Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16In the church, Christ receives a physical form that makes him visible and tangible in the world. Plough Quarterly • Winter 2017 15 How should the church relate to politics? There are moments when this perennial question becomes suddenly urgent. In August 1934, eighteen months after Hitler’s rise to power, Eberhard Arnold spoke to members of his community, the Bruderhof, whose German branch had already been raided twice by Nazi forces. For them, Christian witness to the state was no longer just theory. Arnold’s address had personal poignancy: among his listeners was his eighteen-year-old nephew Hermann, until recently an enthusiastic Nazi and member of the Storm Troopers. But Hermann had just experi- enced a conversion, requesting baptism and announcing that he would take the risky step of publicly repudiating Nazism. Eberhard set out to explain to the young man what kind of Reich (kingdom) he was signing up for by becoming part of the church of Jesus Christ. I t is an immensely wonderful thing when a human heart is touched and moved by God. This is something only God can do; no human has this power, as truly as God is God. For no one knows the thoughts of God except for God’s own Spirit (1 Cor. 2:11). The only human being able to show what is in God was himself born of the Holy Spirit: Jesus. The manner in which his birth through Mary took place is the unique sign and example for how every new birth from the Spirit takes place. The Spirit came to Mary. Mary believed, and received the living Word of God. Because she had faith, the Word took flesh and form from her. Today too the living Word wants to take human form: the eternal Christ wants to have a body. It is for this that the Holy Spirit is sent from the throne of the Father and of the Son. And this is why Christ broke down the barriers and walls through his cross – so that his new embodiment, his new manifestation among humankind, might come into being: the church (Eph. 2:14–16). Just as the eternal, living Word once took on a body as Mary’s son, so today it becomes flesh anew in the church. This is what the apostle means when he writes that a “mystery” has been entrusted to him, the mystery of the body of Christ (Col. 1:24–26). What does it mean that the church is Christ’s body? In the church, Christ receives a physical form that makes him visible and tangible in the world – otherwise the word body would be meaningless. (Theologians who speak of an invisible body of Christ only prove that there is a kind of nonsense of which theologians alone are capable. The apostles did not believe in ghosts.)