The Theology of Martin Luther: A Critical Assessment

4. Difficulties in Approaching Luther

4 Difficulties in Approaching Luther Antisemitism? Luther and the Jews Contemporary questions Today, especially as a Protestant Christian and theologian in Germany, one cannot reflect on Luther’s attitude toward Judaism in his time without thinking of Auschwitz. The Nazis and the so-called “German Christians” appealed explicitly to Luther for their attitude toward Jews. The publications of the Nazi “Luther scholar” Theodor Pauls played an especially ominous role. The minister for church affairs at that time, Hans Kerrl, had a group of state churches subscribe to a document declaring that “in regard to the faith there is no clearer opposition” than that “between the message of Jesus Christ and the Jewish religion of legalism and expectation of a political messiah.” The signers affirmed the statement that “the life of the people demands a serious and responsible racial policy.” The Nazi officialdom did not, of course, appeal directly to Luther’s utterances for their degrading treatment of Jewish people and ultimately their murder in the concentration camps, even though— alas!—it would have been possible. For his writings on the Jews contained an ideological basis for their persecution in Luther’s Germany. Peter von der Osten-Sacken has pointed to an especially tragic case: Rabbi Reinhold Lewin wrote a dissertation on “Luther’s attitude toward the Jews” that, because of its superior quality, won the annual prize of the Lutheran theological faculty at the University of Breslau. In  (or ?) he, his wife, and their two children were deported to Auschwitz or Theresienstadt, where all trace of him is lost. Thus it is inadequate for a presentation of Luther’s theology to say with Oswald Bayer that “Luther’s terrible mistake in his late writings on the Jews in identifying them as enemies of the word of God—with fatal effect—is a source of painful alienation.” Let me say in passing that, unfortunately, it is not merely a matter of “late” writings. It is equally unsatisfactory that the Handbuch Luther, published in , while soberly attesting that the compulsory measures recommended by Luther went “far beyond the 29 30 The Theology of Martin Luther restrictive rules of canon law,” does not seek to explain this, and certainly does not inquire how it accords with Luther’s theology. The section of the Handbuch on “controversial writings,” authored by Hellmut Zschoch, does not even mention the writings on the Jews. The most obvious question to be directed to Luther the Christian theologian today would be where love fits into his words on this subject. Luther would perhaps reply that his concern is with the faith: “Love does not curse or take vengeance, but faith does. To understand this, you must distinguish between God and man, between persons and issues.” In Luther’s thinking, certainly, this signifies the primacy of the “cause” of faith before human beings—certainly an unfortunate alternative in a Christian sense (cf. Eph :). Where, in his anti-Jewish attacks, is the connection between faith and love that Luther postulates elsewhere? Why did he not appeal to his Jewish contemporaries by pointing to the justification of the ungodly? Why is his faith not expressed in good works toward Jews as well, as the Reformer otherwise expects and often declares? If there is no answer to these theological questions, how is it that Luther, the lover of Hebrew and the Old Testament, reacted with such prejudice, and indeed hatred, to the living tradents of the Hebrew language and Bible? Is there anything to be learned from his argumentation, or is any part of it acceptable in any sense? Stages For a long time there was an attempt to see a cordial attitude toward the Jews in the young Reformer and then the severity of the late writings on the Jews as coming from the aging Luther. This view has not been confirmed. Luther’s basic attitude seems to have remained the same, even though his concrete recommendations changed. We need not describe in detail the development of Luther’s attitude. Nor is it the case, as one might think after reading a monograph that erases the “rest of” Luther, that the Reformer thought about the Jews night and day and had nothing else in his head. But recent studies have shown that even his first lectures on the Psalms, the Dictata super Psalterium (–), contained quite a few anti-Jewish remarks that could in no way have been theologically motivated. The Jews, Luther says, crucified Christ in their...