The most famous example is that of the Barmen Declaration of 1934, signed by, among others, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth. What is disappointing about that document in retrospect is its failure to address the Nazis’ anti-Semitism, something Barth later regretted. But there was an earlier and better document that is today all but forgotten: the Bethel Confession of 1933, which Bonhoeffer had composed along with another Lutheran, Hermann Sasse. The two men were later to travel along different theological paths, Bonhoeffer being more amenable to the theology of Barth while Sasse became arguably the most important orthodox and confessional Lutheran of the twentieth century. In 1933, however, these two men saw the real problem of Nazism with a breadth and profundity not found in the Barmen Declaration.
The Bethel Confession has recently been reprinted and is well worth study and reflection. It makes clear that the reason Bonhoeffer and Sasse were able to understand their times was that they placed the transcendent God, his Word and sacraments, and his church above all earthly powers. They understood that the church was not to confuse itself with the state nor with worldly forms of power. And they knew that the church, from the world’s perspective, was necessarily weak and must not seek her own fame. Hers is the way of the cross.
Now, this confession was drafted by Bonhoeffer and Sasse. Therefore, any response like “So they just wanted us all to live in a pious huddle and let the world go to the dogs” is clearly risible. Both were active anti-Nazis and suffered for it. Bonhoeffer was martyred. Sasse’s anti-Nazi credentials were such that he was selected by the Allies to help with the de-Nazification of Erlangen University after the war. These were no passive pietists. Yet it was their grasp of the transcendent God and his gospel that immunized them to the blandishments of Hitler. They did not collapse the transcendence of God into the immanence of political exigency. And it was that very concern for the transcendent that made them wise actors in the world of the immanent.
Carl Trueman | “The Gateway Drug to Post-Christian Paganism” | April 14, 2024
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Exceptional reminder. Among other gems in the article Trueman says: “The pundits on both sides seem more concerned with making sure that no criticism goes unmocked and no critic’s character goes unsmeared than with relativizing the affairs of this world in the light of eternity.” This is a holy “relativizing” that we need to apply ever and always to spheres of influence well beyond politics. I think of it every time I hear church appeals for “relevant” sermons, “fresh” approaches, “updated” methods. What exactly do we mean? The next few years are rarely judged against the next few trillion. II Cor. 4:18