Community, State, and Church. Karl Barth

the true State” (123). Therefore, the “heavenly Jerusalem” can be distinguished from the “earthly State,” but the “future kingdom” still remains a “real State” not an “imaginary” or “ideal” state (123).

      Meanwhile, living ‘between the times’ empowers the church to give the state its intercession. “Far from being an object of worship,” says Barth, “the State and it representatives need prayer on their behalf” (136). Christians should pray for their political authorities, pay their taxes, and obey the civil laws, not only because they respect their civil authority, but also to remind themselves that the church is not the sole human authority. As an agent of intercession, the church’s authority resides in its “priestly duty,” whether the state is just or unjust, whether it’s free to preach the gospel or suffers persecution. The state deserves to be respected because it too falls under God’s authority. So even though the state’s power turns from “protection” to “suppression,” the church will continue to grant the state power as guardian of the law and the common good. Nonetheless, the church must not be naïve about the power of the state. “[T]hus there is clearly no cause for the Church to act as though it lived, in relation to the State, in a night in which all cats are grey” (119). The fact remains there are ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ states, and Christians must act responsibly in each of these situations. For Christians, says Barth, the “fulfillment of political duty means rather responsible choices of authority, responsible decision about the validity of laws, responsible care for their maintenance, in a word, political action, which may also mean political struggle” (144). Being responsible to the state implies that Christians respond in moral judgment and action to the actions of their state without seeking to be the state. Indeed, this is why the church needs the state because it reminds itself that it is the church—not the state.

      It follows that the best way for the state to serve the church is not to give it power but its freedom, that is, allow the church to be the church. The church’s only task is to be the church, but in this role, it also “expects the best” from the state (140). Indeed, through its work, prayer, and struggle, the church seeks to establish a “just state” (Rechtsstadt) that seeks to create and maintain an earthly peace and justice. What the church offers the state is what it also desires from the state, namely, “nothing but freedom” (148).

      Wherever this right [freedom] is recognized, and wherever a true Church makes the right use of it (and the free preaching of justification will see to it that things fall into their true place), there we shall find a legitimate human authority and an equally legitimate human independence; tyranny on the one hand, and anarchy on the other. Fascism and Bolshevism alike will be dethroned; and the true order of human affairs—the justice, wisdom and peace, equity and care for human welfare which are necessary to that true order—will arise. (147–48)

      The freedom of the state depends upon the church being the church, for without this witness, the state remains clueless to its true mission. As a witness to the Kingdom, the church enlightens the state of its true calling, a “just state” (Rechtsstadt) whose purpose is to seek peace and justice. The demonic quality of the “unjust state,” in contrast, denies the church’s witness, and demands its citizens to worship or ‘love’ the state as they would God or to demand that its citizens believe a specific “philosophy of life” (weltanschauung) or ideology propagated by the state. Because of its commitment to the Word of God, the church cannot give its “unquestioning assent to the will and action of the State,” since this would replace its commitment to the Word. “For the possibility of intercession for the State stands or falls within the freedom of God’s Word” (139). Yet even in this case, the church can never be the enemy of the state by refusing to resist, when the state deviates from its task of creating and administering justice. The state is honored by the church’s criticism because it helps save the state from its own misuse of power; in resisting the “unjust state” the church is being responsible to the state and God’s rule over the state. “All this will be done, not against the state, but as the church’s service for the state! Respect for the authority of the state is indeed an annex to the priestly function of the church toward the state” (138–39). In its resistance, the church should never seek to become the state, or replace the state with a powerful church. When the church seeks to be the state, it becomes an “idolatrous church”, and when the state seeks to be the church it becomes an idolatrous “clerical State” (132). The church, in its essence, is not an activist or political church; in doing so, it ceases being a witnessing church and replaces its task of preaching, teaching, and administering the sacraments with the temptation of political power. In bearing witness to God’s justification of the sinner and the state, and acting in justice, the church remains committed to its true political task.

      The third and most important essay is Barth’s 1946 essay, “The Christian Community and the Civil Community.” The most obvious difference from the earlier writings is that the main categories of Church (Kirke) and State (Stadt) have changed to Christian community (Christengemeinde) and civil community (Bürgergemeinde). As Yoder points out, this document stands as one of earliest testaments to how the church and state ought to interact in a post-Christendom world.62 Instead of beginning with “institutions and offices,” Barth begins with communities of persons gathered “together in corporate bodies in the service of common tasks” (150). The Christengemeinde, the ecclesia, becomes most apparent in the gathered community, of Christians “in one place, region, or country” through the Holy Spirit and who seek to hear and obey the Word of God. The Bürgergemeinde, in contrast, is the “commonality of all the people in one place, region, or country insofar as they belong together under a constitutional system of government that is equally valid for and binding on them all, and which is defended and maintained by force” (150). The kingdom of God remains the center of two concentric circles, of which the Christian community is the “inner circle” and the civil community is the “outer circle.” Therefore, both “a simple and absolute equating” and “a simple and absolute heterogeneity” between church and state remain impossible options. Instead, “the existence of the State [is] an allegory, an analogue to the Kingdom of God which the Church preaches and believes in” (169). Barth’s breakthrough emerges in how these two dynamic communities remain distinct yet interdependent with each other in relation to their larger place within the Kingdom of God.

      There is a differentiated hierarchy and unity of the two communities. The church is the inner circle because in hearing and obeying God’s revelation it bears witness to the Word. The state is the outer circle because it often hears and obeys other words, most often found in social and cultural identity (natural law). It is the church’s proximity to the Word that differentiates it from the state. The state is easily corrupted by selfish viewpoints and becomes “ignorant” and “pagan.” “All it can do is grope around and experiment with the convictions which it derives from natural law, never certain whether it may not in the end be an illusion to rely on it as the final authority and therefore always making vigorous use, openly or secretly, of a more or less refined positivism” (164). Still, both state and church exist in a ‘not yet redeemed’ world. The church, too, becomes entrapped in its own misconceptions, ignorance, and forms of paganism. Although the state, as outer circle, is further removed from the realities of the kingdom, the church, as the inner circle, is also a political organization that often fails to perceive itself for what it really is, namely a free church committed solely to the rule of God through Jesus Christ. Both church and state are in a condition of sin and grace; both are corruptible institutions that are, in the eschatological sense, fully redeemed. Yet until the kingdom is fully realized, the church and state (and society) remain in invariably in tension. Although, he clearly states the church, in its witness, should be a ‘nonconformist’ community, and ought not to look to the world for its own identity and vision, but neither should it only look to itself apart from its relation to the outer circle. “The real church must be the model prototype of the real State” (186). This is not because he idealizes the church, but because only the church remains committed to prioritizing the Word of God over the secular ideologies, myths, and philosophies that degenerate God’s name in the world, thus providing a clear witness