[soc.religion.christian] Question: Luther's ultimate position vis-a-vis anti-Semitism?

levy@uunet.uu.net (2656-Daniel R. Levy(0000000)0000) (08/21/90)

In some recent debates between believers and nonbelievers in the alt.atheism
group, I saw some statements ascribed to Martin Luther which, at least on their
face, were virulently anti-Jewish.  These statements were to the effect that
the Jews and their synagogues should be attacked and burned because they (the
Jews) were so low-down.  Now to say the least this came across to me as a very,
very un-Christian thing for a Christian to say.  Jesus Christ Himself verbally
lambasted and foretold woes upon the hypocritical Jewish Pharisees, true, but
He clearly indicated that implementation of the woes would be left to the
Father.  And as for His human followers, the guiding rule seemed to be, far
from vengeance, to return good for evil, "bless them that curse you."  Is there
a larger context to Luther's remarks which would better reconcile them to a
Christian attitude?  Or did Luther himself retract the comments at a later
time?  I am sincerely and sorely puzzled by this, Protestant (but non-Lutheran)
though I am.*

Could anyone who could shed some more light on the matter for me, please send
me email?  As I explained in an earlier query about a stumbling block, I
foolishly swore off reading soc.religion.christian about a year ago, so
email is the only avenue by which I can in good conscience get feedback.

Thanks much, in Jesus' name.


@@@

*
Not a rock-solid alignment; looking at the Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic
divisions of the faith and the various apparently unbiblical quirks and foibles
of the various subdivisions within, the question to me at times has appeared to
be not which is the _right_ church but which one is least _wrong_, a most
distressing position for one earnestly convinced of the need for salvation
to find himself in.  After having struggled with this for many months and
noting the slipups of even the saved disciples and the size of the multitude
"too many for a man to count" which is shown in Revelation to have attained
salvation, I have tentatively concluded that it isn't necessary to find and
join the "perfect" denomination to attain to salvation in Jesus Christ, but the
situation still leaves me uneasy.  Just my personal comments, which have little
to do with the Luther issue, but I am glad to get it off my chest.
-- 
 * Daniel R. Levy * uunet!tellab5!mtcchi!levy * Disclaimer: MTC may not agree *
So far as I can remember, there is not one    | ... therefore be ye as shrewd
word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.| as serpents <Gen. 3> and harm-
-- Bertrand Russell [Berkeley UNIX fortune]   | less as doves -- JC [Mt. 10:16]

[Here is Roland Bainton's discussion of the incident, in "Here I
Stand": "[Luther] had early believed that [the Jews] are a
stiff-necked people to have rejected Christ, but contemporary Jews
could not be blamed for the sins of their fathers and might readily be
excused for their rejection of Christianity by reason of the
corruptions of the papacy.  'If I were a Jew, I would suffer the rack
ten times before I would go over to the pope.  The papists have so
demeaned themselves that a good Christian would rather be a Jew than
one of them, and a Jew would rather be a sow than a Christian.  What
good can we do the Jews when we constrain them, malign them, and hate
them as dogs?  When we deny them work and force them to usury, how can
that help?  We should use toward the Jews not the pope's but Christ's
law of love.  If some are still stiff-neced, what does that matter?
We are not all good Christians.'  Luther was sanguine that his own
reform ... would accomplish the conversion of the Jews."  But this
didn't happen.  "In Luther's latter days, when he was often sorely
frayed, news came that in Moravia, Christians were being induced to
Judaize.  Then he came out with a vulgar blast in which he recommended
that all the Jews be deported to Palestine.  Failing that, they should
be forbidden to practice usury, should be compelled to earn their
living on the land, their synagogues should be burned, and their books
including the Bible should be taken away from them.  One could wish
that Luther had died before ever this tract was written.  Yet one must
be clear as to what he was recommending and why."  It was a variant of
the territorial principle that was coming into effect for Christians:
there were Protestant and Catholic countries.  The Jews should also
get a land of their own.  Bainton notes that the only reason such
proposals didn't show up in other countries is that they had already
expelled their Jews.  Note that this is the same period of time when
Luther became involved in execution of Anabaptists.  In general it
appears that as he became influential in the government he moved from
his earlier position that Christianity cannot be coerced, and came to
believe it was his responsibility to prevent with the sword the
spreading of false ideas.  Thus his later attitude towards the Jews
was part of what I regard as a general degeneration of his principles,
and was consistent with his attitude towards others who taught what he
believed were dangerous falsehoods.  Indeed it was more sympathetic
than his approach to the Anabaptists.  --clh]