Luther and the Jews
By Julio Severo
Dr. Michael Brown wrote an
excellent article in which he, quoting Stephen Nichols, said that “in 1523,
Luther reached out with kindness and humility to the Jewish people, denouncing
how the church had treated them up until then 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.’”
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| Luther and the Bible |
Another important article, also
titled “Was Martin Luther an Anti-Semite?” and written by Dr. Eddie Hyatt,
shows that Luther used vitriolic words against Jews, Muslims, Catholics and
Anabaptists and that they also used vitriolic words against him. You can read Hyatt’s
full article here.
Brown explains how Adolf Hitler
used Martin Luther’s words to persecute the Jews. Of course, Hitler also used
the Bible to support Nazism. According to Ray Comfort, in his book “Hitler,
God and the Bible,”
Hitler made much public use of the Bible. But while Hitler had to pervert the
Bible, he did not have to pervert any words of Luther against the Jews.
Luther’s own words against the Jews were already perverted — and inexcusable.
They are inexcusable not only
because he was the highest leader of the Protestant Reformation, but also
claimed to be a follower of Jesus. “Whoever says he abides in him
ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” (1 John 2:6 ESV)
By criticizing the Jews, Luther did
what all the European society, dominated by ancient anti-Jewish Catholic
traditions, had been doing for a long time. Incidentally, while Luther was
criticizing the Jews, the Catholic Church was also criticizing, and torturing,
robbing and burning them at the fires of the Inquisition.
After all, Luther and his followers
have no history of torturing, robbing, and burning Jews. They have no history
of inquisition against Jews.
The United States, the largest
Protestant nation in the world and the nation that most followed Luther’s
guidance of putting the Bible at the center of everything, has no history of
torturing, robbing, and burning Jews. The U.S. has no history of inquisition
against Jews. On the contrary, as a Protestant nation, the U.S. has an
incredible record of protection, partnership and friendship with the Jews and
an enviable track record against the Inquisition.
More Bible reading (which is the
main value of Protestantism) produces more defense of the Jews, although some
Jews have different thoughts. Osias Wurman, who is Israel’s honorary consul in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, expressed
concern about Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. in 2016 — a victory that was
achieved largely
through evangelical voters.
He spoke of this victory as if an
increase in evangelical conservatism would produce an increase in pro-Holocaust
sentiments, when the reverse is true. American evangelicals do not support the
Holocaust and the Inquisition.
However, as a Brazilian Jew Wurman
lost a great opportunity to denounce that there is an
increase of pro-Inquisition stances among right-wing esoteric Catholics in
Brazil.
These pro-Inquisition far-right-wingers reject the Vatican’s current stance
against the Inquisition and accuse
Luther of having committed a “genocide” for his anti-Jewish views, when in
reality the Inquisition represents the anti-Jewish words and actions of
medieval Catholicism that was a major influence on Luther. This pro-Inquisition
rightistism has been totally rejected by conservative evangelicals, who join
the Jews in denouncing the Holocaust and the Inquisition.
To follow the U.S. conservative Protestantism
leads to stances against the Holocaust and the Inquisition.
To follow medieval Catholicism
leads to stances in support of the Inquisition, which fatally leads to the
Holocaust.
Luther followed medieval European
standards (which were entirely Catholic), and when he verbally attacked the
Jews he did not follow the example of Jesus, who never taught his disciples to
hate the Jews.
Jesus directed his disciples to
pray and be careful. He said, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into
temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew
26:41 ESV) Luther’s temptation was strong and
his flesh was weak. He fell into the prevailing temptation of his generation,
which was before and after hostile to the Jews.
To follow social trends (all social
personalities do this) and religious traditions (all religious leaders do this)
is in conflict with vigilance and prayer.
Actually, if Hitler needed an
anti-Jewish religious example against the Jews, he did not even need Luther, because
the Catholic Church had abundant examples of several centuries of words and
actions against the Jews. All that Luther said against the Jews the Inquisition
was already practicing in abundance.
Hitler, who was an
esoteric Catholic who shrewdly used left-wing and right-wing imageries, used Luther’s example because if
he did not have this evangelical example, he would be left only with the abundant
Catholic examples.
Luther’s Protestantism sought to
free itself from Catholic traditions, and Luther himself had experience only
with such traditions.
Luther lived in a 100 percent
Catholic Europe. Everyone he knew were Catholics. All the opinions he heard
were Catholic and anti-Jewish.
Luther’s generation was
anti-Semitic. In fact, the whole Europe where Luther was born was Catholic and
anti-Semitic.
Luther had toward the Jews the same
hostility of an ordinary Catholic (from popes to priests), because he had been
brought up as a Catholic. Although he and other Protestants had the same
anti-Jewish hostility of Catholics, you did not actually see Luther and other
Protestants killing Jews. They had hatreds or prejudices, but they did not
practice them. They had no inquisitions against the Jews. They did not torture
and kill Jews. In the same way, the Jews had their own hatreds or prejudices
against Christians.
Whoever condemns Luther for his
words against the Jews inevitably has to condemn the pope and the whole
Catholic Church of that time not only for its words but also for its actions,
especially the Inquisition, against the Jews.
A follower of Jesus would have for
the Jews the love that Jesus had, and Luther initially had this love, because
he wanted their conversion. But when he got old and sick, he changed his mind.
And his idea became repugnant and hateful against the Jews, allegedly because
he read blasphemous writings of Jews against Jesus Christ and Christians.
However, Hyatt
makes it clear
that before his death, Luther returned to his more conciliatory attitude toward
the Jews.
A Christian can never be guided by
hatred. It was exactly the hatred of the Jews who supported the Inquisition,
who looted, tortured, and killed Jews.
If Luther had as justification for
his anti-Jewish hatred of Jewish books against Jesus Christ, today others would
find as justification the fact that Karl Marx was a Jew and that Genrikh
Yagoda, a Jew who founded and directed the NKVD (the successor of the KGB), was,
accordingly with a Jewish writer in the Israeli
newspaper Ynetnews,
“the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century.”
In fact, in their strident propaganda
against Marxism, Hitler
and Henry Ford, the greatest American tycoon of that time, hated Soviet Marxism because Jews were mostly
socialists in Germany and also because they held prominent positions of
leadership in the Soviet Union.
In any case, the old and sick
Luther who wrote a book against the Jews committed a grave sin. I totally
disagree with all crazy ideas of the old and sick Luther against the Jews.
However, we should be fair and also
disagree with the ideas and crazy words of the Jews against Jesus Christ and
the Christians.
The Jewish Talmud and the rabbinic
literature are totally against Christians, treating them in a despicable way. The
Talmud may be the Jewish equivalent of Luther’s book, but it was written much
earlier. In fact, the Talmud is much more harmful, because although no Lutheran
and no evangelical put Luther’s anti-Jewish book on an equal footing with the
Bible, religious Jews place the Talmud on a high degree very close to their
Holy Scriptures (which is the Old Testament of Christians).
While no evangelical church has in
its building Luther’s anti-Jewish book nor reads it from the pulpit, synagogues
have the Talmud and read it along with the Scriptures.
According to the book “Jesus in the
Talmud,” written by Peter Schäfer, published by the Princeton University Press
in 2007, the Talmud and rabbinic literature treat Jesus as a depraved sorcerer
son of a prostitute.
Quoting the Talmud, Schäfer said,
“The most bizarre of all the Jesus stories is the one that tells how Jesus
shares his place in the Netherworld with Titus and Balaam, the notorious
archenemies of the Jewish people… Jesus’ fate consists of sitting forever in
boiling excrement” (page 13).
Schäfer said that, according to the
Talmud, Mary, “After she had been driven out by her husband and while she was
wandering about in a disgraceful way she secretly gave birth to Jesus. And…
because he [Jesus] was poor he hired himself out as a workman in Egypt, and
there tried his hand at certain magical powers on which the Egyptians pride
themselves; he returned full of conceit, because of these powers, and on
account of them gave himself the title of God” (page 19).
The Talmud, according to Schäfer,
said, “Jesus’ followers, who claim to be the new
salt of the earth, are nothing but the afterbirth of that imagined offspring of
the mule, a fiction of a fiction” (page 24).
While Protestants in general and
Lutherans in particular reject Luther’s anti-Jewish views, religious Jews make
no effort to reject the anti-Christian Talmud.
However, the Talmud’s crazy words
against Christians and Luther’s crazy words against the Jews are only in the realm
of ideas. If they were implemented, if Lutherans had acted like Genrikh
Yagoda, it would be disgusting. Hence, even defending Luther and the Jews, I do
not agree with them on every point, because of their crazy ideas against each
other.
The Inquisition, of course, was
worse because it was the implementation of crazy ideas. That is why I am
against the Inquisition and I applaud the remarkable history of the United
States in combating pro-Inquisition propaganda.
There is not in Lutheranism and
Protestantism a tradition of Inquisition of torture and death against the Jews,
although there is Luther’s book, which has anti-Judaism in words. In
Catholicism there is in words and deeds, and the Inquisition is one of the
great undeniable evidences.
Protestantism produced the United
States, which has become the largest shelter of Jews the world has ever seen.
And Brazil, the largest Catholic country in the world, has a history of the
Inquisition, which tortured and killed many Brazilian Jews. In fact, the first
Jews of New York in the 1600s were Brazilians who had fled the Inquisition in
Brazil. The first Jewish cemetery in New York is composed of these Brazilian
Jews persecuted by the Inquisition.
Luther’s original proposal was to
value the Bible above all else. The United States did just that. The Protestant
fruit in the U.S. was not only an immense cultural love for the Bible, but also
a tolerance for the Jews never seen before.
The United States, which was
founded by a 98 percent Protestant population, followed the Bible, as Luther
pointed out, but did not follow Luther’s anti-Jewish sins.
With his imperfections, sins and
even heavy opinions, Luther often sought to point to Christ. If an evangelical
puts Luther above Jesus, he will be no better than the popes criticized by
Luther.
A true evangelical must imitate
Jesus and the Gospel, not Luther and other men. If he imitates Luther, he will
utter many profanities, because this was one of Luther’s sins. And he will
imitate Luther’s insane stance against the Jews, a stance totally imitated from
the common Catholic customs of his day.
An evangelical who imitates the
sins, dirty mouth and heavy opinions of Luther is not a follower of Jesus.
Last year, the Lutheran Church of
Norway denounced Luther’s anti-Jewish writings.
More churches of the Reformation should follow the example of the Lutheran
Church of Norway.
Luther set a good example by
denouncing the corruption of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, which has
been working to repair some of these problems. But he eventually imitated one
of the worst sins of the Catholic Church. Now, by following his own example of
giving preeminence to the Bible, the Reformation churches have a moral and
spiritual obligation to denounce the anti-Jewish views that took over an old,
sick Luther.
Yet, Luther’s lasting good fruit is
much better than his momentary anti-Jewish book: Because of Luther, America was
born Protestant and became the best friend and refuge of Jews and Israel.
Another good fruit was Rev.
Wurmbrand, a Lutheran Jewish minister who wrote several books against communism.
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