ESSAY:
The Church as Prophetic Sentinel
by Eberhard Busch
Dean, Faculty of Theology and Professor for (Reformed) Systematic Theology at Georg-August Universität in Göttingen, Germany; Head of the Karl Barth research group at the Faculty of Theology. 

The exercise of the office of prophetic sentinel with regard to social and political affairs is an indispensable constituent of Reformed practice. It is important to see how this office is theologically justified in the Reformed tradition. The question of its proper or improper use depends on its theological grounds. First we note that in the 16th century the Reformed affirmed the Lutheran distinction between the duties of the state and of the church. The objection is incorrect that in this matter the Reformed lapsed back into the Middle Ages and that they desired a clerical dominance over the state. The affirmation of that distinction meant in practice acknowledgment of the principle for all church action: “Without force, but only by the Word.” Of course, for Reformed thinking the “word” is not simply the opposite of “power.” The word is another form of power than the worldly: it is power that convinces by the truth.

The distinction between the duties of the church and the state compels the church to realize that it, basically, has only one duty: to proclaim the Word of God. In the Word of God–through all that humans may think, feel, do and say to themselves–God asserts himself, makes himself perceptible, begins to speak in their midst, says what he is doing, and does what he says. The Word of God, which ends life without God, and inaugurates life with God. The Word of God, which comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable. The Word of God communicates to us what God is for us in His righteousness and mercy, and then lays a claim upon us as His children in His people, in order that we might correspond as humans to his righteousness and mercy. The Word of God is always effective, even beyond our respective horizons, and therefore it pushes us, again and again, beyond our horizon into God’s wider horizon: “By this Word God upholds all things” (Hebr. 1:3).

Scripture says to us that God has spoken, in a certain, particular history, witnessed by the Bible. According to it, we can hear God’s speaking today, too. God himself speaks His word—above all in His incarnated Word. He himself initially carries out the prophetic office, because God not only says the Word of God, God is it. The church can not speak the Word of God. The church has to listen to it, and to proclaim it. “Proclaim”: this happens comprehensively in word and in deed, and also in silence and not-doing, in praying and working, in fighting and celebrating, also in the forms in which the congregation is gathered, edified and sent out. The Church exists in order to proclaim the Word of God. All its members are called to it. For all believers as such participate in the prophetic office of their Lord (Heidelberg Catechism, 31f.).

In the execution of this duty, there are two dangers. The first one is that the Church does not proclaim the Word of God, but offers what people like to hear and to have (or what the pastors think the people should think!). This would mean giving people as  tone (or perhaps cotton), instead of bread (Mt. 7:9). And this is the danger of the secularization of the church. The other danger is that the church restricts the relevance of the Word of God to selected areas of life: to the private sphere, to the inner circle of kindred spirits, excluding the Word’s rightful claim to every area of life. That is to put a lamp under the bushel basket (Mt. 5:14). And this is the danger of sacralization of the church. In that Reformed thinking connected the vertical and the horizontal line—according to the two commandments: “You shall love the Lord and you shall love your neighbor” —the Reformed could see these two dangers, and found their way between them, the way of the proclamation of the Word of God, not of humans, but to humans.

It is exactly in this way that the Church exercises its office as prophetic sentinel. For this defines the church: in it nothing else is announced than the Word of God, but without prescribing in advance where it may be valid or where not, and without limiting arbitrarily the realm of its relevance. Implicitly, every church proclamation is the office of a prophetic sentinel (Calvin on Ez.3:17). This sentinel office is wrongly practised, if it basically wants to be more and something other than simply proclamation of the Word of God. In the same way, Church proclamation is salt that lost its savor (Mt. 5:13), when it wants to be less or something other than the implicit exercise of a prophetic sentinel! Yet, sometimes it has to do this explicitly: in order to expose critically certain cases and realms that resist their exposure by the Word of God. There too, the Church has no other task than to proclaim the Word of God and not human opinions. But the Church must do it now with concrete focus upon this specific situation, not removing it from the proclamation, but asserting with clear and courageous deliberation the Word of God precisely over against the situation in which some people resist it with stubborn energy.

Let us illustrate this with the story of the 27-year-old Heinrich Bullinger, when he was called as the successor of Zwingli. The Council of Zurich wanted to employ him as preacher only on the condition that “he has not to meddle in worldly affairs, for which the civil government is responsible, but to let us do our work.” Bullinger answered: “Concerning your desire that we should preach the Word of God peacefully, we want to obey joyfully. But because there is an endless struggle between good and evil, between truth and lies, the divine word also has its discord and pungency. Therefore we are content, if you order us to preach the Old and New Testaments freely, uninhibitedly, unrestricted by human discretion. For the word of God is not chained (2Tim.2:9). Whatever is found therein, whatever it seeks and whatever it confronts, it must be openly stated”—which means, even concrete political incidents and procedures.

Bullinger was thinking along Zwingli’s lines. According to Zwingli, the Church of Christ is the church “which listens to his Word”—and the preachers are those: who “preach nothing else than the Word of God.” Where this happens, consequently, it has significance for human life together. For the divine righteousness, to which the church points in its proclamation of the Word of God, has its counterpart in a worldly society, based on human righteousness. In order to determine whether such righteousness obtains in it, there is, according to Zwingli, the one criterion: “If the weak are protected legally from the strong, even if they don’t protest.” But wherever a government neglects its duty, it seeks to hinder the proclamation of the Word of God or to change the proclamation into a discourse that serves public interests. And then the government will declare “that the proclamation should not go further than the government permits.” With regard to the objection of influential persons that the Church meddles with its social criticism in matters that have nothing to do with the Gospel, there is the pointed remark of Zwingli: “Thus spoke also the demons out of the man with an unclean spirit. ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus!’” This is dialectical: The Word of God, which the church is to proclaim, unmasks and dethrones the demonic powers which are demonic because they wish to escape from the Word of God.

According to Calvin, too, the Church has no worldly power, nor should want it. According to him, too, the Church exists only there where Christ alone rules and where therefore “the Word of God purely is proclaimed and (!) heard.” But where this happens, there is a political-social effect. Because “where God is acknowledged, there humanity is cultivated” (Calvin on Jer. 22:26). Humanity in the political sphere is a living together in which care is taken “for the general welfare and peace”. Whether this is happening, is measured again by the criterion, whether the weak are protected from the strong and whether the poor receive justice. Where God is acknowledged, there at the same time the inhumanity of society is also exposed. In his late commentary on Daniel, Calvin investigated the structures of the human concentration of power critically. He pointed out that the worldly powers persist precisely, “because everybody tolerates them silently”. And he also emphasized that evil wordly powers seek to make themselves unimpeachable by clothing themselves with religion. Therefore the office of a prophetic sentinel always includes the duty of unmasking the false prophets, who “say ‘peace’, when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14).

When the evangelical Churches in Germany to a large extent acknowledged the Nazi government as god-given and therefore were silent to its injustices, Karl Barth in an assembly of the Pastor’s Emergency Federation in Berlin in October 1933 made statements that were decisive in his expulsion from Germany. He reminded them of what they were overlooking: “What does the church say to what is happening in the concentration camps? Or to what is being done to the Jews? Does not the Church share in this guilt because it has remained silent?” And then comes the statement that precisely defines the procedure, by which, in the church, the explicit, temporally focused prophetic sentinel office must function with theological responsibility: “Whoever is mandated to proclaim the Word of God must say to such events what the Word of God says.” That summarizes exemplarily the Reformed insight in this matter. 

This article was edited by Darrell L. Guder, Peachtree Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.