Rosenstrasse 18, Henrik to Stephen, Berlin 1934 (fictional)

From: Stephen Lehmann Rosenstrasse 18 January 20th, 1934 Berlin To: Henrik Schulz Burgstrasse 27 Berlin Dear Henrik, First, thank you for your visit a fortnight ago. Forgive me that it has taken me so long to put pen to paper. You asked me to sum up our conversation and I delayed. I hope you wil excuse me; the pressures upon the family seem to be increasing day by day. Doubtless, as you read this letter, its young bearer, my daughter Vera, is in your front room, chatting merrily away with your Alexander and Paula, her “bosom pals.” Learning English gives the children very evocative phrases does it not? It is a joy to think on the friendship between these three especially at this time. Let me get to the point, even after some thought, I can come to no other conclusion: Hauer and German Faith Movement” have us by the throat in many ways— just as you initially suspected. Consider the “We” of the statement, “We contend for faith against all un-faith.” Compare this to our earliest (and best) creed, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” Can we forget that the National Socialists are Germany’s answer and rebuke to the Communists; the movement that overwhelms us today is social and communal. With that single word, “we,” Professor Haurer is tapping into the spirit and indeed the strength and terrible joy of the times, especially here in Germany. As you and I have seen so clearly, this is a movement of the people, by the people and for the people, to borrow Abraham Lincoln’s phrase, or as Herr Hitler has put it, “it is we who command the state…we who have created the state…” The singular “I” of our beloved Apostle’s Creed can only appear weak and paltry besides Hitler’s “masses,” his millions. A lie is made great when it is combined with the truth. Our friend, the Swiss theologian Karl Barth says himself that “a private monadic faith is not the Christian faith.” and again, “faith is only in community.” May I bring forth a small side light? Wherever did we get this “I” anyway? I do not doubt that it was necessary to begin in this way and anyway, how dare I judge the authors of the Apostle’s Creed?—And yet, how did it come to begin with those two words? Why not the word, “God” perhaps followed by an active verb? Would not that be something lovely? In Genesis we learn that in the beginning, “God said, ‘Let there be light.” It all begins with him speaking. As Barth puts it, “ In the Bible it is not we who seek answers to the questions about our life, our wants and wishes, but it is the Lord who seeks laborers in his vineyard.” (emphasis original) In our conversation, you were loathe to hear me complain about the Apostle’s Creed. I am admittedly too apt to crab away, especially these days, and yet, did not the Early Fathers work and suffer that we might be able to question and even complain?— “ Readiness to learn from the Early Fathers must not lead to rigid orthodoxy. We are not called to be orthodox…The ecclesia semper reformanda should be constantly ‘en route’ with its own questions, asking what the Holy Spirit and the Word of God require of us today, ready to revise its whole fund of knowledge.” Perhaps the crux of your reaction is that I have not really listened to the Creed. It may be that the “I believe” of the Creed alludes to the father of the child who was thrown into the fire and water by an evil spirit, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24) Thus, “I believe” and all that follows would then be the cri de coeur of its authors against unbelief, like the desperate attempt of that father who loves his son and must swim against the stream of his own and of man’s faithlessness (2 Ti 2:13). Is the Apostles’ Creed swimming against the tide of man’s faithlessness both within and without? Perhaps so. In our day and age, however, the “I believe” of the Creed can be a great temptation. As we see in Hauer’s statement and indeed in Bultmann’s disciples, our belief (whether of the “I” or of the “We”) can be completely unhinged from the Lord Jesus Christ. This (to return to the main subject) is what you first noticed with alarm and what occasioned your visit to me that evening only two weeks ago; the paper that you drew from your pocket and laid before me, made no mention whatsoever of Jesus. This was of course expected, and yet, until the ink was dry, it was almost not be believed. This lack of the Lord Jesus will probably be the undoing the German Faith Movement. Can the German people really do without Jesus? I think not. I remember an American missionary coming to visit my school when I was a youngster. He reported what a Lakota elder had told him and his compatriots one day, “You have taken from us our land, our language. You have carried our children away from their families and put them into schools far away. You have killed the buffalo in order to starve us and you have broken every promise but you have brought us the name of Jesus.” The name of the Lord Jesus is a name filled with power and grace, though we strive to divest Jesus of all place and particularity, we know, as Barth tells us, that we do an “impossible thing.” He is so good to point out in various places that God does not say to us,”it’s my way or the highway” (to use one of those wonderful English phrases again), instead the Lord shows us the way, the truth and the life. (emphasis added) Moreover, I doubt whether Germany can, in the end, embrace this German Faith Movement which scrubs Him completely from the picture. Even Hitler said “Amen” (a Hebrew word) at the end of his speech at the Sportpalast. Did you hear how the crowd roared then? I have a bit more to say on this subject but I will save it to the end of this letter. So now, back to the expected and yet still stunning lack of the name of Jesus in the German Faith Movement— nevertheless, it is worthwhile to see what Hauer has done. You see Henrik, Hauer gives God a place, a “German realm” and even an “area.” It is worth quoting, “We are thankful for every great man in the Western Indo-Germanic area, although outside the political boundaries of Germany, whose life and creativity have the same basis as the great Germans….Dante…Shakespeare… their life springs from the same blood and spirit as ours.” Only Barth seems to mention that Jesus is the King of Israel! And how rare it is to find someone (other than those keen on ridding the “German realm” of the “indecent” Jew) who will consent to speak the words, “Zion” or “Jerusalem.” Our Lord has a realm as well and an “area,” but those in the Church don’t care to mention it too often. Those facts might remind us of the real scandal, that Jesus is Jewish and that he is the King of the Jews and King of a place named Israel. I suppose that this is what the German Faith Movement seeks to avoid with the phrase “Christianity of the East.” Perhaps they do not wish to sully themselves by even saying her name, the name “Zion”, the name, “Jerusalem.” In Zechariah Jerusalem is called also,“Truth City” (Zecharaiah 8:3, MT, translation mine), the city in whose light the nations shall walk.(Rev. 21:24) What a poverty then for Germany and all the world to forget these names and these places but how seductive an abstract God is, a God of our own creation. We Germans are not alone of course in attempting to deprive the Lord of place and particularity. It turns out that in this matter we may be followers rather than leaders! Just the other day, on a whim, I pulled out my history of England and as I paged through what did I find?— the Act of Supremacy Oath of 1559 wherein Elizabeth I caused her subjects to renounce any “foreign prince” and “all foreign jurisdictions.” Somehow the English managed to forget both the Lord Jesus our foreign prince and our mother Jerusalem under whose jurisdiction I hope and pray we may one day blossom and flourish. (Isa 66:10-12) Barth writes, “When the Christian language speaks of God it does so not on the basis of some speculation or other, but looking at this fact, this story, this person….recorded in a tiny sheaf of news abou the existence of this Person.” Is this not what the Barmen Declaration means when it says, “We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions”?— and moreover, “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. (emphasis mine) Henrik, let me also remind you of what you pointed out as we sat at table only two weeks ago. As you said it, my breath caught in my throat, for you grasped the meaning of the last lines of the paragraph just above this phrase, “When we speak of German faith, the line of demarcation we are drawing is over against an alien culture and not against other people in this are of similar kind to ourselves.” Hauer forgets what all of Germany and indeed most of the world has forgotten, that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is indeed not “of similar kind to ourselves,”—“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isa 55:8-9) Barth’s phrase “wholly other” was necessary at the time, but was clarified by him later; God’s thoughts are indeed “alien” and not “of similar kind” because they are so filled with goodness. Henrik, I would also like to draw your attention to two things I have noticed that we did not discuss when we met. Hauer writes, “We contend for faith against un-faith.” First, do you hear how much stronger this too is than our Apostle’s Creed, “I believe”? The German Faith movement contends for faith and against unfaith. I suppose Jakob Hauer must be thinking (though he does not admit it, perhaps even to himself) of the Jakob, he who wrestled with God at Peniel and became Israel. Henrik, let us remember that though the German Faith Movement statement does pose a great temptation to the body of the Christ, it is also merely an ape. Germany is not Israel. The faith of which Hauer speaks is not faith at all and Hitler is not Jesus Christ. Pray for Germany and for the world. Let us pray for ourselves as well! We know what happens to those who reject and betray the Anointed One, the Messiah of Israel. (Mat 27:5, 2 Sam 17:23) Secondly, over the past few weeks I have been thinking about this “faith” and “unfaith.” How certain, how strong, how vibrant the declaration sounds, “Faith is life.” Henrik, you and I are aware that we in the Church are not so certain. Not at all. Nor should we be. Perhaps, it will turn out that God’s power is indeed made perfect in weakness. (2 Cor. 12:9) Whether we choose to remember or not we know that Kittel and Haussleiter have poked significant holes into our understanding of what faith is, and indeed what justification is. How much we need their critique. Someone has said that the greatest scientific discoveries begin not with a “eureka” but rather a “hmm…that’s odd.” Haussleiter especially has pointed out anomalies that theology today studiously avoids. But there are perhaps two theologians today that are not quite avoiding “the faith of the Anointed One.”— Do you remember how Hitler spoke of faith and love at the Sportpalast? He said, “I cannot divest myself of my faith in the Volk, cannot disassociate myself from the conviction that this nation will one day rise again, cannot divorce myself from my love for this, my Volk..” If Hitler has been raised up by the millions to be the “Leader,” instead of our Leader Jesus, then this leader , this new and false “Anointed One,” has a faith (in resurrection) and a love. It is a “subjective genitive,” if you like—that works for the salvation and “right-wise-ing” of the people. God save us from this deception that we have foisted upon ourselves. One last note, have you read Barth’s 1933 commentary on Romans? He is the second theologian to whom I alluded earlier. At Romans 3:22 he simply translates the phrase as “through his [i.e., God’s] faithfulness in Jesus Christ.” Barth seems to be aware of the great danger of justification by our faith in Jesus Christ. We can see why without too much trouble: How easily the “un-faith” becomes those (like the Jews) who are “without faith;” one’s very blood takes on the taint; the mischlinges, baptized or no, clergy, elder, or church member (regular or irregular)— all are a problem, a problem that the people, our neighbors and friends and colleagues—aim to solve. Woe betide us. God keep the children safe. Who hasn’t shed a whole bunch of tears? It is no shame. Jesus himself wept…and when Evie came in and found us crying at the kitchen table… did we not laugh then as we blew our noses in the big handkerchiefs she brought from the chest of drawers?… and then what did we do, all of us together…but cry again? Let us remember what our Lord Jesus Anointed has said, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (Jn 16:33) Isn’t that wonderful? “I have overcome the world!” And so he has! And again, “This is the day the Lord has made and we shall glad and rejoice in it,” and finally “the reproaches of them that reproached thee have fallen upon me.” (Ps 118:24, Rom 15:3). This is too is our comfort Henrik. Do not forget. God bless you Henrik. Give my love to Helen and the children. We know you are praying for us and we are praying for you. See you on Sunday! Thank you for the coals and the cotton thread and the new commentary. Evie was very pleased. Stephen