303 - The Barmen Theological Declaration of 1934: The Archeology of a Confessional Text

The Barmen Theological Declaration of 1934: The Archeology of a Confessional Text

By Rolf Ahlers

Lewiston, N. Y., Edwin Mellen, 1986. 254 Pp. $59.95.

For those who are concerned about the history of the confessing church in the Germany of Hitler's time or with how the church confesses Christ in a time of crisis, this is an invaluable resource. Rolf Ahlers of Russell Sage College, a noted theologian in his own right, has carefully traced for the reader the events and the controversies, the documents and the drafts which led to the Barmen Declaration taking the form in which it was finally proclaimed.

The book has a peculiar structure. Drawing on the latest German research into the antecedents of Barmen, it first gives a brief history of Christian efforts to respond to the Nazi seizure of power over the churches and of the German Christian movement that supported it. The tensions and the compromises between Lutheran, Reformed, and United, between conservative nationalist and democratic progressive, and between competing concepts of what it means to be the church are carefully portrayed. Then, following the text of the Barmen Declaration itself, the various layers of preparatory documents are uncovered step by step from the latest to the earliest, showing how each contributed to the form that the final declaration took. In this sense, it is indeed an archeological enterprise, working forward, then backward with the material of human theologies and confessional ideas.

Ahlers has not come forth with a new thesis on Barmen, although along the way he disposes of a number of inadequate old ones. Like a good archeologist, he is content to have us visit the time and place, to experience the debates, to live with the tensions and to recognize how, by inspiration and compromise, one of the great confessions in the church's history emerged. Those who like to learn by re-living the time will find it fascinating.

Charles C. West, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J.