Posted on 04/01/2017 7:10:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
As we approach the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, focus will return to the leader of that movement, Martin Luther. What kind of man was he, really? More specifically, what kind of Christian was he?
At a recent conference of R. C. Sproul’s Ligonier Ministries, panelists Stephen Nichols and W. Robert Godfrey discussed “whether Martin Luther was guilty of anti-Semitism,” and there is good reason to raise this question.
As Nichols rightly points out, in 1523, Luther reached out with kindness and humility to the Jewish people, denouncing how the Church had treated them up to now with the hope that many would become Christians. Twenty years later, when that did not happen, and when Luther, now old and sick, had been exposed to some blasphemous, anti-Jesus writings penned by Jews in past generations, he wrote his infamous document Concerning the Jews and Their Lies.
In this mini-book, he told the German princes how to deal with “this damned, rejected race of Jews.”
First, their synagogues should be set on fire...Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed....Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer-books and Talmuds...Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more...Fifthly, passport and traveling privileges should be absolutely for bidden to the Jews....Sixthly, they ought to be stopped from usury [charging interest on loans]....Seventhly, let the young and strong Jews and Jewesses be given the flail, the ax, the hoe, the spade, the distaff, and spindle, and let them earn their bread by the sweat of their noses...We ought to drive the rascally lazy bones out of our system....Therefore away with them....To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden-the Jews.
Yes, all this came from the pen of Martin Luther. (Brace yourself. There’s more to come.)
Of this despicable document, Nichols said that “Luther unleashes his rhetoric against the Jews and is very forceful in his rhetoric.” Very forceful? I’d call that a gross understatement.
Nichols continues:
Now we need to say that he was an equal opportunity offender. It wasn’t just—that rhetoric was not just reserved—for the Jews, he used the same rhetoric for the Papists, for the Anabaptists, for the nominal Christians, that he used for the Jews. But he was wrong. He spoke harshly, and I think he abused his influence that he had in speaking harshly. And so, we need to say that Luther was wrong in that. But this isn’t necessarily anti-Semitism, that’s really a 20th-century phenomenon.
Once again, I must take exception to these words, which minimize the horror of what Luther wrote.
Tragically, Adolph Hitler thought that Luther was a genius who figured out how dangerous the Jewish people were. And the date that many historians mark as the beginning of the Holocaust, Nov. 9, 1938, was the day that Hitler put Luther’s advice into practice, setting on fire and vandalizing Jewish synagogues, shops, and homes.
In that light, I cannot agree with Nichols in saying, “I think he abused his influence that he had in speaking harshly.” That, again, is a gross understatement, regardless of how ugly Luther’s rhetoric was towards other groups and regardless of how coarse the rhetoric of the day might have been. For a Christian leader, such writings must be renounced in the strongest possible terms, even with tears and wails.
Robert Godfrey, the other Ligonier panelist, commented:
Just to add one more thing . . . the one little that should be added is Luther, all his life, longed that Jews should be converted and join the church. Hitler never wanted Jews to join the Nazi party. That’s the difference between anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish. Luther wasn’t opposed to the Jews because of their blood. He was opposed to the Jews because of their religion. And he wanted them to join the Christian church. If you’re really anti-Semitic, you’re against Jews because of their blood and there’s nothing Jews can do about that. There’s not change they can make to make a difference. You’re absolutely right, Luther’s language should not be defended by us because it’s violent against the Jews. It was not against an ethnic people, as you said, but against a religion that he reacted so sharply.
Is Godfrey right? Yes and no. On the one hand, the real issue was the Jewish religion (specifically, from Luther’s point of view, Jewish unbelief in Jesus) as opposed to being Jewish in and of itself. On the other hand, there was a fine line between the two, as historian Eric W. Gritsch pointed out in his book, Martin Luther’s Antisemitism: Against His Better Judgment.
He writes,
There is even a hint of racism in Luther when he commented on the unsubstantiated rumor that Jews killed Christian children. This crime "still shines forth from their eyes and their skin. We are at fault in not slaying them [the Jews]." Such a declaration cannot be limited to a specific historical context. It is timeless and means "death to the Jews," whether it is uttered by Luther or Adolf Hitler. Moreover, Luther himself was willing to kill "a blaspheming Jew": "I would slap his face and, if I could, fling him to the ground and, in my anger, pierce him with my sword.”
So wrote Martin Luther. And I find little comfort in the fact that he wrote about others, like the peasants, in similarly dreadful terms: “On the obstinate, hardened, blinded peasants, let no one have mercy, but let everyone, as he is able, hew, stab, slay, lay about him as though among mad dogs, . . . . so that peace and safety may be maintained... etc.”
Returning to Luther and the Jews, quotes like this make it difficult to separate his theological Jew-hatred from his ethnic Jew-hatred:
A Jew or a Jewish heart is as hard as stone and iron and cannot be moved by any means. . . . In sum, they are the devil’s children damned to hell . . . . We cannot even convert the majority of Christians and have to be satisfied with a small number; it is therefore even less possible to convert these children of the devil! Although there are many who derive the crazy notion from the 11th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans that all Jews must be converted, this is not so. St. Paul meant something quite different.
As a non-Catholic, Jewish believer in Jesus, I am indebted to Luther’s positive contributions and recognize the hellacious battle he fought with corrupt traditions. But I appeal to followers and admirers of Luther today: Please do not minimize the horror of what he wrote (against the Jews and others). Please don’t downplay all this as an example of Luther having “feet of clay” (in the words of Nichols).
There is a lot of blood on those clay feet – including Jewish blood.
Let’s own it with sadness and grief. To do otherwise is to be less than honest with the memory of Martin Luther.
"One indeed is the universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved, in which the priest himself is the sacrifice, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine; the bread (changed) into His body by the divine power of transubstantiation, and the wine into the blood, so that to accomplish the mystery of unity we ourselves receive from His (nature) what He Himself received from ours."
--Pope Innocent III and Lateran Council IV (A.D. 1215)
“It’s literally the exact opposite of what you’re teaching.”
That’s what you say. I have no reason to believe you or your interpretation of things.
“You teach salvation is available to “all” people.”
Actually, I’m saying grace is accessible to all in some way or else there would be no point to free will.
“Augustine says it isn’t, and that “all” only means “all kinds of people, the wealthy, the poor, the old,” etc.”
Again, that’s through your interpretative lens - which is not squared with everything that St. Augustine wrote. One of the problems with Protestants interpreting St. Augustine is that they ignore entire categories of his thinking. Praying for the dead, for instance, completely ignored or simply dismissed by Protestants. If there’s prayer for the dead, then the Protestant understanding of St. Augustine is wrong. Grace through the sacraments: If there is grace there, then the Protestant understanding of St. Augustine is wrong.
Our Lord is speaking here of the Pharisees’ tradition (”traditions of men”) and not Apostolic tradition (which comes from Himself, Our Lord, through the Apostles.)
Love ya, Elsie. But you have way too much time on your hands.
“Mother of God” That’s the big one. After that, the rest are just variations and ways to meditate. It has always amazed me how much the Protestants refuse to acknowledge this fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther%27s_Marian_theology
More complicated than just rejected her out of hand.
Catholics do not worship Mary but venerate her. It is implied in this wiki article that we believe that we need Mary and the saints to have salvation. That is not true. We believe that we receive salvation from Jesus Christ. We also however believe that He knows how weak and sinful we are and so he gave us his mother (Jn. 19:25). He also gave us the saints to be our guides and role models. And of course we believe that he gave us the sacraments to strengthen us. To believe that we can just forge on on the strength of our own will is silly of course and to believe that just saying the magic words and then never having to worry about sin again is also silly.
Just SOME of the stuff he wrote; which I have posted in this thread; shows that CATHOLIC teaching ain't what it USED to be!
Ok; where is the EVIDENCE of 'Apostolic tradition' to be found in the bible?
Sorry MrsDon-0; but you have too much to explain than a mere waving of the imperial hand can dismiss lightly.
Izaat so...
Why?
No where in the bible is she 'venerated'.
I venerated my mother while she lived. Why would I not venerate the Mother of God?
This sort of rhetoric would be more useful in a propaganda sense if you didn't overdo it. As it stands, repeating it over and over again, especially in posts where you deliberately misinterpret what the other party has explained and re-explained more than once, robs it of most of its power.
I’ll keep saying it as long as you keep doing it. I have no reason to believe any Protestant interpretations.
Who founded the Eastern Orthodox Churches? And are they heretics too?
There are places in the NT where [Pharisees'] traditions or the "traditions of men" are warned against. There are other places in the NT --- particularly in the writings of St. Paul--- where Apostolic traditions are positively recommended(1 Cor. 11:2, 2 Thess. 2:15, 2 Thess. 3:6, 2 Tim. 2:2) and a great deal more.
I never see the Non-C Arguers attempt to distinguish between one sort of tradition which is warned against, and another sort of Tradition (with a capital T) which is recommended, or even required. Biblically required.
I never see a Non-C Arguer with a serious commitment to ferret out the content of this Biblically required Tradition, or even commit to find out how to find it!
All too often even an initial step of explanation on Catholics' part is met by mockery (GUESSWORK! MAKING IT UP!) or blasphemy (Crucified Christ whining, "Howcome I don't get no dulia?") -- not the seriousness expected of an inquiring heart.
Why should I get into Point 2 when you're still mocking Point 1?
I've got lots of parish obligations from now until Easter. Bringing eleven n00bies into the Church! And then I'm helping lead the Mystagogia discussions from Easter to Pentecost.
Gotta run. I'll go ask Blessed Mary to pray for you.
“Who founded the Eastern Orthodox Churches?”
The Eastern Orthodox.
“And are they heretics too?”
The founders? Some may have been since some were schismatics - as even some Eastern Orthodox seem to tacitly admit with more modern examples. There’s no reason to think of those in Eastern Orthodox Churches today as heretics, however.
So today’s Protestant churches are heretics, but the Orthodox are not?
"Ok; where is the EVIDENCE of 'Apostolic tradition' to be found in the bible?"
1 Cor. 11:2
2 Thess. 2:15
2 Thess. 3:6
2 Tim. 2:2 ....
from Paul.
And on to John: what is the significance of this: "There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were t be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written"? This same John recalls Jesus saying this: "The Advocate, the Holy Spirit Whom the Father will send in My Name --- He will teach you everything and remind you of all I have told you."
Ether John's saying it's all insignificant and not worth looking into,
~OR~ there's much --- not a little, but "much"---- which the Holy Spirit is going to remind and teach the Church.
John come back to this unwritten "much-ness" repeatedly:
2 John 1:12 - "Although I have much to write to you, I do not intend to use paper and ink, Instead, I hope to visit you and speak face to face so that our joy may be complete."
And
3 John 1:13-14 - "I have much to write to you, but I do not wish to write with pen and ink. Instead, I hope to see you soon, when we can talk face to face."
Again: insignificant? Or so significant that he insistently repeated it and said he had to tell them face to face?
How would you find out what was taught by the Apostles bet not written in the Four Gospels or the NT Letters? Would it be reasonable to look into the writings of their disciples?
Disciples of John the Evangelist
OK, is there another reasonably way? How about looking at the local churches St. John and his disciples founded, and find out what teachings and practices they have faithfully transmitted through the earliest centuries as of Apostolic origin?
If you find substantial agreement on doctrines and practices from one end of the Church to the other --- local churches in Asia, Africa, and Europe -- which the churches treasure as having been handed on to them by the Apostolic founders, isn't that evidence of the Holy Spirit leading all these churches in the same direction?
Or did the Church just kinda "peter out" after the first century, whereupon the Holy Spirit, forgetting He was to remind them of "everything," curled up and fell asleep? --- not to reawaken until 1400 years later, when this is what he "reminded" the "reformed" churches: "Verily, forget all that stuff"? I
I had no idea Luther said such things. Well.
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