Is it justifiable on the part of the State — the Christian State! — to make, if possible, Christianity impossible?
The question itself certainly stands in no need of any explanation as a preliminary to answering it. Everyone surely must say for himself that this cannot be justified.
So what needs to be explained is that what the State has done and is doing is, if possible, to make Christianity impossible. For the factual situation in our land is, that Christianity, the Christianity of the New Testament, not merely does not exist, but, if possible, is made impossible.
Suppose that the State employed 1000 officials who with their families lived by opposing and hindering Christianity, and so were pecuniarily interested in doing it — that indeed would be an attempt in the direction of making Christianity, if possible, impossible.
And yet this attempt (which after all has the advantage of openness, that it openly proposed to hinder Christianity) would not be nearly so dangerous as what actually occurs, that the State employs 1000 officials who, under the name of preaching Christianity (here precisely lies the great danger, in comparison with wishing quite openly to hinder Christianity), are pecuniarily interested in: (a) having men call themselves Christians (the bigger the flock of sheep the better), assume the name of being Christians; and (b) in having it stop there, so that they do not learn to know what Christianity truly is.
The existence of these 1000 officials amounts to this, that when you hold up alongside of them the New Testament, it is easily seen that their whole existence is an impropriety. If on the one hand people did not assume the name of Christians, the priests would have nothing to live on; but if on the other hand they were obliged to preach what Christianity truly is, this would be the same thing as to open men's eyes to the fact that the very existence of the priest is an impropriety, that even though the teacher of Christianity gets something to live on, yet to be a priest cannot be...a royal appointment, a career, and steady promotion.
And this, this consequence, does not come about in the name of hindering Christianity, it is not with this in view the 1000 officials with family are paid; no, it comes about under the name of preaching Christianity, spreading Christianity, laboring for Christianity. Between too little and too much, which are said to spoil the broth, between this too little, that men do not assume the name of Christian, and this too much, that they might learn to know what Christianity truly is, and might really become Christians, between these two is balanced, with the seriousness of a tight-rope dancer, the official, state-churchly, or national-churchly Christianity of "Christendom," which does to be sure produce, in comparison with the New Testament, astonishing results...Christians by the millions, all of the same quality.
Is not this then about the most dangerous thing that could be thought of in order, if possible, to make Christianity impossible? The "priest" is pecuniarily interested in having people call themselves Christians, for every such person is in fact (through the State as intermediary) a contributing member, and at the same time contributes to the power of the clerical order — but nothing is more dangerous to true Christianity, nothing more contrary to its nature, than to get men to assume lightmindedly the name of Christian, to teach them to think meanly of what it is to be a Christian, as if it were something one is as a matter of course. And the "priest" is pecuniarily interested in having it stop there, with the assumption of the name of Christian, and that men should not learn to know what Christianity truly is, for with that the whole machinery with the 1000 officials and state power to back them would go up in the air. But nothing is more dangerous to true Christianity, nothing more contrary to its nature, than this criminal abortion which causes the thing to stop there, with the assumption of the name of being a Christian.
And this is supposed to be laboring for Christianity, spreading it abroad, working for it!
There is to me something so abhorrent and shocking even in the thought of such a sort of divine worship, which worships God by taking Him for a fool, that I shall endeavor with all my might, as far as I am able, to ward this off, and to open the eyes of the populace to the true situation, so that they may be prevented from becoming guilty of a crime in which really the State and the priests have implicated them. For however frivolous and sensual the populace may be, there is nevertheless too much good in the people for them to want to worship God in that way.
Therefore let light be cast on the subject, let it be made clear to men what the New Testament understands by being a Christian, so that everyone can choose whether he will be a Christian, or whether, honestly, uprightly, frankly, he will not be one. And let it be said in a loud voice before the whole people that to God in heaven it is infinitely dearer that they honestly admit, as the condition precedent to becoming Christians, that they are not and will not be Christians. This is infinitely dearer to Him than this loathsome notion that to worship God is to take Him for a fool.
Yea, thus it must be done: light must be cast upon the darkness in which the subject is kept by the State or National Church. Instead of having an absolute respect for what the New Testament understands by being a Christian, and then putting to oneself the question how many Christians there may be in the land, people give a different turn to it and say, There are a million men in the land, ergo a million Christians — and so they employ 1000 officials to live off of this. And then a step further: they invert the argument and infer that if there are 1000 officials who have to live off of Christianity (and that is what we have now), then there must also be a million Christians; we must stick to it stoutly that there are a million Christians, for otherwise we cannot assure all these officials of a livelihood.
So then there are 1000 officials who live off of it, with a family, ergo there must be a million Christians. The preaching of Christianity therefore corresponds to this (to this very peculiar sort of a fix into which men have brought themselves): to work for Christianity becomes, as I have said, to get people to assume the name of Christian, and at the same time to make it stop there, and that is what I call, "if possible, to make Christianity impossible," whereby in turn (to repeat myself) the people become guilty of a crime they otherwise would be free from, that of taking God for a fool under the name of worshiping Him, which I (who to be sure have had little thanks for loving men) will nevertheless strive in every way to avert.
I see very clearly that if the matter is taken up in the way I have indicated, there must emerge a very serious question, in an earthly and temporal sense, about the sustenance of these officials; for just as people talk about castles in the moon, so have these parties a vested interest in a chimera...a million Christians; and when it comes to this I am the most accommodating person in the world, eager to help, and as far as possible from wanting to take part in the annoyances the priests may have from other quarters, from certain politicians. It was just in order to be able to get at the question that I had to get that thing Bishop Martensen began to cook up about being a witness to the truth — I had to get that blown away as it were. Before everything else this disgusting rubbish had to be disposed of. Now — let us be good-tempered about it! — now we can talk rationally about what in a simple human sense is a very serious matter. And that way of talking is, I think, the most advantageous to us all. The sort of priests we have would certainly do best not to strike up the tune of wanting to be witnesses to the truth; for, if they do — well then, the difficult problem is solved with infinite ease: one has only to withdraw their whole stipend and save the expense of pensions. Witnesses to the truth must know how to put up with that sort of thing; and the idea about witnesses to the truth, that the priests are witnesses to the truth, if it had not come from a bishop (and was therefore stupid and offensive), but from a shrewd statesman, from a cultus minister, for example, who wanted to get rid of the clergy in an adroit way, would have been a very clever idea.