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APPENDIX 1. Theological Declaration of Barmen (Confessing Church, May 1934) 1. “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold through the door but climbs in somewhere else, he is a thief and a robber. . . . I am the Door; if anyone enters through me, he will be saved” (John 10:1, 9). Jesus Christ, as he attested to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear, and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. We reject the false doctrine that the church could and should recognize as a source of its proclamation, beyond and besides this one Word of God, yet other events, powers, historic figures, and truths as God’s revelation. 2. “Jesus Christ has been made wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption for us by God” (1 Cor. 1, 30). As Jesus Christ is God’s assurance of the forgiveness of all our sins, so, and with equal seriousness, he is also God’s mighty claim [Anspruch] upon our whole life. Through him befalls us a joyful deliverance from the godless fetters of this world for a free, grateful service to his creatures. We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords—areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him. 3. “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body [is] joined and knit together” (Eph. 4:15–16). The Christian Church is the congregation of the brethren in which Jesus Christ acts presently as the Lord in Word and sacrament through the Holy Spirit. As the church of pardoned sinners, it has to testify in the midst of a sinful world, with its faith as with its obedience, with its message as with its order, that it is solely his property, and that it lives and wants to live solely from his comfort and his direction in the expectation of his appearance. We reject the false doctrine, as though the church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions. This translation of the six Barmen theses is a conflation of Arthur Cochrane’s translation in The Church’s Confession and Douglas S. Bax’s translation in Eberhard Jüngel, Christ, Justice and Peace. Bax’s translation first appeared in the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 47 (June 1984). I found it necessary to use parts of each translation since both are somewhat awkward and hard to understand in certain sections. Each of the six theses has three parts: a quote from the Scriptures, an interpretation of the quote by the authors of the declaration, and a rejection of false doctrine by the declaration’s authors. 4. “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant” (Matt. 20:25–26). The various o‹ces in the church do not establish a dominion of some over the others; on the contrary, they are for the exercise of the ministry entrusted to and enjoined upon the whole congregation. We reject the false doctrine, as though the church, apart from this ministry, could and were permitted to give to itself, or allow to be given to it, special leaders vested with ruling powers. 5. “Fear God. Honor the emperor” (I Peter 2:17). Scripture tells us that, in the as yet unredeemed world in which the church also exists, the state has by divine appointment the task of providing for justice and peace. [It fulfills this task] by means of the threat and exercise of force, according to the measure of human judgment and human ability. The church acknowledges the benefit of this divine appointment in gratitude and reverence before him. It calls to mind the Kingdom of God, God’s commandment and righteousness, and thereby the responsibility both of rulers and ruled. It trusts and obeys the power of the...

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