Karl Barth, the German Church Struggle and the Witness-People Myth

Abstract

In another place I have described Barth’s “theology of Israel” as simultaneously radical and traditional.¹ Barth displayed the radical side of his Israel doctrine when he spoke out against Jewish persecution and declared that anti-Semitism was anti-Christian, when he emphasized the continuing and irrevocable nature of Israel’s divine election, when he engaged in private and public dialogues with rabbis and Jewish intellectuals, when he pronounced Christian mission to the Jews “theologically impossible,” and when he took to task the authors of the Vatican’s “Nostra aetate” for its classification of Judaism as a “non-Christian religion.”

The aggravating image of Judaic Christianity must remain in the German Church as a living monument… that Christian faith is not a national religion.

Hans Ehrenberg, Letter to Gerhard Jacobi, July 5, 1933

After the death of Christ, Israel was dismissed from the service of Revelation … and from that time forth Assuerus wanders, forever restless, over the face of the earth. Even after the death of Christ the Jews are still a “mystery,” as St. Paul says (Rom. 11:25); and one day, at the end of time, for them too the hour of grace will strike (Rom. 11:26).

Michael von Faulhaber, “Judaism, Christianity and Germany.”