He responded with a serious message stating that he appreciated my comments and read them with interest, and adding some more details about the background of Hitler’s beliefs. I was very surprised to note that he thought it was important that theologically orthodox Christians supported Hitler, and that there was still some question as to whether Hitler considered Christ to be divine. He also thought it significant that Hitler somewhere referred to Christ as “our religious teacher.” Even though he recognized the obvious fact that Hitler was not involved with orthodox Christianity, the Christian angle still seemed important to an understanding of Hitler and the phenomenon of National Socialism (when in my view it makes much more sense to study German thinkers of the 19^th century, many of whom articulated ideas fundamental to National Socialism but nowhere to be found in the Bible, and indeed unheard of until the misguided and dismal 19^th century).

Hitler’s paganism is so obvious, his hostility to and contempt for Christianity so evident, the vast gulf separating him from any teachings of Christ and the apostles is so undeniable, that now only the most far-out extremists of the anti-religious left try to claim Hitler was actually a Christian. One example of this is Jim Walker, whose website http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm   actually tries to show some common ground between Hitler and Jesus. Unfortunately, his mind has been so corrupted by hatred, ignorance, and fear, that he is incapable of rational thought on anything having to do with Christianity – a subject of which he has not the slightest real understanding.  By the way, we always hear of “the religious right.” Why do we never hear of “the anti-religious left”? That is a fair and accurate description of many of them, not simply a “same-to-you” kind of argument.

Anyway, the Hitler expert reflects a significant trend – accepting that Hitler was not a Christian, but still trying to link Christianity to Hitler in some way. I tried to respond to his message in a way that was brief yet substantive, but received no response. It would have been most interesting to receive a candid response, which I would have welcomed.

What can we as Christians say to an intelligent and informed person with impeccable academic credentials (such as my erstwhile correspondent) when he refers to orthodox Christians supporting Hitler; to Hitler’s understanding of Christ, and to Hitler’s few and rare comments about Christ, as something meriting study and careful consideration? When Hitler said “Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the greatest war criminal of all time,” we don’t have to study this seriously to see if there is any substance to it. When Hitler said that he attacked Poland out of self defense, or that he wanted peace but the Jews controlling England wanted war, we don’t have to study these things to see if there is any substance or important meaning in them. The historical facts are evident, and we can easily recognize the nature of Hitler’s comments.

Christianity is, unfortunately, not well understood today. Moreover, it is under a cloud of suspicion, and people are eager to believe something bad about it. After all, if Hitler promised to support the churches (a promise he broke) and if many Christians supported Hitler, and if Hitler used some religious ideas and rhetoric on occasion, and if the spirit of the age is innately hostile to Christianity as an irrational religion of intolerance and bigotry that encourages and is related to right-wing extremism, then it makes a great deal of sense to look on the Christian religion as having some part of the key to the solution of the Hitler riddle.

So, let’s look at three of the points he raised as meriting serious study (there were others, but these three will do). They are (a) that orthodox Christians supported Hitler; (b) Hitler somewhere referred to Christ as “our teacher”; and (c) whether or not Hitler saw Christ as divine is not yet clear.

Concerning the first of these points, many secularists are unaware that one of the main assertions of the traditional Protestantism of Luther, Calvin, the Wesleys, Jonathan Edwards, and many others), as well as of current Evangelicalism, is that the Bible is the ultimate standard of what Christianity is and is not. People who came nearly two thousand years after Christ, and added many variations unknown to the early Christians do not reflect on Christ or on the teachings of Christ or on other Christians by their failures.

The question is not, “What is the relationship of Christianity to Naziism” – a question that can be answered easily, since not a single one of any of the fundamental tenets of Naziism can be found in the New Testament. The question is, “Why did the German Christians, with rare exceptions, fail so lamentably to follow the teachings of Christ?” It says in the book of Acts that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation…” If Christians refuse to believe this, or believe it in their hearts but are afraid to act upon it because they have a strange and mysterious aversion to being sent to a concentration camp, are the biblical authors to blame. If we fail to follow the teachings of Christ, as we all too often do, that reflects on us, not on Christ.

It is a waste of time to try to prove God does not exist, since, as I noted above, we can do nothing with the information unless we can know something about this God. Therefore the only worthwhile activity is either trying to divine the nature of God, or evaluate the claims of particular beliefs about God. 

I am glad you agree that the atheist position cannot be proven scientifically. I also agree that the mere fact of the existence of some God is inadequate, but it can stir us up to seek more. The worthwhile activity then would be to seek for more information about this God. As Jesus said, “Seek, and you will find.” A good place to start looking for God is in the person and teachings of Jesus Christ. 

I feel like you have studied Harris’ book closely, but resisted it at every step, considering every idea only long enough to come up with some surface-level objection to it, always careful to shield yourself from being contaminated with a true understanding of it.  

I feel you are mistaken. I identified some specific issues in Harris’ book which you didn’t respond to. True, I do think Harris is a deeply misguided man, and a potentially dangerous man who would not be sorry to see Christians persecuted, but I approached his book from the vantage point of long-standing and hard-won beliefs. If my beliefs are not true, my whole approach to life is wrong. If they are true, Sam Harris is a blind man groping in darkness. 

I believe I do have a valid understanding of Harris’ book. His understanding of religion and of religious people is wrong; his ideas of threats to society are wrong, and the solutions he proposes are correspondingly wrong. I also showed, from his own words on a different aspect of his book you chose not to deal with, that Harris and other atheists are perfectly willing to kill for their beliefs, or have other people do the killing for them. 

The general pattern to your questions is one I see in many religious people. You feel that you lack something; and you make up a God to try to fill this void.  

Or is it you who tries to avoid God for various personal reasons? 

The existence of other people who don’t feel this void terrifies you.  

I am happy to say you are wrong there. What was there in any of my posts that was indicative of terror? On the other hand, you said my stating that atheists should not be able to avoid escaping the burden of proof, and you found this “scary.” Perhaps it is you who are easily frightened. What if your rejection of God is based on fear, fear of what the implications for your life and for eternity of the biblical God might be? 

Admitting that they don’t would suggest the problem was with you. So you try and try to insist that they must feel this void, they must have this empty, amoral, purposeless attitude towards life.  

I recognize that many atheists manage to get by because they do not live consistently with their presuppositions, and have various ways to give themselves the illusion of meaning. Their humanity rebels against the world view they claim to hold, so they live inconsistently. They do not always feel empty, but they are. They do not feel amoral, but their morals have no solid foundation. They do not feel purposeless, because they give themselves a false purpose, and the illusion of doing something. 

And because this is what you’re really thinking about, all the fears and problems that you personally have show up in your arguments as things you accuse atheists of having. The objections that religious people make against atheism tell us more about religious people than they do about atheists. 

It all depends on whether or not God exists. If there is no God, Christians are wrong and confused. If there is a God, atheists are wrong and confused. This will be made clear on the day of judgment, when we stand before Christ to give an account of the way in which we have lived. I hope you will find out more about Christ before that day. Again, “Seek and you will find.” 

If life whispers to you and asks you to change your mind, will you listen? 

Many times circumstances have compelled me to reevaluate my self, and required me to do things differently. But about the existence of God, what I have in Christ is more real than life itself.

Evangelist Ray Comfort has taken note of this problem and addressed it in his new book Hitler, God, and the Bible. The book makes a brief but helpful contribution to this debate. Comfort demonstrates Hitler’s paganism by printing in full the “Thirty Point Program for the National Reich Church”—Hitler’s plan for the unification of the Protestant churches in Germany. This program included the removal of crosses and Bibles from churches; forbade the publishing of all religious books, papers, pamphlets, and publications in Germany (including the Bible); and expressly condemned the “strange and foreign Christian faiths” that had been imported into Germany.

Comfort also touches on larger themes, including the collapse of the German churches, Hitler’s mysterious and baffling hatred of Jews, Hitler’s clever manipulation of religion to gain support and minimize opposition, the problem of evil, and parallels between the Holocaust of the Jews and the ongoing holocaust of the unborn.

I have read several of Comfort’s other books with profit. However, I did not like this book as well. One problem I had with the book was that approximately half of it was devoted to a historical overview covering Hitler’s childhood, his experiences in World War I, and his rise to power. This story has been told many times, and while it will be interesting to readers who have read little about the subject, anyone with some knowledge of these events will probably be disappointed by a superficial and hasty overview.

Full text

If there were a God, it wouldn’t much matter what we thought he was obligated to do. 

That is correct. And he would not be obligated to reveal himself in a manner agreeable to atheists, but could (and does) reveal himself in different ways than you might expect. 

“If you should come to believe in God, what changes would this require in your life?” 

There may be a God. This wouldn’t require any changes in my life unless I knew something about this God. 

If you strongly believed there was a God, you would continue life as usual, and make no effort to find out more about him? To learn what was pleasing to be him and should be done, or displeasing to him and should not be done? 

“What would it be like to live forever and never die?” 

Depends on the life. It could be very nice. But if you aren’t changing, then you’re not alive; and if you are changing, eventually you’re someone else. No person alive now can live forever in any meaningful sense.

It could be wonderful (in heaven) or it could be horrible (in hell). And who says people in heaven cannot change? If there is a new heaven and a new earth, they will have many things to do, many places to go, many fascinating people to meet.

As to it being impossible for people to live forever in any meaningful sense, we know of course that you have no means of verifying that empirically. It is merely your personal opinion, and might be wrong. 

“If atheism is correct, are all of our deepest aspirations for meaning, love, significance, purpose, and hope futile and vain?” 

No. Again, the question is strange: How can anyone who needs to posit a God to dictate meaning, significance, and purpose, claim to believe in meaning, significance, or purpose? It is precisely because such a person cannot believe life as we know it has meaning, significance, or purpose, that they must invent a God to define such things by fiat. 

The question isn’t strange in the least. If we live here on earth for a short time and only and then cease to exist – and that in a cosmos that just sort of happened somehow with no higher purpose – then all of human life must inevitably be vain and pointless, a brief moment nullified by death. 

It is your question assumes that people posit God to meet their own needs. But if God does exist independently of us, and is not a human construction – then your question misses the mark. Is it not rather that you must deny God because you cannot (or do not want to accept) life’s higher purpose? 

“Pascal says that people disbelieve in God not because of their reason, but because of their passions.” 

Pascal said that not because of his reason, but because of his passions. 

If God does not exist and Pascal invented one to meet his needs, you made a good response. If on the other hand there is a God, and people want to reject or avoid God not because of reason and logic but because of their feelings, then your response was clever but, again, wide of the mark.

Pascal did say by the way that his belief in God did not come from reason, reason being inadequate in this area. While God is above reason, he is not contrary to reason. Our reasoning powers are small, weak, and limited, and very far from being the final adjuticator of what is or is not real. He also identified human passions as not the cause of belief in God, but as hindrances to belief (since human passions are usually or always misguided and selfish in their natural state). 

“Who decided that your belief in the non-existence of God should be the default position?” 

If there is a default position, it would be not having thought about the matter, or not having a belief one way or the other.

So we agree that atheism is not the default position then. 

“Who laid down the law that atheists don’t have to prove their position ‘because you don’t have to prove a negative’?” 

This one is scary. So you believe that atheists should be required to prove their position? What happens if they don’t? 

Scary? A question on a blog stating that it isn’t right for atheists to claim “We don’t have to prove our position” frightens you?  Or maybe “scary” is purely rhetorical, for effect, and you aren’t scared at all. Anyway, I would say what should happen if an atheist is unable to prove his position is this – he should have the integrity to admit that his position is based on something other than pure disinterested logic and unbiased examination of the facts. If he doesn’t want to do that he is of course free to continue deluding himself with fantasies of rationality. 

“If I am accused of a crime, and I present a solid alibi, isn’t that proving a negative (‘I did not commit the crime’)?” 

The implication of your using this example, is that you believe that people should be presumed guilty until proven innocent. 

1. A complete failure to recognize and address the point. Atheists have been known to say that theists have to prove their position, but atheists don’t, because all they do is deny the existence of God and it isn’t necessary to prove a negative. I believe that is a bogus argument and a tricky evasive tactic. 

It is, at times, necessary and possible to prove a negative. For example, if I am accused of a crime, and I present an airtight alibi proving I could not have been at the crime scene, this proof of a positive (“I was in some other place”) also proves a negative (“I did not commit the crime”). This has nothing at all to do with presumption of guilt. Do you claim that if someone is accused of a crime he didn’t commit that he should do nothing to try and disprove the charge?

I will make a presentation exploring the emergence of ideas fundamental to National Socialism in the 19th century as a direct result of the secular rejection of biblical values. Also discussed will be similarities between the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and today’s ongoing holocaust of the unborn, as well as charges that National Socialism can be connected in some way to Christianity.

Links:

My Presentation (audio)

Conference website

No; it makes it harder to justify killing them. If someone is immortal, why not kill them? What’s the difference between living 70 years on Earth and 70 trillion years in Heaven, vs. 30 years on Earth and 69,999,999,999,960 years in Heaven? Believing in immortality makes it easier to justify killing people, like the Spanish conquistadors who baptized native infants and then bashed their brains out, to save their immortal souls. 

Christians (I am not talking about all kinds of theists here, and Harris did specifically mention Christians) who believe that God created the human race according to the Bible also believe in a day of judgment in which murderers, liars, and other evildoers will go to hell. There has never at any time been a sincere follower of Jesus who said “Someone is going to live forever so I am free to kill him.” This sort of logic has nothing at all to do with Christianity as it is practiced by any sincere person. It is a purely abstract argument that is very far removed from the real world and from the way Bible-believing Christians. But, atheists have killed people freely in Communist countries as they believed there was no God, no heaven, no hell, and they were free to do as they like without any regard for higher law. This is much more serious, and much more relevant to us today, than some isolated example from centuries ago. 

As to the conquistadors, infant baptism has no biblical validity. The bible says “Believe, and be baptized.” Baptizing babies and then killing them to keep them from falling away has nothing to do with any of the teachings of Christ or the apostles, and has never been practiced or even thought of by countless millions of Christians in many different times, places, and cultures. Those conquistadors had nothing to do with Christ, and were in fact enemies of Christ, and will certainly spend an eternity burning in the lake of fire, unless they repented of their wickedness and demonstrated the sincerity of their repentance. 

That sort of behavior is totally contrary to many biblical teachings. The atheist massacres of  Lenin, Stalin, and Mao in no way contradict any essential teachings of atheism and are perfectly consistent with atheist secular logic – eliminating obstacles to the good of society and the future happiness of mankind. 

He says materialism makes it harder to justify killing people, but gives no evidence or logic to support this remarkable claim – a claim that is totally refuted by recent historical experience and by common sense as well. If people are only matter, who cares? “When you chop wood, chips must fly.”

But, there is another question:

The comment about \nothing but matter\ is strange. Do you think that atheists don’t believe in love, joy, or friendship? Do you think that atheists believe in the spiritual? To us, there is nothing but matter, and matter encompasses all these things. 

Atheists need and recognize love, joy, and friendship. This is part of your essential humanity, created by God, which you must recognize – unless, like Stalin, you have  become so totally brutalized that the last spark of humanity is extinguished (this doesn’t usually happen and I concede that Stalin is not representative of most atheists). But, the human impulses which atheists necessarily cherish are completely at odds with the world view you came to hold. Matter does not love, need or share friendship, or experience joy. These are unique qualities of the human soul which continue up to this very day to defy conventional scientific analysis. 

 The world is just as wonderful to us as it is to you; and all these wonderful things take place with matter. \Matter\ for us is just the same as \matter plus spirit\ is to you. So using the phrase \nothing but matter\ shows a gross, basic misunderstanding of atheism. 

A world that just happened by accident, in which we live and die with no higher purpose, is just as wonderful as a world created by God, a place in which we are prepared for eternal life? Not to me and to many others it isn’t. 

Nothing but matter shows a gross misunderstanding of atheism? So would you like to tell me what sort of spiritual reality it is that atheists believe in? Human thoughts and feelings that are nothing more than chemical reactions or neurological responses are very removed from thoughts and feelings that are the result of a higher divine origin unknown to and denied by atheists.

Criticizing Harris, I stated “Life would be so much easier in a “unified” community where everyone marched to the beat of the same drum – but is that what life is all about?” Shagbark answered:

It is the religious who want to have a unified community, not the atheists. Atheists don’t have anything in common with each other, except the absence of a few beliefs. Adherents to a religion do. 

This was a surprising response. Christians (not to speak of all religions) do want to have a unified community of believers, but it is a voluntary one, based on shared beliefs. 

Moreover, we recognize that true believers in Christ will be in a minority. We do not expect a world in which everyone will be like us, but await for that in heaven, in the next life. I quoted some of Harris’ own words, however, which made it fairly clear that his goal is a unified mankind where differences in thought and belief will exist only up to a limited point, within parameters agreeable to him.

http://hitlerandchristianity.com/questions-for-atheists-contd-part-7-of-7/466.html 

In August, someone responded, yet somehow (to my chagrin) I missed the response and only noticed it this month. Hopefully the saying “Better late than never” applies here. Even though the poster (who goes by the name of Shagbark) has long since moved on to greener internet pastures, his response raises some important questions which I am glad to try and answer. 

One point at issue was Harris’ statement that it might be necessary to kill some people for their beliefs. This raised so many questions that he was compelled to give a clarification on the internet. I thought his clarification was devious, evasive, and insincere, and attempted to expose a couple of what I took to be major inconsistencies in his soothing words. 

Harris said that when he spoke of killing people because of their dangerous ideas, he was referring to people like Osama bin Laden. 

I identified two problems with this. One was, that many people shared Osama’s ideas. Did Harris think they should be killed for their ideas? If the answer was “Yes,” then we have someone advocating the deaths of large numbers of people not for what they have done, but for what they have thought. This was the policy of the notorious mass-murdering atheist Lenin.

If, on the other hand, Harris were to respond that Osama should be killed but not necessarily all of the many people who share his beliefs, then he admits that it is not his beliefs that justify Osama’s execution, but some other reason (I assume the fact that he has enabled others to carry out his beliefs, in which case the problem is his harmful acts, not just his ideas).

Shagbark seems to have missed the point entirely. When I asked “Millions of people share Osama bin Laden’s ideas. Should they be killed?” he responded

This is a strange question. It implies that our role is to dispense justice, killing people who ought to be killed. That’s wrong. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/4×9/crime_and_punishment/ .

So, he thinks Sam Harris is wrong.

We want to maximize some measure of goodness in the world. And we want to survive. We have the right to kill people who want to kill us and are able to kill us. Osama was able. Most of these millions are not. 

So, it is wrong for us to kill people who ought to be killed, but we do have the right to kill some people after all. 

Also, Shagbark supports killing Osama not for his ideas, but for his attempts to have others put his ideas into practice. This is very different from what Sam Harris initially said. 

My second problem with Harris response is that he frequently points to Christian beliefs as dangerous to the survival of humanity – so, conceivably, Christians might also have to be killed to save the human race: “Christians, not just Osama bin Laden, might be included among those whose dangerous ideas require their elimination. Do you think Christians should be killed? If you answer ‘No,’ how do we know this is a truthful answer?” 

Shagbark responded:

No, but I get the feeling you’re not going to believe me anyway. 

If Shagbark is willing to concede that killing Christians for their beliefs is the wrong thing to do, I find that possible to believe. But it is common for people to say one thing when they are out of power, and do something else when they are in power, so I see no need to automatically believe everything a public figure like Sam Harris might say. 

 If I were living in 16th century Spain, and were forced to attend mass, and forced to mouth platitudes I didn’t believe, made to renounce reason at the whim of the Catholic hierarchy, and threatened with torture and death for questioning any of the above, then I would say, Yes, the Christian ruling class should be killed, like any other undeserving, self-interested, tyrannical ruling class. But I’m living in the 21st century, and Christians are now capable of tolerating other religions and separating Church and State. 

I was not asking what Shagbark thought, but what Sam Harris thought. He says people with dangerous ideas might have to be killed, and indentifies Christians as people with dangerous ideas. Maybe he really does think they should be killed, or at least sent to labor camps or prisons for the benefit of humanity. If he denies this, who is to say he is telling the truth? This has nothing to do with the 16^th century, it has to do with Christians being identified as a menace today. The response was not relevant. 

I also asked if, in Harris atheist value system, “Wouldn’t it be justified to kill some people to save humanity?” Shagbark’s answer:

Of course. Society already agrees it’s justified to kill some people because they killed some other people, or because they defied military orders, both of which are much less important reasons than saving humanity. It’s even considered justified to put people in jail for 20 years, which is not very different from killing them, for selling other people recreational drugs. 

Here we see the mentality that in different circumstances has been used to justify the deaths of millions – it is for the future benefit of humanity. We also see an illogical response that refers to the death penalty for murder, and for military disobedience, or for socially destructive crimes like selling drugs, which have nothing at all to do with the point at issue – killing people for their ideas. 

He adds: But you’re not talking about saving humanity. You’re talking about a temporary political/cultural struggle, in which humans will continue on pretty much the same as before no matter which side wins. 

Again, a confused response. It was Harris, not me, who speaks of the dangers of religion, and of the possible need to have people killed for their ideas. He also spoke in his book The End of Faith about religious belief being “antithetical to our survival.” Isn’t it justified to kill in self defense? Maybe Harris would like to set up the machine guns and start mowing Christians down, but is too clever to say so at this time.

We’d like to congratulate Mr. Keysor for being published in the prominent Christian magazine, Touchstone.  A featured article, “From Modernity to Auschwitz:  The Secular and Anti-Christian Origins of the Holocaust,” appeared in the March/April 2012 edition of their magazine.  When and if this article can be read online, we will post it here.

Here is a link to the current edition.

2. Unclean language

3. Hostility to science and reason

4. Luther’s responsibility for later events in German history

5. Luther and German nationalism

    a. Some misconceptions

    b. Luther’s worldview

    c. Modern nationalism

6. Luther’s anti-Semitism

    a. David and Bathsheba

    b. Luther’s biblical understanding of the Jews

    c. What Luther did not believe about the Jews

    d. Why Luther was angry at the Jews

    e. Advocacy of violence against the Jews

7. Luther and the Nazis

8. Modern hostility to Luther

9. Personal attacks on Luther

9. Personal attacks on Luther

To conclude this somewhat lengthy series on Luther, I have recently run across a number of attacks on Luther’s private life: that he was a drunkard, that he was given over to vice and immorality, that he broke his monastic vows by marrying, that he encouraged divorce and even prostitution (!), that he was a morally wicked man who felt that sin remaining even in genuine believers (and not totally overcome until death) was a license to disobey moral laws (this is related to his oft-quoted remark “sin boldly”).

No one who reads Luther’s Commentary on Galatians, Preface to Romans, or other important works can possibly miss Luther’s point that, though we struggle with sin in this life even after salvation, we need to look to the Word, the Spirit, and to prayer for victory, and are in no sense given license to commit sin.

In these and other works, when he speaks about “lusts of the flesh,” including his own failings, he is not referring specifically to immorality. As he explains at length, when the Bible speaks of “the flesh,” it refers to all of the sinful feelings of the natural man: pride, greed, envy, fear, unbelief, covetousness, the whole range of sinful human emotions. “Lust” used to have a more general meaning of “desire” or “strong desire” and was not so closely related to sexual desire as it is today. Some hostile witnesses have greatly misinterpreted Luther here.

Also, the quote “sin boldly” was taken out of a letter to Melanchthon. All of us have at one time or another said something we later know we shouldn’t have, or expressed ourselves poorly. Luther was trying to make the point that, if we are in Christ, we do not have to fear that God will turn us away or reject us when we fall short, as we inevitably will. The whole passage from which that quote is so often cut and pasted makes this more evident. Luther should be judged by his considered teachings, not by something maybe hastily dashed off in a letter and sent without proper reflection and re-reading.

Accusations that Luther was a drunkard are as far as I can see totally unfounded. Supporting this by quotes from an alleged “diary” of Luther’s, a book for which I can find to significant reference, is I believe to deal in gossip, false witness, and slander. Other jests, comments quoted by someone years after the fact, or not from any reputable source, should not be seriously considered.

As to Luther breaking his monastic vows by marrying, in my view, and in the views of many others, that was a false vow, a worthless vow, to break which was no sin but a wise and healthy act. The Catholic doctrine of a celibate priesthood is totally contrary to scripture, and a stumbling block to many. Even Peter had a wife – by what right does any church have the power to tyrannize people and enslave them with such false and useless rules? Peter said to Jesus “You will never wash my feet,” yet changed his mind when he realized he had said the wrong thing. Christians are under no obligation to keep a false, harmful, and wicked oath that is contrary to God. 

There was an incident where Luther gave poor advice to a German nobleman who was in serious marital difficulties. To say that this makes him the “father of divorce”, when the Catholic church had already made it possible for people to obtain marital annulments, is ridiculous.

Luther should not be put on a pedestal – neither should any other human being. Yet, in his reassertion of biblical Christianity independent of all of the medieval baggage that had nothing to do with Christ and the apostles, Luther had a powerful, even an incalculable influence on the emergence of modern Europe – and it was no accident that it was in the Protestant countries of northern Europe that spiritual freedom facilitated economic and political freedom as well, along with increased advances in the sciences.

In his Commentary on Galatians, Luther explains that there is a righteousness, a goodness, of keeping God’s law. Because we are by nature sinful, and cannot in our hearts meet the demands of the law, God has made it possible for us to have a different kind of righteousness – the righteousness of Christ himself. This is given to us by God, as a gift, apart from our merits, through faith in Christ and in no other way. Having this righteousness of Christ, though the infirmities of human nature keep us humbled before God’s high and perfect law of absolute holiness, God accepts us as righteous in his sight, and we are enabled to truly live before God. Now we have real spiritual liberty, freedom from the condemnation of God’s law, and liberty to love and serve our Creator thankfully and sincerely. Thus, through the law we can be dead to the law that we might live unto God.

How greatly this pure statement of faith contrasts with the follies, excesses, and superstitions of Rome. In so far as Luther departed from the Bible and fell short of its teachings, as he did many times, we can regret his faults. In so far as he stood for biblical Christianity, we can give thanks to God for his extraordinary life and work. Yet, the struggles of the 21^st century are different from those of the 16^th. Underneath there are the same principles of biblical truth versus the same age-old human sins and evils, but those evils take different forms and expressions. We need more people today who will take a biblical stand against the spiritual evils of our day and time.

2. Unclean language

3. Hostility to science and reason

4. Luther’s responsibility for later events in German history

5. Luther and German nationalism

    a. Some misconceptions

    b. Luther’s worldview

    c. Modern nationalism

6. Luther’s anti-Semitism

    a. David and Bathsheba

    b. Luther’s biblical understanding of the Jews

    c. What Luther did not believe about the Jews

    d. Why Luther was angry at the Jews

    e. Advocacy of violence against the Jews

7. Luther and the Nazis

8. Modern hostility to Luther 

8. Modern hostility to Luther

Noted historian Martin Gilbert opens his otherwise excellent and deeply moving book, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews in Europe During the Second World War, with a reference to Martin Luther, as if that were the starting point for modern German anti-Semitism. But Luther’s attacks were the conventional anti-Semitism prevalent throughout Europe at that time – what was unique about Germany?

Many factors emerged in the 19th century that were very far removed from Luther’s day, as has already been mentioned. In particular, new ideas about the Jews began to emerge out of the “Enlightenment” that were very different from the religious anti-Semitism of the past. The new brand of anti-Semitism was concerned with issues of philosophy, race, and culture derived from secular thought.

There were also major political and economic changes which contributed to making Germany a world power instead of a disorganized collection of small states, and major social changes as well. But Gilbert refers to the 19th century in two sentences as only a time of progress for Jews. Walter Laqueur, however, in the concluding summary of his A History of Zionism, points out that along with the great advances made by German Jewry, there was at the same time increasing hatred against Jews, and an intensification of anti-Semitism.

To view the 19th century, the century in which Hitler was after all born and raised, as if it had nothing to do with what happened a few decades later, is a remarkable oversimplification. But it is an oversimplification that is gratifying the secular mindset, for which just about anything is justified as long as it makes Christianity look bad.

To overlook these issues, to ignore such anti-Semitic thinkers as Lagarde, Langbehn, Wagner, Chamberlain, Fichte, and Kant, and to point only at Luther is at best bad history. It is at worst dishonest. To explain the origins of the Holocaust in depth was admittedly not the purpose of Gilbert’s book, but since he marred an otherwise brilliant book by rambling in a disorderly fashion in the introduction about anti-Semitism in eastern Europe, he could easily have added a paragraph or two to his lengthy book explaining that modern racial and secular anti-Semitism had many totally different themes from the earlier religious variety.

Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that “…the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other reason because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him” (vol. I chapt. 11). That the Jews were (among other things) only materialists with no concept of a hereafter was an idea stressed by Kant, not Luther. It shows a form of anti-Jewish “thought” that emerged out of the so-called Enlightenment, predicated upon the belief that the Old Testament was a merely human and historically inaccurate book.

But, in today’s cultural climate, many will applaud an attack on Luther who do not want to hear that Kant introduced new anti-Semitic themes predicated not on Luther’s belief in the Bible, but on modern secularism’s rejection of it. Moreover, as Professor Zygmunt Bauman suggests in his book Modernity and the Holocaust, pointing the finger at religion may be a way to dodge one of the most troubling aspects of the Holocaust – that it was a “characteristically modern phenomenon, which took place in modern culture using modern technology.”

How much easier, just to blame it on religion, without considering that it was the rejection of religion and the reliance on human reason alone which led to this catastrophic breakdown of civilized norms. The path that led to the Holocaust is a complex one – and I, for my part, do not believe that the 16th century is the logical place to start.

There are those who think that by attacking Luther they can at the same time attack the truths that he so effectively represented. That God exists; that the soul lives after death; that there will be a day of judgment, followed by heaven or hell; that we are all guilty of sin before God and can find forgiveness only in Christ, the Christ of Scripture – these things are hated in the modern era, and attacks on one of their most effective representatives must be understood in this context. But, the truth of what Luther believed does not fall because of an uncharacteristic lapse in his life, any more than the truths of Judaism fall with the sins of David and Solomon, or with the sins of the patriarchs who wanted to kill Joseph.

If someone wants to try and come to an understanding of Luther, two sympathetic biographies, such as Here I Stand by Roland Bainton and the more recent  From Out of the Storm by Derek Wilson are useful starting points. Bainton’s book is more overtly religious, and (as I recall) makes no mention of Luther’s Jewish problem, but both are sympathetic and also historically valid. Wilson’s biography devotes a chapter to Luther’s anti-Semitism (chap. 16, “A Death too Late?”), and deals with the issue fairly if briefly.

For an introduction to Luther in his own words, his “Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Writings” is a good overview of how he saw his own life and work. Written in 1545, the year before his death, it contains no mention of Jews or Judaism. His “Preface to the New Testament” and “Preface to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans” are also useful for those who are not totally incapable of reading or understanding anything having to do with biblical teaching. These are conveniently presented in Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings, John Dillenberger, Ed. (New York, 1962).

Luther was a major figure in Western thought. It is too bad his great contribution to Western progress and democracy is systematically belittled and distorted by people incapable of understanding it. Much of what we consider to be positive about Western culture came not only out of the Renaissance and the “Enlightenment,” but out of the Reformation as well. To omit this fact is to present a false picture of Western culture.