The Fascifist Archive

But the nation needs this Christianity and this church. For, if the nation were the last and highest, it could bear the injustice of the world only in hatred and revenge, not in faith. It would become overconfident in happiness and poisoned in misfortune. Its victory would be nothing but exploitation, and its defeat nothing but being exploited. But when the nation has God before its eyes, its anger becomes pleasing to God and its sword just, for it wields that sword with fear and trembling before the Almighty God, who has put this sword in its hand!

The king as the highest representation of a nation has his dignity, again the prophet and the preacher of the gospel as the proclaimer of God's word to the world has his dignity. The dignity of the king is worldly, but that of the preacher of God is eternal. The former has the majesty of earthly power, the latter, that of the called one of the Megalosyne en Hypselois (the majesty in heaven). (Heb. 1,3) This is how the church stands in relation to the state. Not with earthly power, but shimmering with the majesty of the divine, which it is called to offer. When Jesus stands before Pilate, Pilate, as the representative of the Roman emperor, is in possession of all power, including the power over the death and life of Jesus. Jesus has no earthly power. He, who could do all miracles, who could bring the dead to life, who could still the sea storm, was not able to kill Pilate by a miracle. For he could only do miracles with the will of God the Father. But here the will of God and therefore also of the Son was that the Son of God should be subject to Pilate, that he should be condemned by him and that he should not descend from the cross, but die and rise again. But this rabbi from Nazareth, so powerless in the face of the representative of Caesar Augustus, had power and has power to open and close eternity. So he stands before Pilate - invisible for human eyes - shimmered by the "glory of God", which shimmer is only wondered upon and believed by the called ones.
As Nathan stands before David, as Jesus stands before Pilate, so the ecclesia of God stands before the res publica of the nation. It has no legion to compel the state and the people according to its will; it has nothing but the proclamation of the gospel and the presentation of the grace of God. But in this very thing it has a power that no state and no nation has. The power of the State is that it has the power to dispose of the life and death of men. The power of the Church is faith in the eternal God and the offering of the Kingdom of Heaven. If there is to be a kingdom of heaven, there must also be hell. Therefore, the church has power only where people suspect and fear the infernal powers. For a nation that no longer trembles before hell, the church is powerless. Such a nation kills the messengers of God, it kills God's own Son until the Lord Himself comes and passes judgment on the arrogant. That the humane Christianity of the Enlightenment, which "finally" lets "all people" "go to heaven", because the eternal chastisement would be very unloving, that democratic Christianity, which is frightened by the election of the believers, as if a "privilege" had been established with it, cancels itself. For if everything finally goes to heaven indiscriminately, if not only a few but all are chosen to the kingdom of God, if hell is not a metaphysical reality but only a horror idea of dark brains, then what is the use of the birth of a Savior and the redemption through death on the cross and faith in it? Then faith and non-belief would become one in the same! The state has then no task to regard the church as something else than a cultural association for the embellishment of family celebrations and funerals for such minds, which set so much value on a particular mood that the fees for it are inclined to spend. But the true church of Christ is based on the metaphysical fact of heaven and hell, of the election and of the redemption of the elect. Only such a Christianity, and therefore only such a church, behind which the eternity of damnation and the eternal bliss are shudderingly and blissfully imagined, may claim a higher dignity than that of the nation.

CHAPTER 6: The Dignity of the Nation and the Dignity of the Church
The emotional and intellectual resistance to Christianity in National Socialism is not fundamental, but subjective and individual. A fundamental resistance is offered only where the national bond is absolutized and elevated above the religious bond, where the nation is set as the highest value of all.
Then Christianity must decide whether it wants to be only "a religion" among others in the "development of mankind", which "continues to form itself", i.e. only a historical phenomenon, or whether it claims to be the eternal truth par excellence. If it is the eternal truth, then it can only be a revelation of God, manifested in Jesus Christ. Then it is impossible to postulate further "revelations" in the course of history. Because every later revelation would have to prove that the preceding revelation was insufficient. But the thought that God's incarnation and human death were not sufficient to justify the fallen creation would be blasphemous. The claim that religion offers a higher value than the nation itself, is a claim that can only be made from a dogmatic position. Historicizing and culturalizing Christianity means dragging Christianity down into the clash of cultural values.
The dogmatic position, of course, then gives the church a metaphysical dignity vis-à-vis the state and the nation. From this position one would have to say against an exclusiveness of the national value: First. To elevate the state to an absolute value would mean to elevate it above all creation. The state would then have to be more than history, since historical values, which do not consist in a revelation but in effectiveness, can only be relative. There is nothing against an idealization of the national, but everything against a religious hypostasis of the nation. The idealization of the nation is a process necessary for the increase of the national life. But to demand for the nation a religious worship, that would be a hubris for the Christian.
Secondly. The nation dies just as property dies and clans die. The "glory" of the nation, to be sure, remains eternal, but this "eternity" is not of the kind of temporal infinity, it is not in the mouths of men, but it is with God, who alone is truly eternal. All the kingdoms of the world are temporal, only the kingdom of God lasts from eternity to eternity. If we love our nation, we do not love its temporal duration, but its glory, its "Dora", and this glory consists in the fact that it accomplishes its historical task, that it represents, to speak with authority, its "idea". But this is not what we are talking about here. It is an incontrovertible truth that the nation, as a creation of God, cannot be above God as the Creator of all things.

Fourth. National Socialism fundamentally rejects materialist philosophy. Its socialism springs only from historical, social, perhaps also biological, but not from philosophical considerations. Thus, the salvation of the world is not expected from the economic system.
In this socialism, therefore, no forces are erected against Christianity. It can even be said that the sentiments directed against the "bondage of interest" coincide with the sentiments against the taking of interest cultivated by the church fathers and later by Luther. The latter see in interest the intention of man to "secure" himself from God's punishing hand. Luther opposes ("On Married Life," 1522, p. 302) the endeavor of life insurance in general: "They trust God as long as they know they have no need of him and have supply." Life insurance by interest is to him a kind of robbery of God, a lack of trust in God. Which, in turn, did not prevent him from advocating social measures, a kind of communal socialism in certain hardships.
Thus, Christianity does not have to deal with a philosophical doctrine in the case of National Socialism as it does in the case of liberal socialism, but it can freely allow for the discussion about the economy aside.

CHAPTER 5: Is Socialism an Obstacle to Christianity?
That socialism can become a force against Christianity we know from the history of the social democratic and communist movements. But the reason for this lies not in socialism itself, not in the fact that it strives for a different economic system from the capitalist one, but in its connection with historical materialism and with the secularization process of the liberal age. But this connection is only historical, not essential.
Socialism excludes Christianity the moment it hypostasizes its social ideal, i.e. puts it, as it were, in the place of the Kingdom of God. Economic order always remains only economic order. One order does not have the same deficiencies as the other - they all have deficiencies. That people are tempted to exchange tried and tested deficiencies for untested ones is understandable, and the Christian has no reason to prevent people from trying out the various possibilities of life. But the moment the spirit is declared to be a product or a reappearance of matter, the moment the production and distribution of material goods is elevated to a "doctrine of salvation" which in some way also has, as it were, magical consequences in making men "better," the conflict between socialism and Christianity, and therefore the struggle, is inevitable.
Now, what about the socialism of the National Socialist movement? This socialism consists in the following: First, it demands the domination of the state over the economy, while Marxism wants an abdication of the state to the economy. National Socialism wants to put the economy at the service of the political nation. Marxism wants to transform the state into an economic machinery, into an organization of production and distribution of goods, and to supress the nation into a historical cultural community subordinate to world culture. The National Socialists want the primacy of the state, the Marxists the primacy of the economy. (In this the Marxists find themselves together with bourgeois economic liberalism, to which, according to the idea, they should be deadly enemies).
Second. National Socialism sees as its goal not the greatest possible comfort of the individual (for "common good comes before self-interest"), but the greatest possible accumulation of national power. It wants socialism in the interest of the nation, not in the interest of the individual. He wants a harsh, hard, militarily disciplined socialism, not a socialism that promotes the enjoyment, the pleasure of life, the cultural feasting of the individual, not a "humanistic" socialism.
Thirdly. The Socialism of Marxist origin wants socialization of the means of production. National Socialism wants "breaking the bondage of interest" (that would be point 11 of the party program). What does this mean? Interest bondage is, according to Feder, the condition of the peoples, who are "under the money or interest rule of high finance". So one does not turn against industry, nor does one aim against production, but rather, one turns against the banks and aims at money itself. The means of "high finance", which is designated an "all-Jewish" one, is the device of credit. It is through credit that the farmer, the worker, the commercial middle class, and the industrialist is brought into dependence. The dependence of a nation on other nations, of a man on other men, established by the fetter of interest, is to be "broken." While the ideal of liberal socialism is the well-ordered factory, the ideal of national socialism is the farm. This "National Socialism" strives for a wholesomeness in which all men become functionaries, and further more it strives for a wholesomeness which leaves room for free initiative.