This essay looks more at the issue of how the church and state (and world) relate to one another and less at the issue of war. Nevertheless, it is my contention that Barth moved between the absolutes of just war and absolute pacifism and promoted an active peacemaking role for the state.10 Barth’s peacemaking perspective (or as he called it, “practical pacifism”) is not a reversal of an earlier just war position, but remained his continuing perspective, like his commitment to democratic socialism, throughout his life. Once war begins, however, the state (and Christians within it) must choose between participating and not participating, between supporting the state’s decision and not supporting that decision.11 For example, Barth’s general commitment to the state led him to say No to violence in 1914, but Yes in 1939; by the 1950s, in a time of relative peace, he returned to a more definitive No position. This is not a reversal of positions, but movement within a dialectical position that begins with the peacemaking function of the state, but also acknowledges that there are very unusual circumstances when the state can only preserve peace through the use of force. Barth’s understanding of Christian witness allows the Christian to move freely between an affirmative Yes or No, in response to what God’s commands require in particular circumstances. To forget that Barth’s ethics is one of openness and movement is to forget his basic point, namely that ethics is responsible action in relation to God’s command of grace.
Therefore, this essay presents a continuous—yet dialectical—portrait of Barth’s theological politics, which includes the following points: 1) like all theology, his theological politics is not an independent science but one that begins with the revelation of the Word of God and the deliberative response of the Christian community (church); 2) politics begins with God’s action in Jesus Christ, in judgment and grace, which negatively delegitimizes all ideologies, but also positively commands responsible (and non-ideological) political action; 3) like theology, political thought is dialectical, namely, it remains in constant movement of distinguishing and relating without falling into the extremes of separation and identification; and 4) this dialectical movement allows him to move back and forth, taking different positions at different times, while remaining firmly committed to the priority of God’s action in history; and 5) by placing both church and state within the kingdom of God, he rejects the extreme positions of, on one side, the church standing absolutely against the ‘demonic’ state, and, on the other, the church standing absolutely for the ‘divine’ state, and instead affirms the church standing with the secular—yet redeemed—state.
Finally, we must remember that Barth lived this theology as well as wrote about it; we cannot separate the man from his thought. Hence, it is important to examine the historical context of the three essays included in this volume, in light of Barth’s life and the development of his theology as a whole. With this in mind, this essay includes four parts: 1) a brief political biography of Barth; 2) important themes prior to the publication of “Gospel and Law” (1935); 3) a description of the three essays, “Gospel and Law,” Church and State”, and the “Christian Community and the Civil Community”; and 4) Barth’s later thought and his relevance for contemporary discussions in theological politics.
The Political Barth
Barth’s first political involvement was as a theology student in 1904, when he joined the Swiss Zofinger Union of Bern, the oldest student political union in Switzerland, dating back to 1819.12 This liberal union supported constitutional republican governmental reform, including the rights of public assembly, trial by jury, freedoms of speech and press, and the right of self-government. No doubt as a student he became further interested in Religious Socialism, which was making a significant impact in Switzerland during the first decade of the twentieth century through the efforts of Leonhard Ragaz (1868–1945), Hermann Kutter (1863–1931), and the German Christoph Blumhardt (1858–1919). When Barth was called to his first pastorate at Safenwil in 1911, he not only served the spiritual needs of the congregation, but as a theological liberal and a committed Religious Socialist, he sought to address their economic ones as well.13 Later, in 1915, the ‘Red pastor at Safenwil’ decided to join the Social Democratic party, not out of ideological commitment, but to stand in solidarity with the working-class members of his congregation who joined the party, and suffered various injustices in their factory work. In addition to his ministerial duties, he helped form local unions, began serving as a party delegate, and attended socialist conferences.
Barth’s activity in politics was matched, if not superseded, by his serious commitment to the relevance of theology. He longed for an authentic voice for theology in the world; this, in fact, is why he turned to Religious Socialism in the first place. Regardless, the young Reformed pastor’s life was first tested in 1914, when neither the liberal establishment of German theology nor Religious Socialism were able to challenge the political war aims of Kaiser Willhem II. It was the disruption of World War I, and its horrendous aftermath, that forced Barth to question the liberal theology that undermined the church’s commitment to the nationalistic and militaristic goals of Germany and the other nations.14 Barth struggled to develop a theology that began with the otherness of God and challenged the political, moral, and religious, idealistic aims of humanity, which had collapsed in the War.15 This turn toward theological objectivism, and critical realism, begins with the premise that to take human moral action seriously, we must first take God seriously; the problem, however, is that liberal theology, and consequently Religious Socialism, had turned this basic principle around.16 God’s otherness reveals a diastasis that exists between human righteous actions, including political praxis, and God’s righteous action. Therefore, if he was to begin in a different place than the anthropocentrism and immanentism of liberal theology (and much Religious Socialism), then he would have to take God seriously and open himself to the otherness of God’s mystery and revelation.
Barth’s theological struggle was essentially with the liberal theology behind Religious Socialism and not with overall commitment to social justice and its practical policies. We may recall that the two most important Swiss socialists who had direct influence on Barth were Leonhard Ragaz and Herman Kutter. Ragaz, more of a classic left-wing activist, merged his Christian beliefs into the secular movement of Social Democracy, and sought to work with other secular socialists in seeking the goals of pacifism and social justice. In contrast, Kutter, who was less political and more prophetic, envisioned the kingdom of God emerging only with God’s action. Kutter believed that God would use both religious and secular movements, like Marxism, to bring about these socialist changes. On the surface, Barth politically supported Ragaz’s practical commitments to change the political and economic structures of injustice and his stance against political nationalism and the war. It would seem odd to preach and teach Christian socialism, but not actually attempt to transform the human structures that would necessarily lead to these changes. On a deeper level, however, Barth became more theologically sympathetic to Kutter’s “watching and waiting” perspective, which shifted the focus from human action to divine action, thus more generally, from humanity to God. Although he disagreed with Kutter’s politics, he became convinced that if the socialist movement would lead to God’s kingdom, it would have to be God’s doing, not humanity’s.17 Leaning toward Kutter, therefore, in 1915, Barth met the German Lutheran Pietist Christoph Blumhardt, who had significant influence on both Ragaz and Kutter. Blumhardt had previously been active in Social Democratic politics and even served in the German parliament a decade earlier. The theology of Christoph and his father Johann Christoph Blumardt (1805–80) appealed to Barth because it offered a strictly eschatological and God-centered understanding of God’s action in this world in its total human context, in terms of both the personal and social good. The younger Blumhardt’s theology involved waiting upon God’s action but also hastening toward full realization of the eschatological hope; the kingdom of God is both present and future, and remains entirely dependent upon God’s action through ‘Jesus the Victor.’ Unlike the more extreme positions of Ragaz and Kutter, Blumhardt offered a dialectical position, which Barth found appealing, and provided a good argument against the ideological