Mission-Conference - March 2006 - Greenville
Dr. Jürgen-Burkhard Klautke
Dreihäuser Platz 1
D - 35633 Lahnau
e-mail: klautke@aol.com
The Reformed Faith in German speaking Europe, and what our Church,
the Confessing [Evangelical] Protestant Reformed Church) stands for
Dear brothers in Christ
First: Thank you very much for the invitation to speak here at this conference. The topic is The Reformed Faith in German speaking Europe,
and what our Church the Confessing [Evangelical] Protestant Reformed Church) stands for
I will come to this topic in a few minutes.
However I think it would be good to tell you a bit about my background first, so that you can better assess what I say.
I grew up in a Christian home in the north of Germany, but my parents didn’t belong to a Reformed Church. When I was a teenager the literature I read was generally pietistic, and somewhat dispensationally orientated.
In 1974 I began to study theology at a seminary which had been founded a few years earlier in Switzerland. At that time the theology of Karl Barth and that of Rudolf Bultmann still dominated in Germany and German-speaking countries. The latter became known primarily for his program of demythologization.
This Seminary was founded in 1970 in order to oppose the theological currents dominating the German-speaking theological faculties at that time.
It did not hold to any particular denominational confession but it was what one would describe as "Bible believing". However, there were some reformed theologians teaching at this Seminary. They came both from English-speaking countries and from the Netherlands.
Through them I got to know reformed theology for the first time. When two professors asked me toward the end of my studies in Switzerland whether I would like to continue studying, it quickly became clear to me that I had to continue in the direction of reformed theology.
The Netherlands were - geographically speaking - the nearest option, so that‘s where I chose to continue my studies.
First I went to the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam (Free University in Amsterdam). It was said about it in Basel, Switzerland that it was no longer faithful to Scripture but one could certainly still study there. The area in which I wanted to specialize, was that of Systematic Theology.
I later switched to the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Churches (Liberated) in Kampen.
However, I changed not only the Theological Seminary but also the area in which I wanted to continue studying. While I was studying Systematic Theology (Dogmatics) at the Free University in Amsterdam, I concentrated on the area of Christians Ethics at the Theological Seminary in Kampen.
The reasons for this change were justified purely on theological grounds. The Free University criticized Scripture, and I was looking for a theological course where the Holy Scripture is recognized as being the inerrant and infallible Word of God.
In 1989 I got a call from an evangelical Seminary in Germany to teach Christian Ethics and Reformed Theology.
In 1997 I was asked to stand in for my doctor-father in Kampen and so I lectured between 1997 and 1999 in Kampen on Christian Ethics for two years. Besides this I also held some lectures at the Free Evangelical Theological Seminary in Germany.
By the end of the nineties a theological trend had arisen in the Free Evangelical Theological Seminary in Germany which finally led to my resignation. They trend included ideas about church-growth, as represented by Bill Hybels ("Willow Creek") at that time and a little later also by Rick Warren.
Because two colleagues and I had said that we didn't approve of this development, we were forbidden to say anything against it. There was only one option left to us after that, namely to leave the seminary.
A few churches had come into being in the mid-nineties. From now on, I will call them Confessing Churches. I was involved within these churches. They stood up against the theological currents which presided in the “State” church and also in the Free Churches of Germany. (I will say more about these theological currents soon.)
The question arose: Where could these churches get their pastors from? It was for these and other reasons that we decided to start a Theological Seminary of our own. This seminary was founded in the year 2000. We have 8 students at the moment. Our Seminary is called the Reformed Theological Seminary. [or: Seminary of Reformational Theology].
I emphasize that we call ourselves reformed (reformational). We see ourselves in the tradition of the reformation. Our primary aim is to make sure that the Word of God is preached from the pulpits again, and that it is at the centre of the service.
As of one year ago I also teach as guest professor at the Theological Seminary in Switzerland at which I had begun my studies in 1974.
So much for my personal history. I am married and have four children. I am here with my wife and my oldest son.
My first point is about:
As you have listened you have already heard a bit about the theological situation in Germany – I could even say – in the German speaking countries and beyond as far as I know. I can be very brief in answering this question: What is the state of the reformed faith in Germany? There is none.
Let me explain what I mean.
If you told a German that you are reformed, he would generally not understand what you mean. Should you meet someone who says he understood you please be careful. My experience has shown me that he would understand you be saying: “I am a follower of Karl Barth.“
There is a group of independent reformed churches near the border between the Netherlands and Germany which calls itself old reformed. These old reformed churches have approximately 7000 members.
Several years ago I was invited to speak at a young people’s meeting of these churches. Outwardly everything appeared to be respectable. But I discovered that inwardly many young people had drifted away from the faith that is supposed to shape their lives
I also noticed that many parents and even elders of these churches did not see it or want to see it.
What is the situation of the church in Germany?
Unlike the United States of America we still have an official protestant “State” church which consists of so-called Lutheran and Reformed churches. But sadly, humanism and syncretism effectively have the rule. So in effect it doesn’t matter whether the tradition is Lutheran or Reformed.
As these churches are financed through taxes they are relatively rich, but few people attend services there. Even today two thirds of all Germans still belong to an official church (Roman Catholic or Protestant), but only about 2 to 3 per cent of these people attend church regularly. In all of Europe church attendance decreases year by year. The attitude of an average European is: The time of Christendom has passed. People have got over it.
Let me illustrate this to you by means of a city in Switzerland. I’ll pick Geneva, the city where the reformer John Calvin lived and preached. In 2000 only 17% of the Genevans belonged to a protestant church. And the ones who still belong to the (“State”) church, do not feel connected with her. For the vast majority, affiliation with a church is a mere tradition.
Today Europe is in the middle of a far reaching break with tradition. This post-Christian Europe is not simply a heathen or paganistic Europe in the conventional sense of the terms. For at least there were gods in paganism, but now a spiritual vacuum reigns. A sociologist once formulated it in the following way: The final instance is the single person. The normal European lives without any committed relationships. Answering the question: Why are you in the world? 53 per cent of the Germans say: I want to enjoy life.
What is the situation at the theological faculties of the German-speaking universities?
For this I will describe the theological faculty in Marburg. The university of Marburg was founded in 1527 by the then count Philipp the Magnanimous [of Hesse]. It is regarded as the oldest protestant university in the world.
Two years after its foundation in 1529 this university was the scene of the ”religious conversations of Marburg“ which took place between Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Butzer and Philipp Melanchthon.
Here the topic of the Lord’s Supper was debated. As you know this issue led to the breach between Luther and Zwingli.
Today the essential message of the theological faculty of the university of Marburg is as follows:
The three so-called Abrahamitic religions Christendom, Judaism and Islam actually teach the same ideas. These three religions are merely different ways to the same God.
This syncretism taught at the university of Marburg is nothing exceptional, but corresponds to what is taught at most German theological faculties at the moment.
Effectively we are experiencing the disintegration, the self-destruction of Christianity to an extent which has presumably never been observed before.
In the “State”church church-workers enter today into dialogue with all possible groups, with homosexuals, with lesbians or with pastors living in homosexual partnerships and prostitutes but not with people who hold fast to the Holy Scripture to the best of their knowledge and belief.
Christians who hold fast to the Holy Scripture, the dogmas of the old church and the confessions of the reformation are called fundamentalist sectarians. One does not shrink from lumping them together with the Afghan Taliban or other Islamists.
Above all a feminist theology prevails in the “State” church. To the question: “Who was Jesus Christ actually?“ one hears the answer: “A human brother who wanted to set up a new kingdom of liberal brotherliness and sisterliness in the world. A lady theologian in Germany claims: Jesus was the first man of the human race who broke through the insanity of manhood.
As you know, homosexuality is condemned in the Old and in the New Testament. It is judged as a destruction of the order which God has assigned for this creation (Rom. 1:26-27).
Today in the synods it is no longer discussed whether homosexuality is acceptable or not, Instead it is said that people in Biblical times did not know about the possibility or ability of love between man and man or woman and woman respectively.
Homosexual couples are blessed in church meetings which cannot be distinguished from conventional weddings between a man and a woman.
The Holy Scripture as the infallible, inerrant word of God has been abolished. That is exactly the opposite of the thoughts and confessions of the reformers like Luther and Calvin.
For the reformers the teaching about Jesus’ work of salvation was doubtless the very heart of the gospel.
Already around the end of the 19th century German theologian wrote his widely known book “What Is Christianity?” in Germany. In this book he taught that not Jesus Christ, the Son, and his work of salvation but God, the loving Father, is the center of the gospel. For this theologian it was a myth that the Son of God had to die the atonement death on the cross. - That was the old liberal theology.
Meanwhile we are living in the postmodern era. Here likewise Christ’s work of reconciliation is denied and Christianity is adapted to the spirit of the age. That means: Today the rejection of the reconciliation work of Christ is feministically orientated.
In Germany we witness today a matrification of God (“God as mother“). This is combined with a deification of the earth as “our great mother”. In this context one speaks also of a gaia-centric theology. This word includes the Greek noun ”gaia” =(earth). The earth is shifted in a naturalistic sense into the center of theological thinking.
This gaia-theology wants to annul the distinction between God (the creator) and his creation. It wants instead to establish a universal naturalism.
Here liberation does not mean to be free from the bondage of sin but it means harmony and consciousness of solidarity between all people, animals, plants, the air, the oceans, the deserts, the mountains and the valleys. Today one an all-reconciling universalism is propagated.
For this postmodern theology the divine is immanent in this world. It is the task of the Holy Spirit to renew the world. Nevertheless this “spirit” does not come from God, but it is the maternal force working in the creation. Therefore this so-called “holy spirit” does not come from God but from the depths of the earth.
One is informed that the effectiveness of this so-called “spirit of God” is hindered primarily by the understanding of God as a god who exists outside of this world and rules this world in a free and sovereign way.
Man should no longer comprehend himself as created in the image of God but as a part of the earth.
Taking the place of the Saviour is the redeemer mother earth with its host of spirits and demons. People learn to identify themselves with this mother earth in Christian workshops.
It is no longer all about reconciliation with God, the Almighty, the Holy One, but about reconciliation with the circles (circulation) of nature. Instead of attempting to overcome this world through the hope for a new heaven and a new earth they try to dip into nature.
It is from this position that these people criticize Holy Scripture. Thus a theologian writes: Egypt, Babylonia and India have still experienced the divine in the unity of man and animal. But the election- and covenant-theology of the Old Testament is just an expression of human arrogance.
… Whereas the contemporary myths of the Indians or Egyptians tried to capture the natural history of the world in huge spaces of time, the cosmos and its history in the Old Testament shrink into a history of a few thousand years. So these theologians criticize that in Scripture, the world is measured according to human measures of time too.
In other words, the statement on the first page of the Bible that God created the world in six days is rejected in this “theology” but not because it contradicts a Darwinistic orientated world view. (Darwinism – with its struggle for life and its linear development of time – is thought to be a male orientated philosophy.) The statement that God created this world in six days contradicts the view in which nature is regarded as a gigantic circulation (circle) of life and death.
In this gaia-theology / philosophy it is not all about a hope which transcends death, but its highest value is the finding of a balance between life and death. Death is no longer understood as the wages of sin, but rather it is seen as an eternal circulation viewed as a pre-requisite (condition) for life.
Let me point out in this context that approximately a quarter of the Europeans believe in reincarnation, that is, in a rebirth within the eternal cycle of nature.
This so called gaia-centric theology is rooted in an animistic naturalism and a Chinese universism. It is in fact the negation of biblical Christianity.
As everybody knows the prophets of the Old Testament stood up against naturalism.
For example the prophets Amos and Hosea resisted to the death this mixture between God, who had delivered his people from slavery, and the gods of the Baals and the Asherahs.
This gaia-centric theology denies the understanding (comprehension) of God, of man, of salvation as the reformers treasured it.
As this theology is proclaimed today in Germany more or less openly from the lecterns and the pulpits, perhaps you can estimate roughly what the state of the Reformed Theology in Germany is: It does not exist!
1. The Reformed Faith in German speaking Europe (with regard to the evangelical world)
However, I still want to give a second answer to the question about the state of Reformed Faith in Germany.
So far one might argue that what you are saying here is valid for the theology at the liberal and postmodern faculties.
But you might wonder: Are there really no Christians in Germany, that is people who know Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord and who read their Bible daily? Is there not something like of a Reformed Faith there? Isn't anything of the Reformed faith available in these Christian communities?
In answer I point out first of all that there are considerably less of these “free” churches in Germany than here in the US. The number of the Christians is substantially lower. But unfortunately even there I must inform you of a disillusioning picture.
In the free churches (congregations) confrontation with the world is no longer wanted. Instead, the search for compromises is … more or less the norm.
Yes, it is true: gaia-theology is not propagated. (Presumably many haven't heard the word yet.) Actually, feminist theology isn’t wanted either. But instead of these the gospel is put across as "seeker-friendly", "seeker-orientated". This means that Christianity is popularized.
This popularization of Christianity looks quite different than the thoroughly liberalized version. But at the core it is always all about putting the gospel across "softly" to people.
On the one hand plenty of activities are offered in the free churches. There are groups for all possible interests: children, teenagers, elderly people, women, men, addicts, foreigners. People gather in order to do handcrafts, to play and to talk about all possible issues. All this is not all about preaching the gospel to the people who gather there, but the emphasis is on making them feel comfortable. The proclamation of the gospel is to be carried out incidentally.
A specifically postmodern form of this method is as follows: The emotions of the people are stimulated in order to make them forget the stress of everyday life and make them feel well. Events which usually include loud music are organized. While the apostle Paul demanded: "Brethren, be not children in understanding." (1Corinthians 14:20), here we see a [virtual] reinfantilization of man.
Adult people in these so-called services behave like little children who give way to an apparently big urge for movement.
Every attempt at being a responsible Christian is largely suffocated with emotional tenderness. I point out that this form of Christianity is absolutely connected to the matriarchal religiousness already mentioned.
Here also God is pictured, so to speak, as the great mother-of-all who forgives everything and above all understands everything. If one actually wants to announce the gospel in this framework, it is stated as a rule according to the formula: "God loves you and has a plan for your life!"
Here the omnipotent, righteous, holy God who demands repentance isn't proclaimed any more. I remind you of the apostle Paul, who announced at the Areopagus: "but now (God) commandeth all men everywhere to repent." (Acts 17:30)
Instead of proclaiming this God one begins to exert emotional pressure on the listener. One presses the emotionally struck one to repeat a prayer and describes this as “conversion”. This so-called conversion is then reflected in testimonies such as: Jesus has adopted (accepted) me, because I gave my live to Jesus. Man is in the center here. As a rule there is no talking about God’s covenant of grace or about his election.
But one can say: “emotions are a part of being human”. It isn't a bad thing at all to appeal to man via the emotions.
To this I respond: The manner of the proclamation gives the impression that truth is not an important matter. (After such a sermon: the person doesn't expect any more that there is truth.)
One no longer wants to hear sermons aimed at repentance. Instead one desires a dialogue, that is free of any claim that there is the truth but which appeals more to feelings and experiences of one’s own soul.
In preaching one likes to take up psychology. The problems of man aren't seen any more as stemming from his separation from God but as psychological.
The proclamation of the gospel is brought into the service of a therapeutic process. It is presupposed implicitly that the unhurt (emotionally healthy) person described by psychology is the same as the one who is saved by the gospel of reconciliation.
So the gospel and its fruit are infiltrated by psychology, its contents, aims and methods. This happens when the preacher treats the person just as has become common in our culture: Man is not considered primarily as a person separated from God, a sinner, but as a victim either of his environment, his education or his complexes and his genes.
Or one thinks man can reorient himself with the instrumental help of biblical imperatives and psychological insights. Through this way (method) man can reach “inner healing” and also cure his broken relations.
This form of the "gospel" primarily tries to heal wounds and the broken relations so that one feels himself well again. If somebody has committed adultery, this isn't so bad, because God understands, accepts and forgives everything (like a loving mother).
But if the expectation of an “inner healing” is carried into the gospel, then a wrong gospel is preached. If one takes into consideration psychological categories in order to diagnose a person’s problem and determine the target-setting of the "counselling" and if one expects to find the solution in psychotherapeutic steps, then one no longer preaches Scripture and the gospel but a Christian lacquered psychotherapy.
Here one takes on the psychological thinking and expectations of the listener. Far too many times the problem is misjudged as a question of feelings, when the real problem of the listener in God's eyes is his separation from God and his neighbour, not the question of whether he feels well or not. This is a man centred and therefore a wrong gospel.
There is still another form of so-called evangelization in these churches (congregations).
Here, too, the focus is not on the proclamation of God’s authoritative word according to: “Hear Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.”
But here one wants to evangelize with the strength of one’s own life. What happens in this method reminds me of D.F. Schleiermacher, the father of liberal theology. He held the opinion that a religious movement started out from Christ which was passed on to the apostles and then to many generations after that. This movement will spread to others and in this way Christianity will spread.
What we experience here is nothing else but a very dangerous form of natural theology.
Please don't misunderstand me. My criticism is not with the idea that Christians should lead an orderly life in the sense of Christian ethics. This goes without saying.
But I regard as a basic characteristic of the Holy Scripture that it describes the lives of people in quite a number of places from the negative side in order to magnify God's mercy. The Bible does this with the lives of David and Paul. In David's case, his sin and God's forgiveness are a great comfort for all adulterers and those who have become guilty in some other way.
David says in Psalm 51:13-17:
“Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise. For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem. Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.”
This is anything but human self-representation. The psalmist explicitly wants to extol God's justice and teach the sinners God's ways so that they turn back to him.
Or let's look at Paul. The apostle Paul points to himself as an example of God's free grace. He doesn't expect his self-representation to bring people to faith but he expects explicitly the preaching of the cross to accomplish this. This word causes the faith of his listeners, a faith which is not based on human wisdom but on God's power (1Corinthians 1).
Evangelizing with the help of psychology…
Evangelizing through life...
Furthermore the proclamation of God's word take place by a variety of other entire forms today. One claims that the gospel is also announced through these.
These include show elements like theatre, pantomime, film, art and most of all music. But especially the music, so popular today, shows again that it is not so much about contents but rather about human states.
Within the last few years this emotional stimulation has become virtually an industry in itself. Here one falls back upon the marketing strategies of sales and advertising experts. All this is stimulated by the question: Which methods, with avenues must to be taken so that the church gets more members?
The gospel propagated here becomes an article of consumption, whose primarily concern is success in life.
We don't hear anything about heaven and hell, eternal salvation and eternal damnation. Instead, people who supposedly have been healed hop across the stage and radiant converts present their newly found "life with Jesus".
In fact, these forms of emotional "Jesus experiences" are based on a feminization and reinfantilization of Christianity.
Here the word of the apostle Paul: "When I became a man, I put away childish things." (1Corinthians 13:11) is flushed away with a lot of manipulative music and marketing strategies.
This too is an expression of the self-destruction of biblical Christianity.
This is my second answer to the question about the state of the reformed faith in Germany. My last point is:
3. What does the Confessing [Evangelical] Reformed Church (BERG) and our Seminary stand for
When deism arose in the 17th century God was separated from the world. God only acted as a kind of watchmaker who had set this world in motion and then, however, left it to its fate.
In the 18th and primarily in the 19th century, after this process had taken place, the inevitable questions about the historical development process became the focus of attention. The philosophies of Hegel or Darwin were merely different forms of this way of thinking.
Finally, then, historicism arose at the end of the 19th century: There was never a fixed truth and there had never been one. Everything is in flux.
However, if there isn't any truth outside of man, then – according to the people's demand – the truth can be found only in man himself, that is, in the existence of man. The existentialism arose, the predominant philosophy in the 20th century. This existentialism was still convinced that the single human being could find the truth in himself – in whatever way.
But at the end of the 20th and in the beginning of the 21st century man has given up asking for truth. Instead he flees into a state of intoxication.
For men’s attitude towards the Word of God this means: Beginning with deism and then increasingly in the following centuries man has had difficulties believing that the all-powerful God gave his word as a truthful, life-creating word. It is this Word of God which as "the seed of rebirth" procreates man into life (1Peter 1:23).
Therefore it must be the task of Christ`s church – including our small church – to confess that God's Word is the means by which he saves people. In other words: In the center of the service stands the Word of the sovereign God. Here the center of the gospel is the message: God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself (2Corinthians 5:19).
Such a proclamation is only possible via confrontation, not in a kind of conformity or even retreat into a religious idyll. The prophets in the Old Testament never saw themselves as assistants for the fulfilling of a need-orientated religiousness striving after quietness. They didn't sell any wrong dreams and illusions but they protested against a false religiousness.
The Confessing [Evangelical] Reformed Church wants to do the same.
We want to keep to the Holy Scriptures as the inerrant and infallible word of God which is inspired and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness (2Timothy 3:16).
We do not want to be conformed to the world, but we want to be transformed by the renewing of our mind (Romans 12:2).
Therefore we have called ourselves “confessing” and adopted several creeds. First of all the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563. We appreciate it for teaching us the marvellous reformed doctrine.
In Germany we have quite a lot of „popular“ Arminian heresies, for example the Pentecostal movement and the charismatic movement.
Because of this we adopted the Berlin declaration of 1909 which refutes the errors of Pentecostalism.
In addition to this we due to the theological situation in Germany have adopted the Chicago-Declaration of 1978 which confesses the inerrancy of Holy Scripture.
As I mentioned before, we belong to a small group of churches, called Council of Confessing Protestant [Evangelical] Churches.
It is a working committee of independent congregations which seek to counter the growing apostacy within the German churches and confess again the infallible Word of God. The creed shared by all Confessing Churches is the Theological Declaration of 2000 which consists of 15 articles that oppose popular modern heresies.
This is – in short - what our church stands for.
In view of an increasing form of Christianity which one probably cannot help describing as a growing Baalization it is all about confronting people with the sovereign God and his work of salvation in Christ on the basis of the inerrant Word of God.
This confrontation means that the gospel is: “to the one the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life.” (2Corinthians 2:16).
A "renewal" of the church, a reformation, cannot be organized.
It is not "feasible", especially not through spectacular events or entertainment. On the contrary: The more spectacular events are organized in order to get the "church life" going, the faster one approaches intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy.
But this situation does not mean resignation, but the opposite. The gospel of Jesus Christ and his work of salvation are being proclaimed by all the wounds one suffers in life. This gospel is preached in the knowledge that faith in God is the victory which has overcome the world.
Many thanks for your attention.
If you have questions feel free to ask.