rasmusson barth vs nazis

“DEPRIVE THEM OF THEIRPATHOS”: KARL BARTH AND THENAZI REVOLUTION REVISITED

ARNE RASMUSSON

The role of Karl Barth’s theology during the church struggle after theNazi revolution in 1933 has been endlessly debated. That Barth’s resistanceto the Nazis is important to understanding his theology is not a contro-versial issue in these debates. What is controversial, rather, concerns howbest to understand Barth’s contribution to the church struggle and whetherhis theological approach then (and today) was (is) adequate and relevant.The historical and the theological sets of issues are difficult to separatesharply. Indeed, how one judges the theological adequacy of Barth’sresponse is to a certain extent dependent on how the history is told, andthe way historical questions are posed similarly frames, to an importantdegree, the theological debate.

How are we best to understand Barth’s theological approach to thechurch struggle? Was he consistent or did his views change duringthe 1930s? Was he, at the beginning, only calling for a churchly, apoliticalresistance, separating the church from the political sphere? Does Barth’sconcentration on Christology and sharp criticism of natural theologylead to ecclesial isolation? And did that, in his own case at least, leadto a disinterest in the situation of the Jews? Did his sharp critique of liberalProtestantism and his defense of a confessing theology in fact collude withthe antiliberalism of Nazism? Do Barth’s theology and the Barmen confes-sion in fact promote an authoritarian and antiliberal position?

These are but only a few examples of the type of issues that havebeen raised over the years regarding Barth’s theology. Indeed, it is fair tosay that Barth’s theology is as controversial now as it was in 1933. Most

Arne RasmussonDepartment of Religious Studies, Umeå University, SE-90187 Umeå, SWEDEN

Modern Theology 23:3 July 2007ISSN 0266-7177 (Print)ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)

© 2007 The AuthorJournal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Protestant theology today represents outlooks more aligned with Barth’sopponents in the 1930s than with Barth. At the same time, however, thesupporters of Barth’s theology and the Barmen confession have subse-quently been radically divided and the controversies among them havebeen exceptionally harsh. Regardless of which genealogy one chooses tofollow, both exhibit a reciprocal relationship between the historical inter-pretations provided and the theological, ecclesial, and political standpointsassumed by the interpreters.

I will not attempt to answer all the questions posed above about Barth’stheology. Some of them I have discussed elsewhere.1 At present I willrestrict myself to offering my own reading of Barth’s theology and itsdevelopment during the 1930s concerning the interrelationships amongchurch, theology, and politics as displayed in relation to National Socialismin Germany. I will concentrate on Barth’s writings in 1933, the Barmendeclaration from 1934, and his very sharp rejection of the National Socialiststate in 1938. I do not claim originality in what I argue below, but myreading does differ markedly from readings given by many influentialinterpreters—among Barth’s opponents and his supporters alike—withparticular reference to his theological approach to the church struggle andits political implications. How one understands Barth’s approach to thechurch struggle and its political ramifications has important consequencesfor determining the degree to which one will judge Barth to be consistent(or not) in his articulation of the interrelationships among church, theology,and politics.2

The sharp edges of Barth’s theology, not least its so-called Christo-centrism (some would say its Christo-monism), are enough to make ithighly controversial. But Barth’s response in 1933 was also a straightfor-ward attack on the then dominant types of theology in Germany, bothconservative and liberal. Indeed, conservative and liberal German theolo-gies were not all that different from the types of theology in other Europeancountries or in North America at that time, and Barth’s attack foundsomething of a target in all of them, including theologies ostensibly quiteclose to Barth. The Nazi revolution in 1933 was greeted by much enthu-siasm in German Protestantism, although the attempts by the GermanChristians (Deutsche Christen, a Protestant group highly supportive of theNazi revolution) to take control of the church also met much resistance. ButBarth did not think that the problem was restricted to these GermanChristians, whom he understood simply “as the last, most perfected andugliest progeny of the neo-Protestantism” of the theological era of AdolfHarnack and Ernst Troeltsch.3 The group had its roots in neo-Protestantdevelopments after 1700 which found representatives in people likeFriedrich Schleiermacher and Richard Rothe.4 Ecclesiastical and theologicalliberalism, in Barth’s view, was just one part of German Protestant mod-ernism. Indeed, most theological moderates and conservatives were not

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much different; they all suffered from the same malaise.5 It was all too easy,Barth thought, to go from neo-Protestantism to support of—or at leastunderstanding of—the Nazi revolution. Even for Christians who were waryof the Nazi rise, this form of neo-Protestantism did not prove very helpfulfor resistance. “The whole proud heritage of the eighteenth and nineteenthcentury proved incapable of resistance, obviously because it containednothing that had to resist and could not give away.”6 These accusations werenot made lightly. During the spring semester of 1933, Barth was actuallydelivering his lectures, published after the war,7 on nineteenth-centuryProtestantism; he repeats this judgment in his 1957 lecture, “Evangelicaltheology in the nineteenth century.”8

“As if Nothing Had Happened”

On 1 July, 1933, Barth’s Theological Existence Today was published.9 Thispivotal text, written during a time of sharp conflicts and radical changes inGerman society and German Protestantism and which also coincided witha time of personal crisis,10 became extremely important for the growingresistance among German Protestants. However, one has to see this text incontinuity with Barth’s earlier writings if one is not to misunderstand it.One should certainly not understand his famous (or, depending on per-spective, notorious) introduction where Barth writes that he “endeavour[s]to carry on theology, and only theology, now as previously, and as ifnothing had happened”,11 as a summons to theological isolation or inac-tivity. Instead, one should see this statement as a concrete example of howBarth thinks that the church should ideologically starve the state. In hisfamous commentary on Romans, he had written:

State, Church, Society, Positive Right, Family, Organized Research, &c.,&c., live of the credulity of those who have been nurtured uponvigorous sermons delivered on the field of battle and upon othersuchlike solemn humbug. Deprive them of their PATHOS, and theywill be starved out; but stir up revolution against them, and theirPATHOS is provided with fresh fodder. No-revolution is the bestpreparation for the true Revolution; but even no-revolution is no saferecipe. To be in subjection is, when it is rightly understood, an actionvoid of purpose, an action, that is to say, which can spring only fromobedience to God. Its meaning is that men have encountered God, andare thereby compelled to leave the judgement to Him.12

Barth’s words here do not suggest withdrawal. They mean that political lifeshould be uncoupled from any association with the absolute, from thewarfare between good and evil, and instead become “a prudent reckoningwith reality”.13 It is not the elimination of politics that Barth is after; onthe contrary, he is interested in showing what makes politics possible.

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Interestingly enough, in the process that led to his removal from hisprofessorship in Bonn, this is the way Barth’s language (in his Romanscommentaries) of starving the state is understood from the Nazi side. Ina totalitarian Nazi state, such language could only be seen as highlysubversive.14

One has to remember the historical context. Politicians and intellectuals,theologians and church leaders, proclaimed die Wende as a great Revolu-tion, a new beginning, and a historical work of God. Something extremelyimportant had happened. Many saw it as a new revelation of God. On thefirst day of the 1933 Easter celebrations, the following statement was readin Prussian Protestant churches: “This year the Easter message of the risenChrist goes forth in Germany to a people to whom God has spoken bymeans of a great turning point in history.”15 Students reacted like every-body else. Among the students listening to Barth’s lectures were manyNazis in uniform.16 Barth was thus saying that the church should ignoreclaims of a new beginning and a revelation of God, and proceed instead “asif nothing had happened”. After the war Barth wrote that if the Christianshad followed his summons “they would have built up against NationalSocialism a political factor of the first order.”17

The most brilliant theologian among the German Christians (and maybethe most gifted of all German theologians at this time18) was EmanuelHirsch. He argued that Barth’s statement that we should proceed “as ifnothing had happened” leads to the isolation of theology from what Godis doing and from the concrete lives of human beings. For God is speakingto them precisely in what is happening.19 It is, of course, exactly this viewthat Barth attacks in his text. For Barth, there is no other source ofrevelation beside Jesus Christ as witnessed in Scripture. Barth reiterates hisclaim that nothing has happened that should lead to these suggestedchanges in the church structures, theology, and confessions precisely at atime when the German Christians are trying to take control of the church(they won the church elections soon afterwards) and when the moderatemajority greets the revolution of 1933, thinking that this historical changeis a signal for the church to reform itself. Church reform should bedetermined, Barth contends, from the church’s own life, from the Word ofGod, not from political changes. Not only does he utter an absolute “No”to the German Christians because their world-view—and by implicationNational Socialism itself 20—is impossible to reconcile with Christian faith,he is also and above all very critical of the majority of Christians thatengages them and takes their issues seriously, and often positively. To beable to resist, to be a church faithfully proclaiming the Word, one must say“No” not just to a complete assimilation (Gleichschaltung) to the total state,but also to the accommodating changes suggested by the moderates. “Theprime need of our time is for a spiritual centre of resistance”.21 That does notmean passivity. “Of course something has to be done; very much so; but

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most decidedly nothing other than this, viz. that the Church congregationsbe gathered together again, but aright and anew in fear and great joy, to theWord by the means of the Word.”22 This Barth describes as true realism.23

Klaus Scholder describes how Theological Existence Today “fundamentallychanged the church situation” and comments on the strong reactions itreceived from both sides.24 Although highly praising the work, he is alsocritical of how Barth’s concentration on the theological existence of thechurch put the “Jewish question” as a general political question outside thecenter of the church’s engagement. Barth certainly opposed in the strongestpossible words attempts to apply the Aryan paragraph to the church. “Ifthe German Evangelical Church excludes Jewish-Christians, or treats themas of a lower grade, she ceases to be a Christian Church.”25 But he did notmake the “Jewish question” the center of his argument. Nor did he at thistime, as he later was to do, publicly attack Nazi policy in general or call thechurch to direct political resistance on this point.26 It would not have beeninconsistent with the basic line of argument of Theological Existence ofToday—which was primarily directed to pastors and theologians—to saythat no Christian can accept racial discrimination and anti-Semite policyand that Christians should not practice it anywhere.

It might seem that the more moderate opposition (the Young ReformersMovement and the Pastor’s Emergency League) made the application of theAryan paragraph the center of their resistance. However, they carefullynoted that their concern was for the baptized Jews. Using the two king-doms doctrine, these moderates could, on the one hand, celebrate theGerman revolution and the national awakening, and also accept anti-Jewishlaws, while they could work, on the other hand, inside the church againstthe Aryan paragraph. The political sphere was given independence. It wasthus impossible to criticize the political order. Thus both conservative andliberal moderates could affirm Nazi policy. Volk and race could be seen ascreation orders. Or Christianity and the völkisch doctrine could, in a goodliberal fashion, be synthesized, while inside the church the Aryan para-graph could be rejected. Or one might say that the völkisch and racialdoctrine is now part of political, social, or even scientific reality, andtherefore has to be accepted in the political sphere.27

The reason why Barth did not make central the “Jewish question” wasbecause he thought that the way the church handled that question was infact dependent on a wider issue, namely, the independence of church andtheology. He would not accept a sphere of reality totally independent of theWord of God, a reality given divine justification alongside the reality of theWord of God. The protest, he wrote, “must be directed fundamentallyagainst the fact (which is the source of all individual errors) that, beside theHoly Scriptures as the unique source of revelation, the German-Christiansaffirm the German nationhood, its history and its contemporary politicalsituation as a second source of revelation, and thereby betray themselves to



be believers in ‘another God’.”28 This can hardly be said to diminish theimportance of the “Jewish question”.

In his “Abschied” to Zwischen den Zeiten, in which he takes this line ofargument, Barth mentions as a frightening example that he, still being onthe journal’s editorial board, might read in a forthcoming issue an articledefending the Aryan paragraph in terms of the orders of creation. That hesimply could not allow, and therefore Barth felt that he had to resign fromthe editorial board of the journal.29

In October 1933 Barth was asked to comment on a draft to the so-calledBethel Confession against the German Christians and the application of theAryan paragraph in the church.30 Here he reiterated much the sameargument. Barth criticized the acceptance of the doctrine of the orders ofcreation that is at the basis of the German Christian legitimation of theAryan paragraph. This makes Christian criticism of the civil use of theAryan paragraph very difficult or even impossible. He asks: “Is the civiltreatment that is systematically imposed upon the Jews in present-dayGermany of such a kind that ‘we’ don’t have anything to say about it? That‘we’ accept and participate in it as something ordained by God, since it isdecreed by the ‘authorities’?”31 Barth wanted the Confession to be soconstructed that the church could directly criticize the Aryan paragraph asa state law. Such a position was, in German theology at that time, very rare.In addition, Barth also thought that the Confession should explicitlydescribe the churchly Aryan paragraph as a heresy.32

In light of Barth’s radicalism, Christine-Ruth Müller finds it strangethat Barth did not follow up with action, and especially did not answerDietrich Bonhoeffer’s question with a clear “Yes” that the creation of afree church was indeed the way forward. She thinks, like many others,that the explanation is that Barth did not make the “Jewish question” thecentral question.33 What Barth says in his letter to Bonhoeffer in Sep-tember 1933 is that the church’s acceptance of the Aryan paragraph hascreated a situation of status confessionis and the church leaders and the(actual or imagined) majority of church members that have endorsed theparagraph should publicly be told: “You are in this regard no morethe church of Christ.” That said, Barth nonetheless does not think thatthe opponents of the Aryan paragraph should leave the church; theyshould wait until they are forced out—and only then will there be in facta free church. He does not totally exclude the possibility that a situationmay arise that would make it absolutely impossible to stay within thechurch, though he did not then know what that might be. So he con-tinued to stay and fight. In addition, Barth was also afraid that a newfree church would be dominated by the moderate middle he was socritical of and that they would accept the application of the Aryan para-graph outside the church.34 Such a fear was in fact justified. One shouldremember that even after the Kristallnacht in 1938 such a respected leader

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of the Confessing Church as bishop Theophil Wurm could publiclydefend the right of the state to fight against the danger of Judaism.35

Again one might ask whether Barth’s stance in effect minimizes the“Jewish question”. He was more radical in his critique than even Bon-hoeffer; but Barth put the issue in a wider context.36

On the second Sunday of Advent 1933, Barth delivered a sermon in theSchloßkirche in Bonn on Romans 15.5-13.37 In the context of preaching aboutthe way we are taken up by God’s free grace, he strongly emphasizesthroughout God’s covenant with the people of Israel and the way salvationcomes from the Jews. “That is to say: Christ belonged to the people ofIsrael. This people’s blood was in his veins, the blood of the Son of God.He adopted this people’s ways, when he assumed human existence, not forthe sake of this people, not because of the pre-eminence of its blood and itsrace, but for the sake of truth, i.e. to attest God’s truthfulness andfaithfulness.”38 The relationship between the Jews and the church is thusnot only a question of ethics, but is inherent in the Christian Gospel itself.Without the Jews there is no Gospel. The blood of the Jews is the blood ofthe Son of God. From this it follows that God commands us to “Welcomeone another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory ofGod.” (Rom. 15.9 NSV.) In Barth’s German translation, one reads: “nehmeteuch untereinander auf”. This “one another” includes pagans and Jews andit is, Barth notes, a command without exception. Eberhard Busch describesthis as Barth’s answer to the Aryan paragraph.39 In a letter to one of thelisteners of the sermon, who herself was of Jewish kinship, he wrote “thatone believing in Christ, who was himself a Jew . . . , simply must notparticipate in that contemptuous and abusive treatment of the Jews whichis the order of business these days”.40 A Christian cannot participate in anydisdain or maltreatment of Jews, outside or inside the church. This sermonwas, according to Busch, more widely read than any other similar state-ment. Barth also sent a copy to Hitler.41

This sermon has also been criticized. In his comment to the publishedversion, Barth wrote that the reason he dealt with the “Jewish question”was that the Scripture text itself, which was given him for that Sunday,forced him to do so. Preachers should preach on the text, not on timelytopics or themes. Therefore, political or other topical issues (including the“Jewish question”) do not belong in the sermon as self-chosen themes. ForScholder and others, this is further evidence for how Barth’s concentrationon “theological existence blocked direct insight into the significance of theJewish question.”42 Even if Scholder is right about Barth’s separation oftheological existence and politics, this is surely not how Barth’s editorialcomment should be understood in this case. The church must speak for theJews precisely because it is bound by the Word of God alone. It is notthe political opinion of the preacher that the church must follow, it is theunavoidable Word of God.



So it is not true to say that Barth was only interested in the independenceof church and theology, or that his theology was “apolitical” in the sensethat it did not concern the church’s life in the world. But it is still difficultto know how exactly to interpret him at this time. His German Christianopponents described his theology as ahistorical and apolitical, and so toohave many later interpreters.43 They then quote Barth’s many statements tothe effect that the resistance is not political, but theological. On a personallevel Barth publicly declared that he was not National Socialist and heopenly refused to leave the Social Democratic Party (which, in light of thepolitical developments in Germany, he also very publicly had entered in1931).44 In the political climate at the time, this was in itself an importantstance, helping others to see the situation.

But Barth clearly separated this personal stance from his theologicalwork. One of his concerns was, as we have seen, that the preaching of thechurch should be built on the Scriptures of the church and nothing else. Thepulpit should not be a place for preachers to present their own politicalviews.45 Barth thought that the German Christians were doing exactly thesame thing as the Religious Socialists had been doing, and a churchlyopposition, of which he was in favor, should not make the same mistake.46

The main point here is that the church should not base its teaching onsources outside the Word of God. History or political structures are notindependent sources for Christian knowledge. The whole of reality standsunder the claims of the Word of God. A Christian cannot, for example,disdain and maltreat Jews. Although this affirmation is made on theologicalgrounds, it implicitly but very directly says that Christians cannot on thiscentral point follow and apply the principles of the National Socialist State.The strong claim for the church’s independence is likewise an implicit butdirect attack on the totalitarian claims of the state.47

At this time Barth did not, on a theological basis, explicitly attackNational Socialist policy, as he was later to do. He later regretted that hehad not spoken more explicitly on political matters between 1921–1933. Thereason was, as Barth admitted in 1938, that he did not again want to mixthe kingdom of God with political ideologies.48 Even in 1938, when heclaimed that Christians had to say “No” to the National Socialist State, hethought that it had not been wrong in 1933 to say “No” to the GermanChristians and the Gleichschaltung of the church they required, while at thesame time not directly saying “No” to the Nazi state. First of all, Barththought it was all important to defend the church’s independence. Withoutthat, no future resistance was possible. But he also thought that the 1933Revolution could at that time still be seen as a political experiment thatshould be given some time to develop. Although Barth personally wassharply critical of and had few illusions about Nazi politics, one could notat that time require the church to attack this political experiment directly.No one could see into the future.49

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Some of Barth’s statements from 1933 onward give the impression that,for theological reasons, he could not in principle do then what he was todo in 1938—namely deliver a clear theologically-based “No” to NationalSocialism as a political option for the church. A break in Barth’s theologico-political practice would then occur around 1935. But so much in Barth’swritings before and during 1933 contradict such a view of Barth’s devel-opment. For example, in his 1925 discussion of a possible Reformedconfession, Barth argues that if one were at that time to write a newReformed confession, one should make the issues of völkisch nationalism,anti-Semitism, and militarism into confessional issues. Barth was againstdrafting a new confession precisely because he did not think that theReformed churches were ready to do that.50 His discussion of the Betheldraft in 1933 suggests the same thing. On the other hand, as we will see,he did not explicitly include such political or ethical issues himself when,in 1934, he drafted the Barmen declaration, although the declaration seemsimplicitly to say “No” to the claims of National Socialism.51

In early Spring 1933 Barth asks the General Superintendent OttoDibelius—whom Barth thought was going to preach on the opening of theReichstag on 21 March—to take into account that, in speaking in the nameof the church, he “will have to speak this word in a situation that tomillions of Germans . . . definitely stands under the impression of tyrannyand suppression”.52 In a letter from 18 January 1934, Barth writes that thepolicy on the “Jewish question” is a human, political, and Christianimpossibility, and that the church must say a loud “No” to this policyagainst Christian and non-Christian Jews.53 However, a few weeks earlier,Barth had in another letter surmised that a common statement by theolo-gians on this issue was a practical impossibility. And even if it werepossible, it would only lead to their complete silencing, one consequence ofwhich would be that they would not even be able to protest the applicationof the Aryan paragraph in the church.54 In another discussion (31 October1933), where he says that he is not advocating political resistance, Barthalso remarks that the free preaching of the Gospel must go where the textleads.

The concretized could then become something very dangerously con-crete. There will be questions posed in quite concrete terms, such as:What happened this summer in Germany? Was it right or wrong? Thisseizure of power? This removal of all other parties? This appropriationof assets? What has happened in the concentration camps? Whathappened to the Jews? Can Germany, can the German church answerfor this abundance of suicides? Does not the German church share theguilt, because she kept silent? I am just asking questions! Whoever isto proclaim the word of God must say about these events what theWord of God says.55



So there is a sense in which Barth can say already in 1933 that church andtheology cannot go on as if nothing has happened. However, in anothersense nothing has happened. The political events of 1933 are not a reasonto make changes in theology and church order. Precisely because of theclaim that these events represent a new beginning in which God isspeaking to the German church, the church should claim that nothing ofthis sort has happened. It should ignore these claims, and go on insteadtrying to be true to the Word of God seen in Jesus Christ as attested by theScriptures and follow it wherever it leads. That, Barth claimed, was alwaysthe church’s most important political witness; and so it is now also in theconcrete situation that has arisen.

“We Reject . . . other Events and Powers, Figures and Truths,as God’s Revelation”

We have seen that Barth’s skepticism about the state of the Protestantchurch made him skeptical about the possibility of a common confession.He thus found it astonishing—“one of the most notable events in modernChurch history”56 —that the Barmen Confession of 1934 actually became areality in the way that it did.57 The Confession did not of course representthe reality of the German church, not even of the Confessing Church, whichexplains the latter’s “errors and vacillations”.58 But it was nonetheless apublic representation of “the very miracle that against all expectation hadonce again happened to the Church.”59

The Confessional Church was, so to speak, only the witness of asituation in which simultaneously there took place a remarkable rev-elation, as there had not been for a long time, of the beast out of theabyss, and a fresh confirmation of the one old revelation of God inJesus Christ. It was only a witness of this event. Indeed, it was oftena most inconspicuous and inconvenient witness. But it was awitness.60

Barth was the main author of the Barmen Confession. So it is notsurprising that we find the same themes we have already encountered.61

The first article confesses Jesus Christ as attested in the Scriptures as theone Word of God and rejects any other source of proclamation. The secondarticle addresses God’s claim on the whole of life and rejects the idea thatthere should be areas of life that do not belong to Jesus Christ. This is, ofcourse, an attack on natural theology and various doctrines of creationalorders.62

What Barth finds remarkable is that so many German church leadersand theologians would accept this critique of natural theology, because

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natural theology had during the preceding two centuries been a centraldoctrine in Protestantism in Germany, as elsewhere. The form it had takenin the German Christian Movement was the most sinister form, but notin principle different, he thinks, from what happened in the Enlighten-ment and Pietism, in the liberal Protestantism of Schleiermacher, Rothe,and Albrecht Ritschl, and in the conservative (and even more naïve)Protestantism of people like Adolf Stöcker and Abraham Kuyper. The wayGerman Christians argued for the Christian acceptance of the nationalismof race was not different from how one earlier had argued for idealism,bourgeoisie liberalism, nationalism, or socialism. The new form of racistnationalism was for many as natural and self-evident as liberalism, social-ism, or non-racist nationalism had been for others. As Barth says inanother context: “The triumph of natural theology in the Church, de-scribed as the absorbing and domesticating of revelation, is very clearlythe process of making the Gospel respectable.”63 This theological decisionis thus also highly political in its effect. Citing the first article, Scholderwrites: “The rejection of other ‘events and powers, forms and truths’ as asource of proclamation in fact challenged the all-embracing claim of thenew system. For at that time no one had to explain that the ‘events’referred to the National Socialist revolution, the ‘powers’ to race, bloodand soil, the ‘forms’ to the Führer himself and the ‘truths’ to the newideology.”64 One should, however, not forget that it is the affirmationsabout the primacy of Jesus Christ as attested in the Scriptures and God’sclaim on the whole of life that are primary. The rejections follow fromthese affirmations.

The third article affirms that the church witnesses both through itsmessage and through its church order and it rejects the idea that it has toaccommodate its message and order to current political or ideologicalideas. This, and the article’s description of the church as a congregation ofbrethren, is a critique of the attempted ‘Arianization’ of the church.65 Thefourth addresses the serving character of the offices of the church, whichare given to the whole congregation, and rejects the idea of special rulingleaders (thus, like the third article, attacking the new leadership structureof the German Evangelical Church).

The fifth article deals with the state. The state is divinely appointed toprovide for justice and peace. However, the idea that the state shouldrepresent a totalitarian order for the whole of life, attempting to be thechurch, is rejected. In Hans Asmussen’s accompanying address (the dec-laration and the address were published together) we can read, in thecomments on this article, “that even the political wisdom in our presentform of the State, about which we do not otherwise indulge in passing anyjudgment, is not God’s wisdom; that even the measure of justice thatprevails in our public affairs is not the standard of divine righteousness.And . . . we know no earthly law by which God’s law could lawfully be



broken.”66 The sixth and final article affirms that the church’s calling is toproclaim the Word through preaching and sacraments and rejects the ideathat the church’s work should be in service to any other purpose.

The Barmen Confession had enormous consequences during the churchstruggle and has also been very important in various contexts insideand outside Germany after 1945. Because of its attack on a quite broadlyunderstood natural theology, that is, the way most theology has been donefor the last couple centuries, it has also continued to be as controversial asBarth’s own theology.67 It has also been controversial because of what it didnot say, i.e. because it was not explicitly political, and, above all, becauseit did not explicitly reject the current policy on the Jews. We have seen thatit is in fact implicitly and decidedly political. It also implicitly rejects theapplication of the Aryan paragraph in the church. This was, after all,together with the new leadership structure, the practical reason for theopposition. However, it is not as ethically or politically direct as one mighthave expected, given what Barth earlier had written about confessions. Andconcerning “the Jewish question”, it is much less explicit than Barth’s ownwritings from 1933 and 1934. The Reformed Declaration from January 1934,which Barth composed, explicitly rejects the Aryan paragraph in thechurch.68 One could say, on Barth’s own grounds, that the implicit natureof its ethical/political statements could leave it open for either a moreapolitical interpretation or a different interpretation, insofar that the politi-cal reality was differently construed. Many members of the ConfessingChurch, even the co-drafter of the declaration, Hans Asmussen, would latersharply criticize Barth when he described the Nazi state as an illegitimatestate, though one might think that this is already implicit in the Barmendeclaration’s rejection of any absolute and total claims of the state.69 Butmost of the signers seem not to have made this connection, and there likelywould not have been any confession at all if the text had been moreexplicit. The opposition during the meeting in Barmen, especially from theLutheran side, was strong, and the language in the draft of the fifth articlehad to be changed.70

Barth’s own relationship with the organized forms of the ConfessingChurch continued to be rocky. Many of the leaders of Confessing Church(especially bishops such as Hans Meiser, Theophil Wurm, and AugustMarahrens) wanted to be recognized by the state and thereby maintaincontact with the rest of the Protestant church. To be able to do that theConfessing Church had to replace the people around Barth. According tobishop Marahrens, “at the present the greatest danger to the GermanEvangelical Church comes from Karl Barth.”71 When Marahrens became thehead of the Provisional Church Government (which had replaced theNational Council of Brethren), Barth left.72 But I will not deal with thatepisode here. Soon a process also started that would lead to the loss ofBarth’s professorship and his deportation to Switzerland.73

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“This State Is Anarchy Tempered by Tyranny, or Tyranny Tempered byAnarchy, but it Is Certainly No State”

After Barth was forced to leave Germany in 1935, he kept in contact withand closely followed the affairs of the Confessing Church, combiningsharp criticism with praise according to how it proceeded.74 During thistime Barth also further developed his theological understanding of thestate. And it is striking that he continued to describe the state in thepositive way as he had done in his ethics lectures some years back. Ifanything, it was more positive, because of the theological framing hegave it. The developments in Germany did not lead him back to themore critical language of the Romans commentaries. Instead, he used hispositive theological description of the just state to radically delegitimizethe Nazi state.75

What should the church then do for the state? Barth’s answer is that itfirst of all should be the church; preach, teach, and celebrate the sacra-ments.76 This is always much more politically relevant than any directpolitical action. The church is also called to pray for the authorities. If itprays, Barth says, it should also work for what it prays. That includes, ina democracy, ordinary political work. That Christians are supposed to prayfor the state shows that the state is limited. It should pray for peace,freedom, justice, and order, so that the church will be able to preach andlive the Gospel. When it is not allowed freely to preach the Gospel, thechurch has to resist. Barth therefore does not judge the state in light of someform of natural law or some political theory, but in terms of the freedomit gives the church to proclaim the Gospel. From this stance, it follows thatthe church will defend a limited state. This also means that not any formof the state is as compatible with Christianity as any other. The church canlive in many different forms of states, to be sure. “But it is not true that aChristian can endorse, desire or seek after a mobocracy or a dictatorship asreadily as a democracy.”77 And when the state goes over its limits, thechurch has to resist.78 According to Barth, the German Nazi “state” hadclearly transgressed these limits.

That this was the case he argues most forcefully in a lecture given the 5December 1938, just after the Kristallnacht, titled “The Church and thePolitical Problem Today”.79 Many in the Confessing Church wanted to saythat they did not want to resist the Nazi state politically.80 Church resistance,Barth points out, was not the same as political resistance. Others who alsopolitically resisted the Hitler regime were still ready to fight for Germanyin case of war. Barth himself had made some attempts to call uponChristians in Germany to refuse to serve in the German army, and also tobe active in sabotage and boycotts. But he found little support for thisamong his theological friends in the Confessing Church. Of course, refusingmilitary service in Germany would mean death, fleeing the country, or



going underground. But many of Barth’s colleagues and compatriots alsothought it wrong to refuse military service for Christian ethical reasons.81

In “The Church and the Political Problem Today” lecture, Barth vigor-ously develops his argument why the church cannot be politically neutralin the current situation. The church’s witness to Jesus Christ consists of “adefinite repetition of the confession of him” and “of the actualizing of thisconfession in definite decisions in relation to those contemporary questionswhich agitate the Church and the world.”82 The church does not carry outits witness in relation to just any question, but only “to those questions intowhose area and province it sees itself summoned by its own course and byits own inner necessity” as it is led by Jesus Christ.83

This lecture argues that the political problem in 1938 is German NationalSocialism and that against it the church has to declare openly a definite andclear ‘No’. Europe is now, he says, where Germany was in 1932. The issueis whether Nazism will shape the future of Europe. And there is no way thechurch can be neutral. Nazism has shown itself to be a combination ofpolitical experiment and a salvation doctrine. Its absolutist claims haveplaced before the church the question whether they are witnessing in thepresent political events the kingdom of God or a demonic system. If onecannot see the Christian church in National Socialism, then one has to rejectit. For Barth there is no way of reconciling National Socialism with JesusChrist.

However, Barth thinks that there is an even more decisive reasonfor politically resisting and rejecting the Nazi state and that is itsanti-Semitism.

But the really decisive, biblical, theological reason for the Churchestablishing this does not lie in the various anti-Christian asseverationsand actions of National Socialism. On the contrary it lies in that thingwhich just in this last week has especially moved us, viz. the anti-Semitism, which is one of its principles. Were this to stand by itself itwould quite in itself suffice to justify the sentence; National Socialismis the anti-Church fundamentally hostile to Christianity.84

This means, according to Barth, that this “state” can no longer be under-stood as a legitimate authority as described in Romans 13. It representsinstead a “fundamental dissolution of the just State”.85 As Barth says, “thisState is anarchy tempered by tyranny, or tyranny tempered by anarchy, butit is certainly no State.”86 So the church has no choice but to pray for, andthus also work for, the overthrow of this state and the restoration of a juststate.87 This includes the explicit and strong church support for armeddefense against this German state.88

Barth here defends his own action earlier in 1938 in connection with the“Czech crisis” that led to the Munich agreement, and his famous openletter to the Czech theologian Josef Hromadka, published first in the Czech

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press, and then also in France, Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland.89 Inthis letter he attacks the Western powers’ appeasement policy in relation toHitler’s claim on Czechoslovakia and the bankruptcy of post-War pacifismand calls the Czechs to resistance. Most well-known and controversial is thefollowing sentence: “Every Czech soldier who then fights and suffers willdo that for us as well—and, I say this today unreservedly: he will also doit for the church of Jesus Christ, that in the atmosphere of Hitler andMussolini is bound to fall prey to either ridicule or extinction.”90 Barth wasvery widely and publicly harshly criticized for this letter, especially ofcourse in Germany, also from his friends in Germany. The leader of theConfessing Church even wrote a public letter of censure.91 It also led to thedecision to ban Barth’s publications in Germany. At the time Barth thoughtthat, had the Western democracies resisted, Hitler would have backeddown because Germany was not yet ready for war.92 And later, whenthe war had begun, he strongly endorsed the war against Germany as arighteous war commanded by God.93 In his 1938 lecture, Barth concludedhis discussion of the necessity of armed response with the following words:“would that the Church had concerned herself much more seriously withthe restoration of the just State before matters had reached such a pass thatshe is concerned for its preservation in this form.”94

“It Has to Testify in the Midst of a Sinful World . . . with Its Messageas with Its Order”

The statement quoted at the end of the last paragraph is, of course, also aself-critical statement. But does it mean that Barth now has a principallydifferent view on church and politics than the one he defended in 1933 inTheological Existence Today or the position reflected in the Barmen confessionof 1934? I doubt it. I think there is more continuity between “1925”, “1933”,and “1938” than most commentators have granted.95 In the case of the 1938lecture he is only saying that the unlimited, totalitarian claims of theNational Socialist “state”, National Socialism presenting a total salvationdoctrine, and—most important—its anti-Semite policy, make a choicebetween the church of Jesus Christ and this “state” unavoidable. A faithfulChristian cannot but resist. One can, of course, discuss exactly how best toresist, but it is impossible not to resist. Barth believed that one could notyet have said that in 1933.

The difference between Barth’s views here is partly, of course, alsotactical—but only partly. He did not say in 1933/34 all he would like tohave said, and he did not think the church at that time should say all itcould say. If it had, it would not have been able to say anything more. Anindependent and resisting church was more important than radical state-ments.96 But we also have to remember that Barth did not fully appreciateat that time what would happen, though he had in 1933—in contrast to



most others—a very dark view of the future.97 His critique of all theologicallegitimation of politics was not primarily directed to the few critics of theNazi state, but against the great majority that in various ways theologicallydefended die Wende, using very similar arguments to those used by thereligious socialists. Seeing, for example, how both Paul Tillich and Hirschcould use the Kairos-concept,98 which Barth himself earlier had used, albeitwith a very different meaning, one can appreciate why he would be verysuspicious of such a strategy.99 From his later perspective Barth may haveoverreacted and he sometimes used less felicitous language, suggestingthereby something of a dualism between theology and politics that did notclearly describe his own actions. Part of the problem may be that he wasimprisoned by a too narrow use of the word “politics” as something onlydirectly related to the state.

There is also a tendency to relate theology too narrowly to the sermon,as if the church’s public life primarily is seen in the sermon and it can onlysay what the specific Scripture text of the church year was saying. This mayreflect the situation of an established Protestant Volk church-Christianity,such as the one in Germany (although church and state had been officiallyseparated in 1918). The problem for people like Barth and Bonhoeffer wasthat the church they presupposed in their respective theologies did notreally exist. The issue was not only bad theology. More basic was the realityof the church. Natural theology, a theology of creation orders, the talk ofseeing God in the historical development, and so on, had its basis in achurch that identified itself with (in this case) Germany and made thechurch a function of that wider political order. It is not easy to combineBarth’s theology with a national church, but he, at this time, did theology,presupposing and defending a Christendom order. Hence the centrality ofthe sermon. One might say that the power this established position gave tothe Protestant (and in another way the Roman Catholic) Church created thesocial space for the sort of resistance there was (the small and much morevulnerable free churches did not do very well), but it also ensured that thisresistance would be limited. But more important still, National Socialismdid not come as an external force like a natural disaster. The churches, asestablished Volk churches, had participated in creating the cultural andpolitical imagination and practices that made Nazism possible, just as ithad participated in creating the culture that made the First World Waralmost unavoidable—two parts of the same thing.100 It was no surprise thatso many Christians celebrated the revolution of 1933 after many also hadgiven Hitler their vote.

Barth’s acceptance of Christendom stood in tension with other parts ofhis ecclesiology (and his theology in general). This is expressed, forexample, in the third Barmen article. The church witnesses both through itsmessage and through its ecclesial order. The church is in itself a form ofpolitical order with specific political structures—such as church law, certain

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offices, divisions of labor, and specific institutional structures.101 The churchshould in its order, it practices, and its actual life witness to the kingdomof God which is already a reality in Jesus Christ. This theme is later onmuch more developed in Church Dogmatics in the section “The Order of theCommunity.”102 The community order, which is christologically derived,should be an order of service; it is liturgical, living (evolving), andexemplary. As Barth writes: “[T]he decisive contribution which the Chris-tian community can make to the upbuilding and work and maintenance ofthe civil consists in the witness which it has to give to it and to all humansocieties in the form of the order of its own upbuilding and constitution.”103

The church should not give witness to itself but “to the kingdom of Godalready set up on earth in Jesus Christ, and a promise of its futuremanifestation.”104 The church witnesses to other possibilities. However, thisimplies, I think, a post-Christendom theology and ecclesiology. And, in fact,that is the direction in which Barth’s theology increasingly moved after thewar. This also, one could argue, opens up a more adequate understandingof the church’s life in the world. But that is the subject for another time.105

NOTES

1 For a discussion of the antiliberal charge and the roles of Barthian theology and liberalProtestantism during the Weimar republic and in the early Third Reich, see ArneRasmusson, “Historiography and Theology: Theology in the Weimar Republic and theThird Reich” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte Heft 2, 2007 (in press) but also Arne Rasmusson,“Historicizing the Historicist: Ernst Troeltsch and Recent Mennonite Theology”, inStanley Hauerwas, Chris K. Huebner, Harry J. Huebner, and Mark Thiessen Nation(eds.), The Wisdom of the Cross: Essays in Honor of John Howard Yoder (Grand Rapids, MI:Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), pp. 213–248. For a sustained critique ofpost-Barthian political theology, see Arne Rasmusson, The Church as Polis: From PoliticalTheology to Theological Politics as Exemplified by Jürgen Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995).

2 This essay is part of a much broader project which, while not concentrating on Barth perse, does nonetheless inevitably shape my reading. For a few hints, see Arne Rasmusson,“The Politics of Diaspora: The Post-Christendom Theologies of Karl Barth and JohnHoward Yoder”, in L. Gregory Jones, Reinhard Hütter, and Rosalee Velloso Ewell (eds.),God, Truth, and Witness: Engaging Stanley Hauerwas (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press,2005), pp. 88–111.

3 Karl Barth, “Abschied (1933)”, “Der Götze wackelt”: Zeitkritische Aufsätze, Reden und Briefevon 1930 bis 1960, ed. Karl Kupisch (Berlin: Kathe Vogt, 1961), p. 66. So also Karl Barth,The German Church Conflict, edited by Ernst Wolf (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1965),p. 16.

4 Barth, The German Church Conflict, p. 41.5 Ibid., p. 25.6 Ibid., p. 41.7 Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Its Background and History (Grand

Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002).8 Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982), pp. 9–33. “And

he who in 1933 may still have been spellbound by the theology of the 19th century washopelessly condemned, save for a special intervention of grace, to bet on the wronghorse in regard to national socialism and during the clash between the ConfessingChurch and the German Christians who supported the new regime (Kirchenkampf ).”



(p. 28.) For an overview of Barth’s critique of Neo-Protestantism, see Jan Rohls, “Barthund der theologische Liberalismus”, in Michael Beintker, Christian Link, and MichaelTrowitzsch (eds.), Karl Barth in Deutschland (1921–1935): Aufbruch—Klärung—Widerstand(Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2005), pp. 285–312.

9 Helmut Gollwitzer reports that a first draft of Theological Existence Today was verysharp, direct, and explicitly political. But Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Barth’sstudent Hellmut Traub were shocked and told him that it was impossible to print.Both he himself and the publisher would be in very serious trouble. So he rewrotethe text. According to Gollwitzer, Barth was far from happy with this, and gave vonKirschbaum and Traub the text with the words: “There you have your ‘politicallycoordinated’ (gleichgeschaltete) theological existence!” See Helmut Gollwitzer,“Kingdom of God and Socialism in the Theology of Karl Barth”, in George Hunsinger(ed.), Karl Barth and Radical Politics (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1976), pp.77–120, at p. 113. Klaus Scholder calls this is a legend. See Klaus Scholder, TheChurches and the Third Reich, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1988), Vol. 1, p.435. According to Hinrich Stoevesandt, Barth made some changes after the criticismsfrom von Kirschbaum and Traub, but to describe the changes in the way Gollwitzerdoes is very misleading. See Hinrich Stoevesandt, “Einleitung”, in Barth, TheologischeExistenz heute! (1933), ed. Hinrich Stoevesandt (München: C. Kaiser, 1984), p. 21, andHinrich Stoevesandt, Gottes Freiheit und die Grenze der Theologie: Gesammelte Aufsätze(Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1992), p. 155. It is certainly clear that Barthtempered his text so that it would be publishable. In a letter to Thurneysen two daysafter he finished the manuscript, Barth writes: “You in Switzerland shall have to takeinto account that I could have said much more but to some extent had to ‘hold mytongue’ so as to at least be able to say that much.” See Karl Barth, Eduard Thur-neysen, Briefwechsel: Band 3, 1930–1935, ed. Caren Algner (Zürich: TheologischerVerlag, 2000), p. 427. But this does not confirm Gollwitzer’s account and it is unlikelythat Barth at this time would have wanted to write the sort of text Gollwitzer seemsto think that he should have written.

10 During the spring of 1933 the situation in Barth’s very troubled marriage over manyyears, that is the triple relation between Karl and Nelly Barth and Charlotte vonKirschbaum, became acute and Karl offered Nelly a divorce, an offer she declined. Seethe letters gathered in Barth- Thurneysen Briefwechsel: Band 3, 1930–1935, pp. 371–426(which in addition to the letters by Barth and Thurneysen also includes letters by NellyBarth and Charlotte von Kirschbaum).

11 Karl Barth, Theological Existence Today! A Plea for Theological Freedom (London: Hodderand Stoughton, 1933), p. 9.

12 Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), pp. 483 f.See also the first edition, Barth, Der Römerbrief (Erste Fassung), 1919 (Zürich: Theologis-cher Verlag Zürich, 1985), p. 517.

13 Barth, Romans, p. 489.14 See the documents cited in Hans Prolingheuer, Der Fall Karl Barth, 1934–1935: Chronog-

raphie einer Vertreibung (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1977), pp. 154 f. and 247 f.15 Cited in Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, Vol. 1, p. 236.16 Barth- Thurneysen Briefwechsel: Band 3, 1930–1935, p. 420. Cf. p. 348.17 Karl Barth, Against the Stream: Shorter Post-War Writings, 1946–52, ed. Ronald Gregor

Smith (New York, NY: Philosophical Library, 1954), p. 118.18 Barth was, of course, not German.19 Emanuel Hirsch, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage im Spiegel philosophischer und theologischer

Besinnung: Akademische Vorlesungen zum Verständnis des deutschen Jahrs 1933 (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1934), pp. 139 f. Cf. Gerhard Kittel’s question to the Con-fessing Church whether they could confess the following: “We reject the false teachingthat claims that at any given time or place there could be a proclamation of the gospelwithout reference to the historical moment, a proclamation taking place ‘as if nothinghad happened’; a proclamation that as to its approach and as to its entire formation werenot thoroughly codetermined by its divinely ordained moment of world and nation andhumanity.” The letter, which is part of an open exchange between Kittel and Barth, isfound in Karl Barth, Offene Briefe 1909–1935, ed. Diether Koch (Zürich: Theologischer

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Verlag Zürich, 2001), pp. 273–275, at pp. 274 f. Barth’s response is found on pp. 279–281.See further the whole exchange on pp. 268–319.

20 In a letter of 1933 to a student in reply to the question whether one could be a Christianand National Socialist, Barth wrote that in theory that might be possible, but in practicehe doubted it. Why? Because the religious or world-encompassing character of NationalSocialism implies a total claim that directly rivals Christianity’s total claim on the person.In addition, it seemed to him that to take just one step in the direction of NationalSocialist policy against the Jews would involve a betrayal of the Gospel. Letter toMechtchild Dallmann (1 September 1933), Karl Barth, Briefe des Jahres 1933, edited byEberhard Busch, Bartolt Haase, and Barbara Schenk, (Zürich: Theologischer VerlagZürich, 2004), pp. 359–365.

21 Barth, Theological Existence Today!, p. 76.22 Ibid., p. 77.23 “The help of the Lord is really the only help; indeed the only real-politik of help to the

Church.” “Friend, let us think both spiritually and, consequently, realistically.” (Ibid.,pp. 77 and 81.)

24 Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, Vol. 1, pp. 435–440 (the quotation is fromp. 435).

25 Barth, Theological Existence Today!, p. 52. The Aryan paragraph was a crucial part of thenew government’s attempt to remove non-Aryans (in practice Jews) from variousspheres of society. The German Christians wanted to have the paragraph included inchurch legislation.

26 Often cited is a letter to Maria Ambrosius (19 November 1933) where he bothdescribes the “Jewish question” as only one part of the struggle and explains why adirect political statement at this time would be unwise. But he also writes that hewholeheartedly says ‘No’ not only to the application of the Aryan law in the church,but also to the civil Aryan laws. However, to attack directly in public the latter wouldmean that the church would be silenced on all fronts. Karl Barth, Briefe des Jahres 1933,pp. 529–531.

27 Cf. Rasmusson, “Historiography and Theology”. On Barth and the moderate opposition,see further Michael Hüttenhoff, “Theologische Opposition 1933: Karl Barth und dieJungreformatorische Bewegung”, in Karl Barth in Deutschland, pp. 425–444.

28 Barth, The German Church Conflict, p. 16. This was written in November 1933.29 Barth, “Abschied”, p. 67.30 See Christine-Ruth Müller, Bekenntnis und Bekennen: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Bethel (1933).

Ein lutherischer Versuch (München: C. Kaiser, 1989); Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin 1932–1933:Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke 12, eds. Carsten Nicolaisen and Ernst-Albert Scharffenorth(Gütersloh: C. Kaiser, 1997), pp. 362–407, 503–507; and Eberhard Busch, Unter dem Bogendes einen Bundes: Karl Barth und die Juden 1933–1945 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener,1996), pp. 50–61, 132–135.

31 Cited in Busch, Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes, pp. 134 f., and in Müller, Bekenntnis undBekennen, p. 49. Barth’s statement is, as far as I know, not published. What is publishedis, if I understand it correctly, the letter that accompanied his comments. See JörgenGlenthöj, Die Mündige Welt: Dokumente zur Bonhoeffer-Forschung 1928–1945 (München: C.Kaiser, 1969), pp. 106 f.

32 Müller, Bekenntnis und Bekennen, p. 50.33 Ibid., pp. 49–51.34 One can read Bonhoeffer’s and Barth’s letter exchange in Bonhoeffer, Berlin 1932–1933,

pp. 124–128. The citation is from p. 126. Barth’s letter can also be read in Barth, Briefe1933, pp. 376–380.

35 See Frank Jehle, Lieber unangenehm laut als angenehm leise: Der Theologe Karl Barth und diePolitik, 1906–1968 (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 1999), p. 73. In 1943 Wurmpublicly protested against the persecution of Jews. See Kurt Nowak, Geschichte desChristentums in Deutschland: Religion, Politik und Gesellschaft vom Ende der Aufklärung biszur Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts (München: C. H. Beck, 1995), p. 274.

36 See Busch, Unter dem Bogen des eines Bundes, pp. 67–75, 132–135, and passim. Cf. alsoMarikje Smid, Deutscher Protestantismus und Judentum 1932/1933 (München: C. Kaiser,1990), pp. 289–301 (who takes a position somewhere between Müller and Busch).



37 Karl Barth, Predigten 1921–1935, ed. Holger Finze (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich,1998), pp. 296–305. See, for a discussion, Busch, Unter dem Bogen, pp. 165–174.

38 Barth, Predigten 1921–1935, p. 299.39 Busch, Unter dem Bogen, p. 173.40 Letter to E. Steffens (10.1.1934), cited in ibid., p. 173.41 Ibid., p. 165.42 Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, Vol. 1, p. 439.43 Also many interpreters sympathetic to Barth claim that there is a strong tension or

contradiction between his views in 1933, his direct political “No” to the Nazi state in1938, and his continued position as it is developed after the war and in the ChurchDogmatics. See, e.g., Ulrich Dannemann, Theologie und Politik im Denken Karl Barths(München and Mainz: C. Kaiser and Matthias-Grünewald, 1977), pp. 129–132, BertoldKlappert, Versöhnung und Befreiung: Versuche, Karl Barth kontextuell zu verstehen(Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1994), pp. 204–215, and Stoevesandt, Gottes Freiheit,pp. 143–177.

44 Letter to Paul Tillich (2 April 1933), Barth, Briefe des Jahres 1933, pp. 107–110.45 See the letters to Pastor Theodor Erhardt (16 April 1933), ibid., pp. 141–144, and to Pastor

Reinhard Busch (19 Oct. 1933), ibid., pp. 454–458.46 Letter to George Merz (21 April 1933), ibid., pp. 155–159. “Dear George, I did not resist

religious socialism (already at a time when you still thought that you perceived ‘religiousimpulses’ in socialism) just so that I could now find myself prepared to confess that itis the German fate to combine Christ and Caesar from the other direction because for themoment the holy stream of history runs that way, and that I ought not, for the sake ofthe church, to stand ‘over against’ ‘things as they are’ (e.g., what is now happening tothe German Jews).” (p. 157.) In the above mentioned letter to Erhardt, he says:“ ‘Religious socialism’ was . . . a theological error . . . [the church’s] clergy are not there topromote socialism.” (Ibid., pp. 142 f.) See also his much later comments on this in a letterto J. L. Hromádka (10 July 1963) in Barth, Letters, 1961–1968, eds. Jürgen Fangmeier andHinrich Stoevesandt (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981),pp. 104–106.

47 The Sicherheitsdienst wrote in 1934: “The Barth movement must be marked out as a realdanger. He creates in his theology islands on which people isolate themselves so as tobe able to evade the demand of the present-day state on religious grounds.” Cited inGünther van Norden, Die Weltverantwortung der Christen neu begreifen: Karl Barth als homopoliticus (Gütersloh: C. Kaiser, 1997), p. 55.

48 So, e.g., in a letter to Philip Maury 12 October 1938. See Karl Barth, Offene Briefe1935–1942, ed. Diether Koch (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2001), p. 124.

49 Karl Barth, The Church and the Political Problem of Our Day (New York, NY: Scribner, 1939),pp. 31–36. For criticism of this argument, see Stoevesandt, Gottes Freiheit, pp. 157–159.

50 Karl Barth, Vorträge und kleinere Arbeiten 1922–1925, ed. Holger Finze (Zürich: Theolo-gischer Verlag Zürich, 1990), pp. 604–643.

51 The same is true of the Reformed Declaration from January 1934 written by Barth, exceptthat here he explicitly rejects any racial limitation on church membership or leadership.See Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church’s Confession under Hitler (Philadelphia, PA: West-minster Press, 1962), pp. 230–234.

52 Letter to General Superintendent Otto Dibelius (17 March 1933), Barth, Briefe des Jahres1933, pp. 83–86, at p. 85. Dibelius actually did not preach at the inauguration, but ratherat the St. Nicholai Church. See ibid., p. 85, ftn. 2.

53 Letter to Dr. Schmitz, cited in Werner Koch, “Karl Barths erste Auseinandersetzungenmit dem Dritten Reich (mit besonderer Erlaubnis der Nachlaßkommission dargestellt anHand seiner Briefe 1933–1935)”, in Andreas Baudis, Dieter Clausert, Volkhard Schliski,and Bernhard Wegener (eds.), Richte unsere Füsse auf den Weg des Friedens: HelmutGollwitzer zum 70. Geburtstag (München: C. Kaiser, 1979), pp. 490–513, at p. 511.

54 Letter to Maria Ambrosius (19 November 1933), Barth, Briefe des Jahres 1933, pp. 529–531.55 Cited in van Norden, pp. 49 f. See further pp. 47–50. One should also remember that

when Barth is discussing whether the church should say yes or no to National Socialism,the issue for most of his discussion partners was not whether one should resist or not,but whether the church or theology should say a public yes or no.

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56 Barth, Church Dogmatics, 13 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956–1975), II:1, p. 176(henceforth CD).

57 On Barth on the authority of confessions, see Georg Plasger, Die relative Autorität desBekenntnisses bei Karl Barth (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2000). Plasger discussesBarth’s views in 1933, the process leading up to Barmen, and the relationship betweenBarmen and his later resistance against the Nazi state (and then against the nuclearweapons), see pp. 148–192.

58 CD II:1, p. 175.59 CD II:1, p. 176.60 CD II:1, p. 177.61 For the text of the Barmen Confession and other documents related to it, see Cochrane,

The Church’s Confession under Hitler, pp. 237–267. The Theological Declaration that Isummarize below is found on pp. 238–242. Cf. also Barth’s longer discussion about thenature of church confessions as the church’s authority under the Word in CD I:2, pp.585–660.

62 On this, see his later commentary on the first article in CD II:1, pp. 172–178.63 CD II:1, p. 141.64 Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, Vol. 2, p. 150. The slightly different wordings

used in the subheading above are taken from the translation in Cochrane, The Church’sConfession under Hitler, p. 239.

65 See Asmussen’s comments in Cochrane, The Church’s Confession under Hitler, p. 257, andEberhard Busch, Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes, pp. 209–211.

66 Cochrane, The Church’s Confession under Hitler, p. 261.67 For a recent overview of the German reception and debate of the Barmen declaration, see

Manuel Schilling, Das eine Wort Gottes zwischen den Zeiten: Die Wirkungsgeschichte derBarmer Theologischen Erklärung vom Kirchenkampf bis zum Fall der Mauer (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2005). In terms of historical effect, one of the more important laterdiscussions and receptions is the South African one, especially related to the BelharConfession. See G. D. Cloete and D. J. Smit, A Moment of Truth: The Confession of the DutchReformed Mission Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,1984).

68 Cochrane, The Church’s Confession under Hitler, p. 234.69 van Norden, Die Weltverantwortung der Christen neu begreifen, pp. 60 f.70 Cochrane, The Church’s Confession under Hitler, p. 241, n. 5.71 Cited in Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts

(Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1976), p. 254.72 Ibid., pp. 253–255. Barth later described the administration under Marahrens as “more

like that of a liquidation commission”. See Barth, The German Church Conflict, p. 48.73 See Prolingheuer, Der Fall Karl Barth. Behind the scenes, Hirsch was very active in this

process. See Heinrich Assel, “ ‘Barth ist entlassen . . . ’ Neue Fragen im Fall Barth”, inAssel et al (eds.), Zeitworte: Der Auftrag der Kirche im Gespräch mit der Schrift. FriedrichMildenberger zum 65. Geburtstag (Nürnberg: H. Seubert, 1994), pp. 77–99.

74 See Barth, The German Church Conflict.75 See Barth, Church and State (London: SCM Press, 1939) for his most systematic discussion

about church and state during this time. See also Rasmusson, “The Politics of Diaspora”for a critical discussion of Barth’s different ways of talking about state and politics.

76 On the following, see Barth, Church and State, chapter 4.77 Ibid., p. 90, n. 34.78 “If the State has perverted its God-given authority, it cannot be honoured better than by

this criticism which is due to it in all circumstances.” (Ibid., p. 69.)79 Barth, The Church and the Political Problem of Our Day (New York, NY: Scribner, 1939).80 There were people in the Confessing Church who criticized Barth’s defence of a

constitutional state in Barth, Church and State, saying that dictatorship was closer toChristianity than democracy. See Klappert, Versöhnung und Befreiung, p. 301.

81 See Busch, Karl Barth, p. 298 and Busch, Unter dem Bogen, p. 346. Helmut Gollwitzer, whotook part in these discussions with Barth in the first week of August 1939, has describedhow the arguments went in Gollwitzer, Forderungen der Freiheit: Aufsätze und Reden zurpolitischen Ethik (München: C. Kaiser, 1962), pp. 337–339. He continues to describe his



own personal struggle with the question on pp. 340–342. Some members of theConfessing Church were actually executed because of their refusal to serve in the war.See Nowak, Geschichte des Christentums in Deutschland, p. 283. Cf. Gollwitzer, Forderungen,p. 340.

82 Barth, The Church and the Political Problem of Our Day, p. 12.83 Ibid., p. 15.84 Ibid. p. 50. “He who rejects and persecutes the Jews rejects and persecutes Him who died

for the sins of the Jews—and then, and only thereby for our sins as well.” “Anti-Semitismis sin against the Holy Ghost.” Ibid., p. 51.

85 Ibid., p. 52.86 Ibid., p. 55.87 “When we earnestly pray for the suppression and casting out of National Socialism and

hence for the restoration of Church and State, then we are ourselves eo ipso summonedto do what is humanly possible towards that for which we pray.” (Ibid., p. 74.)

88 Ibid., pp. 76–79.89 See for the letter, its history, and the reactions to it Barth, Offene Briefe 1935–1942,

pp. 107–133.90 Ibid., p. 114.91 Busch, Karl Barth, p. 289.92 Barth, Offene Briefe 1935–1942, pp. 122–126. In March 1939, after the German occupation

of the rest of Bohemia and Moravia, Barth wrote to Hromadka that he was sorry that hewas not much sharper and more explicit in this letter!

93 See for example Karl Barth, This Christian Cause (A Letter to Great Britain from Switzerland)(New York, NY: Macmillan, 1941) (this includes also two earlier letters to the FrenchProtestants) and Karl Barth, The Church and the War (New York: The MacmillanCompany, 1944). E.g., “we approve it as a righteous war, which God does not simplyallow, but which He commands us to wage.” (Barth, This Christian Cause, p. 4.) ForHirsch’s bitter response to Barth’s first letter to the French Protestants, see EmanuelHirsch, Karl Barth: Das Ende einer theologischen Existenz: Brief an einen ausländischen Freund(Göttingen: Privatdruck, 1940).

94 Barth, The Church and the Political Problem of Our Day, p. 79.95 Plasger, Die relative Autorität des Bekenntnisses bei Karl Barth, pp. 178–183, is a recent

example of a similar interpretation.96 See, for example, the letters to Dr. Schmitz (2 May 1933), Barth, Briefe des Jahres 1933,

pp. 186–188, and to Maria Ambrosius (19 November 1933), ibid., pp. 529–531.97 See the documents gathered in Koch, “Auseinandersetzungen”, pp. 496–499.98 On the debate on this that arose between Tillich and Hirsch, see A. James Reimer, The

Emanuel Hirsch and Paul Tillich Debate: A Study in the Political Ramifications of Theology(Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989).

99 For his own positive use of the concept, see “Church and Theology” (1925) in Barth,Theology and Church: Shorter Writings, 1920–1928 (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1962),p. 291. For his critique in 1934 of the “Kairos-philosophy” of Tillich and Hirsch, seeBarth, The German Church Conflict, p. 31. He similarly uses it again negatively in 1938 inDie Kirchliche Dogmatik, I:2 (Zürich: Evangelische Verlag, 1948 [1938]), p. 942 (the wordis not used in the ET in CD I:2, p. 843). The context in the latter case is the fact “that inits testing of Church proclamation dogmatics must orient itself to the actual situation inthe light of which the message of the Church must be expressed, to its position and taskin face of the special circumstances of contemporary society, i.e., to the Word of God asit is spoken by Him, and must be proclaimed by the Church in the present.” (CD II:1,p. 840) But the spirit of the time, the kairos in form of political, intellectual, social, orecclesial events or structures, can never be the norm for the church’s talk, so thatdogmatics becomes the servant or mouth peace of “history” or social or politicalmovements, or even of the history of the church itself. Dogmatics is a function of thepraying church listening to the voice of God to the world. Stoevesandt thinks that in TheChurch and the Political Problem of Our Day (1938) Barth completely contradicts his 1933polemic against the Kairos-concept. But I cannot see that he there says anything differentfrom what he says in the mentioned CD text, also from 1938, in which he criticizes“Kairos-theology”. See Stoevesandt, Gottes Freiheit, pp. 168 f.

390 Arne Rasmusson


100 See Arne Rasmusson, “Historicizing the Historicist”, and Arne Rasmusson, “Church andNation-State: Karl Barth and German Public Theology in the Early 20th Century”, NedGeref Teologiese Tydskrif, Vol. 46, no. 3–4 (2005), pp. 511–524.

101 Barth, Church and State, pp. 54 f.102 CD IV/2, pp. 676–726.103 CD IV/2, p. 721.104 CD IV/2, p. 721.105 See Arne Rasmusson, “Diaspora”.



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