More on Barth

In the turbulent European political milieu of the 1930s, Barth advanced a civic theology that was strongly resonant of the early Reformed tradition. Active in the late years of Latin Christendom, the magisterial Reformed paradigm had been concerned to establish both church and state on properly biblical grounds. While the distinction of jurisdictional powers was maintained in divergent ways, there remained an insistence that both secular and ecclesial rulers owed their authority to divine ordinance – an ordinance which could be reversed if the authorities proved disobedient (although the development of resistance theory was a gradual and not uncontested development). In 1931, Barth approximated the essence of this earlier magisterial doctrine: the church “contains the state in itself” as it represents Jesus Christ alongside the state, only more expansively and directly. Likewise, the fifth article of the Barmen Declaration (1934) stresses that the actions of the state, which are often coercive, are legitimate insofar as they reflect their “divine appointment,” or order (Anordnung). Church and state alike derive their legitimacy from God’s ordination. While they fulfill their commissions in different manners, each is closely tied to the same divine administration. Civil and ecclesial authorities together share the same goals of peace, order, and accommodation of the preaching of the Word.
Similarly, in his essay, “Gospel and Law” (1935), Barth critiqued a key element of the German Protestant consensus of his time: namely, the idea that law and gospel are clearly demarcated both in soteriological as well as theopolitical terms. For Barth, God’s gracious action must be the precondition and substance not only for the redemptive covenant of grace but also for the covenant in creation: “We must first of all know about the Gospel in order to know about the Law, and not vice versa.” The very possibility for reception of the law of creation (creationis lege) is itself evidence of grace. Likewise, it is impossible to speak of the civil realm as if it were not itself an institution of grace (in his Ethics, he refers to the state as an instance of Calvin’s “external means of grace”). Christians must reject any stringent juxtaposition “between the divine gift and the divine task, Gospel and Law … the Christian experience of salvation and Christian service to the glory of God and the benefit of one’s neighbor.” Rather, the “common origin” of these twinned realities is Christ, and therefore they remain integral to each other.
In his early statements, Barth appears to affirm some sense of the old corpus christianum, and of the continuing relevance of the order of Christendom. Considering his theological nemeses at that time, and threatened imposition of theological compromise with Nazism in the German church, Barth’s recapitulation of Calvinist language seems quite instinctual. However, by the end of the Second World War, Barth appears to be somewhat less comfortable with what Oliver O’Donovan terms the “anachronistic Christendom-feel of [his earlier] classic Calvinist assertions.” Does the notion of a corpus christianum hold any weight when secular society has clearly begun to move away from its (explicit) religious commitment?
In his post-war essay “The Christian Community and Civil Community” (1946), Barth resumes his theme of the unity of gospel and law, and therefore of church and civil authority. However, he does so while expanding on his earlier allusions to the church’s role as a “witness” to the state and the coming Kingdom of God. Since for Barth neither the church nor state can claim to embody Christ’s Kingdom, but merely point to it by analogy, each is (or should be) responsible for its discrete actions before God – the church as an explicit witness, the state implicit. The particular role of the church is therefore to call the state out of its “neutrality, ignorance, and paganism” to repentance and proper fulfillment of its divinely ordained mission. What remains rather ambiguous in these later formulations, however, is the extent to which Barth believes the civil order can truly extricate itself from its “natural” state, i.e. paganism. In fact, at times Barth sounds rather pessimistic about the temporal realm, perhaps especially wary of the myriad ways in which the state is able to flaunt its role as God’s “deacon.” While not revoking his older position, Barth now appears rather more skeptical that the state can act with a proper knowledge of Christ. Perhaps this tension between what the state is (de facto) and what it ought to be comes through most clearly when Barth writes of the potential for the existence of both good and bad states: “the reason [that good states exist alongside the bad] is not that the true ‘natural law’ has been discovered, but simply the fact that even the ignorant, neutral, pagan civil community is still in the Kingdom of Christ.” (Oliver O’Donovan objects to Barth’s association of the “natural” origin of the state with “paganism.” Yet, on account of passages like these, Barth appears to make “pagan” a provisional, not definitional, qualification. The state is not yet redeemed, but there is no aspect of creation that is not the realm of redemption.) The disparity between the state as it acts and the state as it is called to be reinforces Barth’s reliance on the church’s prophetic role as witness.
Barth’s skepticism about the civil community’s testimony to Christ seems to inform his more programmatic suggestions. While Barth clearly wants individual Christians to involve themselves in political causes, they make these civic decisions and judgments in an analogous relation to the Kingdom, and not by direct representation. In other words, Christians as individuals, and as members of the church, are “unassuming” witnesses to the Kingdom, as they are careful not to identify themselves with its full instantiation. (At the same time, the Barmen Declaration seems to imply that the “unassuming” and analogous witness of the church to the state can actually appear quite definite in moments of extremity.) Practically speaking, because even sanctified Christians are liable to deep confusion and error, the prospects for true witness are not assured. Both church and state must be wary of the encroachments of insinuating ideologies. In the end, Barth’s preference for language of analogy implies that church and state have a kind of indirect participation in the Kingdom – although that participation generally takes the form of earthly proclamation. While the church witnesses to Christ explicitly, and the state implicitly, in both cases the witness and participation are qualitatively not yet redeemed. This raises a question: What is the substance of the connection between sign (earthly political witness) and thing-signified (the Kingdom)?