Confessing Protestantism in West Germany

In his annual report to the General Assembly of the Evangelical (i.e., Protestant) Church in Germany at Berlin in January, 1971, the presiding bishop, Dr. Hermann Dietzfelbinger, shocked delegates with the following statement: “If I am not totally deceived, we are right in the middle of a struggle for the faith, of a Kirchenkampf [struggle for the church] compared to which the Kirchenkampf under the Nazis was only a skirmish. The ghastly aspects of it are that hardly anyone is aware of it, that it is generally played down, and that it is making headway under such misleading terms as ‘pluralism’!”

A few weeks later the titular leader of Germany’s Protestants sharpened his remarks at a meeting in Brunswick. He called for the urgent convocation of a “confessional” synod, thus reminding his audience of the historic Synod of Barmen that launched the anti-Nazi Confessing Church in 1934.

These declarations caused considerable commotion in church circles all over Germany. They were hailed by the “confessing” groups, all of which have been saying the same thing for the last five years. [The German words bekennende and Bekenntnis-, which we translate literally as “confessing” and “confessional,” carry the old, early Christian and Reformation meaning of making a public confession of one’s faith before the authorities, secular or religious, despite the risk of opposition and persecution.—ED.] Others rejected them entirely or played them down as a wrong diagnosis of an admitted but by no means dangerous problem in theological communication, as a matter of semantics rather than of faith. Germany’s leading Protestant journal, Evangelische Kommentare, commented editorially on Dietzfelbinger’s statement under the title “False Alarm.”

The conflict thus outlined is serious enough to merit the attention of our fellow Christians in other countries. In what follows, I shall attempt to explain it for them. I make no pretense of doing so from a neutral position—which in matters spiritual is always an illegitimate one. I speak as a representative of those who have taken a definite stand for confessing, evangelical Christianity. [The word evangelisch in German usually means nothing more than “Protestant” in the loose sense, but when the author speaks of “confessing, evangelical Christianity” he is using “evangelical” in the English sense of the word.—ED.] I would like to consider (1) the significant theological change of the 1950s; (2) the impact of the revolutionary movement since 1968; and (3) the ways in which confessing, evangelical Christianity in Germany has responded.

Theological Change of the Fifties

When I began my theological studies soon after the war, the academic and ecclesiastical scene was marked by the victory of the Confessing Church over the party of the so-called German Christians who with Hitler’s support controlled both the theological faculties and the church synods. The Confessing Church was mainly influenced by the dialectical theology of Karl Barth, with a strong emphasis given to the heritage of the two great Reformers Luther and Calvin. The salvation-history approach to the Bible pioneered by Oscar Cullmann and Gerhard von Rad was important also.

To study theology during these years marked both by our national collapse and by the hope for spiritual renewal was a thrilling experience. Despite a moderately critical approach to the Bible, we were taught a basically positive attitude toward the authority and relevance of the scriptural revelation and toward the history of Christian teaching. There was no doubt that God’s self-disclosure and redeeming work in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was the sole content and norm of the church’s ministry. We did not hesitate to take our stand within the Church of Jesus Christ, the spiritual renewal of which was the first condition for witnessing to him in the world.

The first nation-wide “Kirchentag” or national rally of German Protestants was held in 1949; others followed at two-year intervals. Real festivals of faith, they demonstrated the solidarity of the Christian community in East and West Germany and attracted hundreds of thousands of people. Bible studies led by noted spiritual leaders were the main attractions in the varied program of the Kirchentag. This was also the case in youth and student work. I can still remember how we packed the lecture halls in Halle and Heidelberg to hear our university chaplains and theological professors alternate in leading our weekly Bible studies. There was a kind of biblical renewal blowing through our churches and faculties. I later observed on the mission field that the most dedicated missionaries from Germany were often those who had been called during those seven years immediately after World War II.

However, by the end of that period we were already sensing a wind of change. Strangely, or perhaps logically enough, it came in connection with our German economic recovery. The spiritual seriousness that marked the war generation was not so evident among younger persons, who were enjoying an easier and more affluent life. Now the search for intellectual truth for its own sake took the upper hand, displacing the desire for spiritual maturity.

At that juncture a theologian suddenly burst into prominence. He was not young but was a contemporary of Karl Barth and, together with Emil Brunner and Friedrich Gogarten, had helped him launch “dialectical theology” during the 1920s. His name was Rudolf Bultmann. Now the moment had come for him to carry out a program that, though he had announced it in 1941, had been overlooked in the heat of the Kirchenkampf and the war: the “demythologizing” of the New Testament.

In 1951 Bultmann republished his 1941 manifesto, “New Testament and Mythology,” in a series of essays called Kerygma and Myth (English translation, SPCK, 1953). This launched a tremendous public debate. Bultmann contended that the New Testament uses mythological language of the first-century world to express non-mythical revealed truth. This truth is essentially concerned not with cosmology or historical events but with an existential transformation of man’s self-understanding, his concept of the meaning of his life, and his attitude toward his neighbor. To bring out the real significance of the New Testament for modern man, we have to free its kerygma (message) from the non-essential mythical framework and translate it into a more appropriate terminology. This terminology Bultmann borrowed from the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger.

This program of demythologization, it is true, was not meant as mere elimination of biblical material without any replacement, but rather as a translation. The translation is achieved, however, at a tremendous cost in biblical substance. Let me quote from “New Testament and Mythology”:

Man’s knowledge and mastery of the world have advanced to such an extent through science and technology that it is not longer possible for anyone seriously to hold the New Testament view of the world.… And if this is so, we can no longer accept the story of Christ’s descent into hell or his ascension into heaven as literally true. We can no longer look for the return of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven or hope that the faithful will meet him in the air (1 Thess. 4:15 ff.). Now that the forces and the laws of nature have been discovered, we can no longer believe in spirits, whether good or evil.… The miracles of the New Testament have ceased to be miraculous.… It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless … and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of daemons and spirits.… The mythical eschatology is untenable for the simple reason that the parousia of Christ never took place as the New Testament expected. History did not come to an end, and, as every schoolboy knows, it will continue to run its course [Kerygma and Myth, pp. 4, 5].

When in 1951 Bultmann made these pronouncements the second time, before a much wider audience, namely the whole Protestant Church in Germany, there was considerable reaction. Many individual theologians and clergymen alerted the general Christian public and demanded that the churches condemn Bultmann’s doctrine. Some church councils and synods actually took up the issue, and a condemnation appeared imminent. However, other theologians and even church spokesmen like Martin Niemoller and Werner Ehlert rushed to defend Bultmann’s right to develop his ideas. As a result, apart from some pastoral letters warning against the dangerous tendencies inherent in such views, no disciplinary action was taken. Instead, a huge debate in the press aroused even more interest, and in the years that followed more and more professorships in New Testament exegesis were awarded to Bultmann’s disciples. The existentialist school, under its euphemistic name “kerygmatic theology,” became dominant not only in New Testament studies but also in systematic and practical theology.

The results of this theological shift in the fifties cannot be overestimated. It created an entirely new atmosphere in the seminaries and begot a new type of theological student who joyously brooded over his existentialist self-understanding. Soon Bultmann’s influence began to be felt in the congregations, where his ideas were expounded from the pulpit, and in the schools, where religious instruction was turned into a reinterpretation of biblical writings according to the new theory. Before long, ministers of Bultmannian convictions were promoted to responsible positions in the church administration.

Even more significantly, this new hypercritical school of biblical interpretation developed a missionary zeal to enlighten the whole church. Cheap pamphlets appeared to popularize the alleged results of so-called scientific theology. The churches were criticized for not having done this much sooner and for thus having supposedly kept their people in ignorance. The mass media, including the big magazines, radio, and television, gleefully pounced upon these sensational “discoveries” and secured for them the widest possible publicity. One of the most disastrous developments was the capture of all key positions in the religious communications services by these “modern” theologians, quite often by people whose personal faith had been destroyed during their studies and who therefore felt unable to become pastors.

In 1966, the point when the modernist takeover of the universities and churches was almost complete, some of the movement’s most outspoken opponents among the orthodox or pietistic theologians and pastors joined to form the Confessional Movement “No Other Gospel” (die Bekenntnisbewegung “Kein anderes Evangelium”). Theological leadership was given by Walter Künneth, professor of systematic theology in Erlangen and one of the fiercest opponents of Hitler’s ideology of “blood and soil.”

As fate would have it, however, by the time the Confessional Movement was organized, the severest attacks against the historic faith and the church were no longer coming from the ranks of Bultmann’s school. Its positions were already being taken over by a new force, the revolutionary movement.

The Revolutionary Movement Since 1968

Compared with the situation of the earlier sixties that produced the Confessional Movement, the ecclesiastical and theological picture has changed greatly. It has not reverted to the spiritual conditions of the postwar period, for we have not yet experienced either a real renewal of classical Lutheran orthodoxy or a large-scale spiritual revival of evangelical piety (though some hopeful signs have been appearing in recent months).

The most staggering change has come through a great mass movement, ignited not by any outstanding academic theologian but by the worldwide chain reaction of the student revolution. Its chief ideologists were not theologians but philosophers and sociologists of neo-Marxist conviction, such as Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Bloch. When the international wave of student revolt swept over the theological faculties and the Christian university groups, the soil had been prepared by some theological developments.

First of all there was the negative impact of the large-scale sell-out of biblical authority and confessional orthodoxy that was due to the so-called results of radical biblical criticism. For several years such criticism was considered the summit of theological study, and lectures on it attracted the largest student enrollments. Now suddenly the students became aware that what they had been doing was to eat up the substance of biblical revelation from which they were supposed to live and upon which they were to draw as ministers. In the name of “kerygmatic theology,” the basic elements of the biblical kerygma had been disintegrated.

The final consequence had been drawn by Herbert Braun, Bultmann’s most radical disciple, whom Bultmann himself called his most attractive one. Braun claimed that God himself is not an objective personality or entity existing independently from the universe he has created. Instead, Braun conceived of him as a certain form of human interrelatedness; he is the “thou shalt” and the “thou mayest,” the “source of my drivenness” [an attempt to translate into meaningful English Braun’s unusually opaque Teutonism, das Woher meines Umgetriebenseins—ED.]. That is to say, “God” is merely a conventional expression to signify a hidden, vital impulse to live courageously and responsibly. This word does not give us any definite content related to our prospects for the future, nor does it supply any norms for our ethical behavior, apart from a general appeal to live in neighborly fashion according to the challenge of a changing situation.

One of the most brilliant theological students of this period, Joachim Kahl, who had himself just gone through this educational process and taken his doctorate in Marburg, drew the logical and rather cynical conclusion in a book that was the bestseller among theological students for a whole year and caused many to give up theology. Its title: The Misery of Christianity: A Plea For Humanism Without God. Kahl gave a synopsis of mutually contradictory statements of present-day theologians, unmasked the hollowness of many awe-inspiring catchwords of this theology, and pronounced that chaos existed in exegesis, dogmatic, and ethics. Remarkably enough, though Kahl himself is an agnostic, his chief target was not the remains of orthodoxy but the kerygmatic school. He called demythologization “a manipulation of authoritative texts for current use,” “organized dishonesty and ambiguity.”

Although many theological students were impressed by Joachim Kahl, not all of them followed his example by leaving both their vocation and the church. During the student riots in 1968 and 1969, various attempts were made to forge a new concept, not only of theology but of the entire function of the Christian Church.

To some extent these efforts could take up and elaborate theological ideas that had already appeared during the Bultmannian era. Here we should mention Bonhoeffer’s theses: that humanity has come of age, that we are at the end of the religious era, and that the task of the church is to follow the example of Jesus as “the man for others.” We should also mention two new schemes of a theology of history: Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Hegelian-inspired concept of world history as revelation, and Jürgen Moltmann’s “theology of hope,” which owes at least as much to the “principle of hope” of Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch as it does to biblical prophecies of the coming Kingdom.

Even more important was the theology of secularization as conceived by Friedrich Gogarten and taken up by Arnold van Leeuwen, Harvey Cox, and J. C. Hoekendijk. Through Hoekendijk and Walter Hollenweger this theology of secularization became the accredited ideology of the World Council of Churches, reaching a new peak of influence at the WCC’s Geneva Conference in 1966 and its Uppsala Assembly in 1968. All these concepts, different as they might be in emphasis, starting from a mild humanism and ending up with an apotheosis of revolution as participation in God’s acting in history, have one thing in common: the church does not exist for its own sake, nor for the sake of a transcendental, personal God, but for the world. Its main purpose is to humanize society by changing political and social structures. This purpose can be achieved only if the church is radically changed, its structures secularized so that it can become more directly involved in the affairs of the world.

A still more radical contingent of young theologians did not even try to preserve appearances. These students and young ministers openly dedicated themselves to plain Marxism in its anarchistic, Leninistic, or Maoist brands. For them no theology was necessary to do the one thing needful, i.e., to engage in revolution. If they continued as theologians or even became ministers, they did so for two reasons: (1) They thought it was necessary to study theology to expose and overcome its repressive ideological function in the history of Christian society. Here the radical criticism of religion and Christianity expounded by Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and others was welcomed. Students even engaged in anti-evangelism to convert their fellow students from their former religious outlook to a supposedly more scientific, utopian sociological outlook. (2) From a tactical perspective, since the majority of church members still had some sentimental religious concepts and desires, these radical young theologians thought they had to be ministers in order to deal with them. Moreover, in order to get control over the machinery of the church and to transform it into an instrument of social change, the revolutionaries had to work from within the church. Their final purpose, however, was to destroy the old institutions of theological faculties and churches and to replace them by new structures of revolutionary action.

When this movement got started, we experienced two years of outrageous and blasphemous performances. Prayer was abandoned, worship services and other church meetings were disputed, and at the end the “theologians” themselves were distributing leaflets and putting up posters ridiculing all the basic doctrines of the creed. Theological students at Münster staged a Black Mass dedicated to Satan.

During the last year or two these groups have become less outrageous in their behavior; there is no real change in conviction, however, but only the adoption of a more calculated, long-range strategy. Personally, I am more concerned about the groups that still take an interest in theology. Here we meet professors who in effect adapt traditional Christian concepts to the expectations and wishes of the new generation. They use language that appears quite traditional, that sounds in fact increasingly orthodox. But its content becomes ever more humanistic and this-worldly. What is euphemistically called “socially relevant” or “political” theology is really a camouflaged atheistic humanism. In his book Atheism in the Bible, Ernst Bloch expounds the thesis that the secret theme of the Bible is the promise of the snake in the Garden of Eden: “Ye shall be like God.” This prophecy, Bloch says, has been fulfilled by Jesus Christ. When Jesus said, “I and the Father are one,” he actually dethroned the sovereign God and installed himself, as a man, in God’s dignity. A group of participants in a missions seminar in Hamburg came to the following conclusion: “The traditional statements about the Return of Christ, that God will be all in all, etc., aim functionally at man’s becoming man, a goal to which Christian mission is calling and paving the way, but which is not given to man to reach on his own.”

We may rightly say that the “death-of-God” theology was of only passing significance. Today it is being replaced by the “man-is-God” theology, which is actually the theology of the Antichrist. This theology is being exported to Asian and African churches, by, for example, the Ecumenical Institute in Chicago. It is important to recognize that this whole development has been made possible by what that institution calls “the revolution in theology,” which really means the destruction of faith in biblical revelation by the subjection of the biblical texts to biased higher criticism.

The Role of Confessing Evangelical Christianity

One of the most disastrous aspects of the present crisis of faith in Germany is the inability of the official church to tell its members clearly which doctrines and practices are consistent with its confessional commitment and to discipline those who persist in violating that commitment.

There are two reasons for this paralysis of the church in its teaching function. One is the pluralism within the theological faculties, which for centuries had served as the standards of reference in doctrinal matters. The other reason is the growing polarization between church workers. Both the conservatives and the progressives insist that their view must become the official one of the whole church. As a result, any authoritative pronouncement on doctrinal or ethical matters is sure to be opposed by one section of the church. There are very few church leaders of the caliber of Bishop Dietzfelbinger who would dare publicly defend the standards of the church, knowing that they would thereby bring ridicule upon themselves. One of the most despicable aspects of the situation is the fact that, as we have noted, all key positions in the Christian press and news service are held by modernists who constantly publish distorted reports and highly biased comments. They simply suppress news of conservative groups, including their public statements. In elections, they engage in extensive propagandizing of the voters. These publications receive large subsidies from official church revenues, whereas no dissenting—i.e., conservative—publication would have the slightest chance of receiving official church funds, and other patterns of funding have not been developed. Therefore there would appear to be no chance of founding a Christian periodical that could compare in doctrinal stand, size, and intellectual level with CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Here is where the new Confessional Movement comes in. It defends biblical standards of doctrine and ethics and their validity in the church, in missions, and for society in general. It has to act in place of the official teaching authorities of the church and to build up a parallel communications network, in order to bring to the attention of the Christian public things they do not receive through official channels.

Actually the Confessional Movement is a whole complex of analogous groups that sprang up independently of one another, all in reaction to the takeover of modern theology in the fifties and to the infiltration of radical leftists into the church and its institutions. The oldest of these grew out of Wurttemburger pietism: the Ludwig Hofacker Conference, established in 1951. The largest group, which soon took over the leadership of the protest, is the already named “No Other Gospel” or Confessional Movement, which was launched in March, 1966, with a mass rally in Dortmund’s Westfalenhalle. Its background was in Westphalian and Rhenish pietism, but it was also inspired by the Reformation and by the Kirchenkampf against the Nazis. Another branch of the Confessional Movement, the Church Rally for Bible and Confession (Kirchliche Sammlung um Bibel und Bekenntnis), was founded the same year, with a distinctively Lutheran confessional emphasis and close relations with similar groups in Scandinavia. Sister movements were founded in the following years in Bavaria and Berlin.

All these movements consist primarily of lay and ordained members of the established Protestant churches and make their appeal to the church administration and to the existing congregations. At this time, they do not seek separation from the established churches; their goal is rather a doctrinal and spiritual renewal within the churches. Thus they take every opportunity for responsible consultation with church leaders and with the older, established missionary societies. They seek to play the role of a “loyal opposition” within their denominations.

Since 1969 these groups have tended to work in ever closer collaboration. In 1969 the “Theological Assembly” (Theologisches Konvent) was founded in Frankfurt with Professor Walter Künneth as president. It united theologians with academic and church positions in an attempt to give theological leadership in the spiritual confusion of our time. It could be called the brain trust of the Confessional Movement.

One opportunity for joint witness was the 1969 Kirchentag in Stuttgart. The Kirchentag planners wanted to limit its scope to social and political issues. But the Confessional Movement refused to participate unless one section of the Kirchentag addressed itself to the burning doctrinal issue. Thus Section I assembled under the heading “Conflict About Jesus.” Contrary to all expectations, this section proved by far the greatest attraction. For three days the largest hall was jammed to overflowing with 9,000 people as three modernist and three conservative scholars confronted one another in a debate about the divine nature and the return of Christ.

In March, 1970, the Theological Assembly came to public attention for the first time by issuing the “Frankfurt Declaration on the Fundamental Crisis of Christian Mission” (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, June 19, 1970, pp. 3–6). By October the spirit of solidarity had developed so far that the five conservative groups formed a federation, “The Conference of Confessing Fellowships in the Evangelical Churches in Germany.” Its purpose is to provide a united witness in matters that concern all the Protestant churches in Germany, with respect to their inner life, their mission, and their public responsibility. One of its first tasks was to appeal to the West German government and legislature about proposed revisions to the criminal code on pornography and abortion.

At the moment we who are in this conference are concerned with the attempt to change the federal structures of both the Protestant state churches and the German Protestant Missionary Council into centralized bodies with legislative and executive authority. We are not opposed in principle to closer unity in church and mission. But we are convinced that the projected unity can be achieved only at the price of doctrinal truth, which until now has been faithfully preserved in various evangelical traditions. Furthermore, we recognize that the primary motive for merger at this time is the desire for a more extensive engagement in social and political issues, based on ideological presuppositions that will inevitably lead to a further secularization of the church. It would ultimately be turned into a syncretistic welfare organization with considerable power. Our protest is therefore taken from the watchword of the 1937 Oxford Conference: “Let the Church be the Church.”

Some may charge that this is just a specter dreamed up by sectarian minds in order to justify their opposition to hopeful ecumenical ventures. But we continually see signs of a fatal change in the way the churches, the missionary societies, and the World Council of Churches see themselves and their role. They think of themselves as instruments to bring about the world society of the future, composed of people of all religions and ideologies.

This new understanding of mission was trumpeted forth last year in a huge publicity campaign. Picture magazines and posters appeared everywhere, portraying a group of armed guerrillas in Africa with the inscription, “Today we are partners.… Mission today is the mandate given to all Christians to fight together against everything that destroys life, against racism, intolerance, exploitation and alienation.…” None of these magazines and posters anywhere indicated that mission has primarily to do with preaching the Gospel and with gathering Christ’s Church from all nations. Although most of the Christians who actively support missions were disgusted with this advertisement, it was hailed by the Ecumenical Press Service and recommended for imitation by other countries.

On the other hand, this campaign has also involuntarily helped to bring about greater solidarity among conservative evangelicals. The “Conference of Evangelical Missionary Societies” decided to adopt the Frankfurt Declaration and to cooperate more closely with the Theological Assembly. This decision brought the Evangelical Alliance and the Conference of Confessional Fellowships into close contact, which means that now the non-state-related Protestant churches in Germany are also joining in the Kirchenkampf. An important addition to the strength of the Conference of Confessing Fellowships came in March, 1972, when the Gnadau Union, the federation of all the pietistic fellowships, institutions, and missions in the state churches, formally adopted the Frankfurt Declaration and joined the conference as its sixth constituent body. This means that the conference’s work will become more and more clearly rooted in the evangelical lay membership of the churches, thus balancing out the predominance of clergy in the Church Rally groups.

The role of confessing, evangelical Christianity is by no means confined to the apologetic task in our present struggle. “Resistance and renewal” are the two great concerns of the Confessional Movement. Without this second, revivifying element, we would be nothing more than a kind of “orthodoxy patrol.” The confessing fellowships from the beginning have seen it as their chief task to nourish the spiritually starved masses of evangelical believers, who have often looked in vain for a proclamation of the biblical Gospel in their church services.

This spiritual nurture is provided in various ways. Great rallies have been an outstanding method. They are not simply old-style revival meetings; they combine a reaffirmation of the confessions, evangelistic proclamation, and solid Christian teaching. A new term has been coined to describe this form of ministry: “teaching evangelization.” The biblical doctrine of the person of Christ, his work, his bodily resurrection, the reality of his personal return, and the significance of prayer are important elements of these popular rallies.

Another, more personal approach is found in weekend courses concentrating on Bible study. Suggestions are given for establishing and maintaining small cells in Christian homes, focused on Bible study, intercession, and mutual responsibility.

We also realize that in spite of the necessary new emphasis on the lay structure of the church, the pastor still holds a key position. Therefore vacation courses for theological students are conducted in an effort to “vaccinate” them against modernist infections and to build up a sound biblical substance for their personal theology. This is also done in the new theological residence hall established in Tübingen in 1970, named for Albrecht Bengel, a well-known Bible expositor who was one of the fathers of Wurttemburg pietism. Here students are formed into a close Christian fraternity and are also brought into vital contact with some of the healthiest parishes in the country.

One crucial question might finally be asked: What are the prospects of saving the church in Germany from spiritual ruin and of experiencing a revival of evangelical faith and life? The answer cannot be given with absolute certainty, mainly because we do not know the exact hour of God’s plan of world salvation in which we are now living. If time still remains to complete the task of proclaiming the Gospel to all nations, we surely may hope and pray for a new spiritual reformation and revival in our German churches. There are some signs that such a revival is beginning, especially among the younger generation. But if we are living shortly before the end that the Lord has appointed for his merciful forbearance, we may be in for a still greater apostasy and even for persecution. We are trying to prepare the church for both possibilities. In either case Christ’s charge and promise to us are the same: “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you a crown of life” (Rev. 2:10).

Peter Beyerhaus is professor of missions at the University of Tübingen, West Germany, and was one of the chief architects of the “Frankfurt Declaration.” This essay will appear in his book “Shaken Foundations—Building Mission Theology on Rock” (Zondervan).

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