[A version of this essay is slated to be published in Flight, Laugh, Feast magazine soon.]
For many, Martin Luther’s name is not synonymous with justification by faith as much as it is tainted with anti-Semitism. Obviously, modern opponents of Luther are glad to dismiss him as a proto-Nazi; his anti-Jewish writings later in life are used to invalidate all his other theological contributions. This is unfair to Luther on many levels. But even Lutherans who appreciate the father of their tradition have struggled with some of the harsh things Luther said about Jews in his day and have renounced them. What are we to make of this? It is my contention here that, while Luther did write some inexcusable things about the Jews in his day, he was actually not anti-Semitic at all. His real opposition was not to Semites as a race but to Judaism as a religion. He opposed the Jews not because of their biology but because of their idolatry. And his critique of Judaism, while driven in part by his frustration with their hard-heartedness towards the gospel, was also driven by his desire to protect Christendom from subversion. He was hopeful, to varying degrees at different times, that Jews would convert, and if/when they did convert, he was glad to embrace them as brothers in Christ. While his hope for Jewish conversions waned, it never died completely.
First, as with any historical figure, we have to understand Luther in context. In sixteenth century Europe, Jews were often seen as a potentially seditious presence who threatened to undermine Christian civilization. Jews were often considered blasphemers (and blasphemy was considered a civil crime, not just a religious sin) because they rejected Jesus as Messiah and denied the Trinity. Jews were often forbidden from entering certain professions, which ironically led them into great wealth as bankers/moneylenders, and great wealth often won them favorable treatment from civil rulers. But Jewish bankers were often usurers, lending money to the poor at high interest rates, furthering resentment against them at a popular level. Luther’s apparent hostility to Jews late in his life was not unique and not totally groundless given the circumstances.
Second, we should note that early in Luther’s career, he was quite friendly towards Jews and hopeful of their conversion to the Christian (Protestant) faith. In 1523, in his treatise “That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew,” Luther called on Christians to treat Jews in a “brotherly fashion” with the hope of converting them:
“I hope that if one deals in a kindly way with the Jews and instructs them carefully from Holy Scripture, many of them will become genuine Christians and turn again to the faith of their fathers, the prophets and patriarchs. They will only be frightened further away from it if their Judaism is so utterly rejected that nothing is allowed to remain, and they are treated only with arrogance and scorn. If the apostles, who also were Jews, had dealt with us Gentiles as we Gentiles deal with the Jews, there would never have been a Christian among the Gentiles. Since they dealt with us Gentiles in such brotherly fashion, we in our turn ought to treat the Jews in a brotherly manner in order that we might convert some of them. For even we ourselves are not yet all very far along, not to speak of having arrived.”
Roman Catholics accused Luther of being too friendly to the Jews in this period, while Luther accused Romanists of treating Jews “as if they were dogs,” hindering the possibility of their conversion. Luther pleaded for kindness towards the Jews with humility and hope:
“I would request and advise that one deal gently with the [the Jews]…If we really want to help them, we must be guided in our dealing with them not by papal law but by Christian love. We must receive them cordially, and permit them to trade and work with us, hear our Christian teaching, and witness our Christian life. If some of them should prove stiff-necked, what of it? After all, we ourselves are not good Christians either.”
This is not the way an anti-Semite speaks.
But, third, when the conversion of the Jews failed to materialize on Luther’s timetable, and as political conditions made the presence of Jews in Germany more tenuous and threatening, Luther’s posture towards them changed. This culminated in Luther’s infamous “The Jews and Their Lies,” which led to Luther eventually being viewed as an anti-Semite. In this 1543 work, Luther suggested Jews had been cursed by God and thus “remain stiff-necked, blinded, hardened, and immovable” in their heretical beliefs. Luther acknowledged the covenantal privileges God had granted the Jews, but these did them no good because they refused to keep God’s commandments. Jews were judged for crucifying Jesus and persecuting his people, the church, which is now the true Israel. Luther called on German princes to take action against Jews in their realms. Following Deuteronomy 13 (was Luther a theonomist of sorts?), he argued that Jewish synagogues and schools should be burned to the ground. He said Jews should not be allowed to own homes or property (a common prohibition in medieval Europe). He wanted their prayer books and copies of the Talmud destroyed, since these works were full of blasphemy, and he wanted Rabbis forbidden from teaching. He called upon the German rulers to deny Jews safe-passage while traveling to keep Judaism from spreading further; this may have been in response to attempts made by Jews to proselytize Christians in the preceding years. Finally, Luther wanted the common Jewish practice of charging usury to be forbidden, per the law of Moses. Jewish wealth should confiscated and only returned on the condition that they convert to Christian faith.
It is certainly true that Luther used harsh language against the Jews, as was common among virtually all Christians in his day. It’s hard to know how much of his language was hyperbole. His suggestions were never really implemented, perhaps because many Jews had already been driven away from Germany in the years preceding the publication of his work. It should also be noted that Luther used very similar language for the papacy and the Turks (Muslims). In fact, this is really the key to understanding Luther’s changing views of the Jews during his theological career. When he believed their conversion was a possibility, he was friendly to them. When it looked less likely, he became hostile. His attitude towards the Jews was not rooted in race, but in religion. He was harsh towards them because they remained stubbornly committed to a religion that was heretical and hostile to Christian faith.
Martin Luther was not, properly speaking, anti-Semitic, at least not in the way that term is usually understood. He was anti-false religion. He opposed Judaism, not Jews per se. He had scathing things to say about the Jews because he opposed their religious faith, just as he had scathing things to say about the papacy because he opposed Romish idolatry, and just as he had scathing things to say about the Turks because he opposed their Muslim faith. (Note that in the case of Turks/Muslims, Luther identified adherents of a false faith with what we could consider an ethnic category today. He did something similar with the Jews of his day.) Luther’s policy recommendations towards the Jews were certainly extreme, but they were also largely circumstantial, based on his view of who the Jews were and how they were acting at that time in history. He was not providing a timeless ethic for all time.
Martin Luther did not operate with modern racial categories as we know them. Again, his opposition to the Jews stemmed from their theology and resultant practices, not their genetics or physical lineage. He was not a proto-Hitler arguing that Jews were an inferior race. He saw the Jewish religion (Judaism) as a false religion and, because Jews rarely converted in his day, a threat to the Christian society in which he lived.
I will not deny Luther said many terrible things about the Jews that he should not have said. Many of the policies he recommended against them were over the top and unjust (and thankfully never actualized). Lutherans in recent generations have understandably condemned much of what Luther said and distanced themselves from it. But it’s important to understand that for Luther, the issue was religion, not race. He should be read along the lines of an old covenant prophet attacking a people who have fallen into idolatry rather than a modern racist bigot who targets people because of physical features. He crossed the line at points, to be sure, but the way he characterized the Jews of his day was not all that different from what many Old Testament prophets said about the Jewish people or what the Apostle Paul said about Gentiles in various places (Romans 1:18ff, Ephesians 4:17ff, Titus 1:12f). Of course, unbelieving people groups can repent, even as believing people groups can apostatize (cf. Romans 11:17ff), so these characterizations are malleable.
Even in his work on “The Jews and Their Lies,” Luther did not completely give up on the Jews. He said we must “still hope that God will bring them home again and give everything back to them.” This hope never totally flickered out, even when Jews resisted joining the Reformation. In his final sermon, Luther seems to have recovered his earlier hope for a mass conversion of Jews: “We want to treat them with Christian love and to pray for them, so that they might become converted and would receive the Lord.” This is not the attitude of a man opposing a people because of their racial heritage; rather, it is the view of a man opposing a false religion, longing for their conversion to true Christian faith. The very fact that Luther would deeply desire the conversion of the Jews, or even hold it out as a possibility, must be the lens through which we view all his anti-Jewish writings. To put it another way, Luther’s view of the Jews in his day was more like Jeremiah (pronouncing a curse on unrepentant Jews) than Hitler (hating Jews because he sees them as an irredeemable cancer on humanity).
Luther’s relationship with the Jews was complex; anyone who simply dismisses him as an anti-Semite is just as inaccurate and sloppy as someone who whitewashes his most extreme statements. Luther was a man of his time, a man of medieval Christendom, a man who wanted to see Jews (and others) come to trust Christ, and a man who had a hard time handling his disappointment when others refused to see the beauty of God’s grace in Christ as he had.
Sources:
TPC Pastor's Page 