Was Martin Luther an Anti-Semite?

As we approach the 500^th 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.”

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.

I don't think you'd find folks in that church kneeling before the mgr scene and praying to those idols nor invoking the names of the idols to aid in their salvation.

Nice try though.

>> "...the worship of Mary, the idols of Mary... are current practices in the RCC."<<

They are not. And, if you have normal reading comprehension, you've been amply corrected and you know that. That's what makes this kind of discussion so tedious, sometimes.

The practices of the average Catholic disagree with your statement. The voluminous writings of Catholics on this also disagree with you.

There is a poster on these threads with more than one example of Catholics kneeling before the idols of Mary. I'm not going to ping them because we don't need to go down that road today.

Re: “A LOT of worthless gasbags make their living parsing words from 500 Years Ago without disclosing that the vernacular and meaning words have changed in that period.”

Much of the most dangerous Holocaust language had a surprisingly long history in Germany.

Karl Marx used the expression “The Jewish Question” in the 1840s.

And Kaiser Wilhelm II, in his personal correspondence, used the expression “a final solution to the Jewish Question” in the 1890s.

In my opinion, much of the Jew hatred during Luther's lifetime seems to be based on working class envy that a relatively large number of Jewish men were successfully employed in “white collar” occupations.

"...your current Pope is so preoccupied with the political to the point that he’s been antithetical to Catholic doctrine."

Yes: that's, sadly, all too obviously true.

But the Vatican (Stato della Città del Vaticano) is not a state church. It is a city-state. It has its own postage stamps, currency, diplomatic corps, etc. The Catholic Church existed before the Stato della Città del Vaticano, and --- if ISIS managed, God forbid, to nuke it ---- will exist after "the Vatican" is gone.

The Church is not a state. What she is, --- well, see tagline.

“Your history of Protestantism is very hobbled, stunted and incomplete.”

I only presented one aspect - Luther is the father of Protestantism. I made no attempt to present a complete history and there is no Protestant history BEFORE Luther.

“You’re in no position to speak authoritatively regarding Protestantism.”

Luther was the father of Protestantism. No one has to be in any particular position to know that or say it.

“Just because the Roman Catholic Church succeeded in killing off or driving underground others of Protestant belief does not erase their existence from history,”

There was NO PROTESTANT HISTORY before Luther. Just because a Protestant pretends there is a history of Protestantism before Luther doesn’t make it so.

“much as The Catholic Encyclopedia and apologists such as yourself may try. The Hussites, the Waldenses, it goes back hundreds of years prior to Luther and even then you ignore England and contemporaries to Luther.”

Neither the Hussites nor the Waldensians were Protestants. The fact that there were multiple heretical groups before the heresy of Protestantism doesn’t make Protestantism less heretical and it doesn’t make previous heretics Protestants.

“I’d say try again, but it’ll be more of the same, very predictable.”

The truth is fairly predictable. There were no Protestants before Luther. Protestants have to pretend there were or else their sects are instantly understood to be modern inventions - which is what they are.

Re: Crusades: "Just don’t go and kill them all this time, OK?

The Crusades were, in terms of jus ad bellum, as defensive as the Allied invasion of Normandy. Their practice was sometimes criminal. Their purpose, however, was the liberation of the Holy Land from hostile hands (Seljuq Turks), the securing and restoration of the Holy Places, and the liberation of oppressed Christians.

I am a peace-lover but not a pacifist. As Thomas Merton once said, "I'm not opposed to all war in theory; just in practice."

“If vlad were merely defending his church I wouldn’t even enter the discussion, but it’s always got to be slagging on Luther...”

I didn’t post the thread - which is ABOUT Protestants talking about Luther and whether he was or was not an anti-semite.

Maybe you should ask yourself why you think it so strange that someone would post about Luther in a thread about Luther? Why, in a thread about Luther, did you feel compelled to bring up the Catholic Church? It seems that you are the one who has to “slag” on something and you keep doing it even in threads not really about it. Why is that?

In a thread about Luther, I posted about Luther. That apparently bothers you. Get over it.

“Oh look, here’s our dear vlad again donning the mantle of Defender Of The Faith and pretending to know all things Protestant as well!”

Luther was the father of Protestantism. That is not a statement about all things or a claim to know all things on my part. It’s just obviously true. There were no Protestants before Luther.

And, if I am “donning the mantle of Defender Of The Faith and pretending to know all things Protestant”, then what are you donning and pretending at by denying historical facts? You can’t even see your hypocrisy can you?

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.

Ecclesia semper reformanda.