Blogging through Barth #2

Last time we talked about how Barth thinks the faithful should be concerned with gospel message instead of all the other things that the Church is often concerned with. This week we will again be talking about the Church, but in a different way.

Here is our quote:“If anything Christian be unrelated to the Gospel, it is a human by-product, a dangerous religious survival, a regrettable misunderstanding…If this be persisted in, there emerges, instead of the community of Christ, Christendom, an ineffective peace-pact or compromise with that existence which, moving with its own momentum, lies on this side resurrection.” pp.36

I have noticed, as I have been reading Barth, that blogging rhymes with “slogging” and that is what I feel I am doing as I read this book. At this point we are still in first chapter of the book and Bart is still responding to Chapter one of Paul’s letter to the Romans (specifically Romans 1:16)

Artists impression of reading Barth

Barth here makes a really good point, but we might need to define something first. What is “Christendom?” Christendom means the place and/or time when the when the values, symbols, and authority of the Church dominated Western culture. The traditional story of history is that this period starts with Constantine when he makes Christianity a legal religion and starts favoring the Church over the Pagan cults that dominated Rome beforehand.

Barth in this passage labels this cultural dominance of the Church as “a human by-product,” “a dangerous religious survival,” and “a regrettable misunderstanding.” Why is Barth so down on Christendom? Well, there are a couple reasons

First, Christendom is “a human by-product” because Christendom is about the Church dominating culture. Funny thing is though, the Bible (and especially the Gospels) are never really all that concerned with dominating culture. Jesus doesn’t come to build a “Christian Civilization.” Jesus doesn’t preach his message to make sure that the Romans take Sunday off or to make sure they all turn into good Protestants. In fact, when Jesus does preach and teach he always proclaims that “the Kingdom of God has drawn near.” Jesus doesn’t say that everyone has to be good church members for the kingdom to draw near. Jesus announces that the kingdom is already close to us in some way.

Second, because Christendom is about dominating culture that means Christendom is really concerned with it’s ow I have written bout how I think that when the Church is concerned with “survival” it is a bad thing, but here Barth is talking about how Christendom encourages the Church to not do the right job. Instead of being concerned with the Gospel that we talked about last week, Christendom is concerned with preserving it’s own privileged place in society. That privilege has nothing to do with the good news that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

Barth describes Christendom as an “ineffective peace-pact.” Basically what happens when the Church tries to be “Christendom” is that the Church tries to play by the rules of the world. We try and be powerful, be big, and be strong in the hope that society will again pay attention to us. Barth gets it right when he says that is “ineffective”