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.
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.