Nailed It?

“There are two days in my calendar: This day and that Day.”

-Martin Luther

Martin Luther is rightly known as the Father of the Reformation; the nail-er (nailist?) of the 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany. He definitely didn't nail it when he wrote his work entitled "On the Jews and Their Lies". In the following blog post I'm looking to see if Martin Luther, revered hero of the protestant revolution, may have had an unhealthy view of the Jewish people.

Martin Luther was born in Saxony, a part of modern day Germany, in 1483. He was a Catholic monk who eventually came to recognize the inconsistencies between the Roman Catholic Church and what is written in the Bible. He took issue in particular with the Roman Church's practice of indulgences for sin. On October 31, 1517, Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the church door in Wittenberg and sparked conversation around the Christian world. He was convicted as a heretic and was forced to go on the run after refusing to recant. While in hiding he translated the bible from Latin to German to allow the common man to read God's word. He published "On the Jews and Their Lies" in 1543, at the age of 59. He died in 1546 after succumbing to one of the many illnesses that plagued him during his life.

The harsh statements at the end of his life condemning the Jews were not the views that Martin Luther held about the Jews over the course of his life. In fact, in earlier stages of his life, Luther stood up for the Jewish people, condemning the Catholic Church for their harsh treatment. He wrote that the Catholics treated the Jews, "as if they were dogs..." which in turn made the Jews unlikely to convert to Christianity. In 1519 Luther wrote, "Absurd theologians defend hatred for the Jews. ... What Jew would consent to enter our ranks when he sees the cruelty and enmity we wreak on them—that in our behavior towards them we less resemble Christians than beasts?" Furthermore, in 1523 Luther wrote an essay titled That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, in which he lamented the poor treatment of the Jews, and argued that if Christians really wanted to help the Jewish people, it would be by following the "Christian law of love" and not the Papal law.

By the end of his life, these views had dramatically changed.

In the sermons he preached in Eisleben in 1546, just before his death, Luther named the Jews as the Christian's "public enemy" as well as accused Jewish doctors of poisoning the Christians they were treating. He even recommended the destruction of Jewish Synagogues, homes, and even livelihoods.

So what was it that changed? What made Martin Luther aim such violent and negative rhetoric at the Jews?

In truth, the rhetoric wasn't as negative as it is often portrayed. Luther, even at the end of his life, still believed that it was the Christians duty to show love towards the Jews, so that they might become believers in Jesus Christ. In the same sermon where he labeled the Jews as "public enemies" and as murderers, he also said, " Yet, we will show them Christian love and pray for them that they may be converted to receive the Lord..." These two views seem incompatible; how can Luther call a whole people group enemies and murders, and yet at the same time tell Christians to love and pray for them? It seems to us to be hypocrisy on a grand scale.

The truth is, Martin Luther actually believed that the Jews were enemies of Christianity and that Jewish doctors really did poison their Christian patients. Luther, for all his counter-cultural tendencies, was still influenced by the times. This was in part because in the early to mid 16th century, news traveled in one of two ways; word of mouth and letters.

The primary news source for people since the dawn of time has been the words of someone else. Travelers, the vast majority of which were merchants, were constantly bombarded about questions of the world when they arrived in a new town. They would tell the things they knew, and most likely made up the rest that they felt that they should know. Rumors were rampant, with no internet or even newspapers to counter them. Even if there had been written information, the literacy rates of 16th century Europe were so appalling that most people wouldn't have been able to read it. And so, news passed from mouth to mouth with little to no way to verify any of it. Anyone who has played a game of telephone knows how that turns out.

Furthermore, the merchants who traveled also had reason to dislike the Jews. Because of their standing with the Roman Catholic Church at the time, the Jews were not allowed to own property or to participate in most of the traditional occupations. Instead they were limited to hawking, peddling goods, and money-lending. Jews formed the primary competition for the Christian merchants and it is easy to see how rumors of Jews killing Christians would start spreading throughout Europe.

I don't want to blame Europe's antisemitism solely on the merchant guilds, for the issue was much more complex than that. There was religious persecution on the Jews because of their role in the death of Jesus of Nazareth. People took issue with the Jewish moneylenders who charged interest on their investments - a practice forbidden in Christianity. Whatever the causes were, antisemitism was rampant in the European society that Martin Luther lived in, and there was no way to know just how unfounded it was.

So what am I saying with all of this?

Martin Luther believed the things he said about the Jews. He believed that they were a danger to Christians and his message, and so he lashed out at them. Luther called the Jews names and recommended drastic measures against them, because he was a man, as fallible as the next. He lived in the blindness of his times, in a culture that lived in fear of the what they didn't know or understand. He did call for better treatment of the Jews throughout his life, however, something that was completely counter-cultural.

To be clear, this does not mean in any way that I condone what Luther wrote out of his anger and fear of the Jews.On this, Luther was wrong, plain and simple. I do believe that it is easy to see how Luther could have come to believe what he did, based on the culture he lived in and the information he had.

A theme that will most definitely be showing up in these posts will be blind-spots. Every culture and every generation has them; those areas of morality that seem so obvious to us and yet are so much more complex to those living in it. This is one of Martin Luther's blind-spots. It did not make him an evil man any more than the next man. It simply made him a man of faith, not a superhero. Flawed and sinful, yet a tool in God's hands.

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As a Protestant Christian myself, it is easy for me to want to idealize the heroes of the reformation. God used men like Calvin and Luther in mighty ways that would forever shape the Christian faith. They were, however, far from perfect men. It is wrong for me to idealize the leaders of the reformation, for in that there is the temptation to turn them into idols. In reality, they are not heroes, but simply men who, with flawed and sinful fingers, point us towards the glory of God.