Christian Language and the Reality of War

Karl Barth’s response to those critics who denounced him for not equating the Cold War with the war waged by Hitler against Europe is an important insight into the way continental theologians determined to interpret war as a metaphysical concept.

Karl Barth

 One such example of Christian language at odds with secular application is in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s definition of war and peace, in which peace was deconstructed into two possible responses: one that acknowledged peace in the world reality (Wirklichkeit) and one that acknowledged the relationship between God and humanity as the summa bonum of peace. The fact that the former could not be reconciled to the latter attenuated the relationship between the two concepts of peace in such a way that the former was diminished to something done in imitation of the latter. Unless one was ready or even capable of operating within the language provided by theological context and accepted Bonhoeffer’s worldview; namely, that true and abiding peace meant “Christian peace,” only the possibility for greater distance between a worldly and sacred context remained.

Years later, when Barth was called to comment upon the Cold War, his hesitation to describe the current situation between the West and Soviet Union as one of war reechoes the dialectical language of his German tradition. Barth’s acknowledgement of Hitler’s aggression, not delimited to hypothetical fears, was part of a stock response that became ingrained in Protestant theologians during the last half of the twentieth century. Behind Barth's analysis is a discernible principle-based ethic at work in comparing Hitler and communism, the danger of which sets up one circumstance as the absolute condition for identifying aggression.

Like other Protestant theologians of his time, Barth seems to reecho the theme of war in terms of its metaphysical understanding. True war is not simply a human concern, one of a number of ways to collate information within a range of possible responses, but the ultimate response (what Barth calls ultima ratio). War goes beyond physical aggression between countries and acts as a rejoinder against life itself. As he writes:

Today we must continue to insist that war is identical with death in the sense that it is inevitable only when it has happened. In 1938 war was an actuality, but it could have been nipped in the bud with the right kind of determination. Russia has not created a similar situation today.

He goes on to write: A war which is not forced upon one, a war which is any other category but the ultima ratio of the political order, war as such is murder. . . . Every premature acceptance of war, all words, deeds and thoughts which assume that it is already present, help to produce it. For this reason it is important that there be people in all nations who refuse to participate in a holy crusade against Russia and communism, however much they may be criticized for their stand.

The force of true war is compulsion. When society finds itself unable to resist an enemy, war is the outcome. Yet Barth claims that compulsion can be resisted “with the right kind of determination” and war avoided, though he spares us any details.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

War is initiated in a various ways, the most dangerous of which is presuming war where war has not materialized. Hysteria and suspicion serve to antagonize the conditions towards war. And aggression is intrinsically connected to war. Yet the danger of war perhaps lies in the fact that one can have war without declaring it.  In the past century, for example, the Congress of the United States has been bypassed in its authority to declare war by presidents who send troops into global conflict zones. War without war has been the result.


The orchestration of a war is more than physical ravages, but a process in which countries formally assent to actions. Rather than create a more open understanding of war as violence, Barth creates a competing structure on the grounds of compulsion, denying the  language of technicality often referenced in political theater. One might assume that this movement is simply too rigidly fixed in the continental Europe of the 1940s to have any range of effect when pointed towards subsequent global conflicts.

A helpful analogy that gives us a view into the type of distinctions drawn by theologians when faced with secular and sacred crucibles comes in the form of Bonhoeffer’s distinction between murder and destruction of the individual (with implied reference to the assassination of Hitler). For Bonhoeffer, the physicality implied by the term “individual” presents a reality beyond its physical limitations. Bonhoeffer introduced the term “destruction” to assert the elimination of the person in a way that denies the very concept of personhood created in God. While murder is the physical destruction of the body, it is secondary to the destruction of the person. In this idea, Bonhoeffer seems to imply that the murder of an individual is not enough to kill his ideas, his political revolution, or writings, movement, etc., that beyond the physical remains a general existential order. In contradistinction, destruction accomplishes the elimination of the person, for it is the complete eradication of the individual’s person and as such a denial of God who created the natural order. Why this microcosm of destruction does not expand far enough to include all individuals who have this “personhood” may be as simple as an acknowledgement that the physical contains the universal mandate of God. The concept has a certain Aristotelian appeal, yet it also recalls Bonhoeffer’s similar analysis of original sin as a communal event and not an individual sin. This discussion in his writings, I believe, was an intellectual exercise that helped Bonhoeffer overcome his own misgivings about assassination.

Barth, however, is too much a pragmatist to assign war completely to some ethereal plane of contemplation. In the end, he levels six charges against the Germany people in opposition to war.  Despite his clarion call that war is murder, a charge that those in Western democracy abhor combining and grant such actions of physical violation as a necessary evil, Barth is not altogether opposed to the reality of wars, justifiable or not. His concern for war against Russia is the inevitability of dragging Germany back into the fray after having stripped them of their militaristic powers. He adjures that there is something morally suspect in demanding a country re-engage in war which has been told to abandon war. Towards the end of the letter, this pivot from high-minded Christian ethics to the realities of the Germany people fails to create a moral bridge between the two worlds of existence. In fact, Barth outright denies the need for a “Christian word” in our day since the political system has been until now keen enough to prepare in the event of a war, a sharp derivation from Bonhoeffer who felt that despite the current political climate, God speaks. It would almost seem that Barth and Bonhoeffer mixed up their own traditions with Barth adopting the more optimistic Lutheranism of human agency while Bonhoeffer falls under the Reformed dependency on the agency of God.       

Barth’s view is clearly not contained and controlled by the conditions imposed by a wanton pacifism that has not seen or does not know the terrible reality of war. It is certainly less optimistic about an intervening God, having lived through the aftermath of WWII, than Bonhoeffer’s whose years during the 1930s were consumed with God’s place in the world and his voice leading up to war.