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churches to an extent far surpassing even late antiquity.
So much for the historical analysis. It shows changing combinations of profane and holy
spheres of Church and society. Just because it places the profane and the holy side by side,
however, the historical consideration is actually profane. We must now consider the
opposition which arises from the holy, if the holy and the profane are coordinated. Revelation
is present wherever the divine appears, not as religion but as challenging religion and denying
the contrast of culture and religion. This happens when an entirely new reality becomes
manifest in anticipation and expectation. Religion and culture, church and society live on such
manifestations. They live on that which denies their contrast, the divine, but they realize the
divine in their contrast. This contrast is insurmountable and was not overcome even where
such potent unifications appeared, as in the early and late Middle Ages. The Kingdom of God
not only stands beyond the contrast of autonomy and heteronomy, but also beyond the
temporal, and therefore only partial and transitory, conquest of this contrast in an attitude
which we call theonomy. For even theonomy is not the Kingdom of God, but only an
indication of it, even if, as such, it is the meaning and the goal of history.
The decisive manifestation of the divine, however, can occur only where this contrast of
revelation to culture and religion becomes manifest. The decisive manifestation, therefore,
cannot be a new religion or a new unity of culture and religion, but only a protest against the
claim of every finite form to be absolute, i.e., the Word of the Cross. The Word of the Cross,
too, became religion in the moment it was uttered, and it became culture the moment it was
perceived. But its greatness and the proof of its absoluteness is that it denies again and again
the religion and the culture that proclaim it. The congregation which knows of this self-
negation stands beyond church and society, but this congregation is invisible. It is not
identical with the Christian Church and not identical with bourgeois society. It is also not
identical with the theonomous unity of profane and holy, as it was realized in the past and will
be realized in the future. Therefore it is not limited by Christian Church history nor Christian
cultural history. It can be sought and yet not proved wherever the absoluteness of the divine
breaks through against religion and culture. The more strongly and distinctly that happens, the
stronger also is the power of revelation in creating religion and culture. But this, its own
creation, is at the same time its entrance into finitude, into conflict, into that which it must
itself contradict ever anew. That is the depth and the background of all history.
This is the result of our historical investigation. Church and society are one in their essential
nature; for the substance of culture is religion and the form of religion is culture. In historical
reality, however, church and society exist beside and against one another, though this
essential relationship again and again encourages new attempts to realize pure unity, to
overcome the contrast of autonomous society and heteronomous church through a
theonomous community. But beyond all these tensions and battles and, shattering them,
stands the act of God, which turns alike against church and society and creates the invisible
congregation. His action is the creative element in cultural and religious history. Yet as soon
as it enters into a finite form, church and society and their destructive conflict grow again, so
that no church and no society can rest in its pride.
What does this result signify for us at present? It means that we are free, in principle free from
the Church, but not through the antithesis of society, but rather through the revelation of God.
And it further means that we are free, in principle free from society, and society is the more
oppressive mistress in our times. We are free from it, but not through the antithesis of the
Church, but rather through the revelation of God. And because we are free from both, we are
therefore also free for both, for service to both: for the Church, because we know that we do
not enter into conflict with society through service to her, but only announce symbolically to
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