Karl Barth, the Constantinian Illusion, and Christian Hope

The great Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth died on this date in 1968, so here's a mighty passage from the Church Dogmatics to serve as a tonic for ecclesial, political, economic, or academic despair:

 

What is hope, and what does it mean for the Christian who, since Jesus Christ has not yet spoken His universal, generally perceptible and conclusive Word, finds himself in that dwindling and almost hopeless minority as His witness to the rest of the world? If the great Constantinian illusion is now being shattered, the question becomes the more insistent, though it has always been felt by astute Christians. What can a few Christians or a pathetic group like the Christian community really accomplish with their scattered witness to Jesus Christ? What do they really imagine or expect to accomplish in the great market, on the battlefield or in the great prison or madhouse which human life always seems to be? "Who hath believed our report?  and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" (Isaiah 53:1). And what are we to say concerning the countless multitudes who either ante or post Christum natum have had no opportunity to hear this witness? The Christian is merely burying his head in the sand if he is not disturbed by these questions and does not find his whole ministry of witness challenged by them. He buries it even more deeply if in order to escape them, forgetting that he can be a Christian at all only as a witness of Jesus Christ, he tries to retreat into his own faith and love or that of his fellow Christians. Nor is there any sense in trying to leap over this barrier with the confident bearing of a Christian world conqueror. The meaningful thing which he is permitted and commanded and liberated to do in face of it is as a Christian, and therefore unambiguously and unfalteringly, to hope, that is, in the face of what seems by human reckoning to be an unreachable majority to count upon it quite unconditionally that Jesus Christ has risen for each and every one of this majority too; that His Word as the Word of reconciliation enacted in Him is spoken for them as it is spoken personally and quite undeservedly for him; that in Him all were and are objectively intended and addressed whether or not they have heard or will hear it in the course of history and prior to its end and goal; that the same Holy Spirit who has been incomprehensibly strong enough to enlighten his own dark heart will perhaps one day find a little less trouble with them; and decisively that when the day of the coming of Jesus Christ in consummating revelation does at last dawn it will quite definitely be that day when not he himself, but the One whom he expects as a Christian, will know how to reach them, so that the quick and the dead, those who came and went both ante and post Christum, will hear His voice, whatever its signification for them (John 5:25). This is what Christian hope means before that insurmountable barrier. This is what the Christian hopes for in face of the puzzle which it presents. But the Christian has not merely to hope. He has really to show that he is a man who is liberated and summoned, as to faith and love, so also to hope. And if he really hopes as he can and should as a Christian, he will not let his hands fall and simply wait in idleness for what God will finally do, neglecting his witness to Christ. On the contrary, strengthened and encouraged by the thought of what God will finally do, he will take up his ministry on this side of the frontier. He will thus not allow himself to be disturbed by the questions of minorities or majorities, of success or failure, of the probable or more likely improbable progress of Christianity in the world. As a witness of Jesus Christ, he will simply do - and no more is required, though this is indeed required - that which he can do to proclaim the Gospel in his own age and place and circle, doing it with humility and good temper, but also with the resoluteness which corresponds to the great certainty of his hope in Jesus Christ.

 

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics , IV/3, §73