The Barmen Theses Then and Now: The 2004 Warfield Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary

by Eberhard Busch

To put it in the form of a picture: the confessions are guideposts on the pathway of the pilgrimage of the people of God.

Although the rejection might be the major motivation for a confession, its merit will be based not upon its main message being a No to something wrong but rather upon its Yes to the truth of the divine gospel.

One should note that in these it is never particular persons who are rejected; it says six times, “We reject the false doctrine. . . .” With that, the false doctrine is separated from those persons who espouse it. That means that in these theses they are not being cast out of the church by those who believe rightly; with their false doctrine they have excluded themselves from the church. Inasmuch they are now distinguished from their false teachings, their return into the church of Christ is made possible.

Confessing means a new binding of the church threatened by or already guilty of unfaithfulness, a binding to the One who gives the church its life and without whom it would cease to be the church. At stake is a new binding of the church to the one God “as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture,” as it is put in the first Barmen thesis.

The Barmen Declaration not only made visible the separation from a false church. It also proved at the same time to be a significant bridge connecting churches that had long been separated. That is its ecumenical significance. It demonstrates that where the church attempts to speak in the name of God in a binding way, this results in new bonds.

The term “Word of God” designates a particular story as it is “attested for us in holy Scripture.” In this story God distinguishes himself from all other gods. By electing particular people to be his people, he differentiates himself from the gods that people choose for themselves. By carrying out this self-differentiation God makes the judgment, so infuriating to his own people, that all gods “aside and next to him,” and especially those that the members of his people might choose for themselves, are false and presumptive gods. As proof that he has elected them and not they him, he does not give them up even when they turn to false gods, but reveals himself then to be their strict reconciler.

Any and every attempt to combine the one Word with other entities next to and aside from it is always the surrender of our binding to the one Word of God. This is precisely what is meant by “natural theology.”

Christians’ solidarity with Jews does not happen by evading Jesus Christ, but only in Jesus Christ. And, we have not yet rightly understood Jesus Christ as the one Word of God if we Christians have him in some other way than in his solidarity with the Jews, which is thus our solidarity. Thus we say that Christians are not God’s chosen people in place of the Jews, but rather that they, the Jews, are elect, and we are, thank God, called into them. This we believe (with Rom. 15:8) in that we believe the reconciliation of Jesus Christ as the confirmation of the promises that God has given to the mothers and the fathers of his people. In this way the Word, which was in the beginning, is that Word which according to 1 Peter 1:25 “endures forever.”

Because the Word of God is such assurance, we may place all our trust in it. And because the Word of God is such a claim, we must obey it with all our lives. Gospel and law must be differentiated. But both are forms of the same one Word of God and thus are not to be separated or seen as opposite to each other. If one speaks first of the law and only then of the gospel, one ends up in a dual difficulty. The law will be understood as an opposite to the gospel from which the gospel liberates us, and we will not be able to differentiate between what God commands and what earthly powers require.

The gracious assurance of forgiveness alone is what frees us from our sins. Note, too, the language about all our sins. This is a prelude to what is then expressed in the second half of the statement: forgiveness takes place after the model of Israel’s exodus from Egypt, in which there is the joyous deliverance not only of some individuals but rather of a community from the godless fetters of the world. There is liberation from a system of injustice, lying, and violence that enslaves the entire community.

The gospel is rigorous and grace is costly also because there is in it a deliverance from sin through the forgiveness of all sins, but no release from Jesus Christ as the one Word of God. The freedom that he gives us is freedom in commitment to and responsibility before him. If forgiveness were to lead to a departure from Christ — as, for example, after recovering from an illness one no longer needs the doctor — then in this instance the human would have fallen back into the world of sin. Sin lies behind us to the extent that Christ is not behind us but rather with us, and we with him. Grace becomes cheap grace to the extent that one makes use of it on occasion only to give the old Adam breathing space to return with a good conscience to the old life under the dominion of corrupt powers, back to the godless fetters of this world.

The church would be unfaithful to its most essential task if, in accordance with God’s command, it did not endeavor to ground and develop an evangelical ethic. It would not take the forgiveness of sins seriously if it did not take the question of the action God commands of us with the same seriousness. The unity of the one Word of God would be put into question if God’s assurance were uncoupled from his claim to our life.

God lays no claim upon humanity before he first lays claim upon himself for them, thus fulfilling his will and his command for their benefit.

In the discipleship of Jesus Christ the goodness of the shared life will be measured by the extent to which the least ones are helped to receive their rights. In his discipleship we ask again and again how all life is to be protected and preserved as far as possible. In his discipleship we do not act in the anxiety and worry that we might be forsaken by God but rather in the joy at his presence.

Discipleship does not mean insistently taking a position and staying there. Discipleship means moving along a path. On this path we come across surprising new situations, sometimes from one day to the next. Yesterday’s solutions do not help us then. In the light of Jesus Christ we are to ask anew from situation to situation: What is commanded of us now in this setting? How will life be protected here and peace served and the truth honored?

In the words of the second Barmen thesis, our liberation through Christ out of the godless fetters is our liberation “for a free, grateful service to his creatures.” In this service, we encounter many whom we would rather not love, because they are disagreeable to us, enemies not friends. But let us not look at them in terms of what they mean to us! Let us look at them in terms of what they mean to God! They are his creatures! And if we see them in that way, then as a matter of principle, our service of love cannot be denied to anyone. In such love, we can and we must do all kinds of things: stand together with others, support and even put up with others, but also perhaps contradict and oppose others firmly. Whether or not we are doing this rightly is determined by the fact that in everything that happens, even when we have to say “no” to their activities, we are still basically saying “yes” to them and thus loving them, and all the while doing so unobtrusively, but decisively.

Where humans are called together by their one good shepherd, they are also related to one another as a community in which every person lives as an important member of a working fellowship.

The church puts itself in jeopardy — either in its retreat from the world into an interior space to attend to a sacral activity that is an end in itself, or in its conforming to the world around it, to which it surrenders. The church is threatened when it contests Jesus’ statement, “You are the salt of the earth” (Matt. 5:13), either by letting its savory message remain unused or by diluting it.

The church is not grounded by itself. It is not the source of its own continuing life. It is grounded by Jesus Christ. He ensures that that which he has grounded then continues. He does not lie in a grave of the past — and woe to the church that in all seriousness speaks of him in the past tense!

The old proposition of the ecclesia semper reformanda, which is the concept of the church constantly being renewed, does not mean that the church is constantly to turn its flag toward the wind of the most recent fad. It says that the church is the church of Jesus Christ only to the extent that it lives in constant repentance, turning away from the idea that Christ is dependent upon the church, turning to the understanding that it is dependent upon him. It is only in that he makes himself present to it that it is the church of Jesus Christ!

Rather, both, the rulers and the ruled, are made accountable in the same way. When the church, addressing both, “calls [this] to mind,” in effect a barrier is erected against both the autonomy of the state and the mentality of passive subjection on the part of the people. The fact that the church calls this to mind makes it clear that it does intervene in the political world and exercise a “prophetic sentinel’s office,” without ceasing to be the church.

Democracy on these terms is something more than merely ascertaining majorities. It has not been fully realized if that is all that it means. Democracy means that all responsible parties participate in the decision-making process for the organization of the common good. Democracy also means the right to oppose and the protection of minorities from the majorities’ abuse of power.

The doctrine of the royal lordship of Christ, on the other hand, has its proper meaning in the emphasis that the same God who rules the church also rules secretly over the rest of the world, and thus over the state that surrounds the church. This correct statement becomes false if it is interpreted to mean that the lordship of Christ in some way also permits the church to exercise lordship over the state. Behind this interpretation is often the mistrust that God is not carrying out his task with regard to the political world well enough, and the church needs to come to his assistance. It is certainly true that the church should be the witness to the will and action of God in relation to the political world. But as such a witness it cannot be or become ruler, but must be and remain servant. As such it cannot from time to time put its calling to the service of God on hold in order to pursue its own interests by devoting itself to a part-time job as a political power or opposition.

The gospel itself has both the will and the power to create a hearing for itself in every language and people, and when that happens, it demonstrates the will and the power of the gospel and not its dependence upon anthropological concessions. The fundamental error is that the church in its mission is not subjecting itself to the Word of its Lord but rather it subjects his Word to intentions that it has established and is striving for, completely apart from his Word. Its error is that it does not carry out its task as service solely of the “Word and work of the Lord,” but that it uses the Word and work of the Lord to bless interests that it has formulated without listening to the Word of God.

We do not have this Word in our hand; we are in its hand. Step by step we continue to be dependent upon its opening itself to us as it does to others. By virtue of its visible demonstrations of power, it will do that, often where we do not expect it, and perhaps not at the very place where we would like to fit it to our wishes and plans — not to “race, folk, and nation,” as the German Christians declared at that time. Instead it will bind itself to the “incompetents and the inferiors” whom the German Christians wanted to get rid of.19

And thus we may be confident that this Word is also more powerful than the danger that threatens it from outside of the church. There, they may not so much want to reject the Word, but rather silence it more effectively by muzzling it like a dancing bear, binding it with a chain and letting it dance its practiced routine. They do not contest it. But they make the gospel into the very thing that Karl Marx criticized: “Religion is the opium of the people.”20 Sometimes demanding, sometimes smiling, they demand that the Word of God should bless and not disturb the arbitrary acts of humans. Its messengers, then, certainly do not end up in prison, as foreseen in 2 Timothy 2:9 — which means that they do not bear the disgrace of Christ (Heb. 13:13), nor do they follow him by taking up his cross (Matt. 16:24), but rather become public figures who are far too popular — not because they make such an impression with the Word of God but rather because they are willing to submit so cooperatively to that human arbitrariness.

Just as God is free in his grace, the church too is free in its commission. The thesis basically says that the freedom of the church is “grounded” in its commission. If, instead of serving him, it put the Word and work of the Lord “in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans,” then it is only apparently free. In fact, it loses its freedom in the process. It will exhaust itself with its efforts to satisfy people’s needs as they are manipulated by the media. It will, for its part, become slave and prisoner of old and new forms of human arbitrariness. The freedom of the church cannot persist if it is separated from its commission. Its commission consists of its serving the Word and work of Jesus Christ. It is free only in this commission.

To put it in a pointed way, the actual addressee of the free grace of God is not the church, but rather “all people.” The church can only be the witness to this. If it also wants to be the addressee of God’s free grace, then it can only do so in solidarity with “all people.” It is just as much in need of forgiveness as are all the rest, and it knows at the same time that as God loves it in spite of that, God also loves all the others who do not know it yet.

In Christ, the Word of God became human. This is not intended to transform the world into the church, but to redeem the world in the kingdom of God. That does not render the church superfluous. But it does define the meaning of its existence. It is the assembly of those who perceive what is already true — namely, that the Son of God has reconciled the world with God and that therefore his Holy Spirit does not stand still but blows where it chooses (John 3:8). Because this truth is perceived in the church, it is the assembly of those who are called to be the messengers, the missionaries in the service of God in the world.