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E-mail exchange on the problem of Luther
There are four e-mails: A. his answer, containing a vigorous denunciation of Luther; B. my partial response; C. a short note from him; D. the completion of my response to his first message.
After receiving my last message [D], Dr. Michael was good enough to send as attachments a couple of substantive articles he had previously written on Luther, Christianity, and antisemitism. I have studied them with interest but they require so much analysis as to merit a separate heading, "Christianity and Antisemitism," which I hope to add to this site eventually.
A. His denunciation of Luther
HI JOE,
well, i don't despise luther any more. i'm beyond that. i suspect he's paying for his sins elsewhere and i don't have to damage my own soul by hating him. ditto hitler.
some of what you write is true. but just heed these words of Luther's:
1. LUTHER'S OBSCENITY was objected to by other Protestants during his lifetime.
The obscene talk of street and field pervaded Luther's anti-Jewish rhetoric. The Jews, the Jewish Scriptures, and the Talmud all fell victim to his obscene assault. He called the synagogue "a defiled bride, yes, an incorrigible whore and an evil slut with whom God ever had to wrangle,
scuffle, and fight." The popular belief that devils ate feces supported Luther's identification of Jews and devils. "It serves them right that . . . instead of the beautiful face of the divine word, they have to look into
the devil's black, dark, lying behind, and worship his stench." Luther also compared the Jewish Scriptures to pig feces--the Nazis made the same analogy --which he alleged that the Jews consumed. "You damned Jews . . . You are not worthy of looking at the outside of the Bible, much less of
reading it. You should read only the bible that is found under the sow's tail, and eat and drink the letters that drop from there."
Luther's attack on the Jews grew more foul and obscene in Vom Schem Hamphoras written later in 1543. Here, he was the first to describe in writing the Judensau carved on the church at Wittenberg, and he further identified the Jews with Judas, whose feces and urine the Jews were also
pictured as consuming. More lewd was his claim that the Jews themselves were full of "the devil's feces . . . which they wallow in like swine."
2. LUTHER'S RACISM:
Luther wrote of the Jews as if they were a "race" that could not truly convert to Christianity. And by making the Jews the devil's people, Luther put them beyond conversion. Trying to convert the Jews, he argued, was like "trying to cast out the devil . . .." "They have failed to learn any
lesson from the terrible distress that has been theirs for over fourteen hundred years in exile. . . . If these blows do not help, it is reasonable to assume that our talking and explaining will help even less. . . . Much less do I propose to convert the Jews, for that is impossible." In a
sermon of 25 September 1539, Luther tried to demonstrate through several examples that individual Jews could not convert permanently, and in several passages of On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther appeared to reject the possibility that the Jews would or could convert"
Speaking to them about [the Law, aside from the Ten Commandments] is much the same as preaching the gospel to a sow. . . . From their youth they have imbibed such venomous hatred against the Goyim from their parents and their rabbis, and they still continuously drink it. . . . It has
penetrated flesh and blood, marrow and bone, and has become part and parcel of their nature and their life. Dear Christian, be advised and so not doubt that next to the devil, you have no more bitter, venomous, and vehement foe than a real Jew who earnestly seeks to be a Jew. . . . Their
lineage and circumcision infect them all. A Jewish heart is as hard as stone and iron and cannot be moved by any means. Even if the Jews were punished in the most gruesome manner so that the streets ran with blood, so that their dead would be counted not in the hundred thousands but in
the millions, [it would not be] possible to convert these children of the devil! It is impossible to convert the devil and his own, nor are we commanded to attempt this."
3. LUTHER'S PROGRAM FOR THE JEWS WAS DUPLICATED BY HITLER, FROM DESTROYING THEIR RELIGION AND HOMES TO SLAVE LABOR.
4. LUTHER SEVERAL TIMES ADVOCATED MASS MURDER:
Luther's program for the Jews asked the princes three times to kill Jews who resisted. His third and fourth steps mention "pain of death" and "pain of loss of life and limb." His fifth step advises the authorities to
deprive the Jews of safe passage once they have left their ghettos.
Another passage of "On the Jews and Their Lies" indicates that Luther saw the necessity of killing at least some of the Jews:
"I wish and I ask that our rulers who have Jewish subjects exercise a sharp mercy toward these wretched people . . .. They must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in, proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. Such a procedure must also
be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did in the wilderness, slaying three thousand lest the whole people perish. [They are a] people possessed . . .."
Luther repeatedly employed the language of violence against most, if not all, of his enemies. Since Luther often wrapped his opponents in his vision of the Antichrist, he urged that brimstone and sword be used against many individuals and groups: the pope and his cardinals, Catholic
nobles, anti-Lutheran sectarians like the Sabbatarians, heretics, Turks, and German peasants. Luther's famous recipe for dealing with the peasants, his former allies, went as follows: "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 the whole land with you." Whereas the peasants presented a real and physical danger to Luther and the Lutheran establishment, the Jews posed
no such physical threat.
Luther did not, however, distinguish between the threat of peasants and Jews because he regarded the powerless Jews as a menace to his theological vision of life, earthly and eternal. Jews became a symbol for all that was evil and devilish, unChristian and anti-Christian in the world. For these reasons, the Jews appeared more threatening than
Luther's other enemies, and he assaulted them with his words and advocated governmental violence against them. In at least three other passages Luther approached an advocacy of mass murder of Jews.
A sermon of 1539 argued that "I cannot convert the Jews. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not succeed in doing it. But I can stop up their mouths so that they will have to lie upon the ground." The language is ambiguous, but it implies a death threat. The imprecise language allowed people of
good will to believe that outright murder was not being proposed, while at the same time this kind of language permitted them to "speak about the unspeakable," the mass murder of Jews.
In "On the Jews and Their Lies," Luther wrote that Jews, like usurers and thieves, should be executed:
"[Today's Jews] are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch-thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security. . . . If I had
power over the Jews, as our princes and cities have, I would deal severely with their lying mouth. . . . For a usurer is an arch-thief and a robber who should rightly be hanged on the gallows seven times higher than other
thieves."
The deadly syllogism Luther concocts in this paragraph may be stated as follows:
All thieves and usurers should be executed by hanging.
All Jews are thieves and usurers.
Therefore, all Jews should be killed.
In another section of "On the Jews and Their Lies," Luther clearly stated that all Jews should be murdered.
"We are even at fault in not avenging all this innocent blood of our Lord and of the Christians which they shed for three hundred years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and the blood of the children they have shed since then (which still shines forth from their eyes and their skin). We
are at fault in not slaying them."
Dear Joe K.,
May the Lord open your eyes to see the truth.
Shalom,
RM
B. A partial response
Hello RM,
Many thanks for your challenging email, which I read with great interest. I am living overseas (English teacher, US citizen) and do not have access to a lot of scholarly information. I was able to obtain a few books, but the comments I have seen linking Luther to the Holocaust center around the "burn the synagogues, force the Jews to work, etc." I read "On the Jews and their Lies" years ago, and for the purposes of my essay skimmed it online fairly recently. I found the quote about not persecuting the Jews but rather expelling them - that was sufficient for my purpose and I did not reread the essay carefully, though of course I looked at it. So, my analysis was incomplete and I am grateful to you for bringing these quotes to my attention. I have made a few changes in the Luther part of the short website as a result of your message, and want to make some changes in the longer one...Working on this in isolation has been a handicap.
If you do not object, I would like to add this correspondence as an appendix to my website. I think you have made the strongest case against Luther that can be made (though it omits the entire course and tenor of his life's work and focuses mostly on one or two atypical tracts - what would someone think of David if they knew nothing about him other than his affair with Bathsheba?). Responding to you will give my analysis of Luther more depth and substance. I can give your name, or omit it if you like. If you do not want your letter to be used at all, I will summarize the main points and then print my response to them. I welcome your thoughts on this - though you may want to see what I write by way of response first.
I still maintain that Luther's comments are not inherent in the bible or even in Protestantism, and that the Holocaust was not the result of either of those. Luther's comments are contrary to the bible, which says Christians should speak evil of no one, and be gentle, "showing all meekness unto all men" (Titus 3:2). It also says in II Timothy "The servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men...In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves" (2:24-25). Thus, Luther's comments are not derived from the bible but are contrary to it; they are contrary to other things he said in much better days; they were echoed or acted upon by no other Protestant leaders and have nothing to do with Luther's greatest achievement or with the fundamental principles of the Reformation - that all of the medieval baggage of Catholicism is superfluous at best and harmful at worst.
Nevertheless, his comments are bad. I have written a detailed response to them, working through your e-mail point by point. My answer will be regrettably long. I can only hope that you will give it your careful attention...
Before responding to your Luther quotes, let me say that I hope you will study Nietzsche's "Antichrist" as carefully as you have studied Luther's tract. Hitler found some nice cut-and-paste quotes in Luther, but Hitler's approach was radically different, modern, and based on a rejection of Christianity. I believe "The Antichrist" says 100 times more about the Nazi mindset than anything Luther wrote. Luther was in his attacks on the Jews (as someone pointed out) a medieval man, while Hitler was a modern one, like Nietzsche. I am aware of the endless debate, "The Nazis took Nietzsche out of context, no they didn't, yes they did," which never gets anywhere. I have never seen "The Antichrist" discussed in this context by anyone but myself. I added a brief synopsis of the book to the Wikipedia site on Nietzsche. It has been allowed to stand for a couple of days now, but it can be changed by anyone at any time, so I am adding it to the end of this e-mail. It is very short. My long essay on the Bedford gaol website is more indepth, but you can study Nietzsche's attack on the Jews and on the "arch-rabbi" Paul for yourself, if you haven't already done so. It can be found online at http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/anti.htm. Nietzsche was adulated, quoted, and admired by the Nazis and by Hitler in a way that Luther never was. Hitler never posed for photos by a bust or a statue of Luther like he did with Nietzsche. You may have seen Shirer's description at
Hitler and the Nazis wanted nothing to do with Luther's basic belief system of God, Christ, the day of judgement, eternal life, and so on. Also, what most angered Luther about the Jews - their insulting Christ and Mary, their refusal to accept Christ, their continuing to believe that they were the chosen people and better than the Gentiles after God had cast them out of their land - these were not the Nazis' issues. Luther handed them a free propaganda bonus, but their racial pseudo-science and Aryan supremacy were unknown in Luther's day, as you know.
I believe that one reason Nietzsche's overt antisemitism is so often overlooked, while Luther is raked over the coals, is because people like Nietzsche's presuppositions, and dislike Luther's, and so protect the one but are eager to discredit the other. Not that I am trying to escape from Luther, I will get to him shortly, but Wagner was also much closer to Hitler in time and in spirit than Luther. There is a very good essay - "Wagner and the Jews" - http://members.aol.com/wagnerbuch/intro.htm.
Getting back to your email, I agree with you that we hurt our souls by hating and despising people. God's final judgement is a help here - he will sort things out in the end, and those who do not find forgiveness will pay. About Luther paying for his sins, David committed a great sin with Bathsheba, and Solomon turned away from God and worshipped false Gods, yet I believe they were forgiven and will not go to hell for that. Luther never harmed anyone in his life, and I do not believe his tracts, bad as they were, place him beyond God's forgiveness. I have read that in his very last sermon Luther adopted a more conciliatory attitude toward the Jews, but have not been able to authenticate that ("A Modern Lutheran Response" http://kevin.davnet.org/articles/lutherjew.html).
You said some of what I write is true, which I am glad to hear. As to hanging my head in shame, my Christian faith does not come from Luther or depend on Luther. Luther stumbled and fell into sin, and forgot many basic teachings, two of which I quoted above. He may very well have been negatively influenced by prolongued illness. In the tract on the Jews we have been discussing, Luther refers to "my gallstone, my bloody tumor, and all the other ailments" - not self-pityingly, but in passing, as part of an analogy. That sort of thing can take a lot out of a man over the years (we are not talking about just a bad day). My dad was significantly changed by prolongued illness in the few years before he died. This tract is nothing like the many works Luther wrote in better days. If German history had not taken such a dramatically wrong turn after 1914 Luther's tracts written at the close of his life would have been forgotten. Luther made a mistake of continuing his work when he should have retired instead.
You refer to Luther's obscenity. I have read some of his most significant and best works (The 95 Theses, Bondage of the Will, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and others) and found them not in the least bit obscene.
Before looking at your e-mail specifically, I got involved in an interesting discussion about this on a Jewish board. One fellow, who shared your views on Luther and criticized him severely, had some comments that genuinely surprised me. Here is the link, followed by some of his comments:
http://www.jewsforjudaism.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2304&start=0
Initially Luther was pretty nice to the Jews, and then he got frustrated by their lack of conversion. And then his movement wasn't going the way he wanted, and then he was having a series of physical maladies and then...somebody brought to his attention a little polemic written by the Jews called "Toldot Yeshu". And if you know "Toldot Yeshu" you can find little references and associations here and there in "The Jews and their lies".
Much of Toldot Yeshu was poking fun at the Mary worship. For example, they claim Mary was a virgin, so Toldot Yeshu, instead of countering that agrees by saying that halachically, a betrothed woman who is raped retains her status as a virgin. And since we want to establish that she was raped because of a lack of witnesses, we claim she was menstruant (a jew is forbidden to have relations with such a woman) and that the father was a gentile.
Every major claim of Christianity was handled in this way.
And it really, REALLY, ticked Martin Luther off.
.......I am not saying that he was justified in what he wrote. I am saying that we fanned a smoldering coal and simply need to acknowledge some part in this.
One of the things he wrote about was how he had interceded in his youth to prevent the death of some local Jews, and condemned the church's creation of the Jewish ghettos in Venice in 1516. And then he feels betrayed, that the Jews came to him for help wearing a false face in order to take from him in a deceptive manner.
This was his perception, and if you read the first 2 paragraphs of his writing, you can hear it. (I also find it sad that many Jewish sites will only include extracts from his book without including the context, when we condemn Christian web sites for doing the same thing with Jewish texts).
An apostate Jew brought it to his attention that this polemic had been circulating among the Jewish people for centuries, where Jews publically mocked Christianity his religion, had insert portions of it into the Talmud, and taught it to Yeshivah students. He discovered that the people whom he not only tried to convert, but many that he had saved from death's door when they sought his help were publically mocking his faith and he blew a gasket.
So intense was his reaction that the Jewish leadership openly declared that Jewish polemics and parodies of Christianity were to stop, including those that could even have been perceived to be deragatory in nature to the Christians. The Rabbis declared that such things should not be part of who we are and what we should teach (although many ignored these warnings), but the damage was done, and in another decade the Church would be censoring our texts for us.
...So when we hold up "The Jews and their Lies" as the prime example of evil Christian writings, don't forget to include the historical context, and that it was a responsa to one of our own texts.
Yes, Martin Luther went over the edge, and his later writing was repugnant. And the Jewish polemics, while not going so far as his did where it called for physical attacks, were also part of the problem and just need to be included.
This is already a very long e-mail, and I have not even started to respond to the Luther quotes yet. I will give three examples from the beginning of your post where you have misinterpreted what Luther said, then I will save the rest for a second message to be sent in the next two or three days. I hope you will not be put off by this and yet another long message, but I really feel that this is the minimum necessary to deal with the points you raised.
Concerning misunderstandings in your letter, you said "The Jews, the Jewish Scriptures, and the Talmud all fell victim to his obscene assault." Luther held the Jewish Scriptures (not the Talmud) to be the inspired word of God, translated them into German, and used them often in his work. He objected to Jewish (and to Catholic) interpretations of them, but did not assault them. He says this about the Jewish scriptures in Part 3 of "On the Jews and their Lies":
God truly honored them highly by circumcision, speaking to them above all other nations on earth and entrusting his word to them. And in order to preserve this word among them, he gave them a special country; he performed great wonders through them, ordained kings and government, and lavished prophets upon them who not only apprised them of the best things pertaining to the present but also promised them the future Messiah, the Savior of the world.
Secondly, you say "He called the synagogue "a defiled bride, yes, an incorrigible whore and an evil slut with whom God ever had to wrangle, scuffle, and fight." Actually, I found that passage in "On the Jews and Their Lies." It is in Part 3, and Luther is not referring to the synagogue at all. He is talking about biblical Israel, the Israel of Moses and the prophets. Here is the passage:
No prophet has ever been able to raise his voice in protest or stand up against them, not even Moses. For in Numbers 16, Korah arose and asserted that they were all holy people of God, and asked why Moses alone should rule and teach. Since that time, the majority of them have been genuine Korahites; there have been very few true Israelites. For just as Korah persecuted Moses, they have never subsequently left a prophet alive or unpersecuted, much less have they obeyed him.
So it became apparent that they were a defiled bride, yes, an incorrigible whore and an evil slut with whom God ever had to wrangle, scuffle, and fight. If he chastised and struck them with his word through the prophets, they contradicted him, killed his prophets, or, like a mad dog, bit the stick with which they were struck.. Thus Psalm 95:10 declares: "For forty years I loathed that generation and said, 'They are a people who err in heart, and they do not regard my ways.'" And Moses himself says in Deuteronomy 31:27: "For I know how rebellious and stubborn you are; behold, while I am yet alive with you, today you have been rebellious against the Lord; how much more after my death!" And Isaiah 48:4: "Because I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead brass... ." And so on; anyone who is interested may read more of this. The Jews are well aware that the prophets upbraided the children of Israel from beginning to end as a disobedient, evil people and as the vilest whore, although they boasted so much of the law of Moses, or circumcision, and of their ancestry.
Here is a good example of one of Luther's main faults, saying "the vilest whore," which was excessive, but the main point is supported by scripture - and does not God say to the prophet Hosea "the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord"? Notice he says "they were a defiled bride" in the past tense. Moses and the prophets themselves referred to the Jews as stubborn, stiff-necked, rebellious. At one point even Torah says God wanted to wipe them out and start over with Moses (Exodus 32:10). The prophets were speaking by the inspiration of God and Luther was speaking by the inspiration of anger so he was off base, but his main idea was based on scripture. Second, this is often done with Luther - a gory quote is pulled out and made much of, but the circumstances behind it are misunderstood. This happens so often that I am sceptical of any Luther quotes I haven't seen in context myself.
Thirdly, You go on to say "Luther also compared the Jewish Scriptures to pig feces--the Nazis made the same analogy --which he alleged that the Jews consumed" and quote: "You damned Jews . . . You are not worthy of looking at the outside of the Bible, much less of reading it. You should read only the bible that is found under the sow's tail, and eat and drink the letters that drop from there." In the quote you gave Luther did not compare the Jewish scriptures to pig feces at all. He said they were not worthy to read the Bible, followed by the other part I don't need to repeat. Again, Luther translated the Jewish bible into German, which he would not have done if he thought it were pig feces. The Nazis wanted to scrap the Old Testament, Luther did not. He studied it and used it in his debates as the word of God.
I need to say something about other passages, especially killing Jews, and their inability to convert, but I am following your points in the order that you made them and will stop here. Again, I hope you will find the time to read my long answers.
Sincerely,
Joe Keysor
C. A short note
HI JOE,
of course you can quote me. just get the name right, as they say.
i have material on how fellow lutheran's took luther's comments on the jews very seriously, from the 16th through the 20th centuries.
hell, i admire some of luther myself. it must have taken courage to oppose the catholic church and risk being burned as a heretic. of course, for lots of reasons, economic, political, and religious, many german princes supported luther, saved him, and his movement.
if you get a chance, read my article on luther: "Luther, Luther Scholars, and the Jews," Encounter (Fall 1985), pp. 339-56.
and on the famous lutheran minister, martin niemoeller: "Theological Myth, German Antisemitism, and the Holocaust: The Case of Martin Niemoeller," Holocaust and Genocide Studies: An International Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1987), pp. 105-22.
i am in the midst of trying to get 4 mss. to publishers at this moment and need to get ready to teach at 4 different universities at the end of august so i have to sign off.
hope you do find your way closer to the truth.
bob michael
post scriptum: one further, sad fact. i knew nothing about luther's antisemitism until someone sent me a ku klux klan catalog, and there it was, "Luther, Martin, 'The Jews and Their Lies.'"
D. Completion of response
Hello RM,
Thanks for your second message. I can see not only by your email but also by your resume (which I found while looking for your articles) that you have a lot to do. I appreciate your comments.
If I do decide to use your messages, they will wind up on http://www.ourchurch.com/member/b/bedford/
I would like to get a hold of the two articles you mentioned and have saved the references in my Luther file. Sometime when I get back to the states or Canada I hope to spend some time in a library. I couldn't find the first one on the internet; I found the second, but there was a fee and I don't have a credit card. I am reluctant to trouble you further, but if you happen to have those articles in your computer and you could send them to me as attachments without spending too much time, I will study them carefully. I have started studying this seriously only in the last year or two - though of course I have read some books about the subject off and on over the years in a haphazard way. I welcome correction and have made some changes already as the result of negative criticism.
About the first article, you said "i have material on how fellow lutheran's took luther's comments on the jews very seriously, from the 16th through the 20th centuries." I did not mean to imply that Luther's attacks were completely ignored after he wrote them. No doubt someone read them and quoted them, but if you consider the broad movement of Protestantism since the Reformation those views were not influential. No other major Protestant figure ever came close to such sentiments - I am speaking of Wesley, Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and others. Also, some theologians may study Luther and make comments about him of various sorts, but still be totally out of the mainstream of cultural development. In his book The Crisis of German Ideology, Mosse analyzes in detail the Volkish movement that he feels prepared the way for Hitler, and in the index Luther is mentioned only five times - once negatively (by a German who disliked Luther's emphasis on the bible), and once just in passing. Mosse spends much more time exploring romanticism and idealistic philosophy - rightly I think. Kaiser Wilhelm's court preacher Stocker may have quoted Luther, I don't know, but it appears he was using antisemitism as a means of solidifying the status quo and had no real commitment to the spiritual principles of the Reformation.
About your article on Niemoller, I was able to read the abstract, and would like to say a few things in Niemoller's defense. If someone were to say "All of these illegal Mexicans are causing too many problems and we should get rid of them," that is very far from saying "They are subhuman vermin who should be exterminated." If Niemoller objected to Hugo Preuss, Rathenau, the high profiles of Jews in the Communist and Socialist movements, he could very well say that the Jews were having a negative influence on German life but never dream of shoving them into the gas chambers. One link that I have used in my essay clarifies this. Niemoller is quoted as saying
[www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/niem/njm415/NatJewMonthly415.htm]:
I had an audience with him, as a representative of the Protestant Church, shortly before he became Chancellor, in 1932. Hitler promised me on his word of honor, to protect the Church, and not to issue any anti-Church laws. He also agreed not to allow pogroms against the Jews, assuring me as follows: 'There will be restrictions against the Jews, but there will be no ghettos, no pogroms, in Germany'."
"I really believed," Niemoeller continued, "given the widespread anti-Semitism in Germany, at that time--that Jews should avoid aspiring to Government positions or seats in the Reichstag. There were many Jews, especially among the Zionists, who took a similar stand. Hitler's assurance satisfied me at the time.
Niemoller was gullible, foolish, and naive, but no one could imagine what Hitler would later become, and he was careful to present a facade of normality, especially before 1933. I don't believe Niemoller was a racial antisemite or had a deep hatred of Jews.
Moreover, and this is a subtle but important point that many who are not Christians find it difficult or impossible to accept, it is very possible for Christians to feel that the Jews are alienated from God by unbelief in Christ (in exactly the same way that unbelieving Japanese, Germans, and Mexicans, the entire human race are also alienated), and still not be antisemites. It is also possible for Christians to believe that God cast the Jews out of the land of Israel in his anger, scattered them in the Diaspora, delivered them into the hands of their enemies and turned a deaf ear to their prayers (as Moses prophesied in Deuteronomy 28: 63-66, and as is mentioned in some places in the prophets) yet still not be an antisemite. Christians can and did say the Jews suffered God's wrath and punishment, but this wrath was inflicted by delivering them into the hands of cruel and evil men - and Christians are not called to be cruel and evil instruments of Satan to whom the Jews have been abandoned by God's wrath. So, some of Niemoller's comments may seem very ominous and antisemitic, yet still be far removed from Hitler.
Getting back to Luther, you say "i admire some of luther myself. it must have taken courage to oppose the catholic church and risk being burned as a heretic. of course, for lots of reasons, economic, political, and religious, many german princes supported luther, saved him, and his movement." Luther did have a great deal of courage, also a high level of education and erudition (Greek, Latin, Hebrew, philosophy, literature), and was far from being the coarse, vulgar, brutal person some make him out to be. His movement was also helped by the fact that huge numbers of common people believed in it, and felt that his basic message was biblical, as I do (you can pick and choose with Luther, I don't agree with him on infant baptism church polity, communion).
You say "hope you do find your way closer to the truth." I think it is truthful to say that Naziism had its roots spiritually in the devil himself, but humanly speaking in the modern secular philosophies of Hegel, Fichte, the Volkish thinkers, Wagner, Nietzsche, and Haeckel, none of whom believed in the literal truth of the bible or were committed Christians. This, plus the unique circumstances of Germany after 1914, paved the way for the Holocaust, not the bible or a couple of tracts from Luther. I am aware of alleged antisemitism in the bible and have discussed this at length in my essay. The Hep riots that broke out in early 19th century Germany were, according to the Wiesenthal Center (citing the Encyclopedia Judaica) the result of secular modern influences
About your post scriptum ("i knew nothing about luther's antisemitism until someone sent me a ku klux klan catalog, and there it was, "Luther, Martin, 'The Jews and Their Lies'"). Luther is certainly to be condemned for his blundering pamphlets, but why is it that the Ku Kluxers are on the lunatic fringe while Hitler was able to appeal to such a broad section of society? Mosse says and documents that Hitler was only acting out ideas that were widespread through German society long before he came on the scene. These ideas (the Volkish movement) he relates not to Luther or to Christianity but to the forces of secularism, which I trace back to the Enlightenment and even back to Descartes. If you care to look at the short section in my essay dealing with Voltaire and Jefferson, there is a new kind of antisemitism wholly different and wholly attributable to secularism. "The Jews with their static laws and static concept of God are fundamentally at odds with reality, with the nature of the universe" leads to a radically different sort of demonization, untempered by fears of the day of judgement and the righteousness of God. "The Jews are to blame for contaminating Germany with their God and rules and even Christianity, which came from them" - the 19th century leads more directly to the Holocaust than the 16th.
Returning now to your first letter, the most important part is about Luther slaying the Jews, but i will answer your points in the order that you raised them. I found the passage "instead of the beautiful face of the divine word, they have to look into the devil's black, dark, lying behind, and worship his stench." This is very bad, but it is no worse than saying "Mary was a whore and Jesus was illegitimate." The kind of statements some Jews made (or allegedly made) are just as bad as some of the things Luther said - not that he is excused for responding in kind. Here is a quote from Section 10: "In his Bible, Sebastian Monster relates that a malicious rabbi does not call the dear mother of Christ Maria but haria; i.e., sterquilinium, a dung heap." If that was in fact said, and it may not have been, it is just as bad - not that it justifies Luther.
About racism and the inability of the Jews to convert, modern racism was unknown in Luther's day. It says in Acts 17:26 that God has "made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." Moreover, that was not the attitude of Paul and the apostles, who did make an effort to convert the Jews. I am reminded of a well-known American Christian who has said and done some foolish things in his old age and tarnished his ministry. These old guys should retire before it is too late. If Luther had stopped writing a little earlier we would not be discussing this, it has nothing to do with his life's work. The Jews were not an issue with him until he declined greatly at the very end of his life.
About the sermon of 25 September 1539 in which "Luther tried to demonstrate through several examples that individual Jews could not convert permanently," I would like to see that. It is clearly contradictory to the New Testament in which many Jews did convert. There may be some other comments in the sermon that would shed some light on this. You say that "in several passages of On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther appeared to reject the possibility that the Jews would or could convert," and the quotes you give are very definite. On the other hand, in the very last sentence of that work he says "May Christ, our dear Lord, convert them mercifully and preserve us steadfastly and immovably in the knowledge of him, which is eternal life." Here he plainly refers to his desire for their conversion. This is the Christian position, not other statements which were made in hostility and anger. Also, Part 6 has this quote: "Whenever a Jew is sincerely converted, he should be handed one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred florins, as personal circumstances may suggest. With this he could set himself up in some occupation for the support of his poor wife and children..." Part 7 says this: Burgensis, who was one of their very learned rabbis, and who through the grace of God became a Christian a very rare happening is much agitated by the fact that they curse us Christians so vilely in their synagogues (as Lyra also writes)... Luther plainly says that Jews can convert, which is the standard Christian position, meaning other statements to the contrary were contradictions of a man writing in anger and not thinking logically. Luther is vacillating and contradictory here, showing a clumsy inconsistency I never noticed in an outstanding and rigorously logical work like Bondage of the Will. It does seem Luther's grasp is failing.
There is another quote, "Even if the Jews were punished in the most gruesome manner so that the streets ran with blood, so that their dead would be counted not in the hundred thousands but in the millions..." I have not seen this in the tract we have been discussing. I need some documentation for that one.
You go on to assert " 3. LUTHER'S PROGRAM FOR THE JEWS WAS DUPLICATED BY HITLER, FROM DESTROYING THEIR RELIGION AND HOMES TO SLAVE LABOR.
In his entire life Luther never moved his little finger to implement such a program, and never advocated it or agitated for it even at the height of his influence. It is tempting to read backward with our knowledge of the Third Reich in mind. The fact that no Lutherans at any time, when Lutheranism was truly the dominant cultural force in Germany, sought to carry out such a program show these comments to be an aberration attributable to a personality defect that never manifested itself in Luther's prime (I need to see that sermon of 1539 you mentioned). It was the destruction of the old order - politically and socially in WWI, philosophically and spiritually in the 1800's - that paved the way for Hitler. Moreover, Luther said in Sect. 10 "In addition, no one is holding them here now. The country and the roads are open for them to proceed to their land whenever they wish. If they did so, we would be glad to present gifts to them on the occasion; it would be good riddance." That doesn't sound like Hitler's program. The Nazis may have said something about the Jews leaving while confiscating their assets and making it impossible for them to do so, but that it is not what Luther is referring to here.
Your fourth point is "LUTHER SEVERAL TIMES ADVOCATED MASS MURDER: Luther's program for the Jews asked the princes three times to kill Jews who resisted. His third and fourth steps mention 'pain of death' and 'pain of loss of life and limb'." I did not see anything like this in the third step, or in the second. The fourth step refers to forbidding rabbis to teach on pain of loss of life, which is bad and wrong, but far less than mass murder. The fact that this was never practiced in any Protestant country before 1914 (a convenient cut-off date) proves my main contention that such things are not inherent in Christianity or in Protestantism. Also, I believe Luther was writing in his study, carried away with his angry rhetoric, not seriously considering what this might mean in real life. Here are some other quotes from Luther cited by Steven Katz in "The Holocaust in Historical Context": Katz cites another passage in which Luther said that money gained by the Jews from usury should be taken from them and used to maintain "converted Jews and the old and the sick among them" [p. 391]. Another passage is cited in which Luther says: "We must indeed with prayer and the fear of God before our eyes, exercise a sharp compassion towards them and seek to save some of them from the flames [of Hell]. Avenge ourselves we dare not" [p. 391]. Say what you like, I believe that Luther would never have been capable of carrying out, and would have recoiled from actually carrying out, harsh words spoken by an ill, resentful, and angry old man.
You say "His fifth step advises the authorities to deprive the Jews of safe passage once they have left their ghettos." He says plainly that the purpose of this is not so the Jews would be killed, but so that they would stay home. Another passage of "On the Jews and Their Lies" indicates that Luther saw the necessity of killing at least some of the Jews: "I wish and I ask that our rulers who have Jewish subjects exercise a sharp mercy toward these wretched people . . .. They must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in, proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did in the wilderness, slaying three thousand lest the whole people perish. [They are a] people possessed . . .."
I tried to find out about the Jews in Reformation Germany, if there were any in Wittenberg, but didn't on the internet. Such things were never practiced after Luther until the Nazis came along, proven enemies of Christianity who severely persecuted the church. Their evils derived from modern philosophies, not from the previously obscure and neglected tracts of someone with a totally different worldview. Reading backward from the Holocaust, this passage seems worse than it was at the time - frustrated and angry mutterings that were not taken seriously. Moreover, God and Moses did have Jewish people slain in the wilderness because of their stubbornness, iniquity, and refusal to obey. Luther, considering the Old Testament to be the word of God, with many truths written for our example, forgot in his bitterness that God was present with Moses in a very different way from what we as Christians experience with Christ. What God can do, and Moses could do, we as Christians cannot. Luther may also have been pointing to Moses' example without actually saying or meaning that Christians should go forth and start slaying. For years and years when he had the ear of many influential people he never said anything of the kind. To say "Look how severe Moses was, we should be severe too" does not necessarily require that we be severe in an identical manner. What if Luther was being rhetorical here? He often was. No Lutherans in 350 years of German history after Luther read this and then as a consequence went out and killed Jews. With Hitler, every hint or suggestion can and should be interpreted with the worst in mind. I don't think this is the case with Luther.
You go on to make a statement that is far from fully accurate: "Luther repeatedly employed the language of violence against most, if not all, of his enemies. Since Luther often wrapped his opponents in his vision of the Antichrist, he urged that brimstone and sword be used against many individuals and groups: the pope and his cardinals, Catholic nobles, anti-Lutheran sectarians like the Sabbatarians, heretics, Turks and German peasants." Luther was adamantly against fighting for the Christian faith and said that Christians should use only the Word and prayer. He specifically condemned Zwingli for fighting for the faith, and said the latter's death in battle was God's judgement for using the sword (as I recall from years ago). He never advocated massacring Catholics and was very pacifistic when it came to Christians suffering martyrdom for their faith.
On the other hand, he did firmly believe that, as Paul taught in Romans, God had given the power of the sword to the state to keep the peace, and believed that legitimate rulers had the right to use the sword for the public good, whether in resisting the Turkish invasions or punishing rebels or criminals. That the invading Turks and peasant rebels should fall under the power of the sword is I believe correct and biblical. Luther's fiery language states a difficult truth with excessive rhetoric. Lincoln believed he had the right to repress a rebellion, but he did not get so worked up about it. Luther was especially concerned because it seemed that some of his Reformation teachings were being distorted to support a revolutionary cause that was anathema to him, and he made sure there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the reformation was not a license for riot and rebellion. As to anti-Lutheran sectarians, some of them were far from pacifistic, and were involved in violence and social turmoil. If Luther actively approved of the persecution of harmless Anabaptists, and not revolutionary and militaristic Anabaptists, I would like to know about it.
By the way, I do not consider Luther to be a pope, to be defended at all costs. I don't agree with some of his words, doctrines, and actions, and admit he had many faults, but I do deny that Hitler got anything more than some useful propaganda from Luther.
I disagree that "Luther did not, however, distinguish between the threat of peasants and Jews because he regarded the powerless Jews as a menace to his theological vision of life, earthly and eternal. Jews became a symbol for all that was evil and devilish, unChristian and anti-Christian in the world. For these reasons, the Jews appeared more threatening than Luther's other enemies, and he assaulted them with his words and advocated governmental violence against them."
This is a very common approach, but the Jews were in no sense a menace to Luther's theological vision. He had a profound faith in the deity of Christ and the truths of the New Testament, and was rather angry at the stubbornness of the Jews for believing they were superior to the Gentiles, after God had manifestly shown his displeasure with them by casting them out of the land of Israel and delivering them into the hands of their enemies, exactly as Moses prophesied. He was also angry at insults to Christ and Mary, and at complaints by the Jews about how badly they were treated ("If you don't like it here, leave. Who brought you here?"). I am not defending Luther's anger, but explaining it was different from what you claim. I know some people like to think that Jews are a threat to Christians because their unbelief undermines Christianity, but in fact the unbelief of the Jews confirms what Paul says in Romans. He also says this unbelief is God's will for the present, but will not last forever. The entire world is full of unbelief in Christ. The bible teaches that this is the natural state of fallen man, and Jesus even asked if he would find any people at all on earth who believed in him when he returned.
As to Jews being "a symbol for all that was evil and devilish," that occurred with much greater vehemence in the 19th century. In my humble essay I have traced the demonization of the Jew that was the result of secular, not Christain influences. Bible believing Christians, as Luther was, have many other examples of evil in the world and do not need to pin everything on the Jews. This is why Luther said in "On the Jews and their Lies": If I had not had the experience with my papists, it would have seemed incredible to me that the earth should harbor such base people who knowingly fly in the face of open and manifest truth, that is, of God himself. For I never expected to encounter such hardened minds in any human breast, but only in that of the devil. However, I am no longer amazed by either the Turks' or the Jews' blindness, obduracy, and malice, since I have to witness the same thing in the most holy fathers of the church, in pope, cardinals, and bishops."
The sin of the Jews is the sin of the Turks is the sin of the papists is the sin of an ordinary German who rejected Christ. Look in a dozen of Luther's most important and well-known Reformation works and you will find he was much more concerned with the pope and Rome, throughout the course of many years and many volumes of writings, than with the Jews. Christians have Satan, demons, and original sin within ourselves to blame for the evils of the world. True, Jews were demonized, but this was contrary to the biblical message.
You say "In at least three other passages Luther approached an advocacy of mass murder of Jews. A sermon of 1539 argued that 'I cannot convert the Jews. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not succeed in doing it. But I can stop up their mouths so that they will have to lie upon the ground.' The language is ambiguous, but it implies a death threat. The imprecise language allowed people of good will to believe that outright murder was not being proposed, while at the same time this kind of language permitted them to 'speak about the unspeakable,' the mass murder of Jews."
Once again, I would like to see that sermon and read it in its entirety. If you read about 19th-century German antisemitism you do not find people quoting these minor and forgotten tracts and sermons (I welcome correction if that is not the case). The whole thrust of modern antisemitism, whether racial or philosophical does not depend on Luther. I have ceased to be surprised at people who use Luther as the explanation for German antisemitism because they have little or no understanding of the 19th century and the vast movement away from Christianity that occurred then (not that I am saying you do this). First there was Luther, then Hitler - never mind about Jahn, Fichte, Hegel, Wagner, Nietzsche and others who had zero interest in Luther's sermons and only admired him as a national hero who liberated the Nordics from the degenerate Italians.
You quote "a usurer is an arch-thief and a robber who should rightly be hanged on the gallows seven times higher than other thieves" and explain "The deadly syllogism Luther concocts in this paragraph may be stated as follows: All thieves and usurers should be executed by hanging. All Jews are thieves and usurers. Therefore, all Jews should be killed." That follows logically, but Luther was not writing logically, as we have seen in his constant contradictions, - "The Jews can't be saved, they can, they can't." Your syllogism makes sense in the abstract, but why was mass killing never put into practice until someone came along who explicitly rejected all of Luther's presuppositions about God, the bible, Jesus, and the meaning of life? Luther could never have imagined that someone centuries later would actually attempt to exterminate the Jews. Luther never said to the Elector of Saxony, "Hey, why don't we go out and slaughter the Jews." Mobs did not come out of Lutheran churches shrieking "Death to the Jews." I continue to believe that Daniel Gasman's "The Scientific Origins of National Socialism" says a hundred times more about the origins of National Socialism than "On the Jews and their Lies."
Your last point is the most important. Maybe I should have put it first. You said "In another section of 'On the Jews and Their Lies,' Luther clearly stated that all Jews should be murdered. 'We are even at fault in not avenging all this innocent blood of our Lord and of the Christians which they shed for three hundred years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and the blood of the children they have shed since then (which still shines forth from their eyes and their skin). We are at fault in not slaying them.'"
That seems clear and unambiguous - yet it is significant that it occurs at the end of Part 10. Immediately after that in Part 11 he says, "What shall we do with the Jews then? We should enact these repressive measures..." (not kill them en masse) but then he goes on to say that "This would not work, so we should expell them." He did not say "Death to the Jews, exterminate the Jews," when he elaborated at length on what he thought should be done. This shows his comment about slaying to be rhetorical, sarcastic, emotional, but not his actual policy. How many times have people said in anger they will do something that they will never do? What did the Protestants in Norway, with the official state religion of Lutheranism, do with the Jews in WWII?
About the Jews slaying children, poisoning wells, etc., we think that is very ignorant, and it is, but Luther was born into that and brought up with it. It was in the air through his most formative years and he nearly went through his entire career without even mentioning it. Then he slipped up at the end to the detriment of what he really stood for. We also have many ideas that the people of Luther's time would think were horrible and disgusting - free sex, porno, homosexuality, scandalous attire of women, mothers killing their children. They would have thought our society was miserable, depraved, and degenerate. There is a certain amount of evil inevitable in the world - you get rid of one abuse and a different one crops up.
Let me add a quote from Part 1 of the tract on the Jews. Luther says "Oh, what do we poor muck-worms, maggots, stench, and filth presume to boast of before him who is the God and Creator of heaven and earth, who made us out of dirt and out of nothing! And as far as our nature, birth, and essence are concerned, we are but dirt and nothing in his eyes; all that we are and have comes from his grace and his rich mercy." This is what he says of himself, of the Germans, of the Christians. No room for Aryan supremacy there.
I have written a lot. I will be thankful if you merely read my message, and am not expecting an in-depth response, though of course you can write what you like.
My essay was written on a personal rather than a scholarly level, and is admittedly argumentative and polemical. If I can give it more depth and objectivity with more complete information I will.
Thanks again for your time. This sort of feedback is most instructive.
Joe Keysor.
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