Lenin's Revolution Vs. Luther's Reformation

Yesterday (Nov. 7): the 90th anniversary of Vladimir Lenin's Communist Revolution. Last week (Oct. 31): the 490th anniversary of the beginning of Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation. That numeral 4 indicates a key difference between the two: The 490 glorified God, while the 90 attempted to deify man -- and some men in particular.

Luther was a theological revolutionary but not a political one. In 1521, he wrote "A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to All Christians To Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion." The following year, as political unrest intensified, Luther preached about effecting change through patience, charity and reliance on God's word rather than violence. He portrayed the devil enjoying religiously based class warfare: "He sits with folded arms behind the fire of hell, and says with malignant looks and frightful grin: 'Ah, how wise these madmen are to play my game! Let them go on; I shall reap the benefit.'"

When one of the madmen, Thomas Muntzer, led a communist uprising in 1524 and 1525, Luther argued that "the Gospel does not make goods common, except in the case of those who do of their own free will what the apostles and disciples did in Acts IV. They did not demand, as do our insane peasants in their raging, that the goods of others -- of a Pilate and a Herod -- should be common, but only their own goods."

For nearly five centuries, many Protestants have followed Luther's distinction. It's good for Christians to be charitable by voluntarily selling property they don't need to help those in need. But kissing up to envy by instituting government-forced theft is sleeping with Satan. Communism always works out poorly in practice because people work hardest when they get to keep for themselves and their families most of what they have earned. Those who provide valuable goods and services deserve their profits, and government should not seize it. Government can tax it, but countries prosper the most when taxes are low.

Why, when the historical evidence is so clear, does communism periodically rear its exceptionally ugly head, sometimes in profile as "Christian socialism" and sometimes in full-monty flare? Part of the appeal lies in the thrill of overturning God-given patterns of family and enterprise and substituting our own. Part is power seeking. Part is satanic.

It all comes back to the difference between 490 and 90. In his 1952 book, "Witness," Whittaker Chambers wrote that Communism "is not new. It is, in fact, man's second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: 'Ye shall be as gods.' It is the great alternative faith of mankind. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God."

Chambers eloquently continued: "It is the vision of man's mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world. It is the vision of man's liberated mind, by the sole force of its rational intelligence, redirecting man's destiny and reorganizing man's life and the world. It is the vision of man, once more the central figure of the Creation, not because God made man in His image, but because man's mind makes him the most intelligent of the animals."

London journalist Richard Spencer put it well two years ago in The Telegraph: "Christianity lays down that a man's responsibility to his neighbour is personal, a matter for his individual conscience, while communism decrees that all duties are collective, to be enforced by the state. Communism and its blood-brother, fascism, have been responsible -- in Asia, Europe, Africa and South America -- for more human misery over the past century than any other systems of belief thought up by man."

A crucial difference between 490 and 90: "Christianity teaches that each of us is a moral being, responsible for our actions to our Maker, and individually bound to love our neighbors as ourselves."

Thanks. This thread refreshed my memory:

“”If we wish to wash our hands of the Jews’ blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country.” (Martin Luther, in his book, “The Jews and Their Lies”,1543) “What shall we Christians do now with this depraved and damned people of the Jews? ... I will give my faithful advice: First, that one should set fire to their synagogues. . . . Then that one should also break down and destroy their houses. . . . That one should drive them out the country.” (Martin Luther, in his book, “The Jews and Their Lies”,1543)”

(post #35 - Rocketman)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1264898/posts?q=1&;page=1

I found no response on that thread that challenged the fact of Luther’s authorship of the above quote.

Again, with this thread, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1881344/posts, I saw no challenge to Dark Savant’s link to “The Jews and Their Lies”, and his comment (post # 11):

“I can’t see how anyone can read this as anything other than viciously anti-semitic.”

john19 finished that thread with his immediate reply:

“The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has repudiated the anti-semetic writings of Luther. It is our official position.”

Luther, in his later writings, was extremely anti-Jewish. Really vile stuff.

I agree. It is believed he expected mass conversions to Christianity & when that didn't happen, he struck out against those who refused to convert.

I'd be interested in your thinking about what it has to do with his position on Christian charity versus state sponsored redistribution of wealth or do you think it's impossible to mention Luther without educating the folks on the position he took about the Jews late in his life?

Perhaps anti-jewish is the term we have a problem with.

Luther was not above over the top polemics. What actions did he commit that would back these comments up?

He refused to give his blessing to a group of Jews to have free passage through Saxony.

Luther’s attacks on the Jews were against their twisting of their own religion; in rejecting the Messiah. He said as much, if not worse about the Roman Catholic faith. Did this mean he hated those that slavishly followed the Papist Antichrist, as he so uncharitably put it? No, it meant he hated the RCC, not necessarily the people under its sway. He was one of them for most of his life.

And anyone who thinks that Luther was pure as snow is ignoring the truth that he proclaimed. No Luther was not perfect, but neither was he the demon that the RCC tried to portray him as. If he was anti-semetic, so were they for their more direct treatment of the Jews.

To me, Luther's later hatred of Jews has no bearing on the value of his other thoughts, unless perhaps if Luther agreed with the Spencer quote; "Christianity lays down that a man's responsibility to his neighbour is personal, a matter for his individual conscience..."

Not defending the RCC here.

They actually killed Jews, while Luther only sometimes advocated that, along destroying their property and driving them from the country:

http://www.kimel.net/luther.html

“In another section of “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.’”

To me, Luther's later hatred of Jews has no bearing on the value of his other thoughts

If true, why did you bring up his treatment of the Jews on this thread?

unless perhaps if Luther agreed with the Spencer quote; "Christianity lays down that a man's responsibility to his neighbour is personal, a matter for his individual conscience..."

I can't presume to speak for him, whether or not he'd agree or disagree with the statement. If he did agree with it, how would it be connected with his ideas about the Jews?

>The Church did not kill Jews. If you are talking about the Inquisition, that was aimed at heretics. So far as the Jews were concerned, the aim was to exclude them from public life. Of course, the policy sounds depressingly like that of the Taliban. Apostasy from Christianity was punishable by death.

True, the Church allowed the secular rulers to do all their dirty work for them. The Church just condemned them, the executions they left to others, with their tacit permission.

But it was not the teaching of the Church to kill Jews. But to put Luther’s rants into perspective, many of the rants of traveling preachers in the 15th Century preached viciously anti-semitic sermons. I think that St. Bernardino fell into that practice and he attracted crowds as large as Whitefield and Wesley did in the 18thg Century. In retrospect, it is hard to understand Catholic feeling against the Jews, except for their stubborn refusal to convert. Nothing worse than when brothers grow to hate one another.

If true, why did you bring up his treatment of the Jews on this thread?

Because the article compared Lenin and Luther, and when I think of Lenin, I think of the mass killings he advocated, and look to Luther for comparisons.

'unless perhaps if Luther agreed with the Spencer quote; "Christianity lays down that a man's responsibility to his neighbour is personal, a matter for his individual conscience..."'

I can't presume to speak for him, whether or not he'd agree or disagree with the statement. If he did agree with it, how would it be connected with his ideas about the Jews?

Finishing the Spencer quote: "Christianity lays down that a man's responsibility to his neighbour is personal, a matter for his individual conscience, while communism decrees that all duties are collective, to be enforced by the state. Communism and its blood-brother, fascism, have been responsible -- in Asia, Europe, Africa and South America -- for more human misery over the past century than any other systems of belief thought up by man."

My thought ran along the lines of "dangers of collectivism", as opposed to seeing individuals as individuals. Luther fits in with Lenin and Hitler when he encourages Christians to view Jews as collectively evil.

Luther's views bore fruit:

"One leading Protestant churchman, Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther's antisemitic vitriol shortly after Kristallnacht's orgy of anti-Jewish violence. In the foreword to the volume, he applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day: 'On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.' The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words 'of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.'"

http://www.nobeliefs.com/luther.htm

Perhaps I erred in thinking of forced conversions (and the killing of refusers) as directed by the Church.

“The only point at which the medieval Inquisition and the Jews intersected was in the matter of apostasy. According to Roman law, and therefore canon law, a Christian was forbidden to convert to Judaism. The problem was that throughout the Middle Ages secular authorities or local populations frequently threatened to attack or expel Jews unless they accepted baptism. Most Jews moved on, if they could. But many others would go to the baptismal font rather than lose their lives or property. When the persecution was over, these baptized Jews would return to Judaism or, fearing the Inquisition, exist in a netherworld between the two faiths. The Church did not recognize a forced conversion as valid, so long as the person repudiated baptism within a reasonable amount of time. Yet if someone received baptism without objection, even if they were acting in response to an implied or spoken threat, that was considered valid. In other words, although the popes were opposed to anti-Jewish violence, if it led to a silent acceptance of coercive baptism, they were forced to recognize the validity of the sacrament. It was the job of the inquisitors, therefore, to make certain that these new Christians remained Christian.”

Don't you think viewing "others" as a collective is different than advocating a collective action?

Luther's views bore fruit:

If Luther's views were behind things that happened in Nazi Germany, what took them so long to bear that fruit?

In 1403 there was a big push in Spain to convert or get out. Many decided to convert and it seems that the majority who entered the waters of baptism, learned to swim. Having made the plunge (plese forgive this!) they became exemplery Chrisians. Jews have this quality: in for a penny, in for a pound. These new Christians began to advance quckly in society, arousing the jealousy of the “old Christians.” Enough of them were fakes and enough retained cultural Jewish practices, that when Isabel and Ferdinand began their program of establishing national unity, that the loyalty of these “judaizing” Christians became suspect. As a matter of fact, this was a sort of rehashing of what had happened in Constantinople at the end of the 4th Century, when Catholicism was firstly established as the official religion. Many Jews converted, and most held to the bargain they made. Others did not, and aroused the suspicion and hatred of the people. It amounts to a fear of a fifth column, and fear leads to persecution.

Don't you think viewing "others" as a collective is different than advocating a collective action?

Yes I do see the difference, but also the connection.

If Luther's views were behind things that happened in Nazi Germany, what took them so long to bear that fruit?

Luther doesn't deserve sole blame for the Holocaust. Many tributaries contributed to that river.

Thanks for the history.

I also found this:

“Persecution under Pope Paul IV.

Under Paul IV. (1555-59) the Jews were subjected to further oppression. By his direction they were deprived of valuable franchises, enclosed within the ghetto, subjected to further taxation, limited in their commerce to old clothing, prohibited from practising any art other than medicine, and this not among the Christians, and forbidden the use of their calendar. As a means of satisfying his feeling of hatred against the Spaniards, Paul IV. practised cruelty toward the Portuguese Jews; he sent an inhuman commissioner, a certain Cesare Galuaba, to Ancona with orders to incarcerate all who did not accept baptism and to condemn them to the stake. Thus terrorized, sixty-three renounced their faith. Twenty-three men and one woman, whose names have been handed down in chronicles, preferred death to apostasy, and these were all hanged together and afterward burnt on the Piazza della Mostra (”Shalshelet ha-?abbalah” of Gedaliah ibn Ya?ya, and local records). (Compare D. Kaufmann, “Les Vingt-quatres Martyrs d’Ancona,” in “Rev. Ét. Juives,” xxxi. 222-230.) Thoroughly alarmed, many of the Jews fled. Prayers for the dead are still said, and the elegy composed by Jacob de Zano is still recited annually in the synagogues for these martyrs.”

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1491&letter=A

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.