The Knowledge of God and the Service of God According to the Teaching of the Reformation. Karl Barth
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the church founded, sustained and ordered by Jesus Christ and that set up, defended and made use of by men on their own authority.
3. The existence of the true church of Jesus Christ in an individual church (or the existence of an individual church as the true church of Jesus Christ) stands or falls with the work of the Holy Spirit taking place within this individual church. The question as to the true church can never be decided anywhere by means of the standards which we as human beings have at our disposal.
4. But the spiritual distinction between the true church and the false is carried into effect and made manifest in so far as the life of each individual church is reformed, that is, as in accordance with faith, active in love it is made subject to the Word of God as the Revelation of His Grace in Jesus Christ.
LECTURE XVI
(Art. 18b–20)
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH
1. The church cannot be governed either by the majority of its members or by a special ecclesiastical order—in no sense can she be governed by herself but only by the Word of God, by which she also has been founded and is sustained. But the Word of God is Holy Scripture, i.e. the testimony of the prophets and apostles to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Because it is by the voice of the Holy Spirit alone that the true church is both created and distinguished from the false church, she cannot listen to the voice of a stranger alongside His.
2. The church cannot therefore understand her course as a history of arbitrary human opinions and resolutions. She understands it rather as the exposition of Holy Scripture by itself, as the Word of God acting in her. Human opinions and resolutions can never precede but only follow the decisions of the Word of God and the church can never have the truth of the Word of God at her disposal but can only be its servant.
3. If the church on her side makes definite decisions, she does so because she must constantly justify her actions before the Word of God which governs her, and must constantly profess the truth in the face of error. The bonds she thus imposes can and will provide not a hindrance but rather free course to the Word of God. They are valid and effective in so far as the church in them owes allegiance not to herself but to Jesus Christ as her head and thus to Holy Scripture.
4. Provided that Holy Scripture alone governs the church, the valid constitution of government can in itself be built up equally well on the basis of an ecclesiastical order or on the basis of the congregation. But the freedom of the Word of God is better served and hence so also is the legitimate authority of the bonds necessarily imposed if the congregation is and remains in itself the bearer of the church’s responsibility towards the Word of God.
LECTURE XVII
(Art. 21)
THE CHURCH SERVICE AS DIVINE ACTION
1. The primary ground of the church service is neither devotional nor instructional. Nor is it the confession made by the human beings who take part in it, but the presence and action of Jesus Christ Himself and hence the work of the divine creation and sustaining of the church and of the Christian life of her members—a work which is the meaning and goal of all human history.
2. The primary content of the church service is therefore the work of the Holy Spirit both in the proclamation of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, determined and delimited by baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and in the faith which is established and nourished by this proclamation—a faith in which man, in spite of his natural lack of faith and disobedience, commits himself to the gracious and almighty lordship and care of God.
3. The primary form of the church service is given with that proclamation’s human means and signs which are instituted through the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. This, the form of the church service, cannot be confounded with its content and hence cannot be made absolute, as if Jesus Christ had rendered Himself superfluous through the human institution of the church. But this, the form of the church service, cannot be detached from its content, and cannot therefore be lightly esteemed and neglected as if Jesus Christ did not wish to glorify Himself expressly in the human institution of the church.
LECTURE XVIII
(Art. 22–23)
THE CHURCH SERVICE AS A HUMAN ACTION
1. The secondary ground of the church service is not the religious need or capacity of the human beings who take part in it but the necessity of obedience to the gracious will of Jesus Christ, present and active in their midst—a necessity which unites them into the church. This obedience is also the service which the church owes to the whole world.
2. The secondary content of the church service consists therefore in such action on the part of the congregation as has for its goal a new, more loyal and more efficacious hearing of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and thus the glory of God’s name in its own midst and throughout the whole world. In this action both those who belong to the ecclesiastical order and those who belong to the rest of the congregation possess a promise and a responsibility which is in each case their own, yet is in each case of the same importance in the sight of God and in their relation to one another, and in the last resort is common to both.
3. The secondary form of the church service consists in an effort which is unceasingly the task of the whole congregation and which must always be repeated anew. It is the effort, critical in spirit, after a sincere and humble proclamation and understanding of the divine Word—a proclamation and understanding which correspond to the institution of the church as originated by Jesus Christ.
LECTURE XIX
(Art. 24)
THE STATE’S SERVICE OF GOD
1. No sphere exists in which Jesus Christ is not already to-day secretly or openly the only Lord and the supreme judge. No other law exists which can have the right of limiting the church’s task and of setting aside faith in Jesus Christ, active in love. The political order in its varying forms is no less an order for the service of God, in which rulers and ruled are called to obedience to God, to thankfulness and to penitence.
2. The significance of the political order as service of God is clearly seen, wherever the form of political power then in force honours God by providing for justice and peace, so far as human insight and human ability can, and by providing and preserving freedom for the true church to proclaim the forgiveness of sins and eternal life in accordance with the task laid upon her. The significance of the political order as service of God is obscured, wherever the form of political power then in force seeks to operate for its own advantage, violating and suppressing justice and peace, advancing the false church or becoming itself the false church.
3. Faith in Jesus Christ, active in love, will enter on positive co-operation in the tasks and aims of the political power then in force or it will passively withdraw from this power’s responsibility according in either case as the significance of the state as service of God is made clear or obscured in its application by the political power.
4. The duty of obedience to the political order, which is bound up with its significance—made clear or obscured—of serving God, and the duty of prayer for the holders of the form of political power then in force, does not cease, but merely adopts a new form, when a choice must be made in the conflict between faith in Jesus Christ, active in love, and the claims of a particular political power, and when, this being the case, God must be obeyed rather than men.
LECTURE XX
(Art. 25b)
THE GIFT OF COMFORT AND HOPE
1. The necessity but also the questionableness and danger of the service rendered by the state to God reminds the church of the fact that her life and all Christian life here and now takes place within the bounds of a still unredeemed world of sinful men, whose reconciliation with God is indeed already accomplished in Jesus Christ, yet is still hidden.
2. The power with which the church serves her Lord here and now and the confidence with which she does so, cannot therefore be founded on what men can feel and think, say and do within the compass of the church. They find their basis in the comfort given