The Legacy of Martin Luther
Christianity's persecution of the Jews has dominated the Jewish
history since the Christianization of the Roman Empire under
the Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century AD.
To the Jews, the cross has been as much a symbol of persecution
and terror as the swastika, only provoking dread. The Jews
know the history of Christianity.
Most people are familiar with the persecution of the Jews by
the Roman Catholic Church. The Spanish Inquisition from 1481 to
1808 is the most notorious example. Roman Catholic historian,
Malcolm Hays, writes:
The machinery of propaganda was entirely in the hands of the
church officials. Preaching, chronicles, mystery plays, and even
ecclesiastical ceremonies were the principle agencies available
for the dissemination of hate. Preachers dwelt with morbid and
sometimes sadistic realism upon the sufferings of Christ, for
which they blamed all Jews of the time and all their descendants.
For many centuries the bishops of Beziers preached a series of
sermons during Holy Week, urging their congregations to take vengeance
on the Jews who lived in the district. Stoning them became a regular
part of the Holy Week ceremonial. [Gary E. McCuen, "Religion
and Politics, Issues in Religious Liberty," pages 37-38 (1989)]
Yet what the Jews suffered at the hands of the Protestants is
largely forgotten. Under the banner of the cross and in the name
of Christ, the Jews have been cast out of nations, confined to
ghettos, lost their possessions and frequently their lives. They
have been forced to convert to a Christianity which compelled
them to break the Sabbath, to not circumcise their children, and
to eat unclean meat. They had to disobey the Bible to become Christians.
It is frightening that this hatred of the Jews is only cultured
over in Christianity today. Neither the Roman Catholic Church
nor any of the Protestant denominations have repented of it. Today,
everyone blames the Nazis for the Holocaust and not Christianity,
yet it is willful, historic blindness to not see that all the
Nazis did was rooted in the Christianity that shaped the German
nation. Even though later generations may not have seen the connection
with Christianity, you can be sure the Germans did, and the Jews
still do.
It has to be remembered that the Nazi Holocaust was nurtured
in the land of the Protestant Reformation. In fact the seed of
all that Adolf Hitler would do was carefully transplanted from
Catholicism into Protestantism by none other than Martin Luther,
the greatest spokesman of the Reformation and one of the most
influential men in all of history.
This is a shocking accusation! What could such a hero of the
faith have to do with the nightmare of the Third Reich and the
demonic figure of Adolf Hitler? Surely, the man who liberated
the Gospel from the grasp of meaningless tradition and restored
the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith alone would not
be guilty of such things, would he? Yet Martin Luther's violent,
venomous views and bitter treatment of the Jews was not something
he sought to hide. Far from it. By every means at his disposal
— the pen, the pulpit, and persuasion — he sought to
gain not merely acceptance of his views but concrete, violent
action against the Jews.
His Three Treatises
Martin Luther was certainly not ashamed of his words. He
wanted them to be remembered and obeyed. It is only his
followers who would like to have his words forgotten, since
they seemingly invalidate all that he stood for. And so
the chances are almost certain that you have never heard
of the three treatises Martin Luther wrote against the Jews
in 1543: On the Jews and Their Lies, On the Ineffable
Name, and On the Last Words of David.
These treatises represented a lifetime of thought on his part
concerning the Jews. His first attempt to win them was by persuasion.
He wrote these words when he was a younger man:
If we wish to help them, we must practice on them not the papal
law but rather the Christian law of love, and accept them in friendly
fashion, allowing them to work and make a living, so that they
gain the reason and opportunity to be with and among us and to
see and to hear our Christian teaching and life. ["That Jesus
Christ Was Born a Jew," published 1523]
It was only when such preaching and persuasion failed ("soft
mercy" in Luther's theology) that more forceful measures
were taken. For over the course of Luther's life it became apparent
to him that the prejudices against the Jews he had sought to combat
in his earlier writing were in fact true. In his mind they were
accursed blasphemers whose Lord was the devil. He now saw it was
nearly impossible to convert them, and any suffering inflicted
upon them would remind them that they were God's rejected people.
Only the keen awareness of that would soften a few of their hearts.
Luther's Legacy
The following measures are in a sense Martin Luther's last
will and testament, his legacy to the world. The legacy
of a man is what his descendants derive from him, a living
memorial to who he was long after he is dead. In one of
these formal, systematic presentations of his mature convictions
he summarized the wisdom his 32 years of Bible study had
gained for him into seven recommendations. They are found
in the treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies:
What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned
people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate
their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling
and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing,
and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire
of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert
the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must practice a sharp
mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing
flames. We dare not avenge ourselves ... I shall give you my sincere
advice:
-
Set fire to their synagogues and schools, burying and covering
with dirt what won't burn, so no man will see a stone or cinder
of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and Christendom.
-
Second, I advise that their houses be seized and destroyed.
-
Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic
writings be taken from them.
-
Fourth, I advise that the rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth
on pain of life and limb.
-
Fifth, I advise that safe conduct on the highways be abolished
completely for the Jews, for they have no business in the
countryside, since they are not lords, officials, or tradesmen.
Let them stay at home.
-
Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and all
cash and treasures be taken and kept for safekeeping.
-
Seventh, I recommend putting a flail, an axe, a spade, a
distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews
and Jewesses, letting them earn their bread by the sweat of
their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Genesis
3:19). For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed
Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy
people, idle away their time ... boasting blasphemously of
their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat ...
For, as we have heard, God's anger with them is so intense
that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse and worse,
while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore,
in any case, away with them!
[The whole tract may be found in English in
Luther's Works, Volume 47: The Christian in Society IV,
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), pp 268-293. A number
of English books have translations of these directives.
Among them is "The Christian in Society," ed.
Franklin Sherman (1971), pages 268-272. The "Ideas
in Conflict" book, "Religion and Politics —
Issues in Religious Liberties," by Gary E. McCuen,
also quotes them on pages 16-23.]
To Martin Luther, this "sharp mercy" was needed
to bring them to repentance, since they were not being converted
by the 'pure gospel' he was preaching. This was not a passing
mood on his part; once he came to these conclusions he never
wavered from them. Martin Luther's last sermon, preached
just days before his death, was brimming over with biting
condemnation and vulgarities for the Jews. He planted the
seed of hate in fertile soil, and it grew over the centuries.
You Shall Know them by their Fruits
Those with even a modest knowledge of the brutal history of the
Third Reich know that the Nazis put into practice all of Martin
Luther's recommendations against the Jews, and more. They burned
their synagogues in honor of the "positive Christianity"
Adolf Hitler claimed to stand for; they seized and burned their
houses; they took public delight in destroying the sacred and
precious Torahs and Talmuds of the Jews; they separated life and
limb from the rabbis; they certainly abolished safe travel for
the Jews — the only travel they had was a one-way trip on
cattle cars; they took every bit of their wealth away from them
— even the fillings in their teeth and the hair on their
heads; and the ones the Nazis didn't kill immediately they put
to demeaning and destroying slave labor. All this they were justified
in doing, according to Martin Luther, with prayer and the fear
of God.
If subsequent generations of Christians (who have lionized
Martin Luther as a man of God) have chosen not to see the
direct connection between Protestant anti-Semitism and Martin
Luther, the Nazis certainly did. They understood what Martin
Luther meant. Julius Striecher, one of the most notorious
anti-Semites even in the perverse world of the Third Reich,
used Martin Luther's seven recommendations in his defense
at the Nuremberg Trials. He even took as the motto for his
newspaper, Der Sturmer (the Nazi hate paper) a direct quote
of Martin Luther, Die Juden sind unser Ungluck, or,
The Jews are our misfortune.[For a sample cover,
see the Time-Life World War II series, At the Center
of the Web (1989).]
In the World but Not of It?
Make no mistake about it: In spite of being a devoutly
Christian nation, the Germans were under no illusions as
to what Adolf Hitler's intentions were towards the Jews.
He had told them a thousand times. Many of the tens of thousands
of Protestant and Catholic clergy openly supported Hitler.
The rest stayed in the passive state they had always maintained.
William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the
Third Reich understood how they came to be in this condition:
in his [Martin Luther's] utterances about the Jews, Luther employed
a coarseness, brutality, and language unequaled in German history
until the Nazi time. The influence of this towering figure extended
down through the generations in Germany, especially among the
Protestants ... In no country with the exception of Czarist Russia
did the clergy become by tradition so completely servile to the
political authority of the State. ["The Rise and Fall of
the Third Reich, A History of Nazi Germany," by William L.
Shirer, page 327 of the 1962 paperback edition.]
When they all were given the choice of joining Hitler's state
church or going to prison, the overwhelming majority quietly became
part of the Reich Church. Becoming the religious arm of the Third
Reich, the pastors, both the enthusiastic and the reluctant, had
to support it, since they looked to it to define what was right
and wrong. It was far too personally dangerous to let God do this
through the Holy Scriptures. To do so was to say that there was
a greater authority in men's lives than the Third Reich. This
was treason to Hitler.
So, they righteously stood by praising their Jesus, adorning
their churches with swatiskas, closing their eyes, and saying
they didn't know what was going on. It is much easier to
think about the heroic few like Martin Niemoller who chose
the concentration camp rather than be silent in the face
of such monstrous evil than the legions of 'good', hard-working,
German Christians who filled up Hitler's armies, police
forces, death squads, and pulpits. They did not prove able
to be in the world but not of it.
What each pastor did do could not be better illustrated than
by these words concerning Martin Luther when he was Professor
of Theology at the University of Wittenburg:
Elector Johann Friedrich [one of the princes Martin Luther served
who supported the Reformation] was prone to solicit advice from
Luther and Luther's colleagues only after policy had been set:
The original function of the Wittenburg opinion, to advise conscience,
was increasingly transformed by Johann Friedrich into the function
of relieving consciences, as a religious sanction and assurance.
[Quoted in "Luther's Last Battles, Politics and Polemics,"
by Marc Edwards, Jr., page 205 (1983)]
How well they relieved consciences! How well they provided the
assurance of God's favor in this life and welcome in the next!
So well, in fact, that the men running the death camps could be
heard singing carols at Christmas time. Then, of course, they
would get back to their practice of sharp mercy.
How far is the example of Christianity from the heart of Paul
the Apostle, who saw his entire ministry among the Gentiles as
a means to, "somehow move to jealousy my fellow countrymen
and save some of them." (Romans 11:14 ).
After hearing Paul's compassion, the ruthlessness of Martin Luther's
"sharp mercy" would cause any reasonable man to question
whether they had the same spirit empowering them:
For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from
Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsman according to the
flesh, who are Israelites ... (Romans 9:3).
Church and State
Martin Luther's thinking has borne much fruit since he wrote
his three fateful books. Religious persecution resulting from
the merging of church and state has been its most common expression
since then, and the Holocaust its most specific and awful statement.
But it is the unholy merger of church and state that gives such
persecution both its earthly power and political motive. In such
states a threat to the state religion (unbelief or a contrary
belief) becomes a threat to the state. Whether Roman Catholic
or Protestant in origin, religious persecution, strengthened by
the power of the state, is an expression of beastly insensitivity
to the human spirit. When such an atmosphere prevails in a nation,
the most unthinkably cruel acts become utterly reasonable, and
even receive the enthusiastic support of the large mass of people.
Martin Luther's three treatises sowed an enormous evil
of the Roman Catholic system in the soil of the Protestant
faith. This unrepented evil waits for the day when it can
again be unleashed on the world. Martin Luther was a foretaste
of the false prophet of Revelation 16 and 19, and Adolf
Hitler was like the beast of Revelation who waged war against
God's chosen people. These things are types of the end times
prophesied in the Scriptures.
Like Mother, Like Daughter
The development of Martin Luther's thinking was a gradual process,
taking shape during his entire adult life. He grew up in Roman
Catholicism, for that was Europe's only religion. It was the binding
force in society and government by which everyone knew their place,
and heaven was the reward for the generally short and harsh lives
people lived. Anything besides strict adherence to Catholicism
was perceived as a threat, not only to this life, but to the next.
For if the Catholic Church was not the only truth, then heaven
might not await good Catholics, and they may have lived their
lives in vain. So ingrained was this view of reality that often
the Church had to restrain the common people from taking the lives
of Jews and other non-Catholics into their hands.
This mindset has always regarded with active hostility every
attempt to raise up something new on the earth, especially anything
that challenged by its sincerity the insincerity and compromise
with the world of the established church, whether Catholic or
Protestant. There has been a consistent pattern down through the
centuries in dealing with these attempts: lies and intimidation
are followed by the seizure of the heretic's property, then by
cruel physical punishments; and if all this failed to bring the
unbeliever back into the fold, execution by the most merciless
means.
Martin Luther, like other Catholic theologians before him,
thought the same way — earthly punishment inflicted
by the Church, and where necessary by the state, is actually
the working of God's grace to save some from the flames
of hell. In other words, it's always done for their own
good. And not only their good, but the good of society as
a whole — for unbelievers in a 'Christian nation' represent
faction and division, and must be dealt with, or else the
society cannot be blessed by God.
This has been the story of practically every nation and society
where Christianity has been the predominant influence. It is part
of the essential nature of Christianity. For when Christians take
the reins of power, ultimately the denial of rights to nonbelievers
is considered inconsequential, because they are all going to hell
anyway.
"Heretics" like the Anabaptists suffered a similar
fate at the hands of Martin Luther. Their desire for restoration
of the true faith was a threat to the established Church. Martin
Luther only sought reformation of the Church that already was,
and not restoration of the Apostolic Church that had fallen away
at the end of the first century. His crucial decision to persecute
those who did seek true restoration, like the Anabaptists, made
inevitable the likeness of Catholicism and Protestantism, like
a mother and her daughter.
Responsibility
It is entirely fair to give Martin Luther the credit (he would
not see it as the blame or the shame) for all future Christian
rulers who treated the Jews according to the wisdom of his policies.
In the light of God's word, how shall we judge this wisdom? Is
it the pure, peaceable, gentle, reasonable wisdom from above,
full of mercy and good fruits? Or is it an earthly, natural, demonic
wisdom that comes from below? What then was the source for Martin
Luther's words, that with them he could bless Jesus Christ his
Savior and with them lay the most bitter curses on men made in
God's image? (James 3:9-18).
There are other guidelines in the Word regarding righteous judgment
as well. The Son of God never said that you would know false prophets
by their doctrine. He said you shall know them by their fruit.
He also said that a good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can
a bad tree produce good fruit. If Martin Luther and the Reformation
were a good tree, then it cannot have produced bad fruit. If it
has produced bad fruit, it cannot have been a good tree. These
are the words of the Son of God of which we are not to be ashamed
(Matthew 7:15-20).
He also said, "A pupil is not above his teacher, but everyone,
after he is fully trained, will be like his teacher" (Luke
6:40). It is pathetic to see the Messianic Jewish congregations
springing up around the country who owe their standard Protestant
theology to Martin Luther and the Reformation. For they shall
be like their teacher, as will all who stay under the fallen,
compromised, disobedient gospel of the Reformation.
The Son of God spoke this in the Good News of Matthew:
But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
If therefore the light that is within you is darkness, how great
is the darkness! (Matthew 6:23)
Is not Martin Luther the 'eye' through which Protestantism
saw her clearest doctrines? How did the clarity of his doctrines
carry through to the purity of his deeds? So then, if the
'eye' is bad, isn't the whole body of the Protestant church
full of darkness? How great is that darkness!
The writer to the Hebrews wrote, "Remember those who
led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering
the result of their conduct, imitate their faith."
(Hebrews 13:7). We will all receive the reward we merit
for the faith we imitate. For each person's faith is known
by his conduct, or as James put it, his works (James 2:17-20
).
The Triumph of Gnosticism
There is a compromise faced by all who seek to remain in
the world, with its possessions and its power, instead of
being saved from the wicked and perverse generation they
live in (Acts 2:40). As a Lutheran scholar and historian
of the Reformation, Marc Edwards wrote of Martin Luther,
"Through compromise and accommodation to political
realities, he tried to maintain his influence in order to
preserve his central insights into Christian faith."
[Luther's Last Battles page 208] Judging by the history
of Christianity since then, especially as regards the Jews
and the Christian's role in the state, it is evident his
insights were preserved.
Martin Luther taught by word and example that the ends of preserving
one's life — one's influence, power, wealth — justify
the means of compromising the truth. This is all any emperor has
ever demanded — his pinch of incense — the acknowledgment
that there is none greater than he. It is no different than what
was offered to (and refused by) the Son of God in return for worshipping
the evil one — the kingdoms of this world (Matthew 4:8-10).
All one is left with once this incense is given (once the world
becomes the standard for faith, and not the Word of God) is a
gnostic faith, devoid of saving power. It is a faith so thoroughly
divorced from the reality of life and the balm of human compassion
that the most fundamental violations of the conscience (like the
murder, theft, lying, and hate that the Nazis practiced and the
German Christians made room for) are overlooked, if not praised
(Romans 1:28-32). It has nothing to do with the God who is love.
It heaps shame on the Jew born in that stable so long ago, and
leaves Him hanging on the cross, not risen from the grave. The
cross of this gnostic faith is not a rugged one, but rather a
mere mental concept, suitable for those who will not pay the true
cost of following Him (Luke 14:26-33).
The thought that Martin Luther, and the German Christians of
the Third Reich who carried out his recommendations, will dwell
in eternal bliss, is only possible in the unreal realm of gnosticism.
Gnosticism was the heresy that destroyed the early church by substituting
knowledge and intellectual pride for faith. The Gnostics said
that a man was saved by what he believed in his mind, by so-called
faith alone, regardless of his works. For Martin Luther and those
who received his legacy, this faith could be so far removed from
their works that they could murder the Jews without invalidating
their claim on eternal life. It is obvious that the faith Martin
Luther made so much of was not saving faith, or he never would
have done and said the things he did. He would have had the heart
of Paul the Apostle towards the Jews. The Savior whom Paul served
is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8).
In reality, it was no faith at all, since it did not bring anyone
into obedience to the gospel (John 8:51; Romans 1:5; 10:17; 15:18;
16:25). It was instead only knowledge about the truth, biblical
principles for men to live by. History has shown the infinite
uses to which such principles may be put.
In spite of everything the evil one has done to malign the name
of the Savior, the word of God will prove true. Those who were
once not His people will be called the sons of the living God
(Romans 10:26). They will be those who receive the same Spirit
Paul did, and like him, they will forsake everything for the sake
of gaining Messiah (Philippians 3:8). They will make the Jews
jealous through having God's law written on their hearts, fulfilling
all the prophets have spoken about the New Covenant.
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