3. True Religion (Post 2)
As a historian of Christianity, I take particular pleasure in Barth’s very clear acknowledge of the difficulty of teaching and writing about the history of Christianity:
We must not allow ourselves to be confused by the fact that a history of Christianity can be written only as a story of the distress which it makes for itself. It is a story which lies completely behind the story of that which took place between Yahweh and His people, between Jesus and His apostles. It is a story whose source and meaning and goal, the fact that the Christian is strong only in his weakness, that he is really satisfied by grace, can in the strict sense nowhere be perceived directly. Not even in the history of the Reformation! (I/2/337)
Indeed! And of Christians under this reality:
What is evident is in the first instance a part of humanity which no less contradicts the grace and revelation of God because it claims them as its own peculiar and most sacred treasures, and its religion is to that extent a religion of revelation. Contradiction is contradiction. That it exists at this point, in respect of the religion of revelation, can be denied even less than at other points. (ibid.)
So therefore we are back at the beginning of of §17 :
Elsewhere we might claim in extenuation that it simply exists in fact, but not in direct contrast with revelation. But in the history of Christianity, just because it is the religion of revelation, the sin is, as it were, committed with a high hand. Yes, sin! For contradiction against grace is unbelief, and unbelief is sin, indeed it is the sin. It is, therefore, a fact that we can speak of the truth of the Christian religion only within the doctrine of the iustificatio impii. The statement that even Christianity is unbelief gives rise to a whole mass of naive and rationalising contradiction. Church history itself is a history of this contradiction. But it is this very fact which best shows us how true and right the statement is. We can as little avoid the contradiction as jump over our own shadow. (to I/2/337—338)
This is a reminder of where Barth is finally going when he speaks in any sense positively about Christianity as a religion. (Barth always follows his famous NO! with a yes!) “In the strict sense there is no evidence of this [reality of God’s grace in the Church] throughout the whole range of Christianity.” (I/2/337) –and then what are we to teach about the history of Christianity? Therein lies the problem: “That there is a true religion is an event in the act of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.” (I/2/344)
This act of grace, more precisely, “is an event in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. To be even more precise, it is an event in the existence of the Church and the children of God.” (ibid.) So Barth has brought the Word of grace, made known through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, into the realm of the human. But hardly positively: “In other words, there is a knowledge and worship of God and a corresponding human activity. We can only say of them that they are corrupt.”(ibid.) Yet “they do reach their goal,” but not as a human achievement: “there is a genuine activity of [the human] as reconciled to God.” (ibid.)
The Church and the children of God and therefore the bearers of true religion live by the grace of God. Their knowledge and worship of God, their service of God in teaching, cultus and life, are determined by the realisation of the free kindness of God which anticipates all human thought and will and action and corrects all human corruption.(ibid.)
The fact that the Church does so live, however, is not the basis of its life, its work, or its claim to any authenticity or truth in the human realm. Christians do not escape the divine accusation of idolatry and self-righteousness. Barth’s insight into the difficulty of studying and teaching Church History is arresting: “For one thing, their life by grace hardly ever appears in history except as an occasional obstacle to the effective fulfillment even amongst them of the law of all religion.”(I/2/344-345) The real point of church history vanishes as soon as it is seen, what is concealed even as it is revealed, and revealed even as it is concealed. “It is not unknown for an apparent and sometimes a very convincing life of grace, and the phenomenon of the religion of grace, to appear in other fields of religious history.” (I/2/345) The decisive criterion for Christians’ life by the grace of God is so equivocal: “It is the fact that by the grace of God they live by His grace. That is what makes them what they are. That is what makes their religion true. That is what lifts it above the general level of religious history.” (ibid.)
No sooner does Barth make this affirmation then he hedges it.
But “by the grace of God” means by the reality of that by which they apparently but very equivocally live; by the reality of that by which men can apparently and equivocally live in other spheres of religious history. “By the reality” means by the fact that beyond all human appearance, beyond all that men can think and will and do in the sphere of their religion, even if it is a religion of grace, without any merits or deservings of their own, God acts towards them as the gracious God He is, anticipating their own thought and will and action by His own free kindness, arousing in them faith and thankfulness, and never refusing them. (ibid.)
Barth re-iterates his central insight in one of his great periodic sentences that begs for a diagram:
They are what they are, and their religion is the true religion,
not because they recognise Him as such and act accordingly,
not in virtue of their religion of grace,
but
in virtue of the fact that God has graciously intervened for them,
in virtue of His mercy in spite of their apparent but equivocal religion of grace,
in virtue of the good pleasure which He has in them,
in virtue of His free election, of which this good pleasure is the only motive,
in virtue of the Holy Spirit whom He willed to pour out upon them.
It is of grace that the Church and the children of God live by His grace.(ibid.)
We can see this clearly only when we understand “by the grace of God” means exactly the same thing as “through the name of Jesus Christ.” (ibid.) In the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and in the giving of the Holy Spirit, the Church is what the Church is, “and they have the true religion, because He stands in their place, and therefore for His sake.” (I/2/346) This becomes a historical reality, even if subtle and easily ruptured by departing from Jesus Christ. “Therefore by the grace of God there are men who live by His grace. Or, to put it concretely, through the name of Jesus Christ there are men who believe in this name.”(ibid.) Barth then sets forth the meaning of this existence –the relationship between the name of Jesus Christ and the Christian religion– in four acts of God: creation, election, justification, and sanctification. (One sees here a precise echo of the organization of Reformed theology in Calvin’s Institutes.)
- As regards God’s act of creation (or creating, insofar as Barth cites creatio continua), “The name of Jesus Christ alone has created the Christian religion. Without Him it would never have been.” (I/2/346), not only in the past, but in the present. Here Barth anticipates some of what he will greatly expand in The Doctrine of Creation, Church Dogmatics Volume III. Creatio continua means that the name of Jesus Christ creates the Christian religion yesterday, today, and tomorrow, apart from whom the Christian religion has no reality. Without Jesus Christ, and his presence in his name, there remains only the general possibility of religion (human religion, humanly conceived), or “the swiftly crumbling ruin of a construct very like religion which was once called and perhaps even was Christianity.” But now, cut off from the root of it life, “it no longer has the capacity for life of a non-Christian religion.” One must think not only of the Deutsche Christen, part of the National Socialist regime in Germany, but also of the revival of “Aryan” Germanic pagan “religions” as an extension of that ideology –which definitely had ersatz life for some people in the mid 1930s. Barth is also implicitly reproving Friedrich Schleiermacher: the root of the Christian religion is not a feeling of absolute dependence, but the specific, verbal naming of Jesus Christ. “And from the history of the Church during the last centuries we can learn that the existence of the Christian religion is actually bound up with this name and with the act of divine creation and preservation to which it points.” (I/2/347) “The Christian religion is the predicate to the subject of the name of Jesus Christ. Without Him it is not merely something different. It is nothing at all, a fact which cannot be hidden for long.”(ibid.) This name is not a mere nomen (thinking of the nominalist theological disputes of late medieval Christianity), and our theological doctrines are not a merely confirmatory addendum “like stained glass window in an otherwise finished church” that conjures a magic life simply by citation.(I/2/348) “The Christian religion is simply the earthly-historical life of the Church and the children of God. As such we must think of it as an annexe to the human nature of Jesus Christ. And we must remember what we are told concerning His human nature in Jn. 114.” (1/2/348) The human nature of Jesus Christ has no hypostasis of its own; it is bound in the dual nature of the logos made flesh. The Christian religion and the church is the earthly form of Christ’s heavenly body: in him believes dwell, or they do not live at all. Christians have a choice, but “they have the choice only of a part in His life or of no life at all.” (ibid.)
- God’s act of election signifies that the reality of the Christian religion, created by the name of Jesus Christ, is based on God’s free choosing. The reality of the Christian religion we can never deduce from historical study. “Historically, we cannot seriously explain and deduce it except from the history of the covenant made with Israel.”(ibid.) There is an extremely important delimitation here for church historians: “From that day to this it is election by the free grace and compassion of God if in virtue of the name of Jesus Christ the Christian religion is a reality and not nothingness. As there is a creatio continua so also there is an electio continua, better described, of course, as God’s faithfulness and patience.” (I/2/349) The election of the church and the Christian religion means that it is not just a religious society among others, “but the body of Christ, if it not only has aspirations but inspirations, if its relation to state and society is a relation of genuine antithesis and therefore of genuine fellowship.” (ibid.) That relationship of antithesis is clearly and completely opposed to the National Socialist policy of coordination (Gleichschaltung) of every aspect of society and politics with the Führerprinzip. Although the church may “control” the Word and Sacraments (an unfortunate translation of verwalten, or more accurately, “administer, KD I/2/383”), it is entirely election, free and unmerited, that empowers the Christian Religion and the Church. Worship in spirit and in truth is only by the merciful and free turning of God, and no tradition (contra Catholicism or conservative Protestantism) or “consciousness of immediacy” (kein noch so lebendiges religiöses Gegenwartsbewußtsein) can prevent the Church from being simply the inheritor of ancient religious options (such as the mystery cults). The name “Christian” is not ours to control, but names Jesus Christ, and is not our property to possess, “It can only be a reaching out for the divine possession included in this name. It can only be an inquiry about election. It can only be a prayer that God will not turn away His face from us, that He will not weary of His unmerited faithfulness and patience.” (I/2/349) What is the truth except divine affirmation, which is only God’s to give? In the note Barth refers particularly to Psalm 100 (in Luther’s translation, equally in the Book of Common Prayer Jubilate), “He hath made us, and not we ourselves, to be his people and the sheep of his pasture.” Along with “You did not choose me, I chose you,” John 15.16, both are sayings that are “particularly directed to the religious community of the religion of revelation as such. For the Church and for the children of God there is a recurrent temptation to regard themselves as those who elect in this matter.” (I/2/350) . Barth contrasts this with the theology of the 18th to 20th centuries during which Christian religion thought it could live on its own substance, and hence aimed to be “Christocentric.” Luther and Calvin, by contrast, never had such an aim: their theology was Christocentric form the outset. This is particularly weak –and glaringly hesitant–when discussing Jesus’ “messianic consciousness,” and hence the predominant mood or affect of 19th century theologians was melancholia and depression (I/2/351) –tentativeness to the core. By contrast, “Those who confess and therefore choose the name of Jesus Christ choose the only possibility which is given to them, the possibility which is given to them by Jesus Christ: “Thou hast the words of eternal life.” They elect, but they elect their own election.” (I/2/352) . The name of Jesus Christ is no magic or medieval nomen, “The power of affirming the name of Jesus Christ is either its own power or it is impotence.”
- The act of divine justification or forgiveness of sins is God’s free act in Jesus Christ, and signifies to the Church that all religion is idolatry and self-righteousness with God’s forgiving grace. (I/2/352) “The history of the Church as a whole or the life-story of the individual child of God in particular, stands always under this sign.”(ibid.) God delivers Himself to humans who all have unclean hands: otherwise the truth of the Christian religion would have been permanently concealed in a maze of human arguments. Barth proposes one of his long metaphors: “The fact . . . . stands in the same relationship to this realm as does the sun to the earth. That the sun lights up this part of the earth and not that means for the earth no less than this, that day rules in the one part and night in the other. Yet the earth is the same in both places. In neither place is there anything in the earth itself to dispose it for the day. Apart from the sun it would everywhere be enwrapped in eternal night. The fact that it is partly in the day does not derive in any sense from the nature of the particular part as such. Now it is in exactly the same way that the light of the righteousness and judgment of God falls upon the world of man’s religion, upon one part of that world, upon the Christian religion, so that that religion is not in the night but in the day, it is not perverted but straight, it is not false religion but true.” (I/2/253) In itself Christianity is human religion, and like all human religions, it is unbelief and idolatry. The Church is confronted with an acquittal that by itself is utterly inconceivable, and yet a judgment. “The justification of the Christian religion is a righteous acquittal. It rests entirely on the righteousness of God. It is not in any way conditioned by the qualities of the Christian religion.” (I/2/354) . The absoluteness of Christian truth rests entirely with God. “It is only as forgiveness that the truth adopts the Christian religion. It is only as forgiveness that it can be known as a definition which in the last resort is inalienably peculiar to the Christian religion.” (I/2/354-355) . Thus every human characteristic of Christianity is merely relative, and inevitably unclean. “The one decisive question which confronts the Christian religion, or its adherents and representatives, in respect of its truth, is this: who and what are they in their naked reality, as they stand before the all-piercing eye of God?” (I/2/356) When Christians accept the absoluteness of God’s decision in Jesus Christ, “Beyond all dialectic and to the exclusion of all discussion the divine fact of the name of Jesus Christ confirms what no other fact does or can confirm: the creation and election of this religion to be the one and only true religion.” In the comparison or “world of religions,” Christianity therefore stands in special danger of idolatry and unbelief, insofar as its absolute truth rests solely in God’s act of forgiveness and justification. “As it does not have this light and glory of itself, no one can take it away from it.” (I/2/357) In the note Barth extends this argument: Christians who “are wrapped up in themselves” inevitably give way to uncertainty and doubt, and glancing aside seek justification from other sources: “with the unteachable ferocity of a secret despair of faith, [they] have to take refuge in reason or culture or humanity or race, in order to find some support or other for the Christian religion.”(I/2/357) This is again a clear repudiation of the Deutsche Christen and their acceptance of the Führerprinzip. For them, unbelief has the decisive word, and the result will be the loss of all strength and vitality. This truth was borne out in the thirteen years of the thousand-year Reich.
- Finally, the truth of the Christian religion is entirely dependent upon God’s act of sanctification. Barth quickly rehearses his previous main points: we just look away from Christianity to the fact of God which is its basis; its basis is the name of Jesus Christ; God’s gracious justification of Christianity involves a “positive relationship” between the religion of Christianity and the name of Jesus Christ. “It is claimed for His Service. It becomes the historical manifestation and means of its revelation.” (I/2/358) Barth returns to his metaphor of the sun: “We have compared the name of Jesus Christ with the sun in its relation to the earth. That must be an end of the matter. But the sun shines. And its light is not remote from the earth and alien to it. Without ceasing to be the light of the sun, it becomes the light of the earth, the light which illuminates the earth. In that light the earth which has no light of its own is bright. It is not, of course, a second sun. But it carries the reflection of the sun’s light. It is, therefore, an illuminated earth. It is the same with the name of Jesus Christ in relation to the Christian religion. That name alone is its justification.” (ibid.) Only now does Barth allow positive use of the word “immanent” — “But it [the name] cannot be transcendent if it is not immanent.” (Barth’s No always implies a Yes.) The way that Christianity is then so marked is peculiar to it: “even though Christianity is a religion like others, it is significant and eloquent, a sign, a proclamation.”(ibid.) The event on God’s side is the incarnate Word of God adopting humans and giving Himself to them. The event on the human side is determined by the Word of God; it has its being and form in the world of human religion. “The correspondence of the two events is the relationship between the name of Jesus Christ and the Christian religion from the standpoint of sanctification.” The pointing and proclaiming of Christianity never has an authority of power of its own, but only by virtue of the name of Jesus, effectual in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. ” It is made holy because it is justified. And it is not true because it is holy in itself-which it never was and never will be. But it is made holy in order to show that it is the true religion. At this point we link up with what we earlier described as the twofold subjective reality of revelation, which is the counterpart in our realm of the objective revelation in Jesus Christ.” (I/2/359) The Christian religion is the sacramental area created by the Holy Spirit, “in which God whose Word became flesh continues to speak through the sign of His revelation.” Barth affirms the true, real existence of the Church and the children of God. “The actuality of their existence is quite unassuming, but it is always visible and in its visibility it is significant. It is an actuality which is called and dedicated to the declaration of the name of Jesus Christ. And that is the sanctification of the Christian religion.” (ibid.) The concluding note takes up the themes of Law and Gospel. “The observance of the Law can only be a sign and a testimony . . . But it is obviously a necessary sign and testimony.” The Word of God in Jesus Christ has a consequent and necessary adjunct, a “ministry of reconciliation.” Consequently Christians are sinners, the Church is a Church is sinners, “But if they are sinners, by virtue of the Word and Spirit then are also sanctified sinners. They are placed under discipline. They are put under the order of revelation. They are not longer free in all their sinfulness.” (I/2/360) But the consequent serious problems Christianity faces of canon and order, worship and theology are answered according to whether the church is here and now ready for the Lord who justified it long ago. “The sanctification, to which {Christians and Christianity] are subject in their exercise and repetition, is quite beyond their own striving and its successes and failures. No less than their justification, it is the work of Him for whose sake they are called Christians and Christianity.” (I/2/361)
I began this long digression into §17 of Church Dogmatics in 2012 because I was so dismayed at the enculturation and Babylonian captivity of Christianity in Saint Thomas’ Church, New York City, where my younger son sang in the Choir of Men and Boys and experienced a Christianity characterized by power-plays and hypocrisy. I do not know whether things have changed there; I hope so; and the late John Scott is sorely missed. In the time since 2012 the entire nation and world have experienced a power-play and hypocrisy in Christianity (specifically, evangelical Christians in the USA) that dwarfs my personal experience. Barth’s devastating critique of the religion of Christianity and theological re-formulation of the only way to understand it as a “religion” rings profoundly true and counter-cultural at this time. His experience with Hitler’s Germany presaged many of the currents of the authoritarian seizure of popular “religion” prominent at the current moment, with (one hopes) less dire political, social, and historical consequences. The corruption of the “court evangelicals” and their radical hypocrisy will stand condemned, surely. That the Holy Spirit can create a space in which Word and Sacrament can proclaim the name of Jesus Christ over and against American culture is a pure and unmerited gift of God’s grace with sinners. It remains to be seen what will happen to Christianity as many Americans have known it, as it is becoming discredited, inauthentic, and spurious for whole generations. The Word will be doing a new work in the world, and the proclamation will go on despite (and in the face of) human willfulness and sinfulness. “From hypocrisy, hardness of heart, and contempt of Thy Word and commandment, good Lord deliver us” (to paraphrase the Great Litany).
Rev. and page numbers corrected, April 2020