By David Gushee
“And if we glance again at Jewish history and see the strangeness and absurdity of the Jew, his obnoxiousness which repeatedly made him odious among the nations — and now you may give the anti-Semitic register full play — what else does that mean but confirmation of this rejected Israel, which by God was made visible at the Cross, but also of the Israel with whom God keeps faith right through all stages of his wandering?”
Who said this? Martin Luther? David Duke? Richard Williamson, the controversial Holocaust-denying bishop?
None of the above. These words come from Karl Barth, probably the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century. In this same essay, drawn from 1946 lectures offered in a bombed-out Bonn university and published under the title Dogmatics in Outline, Barth writes: “Alongside the Church there is still a Synagogue, existing upon the denial of Jesus Christ and on a powerless continuation of Israelite history, which entered upon fullness [in Jesus Christ] long ago.” And of God’s relationship to Israel, Barth says: “He has never ceased to lead by cords of love this people which to His face has behaved like a whore.” And: “It was no accidental matter … that here in Germany it was said that ‘Judah is the enemy.’ We may say this and in some circumstances we must say it; but let us be quite sure what we are doing.”
Think of when these words were spoken — the summer of 1946! World War II had been over for one year. National Socialism had collapsed; its leaders were dead, missing or facing trials. But the regime had lasted long enough to murder six million Jews. How in the world could one of the church’s most astute theologians say such things in the shadow of the catastrophe that had just befallen the Jewish people?
It is not as if Barth was unaware of that catastrophe. It runs like a subtext throughout this chapter. Israel for Barth is indeed God’s chosen people. Israel is “the rock of the work and revelation of God.” Nazism’s attack on the Jews was therefore an attack on “the nation that embodies in history the free grace of God for us all.” But this divine grace carries with it the sad necessity of being “a people in God’s service,” with a prophetic, priestly and kingly mission, which often involves “surrender … even unto death” in the service of God. And the fact that, according to Barth, Israel has resisted its election and mission and, most significantly, “handed [Jesus] over to Pilate to be killed” means that Israel has “pronounce[d] its own condemnation” and is therefore “continually struck down and broken by the judgment which afflicts him just because he withdraws from grace.”
Karl Barth resisted Nazism. He led theological efforts to resist the Nazification of the German church. He fled Germany rather than cooperate with that evil regime. History has judged him to be one of the very best leaders German Christianity had during the struggle for its soul in the early 1930s.
And yet, Barth left published words that are breathtaking and terrible; at least, they must seem that way to anyone who takes seriously the long history of Christian theological anti-Judaism and cultural/political anti-Semitism and its contribution to the Holocaust. As of 1946, at least, he had not reconsidered his theology of Israel in light of the grotesque evil of the Holocaust. (The book was published in English in 1959. Even 14 more years did not lead to a revision.)
Here is the point. Ecclesia semper reformanda — in English, “The church is always in need of reformation.”
It is a Lutheran slogan that would have been well known to Karl Barth himself. But Barth did not fully assimilate its implications when it came to how he talked about Jews and Judaism. His writing reveals evidence not just of a long Christian history of interpreting the Jewish people as God’s reprobate elect who suffer for their rejection of Christ, but also shows traces of the anti-Semitic Nazi culture that, in so many profound ways, he had led in resisting.
If this could happen even to Karl Barth, one of the church’s very best thinkers, what might that say about the rest of us? What are our blind spots? Where might we be in need of reformation?
This is a word that ought to speak to those hard-shelled traditionalists who have allowed their version of Christian faith to calcify and resist needed reformation prompted by new times, new tragedies and new insights. But it is also a word to those soft-shelled modernists who have allowed their version of Christian faith to stray from core convictions that must be held steadfastly in all times and places.