Christian Faith in Dark Times: Theological Conflicts in the Shadow of Hitler.

Clements, Keith

Fifty years after the surrender of Nazi Germany and the end of the second world war, the twelve years of Hitler's rule still put the most searching questions to Western society, and to the churches in particular. Why was Hitler's accession to power in January 1933 hailed so widely by Christians, Protestants and Catholics alike, and not only at the popular level of street or pew, but by some of the most renowned and sophisticated theologians of the day? It is right that we continue to be inspired by heroes such as Barth and Niemoller, and resisters like Bonhoeffer. But the more discomforting question is why they were untypical.

Jack Forstman's study is therefore to be welcomed as a contribution to a profoundly important, continuing enquiry. As he states in his eloquent introduction, it remains a crucial theological question for today whether and how we can recognize the demonic in society -- at the stage when the evil is still potential rather than fully manifest. Forstman concentrates on seven Protestant professors who were already into their academic maturity by 1933: Karl Barth, Emanuel Hirsch, Paul Tillich, Friedrich Gogarten, Georg Wunsch, Paul Althaus and Rudolf Bultmann. With admirable fairness and lucidity (in what could be a bewilderingly tangled story) he traces their respective stances towards each other, to the Nazi revolution, and in turn to each other's responses to that earthshaking event. Barth and Bultmann, early allies in the dialectical theology movement, remained consistently opposed to the Nazification of theology and church. Barth's great service in being the chief inspiration of the Barmen Confession always deserves underlining. Less often acknowledged is Bultmann's acerbic dismissal of the pseudo-religious Germanic mythology and his forthright denunciation of the proposed "Aryan paragraph". Tillich, largely on account of his religious socialism, fell foul of the regime very early on.

The most tragic figure in the whole drama is Emanuel Hirsch. Of brilliant mind and immense knowledge, and with a passionate desire to revitalize the life of his tired, dispirited and demoralized fellow-Germans after 1918, he was also remarkably close to Tillich on both a personal and intellectual level. Yet he hailed the Nazi era as (to use Tillich's kind of language) a positive kairos. Hitler, he believed, had a God-given mission to unify and uplift the German nation. Hirsch supported the anti-Jewish measures of the 1930s, by which "non-Aryans" were dismissed from civil office and excluded from business life, as an unfortunate necessity. Paul Althaus, perhaps the greatest exponent of Luther of the time, likewise greeted the new Nazi age -- though by 1937 he realized his mistake. Hirsch remained unrepentant for the rest of his life.

Even among those who agreed over the main issue, there were at times sharp disagreements. Barth disagreed with Tillich on the matter of membership in the socialist party, and with Bultmann on the oath of loyalty to Hitler. But overall perhaps the most illuminating case is the bitter dispute between Tillich and Hirsch, precisely because in many respects they were so close. They shared the insight that Christianity always requires a concrete, historical cultural context in which to express itself. But whereas Tillich maintained the "Protestant principle" that finite historical forms are never to be identified with the transcendent, unconditioned reality to which they point, for Hirsch the contemporary historical moment became everything in itself. Germany, its Volk and its national aspirations, became not just the context but the actual content of theology, ultimate concerns in themselves. For Tillich the scene had to remain open to the unremaining criticism of a transcendent perspective, otherwise there would be idolatry.

Obviously any such survey must be selective. But it is strange that no more than a footnote is given to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in whom German Protestantism found its most decisive anti-Nazi embodiment, both theologically and politically. Bonhoeffer may have received over-exposure in some respects, but that is all the more reason to bring him out of his "saintly isolation" into the context of these other figures. Nor can this exclusion be justified on the grounds that "Bonhoffer (sic) was just beginning his theological work in 1933, and his most important work came later". In fact by 1933 Bonhoeffer already had two major treatises to his credit, Sanctorum Communio (written in 1927!) and Act and Being (1930), in both of which he argued with Barth. Bultmann and several of the other senior contemporaries. Both works -- and others, especially his Berlin university lectures on Christology (1933) -- are crucially important for an understanding of his later ecclesiological and social thought.

However, this study will certainly make more accessible to English-speaking students a crucially important piece of modern theological history and some of its chief players. It complements Robert P. Ericksen's closely related study Theologians Under Hitler (Yale University Press, 1985), of which, surprisingly, there is no mention by Forstman, not even when dealing with Althaus and Hirsch who, along with Gerhard Kittel (whom Forstman does not mention either), form the focus of the earlier study. I would argue strongly for keeping Forstman and Ericksen as companion volumes. Forstman shows deeper and more precise understanding of the theological issues themselves, and deals with more figures. Ericksen, however, has a surer grasp of the wider social and intellectual context of post-1918 Germany, and above all of the crisis which modernity was posing for the theologians.

But in neither book is there finally a clear and satisfactory answer to this crucial question: whether one type of theology rather than another guarantees a surer perception and response to politicized evil. That is not necessarily a fault in these or any other such works. Perhaps the question itself is wrong. Maybe we are here expecting a little too much of theology in itself, as an intellectual discipline. Recognizing the devil (or not) takes place at a much more primal level, in the very guts of what it is to be human and to have faith.

Keith Clements is coordinating secretary for international affairs in the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland.