The Revelation will not be Compromised
In 1933, Bonhoeffer and Sasse drafted the Bethel Confession which was followed one year later by the Barmen Declaration, a piece often attributed to Barth whose influence was present but not exclusive.
Both pieces acknowledge a mounting danger in the conflation of church and state and admit that a Biblical ecclesiology was the only way forward for a Church that was committed to announcing the revelation of Jesus Christ. Barth saw the opposing systems of revelation as clearly framed in an antithetical manner. He would often refer to Nazism as the ‘revelation of Adolf Hitler’ in order to cast one’s mind to the phraseology of the apostles concerning Christ.
Barth references the Church’s response to this onslaught as kirk-kampf, “the Church’s struggle.” One is forced to think of the “our” in the Lord’s Prayer as being directly opposed to the “my” in Hitler’s My Struggle (Mein Kampf).
The co-opting of the Christian narrative by the state for the purpose of the expansion of power over the Church is not a new plot. It is not an impossible thing to imagine an uneducated group being taught a popular doctrine and having it believed. It happens with both true things and lies.
One of Hitler’s greatest successes was winning the hearts of the people by writing himself and his movement into Christmas.
Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.
Only the Chancellor stays on guard,
Germany’s future to watch and to ward,
guiding our nation aright.
Nothing like nesting new habits inside pre-existent ones.
This editing of the Advent of the Christ isn’t new. It happened before Christ came into the world by manipulating and co-opting the prophecies concerning the Messiah and it is happening still. According to North Korean mythology, Kim Jong Un was preceded by a new star in the sky that shone brighter than all the others and came to rest immediately over the spot atop the mountain where he was born. We could go on.
This is a time for Christians to recognize that the threat of liberalism does not simply exist in the 1619 riots or the radical redefinitions accomplished by critical studies. Liberalism exists in much of the so-called conservative response to liberalism. Apart from the revelation of Jesus Christ, any answer to the problems of humanity will only be another revelation of humanity. Is the Church in the West prepared to answer false revelation with true revelation, or will we trust in a conservatism that only advances the liberal cause? Perhaps reading the Barmen Declaration is a good place to start. You can check it out HERE.
