402 - How To Serve God In a Marxist Land

How To Serve God In a Marxist Land
By Karl Barth and Johannes Hamel
126 pp. New York, Association Press, 1959. $2.50.

This book is a document unique of its kind. Here for the first time we have between covers in English three important reflections on the most significant Christian encounter with communist society in the World today-the life of the Evangelical Church in that part of Germany under Marxist rule, the "German Democratic Republic." They are Karl Barth's letter to a pastor there, in Which he comments generally and then answers some specific questions; Johannes Hamel's essay on "The Proclamation of the Gospel in the Marxist World," and Professor Robert M. Brown's introduction to them both.

Most readers will buy and read this book because of the name Karl Barth. One of his most controversial writings is contained in it. They will keep it, however, and inwardly digest it, because of what Johannes Hamel has written. This reviewer would advise every reader to turn first to this latter essay.

Hamel is a pastor and teacher of theology in eastern Germany. He speaks directly out of a Marxist land. He does so, however, in accents which are new to most who speak English. We know well the diatribe against communist atheism and slavery. On the other side we have heard the voice which tells us to accept Marxism as the instrument of

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God's judgment and grace. Hamel's position is neither of these. Rather he combines a thoroughgoing realism about what communism is, with the faith that God and his Gospel are there for the communist as well as for the Christian. He spells out this faith with Biblical analogies-Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and Rome under Nero-and with practical insight into the conditions around him. What does it mean to see in communist attacks a judgment on the Church without accepting the Marxist terms of that judgment? How can one repent in a free way when under attack? How can Christians speak the truth to communists, and work for justice and humanity without confusing their judgments with ideals borrowed from the West? I-low can their suffering, in the extreme case where no other course is open, be a witness to the suffering and triumph of Christ? With such questions Hamel is concerned. This is no political analysis of conditions in eastern Germany. Realism about this is presupposed. Hamel is writing for people so saturated with it that their spirits are in danger of drowning. It is theological analysis and personal confession of faith-the attempt to trace what God may be doing in the Marxist world.

After reading Hamel one might well turn to test oneself, to Dr. Brown's introductory essay. Here in lucid form are set forth the main themes first of Hamel, then of Barth, with questions to each, from a thoughtful American point of view. If the reader has understood Hamel as well as Dr. Brown, he may grade himself A plus and pass on. If not, he would be wise to look at the former's essay again in the light of the latter's exposition and critique.

Finally one comes to the letter of Karl Barth. Dr. Brown has analyzed it so well in the context of Barth's whole theology and politics that the reviewer can do no better than recommend his treatment. But there are a few words which might be said in addition.

On the one side one can make a strong case for the claim that it was a mistake for Barth to have written this particular letter at this time. First, the questions were confused. Much sharper and more central ones could have been formulated, not in a spirit of antagonism, but to elicit from Barth the best he has to offer.

Second, Barth did not take the trouble to inform himself on certain concrete problems before writing, with the result that his advice on at least one point-the loyalty oath to the government-was wrong, and on other points (for example, the "peace pastors") was vague and confusing. This in sharp contrast to his concrete advice during the Nazi times.

Third, Barth, although lie has given to men like Hamel and many others the theological insights with which to meet the communists, lacks himself that inner feeling for the pressures and temptations of life in a

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Marxist land which is needed to make his insight accurate and convincing. He fails most where he is called upon to be most pastoral. He gives the cast German hearer reason to dismiss his theology with the remark, "If he lived here he would think differently." The absolute precondition of any good advice going across the Iron Curtain in our day is the giver's ability to persuade the hearer that in his prayers, his spirit, his sensitivity, his vicarious sorrow and joy, he does "live there."

Fourth, Barth perpetuates in this letter his misunderstanding of the spiritual problems and temptations of the Western world, and thereby discredits, both for Western readers and for those in the East who understand the Western world somewhat, his sound theology. It is true that the temptations and spiritual dangers which beset men in the West are as strong, perhaps stronger because more subtle, than those in the East. But Barth's description of them in West Germany and elsewhere is the poorest part of his letter.

But this letter has nevertheless been written. It has become thereby an important event in the history of the Church. It will doubtless be studied by historians and theologians centuries hence who, like so many of us today, find short pieces by great men easier to master than long volumes. Therefore we must read it for its true message, for its theology rather than its politics, for its reminder of Christian perspectives we dare not forget in East or West if our witness is to be true. Let a few of them be enumerated in closing:

It is true that God is the victor in his Word over the societies of both the communist and the non-communist world, and that both these societies, not just one of them, stand under his judgment. The Christian who is not free from bondage to his own Western world has no prophetic word for the Eastern one.

It is true that the Church is not called to defend its own power and influence, or even its "religious liberty," as its first order of business. It is called to repent of its own worldliness when it is attacked, and to proclaim the Gospel in the confidence that God himself will make a place in this world for the community which so lives and witnesses.

It is true that the prayer and action of the Christian can never be against the enemy but only for him that his life and power, and eventually he himself, may turn and glorify a gracious God.

Read for insights such as these by those prepared to allow their own souls to be searched, this letter may yet prove, with Hamel's and Dr. Brown's help, to be a blessing for the Church in East and West.

Charles C. West
Bossey, Switzerland