The truth about the "priest's" importance to society
As a statistician who is familiar with such things, being informed of the population of a big city, must be able to indicate the number of public prostitutes such a city consumes; as a statistician expert in such matters, knowing the size of the army, must be able to determine the number of physicians an army of that size needs in order to be well supplied; so also a statistician engaged for such a purpose, upon being told the population of a country, must be able to determine the number of perjurers (priests) which such a country needs, if under the name of Christianity it were to be perfectly secured against Christianity, or under the appearance of having Christianity it were to be perfectly reassured of being able to live a life of paganism, a paganism which is moreover tranquillized and refined by the notion that it is Christianity.
From this point of view one can perceive the truth of the "priest's" importance to society, or how the case truly stands with regard to his importance.
Christianity rests upon the view of human existence which has as its presupposition that the human race is a lost race, that every individual who is born is by being born a lost individual. Christianity then would save every individual, but it makes no disguise of the fact that, when this is taken seriously, this life becomes the direct opposite of what is to man's taste and liking, being sheer suffering, anguish, misery.
This of course man is not willing to submit to; among millions there is perhaps not one man who is willing honestly to submit to it. So the problem for "man," for the "human race," for "society," is to protect itself with all its might against Christianity, which must be regarded as its mortal enemy.
But to break openly with Christianity, "No," says man, "that is not shrewd, it is even imprudent, and by no means gives promise of sufficient security. Such a prodigious power as Christianity is — when in the very face of it one is so honest, actually has to do with it to the extent that one flatly rejects it, one runs the risk that the game will end with this power getting a finger into one after all, as a punishment for the imprudence of having anything to do with it. For to reject it honestly is after all one way of having something to do with it."
No, entirely different measures are needed in this instance: "man," this clever pate, must here be thoroughly alert.
And now the comedy begins. For a population of such and such a size, says the statistician, there will be needed such and such a number of perjurers. They are engaged. The fact that what they preach and what their lives express is not the Christianity of the New Testament, they themselves see plainly enough; "But," say they, "this is our livelihood, so it behooves us not to yield, not to let anyone get the better of us."
This is what the perjurers said. Society has perhaps a sort of suspicion that there is something amiss about this oath upon the New Testament. "However," thinks society, "it naturally is our business not to yield, but to act as if everything were all right." "We," says society, "are only laymen, we can't meddle with religion in this way, we are tranquil in the confidence we repose in the priest, who is bound in fact by an oath upon the New Testament."
Now the comedy is complete: all are Christians, and everything is Christian, the priest included — and everything expresses the direct opposite of the Christianity of the New Testament. But it is almost impossible to get hold of the end of this cunningly tangled thread, it is almost impossible to get behind this specious appearance. How could it occur to anyone to doubt that Christianity exists? That is just as impossible as to get into one's head the notion that the priest is a tradesman, this man who is bound by an oath to renounce the world, so that this trade, this business, has therefore to be carried on under the corporate title: "Renunciation of This World," a thing just as confusing as if on arriving one were to say "Farewell." How could it occur to anyone on hearing the word "farewell" that a person is arriving? And how could it occur to anyone — indeed it never did occur to anyone, and if I myself had not said it, no one would have known what I am talking about when I speak of "perjurers," that I mean the "priest," precisely that man who is...a witness to the truth.
This is the "priest's" importance to society, which from generation to generation consumes a "necessary" number of perjurers, in order, under the name of Christianity, to be fully assured of being able to live a life of paganism, a paganism which is tranquillized and refined by the notion that it is Christianity.
Naturally in the whole clerical order there is not a single honest man. Yes, I know well enough that people who in other respects are even not disinclined to agree with me in what I say, think nevertheless that I ought to make exceptions, that there are some after all. No, I thank you kindly. To get into that would be to get into twaddle; for the result presumably would be that the whole clerical order and society as a whole would acknowledge that I am right in all that I say, for each one in particular would naturally think that he was the exception. But, quite literally, there is no exception; quite literally, there is not one honest priest. Only let the police look a little more sharply at this presumptively honest, this rare and extraordinarily honest man, and he who is willing to see will see at once that not even he is excepted, for, quite literally, there is not one honest priest.
In the first place, he surely cannot be so stupid as not to see that the way in which he is paid is, Christianly, entirely inadmissible, directly contrary to Christ's ordinance. Item that his whole existence as a combination of civil servant and disciple of Christ is entirely inadmissible, directly contrary to Christ's ordinance, is such an ambiguity that he might be required (though not for the reason that criminals wear stripes — for the "priest" will not run away, one need hardly be afraid of that) to wear a costume of two colors, to express: partly — partly, bothand. In the second place, by being a member of the order he partakes in the whole guilt of the order. When the whole order is depraved, honesty can only be expressed by ceasing to be a member of the order; otherwise all one accomplishes is (assuming for an instant the man's honesty) that by having him as a member of it, the order has one it can appeal to as honest, which it ought not to have. It is as when the police on the occasion of a riot have notified the people to get away — then no good citizen remains. To remain is precisely a sign that one is not a good citizen, for the fact of being a good citizen is expressed by not wanting to have fellowship with those who remain in spite of the prohibition of the police. But let us assume for an instant that this man who remains is a highly respectable man, a good citizen, let us overlook the fact that by remaining he invalidates this assumption. By remaining he does great harm in another way. The riot now gets one it can appeal to, and perhaps this has the effect that the police cannot go ahead as vigorously as is necessary, merely because this "good citizen" is in the party. In the third place, it is perhaps very far from being true that this presumptively honest man is an exception; it may be that, though in a more refined way, he is worse than the others. It is well known that among the blind the one-eyed man is king; and when one has a mind to succeed at a cheap price in counting for something extraordinary, it is a shrewd plan to enter the company of mediocrity, meanness and dishonesty. Here by the effect of contrast a man's bit of honesty will make a brilliant showing — aha, yes, if this shrewd employment of the art of illumination were not a deeper kind of dishonesty than the blunt dishonesty of the others.
No, there literally is not one single honest priest. On the other hand, by the existence of the priest, society as a whole is a baseness, a Gemeinheit, as it would not be if the priest were not a part of it.
From morning to evening these thousands or millions in society express the view of life which is the direct opposite of that of the New Testament, as opposite as are the conceptions of living and dying. One cannot call this base, it is human. But now comes the baseness, that with them there are 1000 perjurers who have taken an oath upon the New Testament, and who like all the rest of the community express that view of life which is directly opposite to that of Christianity, but at the same time reassure society that this is Christianity. Now society is thoroughly base.
In the New Testament sense, to be a Christian is, in an upward sense, as different from being a man as, in a downward sense, to be a man is different from being a beast. A Christian in the sense of the New Testament, although he stands suffering in the midst of life's reality, has yet become completely a stranger to this life; in the words of the Scripture and also of the Collects59 (which still are read — O bloody satire! — by the sort of priests we now have, and in the ears of the sort of Christians that now live) he is a stranger and a pilgrim — just think for example of the late Bishop Mynster intoning, "We are strangers and pilgrims in this world"! A Christian in the New Testament sense is literally a stranger and a pilgrim, he feels himself a stranger, and everyone involuntarily feels that this man is a stranger to him.
Let me take an example. To live in such a way that one works more laboriously than any day laborer, and with that manages only to have to pay money out, to become nothing, to be jeered at, etc. This way of living must appear to the multitude a sort of madness, at all events it will feel itself strange to such a life, will look strangely upon it. The truth is nevertheless that such a life comports with the Christianity of the New Testament. Let then one who leads such a life live in a Christian community where there is a whole garrison of teachers bound by an oath upon the New Testament — then we have the baseness. These perjured teachers — indeed before them and their way of life the crowd does not feel itself strange, it is well acquainted with this, in fact it is its own: hail to profit, to activity in a business which promises both earthly and heavenly profit. But these teachers are priests, so as perjurers upon the New Testament they surely must know what Christianity is, and so can furnish a guarantee to the crowd that this profiteering is genuine Christianity. When the crowd thus instructed feels strange in the face of such a way of living as was described, and is inclined to regard it as madness, this is not base but human. But then the crowd thinks that Christianly it is justified in condemning such a mode of life as a sort of madness. This is base, and this baseness is due to...the existence of the "priest."
On one occasion I had the following conversation with the late Bishop Mynster. I said to him that the priests might just about as well give up preaching, that all their sermons produced no effect whatsoever, because in the back of their heads the congregation was thinking privately, "Yes, that's his business." To my surprise Bishop Mynster replied, "Yes, there's something in that." I had not really expected this answer; for though this was said, to be sure, under four eyes, yet on this point Bishop Mynster was usually prudence itself. For my part, in relation to that utterance of mine, I have altered my opinion only to this extent, that it has now become clear to me that in one sense the priest does in fact produce a prodigious effect, that his existence transforms society as a whole, Christianly speaking, into a Gemeinheit.
Translator's Footnotes
59Collect for the First Sunday after New Year's Day, which takes this phrase from I Peter 2:11.