Theological Existence To-Day!

(A Plea for Theological Freedom)

Barth, Hoyle

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781498270809
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In 1933, the very year Hitler came to power in Germany, Karl Barth wrote Theological Existence To-Day! to take his stand against state control of the German church. Many believe this book began the fateful struggle for a Confessing Church. - James W. M. McClendon Jr.

THEOLOGICAL EXISTENCE TO-DAY!

FOR a good while back I have been frequently asked if I had nothing to say about the concerns and problems affecting the German Church nowadays. I can no longer ignore these requests, coming as they do from many of my former pupils and others who share my theological outlook. But I must at once make clear that the essence of what I attempt to contribute to-day bearing upon these anxieties and problems cannot be made the theme of a particular manifesto, for the simple reason that at Bonn here, with my students in lectures and courses, I endeavour to carry on theology, and only theology, now as previously, and as if nothing had happened. Perhaps there is a slightly increased tone, but without direct allusions: something like the chanting of the hours by the Benedictines near by in the Maria Laach, which goes on undoubtedly without break or interruption, pursuing the even tenor of its way even in the Third Reich. I regard the pursuit of theology as the proper attitude to adopt: at any rate it is one befitting Church-politics, and, indirectly, even politics. And I expect that this communication, without “particular messages,” will be heard and interpreted by the students committed to my charge, as well as may be, amidst the stirring happenings of our time.

In the matter of speaking and having an audience I have ample reasons for being content to keep within the limits of my vocation as a theological professor. I did not pass beyond these bounds when I accepted an invitation to collaborate with other members of the Reformed Church persuasion when recently issuing two theological manifestos. The part I took in this affair has been rightly interpreted, and I think those manifestos received the finest compliment, for they were blamed as lacking. It was said that they did not face actualities and the facts of life, they did not tackle the problems of the day. If, dear friends at home and abroad, I have now been persuaded to speak “to the situation,” as it is expected of me, it can only be in the form of a question. The question is: “Would it not be better if one did not speak ‘to the situation,’ but, each one within the limits of his vocation, if he spoke ‘ad rem’?” In other words, to consider and work out the presuppositions needed every day for speaking “ad rem,” as it is needed to-day*—not to-day for the first time—and yet it is needed to-day! A slight elucidation of this question can alone be my theme, if so be anyone wants to hear me on the stirrings now afoot.

WHAT THEOLOGICAL EXISTENCE PRESUPPOSES

The one thing that must not happen to us who are theological professors, is our abandoning our job through becoming zealous for some cause we think to be good. Our existence as theologians is our life within the Church, and, of course, as appointed preachers and teachers within the Church.

There are some things about which there is unanimity within the Church. One is, that there is no more urgent demand in the whole world than that which the Word of God makes, viz. that the Word be preached and heard. At all costs this demand has to be discharged by the world and the Church itself, cost what it may. Another thing there is agreement about is, that the Word of God clears out of the way everything that might oppose, so that it will triumph over us and all other opponents, for the reason that it has triumphed already, once for all, over us and on our behalf, and over all its other opponents. For the Word, “was crucified, dead, buried, raised again the third day, sitteth at the right hand of the Father.” Within the Church it is agreed that God “upholds all things by the Word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3): that He supplies answer to every question, that He allows righteousness to experience all anxieties, that He sustains all that He has made, and leads it to its truest end, that no thing can subsist and flourish without His Word. Again, within the Church it is agreed that it is good for man to depend upon the Word of God, and that this is his only good in time and eternity, to rely upon it with all his heart, all his mind, soul and all his powers. Further, it is the unanimous opinion within the Church, that God is never for us in the world, that is to say, in our space and time, except in this His Word, and that this Word for us has no other name and content but Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ is never to be found on our behalf save each day afresh in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. One is not in the Church at all if he is not of a mind with the Church in these things.

And, particularly as preachers and teachers of the Church, we are at one in fear but also in joy, that we are called to serve the Word of God within the Church and in the world by our preaching and our teaching. We agree, too, that with the fulfilment of our calling we not only see ourselves stand or fall, but we see everything that is important to us in this world, however precious or great it be, standing or falling. So that to us no concern can be more pressing, no hope more moving than the concern and hope of our ministry. No friend can be dearer than one who helps us in this ministry, no foe more hateful than he that wants to hinder us in this ministry.

We are agreed about this too, that alongside of this first business, as the meaning of our labour and our rest, our diligence and relaxation, our love and our scorn, we brook no second as a rival. But we regard every second or third thing that may and should incite us as included and taken up in this first concern, and condemned or blessed thereby. On these things we agree or we are not preachers and teachers of the Church. And this is what is meant by what we term our “Theological existence,” viz. that in the midst of our life in other aspects, as, say, men, fathers and sons, as Germans, as citizens, thinkers, as having hearts ever in unrest, etc., the Word of God may be what it simply is, and only can be to us, and taxes our powers, particularly as preachers and teachers, to the full as the Word alone can and must do.

THE MINISTER’S TEMPTATION TO-DAY

To-day we can lose our existence as theologians and teachers, which consists in our attachment to God’s Word and plying our calling particularly to the ministry of the Word. To put it in other words, to-day, more than ever, we can neglect to affirm our life’s calling. Or, better expressed still, it is possible for us to find that our theological life will no longer be allowed to us, as it ought to be granted us anew every day, just because we forget to pray and reach out for it, and now to-day, more than ever, we should do our part so that it may be given to us. For the mighty temptation of this age, which appears in every shape possible, is that we no longer appreciate the intensity and exclusiveness of the demand which the Divine Word makes as such when looking at the force of other demands: so that in our anxiety in face of existing dangers we no longer put our whole trust in the authority of God’s Word, but we think we ought to come to its aid with all sorts of contrivances, and we thus throw quite aside our confidence in the Word’s power to triumph. That is to say, we think ourselves capable of facing, solving and moulding definite problems better from some other source than that from and by means of God’s Word. By doing this we show that we do not esteem God to be a working factor in anything as Creator, Reconciler, and Redeemer. That our hearts are thus divided between God’s Word and all other sorts of things which, avowedly or tacitly, we invest with Divine glory. By so doing we demonstrate that our hearts are not in contact with God’s Word. And this means that under the stormy assault of “principalities, powers, and rulers of this world’s darkness,” we seek for God elsewhere than in His Word, and seek His Word somewhere else than in Jesus Christ, and seek Jesus Christ elsewhere than in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. And so we become as those who do not seek for God at all And all this, though the very opposite is what is agreed upon within the Church!

How, then, ought we to be in the Church? The special form of this temptation to us, the Church’s preachers and teachers is, that possibly and actually there can be something like rivalry between our vocation within the Church and this or that other calling which is different: in such a way that we feel driven and forced to let this or that different calling be played off against or parallel with our Church vocation, or let that other interpret and shape our proper Church vocation. That we see ourselves and the men to whom we are appointed standing and falling under utterly different conditions from the condition that rightly directs our ministry. So that the secondary or the third thing, which we well know ought to be absorbed in the first concern, as an operative factor, comes to be first, coincides with it, and finally steps into the place of the first. And thereby, the really first concern, and our particular vocation, become hopelessly lost. Although we, as preachers and teachers within the Church, in a quite different sense were in accord! We are then no longer preachers and teachers of the Church; we are politicians, and Church politicians at that! It is no disgrace to be a politician or even a Church politician; it holds a special esteem: but it is something else to be a theologian. It can always denote damage to the theologian’s existence as such, when he becomes a politician or a Church politician. To-day this seems to be pre-eminently the case. And t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Theological Existence To-Day!