George Hunsinger:
By the time he wrote his comments on Romans 13 in the second edition of Romans, Barth, like the anarchists, considered every existing order to be evil in itself. Although in the first edition he had greeted revolution with enthusiasm, he now regarded even an existing order established by revolution as merely the evil residue left over once social upheaval had subsided. Barth’s attitude toward the state has often been labeled as conservative. In fact, Barth’s intention was not that of legitimizing the existing order, but that of radically deabsolutizing it. Even his critique of the revolutionary—largely a critique of his earlier stance—was directed against bolshevist socialism from the standpoint of anarchist socialism. His political perspective was thus “anarchist” in the sense that he sought to criticize revolution from the left, to de-mystify the existing order, and to revolutionize the individual before changing conditions. Contrary to the way this section has customarily been read, the theology that Barth advances here has nothing to do with complacency. While recognizing the necessary limits of all political action, he wants to ensure that within any existing order, conditions will really be changed along socialist lines. Revolutionary hubris is no answer to this challenge.
Barth was unlike the anarchists, however, in that his grounding for this position was fundamentally theological. The radical standard of his critique was derived, not from history, but from the kingdom of God. “It is only in relation to God that the evil of the existing order is really evil.” Whereas the anarchists had argued that historically the state was a necessary evil whose complete extinction would sooner or later be equally necessary, Barth argued instead that both its necessity and its eventual extinction were eschatological: The existing order must not be destroyed, but must be allowed to exist, as a negative parable to God’s kingdom. In this negative way, the evil existing order “reveals that we have a hope—the hope of the coming world where revolution and order are one.” “The real revolution comes from God and not from human revolt.”
In relation to this real revolution, political praxis can always be only a witness, never a realization. Hence Barth did not subscribe to anarchist tactics. Despite his occasional appeals to direct action, he did not indulge in the practical nihilism that repudiated parliamentary democracy while glorifying general strikes, spontaneous uprisings, and individual terror. His radical eschatology led logically to pragmatist political ethics. Like the social democrats, he was sometimes willing to support coalitions with nonsocialist or “bourgeois” parties—as in the case of the Weimar Republic. Like the left-wing socialists, he was at other times ready to cooperate with bolshevist parties—as in the case of the Committee for a Free Germany—and also to resort to the use of violence, if necessary, in order to achieve or defend a democratic order—as in the case of resistance to Nazism.
But in all cases Barth insisted on a harsh theological realism and a sober lack of illusions: All political activity stands under the wrath of God, who meets “the encroachments of government . . . with the sword of revolution” and “the encroachments of revolution with the sword of government.” “Whether we attempt to build up some positive thing or demolish what others have accomplished, all our endeavors to justify ourselves are in one way or another shattered in pieces.” It is God who inspires revolutionary discontent, yet God alone who will bring about the true revolution of his kingdom.