Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / Karl Barth on Church and Politics: Is the Church at War? | Faith & Politics #10

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Karl Barth on Church and Politics: Is the Church at War? | Faith & Politics #10 · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: James Spencer. I'm joined by Dr. Ashish Varma. And today
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: we are finishing up our series on Bart's letter to
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: the United States. And we're on the third question here.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: And the third question is sort of like parts 3A
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: through E. There are five questions embedded there. And then
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Bart sort of turns this around and he asks his
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: own question. And so I'm going to read through the
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: six A through B, the multi-part question that the folks
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: who prompted him to write this letter gave him. And
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: then I'm going to read Bart's response to them and
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: how he is sort of framing the question back to them.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: And because I think the way he frames the question
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: back to them really does shape the rest of his argument.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: So here was the third set of questions, we might say,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: in Barth's letter to the United States. What is the
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: true function of the church and its ministers in relation
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: to this war? Should church bodies and pastors actively support
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: the prosecution of the war by preaching about the issues involved,
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  Speaker 1: by urging the membership of the churches to serve in
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the armed forces, to buy war bonds, etc.? Or should
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: they confine their activities to the timeless spiritual ministries? What
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: are the limits beyond which the church should not go
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: in identifying itself with any political cause? And in what
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: sense is it true that the church is not at war?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: So those are the questions that Barth was posed, and
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: then he offers this question back as part of the letter,
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  Speaker 1: and he says this. Is the church clearly aware that
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: its mission in every and therefore also in this time
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: is solely— and this in the fullest sense of the concept,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: to preach the word of God to the mankind of today,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: according to the Holy Scripture. Really interesting set of questions here.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: And I think the way that Barth turns this, Ashish,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: he is gesturing toward how he's going to answer every
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: single one of these questions that is posed in the
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: third set of questions. It's a very Barthian move.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: It is a very Barty move, and perhaps it was
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: frustrating to the people who read it, as it is
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: to many people that hear Bart's way of thinking through things.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: But I think for us, it's pretty instructive, and it's
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  Speaker 2: a good climax to the sort of answers he's giving
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: to the first two questions. You can see a building
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: in his response question. Our mothers told us, don't answer
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: a question with a question. But Jesus did it, and
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: now Bart did it. you can see that building in
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: this fullest sense of what he wants to say. And
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: if we can encapsulate the first two questions in a
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: way in which he's really trying to nail home this
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: idea of the kingdom of God as the righteous state,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: and the kingdom of God as righteous state just cannot
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: be identified identically with any state. The nature of what
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: a nation state is is by definition different because it
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: has a bound set, versus the kingdom of God is
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: theoretically open to all, to all who are willing to enter.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: What might that mean now about a war, in this case,
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  Speaker 2: that's bound to the idea of the nation-state, when what
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  Speaker 2: he really wants to emphasize is the church belongs to
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: something else. It belongs to this righteous state or this kingdom,
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: you know, your kingdom come, your will be done sort
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  Speaker 2: of a thing. And I think this is the beauty
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: of what Barth's doing, that he can answer questions, but
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  Speaker 2: he refuses to be trapped within the parameters of what
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: those questions are assuming. So even when we talk about
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: an American church, that is a real thing if what
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: we mean by that is the church as it exists
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  Speaker 2: within the boundaries of the idea of the nation-state of
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  Speaker 2: the U.S. But you see hints in here of Barth saying,
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  Speaker 2: That sense of what the American church is, while historically real,
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  Speaker 2: is ultimately theologically trivial. Because what the church is, is
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: bound by another allegiance to a different program, to a
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: different operation within creation, that doesn't know the sorts of desires, expectations,
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: agendas that the nation-state has. And I think that's what
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: makes this interesting. a beautiful responding to a question with
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  Speaker 2: other questions and then working his way through that. What
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  Speaker 2: do you think about that? Can you hear me still?
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he does something at the beginning of the next page.
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  Speaker 1: He says this, he says, you know, he's going to
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  Speaker 1: take the liberty of proposing another counter question. And he says,
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  Speaker 1: what is being done today in the church bodies, ministerial conferences,
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  Speaker 1: theological faculties, but above all in the studies of the
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  Speaker 1: individual pastors of all the dominations in the United States
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  Speaker 1: to the end that the church shall again be the church,
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  Speaker 1: understand itself as such and act accordingly. And so what
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  Speaker 1: we see here in Bard is very much that he's
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: wanting to resituate the church as something unique and different.
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  Speaker 1: This resonates with what He was extremely influential in writing
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  Speaker 1: the Barman Declaration, if not the basically sole author of
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the Barman Declaration. And so you see that in the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Barman Declaration as well, that Barth's concern is that the
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  Speaker 1: church act as the church, that it be something different
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  Speaker 1: and distinct from the state, from politics, from anything else,
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  Speaker 1: that it's answering to God as its authority. And I
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: think your point about, you know, sort of the American churches,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: while we can speak of it in that way, I
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: can remember when Stanley Hauerwas was named America's most influential theologian.
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  Speaker 1: He took pains to make the point he wanted to
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: be most influential theologian in America. He wanted to make
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: sure that America was the location, that he was not
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: sort of prefixing himself as a theologian. And so he
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: has a whole riff on that that he does. And
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  Speaker 1: I think Bart would resonate with that. I think what
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: he's looking for is not an isolated church, a decontextualized church,
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  Speaker 1: but a church within a context. Not a church determined
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: by that context, but a church that is determined by
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: God and preaching to that context. And you see that
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: come out in all the rest of the way that
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  Speaker 1: he answers each one of these questions. I mean, even
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  Speaker 1: just as he's addressing the first question about, you know,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: how the church should, you know, be thinking about the war,
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  Speaker 1: he prefaces it with, if the church is really preaching
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  Speaker 1: the word of God, then this will mean active support
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  Speaker 1: of the war effort insofar as it testifies with a
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  Speaker 1: clarity consistent with the word of God, that the carrying
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: through of this stern police action against Hitler's nihilism is
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: a necessary task of the righteous state. But that if-then construction,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: really does reroute this question. It takes it out of
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  Speaker 1: the position of politics. Hey, what do you think about
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  Speaker 1: Hitler's politics? Hey, what do you think about Great Britain? Hey,
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  Speaker 1: what do you think about the decision to get into
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: World War II? This is not what he's talking about.
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  Speaker 1: What he's talking about is if the church is really
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  Speaker 1: preaching the word of God, then this consensus around the
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  Speaker 1: war is going to emerge and it's going to be
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  Speaker 1: recognized as an act of a righteous state. It's going
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: to be recognized as commensurate with and in attunement with
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: God's word. And he does that in the first few
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  Speaker 1: questions here, always coming back to the notion that God's
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  Speaker 1: word is the governing presence here and that the church
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: is always acting in accordance with it. And that is
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: the basic guidance that he gives to the church during
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: this time in this back half of his letter.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, in light of this preamble that you and I
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  Speaker 2: have both attached to what Bart's doing here, right? With
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: the questions posed to Bart, we have his brief answer
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  Speaker 2: to the questions before he says, here's what I really
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  Speaker 2: want to ask. And now we've got our preambles attached
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  Speaker 2: to them. So we've got a lot of material to
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: wade through here. Maybe it's worth just jumping into what
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  Speaker 2: is it that he wants to say, right? What's behind this?
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  Speaker 2: His question, is the church really aware of what its
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  Speaker 2: task is to preach the word of God to mankind
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  Speaker 2: today according to the Holy Scriptures? Do we get that?
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  Speaker 2: And you can kind of sense a little bit of
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  Speaker 2: sarcasm under there, maybe a friendly sarcasm of, you wouldn't
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  Speaker 2: really ask this question if you got your ducks in
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  Speaker 2: a row. That's a strange saying, by the way, ducks
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  Speaker 2: in a row. If you get your ducks in a
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  Speaker 2: row and you have.
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  Speaker 2: A clear understanding of who you are, that your goal
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  Speaker 2: here is not to be a recruitment body, in some sense,
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  Speaker 2: for whatever the state's doing, even in a task like
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  Speaker 2: this one, where he's saying there needs to be, as
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  Speaker 2: we've already covered in the previous episodes, there needs to
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  Speaker 2: be a response to the Nazi regime and what Hitler's
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: doing in leading them. But you get the sense that
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  Speaker 2: even though there needs to be a response on the
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  Speaker 2: national level, because of the way in which he understands
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  Speaker 2: the local, national, the nation-state, As itself, at best, an
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  Speaker 2: incomplete riff upon this larger reality of the righteous state,
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  Speaker 2: the kingdom of God. If you get who you are
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  Speaker 2: as the church, you know that your task is bigger
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  Speaker 2: than this. So of course that means speaking in a
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  Speaker 2: way that calls out the sort of stuff that we
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  Speaker 2: see as horrible, but one of the things you can
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  Speaker 2: kind of hear in the background that I think is
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  Speaker 2: sort of the friendly sarcasm is that if we're thinking
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  Speaker 2: about the church with regard to what its true mission
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  Speaker 2: is and the true state that it belongs to, then
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  Speaker 2: we can't help but see that the sort of thing
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  Speaker 2: that's present in the Nazi regime is the sort of
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  Speaker 2: thing that's present in every nation state, and it's present
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  Speaker 2: in every regime of the world. So you're not just
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  Speaker 2: simply saying, I back up what my state is doing
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  Speaker 2: in response to this. You're calling out evil, is the
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  Speaker 2: sort of idea that I'm getting from him here. And
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: calling out evil means, of course, you're calling out, even
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  Speaker 2: if it's not in name, Hitler and the Nazis. But
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  Speaker 2: in the process of doing that, you're calling out the
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  Speaker 2: evil in your midst. And that could be on the
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  Speaker 2: national level, it could be on the local level. So
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  Speaker 2: you can sort of hear here that one of the
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  Speaker 2: things that we brought up in previous episodes on this
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  Speaker 2: topic is the quagmire that we find ourselves in with
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  Speaker 2: someone like Churchill, who does some terrible things. that some
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  Speaker 2: would argue, I'd probably be in that category, is every
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  Speaker 2: bit as horrible as the sort of thing Nazis were doing.
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  Speaker 2: So of course you stand up there, but the church's
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  Speaker 2: preaching should also, from what I'm understanding, what Bart's saying here,
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  Speaker 2: should also be calling out this sort of stuff, to
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  Speaker 2: the degree that they're aware of it, obviously, what Winston
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  Speaker 2: Churchill is doing. And then right down to the local level,
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: there's sorts of things in our community that we can't
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  Speaker 2: lose sight of, where at the end of the day,
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  Speaker 2: that's where the church is embedded, not ultimately as an
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  Speaker 2: American church, but in the Hauerwasian sense, a church in
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  Speaker 2: America in specific places, in communities that have issues that
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: continue to need to be contended with. Is that a
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  Speaker 2: fair reading of Barth here?
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  Speaker 1: I think so. And I think one of the concepts
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: that I would draw out of all that you just
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: said is it's this notion of allegiance. And in the
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: fourth question in this series, he asks about should the
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: church identify with a particular political party? And he gives
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: it an emphatic no, that the church should not identify
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: with any particular political party. And part of what I
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: see there is this is a splitting of allegiances when
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: that's done. That when you start to affiliate with these
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  Speaker 1: other political parties, when you start to identify with them
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  Speaker 1: in the sense that This particular political party now becomes
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: our political party. You draw it into yourself. You fundamentally
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: changed who and what you are, and you fundamentally changed
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  Speaker 1: who you serve. And so there's a splitting of allegiances
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  Speaker 1: that happens when you identify too closely with a political party.
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  Speaker 1: That then diminishes the ability of the church. Again, I
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: think at Barth's reading, and I would tend to agree
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  Speaker 1: with it, As we get more and more entailed with
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  Speaker 1: these other sort of minor allegiances or split allegiances, it
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: becomes much more difficult for us to speak out against
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  Speaker 1: those allegiances. And there's a book written on Dwight Moody,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: and I'm blanking on the gentleman's name who wrote it,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: James Findlay. He was making just sort of an offhand
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: comment about church in this deep era in the 1800s
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: of industrialization and urbanization. And he says something to the
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: effect of the church became so tied to the economic
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: structures of the time that it was difficult for the
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: church to speak out against those institutions and really lost
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: anything except the the personal moral standard sort of argument. Hey,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: you should do your best practices in business. You should
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: practice your business morally, those kinds of critiques and exhortations.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: But because it was so intertwined and dependent on the
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: revenue that was coming in from these business people and
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: from the economic situation overall, it lost its vision and
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: lost its sight, lost its ability to speak against some
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: of what was going on because it was too beholden
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: to it. And I think that that sort of situation
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: is what Bart is trying to avoid in asking these three,
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  Speaker 1: in answering this set of questions. It's let's be beholden
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  Speaker 1: to the word of God, Let's make sure that we're
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: actually preaching according to the scriptures, that we're aligning with
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: the scriptures, and that we are being an entity apart
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: while we're being an entity embedded. And I think that
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: that's a little different than the way we usually say it,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: you know, being in the world, not of the world, right?
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Because you're both and. You're an entity apart, but you're
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: embedded within a particular context. And so Bart does not
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: want to abandon that context. He rejects this notion of timelessness.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: And one of the questions he talks about, you know,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: that we're not timeless. We're in time. And so the
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: church doesn't have a, you know, sort of a timeless spirituality.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: We have a moment to moment spirituality that we exercise
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: in time. He's very much wanting that allegiance to show
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: forth in an embedded context. And I think that he's
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: arguing that the best way to do that is to
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: sit subject to the word of God.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: So the exact words that came to my mind as
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: you were, as you begun, what you were saying was the,
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: in the world of the world dialectic. Um, and I
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: think often in my experience, when the church thinks of that,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: we're thinking really small scale. We're thinking ethical things, right?
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: So perhaps early to mid 20th century, the way that
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: manifested is don't dance. Don't go to movie theaters. Um,
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: don't listen to rock and roll music. And that's evolved
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: in certain kinds of ways. Some communities continue to have
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: it on that low level, sort of these things don't do,
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  Speaker 2: but it always seems to entail there are the things
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: of the world and the agenda of the world is
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: tied to being attached to creation, right? World seems to
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: be a gloss in many Christians' minds on creation itself.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: And I get it, right? Because we talk about our
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: planet as the world. But I think the point that
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: I hear you making, and I think the point that
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  Speaker 2: I understand Bart making, is to reimagine what it is
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  Speaker 2: we're thinking about when we say be in the world,
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  Speaker 2: but not of it. That this isn't a statement of
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  Speaker 2: abandoning creation, so it's not on one side saying, well,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: you know, those problems belong to creation, we're looking on
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: higher things, and therefore we're looking on higher things, means
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: that we don't pay attention to social issues. We don't
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: pay attention to care of creation. We don't pay attention
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: to what could happen to the body when we should
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: be concerned about the soul, which is certainly taking words
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: of Jesus, but I think misappropriating them. Conversely, it seems
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: to me what's at stake here is the ability to
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: be able to say that in the world is a
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: statement of structure. You are in structures that organize creation.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: The nation state is one of them. It's the most
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: obvious one in the sense of our current organization of
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: the world according to how we've carved up the land.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Here's the border. On this side of it is the U.S.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: On the other side of it is Canada. Here's the border.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: On this side of it is the U.S. The other
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: side is Mexico.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: And you see the.
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  Speaker 2: Effects upon creation of it. creation legitimately looks differently the
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: moment you cross the border oftentimes because now you have
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: different schemes for understanding the place that then import that
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: vision of the structure upon the ground. And Jesus clearly
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: gets that because he lives as a Jewish person within
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: an occupied Roman regime. And he gets that a lot
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: of the things that go on in this regime are
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: don't allow Jewish people to be Jewish people in some
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: sort of isolated setting, but instead they have to adapt
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: to whatever it is the rule of law is. And
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: you get hints of that at, do we pay taxes?
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Whose image is on that coin?
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Caesar's.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Okay, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. And
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: the implicit thing within that is, whose image is upon you?
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Render yourself to the one whose image you bear, right?
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  Speaker 2: And that to me is sort of a gloss on
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  Speaker 2: be in the world but not of the world. You
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: recognize the structures that are at play that especially in
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: the case of a non-political church in the sense of
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: being tied to a political party, that the church just
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: has to accept as a given reality. We accept that
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: there are nation states. We accept that within this nation
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: state there are primary political parties and then some adjacent
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: ones that have minimal amounts of influence. But we don't
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: see ourselves where our lines are drawn by the nation state.
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  Speaker 2: And that's what I gather is at play with the Hauerwasian.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: I'm a theologian in America, not an American theologian. I'm
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: a church in America. not an American church. But that
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean an abrogating of responsibility within that place. And
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: so I think of, the way I often like to
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: think about this is we're to work in for the margins.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: We feel the margins, not because we're essentializing not being
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: in power, but because we're again, our goals are different.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: And our goals are absolutely related to creation and of
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: seeing the presence of Christ be the one that redraws
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: our lines ultimately. That's the kingdom of God. So that
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: creation in full thrives. But we live in a state
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: in which we imagine one reality that has begun to
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: enter in but is not yet consummated. We're not in
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: the new heavens and the new earth yet. And we
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: recognize the reality, the present, to seek out the margins again,
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: not to essentialize the margins, but to begin to poke
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: holes in the structures, poke holes in the ways that
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: we have a tendency to view the structure as everything,
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: as creation itself. But instead to show that we are
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: in this, we are not of this, look, there's something else.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: And I see that as what Bart's doing here. And
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: the way that he's trying to call the church to
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: be conscious of real issues and to speak out against
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: real things without reducing itself to an agent of that structure.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: In the world, but not of. Is that fair?
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I think that the reason I was
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: trying to avoid the in the world, not of it,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: and I agree with the way you've construed it. I
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: think a lot of times, to your point, when we
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: think of in the world, not of it, We think
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: of those, you know, don't drink, don't chew, don't date
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: girls who do sort of mantras, right? And so we're
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: supposed to stay away from these, the evils of the
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: world that are trying to seduce us away from Christ.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: But I think Barth is saying something far more profound
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: than that. I think he's also saying that even in
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: the world where there is a, we'll call it a
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: moral must, that the righteous state is right. to go
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: in and police what's going on with Hitler, that our
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: agreement with that must emerges from somewhere else. That it
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: comes out of an allegiance, not to the state, not
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: to humanity qua humanity, sort of in a humanitarian sort
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: of sense, but it's derived from a deep theological conviction
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: that we're living according to the scriptures. And I think
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: that that's a really crucial aspect of this, because otherwise
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: what happens in the in the world, not of the
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: world sort of scenario is we get to engage in
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: the good things of the world, the things that seem
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: like they agree with Christianity with no particular distinction between
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: the way these things tend to emerge. And I think
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: that's a real challenge here. as we think through the
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: issue of the in versus the of. There's a way
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: for us to do things that are, you know, somewhat
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: aligned with God's order as part of our nation. But
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: if we do those because we are, as I like
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: to say, settling for wholesomeness, we will ultimately end up
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: not pursuing holiness. And I think what Bart is calling
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: on here is Listen, church, be the church. And as
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: you're being the church, some of these things are just
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: going to start making sense. Like you're going to understand
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: now that the governments of the world need to come
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: about and act in this instance as a righteous state,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: bringing judgment on something that is abhorrent. You're going to
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: understand that. And you're also going to understand that as
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: you're being the church, you have certain roles and responsibilities
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: with this whole thing. But it all starts with you
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: being the church, not with you debating the issue, but
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: with you actually allowing God's word to form and shape
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: you such that you are his people. And again, that's
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: sort of a very Bardian answer. You know, and it
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: sounds really esoteric and sort of complicated. And I could
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: see why people get frustrated and just be like, Bart,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: why don't you just give us some practical advice, jerk? Like,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: just tell us what you're thinking. But I think he's right.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think if it doesn't start there, right,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: if you lose that connective tissue of, hey, church, be
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: the church. Now, let's look at the downstream implications of
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: being the church. What you end up with is something
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: that drifts very quickly away from the word of God
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: and toward either conservatism, liberalism, you know, whatever have you.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: I think that actually happened in the German Christian church,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: where we see the lack of mooring that the church
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: actually has as church. It's now going to subject itself
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: to the state. It's going to put itself under the
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: authority of Nazism more deeply than it needed to. And
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: it's going to adopt some of the ideas and principles
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: of sort of we need a German church, an ethnically
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: German church. And this is an appropriate expression of our
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: contextualized witness. And so we need to engage in a
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: lot of these things that that Hitler and the Nazi
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: party are doing. like that sort of capitulation, I think
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: is what Bart is at pains to say to all nations.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: These are things, or I'm sorry, not to all nations,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: to all churches. This is the sort of surrender to
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: worldly authorities that we have to avoid. And the best
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: way to avoid it is be the church.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. There's a section early in his response questions that
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: I think makes this point in a really helpful way. Um,
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: He says, recently we read here in Switzerland a pronouncement
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: by 93 leading American Protestants, and we were informed that
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: this was a statement characteristic of the majority of the
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: American churches. In this statement is the sentence, quote, we
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: abhor war, but upon the outcome of this war depends
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: the realization of Christian principles to which no Christian can
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: be indifferent, end quote. Barth then returns, I venture to
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: doubt that this is the unequivocal language appropriate to God's word,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: which should be employed today. And we've heard this, I'm
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: sure you have, I've heard this kind of talk all
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: the time, right? It's equivalent to, this is the most
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: crucial election. And there might be good reason to say
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: this is an important election because of X, Y, and Z.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: But we often hear, this is the most crucial election.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Or we've both heard, we need, fill in the blank,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: God's institution. to be this institution more than ever before.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: God needs this to happen, right? It's an elevation of
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: a particular institute tethered to the idea of in order
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: to ensure that the American environment continues to be this
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: superlative notion of God's place, which is failing to make
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: that distinction between a nation-state And again, what Barth terms
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: the righteous state or the kingdom of God. All right, continuing,
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: he says, I venture to doubt that this is the
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: unequivocal language appropriate to God's word, which should be employed today.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: If the realization of Christian principles depends upon the outcome
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: of this war, then there is no point in the
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: assurance that war is abhorrent, for it is surely only
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: unnecessary and unjust wars which are condemned as abhorrent, and
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: among this Among this number, the present one is not
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: really to be classed. If, conversely, war as such is
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: really condemned, then the realization of Christian principles must definitely
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: not be made dependent on its outcome. That would mean
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: the determination to do evil in violation of conscience in
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: order that good may result. What is he getting at
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: right there? He's trying to strip away, I think, the
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: language that remains hidden underneath or it shows our alliances
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: that make us not the church in America, but the
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: American church, such that we're really concerned with a particular
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: idea of civilization being upheld. And that's what makes this
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: war that otherwise would be abhorrent just, because that enables
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: us to be able to uphold this idea of civilization.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: And this idea of civilization is ultimately necessary for the
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: unpacking of the kingdom of God. That's the idea that
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Bart's pulling out and that he's also reacting to, where
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: he wants to say no. So I might say that
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: he is implicitly articulating an understanding of divine providence where
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: things could look really bad, things could look terrible, and
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: that doesn't mean we've undone the providence of God. Things
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: could have gone in a different way where the allies
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: lost that war, and I can hear Bart saying within
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: this that The goal here wasn't to ensure the way
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: of life of the so-called Western world. The goal here
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: was to stand up against something that was horrific. And
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: whether or not those who stood up succeed, and whether
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: or not their notion of civilization moves forward, is sort of...
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: of a secondary issue to the real issue. And the
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: real issue is the gospel entails that we stand up
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: against certain things because this is the sort of work
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: that Jesus does in his work of reconciliation. It's not
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: just to draw people back to himself, but it's in
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: the process to call what is evil, evil. and to
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: stand against it and to place his very body in
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: that way. And you can see him now calling the church,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: and that's what he says in his next point after that.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: You can see him calling for the church to say,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: this is why we stand up, because we are doing
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: a work that these allies are, in this case, allied with,
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: even if not intent. And that work is to place
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: ourselves right in the midst of of the work of reconciliation,
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: to participate in the work of reconciliation of Jesus by
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: standing up to what is truly evil.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think two things. Number one, I
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: think it's easy for people listening and reading Barth to
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: be frustrated by his theological precision. I think there's a
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: sense in which And, you know, when I try to
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: wade through the church dogmatics, you get a lot of
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: you get a fair amount of this. Right. For sure. Yeah.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: It's part of the reason I really. Yeah. It's part
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: of the reason I really like these shorter pieces from
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Barth that are more occasional, because I think he I
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: think his theological precision hits harder in these letters. But
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: that's directed at real issues. It's directed at real issues.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: And I think that section you read, people couldn't. listen
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: to that and feel like, hey, Bart's just playing word games.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: But the reality is he is actually trying to get
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: at an underlying dynamic. He's trying to root out assumptions
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: that are just sitting there and allowing for this sort
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: of loose quasi-theological assertions that we all nod our head
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: to and go, yep, yep, but never actually examine. And
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: I think it's a really important role that he's playing
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: as he's addressing some of these issues here. I would
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: also agree that when Bart's looking at this overall, he
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: is not looking at it in terms of a cause
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: and effect. He's not looking at it as an instrumental
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: war necessarily. He's looking at it from a very much
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: a do what is right regardless of the outcome sort
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: of war. And so to your point, I think, yes,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: the allies could have lost the war. And he would
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: not sit back and go, ah, we shouldn't have fought it.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: I guess I was wrong. He would say, we fought,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: we tried. That's what we're called to do. And now
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: we're living with the consequences of this other regime winning.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: But there is no sense in BART that a loss
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: should have prompted different actions. And I'd say the last
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: thing that maybe we should probably unpack a little bit is,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: you know, when you say the allies are now allied
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: in this instance, right, with sort of something that the
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: church would agree with. I think that's a very difficult
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: point for people to navigate because what we see is
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: we see humanity living into the good, the true, and
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: the beautiful. They're attuned now with God's order to a
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: certain degree. even if they're not loyal to God, they
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: are acting. And this is where we go back to,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: I mentioned Oliver O'Donovan last episode, I think. He calls
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: the nation state, you know, and the governing authorities, the
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: secondary witness or a secondary theater of God's glory, right?
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: And I think the idea here is just this. It's
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: that the pursuit of something good and right and just
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: is even when motivated by emotions, intellect, rationality that excludes
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: God from the picture, is something that Christians should recognize, acknowledge, affirm,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: and point beyond. And so I think for Barth, yeah,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: he's looking at it and saying, yes, in this instance,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: these states are acting as the righteous state. but only
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: in this instance. And he doesn't want to expand that to,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: this is the righteous state. It's a, they're doing what
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: the righteous state is to do. Right. But that is
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: very different than saying church be the church. He's not
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: suggesting that the allies are the righteous state. He's just
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: saying that they're acting along the line that the righteous
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: state should act in this instance and would not hold
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: it beyond this instance. It's a very in-time argument. I
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: think that that is difficult for people to parse because
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: we tend to want to– I remember Daniel Kahneman wrote this.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: He wrote Thinking Fast and Slow. It was a book
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: on cognitive psych and decision-making. He talks about the halo effect.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: We want people to be all good or all bad.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: And he's actually got a line in there that says,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to think that Hitler loved
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: puppies and babies. You just don't want that. You want
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: this guy to be full on evil. But the reality
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: is that most of us are a mix of these things,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: that we do have good character traits and bad character traits,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: and that we shouldn't be totalizing one way or another necessarily.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: We should be operating in as Bart's talking about here,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: in this instance, this needs to happen. But after this happens,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: that does not mean that these nation states that were
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: allies get, you know, sort of a carte blanche to
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: do whatever the heck they want because they acted as
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: the righteous state right now. And I think part of
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the reason that he wants to keep the church separate
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: from these things is so that the church can retain
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: a degree of objectivity and judgment, right? about where these
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: nation states fall because they are not to be aligned
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: with the nation states in every instance, we might say.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: So to your point, you mentioned the timeless bit, that
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: we are in time and the church is in time
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: and the states are in time. That's the third point
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: that he makes in his own response to his own
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: question back, where he says, when the church is truly
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: preaching the word of God, To the man of today,
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: there can be no question of confining itself to a, quote,
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: timeless spiritual service. What exactly is that anyway? Mark's question.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: There is a, quote, timeless religion, a timeless standard of morals.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: The word of God, however, is never timeless. And that
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: could be a little bit scandalous, right, for him to
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: say that. He says the time in which we live
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: is the time accorded to us through God's patience between
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: the resurrection of Jesus and his second coming. Therefore, it
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: is God's time.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: No.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: I'll say as a side note, for anyone interested, then
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: go dig into his church dogmatics. I'm intrigued that he
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: says that here because he kind of sets up three
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: senses of time in his church dogmatics. The first one
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: is what we tend to think of as natural history,
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: and it's what historians are trying to get at, natural
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: scientists are trying to get at, physicists are trying to
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: get at when they date the universe according to red
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: and blue shifts in cosmic light. And he says that's
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: stuff that's all predicated upon our method in the present,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: and that's what we tend to think of as history.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: And comporting to that is what counts as history. But
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: then he says there's biblical time, and that's what he
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: describes here as God's time, and that's the narrative of
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: creation to consummation, new creation. But actually in his dogmatics,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: he says the true time is what he calls Christological time,
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: and it's the time that's measured from from the cross
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: of Christ. So everything exists either on the shadow of
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: the cross on one side looking forward to it, or
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: in the shadow of the cross on the other side
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: with the unpacking of that reality. Now, I'm intrigued that
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: he has left that number three out and he's identified
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: the true time or God's time here with number two.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: That's a nerd moment. But I think for our purposes,
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: what's significant is the way that he wants to describe
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: this cuts away from what we tend to want to believe,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: as you've said, that There's a single timeless truth that
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: we've set up in the clouds, and that's what we
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: have to access as these eternal principles, and that's what
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: helps us make the decision in the moment to say,
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: this war is justified, or this political season requires this
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: kind of action, as opposed to that political season. But
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: what he wants to say against this idea of timeless
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: is that the word of God and the work of
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: reconciliation that the church participates in, by the grace of
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: God and his spirit, It means that every moment is
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: us trying to discern what it looks like to enact
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: that ministry of reconciliation in the present. So that, to
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: your point, had the allies lost, I want to take
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: you a step further and say I don't think Barth
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: would say, well, at least we did the right thing
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: and now we have to adjust to this new reality.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: I think for him it's the nation state might have failed,
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: the allies might have failed, but the mission of the
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: church remains unchanged because it's now trying to discern in
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: this time where there's no longer that particular lever to
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: pull to resist Hitler.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: How does the.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Church continue to act in a manner appropriate with participating
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: in the triune mission of reconciliation? Now what that looks
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: like might require looking to churches around the world who
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: have not lived under the condition of being able to
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: pull levers of power. It could mean looking at the
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: church under ISIS occupation and what that's looked like. It
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: might look like or look at churches in places like
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: China or India or Japan that have never had a
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Christian political presence. It might mean looking to the so-called
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: liberation approaches that are in Latin America that have more
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: or less relationship to political power. But I think Barth's
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: point in this at the time was to say regardless
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: of what it looks like and who we have as
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: a model, The Church's mission is precisely timed in that
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: it's a discernment within places with what's available to us
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: to make the appropriate choice to participate in the ministry
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: of reconciliation, which means standing up to evil. And in
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: the moment of the Nazi regime, it meant these countries
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: and the Church to support the standing up against Hitler,
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: but not to be limited in its scope as if
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: the fullness of its of its witness of its reconciliation ministry.
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: It was tied up in the military actions. That's how
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: I read him here.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: I agree. I think there's a, and this is always
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: one of those things that I kind of go back
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: and forth in my mind when we're talking about time
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: and the way that Bart is talking about it here,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: it always feels like time and space collapse. Like there's
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: a dislocation that I think he's talking about and trying
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: to avoid here. Don't dislocate yourself. You're always located. You're
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: always in, in the place where you are and you
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: can't sort of, he even talks about it a little bit,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: you know, like don't, don't pull out and talk about
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: this vacuum of timelessness, right? Don't, don't pull away from
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: the context, embed yourself within the context. And so I
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: think the way you described it is really helpful. It's
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: I think that element of what we're looking at here
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: is number one, really difficult for anyone to handle. I
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: think it's very hard to recognize that there's a stability
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: in our convictions and our beliefs and who we are
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: as the church that maintains across time. And that what
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: we're always doing is renegotiating how to execute that faithfully
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: in any given moment. Because even though we have this
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: sort of stability in who we are in Christ and
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: what the church is and what our mission is, what
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: our convictions are, we want more stability on the day-to-day
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: level than I think often we get. And so we
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: end up sort of vacillating on some of these issues
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: as opposed to really rethinking what does it mean for
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: us to offer a faithful witness in this moment? period. And,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: and if we started there, if we said, you know,
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: what does it look like for this next decision that
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: I make to point other people to, uh, or to,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: to point to and glorify God, what would it mean
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: for that next decision to look like that? That's a
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: whole different decision matrix that we, that we would, than
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: we normally employ. We're not thinking now, beginning with sort
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: of a rational response where we sit back and say, okay,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: what do we think this would lead to cause and
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: effect wise? What do we think? Would this be an
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: effective decision? Would this be an efficient decision? The first
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: decision for the church is, is this going to point
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: to and glorify God? And if it won't, these other
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: options are off the table. I think that's what Bart's
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: trying to underscore. And that's what I hear you saying.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: It's just in different words, I suppose. Right.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, who can repeat the exact words of Barth,
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: but Barth himself. But it's worth noting that for Barth,
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: everything boils down to the ministry of Jesus as the
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: incarnate word. And Jesus is the one who fully unveils
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: or fully reveals the persons of the triune God in
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: his march to and death upon the cross. And then
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: out of that, the resurrection. So if we take away that,
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: we've lost the litmus test for understanding God's time. Because
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: all of God's time becomes meaningful in that moment. So
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: it's precisely the case that one might have to suffer.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: In fact, we should expect that one might have to
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: suffer for that purpose. And I think that's important because
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: I think often I hear Christians hearing disagreement as suffering
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: or hearing attempts to grab control being rebuffed as therefore suffering.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: And that's not what Barth's getting at here. For him,
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: it's about a participation. So he says, woe betide if
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: the church should desecrate itself in this cause instead of
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: seeing to it, on the contrary, that this cause be
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: consecrated through the church, this cause being the resistance against
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Nazis and Hitler. So that this cause is consecrated through
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: the church, that the righteousness and necessity of this war
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: for the defense of the righteous state be preserved to
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: the nations, to their governments and armies consciously, thus giving
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: them a clear conscience in the conduct of it, but
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: also preserving the moderation necessary to its proper conclusion. This mission,
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: by virtue of which it preaches a righteous peace in
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: the midst of war, and thus approves the war only
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: for the sake of righteous peace, but for its sake
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: does so in wholehearted earnest, is the prophetic mission of
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: the Church in this war. I think that's telling. Because again,
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: he's making sure that the church understands it's not that
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: we're joining in for some righteous purpose that the state
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: already has, but it's that in this moment, the church,
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: like in every moment, needs to be attentive to what
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: it means to stand up against the powers and principalities,
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: to use Paul's language. And within standing up to the
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: powers and principalities, to do so in a political climate
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: in which it's possible for the state as a local entity,
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: as a nation state, to join in for whatever their
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: purposes are to the same task, but to continue to
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: recognize that the church's purposes are different. And that again
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: gets them to the same conclusion, that should the state fail,
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: the church's mission has not changed, even if its mechanism
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: of achieving it might be changed by the levers it
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: has to pull.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think this last section of his letter,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: section five, really underscores everything we've kind of been saying here,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: because he gets to this point where he asks the question,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: you know, is the church at war? And basically says, no,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: it's not, if in the sense of the church being
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: at war, we mean that it's an instrument of the state.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: And he justifies this by saying that It can't be
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: an instrument of the state because whether we're at war
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: or at peace, the church belongs to the Lord. And
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: it's taking its marching orders from him. And so he says,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: you know, in war as in peace, it serves its
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: own Lord. The church serves its own Lord, pursues its
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: own cause and speaks its own language. The cause and
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: message of the gospel, which is directed to friend and
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: foe alike, is not dependent on the outcome of the war,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: whatever it may be. And I think here we have
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: that sort of return to Barth's original question that he posed, right?
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Because you have the Lord owning the church. The church
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: is answerable to a different authority than the nation state.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: And it's not taking its marching orders from the nation state. Again,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: it's hard not to hear sort of echoes of the
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Barman Declaration in this. Because in the Barman Declaration, he
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: very much scopes this out in a very similar way.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: And I think that this is sort of at the
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: heart of how Bart is reasoning through this whole thing,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: that the church is not at war in the sense
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: that it is serving the state, but the church may
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: very well be at war in the sense that it's
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: fighting to continue its mission faithfully in the midst of
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: hostile powers and pressures that are trying to get it
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: to compromise that mission. Right. Part of the fight then
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: of the church becomes making sure that we're continuing to
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: pursue our own cause, making sure that we're continuing to
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: speak our own language. These are the things that I
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: think Bart would say, yeah, these are the things that
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: we should never give up. These are part of what
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: are constitutive of what it means to be the church.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: And if we lose these things, we do in some
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: sense lose our war. And that's not World War II.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: That's not World War I. It's this fight against, you mentioned,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: the principalities and powers that try to suck us into
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: a world that we're really not part of and that
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: try to get us to live on terms that it defines.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: I like to say the world always tries to get
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: us to love it on its own terms. but the
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: church's job is to love the world on God's terms.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: And so we're constantly, that's the battle we're fighting. That's
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: the moment of resistance that we're trying to execute well
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: is making sure that we're loving the world on God's terms.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: And I think this last section in Bart's letter really
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: underscores his whole vision of for how he thinks these
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: things through and it begins very much with the church
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: is not its own it belongs to the lord and
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: the lord only and thus anything it does and says
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: has to conform to the image of.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: Christ yeah so i think i think one of the
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: key phrases there is the terms the terms of engagement
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: so even to the degree that they have a similar
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: pursuit the church doesn't have a military, the true sense
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: of the military. So the idea of resistance doesn't even
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: necessarily look the same. What exactly it looks like when
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: the purposes of the church are to resist and the
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: allies are allied with them enables a certain kind of
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: resistance in this regime. But if we pull out of
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: that setting and we come to the present time, it
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: can be very easy for the church's rhetoric. You use
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: the You used the issue of language, which I think
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: is an important one. For the church's language to start
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: to sound like the language of a political party. And
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: that should be a moment of pause to ask the question,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: whose cause is this? Now note that that doesn't mean
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: that a particular political party doesn't have an agenda item
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: that overlaps with what the church should stand for. That's
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: entirely plausible. But that's not what's at issue here. What's
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: at issue here is when the language of the church
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: is reduced to the language of a party. Or the
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: language of the church begins to be formed by the
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: talking points of a party. And that could be their party.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: Of course, we know that one is more dominantly tapped
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: into the church, but it's not restrictive to just that party.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: The church should be asking itself in that moment, have
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: the things that I have to stand for, the things
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: that characterize the ministry of Christ, been reduced now to
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: the party that has co-opted it as a cog within
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: its agenda? And if so, that should be a problem. Again,
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: that doesn't mean throw the baby out with the bathwater.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: There might be particular issues to continue to stand for,
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: but the language has to be adjusted so that that
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: becomes part of a larger rhetoric. And that larger rhetoric
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: is holistic, right? So perhaps the issue is a respect
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: for life. It needs to be a respect for life
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: that's rooted in the notion of people as created image
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: bearers before a God who cares about life from beginning
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: to end. but also the same God who also cares
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: about the life that the image barriers are embedded within.
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: There's life all around us. And the Creator is their
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: Creator as well, or its Creator as well, however you
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: want to put it. And all of the things in
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: the ways that we're created are implicated within our very bodies.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: As I often get my students to chuckle at, all
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: of our mothers are glad that we weren't born the
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: sizes that we are now. But what led into us
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: getting this size? It's the fact that we are deeply
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: entangled with a larger creative environment that we do need
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: to be protective against, not least because our personal survival
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: depends on it, but also because the very beginning of
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: the creative order, as marked out by God, entailed giving
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: us to the rest of creation to care for it,
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: to have a kind of mastery over it that wasn't
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: forceful control, but was rather a kind of mastery that
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: was artistic. It's to understand deeply what a thing or
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: a set of things needs to be able to work
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: from within that. Now we're talking about a language and
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: a rhetoric that belongs to the church as shaped by
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: the time that Bart Schmidt was saying is God's time,
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: the narrative of creation to new creation, and recognizing within
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: that where we stand, that we live somewhere between the
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: cross and the shadow it lays upon creation in anticipation
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: of the consummation. That's a different rhetoric, and I think
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: that's really important to what Barth is trying to get
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: at here to draw this distinction. And if one wants
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: to push back, I'll at least say it's important for
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: me to be able to articulate what I think is
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: that same spirit in the present and how that has
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: to be something that directs the church, not particular sloganeering
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: that one party is used to co-opt us, one or
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: the other party.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I think going back to that issue of
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: language and how it influences the way that we think,
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: there was a fascinating TED talk, and I'm forgetting the
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: doctor's name, but she talks about a tribe in Africa
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: that uses the cardinal directions instead of right and left.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, at any given moment, you're You
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: may have a north hand and a south hand. You
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: might have an east hand and a west hand. And
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: they might switch depending on which direction you're facing. When
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: we think about how that way of using language would
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: reshape our understanding of the world. I mean, I couldn't
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: tell you what direction I'm facing right now if you
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: paid me. I have no idea whether I'm facing north, south, east,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: or west. Yeah, I have no clue. But But if
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: you grow up in an environment where those cardinal directions
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: are so crucial because they're governing everyday activities, that language
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: now starts to shape the way you perceive the world
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: around you. These directions, north, south, east, and west, become
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: far more significant than right or left, which are ingrained
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: in our understanding of directionality. Far more, I would argue,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: than north, south, east, and west. And so I think
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: that these issues of language, if we take that sort
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: of analogy and we say, okay, then why is Barth
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: so keen on theological language? And why is it that
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: we need to make sure that we're not adopting the
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: language of any given political party, even if we share
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: some sort of, even if we agree with some of
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: the concerns of that political party? And I think in
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: large part, it's because the language we use begins to
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: shape our imagination. And so using these theological terms, rooting
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: ourselves back in, being careful about how we articulate this
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: theological precision that we've seen Barth use at various points
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: in the letter, is not him being esoteric. It's him
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: trying to be thoroughly theological and rooting the church back
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: into itself. And I think that we need to get
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: our heads around that because the way we use language
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: actually does matter. And if we go around talking as
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: if we're all Republicans or all Democrats, I just had
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: an interview with a gentleman who said that he'd had
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: an issue in his church where someone was listening to
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: a podcaster who said, you know, if your pastor says
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: the word justice from the pulpit, you should just leave.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: And his comment was, how much of the Old Testament
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: do you want me to skip? Like, it's a biblical word.
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: But these are the things that if we start allowing
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: the political rhetoric to shape the way we talk, to
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: shape the way our language works, to shape our understanding
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: of these deeply biblical terms, we are going to lose
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: more than just language. We're going to start loosening our
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: grip on reality. We're going to start losing our identity,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: and we're going to stop being able to affirm the good,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: the true, and the beautiful that we see before us
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: while also pointing beyond it to the triune God who
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: is its source. And I think that's basically one of
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: the basic missions of the church needs to be Look,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: we're not saying that the world is completely and totally
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: off base on everything. You know, there's a righteous state.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: And as Bart is arguing in his letter, nation states
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: can do good things. So it's not like they're evil
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: and we need to just jettison them completely. We need
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: to recognize when they're doing good things, just as we
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: recognize when they're doing bad things. But in either case,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: we need to be pointing them not just to some
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: sort of vague moral standard. What we need to be
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: reminding them is that the authority that owns the church,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: the God who owns the church, he is the authority
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: over all things, not just over the church. And so
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: we've got to be pointing these nations to that God
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: who is going to judge, that God who has authority
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: over them, to the God who establishes reality. And if
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: we're not, we're not doing our job. And I think
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: that's just a crucial aspect of all of this. that
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Bart's emphasis on language. I noticed it when I was
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: reading through his church dogmatics, like back in the day.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: But I mean, here, I think it comes out so
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: well and so clearly that to be the church, we
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: have to speak the language of the church. And in
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: speaking the language of the church, we're signaling that we're
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: living life on God's terms, not on the terms of
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: the world.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: And to be clear, you and Bart are not saying
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: we invent our own languages so that no one understands us.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: No, no Klingon.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: Correct, correct. But the issue at play, I've said that
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: a lot this episode, it's an important one, is sort
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: of akin to Norman Worsba has a book where he's advocating,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: speaking of creation rather than nature. Not because he sees
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: nature as a four-letter word, but because what he's really
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: trying to do is to emphasize that when we're talking
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: about the rest of the things around us that include us,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: we are making an explicit linguistic connection to God in
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: the moment. That it's not just the tree out there.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: It's not just my body, your body. It's not just
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: the dog. but all of us are the work, the
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: handiwork of a God who created. And that places us,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: again to the Bart point, within a timeline, or if
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: you prefer, a story. And that story is one that
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: sees us between creation and new creation. And more specifically
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: in our moment, between the cross and new creation. And
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: that's what I think Bart's getting at. That's where the
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: saltiness of the church comes in being deliberate with language,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: even poetic with language. Sometimes poetry can seem too opaque,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: but there's a kind of prose that can be poetic,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: as Owen Barfield talks about, that enables us to take
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: something and signal to something bigger. And that's the call,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: maybe on the little level, to say creation instead of nature.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: But it's also a call to say we won't just
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: simply repeat the talking points that a group of people
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: want us to consolidate their political power base. Our goal
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: here is to testify to the work of reconciliation that
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: might include some of those talking points, but never on
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: their linguistic terms. And includes a lot of other things
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: that invariably any given party is leaving out. Thoughts? I
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: think we lost each other again.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's always a re-situation. A little bit.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: I'll clip it there and then I'll start over again.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: Because we need to close it out anyway. Yeah, I
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: think what Bart talks about here is there's a re-situation
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: that has to happen for the church to be the
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: church in the world. And we're always under pressure to
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: adopt the identities that the world gives us. And to
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: somehow think that we're defined by those identities as opposed
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: to being defined by Christ. And I think what he's
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: trying to get at in this whole letter is, look,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: if the church is being the church, that's what needs
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: to be done. And the decisions that come from the
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: church being the church are going to be the faithful
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: decisions that are according to the scriptures. And if they
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: end up, you know, supporting the war, not supporting the war,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: people go out and buy war bonds. They don't go
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: out and buy war bonds. These are things that I
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: think he would leave up largely to individual discernment, so
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: long as the church is being the church. And so, man,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I think this series has been interesting.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: I always love reading Barth. Like I said, I've enjoyed
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: the Barman Declaration. I think it's a fantastic document, and
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: I could see it informing a lot of what he's
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: writing here. I'm not exactly sure the timeline of when
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: these were written, whether Barman was first and this was second,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: but I think Barman was first. But either way, this
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: has been a really great conversation and appreciate you throwing
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: this letter out there so we could discuss it as
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: part of our faith and politics series. So thanks, man.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been great.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody. Well, we're going to close this episode out.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: Keep listening to Thinking Christian. We're in the midst of
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: a faith and politics series leading up to the midterm
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: elections in November. And the goal really is to provide
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: you with some different frameworks to think through how your
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: faith connects to politics and how really these things should
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: emerge so that you can love politically on God's terms
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: as opposed to loving politically on the political party's terms.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: And so hopefully this has been helpful, good, helpful discussions,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: and just encourage you to take a listen to some
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: of the other guests we've had on. We've had some
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: great people on. So check out those episodes. And otherwise,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: we'll catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: Take care. Just want to take a second to thank
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.