The Bethel Confession: First Draft
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The following is the text of the first Draft of the Bethel Confession authored by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hermann Sasse, and others; the text of the second, longer draft, also known as "August Version," can be read here. A summary of the second version's content, along with a brief historical and theological introduction, is available here.
| The text below has been graciously provided to Lutheranwiki by Augsburg Fortress Publishing House (P.O. Box 1209 Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209), and soon will be published in Berlin 1933, the forthcoming Volume 12 of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English Edition,translated by Isabel Best and edited by Larry Rasmussen. Unless specifically noted, no part of this text may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Augsburg Fortress Publishing. |
Contents |
[edit] On the Holy Scriptures
The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the sole source and norm for the doctrine of the church. They constitute the fully valid witness, authenticated by the Holy Spirit, that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, is the Christ, Israel’s Messiah, the anointed King of the Church, the Son of the living God. Everything the church teaches must be measured solely by this guiding principle of the Holy Scriptures and be revealed as pure doctrine through it alone. The Holy Scriptures alone witness to the divine revelation, which occurred as a one-time, unrepeatable and self-contained history of salvation. We know about this history only from the prophetic and apostolic words of the Old and New Testaments, and the church can proclaim the revelation only by interpreting this Word that bears witness to it. The facts of salvation history to which the Scriptures bear witness (i.e. the election of Israel and the condemnation of its sin, the revelation of the Law of Moses, the incarnation, the teachings and deeds of Jesus Christ, his death on the cross and his resurrection, the founding of the church) are unique revelatory acts of God, which the church has to proclaim as such and as valid also for us today. It is in bearing witness to these acts of God that the Scriptures are God’s Word spoken to us; it is not because they contain general religious truths and words, which they merely illustrate by using these facts as examples. The Scriptures are the only witness to the revelation because only in them does Christ testify to himself as the Word of God made flesh. In accordance with the confessions of the Protestant churches of the Reformation period, we reject the false doctrine, in whatever form it may occur, that Christ may also testify to himself outside the Scriptures and without them, and that the Holy Spirit may be given without the external words of preaching founded on the Scriptures, and without the sacraments. (A.C. 5: “Damnant Anabaptistas et alios, qui sentiunt spiritum sanctum contingere hominibus sine verbo externo per ipsorum praeparationes et opera.” Smalcald Articles III, 8: "In short, enthusiasm clings to Adam and his children from the beginning to the end of the world—fed and spread among them as poison by the old dragon. It is the source, power, and might of all heresies, even that of the papacy and Mohammed. Therefore we should and insist that God does not want to deal with us human beings, except by means of his external Word and sacrament. Everything that boasts of being from the Spirit apart from such a Word and sacrament is of the devil." “Et in his, quae vocale et externum verbum concernunt, constanter tenendum est Deum nemini spiritum vel gratiam suam largiri nisi per verbum et cum verbo externo et praecedente, ut ita praemuniamus nos adversum enthusiastas, id est spiritus, qui jactitant se ante verbum et sine verbo spiritum habere et ideo scripturam sive vocale verbum judicant[,] flectunt et reflectunt . . .”). We reject the false doctrine that tears apart the unity of the Holy Scriptures, that claims to separate God’s words from human words for its own arbitrary reasons. The unity of the entire Holy Scriptures is Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Risen One, who speaks throughout the Scriptures wherever and whenever he wants. We are not the judges of God’s Word in the Bible; instead, the Bible is given to us so that through it we may submit ourselves to Christ’s judgment. Only the Spirit hears the Word of God from the Bible. But this Spirit itself comes to us only through the words of the Holy Scriptures in their entirety, and therefore can never, except by enthusiasm [Schwärmerei], be separated from these words. We reject the false doctrine that consults the Scriptures only as an historical document that gives examples of certain generally valid truths. It is a denial of the uniqueness and the historicity of God’s revelation to draw conclusions about the election of any other people, or perhaps of all peoples, from the election of Israel as God’s chosen people, or to conclude from God’s giving the Law of Moses to Israel that the laws of all nations are given to them by God. The saving acts of God in the Bible are significant not as examples or symbols, but rather as subjects of the church’s proclamation of the unique revelation of God.
[edit] On Creation and Sin
[edit] Faith in the Creator and natural knowledge
The church teaches that God created the world in the beginning out of nothing and is its Lord. We receive this faith only through the proclamation of the revelation of the trinitarian God, as witnessed to us by the church on the basis of the Holy Scriptures. Natural knowledge cannot deceive itself that it comprehends God as creator and the world as creation. It can recognize that there must ultimately be a first cause for the world’s existence, but cannot understand this to be an act of the Creator’s free will. God’s relationship to the world is, however, not that of a first cause to its effect, but rather that of Lord to creature. Natural knowledge begins with the world and derives the existence of God from it. Faith begins with God and the Word of God, and clings to it despite the arguments against it from worldly knowledge. In the face of death and the evil in the world, faith in God as Creator cannot arise from the world itself, but only from God’s own revealed words. Natural knowledge remains mired in the unresolved contradictions of the world. It continues to see God as enigmatic, dark and frightening. Right away it becomes involved in the problem of the divine Majesty’s secrets, which the servant is not supposed to know or try to find out. It comes to grief with the questions it asks of God. Faith knows that the contradictions can only be resolved through redemption, through a new creation by the Creator. Faith, which begins with God, and natural knowledge, which begins with the world, are no longer one and the same because we are no longer at the beginning – that is, because the world is no longer visibly and unambiguously the Word of God. For Adam, faith and natural knowledge were one and the same. The fall into sin lies between us and the beginning. Through Adam’s fall, the whole world came under God’s curse. “Cursed is the ground because of you.” We live on that cursed ground. Under the curse, God’s blessing is now hidden; under God’s wrath, the grace of God is concealed. God’s blessing and grace have never been more unambiguously visible in this fallen world. In the fallen creation, God and the devil are both at work in everything that happens. Therefore, in order to know God, we are entirely dependent on God’s self-revelation, as it comes to us through the church’s proclamation according to the Scriptures. Not through any interpretation of events in the world, but only in obedience to the Word of God in the Scriptures can we know the Creator. We reject the false doctrine that we can know God as Creator and Father without knowing Christ. For without Christ we can think of God only as an angry despot. We reject the false doctrine that this world must be fully affirmed, just as it is, as the original creation according to the will of God. If we thought of the world as unscathed by sin, it would contradict the Bible’s affirmation that sin is mortally dangerous. We reject the false doctrine that struggle [Kampf] is the fundamental law of creation, for struggle is a consequence of the Fall and is forbidden by the commandment of peace. We reject the false doctrine that certain events in history are to be clearly interpreted as visible expressions of God’s grace or of God’s wrath and evaluated as such. The high points of history and national progress, and to an equal degree periods of decline, call us to repentance and thanksgiving and represent both judgment and grace. The cross of Christ broke down completely any thought of equating great historical events with the grace of God. We reject the false doctrine that in a particular “hour of history” God is speaking to us directly, for it is enthusiasm [Schwärmerei] to think that one understands the will of God without the express words of the Holy Scriptures, to which God is bound. We reject the false doctrine that the voice of the people [Volk] could be the voice of God; this is a fanatical [schwärmerisch] interpretation of history. “They shouted in reply: ‘Not this man, but Barabbas!’” “Hosanna!” “Crucify him!”
[edit] The Orders
The church teaches that God has patience with human beings, allowing them to live in the fallen world and sustaining them there. To preserve human beings from their unbridled selfishness and keep them from destroying themselves, God imposes firm orders upon human life. These are not the orders of the original creation, but rather orders by which God keeps humankind alive for the sake of its future in Christ and the new creation. These orders of preservation are therefore of no value in themselves, but only in relation to the end to which God will bring humankind, to the new creation in Christ. Their only meaning is that human beings may and must live in accordance with them until we are redeemed. They are the valid orders of God, but have no ultimate validity. They have already been broken down and overcome, from the perspective of the end of history. The orders that we have been given are those of gender, marriage, the family, the nation, property (work and the economy), and government. Human beings cannot escape from any of these orders, nor can any of them be transferred or transformed into another. Marriage remains marriage, the nation [Volk] remains the nation, government [Obrigkeit] remains government. No aspect of any of them can be changed by any historical upheaval. No order regarding race is found in either the Bible or the Lutheran confessions. In this regard, we are referred to Acts 17:26, to the origin of the human race in one common ancestor. Because of the demands of the various orders, human beings find themselves in the midst of continuous conflict. This conflict is for us the most highly visible proof that the world is in need of redemption. Worldly authority has the responsibility for resolving the world’s conflicts, and it alone defends its legal system by the sword. Christians receive these orders, which keep human beings alive and preserve them for their future in Christ, in faith from the hand of our Creator. The orders call us to thanksgiving and repentance. Christians know that besides the resolution of conflicts by the state, to which we bow in obedience, the church’s proclamation assures us of the ultimate resolution of all conflicts through redemption in Christ. We reject the false doctrine that in this fallen world there could be any orders of ultimate significance that would not be included under God’s curse as a result of the Fall and could thus be recognized and affirmed as the original, unbroken orders of creation. For this would make it possible for humankind to return to a world without sin, and would make Christ’s death on the cross superfluous. We reject the false doctrine that because the orders of the fallen world mentioned above are not ultimately valid for Christians, they could therefore be a matter of indifference for us or without any validity at all. We therefore reject every attempt to make of the Gospel of love a law for the construction of a new, harmonious society. “At the same time it permits us to make outward use of the legitimate political ordinances of whatever nation in which we live . . . For the Gospel does not destroy the state or the household but rather approves them, and it orders us to obey them as divine ordinances. . . Accordingly, we have repeated these things so that even outsiders may understand that our teaching does not weaken but rather strengthens the authority of magistrates and the value of civil ordinances in general." A.C. 10, Art. 16. We reject the false doctrine that could consider any particular corporative order as belonging to God’s orders of creation. According to Luther’s teaching, human society is indeed ordered, but in such a way that the same person belongs simultaneously to various orders or groups (ordo oeconomicus, politicus, ecclesiasticus'). To say that a certain historical form of society is based upon natural law and is therefore an ultimate order would be to fall back into Catholic social teaching. We reject the false doctrine that would make obedience to the orders dependent on whether the person who embodies them is a Christian. It is not whether the authorities are Christian or heathen, but whether they have a right concept of their worldly office, which obligates us to obey them as God’s order. "[The Gospel] . . . commands us to obey the present laws, whether they were formulated by pagans or by others." (A.C. 16) We reject the false doctrine that holds that we ourselves are able to restore the orders of creation, which have been destroyed by sin, to their original purity. Only in Christ can the world be restored; not until the new creation will it again stand in visible purity before its Creator. "God alone can separate human nature and the corruption of this nature from each other." (F.C. I.I.III).
[edit] The Law
The orders preserve the world until its end according to God’s will. The orders are equally well known to both heathens and Christians. They are to be distinguished from the law of God. In the law, God speaks through revelation to each human being personally. It represents God’s claim to be Lord among humankind, in which we are called to offer up our complete devotion and love for God and our neighbor. The law is revealed in the Bible in numerous specific demands; these do not have the meaning for us of principles to be applied, but rather carry the authority of true witness to the Lord who commands us freely. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are in agreement on this. The church therefore proclaims the law of the Scriptures, not as a principle for us each to apply in different ways, but as the concrete claim made upon us by God as our Lord, which binds us again and again to the one Lord revealed in the Bible. A Christian receives God’s law only as it is proclaimed in the church according to the Scriptures. Christians also understand the orders within which they live as God’s law only through the Holy Scriptures. The Old Testament law differs from the laws for living and the orders of other peoples in that it is given to Israel as people of God, as the people chosen to be the church. Therefore it is not to be made the subject of comparisons, but only of proclamation. We reject the false doctrine that the orders of nations could be the same as the law of God. This only applies to the Old Testament law of the people Israel. Israel is both people and church. It alone is chosen. That this is fact is expressed in the difference between the laws of all other peoples and the Ten Commandments. The latter’s uniqueness is found in the first commandment, which denies any attempt to call upon any other orders as if they were God’s law. The entire law of Israel is valid only by virtue of this first commandment. The first and second tablets of the Ten Commandments form an indissoluble unity, and are to be proclaimed only as such. The Christian who wants to live in obedience to the orders as if they were the law of God can do so only on the basis of the proclamation of the biblical law.
[edit] Sin
The church teaches that human beings, by freely transgressing against God’s law, have fallen away from God, subsist in the misery of sin, decay, and death in their whole nature and all their doings, and have lost the image of God that was in them. The confessions say “that there is nothing sound or uncorrupted left in the human body or soul, in his internal or external powers. Instead, as the church sings, ‘Through Adam’s fall human nature and our essence are completely corrupted.’ The damage is so indescribable that it cannot be recognized by our reason, but only from God’s Word. The damage is such that only God alone can separate human nature and the corruption of this nature from each other.” (F.C. I.I.III). With the confessions, we are also teaching that human beings are not only sick, but dead to all that is good, and that from birth they are without faith, without fear of God, full of evil desires and subject to the righteous wrath of God. We reject the false doctrine that sin is merely cutting oneself off from the organic context of life. That would mean that everything we do within the organic context of life is good and without sin. But this would deny the biblical view that the organic world as well has been destroyed by the fall into sin; it would be to idolize the organic world. There are actions that do not break apart the organic context of life, but are still sinful because they are unloving. Sin is rebellion against God’s absolute claim to be Lord through the law of love. We reject the false doctrine that speculates that creation and sin both originate from the same principle, so that sin would be simply another side of creation. Creation and sin are total opposites, and can never be derived one from the other. They can be seen as God’s world and the devil’s world, although certainly God is also Lord over the devil. The Gnostic attempt to understand sin as necessary is only an excuse for sin, as if black were white; it gives people the possibility of justifying themselves, does away with reconciliation through Christ’s death on the cross, takes all seriousness out of the contrast between good and evil, and thus leads to loss of discipline.
[edit] On Christ
The church teaches that Jesus Christ is Son of God and Son of David, true God and true human being, the Sinless One in the sinful flesh, and the sole salvation of humankind; that the world without Christ is lost because of the wrath of God. We teach that Christ is the end and the fulfillment of the law, the forgiveness of all sins, the victory over death, the solution to every problem, and that he alone is the turning point of the ages. Jesus was crucified for the sake of the guilt of all people and through their lack of faith, and resurrected that we might be made righteous. With the Holy Scriptures and the confessions we call him our Lord, because he “redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, delivered me and freed me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with silver and gold but with his holy and precious blood and with his innocent sufferings and death, in order that I may be his, live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, even as he is risen from the dead and lives and reigns to all eternity.” (Small Catechism, Art. 2). We reject that false doctrine that Jesus appeared as a “flare of Nordic light” in the midst of a world tormented by signs of decay. Christ is the reflection of God’s glory (Hebrews 12) in the midst of the world, and the Son of David who was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. We reject the false doctrine that says we confess Jesus as our Lord because of his heroic devotion. He is our Lord only because he is sent by our Father, the Son and Savior crucified and resurrected for us. With the confessions we hereby reject the error of the new Arians, “that Christ is not true, essential God by nature, of one eternal divine essence with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, but that he is merely adorned with divine majesty under and alongside God the Father.” F.C. I, XII 8. We reject the false doctrine that the cross of Jesus Christ may be regarded as a symbol for a generalized religious or human truth, as expressed in the sentence “The public interest comes before private interest” (Wieneke). The cross of Jesus Christ is not at all a symbol for anything; it is rather the unique revelatory act of God, in which the fulfillment of the law, the judgment of death on all flesh, and the reconciliation of the world with God are carried out for all people. Therefore the death of Jesus is not to be compared with any other sacrificial death, and the passion of Jesus Christ should not be compared with the passion of any other person or people. Christ’s passion and cross can only be proclaimed as God’s judgment and mercy on the entire world. We reject the false doctrine that would make the crucifixion of Christ the fault of the Jewish people alone, as though other peoples and races had not crucified him. All races and peoples, even the mightiest, share in the guilt for his death and become guilty of it every day anew, when they commit outrage against the Spirit of grace (Hebrews 10:29). “Thy grief and bitter passion were all for sinners’ gain; mine, mine was the transgression, but thine the deadly pain.” “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:6. A.C. XIII 8, XXIV 56.
[edit] On the Holy Spirit
The church teaches that the Holy Spirit, true God for all eternity, is not created, not made, but proceeds from the Father and the Son; that the Spirit is given to humankind only through the external Word and the sacraments of the church; that through the Spirit those persons are drawn from all nations [Völker] whom God has chosen, who will belong to Christ’s church; that the Spirit teaches, judges, punishes and creates faith, conversion and renewal in human beings. We reject the false doctrine that the Holy Spirit can be recognized without Christ in the creation and its orders. For it is always as proceeding from the Son that the Holy Spirit judges this fallen world and establishes the new order, above all nations, of the church as the people of God. Only because the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son does the church receive its mission to all nations. The rebellion against this teaching about the Holy Spirit is an ethno-nationalist [völkisch] rebellion against the church of Jesus Christ. C.A. I: “Therefore all heresies . . . are rejected . . . which hold that . . . the Holy Spirit is a movement induced in creatures.” Ap. XXIV: “For the Holy Spirit works through the Word and the Sacraments.” Art. Sm. III, VIII.: “In these matters, which concern the spoken, external Word, it must be firmly maintained that God gives no one his Spirit or grace apart from the external Word which goes before. We say this to protect ourselves from the enthusiasts, that is, the “spirits,” who boast that they have the Spirit apart from and before contact with the Word.”
[edit] On Justification and Faith
The church teaches that godless humankind can find its way to a merciful God only through faith in Jesus Christ, who was crucified and resurrected as intermediary for us. This faith is given by the Holy Spirit through Christ’s Word. Against human reason, against the pride of the flesh, against conscience, faith clings solely to the biblical Word of the promise of God’s grace. It is through this faith alone that we are justified. C.A. IV. We reject the confusion of trust in God with faith. There is a heathen way of trusting in God that is limited to ideas of divine providence, an immodest confidence that fearlessly claims God’s mercy as something to be taken for granted and asserts to all the world its own justification by God. This confidence is fixated on what is going on in today’s world and knows nothing of faith in the future, in the end of all things in Christ. In contrast, Christian faith in Luther’s sense is wholly bound to Christ as the Word of God, Christ who goes with us to judgment, allows us to die before God and in his unseen mercy and power calls us back to life. Christian faith knows God’s wrath; it knows of God’s wrath and is repentant, fears God and sees God’s grace as the miracle of miracles that the world cannot comprehend. Thus Christian faith is always oriented toward the end of the world.
Heathen trust in God sees God as a nameless power to which one must submit, as destiny. Christian faith recognizes God, revealed in Christ alone, as the living, holy, just and merciful Father and Lord. For a Christian, to trust in God means to accept the world obediently from the hand of this God who is revealed in Christ, to take Christ’s cross upon oneself and to carry it in the power of the promise that at the end of all things God will create a new heaven and a new earth. Heathen trust in God lives with reference to the world and its fate, while Christian trust in God lives with reference to the end of all things, the last days.
We reject as Israelite thinking the teaching that at the Last Judgment God will ask people only whether they have been “decent folk”. This is a basic misunderstanding of the Gospel’s meaning and of the faith in Luther’s sense. In judging humankind, God intends only to ask whether we have believed in Christ, and this faith is to justify each of us before God. This faith is the work of God, and it bears fruit in the good works for which God prepared us beforehand, cf. Ephesians 2:10. We reject the doctrine that the meaning of the Gospel is lighthearted trust in God, knowing one’s duty, and the will to conquer. The meaning of the Gospel is to repent (to turn back, to change one’s mind), and to believe in the good news of the kingdom of God in Christ.
[edit] [The Church of Christ]
The church of Jesus Christ, as it has understood itself since New Testament times, is not one among many religious communities, namely the community of those persons who, as distinct from the members of other religious communities, confess the Christian religion. There is no such thing as “church” as a general phenomenon in the history of religion, of which the Christian church would only be a particular case. In calling itself the body of Christ, the church is making a statement that has no analogy in the history of human religion, and which cannot be understood at all by those outside the church. Everything the church says about its own nature must appear to the outside world as foolishness or presumptuousness. Thus all such statements will not only meet with lack of understanding, but will be opposed by the world. What church is, is unknown to any worldly body of knowledge, neither that of history nor that of sociology, and no statesman knows it on the basis of his craft. It can only be known through faith in Jesus Christ the Lord. The prerequisite for church to exist is solely that Jesus of Nazareth, the Crucified and Risen One, is the Christ and the Lord. If he had not risen from the dead, if he were not the Lord to whom every knee shall bow, then there would be at the most a Christian religious community, but not a church. Church is that place, or more precisely, that place becomes church, where the One who, through the words of the Gospel and through the sacraments, is truly and personally present as Lord, calls people to repentance and to faith, forgives their sins and gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit. There the church emerges as the congregatio sanctorum, the community of saints, that is, of justified sinners, the people of God, the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit. Thus the church is not constituted by human beings, not even by the faith or the moral qualities of persons, but only by Jesus Christ the Lord: ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia. It does not owe its existence to the will of human beings. Its existence or non-existence therefore does not depend on our good will or lack of good will, but only on the sovereign will of God, whose almighty and loving Word calls people from the nations of the earth to be the people of God, wherever and whenever God pleases. As people of God and body of Christ, hidden from the eyes of humankind, this church is nevertheless not a civitas Platonica, but rather a reality in the world. It is hidden within the visible institutions and social forms in which it enters into history. Only faith can recognize the true church in the outward expression of the forms that Christianity takes within history. And it is not the particular religious or moral qualities of these historical communities that make them recognizable as church, but rather the presence of the pure teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments according to their institution. The Word and the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, the means of grace through which God is pleased, at any time or place, to give the gift of the Holy Spirit, are the sole notae ecclesiae. The holiness of the church consists solely in the words of the Gospel, through which God justifies sinners and calls them into the holy company of the people of God. Wherever on earth the pure Gospel is preached, there the one, holy, catholic church is a reality in the world. Thus it is certain that the Word of God, the Word of the Creator and Perfecter, of the Judge and Reconciler, “shall not return to me empty”. Because the church bases itself solely on the presence of Jesus Christ in Word and sacrament, therefore the forms in which the ministry of preaching the Word and administering the sacraments is carried out, and the forms in which the historical church organizes itself as an earthly societas, are not of the essence of the church. No constitution was established for the church at its founding. However, this does not mean that the church has no need of outward forms and orders. When Jesus Christ chose the twelve apostles and sent them out into the world, he founded the church as an earthly entity that appears in history. It is God’s will that the church should take shape as a particular community amongst the institutions of human life (marriage, family, nation, state), within their context but distinct from them. For example, the preaching ministry was established from the foundation of the church, side by side with the offices, established by God, of the nation and of worldly authority. However, the forms in which the church organizes itself in this world as a body incorporated under public law are taken from the world’s example, and they remain part of the world. The church has not only the freedom, but also the obligation, to adapt itself in its outward forms to the various cultures and historical periods, so that the Gospel may go forth into the world and be proclaimed by the church to each people in its own language. With this statement we declare anew our allegiance to the church’s teaching as set forth in Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession, and in Articles 5, 8, 14 and 28 which are indissolubly bound up with it, and as explained in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, as a fundamental doctrine of the Protestant church.
We reject these false doctrines:
- that the church is a religious association formed by the gathering together of devout individuals (Enlightenment, pietism, liberalism);
- that the true church is invisible, and that every empirical church is only an imperfect attempt to realize the ideal of the true church (idealism);
- that there could be any marks of the true church other than the Word and the sacraments, particularly that moral or religious perfection on the part of its members is of the essence of the church (perfectionism);
- that the unity of the church could depend on other things besides the unity of doctrine; that there could be a unity of the church and fellowship among churches where there is no unity of doctrine (unionism);
- that the church has a constitution that is prescribed for it, and that the existence of the true church depends on its presence (Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, Congregationalism, Irvingianism, etc.);
- that the outward form of the church is of no importance, because the teaching of the Gospel is not affected by any constitution (spiritualism);
- that church government by the sovereign princes of the Reformation period could be anything other than a temporary and provisional order established by the membra praecipua ecclesiae over against the anti-Christian papacy and the worldly bishops, who were no longer fulfilling their spiritual ministry, but rather represented the estate of secular authority and were ruling the church as such (late Lutheran teaching of the Ordo Triplex as the estates ruling the church);
- that the state government as such could have the right to rule the church, especially the right to confer offices within it and to dismiss persons from office, and to make laws that affect the teachings of the church directly or indirectly (doctrine of the absolute state, Erastianism, caesaro-papism);
- that the church ought to be absorbed into the state and more or less renounce its independent existence as a body incorporated under public law (liberalism, socialism, doctrine of the totalitarian state);
- that the church, not being tied in its essence to any particular nation, would not have to take into account, in its organization and in its preaching, the individuality of each particular ethno-national tradition [Volkstum] (internationalism);
- that the church could be the religious organization for a nation, so that it would have to provide the religious foundation for that nation’s ethno-national tradition [Volkstum], and that the territorial boundaries of that church should be the same as those of that nation (nationalism).
