Part 2: Is Luther to Blame for Nazism?
Luther and Racism
“Anti-Semitism” often carries two different meanings, and unfortunately people often equivocate between the two. “Anti-Semitism” can refer to being against the race of the Jews. The genetic inheritance of the Jews is blamed for somehow causing the alleged moral failings of Jews. However, “anti-Semitism” is also used against those who reject the Jewish religion, a belief system. But this is no more racist than Aristotle’s rejection of Platonism was racist. That is, it’s not racist. Luther’s opposition to the Jews was because of their beliefs, not their race. He had hoped that, with the burden of Roman Catholic theology and history having been thrown off, Jews would embrace the Protestant beliefs in large numbers. Luther wrote:
I would request and advise that one deal gently with the Jews. . . . If we really want to help them, 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, 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.
Fifteen years later, after his hopes of wide-spread conversions among the Jews were not realized, Luther wrote On the Jews and their Lies in which he makes vitriolic demands for the State to persecute Jews as he thinks idolaters were in the Old Testament – by burning down Jewish synagogues and homes, forbidding rabbinic teaching, and forcing them into manual labor. It should be noted that these demands had nothing to do with race and nationality but with belief systems. He was reacting to Rabbinic writings that called Jesus Christ “the bastard Son” of “that whore, Mary” and worse. Luther was as equally vitriolic toward the Roman Catholic Church, which had nothing to do with race. Continue reading →
