God Has Done It

Through the length 85 breadth of Christendom, the echoes of the Amsterdam conference still roll. No voice raised in that assembly of the World Council of Churches was more challenging to modern Christians than that of the great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth. TIME has already reported (Sept. 13) the impact of his address on the U.S. delegates, many of whom criticized Barth as advocating a passive "let-God-do-it" approach to the problems of our time. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr attacked Earth's speech as offering "a too simple and premature escape from the trials . . . duties and tragic choices which are the condition of our common humanity" (TIME, Nov. 8). Last week an English translation of Earth's speech was printed in the Christian Century. Excerpts:

"Our main theme ... is 'the world's disorder and God's design.' May I begin by asking whether we must not deal with this theme, as a whole and in all its aspects, in reverse order? It is written, we should first seek God's Kingdom and His righteousness, so that all we need in relation to the world's disorder may be added unto us. Must we not take this order of topics seriously? . . .

"We should . . . begin ... not with the unity and disunity of our churches, nor with the good and bad manners of modern man, nor with the terrifying picture of a culture that is oriented only technically and concerned only with production, nor with the threat of the atomic bomb, nor certainly with the few measures by which. we think we might cure all this calamity . . . [Man] himself is a part of the evil he thinks to overcome . . ."

A Christian Marshall Plan? "Should we not . . . come to the clear understanding that 'God's design' really means His plan; that is, His already come, already victorious, already founded Kingdom in all its majesty--our Lord Jesus Christ, who has already robbed sin and death, the devil and hell of their power? . . . Should we not see that 'God's design' therefore does not mean the existence of the church in the world, its task in relation to the world's disorder, its outward and inward activity as an instrument for the amelioration of human life, or finally the result of this activity in the Christianization of all humanity and, consequently, the setting up of an order of justice and peace embracing our whole planet? That 'God's design' does not mean something like a Christian Marshall plan? . . .

"We have been led to the surely unbiblical habit of speaking as though we had in the church a continuation of the incarnation of the Word of God. If that were so, then manifestly . . . enslaved mankind would have to expect its salvation from us --from our clear grasp of the world's historical situation, from the progress and action and hoped-for future triumphs of the church as the embodiment and representative of Jesus Christ and God Himself. Then one easily got in the way of acting as though the Lord on high were dead ... as though everything took the form of our outlook, our insight and foresight, our Christian endeavor to get right with God and our neighbor. No wonder we become so nervous and fearful when we look at the world's disorder--like Peter when he looked at the stormy waves in which he was destined shortly to sink."

Man the Atlas? "I do not wish to weaken the earnestness, the good will and the hopes that have brought us here, but only to base them on their proper foundation, when I say: we ought to give up, even on this first day of our deliberations, every thought that the care of the church, the care of the world is our care. Burdened with this thought we should straighten out nothing; we should only increase disorder in church and world still more. For this is the root and ground of all human disorder; the dreadful, godless, ridiculous opinion that man is the Atlas who is destined to bear the dome of heaven on his shoulders. What we can and ought to do here is simply this: we must give our churches and the world a proof--which we hope will be a proof 'in spirit and in power'--of how it is when a thousand Christians from all lands and peoples, of all tongues and confessions, gathered together in one congregation under present conditions, stand by what they have so often heard and preached in their several positions and various styles: 'Commit thy way unto the Lord and trust in Him, and He will bring it to pass'. . . .

"We do not know what will come of it if we listen to Him. We do not know how our confessional and ecumenical conceptions will withstand the testing fire of His word. And we ought not to wish to know beforehand. But we may be sure that it can only have a good and wholesome influence upon our desires and ourselves and our churches to put them and ourselves into this testing fire ... I propose that we should now praise and thank God that it pleases Him to stand so clearly in the way of our plans . . .

"What objection could we really make if it should please God to carry His work onward and reach His goal, not through a further numerical increase but through a drastic numerical decrease of so-called Christendom? It seems to me the only question in this matter is: how can we free ourselves from all quantitative thinking, all statistics, all calculation of observable consequences, all efforts to achieve a Christian world order, and then shape our witness into a witness to the sovereignty of God's mercy, by which alone we can live--a witness to which the Holy Ghost will surely not refuse His confirmation?"

Disciples & Servants. "While we observe our office as political watchmen and do our service as social Samaritans, we wait for the eternal city which God will build, not for a future political state to be set up with Christian assistance, whether of liberal or authoritarian character. This world passeth away. We have a unique revolutionary hope to proclaim to this world, but we have no system of economic or political principles to offer which would presume to present in itself the content of this hope. There is no such system; there are only Christian decisions as demonstrations and signs of this hope. For God Himself, and He alone, is this hope.

"What is required of us is that we should be watchful, willing and ready to make Christian decisions in the midst of an evil world. We are not the ones to change this evil world into a good world. God has not resigned His lordship over it into our hands. The salvation of the world, which has already been accomplished, was not our work ... All that is required of us is that in the midst of the political and social disorder of the world we should be His witness, disciples and servants of Jesus. We shall have plenty for all our hands to do, just being that! 'It is enough for the disciple that he should be as his Lord, and for the servant that he should be as his master.'"

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