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The Covenant of Grace Fulfilled in Christ as the Foundation of the Indissoluble Solidarity of the Church with Israel: Barth's Position on the Jews During the Hitler Era1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Eberhard Busch
Affiliation:
George August Universität, Fachbereich Theologie, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 2, D-37073 GöttingenGermany

Extract

How might Karl Barth's engagement with the question of the relationship of the church to Judaism during the Nazi era help us today as we seek to revise that relationship? It is obvious that we cannot simply repeat his statements today. But the reference to Barth would be unproductive if it consisted solely in the assertion that the opponent of anti-Semitism at that time was in fact in league with his adversaries. Protestants all too willingly take on an air of self-importance, imagining the distant past to be the proverbial night in which all cats are gray. It would also be insufficient to find in this theologian some good initial ideas, to the extent that they agree with one's own views, in order then, when one differs from his thinking, to identify all the logical flaws that one believes to have been successfully overcome. In neither case would we learn anything, but only confirm our own position. If our encounter with a teacher of the church is to be fruitful, we must enter into a conversation in which we are not only the questioners, but also those who are questioned. True, such a teacher, whom we may critically question, is only an authority subject to the Word of God. But a proper teacher of the church is an authority under the Word of God, and his or her question to us, therefore, is whether we, as we move ahead, are following the Word of God as attested in the Bible or only our own authority.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1999

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References

page 477 note 2 Scholder, K., Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich, vol. I, Frankfurt, et al. , 1977, pp. 546559.Google Scholar

page 477 note 3 W. Gerlach, Theologische Höhenluft über der Wupper, in DASBI, 3.11.1985, 1985, p. 16. The slander that twists Barth's expulsion from Germany into a retreat for dishonorable reasons has its parallels in the Nazi propaganda of that time.

page 477 note 4 Gerlach, W., Als die Zeugen schwiegen: Bekennende Kirche und die Juden, Berlin, 1987, p. 408.Google Scholar

page 477 note 5 Marquardt, F. W., Die Entdeckung des Judentums für die christliche Theologie: Israel im Denken Karl Baths, München, 1967, pp. 266ff.Google Scholar

page 478 note 6 Cf. Busch, E., Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes: Karl und die Juden, 1933–1945, Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1996, pp. 525537.Google Scholar

page 478 note 7 According to Prolingheuer, H., Der Fall Karl Barth: Chronographie einer Vertreibung, 1934–1935, Neukirchen-Vluyn, p. 2. Ed., 1984, p. 233.Google Scholar

page 478 note 8 For one of many examples, see Busch, E., Unter dem Bogen, p. 41.Google Scholar

page 478 note 9 Die Kirche Jesus Christi (TEH 5), München, 1933. A copy of Barth's letter to Hitler is in Scholder, K., Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich, vol. 2, Berlin, 1985, p. 77.Google Scholar

page 478 note 10 For references, see Busch, E., Unter dem Bogen, pp. 165f.Google Scholar

page 478 note 11 Scholder, , Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich, vol. I, p. 558, note 101.Google Scholar

page 478 note 12 Barth's letter to Fr. Schmidt, Jan. 1, 1934, (Barth-Archives, Basel).

page 479 note 13 H.-W. Krumwiede, Göttinger Theologie im Hitler-Staat, in, JGNKG 85, 1987, p. 160.

page 479 note 14 Barth's letter to Fr. Dalmann, Sept. 1, 1933, (Barth-Archives, Basel).

page 479 note 15 References in Busch, E., Unter dem Bogen, pp. 8795; 179f.Google Scholar

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page 481 note 21 Barth, Karl, Eine Schweizer Stimme, 1938–1945, Zürich-Zollikon, 1945, pp. 69107.Google Scholar

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page 481 note 24 For more, see the citation in Busch, E., Unter dem Bogen, pp. 515517.Google Scholar

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page 482 note 26 E.g. Sonderegger, K. A., Karl Barth's Dogmatic Interpretation of Israel, Providence, 1990.Google Scholar

page 482 note 27 See Busch, E., Unter dem Bogen, p. 441.Google Scholar

page 483 note 28 In much greater detail, ibid., pp. 97–124.

page 483 note 29 Schleiermacher, F., Der christlicher Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche, Berlin, 1835, vol. I, pp. 7780.Google Scholar

page 483 note 30 Schleiermacher, F., Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums, Leipzig, 1910, par. 115.Google Scholar

page 484 note 31 Kirchliche Dogmatic, II/2, p. 284.

page 484 note 32 Barth, K., Briefe 1961–1968, Zürich, 1975, pp. 420f.Google Scholar It is important to understand Barth here correctly. He is not contending that one's hearing of the scripture replaces hearing the Jewish testimonies from the past and today. This is as unacceptable as saying that the church's necessary attending to the biblical witness would render its attending to the church's own utterances over time superfluous. Barth demonstrates his commitment to sola scriptura here by emphasizing that it is even less possible that such hearing of Jewish and churchly voices should ever replace our listening to Scripture as it speaks to us about the Jewish people and the Christian church. Rather, in our listening to scripture we perceive the illumining and normative light in which both Jewish and churchly statements are to be seen, understood, discussed, and judged. The assumption which Barth makes is that there is both a continuity between the church the New Testament community, as well as between Judaism and biblical Israel, so that their illumination with this light is entirely appropriate and does not alienate them from their calling and identity.

page 484 note 33 Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, pp. 223 and 318.

page 485 note 34 Op. cit., pp. 319f.

page 485 note 35 Steiger, L., ‘Die Theologie vor der “Judenfrage” – Karl Barth als Beispiel’, in Rendtorff, R. and Stegemann, E., eds., Auschwitz – Krise der christlichen Theologie, Munich, 1980, pp. 8298.Google Scholar

page 486 note 36 See as early as Kirchliche Dogmatik, 1/2, pp. 566–568.

page 486 note 37 See op. cit., p. 567: Rather, God exercises ‘grace in judgment’ and ‘in judgment grace’. According to Barth, one has not understood God's grace when one separates it from God's judgment, nor God's judgment when one understands it as expulsion from the covenant rather than as an event within the covenant. According to Barth, Anti-Judaism does not understand that God's judgment, bound to grace, takes place on the foundation of the covenant and does not expel from it. For Barth, this is precisely how any criticism of a New Testament (or rather, biblical) ‘Anti-Judaism’ thinks; by so doing, such criticism disputes that the gracious God of the covenant is also the demanding judge of his community.

page 486 note 38 Bultmann, R., Glauben und Verstehen, in Gesammelte Aufsätze, vol. 1, Tubingen 1958, p. 333.Google Scholar

page 487 note 39 Barth, K., Die Kirche Jesu Christi, (TEH 5), Munich, 1933, p. 17.Google Scholar

page 487 note 40 Calvin, J., Institutio christianae religionis II, 911Google Scholar, and especially: 11, 10.2. See also Barth, , Unterricht in der Christlichen Religion (1924–1925), vol. 2, Zürich, 1990, pp. 381398Google Scholar. One can understand here why Barth, in his conversation with the Jewish theologian Schoeps, H. J. at the beginning of 1933, did not find his thesis helpful (in his book Jüdischer Glaube in dieser Zeit: Prolegomena zu einer systematischen Theologie des Judentums, Berlin, 1932)Google Scholar. Schoeps wanted to transfer the concept of the Christ-Revelation, which he had learned from Barth, to the Sinai-Revelation. This would not have resulted in the conclusion that was Barth's concern: that the church lives with the synagogue ‘in a fellowship that is not possible between any two other “religions”’. For that very reason, ‘What more could the church desire than to be confronted constantly by all that it inherits from the synagogue in all its distinctiveness’. See Busch, E., Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes, pp. 174179, esp. 179Google Scholar.

page 488 note 41 Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, pp. 101214Google Scholar.

page 488 note 42 Op. cit, pp. 177–190; e.g. p. 177: ‘God wills to lose, so that man might win’.

page 488 note 43 Op. cit, p. 218.

page 489 note 44 Op. cit, p. 225.

page 489 note 45 See the title of the paragraph in which Barth treats Israel and the church, ‘The election of the community’.

page 489 note 46 Kirchliche Dogmalik, II/2, p. 220, 286Google Scholar.

page 489 note 47 Op. cit., p. 221.

page 490 note 48 Op. cit., p. 218.

page 490 note 49 Op. cit., pp. 219f.

page 490 note 50 Terminologically Barth reserves the concept ‘people’ [Volk] for Israel, while he uses ‘assembly’ (=ecclesia) as synonym for church; the two together are called by him “community”. This agrees with the definitions in Rosenzweig, F., Der Stem der Erklösung (1921), Frankfurt, 1993, p. 381Google Scholar.

page 490 note 51 E.g. Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, pp. 234fGoogle Scholar.

page 491 note 52 See on this Busch, E., Unter dem Bogen, pp. 457fGoogle Scholar.

page 491 note 53 Barth, says ‘resound together’ [zusammenklingt], Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, p. 288Google Scholar.

page 491 note 54 Kinhliche Dogmatik., II/2, pp. 341344Google Scholar.

page 492 note 55 Op. cit., p. 312.

page 492 note 56 Rosenzweig, F., Der Stern der Erlösung (1921), Frankfurt, 1993, pp. 309ffGoogle Scholar, especially p. 317 and 379. Miskotte, K. H. (in Stoevesandt, H., ed., Karl Barth/ K.H. Miskotte, Briefwechsel 1924– 1968, Zürich, 1991, p. 79Google Scholar) wrote that in 1928 he referred Barth to this ‘great book’, which brings to light ‘signs of the unity of God's one community (in Israel and in the church)’. Barth (p. 104) asked Miskotte to help him to read this book, which seemed to him difficult to understand.

page 492 note 57 Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, p. 289Google Scholar.

page 493 note 58 ‘The Jew keeps the question of Christ open’, is the much quoted statement of Bonhoeffer, D., often taken out of context (Ethik, Munich, 1985, p. 31)Google Scholar. Barth agrees with it to the extent that it means that ‘Christ’ is not the property of the church in such a way that it can assert Christ without and against ‘the’ Jew. When it does that, the church renders itself incapable of perceiving the ‘sign’ of the goodness and of the seriousness of God that ‘the Jew’ is for Christianity (Bonhoeffer). For Barth, the statement would be inacceptable in the interpretation often ascribed to it that the Jewish testimony can help Christianity to deal with the question, ‘Are you the one who is to come?’, as unanswered, in order then to regard the question as quite irrelevant and to seek common ground with the Jews at all kinds of other points, e.g. in the hope for an decisive event yet to come in which the question could be revealed to be totally nonessential.

page 493 note 59 Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, p. 289Google Scholar.

page 493 note 60 Op. cit,, p. 231.

page 493 note 61 Op. cit., p. 228.

page 493 note 62 Op. cit., p. 294.

page 494 note 63 Op. cit., p. 257.

page 494 note 64 See the division of the three chapters in Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, pp. 226336Google Scholar which lay out the difference in the togetherness of ‘Israel and the Church;’ in the ET, pp. 195–305.

page 495 note 65 One should note that the three step argument which follows is not derived solely from Romans 9–11. In the dogmatic consideration of the relationship of the two biblical testaments in general, Barth, (in Kirchliche Dogmatik, I/2, pp. 77133Google Scholar) proceeds in a structurally analogous three-step pattern, which seeks to develop this thesis (in a disputational dialogue with contemporary Jewish theologians, see p. 87) as follows: Both testaments are saying the same thing, but in different ways. The Old Testament speaks (1) of the covenant of God, (2) of the revelation of the concealed God, and (3) of the eschatological coming of God. The New Testament says the same thing and thus connects the church ‘indivisibly’ (p. 111) with the people of the Old Testament; ’it can only have to do with their incorporation into die one covenant’ (p. 115). It does this because the New Testament testifies, moving beyond the Old Testament, to (1) the fulfillment of the covenant in the incarnation of God, (2) the perfecting of the hiddenness of God in the Passion of Christ, which is revealed at Easter as the good news, and (3) the One who has come as the One who is to come. Further, we note that Barth in Kirchliche Dogmatik II/2 on the one hand presents God's gracious election in Christ in a three-step pattern again: (1) God determining himself to be the covenant partner, (2) God confirming himself as covenant witness, (3) God electing humanity to be his covenant partner; on the other hand, he presents his doctrine of election in a corresponding three-step pattern: (1) asjust mentioned, God as the one who graciously elects, (2) the elect community (Israel/the Church) as his covenant witness, (3) humanity outside this community as the addressee of the gospel of God's gracious election. This leads to the conclusion that the three-step pattern to be discussed here (it relates to the ‘elect community’ just mentioned under #2) is to be understood in such a way that what it at stake is the testifying of (1) God's covenant action, (2) God's covenant revelation, and (3) the addressees of God's action and speaking.

page 496 note 66 Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, p. 254, 256Google Scholar.

page 496 note 67 Baeck, Leo, ‘Die Existenz des Juden: Lehrhausvortrag am 30.5.1935’, in Leo Batch Institute Bulletin 81 (1988), p. 1Google Scholar.

page 497 note 68 Barth can say briefly that the Jews testify to Gentiles that they are not elect, that one must be Jewish or belong to them, in order to be elect (III/3, p. 255). This is, in his view, the thing about the Jews that bothers the Gentiles (cf. Kirchliche Dogmatik, I/2, p. 567)Google Scholar. Cf. Rosenzweig, F., Der Stern der Erlösung (1921), Frankfurt, 1993Google Scholar, with a similar thought: This people ‘must…remain always alien to and an offence to world history’.

page 497 note 68 Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, p. 227, 229Google Scholar.

page 497 note 70 More precisely, the text under discussion is Romans 9:30–10:21.

page 498 note 71 Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, p. 267Google Scholar.

page 498 note 72 Op. cit., p. 281, 285.

page 499 note 73 Thus Kirchliche Dogmatik, I/2, p. 566Google Scholar, see also III/3, p. 240: The Jews are the ‘librarians of the church’ (Augustine), not the antiquarians, but rather ‘the constantly self-renewing realization and exposition of that human’ who according to those books is the counterpart in God's covenant.

page 499 note 74 Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, p. 257Google Scholar. If it did not listen to the Jewish witness, the church would ‘have nothing more to say to the world’.

page 499 note 75 Op. cit., p. 263.

page 499 note 76 Op. cit., p. 261. On January 28, 1934, Cohn had sent Barth his book, Aufruf zum Judentum, and commented in the accompanying letter that Barth's writings were being read in the circles of the synagogue with lively attentiveness. The letter together with Barth's response of February 2, 1934, is found in the Barth Archives in Basel. What is at stake here becomes clear when we listen at the same time to Rosenzweig's, F. formulation in Der Stern der Erlösung (1921), Frankfurt, 1993, p. 379fGoogle Scholar: ‘Christian faith is faith in…’, contrasted to it the faith of the Jew were ‘not the content of a testimony, but the product of a begetting. The one who is begotten as a Jew testifies to his faith in that he continues the procreation of the eternal people’. In the context above, Barth is apparently debating this view.

page 500 note 77 Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, p. 298, 301frGoogle Scholar.

page 500 note 78 Op. cit., p. 313.

page 500 note 79 Op. cit., p. 312.

page 501 note 80 Op. cit., p. 289.

page 501 note 81 Romans 11:32, the concluding statement of the entire tractate of chapters 9 to 11 before Paul utters the adoring song of praise in view of God's mysterious ways, is also for Barth the key statement for the understanding of the whole. He understands this statement (op. cit., pp. 330f) together with Jesus' word about the first, the last, and the last ones who will be first, in such a way that it describes the law of grace of God's activity in his covenant: the last will be first because God accepts those who are lost and because the Gentiles are those who are most lost. And the first will be the last, without loss of the ‘Jewish rights of the firstborn’!, because the acceptance of the lost Gentiles reveals that the (enduring!) benefit of theirelection is based solely upon the fact that God accepts the lost.

page 501 note 82 Op. cit., pp. 309–313.

page 501 note 83 Buber, M., ‘Kirche, Staat, Volk, Judentum;; Zwiegespräch im Jüdischen Lehrhaus in Stuttgart am 14.1.1933’, (mit K. L. Schmidt), in ThBl 12 (1833), p. 257274Google Scholar. One should note that Barth, in the analogous third step in the cited section in CD. 1/2 was doubtlessly thinking of Buber's, M.Der Kommende: Untersuchungen zur Entstehungsgeschichte des messianischen Glaubens, vol. I, Berlin, 1932Google Scholar.

page 502 note 84 Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, p. 260Google Scholar.

page 502 note 85 cf. Kirchliche Dogmatik, III/2, p. 679Google Scholar. Barth explained (pp. 715ff) that the Old Testament testifies to the limitation of created life. And this is intensified in the New Testament (pp. 728ff), in that here, in the ‘word of the cross’, death itself (the death which was suffered in our place and which allows our ‘old man’ to pass away) stands in the center as the accursed death. The Easter hope that is implied here becomes visible only against the background of this intensification.

page 502 note 86 Kirchliche Dogmatik, II/2, p. 286Google Scholar.

page 502 note 87 Op. cit., p. 289.

page 502 note 88 Op. cit., p. 294.

page 503 note 89 ‘Delphisches Orakel’, in Werfel, F., Das lyrische Werk, ed. Klarmann, A. D., Frankfurt, 1967, p. 527Google Scholar.