Once again Luther proves to be an abundant supply of theological humor. This advice is similar to what he said on other occasions (See “There’s Humor in Theology 5“).
Seek out the society of your boon companions, drink, play, talk bawdy, and amuse yourself. One must sometimes commit a sin out of hate and contempt for the Devil, so as not to give him the chance to make one scrupulous over mere nothings… (Martin Luther, LW 20, 58)
Some Christians will no doubt find this strange if not ungodly advice. How could someone encourage someone to sin, and how could sinning show hate and contempt for the Devil? Others, perhaps out of an affection for Luther’s theology, might seek to exonerate Luther by pointing out that none of the things in Luther’s list are necessarily sins. It is no sin in itself to seek out one’s closest companions, nor is it a sin to drink (I rightly presume that he means alchoholic beverages). “Play” is a bit vague, but it is close to our contemporary admonition to “have fun.” I myself can find nothing necessarily sinful about talking bawdy. I cannot produce any cut-and-dry prohibition against the occasional use of George Carlin’s seven words in an accepting environment (of course one doesn’t even to have to go to George Carlin levels to be said to “talk bawdy”). To amuse oneself is certainly not necessarily sinful.
However, the problem with excusing Luther because he doesn’t include what we might consider sinful is that it overlooks the fact that he intended to include things that people consider sinful in this list and we can’t excuse that on a technicality. Nor could we excuse Luther for having mispoken in an unguarded moment when it appears he gave this advice on numerous occasions.
Does Luther’s advice boil down to the injunction to sin in order that grace may abound? I don’t think so, and here’s why.
If we start from the premise that the worst thing a Christian can do in any situation is to commit a sin, then following Luther’s advice will obviously be considered bad advice. But I don’t think that committing a sin is the worst possible action in any given scenario. If our ambition not to sin causes Satan to gain a foothold and leads us to fear God’s judgment, then this is far worse than someone who sins yet trusts the grace of God shown in Christ. If sinning causes someone to see their need for God’s grace then this is to be desired above the person who avoids sin because of his fear of God’s judgment. The fearful person has bought a lie, while the sinner rejoices in the truth. This fact does not mean that sin is a good thing (which is the claim that Paul is confronting in Romans 6), rather, it means that a bad thing has been used for good. This is consistent with Luther’s view of the law, according to which the law reveals our sin and shows us our need for Christ. Sinning and seeing our need for Christ is better than not sinning and remaining in fear of God’s judgment.
I can think of no better advice for the person who is scrupulous over the “mere nothings” of playing cards, attending cinemas, and dancing. These are not matters of conscience which should be left in tact. They are spurnings of good gifts from God and perhaps violating one’s misunderstandings will reveal that these things can be enjoyed without God’s judgment.
Hear! Hear!
If I made a list of the reasons why I left seminary, probably #14 would be the no-alchohol policy. OK, maybe #12. But certainly not higher than #10. Anyways, when ever the subject of alchohol came up, many admitted that there was no justification for abstinence, that it was even a good thing… BUT… it was fine for others, but they weren’t going to do it. Why? Well, it was usually a ministry issue or a stumbling block issue… you know those arguments. I even went along with this for a while. Eventually, though, I began to see how silly this was. Sometimes, the people who are OK with beer, but just won’t drink it themselves, drives me crazier than the people who say drinking is a sin. The spurning of God’s good gifts in order to facilitate others’ legalistic views…. that leaves a worse taste in my mouth than a Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Y’know, I’ve never honestly been able to figure out why cards have been frowned upon in church circles. Assuming you’re not playing for money, it’s a game of skill, chance, and luck. Not unlike the dice games featured in Scripture.
But some things, a pint can help out with, I think.
Of course, since I’m a teetotaler, it’s academic for me.
There is also far less than humor to be found in Luther’s theology, for example in his admonition against the peasants who rose up in Germany against the “nobility”:
“Thus it may be that one who is killed fighting on the ruler’s side may be a true martyr in the eyes of God, if he fights with such a conscience as I have just described, for he is in God’s Word and is obedient to Him. On the other hand, one who perishes on the peasants’ side is an eternal brand of hell, for he bears the sword against God’s Word and is disobedient to Him, and is a member of the devil. And even though it happen that the peasants gain the upper hand (which God forbid!) — for to God all things are possible, and we do not know whether it may be His will, through the devil, to destroy all order and rule and cast the world upon a desolate heap, as a prelude to the Last Day, which cannot be far off — nevertheless, they may die without worry and go to the scaffold with a good conscience, who are found exercising their office of the sword. They may leave to the devil the kingdom of the world, and take in exchange the everlasting kingdom.
Strange times, these, when a prince can win heaven with bloodshed, better than other men with prayer!”
And Luther advises,
“Stab, smite, slay, whoever can. If you die in doing it, well for you! A more blessed death can never be yours, for you die in obeying the divine Word and commandment in Romans 13, and in loving service of your neighbor, whom you are rescuing from the bonds of hell and of the devil.”
We have seen from history what a dangerous theory “winning heaven with bloodshed” can be.
Hokku,
If your point is that the uncited quotes you provided from Luther are not humorous then your point stands, but what a moot observation on your part. Beyond this, you are simply showcasing your ignorance of this subject. I suspect that you think that quoting Luther encouraging the death of the rebels in the Peasant’s War shows a problem with religion or with Protestant Christianity in particular.
You obviously have not researched the Peasant’s War and are not familiar with what took place. The Peasant’s War was motivated both religiously and economically. The class of Princes, nobles, prelates, patricians and burghers were all oppressing the lowest class of peasants by imposing excessive taxes and toll fares on them. Furthermore, many had become angry with the Catholic church for its exploitation of the poor. Luther had spoken out against the usury and excessive taxation, but did not want to see revolt over it. Things were changing without people rising up against the state and he feared that a revolt might threaten that.
Theologically, peasants do not have the blessing of God to rise against the state when the state is not commanding the people to do something that God has forbidden or forbidding what God has commanded. The state has its authority from God and whoever opposes the state opposes God and the state does not bear the sword in vain (Romans 13:1-5). The state has the authority of God to strike down those who are insurrectionists and rebels. Luther agreed with many of the peasants concerns, but violence was not the way to oppose it.
The things that the peasants did were horrible. In rebellion they raped nuns, killed priests and monks and burned monasteries and churches, looted shops of the rising middle class and even stole from one another.
Luther saw that the rebellion was a threat to reforming the church and that his opposition to the Catholic church would be lumped together with the actions of the peasants thus giving cause for the state, without distinction, to kill anyone who opposed the church. Luther sought to distance himself from both the radical action of the peasants and the radical theology of the Anabaptists such as Muntzer and Hubmaier.
The actions of the peasants thoroughly lacked biblical support. We have no right before God to kill people because they are taxing us too much. The state has the authority before God to bear the sword. Luther was right to give his support to the state’s opposition to the rebels. This did not mean that Luther agreed that the state was right to mistreat the peasants, but Luther recognized that the only thing worse than a tyrrant is a rebel.
“Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you” (Luther, “Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants” 1525).
I have no problem with the quotations you lifted. You’re simply ignorant of the background of Luther’s statements. If you’re such a man of evidence you should look at all of it before you go hunting for words from Luther in order to discredit him. There are enough issues about which Luther was wrong, but his stance on the Peasant’s War was not one of them.
I say this for the benefit of others reading and not for you since you have ignored this observation at every turn: notice how Hokku’s anti-Christian bias affects his reading of Luther just as it does his reading of Scripture. He claims the evidence is on his side but he once again demonstrates that all evidence requires interpretation and he is interpreting it according to his bias.
Ah, Frasier,
I was simply pointing out from Luther’s own words that Christian “theology” has its dark side, so dark that the leading founder of Protestantism could actually say one could “win heaven with bloodshed.”
That is a view with which we are all too familiar from the daily news.
Anyone doubting the very dark side of Luther’s theology need only read his work on the peasant revolt and his virulent anti-Semitic comments, raising a grim spectre that later came back to haunt Germany and the world.
You’ve gotta love Hokku, our new residential “whipping boy” for Lutheranism… if there’s anything good out there about it, he’ll insult/demean it just to spite others… with poster boys like him, humanism has it made.
Notice how when it is pointed out that Luther’s theology had a dark side, the reaction is twofold — first, deny it without examination, and second, attack the messenger.
The comments made here interestingly parallel Luther’s own course in life. He went through years of agonizing guilt and insecurity, and finally he thought he had found a way out of that in the writings of Paul. He embraced what he took to be the Pauline view of “grace” so completely that the Book of James, with its “justification by works,” irritated him when used to counter Paul.
Having found his psychological escape from his own prison of guilt and insecurity, Luther then began to express the anger inherent in his new view toward anyone who crossed him. He quickly found that having opened access to the Bible through all via his German translation, that some readers were disagreeing with his interpretations and coming up with their own. Initially conciliatory with the Jews, Luther soon found that his “new” Christianity was no more accepted in Jewish communities than the Catholic version, and he began to spew hatred toward them.
It is interesting that Luther’s hymn “Ein Feste Burg” is a demonstration of his new fortress mentality, the same kind of mentality repeated in other newly-appearing Christian sects, the same kind of mentality still found in fundamentalistic Christianity today.
The essential root of the problem is an inherent insecurity that is only masked by the acceptance of “grace.” Because as long as anyone is out there who doubts the belief system that gives rise to that “grace, the “believer” still has suppressed inner doubts. That is why fundamentalists strike out bitterly at anyone who points out that the Emperor has no clothes, that their beliefs are based on human and fallible writings and human and fallible doctrines derived from those writings. So Luther and others like him pay a terrible price for their supposed security that only masks a deeper insecurity. And at times the rest of society suffers the effects.
One thing we can say; Luther broke the power of the papacy and unwittingly and unintentionally opened the doors to individual investigation and individual decision regarding matters of belief, much as he would have disliked those results. It is something he would not have liked, but ultimately it helped contribute to the Scientific revolution and to the freedom of the individual conscience and freedom of thought and of the press.
But unfortunately, there are many who choose to repeat Luther’s pattern of grasping on to a new security blanket belief system, and then striking out at anyone who threatens it. That is why the people who comment here make no real effort to honestly examine facts and evidence, or even to recognize and admit as obviously deplorable certain bitter statements by Luther. It is the old “fortress” mentality, but a fortress can also be a prison. It is only when one chooses truth as the goal, rather than a false sense of security, that one can escape from that prison. Otherwise one is doomed to repeat the same pattern of guilt, insecurity, acceptance through “belief” of a presumed escape, but with it the constant maintenance of a deeper insecurity and the consequent anger that results from any perceived threat.
It is a kind of unfortunate self delusion that is inherently destructive toward the individual and eventually toward any society infected with it.
On the other hand, one could notice how Hokku repeatedly steps aside from the actual topics at hand, to deal with his own pet issues. Has John Frasier ever denied any of Luther’s faults? Not that I can recall. Of course, this is a posting detailing HUMOR in Luther’s writings. Yet, Hokku goes crazy when we kindly disagree with his choosing to relate difficulties in Luther’s writings in a subject relating to humor.
As for attacking the messenger….well, Hokku is decidedly “Not so Neutral” in regard to this, isn’t he? Not like Hokku is innocent in these matters. But then, this is the irrrationality found in the humanist mindset.
Oh, btw, Hokku, if you want answers objections about Christianity, check out Tim Keller’s “The Reason for God” (look it up on Amazon), coming out next week.
I think you’ll find it worth reading.
Hokku,
Sometime ago I heard some very good blog advice, “Don’t feed the troll.” Since then I have found that if you don’t feed the troll he has nothing to eat and dies. The fact that you, Hokku, have been silent for days is simply because no one has fed you. As much as I am inclined to keep you silent, I’m too weak of will to follow good advice and not feed the troll. Your statements are too unfounded to ignore, and I don’t want my silence to give anyone the impression that your claims deserve the least bit of credibility.
“That [winning heaven with bloodshed] is a view with which we are all too familiar from the daily news.”
What a textbook case of guilt by association! Luther must have a dark side because what he says sounds to your ears like radical Muslim fundamentalists. Obviously you couldn’t win with the evidence. I offered the context of the peasant’s war and the context of Luther’s view in light of the authority of the state to kill in Romans 13, and you are completely ignored every argument. You addressed none of it. Instead you shifted tactics by attacking Luther (and by extention, Protestant Christians) with political correctness, thinking you could make Christians look bad by associating them with extremist Muslims. But I won’t let you be distracted from the facts. You completely ignore facts such as that Luther taught so clearly that the private citizen has no right to perpetrate violence. This belief could not be more foreign to radical Islam. If radical Muslims followed the ideas of Luther there would be no such thing as radical Islam. In order for you to make your claim you have to also ignore the fact that the peasants are better parallels to radical Islam than Luther. Both radical Muslims and the peasants are private citizens attacking other citizens as a way of attempting to get their way and ignoring the rule of law. This is exactly what Luther opposed and was the reason he sanctioned their death. Luther’s statement about winning heaven with bloodshed was spoken about Christian governing officials who rule well and exercise responsibly the authority that God has given them. These authorities will gain heaven, if bloodshed is one of those ways of ruling well and doing the right thing under Romans 13. Your comparison of Luther to “a view with which we are all too familiar from the daily news” is too asymmetrical. All of your claims to follow the evidence where it leads, in the end it turns out to be mere rhetoric. You must ignore all of the data since you are too preoccupied with making sure that Luther (and by extention, Protestant Christianity) gets bad press. You’re merely trying to create a perception in people’s minds, not trying to be responsible to the evidence.
“Anyone doubting the very dark side of Luther’s theology need only read his work on the peasant revolt and his virulent anti-Semitic comments, raising a grim spectre that later came back to haunt Germany and the world.”
Well I have read every extant word that Luther ever said about the Jews and I’m still doubting “the very dark side of Luther’s theology.” What else do you have to offer? An argument maybe? You simply have not researched the area in which you’ve chosen to make an attack or you would know that you need more than a drive-by accusation that Luther’s theology was complicit in Nazism to prove your point. You say this as though it’s simply uncontested and that there’s no other possibility. There is an entire catalog of literature on this subject and much of Reformation historical scholarship – Christian and non-christian, Lutheran and non-Lutheran – sharply denies what you affirm (without any support).
A Pro-Jewish Luther
Tell me if the following statements have anything in common with the anti-semitism of Nazi Germany:
“They [Roman Catholic leaders] have dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs rather than human beings; they have done little else than deride them and seize their property. When they baptize them they show them nothing of Christian doctrine or life, but only subject them to popishness and monkery” (Luther, “That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew” [1523]).
“Our fools, the popes, bishops, sophists, and monks-the crude asses’ heads-have hitherto so treated the Jews that anyone who wished to be a good Christian would almost have had to become a Jew. If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian” (Ibid.).
“Therefore, I would request and advise that one deal gently with them [the Jews] and instruct them from Scripture; then some of them may come along. Instead of this we are trying only to drive them by force, slandering them, accusing them of having Christian blood if they don’t stink, and I know not what other foolishness. So long as we thus treat them like dogs, how can we expect to work any good among them? Again, when we forbid them to labor and do business and have any human fellowship with us, thereby forcing them into usury, how is that supposed to do them any good” (Ibid.)?
“If we really want to help them [the Jews], we must be guided in our dealings with them not by papal law but by the law of Christian love. We must receive them cordially, and permit them to trade and work with us, that they may have occasion and opportunity to associate with us, hear our Christian teaching, and witness our Christian life. If some of them should prove stiff-necked, what of it? After all, we ourselves are not all good Christians either” (Ibid.).
“Absurd theologians defend hatred for the Jews….What Jew would consent to enter our ranks when he sees the cruelty and enmity we wreak on them—that in our behavior towards them we less resemble Christians than beasts” (Luther quoted in Elliot Rosenberg, But Were They Good for the Jews? [New York: Birch Lane Press, 1997], 65).
If you’re so interested in drawing parallels between Luther’s thought and Nazi ideology then I’d like to see you try your hand at pairing anything in Nazi propaganda with the above quotations. Or can you only fault Luther for the Holocaust by taking scissors to the evidence?
I do not defend Martin Luther in order to defend Christianity. One can rightly dismiss Luther’s wrongdoing and consider his actions an abuse of Scripture and the Christian faith. Any shortcomings of Martin Luther are no invection against the truth of the Christian faith. This this is an area where you’re ignorance is on display. There are things for which you can legitimately fault Luther but contributing to Nazi ideology is not one of them.
“On the Jews and Their Lies”
Luther’s favor toward the Jews turned to “harsh mercy” when he saw how opposed they were to the message of the gospel that he preached. He originally thought that they would be converted now that the gospel was no longer being perverted by Rome. I make no attempt to whitewash Luther’s view of the Jews. For good reason the church no longer says the things he said, but we can’t lay blame where it doesn’t belong. But there’s no sense in wading through all of it here, so I’ll quote the sections that are clearly the most egregious and offensive. The following is the advice that Luther gives to magistrates regarding Jews.
“First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them.” Now the morality of this cannot be defended. But that it does not even share so much as the same motivation as Nazism is clear from Luther’s next sentence: “This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians.”
Luther also writes, “I recommend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam.”
“I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have justly forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews captive with the saying of Moses.”
Two Luthers?
As divergent as Luther’s later statements may appear to be from his earlier statements, one cannot easily divide the two. There are too many statements in the later part of his life that harken back to the younger Luther.
Even when Luther discussed one of the most extreme question of whether the authorities should expel the Jews from the country, he still acknowledged a special status of Jews over Gentiles. He wrote to Josel von Rosheim that nothing would prevent the misery of exile unless “you accept your cousin and Lord, the beloved crucified Jesus, along with us heathens.” (Luther 1537, quoted in Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwartzbart, 2nd Eng. Ed. [New York: Image Books, 1992], 294). This statement provides a strong point of continuity with his earlier statements in which he upholds the Jewishness of Jesus and the Jews as his wayward people. The historical context of Luther’s statement is also significant. Luther was responding to Rosheim’s request that Luther help protect the Jews against exile. He appealed to Luther specifically because he knew that Luther did not share in the common anti-semitic attitude and was often ridiculed by Catholics as a “friend of the Jews.”
In his reply to Rosheim he also wrote, “Would you kindly accept my advice,…Because for the sake of the crucified Jew, whom no one shall take from me, I would gladly do my best for all you Jews, unless you should use my favor for your stubbornness. This is what you should know” (Ibid.).
That Luther recognized the familial relation of Jews and Christ establishes a sharp discontinuity with the widely-held Nazi belief that Jesus was Aryan not Jewish. H. S. Chamberlain’s book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century was probably the most influential anti-semitic work on this question. He wrote: “The probability that Christ was no Jew, that he had not a drop of genuinely Jewish blood in his veins, is so great that it is almost equivalent to a certainty” (Chamberlain quoted in Maurice casey, “Who’s Afraid of Jesus Christ? Some Comments on Attempts to Write a Life of Jesus Christ,” in Writing History, Constructing Religion, eds. James G. Crossley, Christian Karner [Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2005], 130). As influential as this work was it was only one of many denying the Jewishness of Christ.
Even in his most virulent work, “On the Jews and Their Lies,” he still says of the Jewish people that “they are set apart from all other nations by this holy circumcision and made a holy people of God.”
In spite of these later positive statements Luther’s negative statements nevertheless remain and he is guilty before God for them. Yet, when it comes to the atrocities of the Holocaust he shares no guilt, not because his statements can be excused, but because the asymmetry between Luther’s view of the Jews and the Nazi view of the Jews is too great.
Luther’s criticism of the Jews was theological not biological or political. He had no concept of ethnic superiority or extermination of the Jewish race. The Holocaust was rooted in an entirely different motivation. Nazism was not angered by the Jewish rejection of Jesus as the Messiah. Furthermore, it was not Luther’s desire that Jews be unprosperous. He simply did not want them to be prosperous in Germany. Right or wrong, Luther believed that Jews were taking advantage of Christians in the commerce sector of society and wanted to see it stopped. In his mind, because of immoral business practice, Jews needed to return to agriculture where you cannot cheat the land. You earn what you earn by the honest work of the sweat of your brow not by chicanery.
Roland Bainton concurs when he says that Luther’s criticism of the Jews was:
“entirely religious and in no respect racial. The supreme sin for him was the persistent rejection of God’s revelation of himself in Christ. The centuries of Jewish suffering were themselves a mark of the divine displeasure. They should be compelled to leave and go to a land of their own. This was a program of enforced Zionism. But if it were not feasible, then Luther would recommend that the Jews be compelled to live from the soil. He was unwittingly proposing a return to the condition of the early Middle Ages, when the Jews had been in agriculture. Forced off the land, they had gone into commerce and, having been expelled from commerce, into money lending. Luther wished to reverse the process and thereby inadvertently would accord the Jews a more secure position than they enjoyed in his day” (Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978], 299).
For all the wrong that he spoke against the Jews, Luther nevertheless thought them worthy of the gospel. He believed that Christ was for them. “I also would wish that through your example and your work, Christ might also be made known among other Jews, who were predestined, are called, and shall come to their king David, in order that he might lead and save them” (Luther, “Letter to Bernhard, a Converted Jew”, 1523). In Luther’s historical Christian context this sentiment was at odds with popular Christian opinion of his day.
His method for bringing them to Christ was undoubtedly flawed, but we can nevertheless establish for Luther an entirely different motivation than that of Hitler.
Luther was not against Jews qua Jews. If a Jew did not blaspheme Christ and call him “a bastard son” or speak of “that whore, Mary” (both were phrases which Luther heard from many Jews) then Luther had no problem with this person. In fact Luther went so far as to argue (immorally, I think) that money should be taken from unbelieving Jews and given to Jews who convert to the Christian faith. Nazism, on the other hand, did not care in the least what confession Jews made about Christ. Christian Jews (and there were some) were under just as much oppression by Nazi government as any Jew. Properly used, then, the term “anti-semite” does not apply to Luther. He was not against Jews as a race he was against their creed. His position is properly characterized as anti-judaism. Even in his most virulent attack against the Jews, “On the Jews and Their Lies,” he still says of the Jewish people that “they are set apart from all other nations by this holy circumcision and made a holy people of God.” Statements such as this cannot be attributed to an anti-semitism.
Also, unlike many of his time, Luther did not even hold Jews responsible for the death of Christ. As he wrote in a hymn: “We dare not blame … the band of Jews; ours is the shame.” This was frequently the seed of violence against Jews. Yet Luther recognized that the blame is upon all of us not a certain few.
Nothing in Luther’s writings even hints at a program of racial extermination. He is not interested in seeing exterminated from the face of the earth.
“We are aliens and in-laws; they are blood relatives, cousins, and brothers of our Lord. Therefore, if one is to boast of flesh and blood the Jews are actually nearer to Christ than we are” (Luther, “That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew”).
Heiko Oberman, the premier Luther biographer, criticized those who paint Luther with the anti-semitic brush (in your case though, the accusation is not precise or responsible enough to be called a brush. You really offer no argument, only assertions. Thus, a rag is a perhaps a more fitting instrumental metaphor for your statements). Oberman laments that many would have us choose between “two Luthers” – one, the “bold Reformer, the liberating theologian, the powerfully eloquent German”; the other, an “anti-Semite” who “wrote mainly about Jews,” and “preached hatred” (Heiko Oberman, The Roots of Antisemitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation, trans. James I. Porter (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 94. As I have argued, the similarities between his earlier years and his later years is proof enough that this is a false choice.
Luther under Nazi interpretation
All of the above situates Luther in the context of his own day but what of Luther’s place in the context of pre-Nazi and Nazi Germany? It is only when Luther’s view is contrasted with the Aryan program of ethnic cleansing that the As we consider the religious context of the first half of the twentieth century, there are numerous facts which we must take into account.
Six thousand of the nearly 14,000 Protestant pastors in Germany illegally expressed opposition to the Nazi state (William Lazareth, Christians in Society: Luther, the Bible, and Social Ethics [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001], 9).
Those pastors who opposed Hitler’s Jewish program did not do so by abandoning Lutheran theology but rather opposed him with Lutheran theology.
Following World War Two, the Lutheran church in Germany drew from Luther’s writings to show that those who used Luther to justify their racism had done so only by selectively quoting him and ignoring his many statements contrary to their racism.
The Confessing Church, a Protestant organization of clergy and layleaders that opposed Nazism, was comprised almost entirely of devout Lutherans who saw no support for the Holocaust in Luther’s writings.
Now there is no doubt that Hitler and other Nazis appealed to Luther in defense of their anti-semitism and the attrocities they committed against the Jews. But whether the Nazis appropriated Luther for their cause is not the same as whether Luther’s writings were responsible for their anti-semitism. The appeal to Luther was a post-facto justification of their anti-semitism and not the impetus for it. Furthermore, as we have seen, it was a selective appropriation of Luther without due consideration for his pro-jewish sentiments.
Who gets the blame?
Gordon Rupp was one of the first Luther scholars to disconnect Luther from the motivation of Nazi anti-semitism “…Needless to say, there is no trace of such a relation between Luther and Hitler. I suppose Hitler never once read a page by Luther. The fact that he and other Nazis claimed Luther on their side proves no more than the fact that they also numbered Almighty God among their supporters. Hitler mentions Luther once in Mein Kampf in a harmless context” (Gordon Rupp, Martin Luther: Hitler’s Cause or Cure? [London: Lutterworth Press, 1945], 84).
What many who associate the Holocaust with Luther often fail to recognize is that Hitler and the leading members of his cabinet – Himmler, Goebbels, and Streicher – were all lapsed Roman Catholics. There was much more of an abundance of anti-semitism (not just anti-judaism) in Catholic writings than in could be found in the narrow slice of Luther’s writings on the Jewish people.
As Gordon Rupp points out:
“Luther’s antagonism to the Jews was poles apart from the Nazi doctrine of ‘Race’. It was based on medieval Catholic anti-semitism towards the people who crucified the Redeemer, turned their back on the way of Life, and whose very existence in the midst of a Christian society was considered a reproach and blasphemy. Luther is a small chapter in the large volume of Christian inhumanities toward the Jewish people” (Ibid., 75).
Moreover, the anger, negativity, and call for resistance found in Luther’s writings on the Jews is outmatched – both in sheer volume and in the tone – by what is found in Luther’s comments against medieval Roman Catholicism. If Luther opposed anything it was the Catholic religion into which Hitler himself was baptized. This fact alone is enough to demonstrate that any appropriation which Hitler made of Luther’s writings was not built widely on the whole of his theology but only a highly selective reading of Luther for the purpose of supporting his own pre-formed ideology. It is no surprise that Nazi leaders claimed Luther for their cause. He was only one of many sources brought into to propagandize the nation, sources which extended even as far as the Jewish Scriptures themselves.
Remarkably then, those who see a parallel between Luther’s attitude toward the Jews and the Nazi attitude toward the Jews are still reading Luther in the same selective and shallow way that the Nazi’s did. Those who knew better both then and now recognize that for all of Luther’s failures to deal properly with the Jews, the Nazi program diverges too greatly from Luther to say that he bears any of the responsibility.
As unacceptable as Luther’s views of the Jews are today, when we place them in their historical context, his view of the Jews surpassed and matured far beyond the medieval soil from which Luther himself grew. His unchanging belief in the positive ontological status of the Jews transcended his criticism of their behavior or their religion, and with this he separates himself from the common perception of Jews in his own day as well the perception of Jews under Nazism. Both medieval theology and Nazi ideology can be united by the more severe action which they called for with no regard for the Jewish spiritual condition. Luther’s is a view all his own. It neither fit with the perception of the Jews in his own day nor with the perception of the Jews under Nazism. Luther’s theology was properly used to combat the ideology of Nazism both during and after it’s reign. If we are looking for a historical link between the Holocaust and Christianity we have a more likely source in medieval theology than could ever be found in Luther’s theology.
There’s not a single ethnic or ideological group that does not have bloodshed in its past, Jews included. We all have much for which to beg pardon and must make amends commensurate with our guilt. We have all sinned and we will all be judged, but when that judgment takes place it won’t be according to the flimsy and sapless thought you employ to make your ill-formed judgment.
This is what I have to say on the matter. What say ye? Let’s see some real arguments this time.
And That ladies and gentlemen is what we call a “slam dunk” argument.
Thanks John. It is comforting to know that our faith in the Lord Jesus does not rise or fall on the words of Luther (though he edifies Christians still to this day); however, it is nice to know that his statements concerning the Jews cannot be used at point-blank range to persecute Christians or to tear down our worldview. Rather it seems that Luther’s words should more appropriately be seen as combating the vicious and evil idealogy responsible for the Holocaust.
Thanks for your time on this one. It looks like it took quite abit of time to put together.
John M
Luther’s table talk is very good. “Whenever you fart, fart to the pope”, is one of my favourites. It’s just so refreshing to know these guys were human. Katie (his wife) was always telling him off for being too “boisterous” in language before his students.
[...] Imagem: Chaos & Old Night. [...]
[...] Imagem: Chaos & Old Night. [...]