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.
In other words, you either have both (written and oral Apostolic Tradition) or you have neither.
For example, read Jerome, whom most Protestant apologists accept as a good guy as far as the formation of the Canon is concerned.
In “Against Helvidius”, he wrote in defense of the Ever-Virginity of Mary, which was already part of the body of beliefs of the extant Churches East and West. These Churches still subsist as Catholicism, Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Assyrian Church of the East, all of which title Mary the "Ever Virgin", and always have.. (You can't find any earlier historical time when they didn't.)
And how did Jerome argue against Helvidius?
Sure he had his own lines of reason, his own interpretations of Scripture, his own copious scholarship. But even though he was a formidable and even vehement arguer, he did not consider his arguments disposative, as if it could be established on his own authority. No, his clincher was always, finally, that This is what the Churches teach. This is what they all believed since Apostolic times.
Helvidius had argued against the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity by appealing to Tertullian, whom Jerome simply dismissed by pointing out that Tertullian was "not a man of the church."
"We are, however, spending our strength on trifles, and, leaving the fountain of truth, are following the tiny streams of opinion. Might I not array against you the whole series of ancient writers? Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenæus, Justin Martyr, and many other apostolic and eloquent men, (He adds, “If you had ever read what they wrote, you would be a wiser man.”)He makes the same argument in the formation of the Canon. He lays aside his view (his own opinion was against the seven Greek books of the Deuterocanon) and writes to Rufinus,
"The churches choose to read Daniel in the version of Theodotion. What sin have I committed in following the judgment of the churches?"
Here's what we have to keep in mind: the ECF's relied, ultimately, on the doctrines and practices of the churches, and the churches relied on what was handed on to them from the Apostles (Apostolic Tradition), and that Tradition (what was handed on) includes the very Scriptures themselves.
1 Timothy 3:15
If I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.
In other words, you either have both (written and oral Apostolic Tradition) or you have neither.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/excluded-middle
The members just follow what it teaches.
His mother said, "Listen to what He says."
Later He says, "Call no man father"
Call no man father??
The church was BUILT upon Peter?
Mary comes down from heaven and teaches people?
Please; Lady...
Clean your mirror!
Ha!
How many of our now PROTESTANT FReepers get this very same treatment from our Catholic Freepers?
"You ain't a CATHOLIC so your words do not matter!"
You misunderstood what I wrote. I was talking about the formation of the Biblical canon.
I've posted numerous times what your ECFs have written about Matthew 16:18.
Can you HONESTLY say that this is what constitutes the 'doctrines and practices of the church'??
Then quit babbling on about something else in the same reply so your main point can be discerned.
I've heard that John was told by an angel about what 7 churches in ASIA had been teaching...
But I'd be the first to note that there are some Protestants who are more Catholic than the Pope.
Nevertheless, your comment is not relevant to my post. The context is that in his thoughts on the BVM, Tertullian was relying on his own notions, not on receiving and handing on the actual experience and practice of the Church, based on the Apostles. In this sense, Tertullian and Pope Francis might have a lot in common.
I guess being damned with faint praise is better than not being damned at all.
Where do you go if looking for problems with the Catholic faith?
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