Word: dibeliuses
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...pious but practical young pastor. Otto Dibelius noticed these things. The professors at his seminary had taught him that a pastor should never enter the homes of his parishioners. "If you do," one instructor warned, "the mantle of Elijah will surely fall from your shoulders." In Scotland, as a student of the established church, Pastor Dibelius learned differently. Back in Germany, after months of observing the ways of his Calvinist brethren, he startled some of his colleagues by mixing freely with his parishioners and encouraging them to be active in the life of the church. Once, while...
...Otto Dibelius was one of the first to see that here was an entirely new premise for church and state relations, which Martin Luther, friend and loyal subject of Christian princes, had never bargained for. The German state no longer claimed divine sanction. Far from being the God blessed state of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, it might conceivably change itself into another state mentioned in the New Testament-the godless, seven-headed monster of St. John's Revelation...
...Pastor Dibelius wrote a book called The Century of the Church, in which he offered his fellow Protestants an outline of a new church-state relationship. He advised pastors to be pastors and not just preachers, to lead the church into all the concerns of public life. And he warned bluntly that the church must raise its necessary funds from the free-will contributions of its parishioners-no longer through the tax collectors of a state that was now avowedly secular...
...Century of the Church pulled down a hornet's nest. It brought an especially strong buzzing from Swiss Theologian Karl Barth, who disagreed on theological grounds with Dibelius' view that the church must fill the void left by the passing of the Kaiser's "Christian state." Snapped Barth: "I have nothing against your argument, but don't call it theology." Dibelius looked on Theologian Earth's criticism as a front-line infantry commander might regard a staff officer's observations on tactics. Said he: "I think dogmatics are a mischief. A systematic theologian...
Open Warfare. In 1933, the monster state of St. John's Revelation appeared: the Nazis took over Germany. Dibelius was at first cautious. In Potsdam's Nikolai Church he preached a guarded but firm sermon to Reichstag members, including President von Hindenburg and many of the Nazi Party leaders. "We do not resist authority," he said, "since to do so is anarchy and thus irreligious . . . But as soon as the state demands to be the church, and strives to assume power to rule the souls of men . . . then we are asked by Luther's words to exercise...