NEIN

No European church statement on nuclear arms has created controversy more quickly than the June, 1982 declaration of the West German Reformed Alliance. The debate's intensity was sparked by the statement's use of the European tradition of status confessionis. This means that there come times in the church when Christians have to offer a confession.

Originating in the Reformation of the 16th century in regard to doctrinal issues, the notion that an issue has reached the status of confession is intended to force a distinction between teachings still Christian and teachings that must be considered un-Christian and sinful. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church used the idea to take a stand against Nazi teachings infiltrating the churches in the 1930s. In its 1934 Barmen Declaration, the Confessing Church employed status confessionis to reject any loyalty to the ideology of National Socialism.

Today we often hear that Russia is using Europe as a pawn in the propaganda war surrounding, for example, the Geneva arms reduction talks. The European peace movement is often called communist-inspired. But in order to understand the resistance in the churches, one has to go at least back to the 1950s when nuclear weapons were first placed on European soil and the church protest began. Much of it, even then, was rooted in the status confessionis argument of the Nazi era.

The June, 1982 Reformed Alliance statement has to be read against this background. At its core it offers an either/or on the European scene. The Reformed Alliance position argues in effect that you cannot be a Christian and support nuclear arms.

The Evangelical Churches of Germany (EKD), West Germany's equivalent to the U.S. National Council of Churches, has taken another position. The EKD declares that until an effective disarmament agreement can be reached, for reasons of NATO security it is necessary to compromise and to continue with some form of the present nuclear safety shield.

For some, these two summary sentences may seem oversimplified. Yet the heart of the debate circles around either resistance or compromise. In clarifying the European debate, the Reformed Alliance statement has taken a giant step ahead.

I have tried to explain many times why we need to say no to weapons of mass destruction. One cannot say these things in absolute perfection. One can point to sin only as a sinner, in fear and trembling. But one can rejoice when Christian sisters and brothers try to clear the air.
--Frederick Herzog

Preface

In its session of June 12, 1982, the Moderamen of the Reformierte Bund (the Reformed Alliance) in the German Federal Republic unanimously agreed to lay the following theses before the General Assembly of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in Ottawa, 1982.

As Germans we are living in the focal point of the tensions between the two great military power-blocks, in a zone with the greatest concentration of atomic weapons anywhere in the world, both launch pad and target of a conceivable "limited atomic war" which could extend into a universal holocaust.

It is out of this perilous situation that we are raising our voice and asking our brothers and sisters in all the world to join us in resolute resistance to the looming horror of annihilation, and to ally themselves with all those who condemn as "the logic of insanity" what we as Christians term "blasphemy."

The atomic arms race, which the politicians are still attempting to explain and justify on the basis of "the necessity of defense," has long since fallen hostage to perplexed terror, world-wide dismay and incalculable risks of the outbreak of hostilities.

H. J. Kraus Moderator

The Theses

I.

Jesus Christ is our peace. In his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead God has reconciled to himself the entire world which was at enmity with him and set all men [sic] under the consolation and the claim of his own peace. To the crucified and risen Lord belongs all power in heaven and on earth. He has sent his community into the world to spread the word of reconciliation, to witness to his peace and in obedience to his word to keep peace with all men. His peace, which the world can neither give, secure nor destroy, frees us and commits us to pray, think and work for peace among men.

This confession of our faith is incompatible with the opinion that the question of peace on earth among men is simply a matter of political calculation, and accordingly to be settled independently of the Gospel's embassy of peace.

In the face of the threat to peace posed by the means of mass destruction (both "conventional" weapons of mass destruction and A-B-C [atomic, biological, and chemical] weapons), we as church have mostly kept silence and not witnessed to the will of the Lord with sufficient decision. Now, as the possibility of atomic war is more than ever before becoming a probability, we come to this recognition: The issue of peace is a confessional issue. For us the status confessionis is given with it because the attitude taken to means of mass destruction has to do with the affirmation or denial of the Gospel itself.

II.

In Jesus Christ God has granted peace to all humanity. In Jesus Christ's act of reconciliation he grounds the new reality: The entire world is reconciled with God. It is in this reality that we are living, and it is to it that our faith and obedience throughout our life should correspond.

This confession of our faith is incompatible with all life-threatening enmity between men and all hostile, ideological images of others, by which up to now an unfettered rearmament has been supported. Hostility, readiness to destroy and requite, hate and fear of other human beings: all these deny the reality of the reconciliation of the world with God, the truth of which God has made apparent in the resurrection of the Crucified.

In confident reliance on Jesus Christ's act of reconciliation--which includes our enemy--we wish to banish all acts of unpeace, all distorted images of other people and nations, and therefore also all the means of mass destruction that are justified by such images. In Christ we are all humans who have been reconciled with God and with each other, who may not avoid, threaten, intimidate or even destroy each other as if we were unreconciled.

III.

God is the Creator and Preserver of the world. In spite of our guilt he faithfully maintains and renews his covenant with us humans; he does not abandon the work of his own hands.

This confession of our faith is incompatible with the development, deployment and use of means of mass destruction which are capable of exterminating mankind, whom God loves and has elected as his covenant-partner, and of devastating his creation.

In confident reliance on the God of the covenant, the God who is faithful, we wish no longer to allow ourselves to be surrounded, "protected" and endangered by such "means of defense."

IV.

In Christ, God has bound up his peace with the promise of and the demand for justice among human beings.

This confession of our faith is incompatible with the approval, or even the mere toleration of a "system of security" that is maintained at the expense of the starving and wretched of the earth, indeed at the price of their death.

In obedience to the God of peace and justice we wish to commit ourselves to solid reductions in military budgets in favor of the poor. In confident reliance on him we are ready to take first, even unilateral steps toward disarmament, and wish to call for and to encourage their political realization. Such first steps are:

- the fundamental commitment to resolving conflicts without the use or threat of force,

- the renunciation of ever newer weapons,

- the immediate halt to the development and deployment of new instruments of mass destruction,

- the promise not to use the available means of mass destruction in the event of war and certainly not to be the first to use them,

- the establishment of zones free of nuclear weapons,

- calculated, unilateral disarmament measures,

- prohibition and prevention of arms exports.

V.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the one and only Lord whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death. His command is at the same time the norm and limit for the whole political responsibility of Christians within the world.

This confession of our faith is incompatible with the view that the Christian could decide the question of the appropriate use of force by a state without reference to his faith and obedience. Even for a state's exercise of force there is a limit which it may not overstep.

In obedience to Jesus Christ we declare: Mass means of destruction are not appropriate or necessary instruments of force with which a state is entitled to frighten off potential military opponents or, in the event of war, to join battle against them. It is certainly the duty of the state to secure law and peace and to protect the lives of its citizens. But instruments of mass destruction destroy what they feign to protect. They deserve from the side of Christians an unconditional "No!" spoken out of confessing commitment to God the Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer, a "No without any kind of Yes."

VI.

Jesus Christ, the Lord who was crucified and raised for us, is present in the power of the Holy Spirit. Under his Lordship, which he exercises without force, and under his leadership, which coerces no one, we win our hope and confidence.

This confession of our faith is incompatible with every kind of despair and passivity in the face of the monstrous threat to peace and the fact that the effort to preserve it often seems without prospect of success.

In confident reliance on the Lordship of Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit we will not allow ourselves to be discouraged from praying, thinking and acting for peace. Since Jesus Christ is the Reconciler and Lord of the whole world, whose power does not end at the frontier of the Christian community, we also cooperate with those who are not Christians. When the way of peace leads to suffering and the cross, we commend ourselves to the consoling power of his Spirit.

VII.

God will complete the reconciliation concluded in Christ with the return of the Lord, and create a new heaven and a new earth, in which righteousness and peace will dwell without end. Though this completion of our salvation is still to come, yet it will come--for it is determined by God and pledged by him in the resurrection of the Crucified--and will begin with the raising of all who have died and with the Last Judgment.

This confession of our faith is incompatible with all frantic, aimless activism, with all blasphemous speculation on "the terrors of the last days," with all unconcern for the preservation of peace and with all political indifference towards what happens with this world.

In the hope for the return of the Lord we are set free to take provisional, partial, yet bold and decisive steps for peace. It is before him as the final Judge of our life that we must give account of what we have contributed with our own particular gifts to resisting the threat, to preventing the atomic catastrophe and to witnessing in word and action to his peace.

Frederick Herzog was professor of systematic theology at the Divinity School of Duke University when this article appeared.