Karl Barth, the German Christians, and ECUSA - Introduction

In a previous essay, I described what I called the "ecstatic heresy."(1) This heresy was first developed by Schleiermacher, advanced by thinkers like Tillich and Macquarrie, and it is the primary theological heresy devastating the Episcopal Church. In another essay I also theologically analyzed the public statements of the Presiding Bishop.(2) I analyzed his thought because he, probably more than anyone, represents what people in ECUSA feel and think. His theology, like that of many in the leadership of the Episcopal Church, is a version of the ecstatic heresy. This present essay presupposes the two previous essays. Among other things, I make a number of claims as to the theology of the Presiding Bishop. I have substantiated those claims in full, and the evidence can be found on my web site.(3)

In this essay, I shall discuss the theology of Karl Barth, that of the Presiding Bishop, and that of the German Christians. The three are related. The German Christians were those who subverted the Christian Churches in Germany at the time of Hitler. Like the Presiding Bishop, they affirmed a version of the ecstatic heresy. The chief theological opponent of the German Christians was Karl Barth. He developed the ideas that countered the Nazi subversion of the Church and his theology is directly relevant to the theological issues that face the Episcopal Church today.

In making a comparison between the Presiding Bishop and the Nazi Christians, I run the risk of being read as if I am saying they are the same. They are not the same. The Presiding Bishop is not a Nazi. His politics, for example, are of the left. The Nazis were on the right. It must be said, however, that the Church can be corrupted as easily by something sweet and soft on the left as it can by something hard and brutal on the right. Both, however, both right and left, can be embraced by the ecstatic heresy. That is why it is such a brilliant heresy, so pervasive and so elastic. My only claim is that the theological ideas of the German Christians and a powerful theological perspective within ECUSA are both versions of the same heresy. To show this, I will begin by summarizing three aspects of Schleiermacher's theology, as well as its reflections in the thought of the Presiding Bishop.

The Ecstatic Heresy
Schleiermacher and The Presiding Bishop

First, Schleiermacher did not really distinguish between God's act of creation and his act in incarnation.(4) For him, the incarnation is simply a moment of creation; a place where the Infinite became visible in the finite, along with all the other times and places where the Infinite appears. In a similar way, the Presiding Bishop does not distinguish between creation and incarnation, but views the incarnation as a symbol that all of creation is revelatory.

Secondly, Schleiermacher did not believe that the ordinary language of life, the language we used to describe and relate to objects, could be used of God. Nor did he believe that God could speak in words we could understand. In his view, language relating to God is symbolic. The words ultimately refer to a mystery, something beyond language. Similarly, the Presiding Bishop believes that God is a mystical ground or "sky" which harmonizes all things, including beliefs that contradict at the level of language. In his words,

How we all fit together, how our singularities are made sense of, how our divergent views and different understandings of God's intent are reconciled passes all understanding. All that we can do is to travel on in faith and trust, knowing that all contradictions and paradoxes and seemingly irreconcilable truths which seem both consistent and inconsistent with Scripture are brought together in the larger and all embracing truth of Christ, which, by Christ's own words, has yet to be fully drawn forth and known.(5)

Finally, Schleiermacher was a Romantic. He believed in the individual, the organic, the historical. Truth for him was not an abstract proposition, but rather, it was a mystical feeling that combined with national, individual, and historical characteristics to form expressions of Christian piety suitable to each unique individual, culture, and historical moment. Similarly, for the Presiding bishop, truth is not propositional. It is personal, the expression of each person's unique character as given by life. For example, in the debate over homosexuality, he will not address the matter as if it could be settled by an appeal to Scripture or the tradition. Such an approach puts a person in a box, as if the biblical language could circumscribe the person. Rather, the truth is found in homosexual persons themselves.

For me, homosexuality is not primarily a cause or an issue: it is a matter of men and women I know, respect and love, and whose lives bear ample witness to the fruits of the Spirit as enumerated in Galatians 5:22. It is about people with whom I have shared ministry and friendship, whose many gifts have enriched my life and continue to bless and upbuild the Church.(6)

The German Version of the Ecstatic Heresy

My next step is to show how this picture of God was used by the Nazis to subvert the Church.

Hitler's first step in subverting the German Churches was to unify the Protestant Churches into one pan-Germanic Church. This German Church was then used to promote certain Nazi ideas, a blending of Hitler with Christ, Nazism with Christianity. Most German Christians went along with the seduction, and they did so because the Church had long since given way to nineteenth century liberalism as championed by Schleiermacher. In Barth's words,

The error which has broken out today in the theology and Church politics of the German Christians originated neither in the school of Luther nor of Calvin, but rather (Schleiermacher, R. Roth, W. Beyschlag might be named among its particular fathers) the typical error of the final phase of that "Union" of the nineteenth century.(7)

What the "German Christians" wanted and did was obviously along a line which had for long enough been acknowledged and trodden by the Church of the whole world: the line of the Enlightenment and Pietism, of Schleiermacher, Richard Rothe and Ritschl.(8)

Because the doctrine and attitude of the German Christians is nothing but a particularly vigorous result of the entire neo-protestant development since 1700, our protest is directed against a spreading and existent corruption of the whole evangelical Church.(9)

How did the ecstatic heresy lend itself to the Nazi program and the resulting seduction of the Church? To address that question, let me quote some of the guiding principles of the German Christian movement as published in 1932.

We are fighting for a union of the twenty nine Churches included in the "German Evangelical Federation of Churches" into one evangelical State Church. We march under the banner: "Outwardly united and in the might of the spirit gathered around Christ and his Word, inwardly rich and varied, each a Christian according to his own character and calling!"

We see in race, folk, and nation, orders of existence granted and entrusted to us by God. God's law for us is that we look to the preservation of these orders. Consequently, miscegenation is to be opposed. ... faith in Christ does not destroy one's race but deepens and sanctifies it.

We want the awakened German sense of vitality respected in our Church. We want to make our Church a vital force. In the fateful struggle for the freedom and future of Germany the Church in its administration has proven weak. Hitherto the Church has not called for an all out fight against atheistic Marxism and the reactionary Center Party.(10)

In the first quotation the Nazi Christians are claiming that the spirit enables them to "gather around Christ and his Word" in a way that allows them to be "inwardly rich and varied, each a Christian according to his own character and calling!" In other words, the Word does not really divide the various Christian bodies. This is because the Word is ultimately ecstatic, spiritual, something ineffable, something beyond the petty theological differences found in the denominations. The German Christians did not need to reconcile their differences at the level of theological propositions because they believed, to quote the Presiding bishop, that their "divergent views and different understandings of God's intent" were "brought together in the larger and all embracing truth of Christ."

In the second quotation, orders of existence, "race, folk, and nation," are proclaimed as norms alongside the gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, the gospel does not destroy the gift of existence, but "deepens and sanctifies it." If one believes that creation and incarnation are ultimately one, that both reveal God, then any "truth" presumably emerging from existence would also be sanctified by Christ. As things go, it is possible to see all sorts of truths in creation -- German blood and soil, sexual orientation, eucharistic inclusion of everyone created in God's image, male and female metaphors from creation applied equally to God, and much more. According to the German Christians, these sorts of truths are not denied by the gospel, but rather, they are deepened and sanctified. The Presiding Bishop calls this approach "profoundly incarnational," meaning that he attributes to existence the same revealing power as incarnation.

The third quotation describes an historical moment, a moment in which the German people had been "reawakened" and given a "sense of vitality." They want the Church to participate in the "vital force" that is renewing the German nation. Here we find the Romantic notion that the individual, the unique, and the historical, are the bearer of God's purpose. It is a form of kairos theology, the notion that God comes especially close in distinctive historical events. For the Germans, that moment was Hitler. For the Presiding Bishop, it is the "events and experiences which accost us and demand to be lived."(11) By this he means that events, experiences, and circumstances have a claim on us. They are the revelation of God in the special moments of our unique histories.

Barth and Barmen

Did the German Christians resist? Only a few. Here is Barth,

A point blank amazing lack of resistance, in which pastors and church members, professors and students of theology, educated and illiterate, old and young, Liberals, Fundamentalists and Pietists, Lutherans and Calvinists, have surrendered in droves at the noise of this Movement: surrendered as on falls under the spell of a real, downright psychosis.(12)

Even so, there was resistance, and a critical moment in that resistance was the Barmen Declaration of May 29-31, 1934. At that time, representatives of all Confessing Churches in German met together and passed a declaration entitled the "Barmen Declaration." It was not a Confession uniting them, but a declaration in the face of a threat to all of them.

Aside for a few minor changes, Karl Barth wrote the Barmen Declaration. He did so because he had already developed the theological perspective needed to oppose Schleiermacher. Against the notion that God is only perceived mystically, he developed a theology of the Word of God, the claim that God can and does speak so that we can understand him. Against the notion that incarnation is but a special moment of creation, he saw Incarnation as a new, miraculous act of God in which God the Father spoke his one Word Jesus Christ. As a result, there are not two words of God, one of creation and another of incarnation, but one Word Jesus Christ as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. Against the kairos doctrine that God reveals himself in special moments, Barth insisted that the Spirit witnesses to the Son as revealed in Scripture, and not in special moments given in the "events and circumstances of life." As a result of these theological affirmations, entailing both a doctrine of the Trinity as well as Incarnation, Barth was able to begin his monumental theological work, the Church Dogmatics. By 1932 the first volume, the first of twelve, had been written.

After quoting John 14:6 and 10:1, 9, the first article of Barmen reads,

Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.

We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God's revelation.(13)

We have the following: 1. There is one Word of God, Jesus Christ, and this one Word is attested in Scripture. 2. There are no other words, events and powers, figures and truths that are also God's revelation, given in creation, history, or culture, alongside the one Word Jesus Christ. This also means that there are no "special moments," no "events and circumstances of life" in which God reveals himself alongside his revelation in Scripture. 3. The Word of God can be understood. God can speak and his people can "hear" him. They can "trust and obey in life and in death." God's Word is not a mystical cipher upon which we can project our own feelings, impulses, and justifications. These are the critical claims that denied the German version of the ecstatic heresy, together with its manifestations in the Episcopal Church today.

I first encountered Barth in 1980 while studying for my Ph.D. in systematic theology. I wrote my dissertation on him, his doctrine of the Trinity in relation to poverty. I do not accept everything he says. He is, for example, weak in his sacramental theology, and I personally believe that something of God can be seen in creation. Nevertheless, God's wisdom and power can only properly be understood in light of Scripture with Jesus Christ as its hermeneutical center. Athanasius, for example, believed that God's power and order could be seen in creation. Hooker believed that uncorrupted reason could see the moral law in nature, though sin had so corrupted our vision that God placed major portions of the moral law in Scripture. Like Barth, Hooker and all the Anglican Reformers believed that Scripture was the final norm in faith and morals. They would be appalled by the Presiding Bishop's notion that revelation is equally given in the "events and circumstances of life."

I believe Barth to be the theologian the Church needs to be studying today. Among theologians, he is often recognized as the greatest theologian of the past century, and one of the greats of the Church universal. The theological concepts he set forth in the struggle against the Nazis are directly relevant to the issues facing the Episcopal Church. He is the strongest opponent of the ecstatic heresy. In all the years I have been in the Episcopal Church (since 1969), I have never read, heard of, or met a single revisionist in ECUSA who had read Barth, understood him, and come to terms with him. I find it utterly amazing that a church with such pretensions to intellectual integrity, a church going full steam to rewrite the faith, has yet to produce a single ecstatic who can oppose Barth's devastating critique of their theology.

By God's grace, we in the Episcopal Church do not have to pay with our lives as did those Christians who opposed the Nazis. Ours is a slow seduction of the bride of Christ, not a brutal rape. Even so, we cannot sit still. We must resist. Among other things, the revisionists must be exposed. Their thinking is not enlightened and progressive as they claim, but a shambles, albeit not without a certain degree of skill and plausibility for the unwary.

Let me ask my readers to read Barth, do some serious thinking, and promote resistance in every way you can. In the end, of course, the revisionists will be judged, their sin revealed. But that is not our task this Lent. Our call is to let ourselves be judged, to have our sin revealed. We need to hear that one Word of God, to come before his judgment seat, to let him judge us in these matters that afflict our Church, and to obey him regardless of the consequences. "For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? (1 Pet 4:17)

Endnotes

1. Virtuosity, Feb., week 3, as well as The Ecstatic Heresy.
2. Virtuosity, Nov. 26, 2002, as well as Mystical Paganism.
3. Mystical Paganism.
4. For Schleiermacher, the relationship to God is the feeling of absolute dependence. This feeling is prior to thinking and action, but expresses itself in both. In thinking and action, Christian consciousness can distinguish between creation and incarnation, but within the feeling of absolute dependence, there can be no distinction in relation to God. Or, to put it another way, we can experience the difference between creation and incarnation, but we have no experience of God doing anything different in the two. From this it follows that God's "revelation" in the one cannot ultimately be distinguished from the other. For more on this, see my essay on Friedrich Schleiermacher.
5. "Glimpses of the Eternal Design," The Presiding Bishop's Column, September, 1998.
6. Canterbury Cathedral, A letter to the Episcopal Church, August 14, 1998.
7. The German Church Conflict, translated by P. T. A. Parker. Richmond: John Knox press, 1965, p. 27.
8. Church Dogmatics, Volume II,1. Translated by Parker, Johnston, Knight, and Haire. Edinburgh: T&T; Clark, 1957, p. 174.
9. The German Church Conflict, p. 16.
10. Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church's Confession Under Hitler, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962, pp. 222 3.
11. Reflections on the Season of Advent.
12. Karl Barth, Theological Existence Today. Translated by Birch Hoyle. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1933, pp. 55 6.
13. Cochrane, The Church's Confession Under Hitler, p. 239.