Is the State justified in receiving an oath which not only is not kept but in the taking of which there is a self-contradiction?
One need not be very old, if only one has an eye for such things and has made use of it, to have convinced oneself that men have a decided partiality for illusion, find the best repose in illusion.
If there is one thing or another of importance for the community, men generally concentrate their effort in getting a committee appointed. When it is appointed people are reassured, do not much concern themselves whether the committee does anything, and finally forget the whole affair.
So also when something is to be seriously undertaken, men think there must be an oath, an oath which reassures us that the thing is serious and remains serious — whether the oath is kept or not concerns them less.
Indeed for sheer seriousness they sometimes do not observe whether the taking of the oath does not involve a self-contradiction.
This is the case with the priest's oath upon the New Testament, which the State nevertheless receives. If it should turn out that the oath is not kept, that would be not the most suspicious circumstance; but the truth is that it involves a self-contradiction. Yet it is likely that neither society nor the individual would feel reassured if in relation to something so serious as being a teacher of Christianity the seriousness is not secured by...an oath, the taking of which certainly involves a self-contradiction, so that one who is reassured by such an oath is reassured by...an illusion.
Christianity is related to a kingdom which is not of this world — and then the State receives an oath from teachers of Christianity, which oath signifies therefore that the man swears loyalty precisely to that which is the opposite to the State. Such an oath is a self-contradiction, like making a man swear by laying his hand upon the New Testament, where it is written, Thou shalt not swear.
In case the priest should be by any manner of means what the oath upon the New Testament obliges him to be, namely, a disciple of Christ, and his life an imitation of Christ, then his engagement as a royal functionary is the greatest obstacle. At the very moment when he should move in the direction in which his oath upon the New Testament requires him to move, he must break with his position as a royal functionary. That is, by an oath as a royal functionary they bind him in such a way that if he is to keep the oath they require him to make upon the New Testament, he must break with the first relationship. What a self-contradiction! And what a strange sort of seriousness, that an oath is taken (how solemnly!), an oath the taking of which is...a self-contradiction! And how pernicious both to the State and to Christianity!
The Christian demand upon the State must be to the following effect: Whether the State, the sooner the better, might not be so good as to dispense all the clergy from their oath upon the New Testament, give them back the oath, as an expression of the fact that the State had got into something it cannot meddle with, which at the same time will express what is true, that God, if I may venture to say so, discharges the whole actual garrison of priests, gives them back their oath.