dwells bodily" (Colossians 2. 9).
In the new conception God becomes man in a political sense as a member of
the Aryan race whose highest representative on earth is the Fuehrer.
This change in the essential meaning of the concepts God-man is, from the
standpoint of cognition, effected by converting the relative into the
absolute and, from the standpoint of theology, by transferring the Pauline
conception (Ephesians 4. 24; Colossians 3. 10) from the plane of metaphysics
and eschatology to that of nationality rind politics.
<IV>
It was this radical change from Christian doctrines to pagan myths that
aroused the Churches to express their protest against Nazism, and also
against the persecution of the Jews, in the above Pastoral of the year 1943:

"And there is now a return to the worship of life and power by accepting and
exalting the old Adam as the original and eternal MAN. There is an attempt at
self-salvation - the old Adam is not crucified with Christ (Rom. 6. 6) but
by his very own inmost strength achieves a new life and a heightened
vitality..." [5]

Similarly, the theological concepts of sin and redemption were transferred
to a legal category of administrative regulations that demanded outer
conformity and inner obedience. The traditional conception of sin and
redemption that was common to all currents of Christian thought held that
man's redemption, and hence eschatological existence, depends on his faith:
"the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ... since all have
sinned and... they are justified by grace... through the redemption which
is in Christ Jesus..."(Rom. 3. 22-24). In the totalitarian Nazi regime the
concepts sin and redemption were used as means by the State or the Party
to convert man into a loyal subject whose allegiance is assured by his
constant fear not only of violating some concrete ordinance or governmental
decree but simply of just deviating from the official ideology. The Christian
belief that man could be saved through faith in the forgiveness of Jesus who
died for his sins, "so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might
no longer be enslaved to sin" (Rom. 6.6), was transferred from the theological
to the secular, political plane. Even the comforting assurance of the believer
that his sins shall be forgiven and that he shall be found worthy of the
purifying influences of grace could now be gained