A message "to all people" the missionary task of Protestant churches in Europe--in the light of Barmen's sixth thesis. (2024)

The Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Austria is in many respects typical of those that belong to the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe, especially in the area of southeast Europe. Since the 1970s our church has been experiencing a slow but steady decline in membership. More worrying than the failing numbers, however, is the demographic aspect which shows that our church is not slimming its way back to health, but declining into old age. At present there are some 350,000 Protestants in a total population of eight million. Added to this are the far-reaching changes that are taking place in Austria's religious landscape. The largest and fastest growing element is the portion of the population with no religious confession. This can cover a range of things, from free church fundamentalism to habitual atheism or a deliberately agnostic position. In recent years, as in all European societies, we have seen a marked increase in the number of Muslims. Serious estimates now place the number in Austria at around 410,000; that is considerably more than the number of Protestants. What is perhaps less well known is the fact that there has also been a marked increase in the number of Orthodox Christians in Austria. According to estimations by their Metropolitan they too have passed the 400,000 threshold. At the same time the percentage of Roman Catholics in the total population has fallen, to even less than 50 percent in Vienna, but overall Austria remains a majority Catholic country. The situation is marked by pluralism and individualism in the field of religion, together with a growing "church crisis" reflected in mistrust of institutions, loss of confessional ties and a tendency to leave the church. Similar developments can be noted in other Protestant churches throughout Europe. So it is not surprising that we are hearing more nowadays about the church's missionary task, or of the missionary church in general as a self-definition and commitment to which we look hopefully to provide perhaps not a way out of the crisis, but at least a possible way through it.

The proposals are many and varied, so much so that it is sometimes difficult to keep track of them. We need "plurality of mission" and "mission in the plural", to paraphrase Michael Herbst. There is no one magic key, many answers are needed, in other words, a whole bunch of keys. (2) This must not of course be taken to mean that we only have to enlarge the range of what we offer or raise the level of operations, say, by pouring in more resources. I say this of our church: it will not be able to fulfil its task of mission if that means doing something in addition to everything that is already being done and all that is already happening. This would overstretch the structures and, above all, overtax the strength of the people in the church and create boredom for those outside by offering "more of the same".

As I see it, and I am convinced of this, the entry into the lifestyle of a missionary church begins with listening. Sometimes I have the impression that we are always very busy but not actually doing very much. Marianne Gronemeyer recently described the art of listening in a book entitled "Genug ist genug" (Enough is enough). (3) She quotes Ingeborg Bachmann, who was asked in an interview whether she had perhaps stopped writing poetry because she felt too weak. Ingeborg Bachmann answered, "Listening is a strength, not a weakness." It does not simply mean stopping, turning aside, tearing ourselves away; it means concentrating, quite deliberately turning towards someone, listening to what they say, opening our ears. Listening in this way, listening to Jesus Christ, the one Word of God, is what I would like to talk about here.

I would like to introduce three lines of thinking on this and, in doing so, I draw on the Barmen Declaration of 1934, in particular its sixth thesis, and establish a bridge between it and the 2006 study of the Commission of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE) entitled "Evangelizing. Protestant perspectives for the churches in Europe". (4) There is a clear, though not always explicit, connection between the Barmen Declaration and the Leuenberg Agreement of 1973, which established church fellowship between Lutheran, Reformed and United churches in Europe and led to the formation of the CPCE. For Ulrich Kortner, Leuenberg is one of the "distant effects" of Barmen while, conversely, the Barmen Declaration can be seen as common witness in a particularly challenging historical situation, and hence as the expression of greater church fellowship among churches of different confessions.

To help us along the way, let me add a Viennese theme to what I have to say, in the form of Vienna's cafe culture. I shall talk about the type of sidewalk cafe called the Schanigarten, the Viennese coffee house, as well as the bars we know as "Heuriger" that originally served the year's new wine. When Vienna's Schanigarten season opened in March, the city's mayor Michael Haupt was reported as saying that taverns with their Schanigarten, coffee houses and Heuriger are typical of Vienna's restaurant scene: he called this Vienna's gastronomical "trinity".

The Schanigarten, or: looking outwards rather than inwards

The "Schanigarten" is the part of a Viennese tavern that is set out on the pavement or sidewalk. The name comes from the French boy's name Jean, which was the name usually given to the prince's footman in old comedies, and in the Viennese dialect Jean is Schani. The Schanigarten is the very opposite of the peaceful, quiet but secluded garden in the inner courtyard which can often be reached only down winding corridors and steps and other obstacles. The Schanigarten, on the other hand, is very visible, with easy access; it is often noisy, sometimes dirty too, but that does not make it any the less popular. Applied to the church, the image of the Schanigarten first of all suggests the need for openness to the outside world. "The greatest danger for the church throughout the world is the danger of being introverted," Eberhard Busch has said, (5) quoting Hendrikus Berkhof on Barmen VI. "Whenever the church adopts this attitude it shamefully fails in its calling to be part of the great movement from the One to the Universal; it becomes static and consequently disobedient." The church does not choose the context and conditions in which it lives for itself, but fails in its mission if--for whatever reasons--it stays within its own walls, safe in the familiar inner courtyard of common Christian practice.

The church cannot be anything else but missionary; mission is part of its being. Thesis VI of the Barmen Declaration speaks of the church's mission as follows: "The church's commission, upon which its freedom is founded, consists in delivering the message of the free grace of God to all people in Christ's stead, and therefore in the ministry of his own Word and work through sermon and sacrament." (6)

In its commentary, the theological commission of the Evangelical Church of the Union 0SKU) expressly points out the unusual circ*mstance that the text speaks of the commission of the church in the singular. Today, by contrast, we constantly hear it said that the church has a great number of commissions or tasks in the plural, and in practice we quite often find these being played off against each other as one or other of them is held up as the "real" mission of the church. "Amidst the diversity and complexity of church practice today the astonishingly simple and clear 'gospel truth' of the sixth Barmen thesis is a call for a clearer focus. The church has only one commission, and in fulfilling that commission it has its freedom." (7)

This one commission is laid down for the church, regardless of all contemporary challenges and regardless of all the expectations addressed to the church. This one commission takes precedence over everything else and is independent of everything else. Only because of this and only when this is actually so, is this one commission the foundation of the church's freedom. This is what was at stake in 1934. Today, we have to affirm this freedom based on the church's one commission against all interests, not least the church's own self-interest in maintaining and reproducing itself.

So the CPCE study also takes the view that the gospel in not the church's "private property" but that it has been entrusted to the church to pass on to all people (1.1). (8) This means that the church is not the real subject of mission, and that the possible growth of the church is not the primary or perhaps even the only goal of mission. Rather, mission is about God the Three-in-One giving himself to human beings. And the church is taken into God's giving of himself to human beings as an instrument. Mission is not about the church's interests, but about reconciliation and the healing of humankind which have always come from God. The church has been accepted into the missio Dei and is empowered and encouraged by God for this mission. This is the promise, which includes critical self-examination.

The Viennese coffee-house, or: the water of life is free

As you may know, Vienna's coffee houses have serenely survived several crises that seemed to threaten their existence. First there was the espresso crisis of the seventies, and more recently the onslaught of US-style coffee shops. But the Viennese institution of the coffee-house has emerged strengthened from each of these crises. One special feature of this institution is the fact that customers can sit there for as long as they like, even without ordering another drink. This has to be, for how else would they get through the mountain of newspapers that are part of any good coffee-house? But they are not left to sit there thirsty. Every so often, the waiter, sometimes even the head-waiter himself, brings a glass of fresh water to the table, and there is no charge for this. The waiter may do this gladly and cheerfully, or reluctantly and grumpily--mostly the latter--but he does it. Let me use this free water as a little reminder that we receive the most basic thing of all, life itself, first and last through grace.

Mission belongs to the nature of the church. I think of Eberhard Jungel's memorable and much-quoted image of breathing in and breathing out in his presentation at the 1999 synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). Through mission the church shares in Christ's Word and work. The sixth and final thesis of the Barmen Declaration links up again with the first thesis. This focus on the One in the midst of many comes from "the message of the free grace of God" which the church owes to the world.

 With this message of the free grace of God, Barmen VI places the justification of the Godless by faith alone at the centre of the church's mission of proclamation. The church owes it to the world to witness to the all-transforming, all-renewing grace of God which breaks through humanity's self-absorption and frees people from the never-ending deadly cycle of their individual and collective urge to be busy and active. It does so by placing them on the firm ground of God's act of reconciliation. (9)

The CPCE paper on mission describes the message of justification as the central element in the church's overall missionary orientation. At the same time, it is also the critical yardstick for the different missionary and evangelistic projects and activities, the criterion by which the plurality of missionary work has to be measured if it is to be a legitimate diversity and not a collection of unrelated and possibly even competing and mutually exclusive efforts. All of them have to be measured in relation to this central element, the message of the free grace of God.

This critical examination is an ongoing task. It is necessary because a basic missionary approach in which the central content is the free grace of God, which always precedes any human words and deeds, is the only one that corresponds to the church's one commission. On the basis of this approach, the CPCE study speaks several times about not being hasty in drawing boundaries; indeed it repeatedly states that the important thing is to open up free spaces. "In the context of pluralism and individualism, the churches of the Reformation in Europe want to offer the space in which people can find their bearings and the message of liberation can be passed on." (2.12) The study is concerned that form and content should correspond. The content is the message of God's liberating grace, so the form, the proclamation of this message, must also be liberating. The life situation of people in Europe today cries out for this liberating message. For people who know nothing of the justifying God, the merciful judge, will either deny their guilt or be morbidly fixated on it, resulting perhaps in anxiety about personal failure; these people constantly drag themselves and their fellow human beings before the law court of mutual blame and accusation. (10) That is why the CPCE study describes evangelizing in a Protestant perspective as calling people to faith and opening up ways to a "new freedom of the children of God" (2.12). "God's acceptance of human beings out of pure love and grace" frees them from the "God-complex that makes them think they have to do everything themselves, and do it perfectly". (2.8) Therefore, in the Protestant understanding, "evangelizing takes human beings seriously in their creatureliness" (2.14) and respects them as they are (2.15). Above all there can be no question of sitting in judgment over belief or unbelief: "... all human beings continue to be directed towards the proclamation that awakens faith" (2.13).

But now it is time for us to leave the coffee-house and move to the last stop on our tour, the Heuriger, the wine bar that serves this year's new wine.

The "Heuriger", or: all people in heaven and on earth

Vienna's "Heuriger" wine is a child of the Enlightenment. It was the Emperor Joseph II, to whom we Protestants owe the Edict of Tolerance, who also gave the local winegrowers permission to sell their own wine from that year's harvest (hence the name Heuriger, which comes from the Austrian German meaning "this year"). And so even today we find simple taverns doing that; instead of separate, individual chairs they tend to have long benches where everyone sits together (like the churches), and they serve a few other things, but not everything. A Heuriger tavern is all about wine. Back in 1784 this brought an element of democracy to the cafe scene. Anyone can go to the Heuriger. If you are hard up you can bring your own drinks with you from home. In many Viennese songs, the Heuriger is an image of heaven.

The sixth Barmen thesis speaks about the message that is to be delivered "to all people". The intention of this at the time is clear from a response from Paul Althaus in a letter to Bishop Meiser before the synod in Barmen: "And fortunately the word people appears: 'to all people'. But it is not the word used in our sense ... but a neutral biblical phrase." (11) Bishop Meiser agreed: "The Declaration says nothing about proclamation for our people." They were correct. For both in the Bible quotation from 2 Tim. 2:9 ("the Word of God is not fettered"), and in the statements of rejection and the double reference to freedom in the affirmation, the sixth thesis opposes any attempt to adapt proclamation to German nationhood. The error that is rejected here is not that the gospel should not be able to be heard in every context, in every language and for every people, but that the church, instead of subordinating itself to the Word, is here subordinating the Word of God to its own intentions and interests. That was a burning and politically explosive issue in 1934. But the same issue is still a challenge today, for instance, when it comes to defining the relation between gospel and context. On this the CPCE notes: "The gospel has been and is always determined by the contexts to which it addresses itself. Conversely the contexts are not to be understood as neutral. As Christians we always see and interpret them in the light of the gospel" (1.6). Also worth noting is the fact that, in the phrase "to all people", the 6th thesis uses a biblical reference for the biblical foundation of the church's basic missionary orientation which is rather unusual and which deserves a closer look.

"To all people" is a quotation from Luke 2:10 (pas ho laos). It is a common phrase in Luke (7:29; 11:53; 18:49; 21:38), to be read as synonymous with plethos tou laou (1:10; 6:17; 23:27). As Hans Klein says in his new commentary, (12) both phrases mean the actual mass of the people. Karl Barth put it with admirable brevity, '"The people' means 'ordinary people' as they are and always have been." Laos is the people whom God wants to save. Luke sees them as basically positive even though they are easily misled. This is the people that listens to Jesus (7: 1.29), that witnesses the miracles (24:19), that comes to him to be healed (6:17f). It is not the same as the ethne of Matt. 28, for it says "all people", not "every people". How preaching the gospel to all people is related to preaching the gospel to all nations is not our subject here. Laos always has some knowledge of the gospel and has a relationship to God in Jesus Christ. This is the people that constantly needs to hear the faith-awakening message afresh. It is to the laos that evangelizing is addressed, people everywhere as they are and always have been, and here we meet them as real people. In the reference to Luke 2 in the sixth thesis they are the shepherds. Eberhard Busch concludes from this: "The Bible understands the word 'all' quite concretely. The good news of great joy that Luke 2 speaks of was announced first of all to the shepherds, in other words, the lowest and most excluded, and so they first had the promise that it would be for all people." (13)

Because God, in saving love for the laos, all people, speaks specifically to the lowest and excluded, this also has implications for the church's basic missional orientation. I see this as largely cancelling the diagnostic distinction that some people have drawn here between mission and diakonia. "To all people" does mean all, but it has to be specifically addressed, first to those who are on the edges of society, who are excluded. The message of free grace shows its universal validity precisely in the fact that it was specially addressed to the shepherds.

Conclusion

In Christ's stead, in the service of his word and work, the church delivers the message of the free grace of God through its words and its actions. It shows itself to be a missionary church in its love and concern for the lowly and the excluded. At the centre stands the present Lord, the Risen Christ, whom the community knows is present and celebrates in its midst. This presence of Christ radiates out wherever it is celebrated in a way that is more than inviting, that is "attractive" (CPCE). This radiating, attractive celebration of Jesus Christ present among us will be crucial if the Protestant churches are to fulfil their missionary task convincingly in Europe. Or in short, as the CPCE ends its appeal to local churches, to see "the world and humankind unfailingly in the light of God's boundless grace".

Translated from the German by the Language Service of the World Council of Churches and edited for this issue of The Ecumenical Review.

(1) This is an edited version of a speech given at the reception by the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland on the occasion of the assembly of the Union of Evangelical Churches (UEK) in the Germarker Church Wuppertal-Barmen on 16 May 2008.

(2) Herbst, M. (2006) Sagen, was wir glauben, und glauben, was wit sagen. Sprach- und auskunftsfahige Kirche in Gemeinde, Schule and Gesellschaft. Pastoraltheologie, 95(3), p. 127.

(3) Gronemeyer, M. (2008) Genug ist genug, giber die Kunst des Aufhorens, (Enough is enough. On the art of listening), Primus Verlag, Darmstadt.

(4) CPCE (2007) Evangelising- Protestant perspectives for the churches in Europe. Community of Protestant Churches in Europe, Vienna.

(5) Busch, E. (2004) Die Barmer Thesen 1934-2004. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gottingen.

(6) The Declaration, Resolutions, and Motions adopted by the synod of Barmen, May 29-31, 1934. In: A. C. Cochrane (1957) The church's confession under Hitler, pp.237-247. The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, Appendix VII.

(7) Huffmeier, W. (ed.) (1993) Das eine Wort Gottes- Botschaft fur alle. Vol 2." Votum des Theologischen Ausschusses der Evangelischen Kirche der Union zu Barmen I und VI. Gutersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, Gutersloh.

(8) CPCE (2007).

(9) Huffmeier (1993) p.103, note 4.

(10) cf. Huffmeier (1993) p.104.

(11) Huffmeier (1993) p.91.

(12) Klein, H. (2003) Das Evangelium nach Lukas. Kritisch-exegetischer Komentar uber das Neue Testament, vol. 1 / 3. Gottingen, p.241.

(13) Busch (2004) p.92.

Michael Bunker is bishop of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Austria and general secretary of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE).