct as to the standards of the Church, Bible and Reformation. And yet, in principle do not think differently from those heretics.”

So, for similarities the most basic sameness in the two Church struggles has to do with revelation. Without dictatorships, without Nazis or any other evil ideology some fail to see that the two struggles are the same. The theologians of Germany for two hundred years had prepared the Church of Germany to recognize other forms of revelation beside Jesus Christ as he is found in Holy Scripture. Today it is reason, science, culture, gender, community, etc. Then, culture, soil, community (volk) and the events of history became the revelation German Christianity placed beside Jesus Christ.

Christianity became Germanic; Hitler and National Socialism were the great gifts and revelation that God had supposedly given to Germany. This is why the German Christians rejected the Jewish people and the Hebrew Bible. This is also why many of the German Christians rejected the atoning death of Jesus Christ on the cross. For them Jesus became a kind of super hero, some one to emulate rather then kneel before. The culture of Germany became more important than the blood of the cross.

Ideas about the Church changed with the new revelation. The Church was seen as a means to unify the community, the volk. The Church was to be an instrument for building up people and culture. The Church took on a new appearance. The German officials rejected the Reform understanding of parliamentary governance. Leaders of the German Faith movement wrote in their "Guiding Priniciples":

“The time of parliamentarianism has outlived itself even in the Church. Ecclesiastical parties have no religious sanction to represent Church people and are opposed to the lofty purpose of becoming a national Church.”1

The leaders believed parliamentary governance destroyed the unity of the Church and the nation. Instead they opted for a hierarchical structure that went well beyond the Lutheran tradition since it was shaped on an administrative rather than a spiritual foundation.

The orthodox in the midst of the Church crisis began to call for free synods. Arthur Cochrane writes:

"There remained for Christ’s flock the one thing possible—the one thing the Church can do when all other possibilities have been exhausted, namely, a common Confession of Christ in the face of a heresy that threatens the life of the Church as the true bride of Christ. Thus in the early months of 1934, a new movement appeared on the scene, in which the laity played as important a part as the clergy. A.S. Duncan-Jones has called this the ‘synodical movement, because it took the form of local synods of clergy and laity who expressed their mind on the dangers that threatened the Church.’”

As part of this movement and alongside it several declarations were formulated which eventually led to the Declaration of Barmen. Beyond this, at the same synod that produced the Declaration of Barmen, the Confessional Synod voted for a resolution that dealt with such things as the Confessing Church's legality, their practical work, the spiritual renewal of ministers, education and the mission of the Church, (which included among other projects ministering to Storm Troopers and Hitler Youth!).

With further postings I intend to deal with the “free Synods,” the gathering declarations and finally with the various resolutions the members of the Synod of Barmen approved to guide them as they became a Church within a Church.

1 “The Guiding Principles of the Faith Movement of the ‘German Christians,, June 6 1932” Appendix II in The Church’s Confession Under Hitler, Arthur C. Cochrane, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press 1961) 222.

Paul Schneider: A Chestnut Tree and the Confessing Church

Pastor Paul Schneider at the funeral of a child “denounced the web of pagan mythology that for political reasons was being superimposed upon the Christian concept of the hereafter.” He, like other members of the Confessing Churches had denounced the attempt by various groups and people in Germany to de-Christianize the Churches.

In a letter to Hitler some of the Confessing Church members had complained that, among other acts against the Christian faith: “Other members of the Reich Government have, under the cloak of positive Christianity, divested of their confessional character categorical conceptions of the Christian Faith, such as belief, love, eternity, prayer, resurrection, and have given a new, purely worldly, psychological interpretation.” (emphasis mine)

In the book The Shame and the Sacrifice: The Life and Martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Schneider is mentioned as the first Confessing Pastor to die in a concentration camp. Always outspoken and courageous, when he was banished from his two Churches he refused to leave them and was arrested. Schneider was beaten many times both for preaching the gospel and for standing up for other prisoners. He died when a prison doctor gave him poison rather than medicine.

In the book on Bonhoeffer another small book is mentioned which was circulated privately in Germany during the time of Schneider and Bonhoeffer and their imprisonment. Dying We Live was translated into English in the fifties in a small paperback book. It contains letters from many prisoners of the Nazi’s.

Most of Schneider’s letters, featured in Dying We Live, are written to his wife and children while he awaited his trial which would lead to Buchenwald and death. In the letters, he often refers to an old chestnut tree in the prison grounds and uses it as a picture of the Church. As Schneider writes of the Lord, the Church and the times he lives in, his words carry meaning for other eras. Here is one letter dated November 7, 1937:

“You ask me what I do all day long. Above all I am a student of the word of God, and want to go on being that. …

Once again the chestnut tree is preaching a sermon to me. Its bare black branches reach out to me so promisingly the small brown buds for next spring. I can see them close to the window and also in the top branches. They were already there even when the yellow foliage was still hiding them. Should we be so thankless and of so little faith that we deliberately overlook among the falling, withered leaves of the church the buds that here too cling tenaciously to trunk and branches?

Dear wife, I believe we know enough out of our own inner experience to speak and to believe for our communities too. … The Confessional church—it is truly that—is the tree with the buds; the secret congregations within the congregations are the buds of the church. Wherever a pastor is ready to assume a ministry that no longer is a ‘ministry,’ that continues to exist even without the assurance of state support (because a ‘position’ thus supported would no longer be a religious post), while all calculations and considerations of church politics are at an end, there the spiritual eye sees even now the coming church and its spring. Of course the world and the faithless churchmen see the bare tree stripped of its cultural and public significance and judge that, since the world and the state withhold recognition, it will soon die and serve only for firewood. They take refuge in the tangled vine of the false church and state religion, rankly overgrowing the duly doomed tree of a godless, self-glorifying and self-complacent world—a vine that will collapse and be burned with the tree of such a transient world.

But we abide in the branches of the poor, bare, despised, and defamed church that reaches its buds out to us with so much promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. In it only can we live in safety, ‘secure in all our ways’; only in that faith which is the indestructible strength of its life and its burgeoning can true freedom and happiness be found. Let us go on holding to this faith, live by it and act by it, as the richly ‘comforted,’ because this faith alone represents the victory over the prison of this world and its lethal power. ‘Then let the world with its vain reward dissolve. Faith perseveres, the Cross will lead to the crown.’”

There is an excellent article about Paul Schneider, with pictures, here.