WAS MARTIN LUTHER ANTI-SEMITIC?

In the early days of the Reformation, Luther was very friendly toward the Jewish people and he maintained personal friendships with Jews throughout his life. He had hoped that Jews would respond en masse to the rediscovered gospel message of the Reformation.

In 1523 Luther wrote a book entitled, That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, in which he attempted to win Jews to Christ, and in that context, he also advocated humane treatment for them in the face of widespread anti-Semitism throughout Europe. He reminded Christians that Jesus Christ was born a Jew and that “we in turn ought to treat the Jews in a brotherly fashion.” He also stated that he admired—indeed, loved—the Jewish people.

Luther reported on one occasion that three rabbis visited him because they had heard of his interest in the Hebrew language and hoped to reach an agreement with him. However, they rejected Luther’s argument that the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament point to Jesus Christ.

Nonetheless, because Jews were forbidden to travel in that part of Germany, Luther gave them a letter of introduction in which he asked, “for Christ’s sake,” that they be granted free passage. Because of his mention of Christ, they refrained from using the letter.

Luther continued to support his Jewish friend, Bernard, when he fell on hard times in 1531 and had to leave his family because of his debt. Luther and Melanchthon each cared for one of his children and continued this support for many years. Even though it posed a financial hardship for him, Luther said he did it because “he felt obligated to do good to Bernard as a member of the Jewish church.” Bernard also served as a messenger for Luther on numerous occasions.

To another Jewish friend, Luther argued that the gospel had to be of God; for how else could it be explained that Gentiles, who hate Jews, worship a Jewish king, much less a crucified one. 

Luther was eventually attacked by Jewish writers who vilified him for his attempts to win them to Christ. His writings such as, That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, were maligned and held up to ridicule.

Luther’s response was, at first, mild. He replied, “For the sake of the crucified Jew, whom no one will take from me, I gladly wanted to do my best for you Jews, except that you abused my favor and hardened your hearts.”

Luther’s attitude toward the Jews obviously hardened as he entered more extensive dialogues/debates with Jewish rabbis on the Scriptures and the Messiah. Luther had hoped that, through these debates, the Jews would be won to faith in Christ.

Through these debates, however, Luther was exposed to writings that maligned Jesus and Christianity. He was horrified to read of Jesus being vilified as the illegitimate son of a whore and a cabalistic magician who was exposed for his trickery and put to death.

Having been taught from childhood to reverence and honor God and Jesus and Mary, he responded with both anger and fear. He wrote;

I am still praying daily and I duck under the shelter of the Son of God. I hold Him and honor Him as my Lord, to whom I must run and flee when the devil, sin or other misfortune threatens me, for He is my shelter, as wide as heaven and earth, and my mother hen under whom I crawl from God’s wrath. Therefore, I cannot have any fellowship or patience with obstinate blasphemers and those who defame this dear Savior.[i]

When he found the rabbis to be obstinate in their positions, he finally gave up any hope of the Jews coming to Christ en masse. And with them entertaining such blasphemous views of Christ, he gave up any hope of Christians and Jews being able to live together in harmony.

Although Luther should have responded in the spirit of the One he proclaimed (Who had prayed for His tormenters at the cross, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do”) he, instead, reacted with anger and fury and wrote a treatise entitled On the Jews and Their Lies. The word Lies in the title referred to the Jewish diatribes against Jesus, Mary, and the Triune God. The third section of this book contains the diatribes that he fulminated against the Jewish people.

Different reasons have been offered for Luther’s violent verbal attack on the Jews in which he called for their synagogues being burned and them being expelled from Germany. Some have pointed that this was just a few years before his death when he was dealing with various illnesses, including chronic constipation, dysentery, kidney stones, dizziness and bouts of depression. In this state, everything seemed to set him off.

Essentially, however, Luther related to the Jews the same way, and on the same basis, he did other groups with whom he disagreed. The rough, violent language he used against the Jews was the same sort of language he used against Anabaptists, Catholics, peasants, “Turks” and everyone he considered to be enemies of the gospel of Christ.

Luther is a prime example of how one’s greatest strength may turn out to be their greatest weakness. His bold, bombastic rhetoric was exactly what was needed in confronting the pope and the Roman Church. When, however, he was in a place of influence and used the same rhetoric on weaker groups, that is when his greatest strength became his greatest weakness.

These verbal attacks were based on his belief that the civil magistrate had a Divine responsibility to enforce the doctrines and practices of the official church, which in Germany was Lutheranism. Dissenting belief systems were not tolerated. Therefore, Luther’s attacks on Jews. Anabaptists, Turks and Catholics, were all doctrinal and theological in nature, not racial.

The eminent Lutheran scholar, Martin Brecht, makes this point as well, arguing that Luther’s verbal attacks against the Jews were not based on race but on a disagreement in theology. He says that Luther, therefore, “was not involved with later racial anti-Semitism.”[ii]

Nonetheless, Luther’s misguided invectives had the unfortunate result of him becoming identified with the church fathers of anti-Semitism and they provided fodder for modern anti-Semites who cloaked their hatred of the Jews in the authority of Luther.

On their website (www.lcms.org), The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, has graciously and wisely denounced Luther’s anti-Jewish invectives while recognizing the vital and critical contributions he has made to all of Christendom.

They also point out Luther’s conciliatory tone in his last sermon when he said of the 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 indicates that, in later life, Luther’s tone shifted back toward his earlier and more conciliatory attitude.

Another example of this occurred in 1545, about one year before his death, when he revised a hymn that had blamed the Jews for the death of Christ (a common claim by the medieval church). In his revision, Luther removed the invective against the Jews. His revised version reads,

T’was our great sins and misdeeds gross,

Nailed Jesus, God’s true Son, to the cross.

Thus you, poor Judas, we dare not blame,

Nor the band of Jews; ours is the shame.

Commenting on this eye-opening revision by Luther, Eric Metaxas says,

So if people want to see Luther as any kind of run of the mill anti-Semite, they must be disappointed. He rightly lays the blame for Jesus’s Crucifixion not on the Jews, but on everyone one of us and on himself, as well he should.[iii]

This author suspects that if Luther were living today in this more tolerant and civil era, and with the Jews back in their homeland, he might well be one of their biggest supporters.

This article was derived from Eddie Hyatt's latest book, The Charismatic Luther, available from Amazon and from his website at www.eddiehyatt.com.

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[i] Brect, Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church, 1532-1536, 350.

[ii] Brect, Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church, 1532-1536, 351.

[iii] Metaxas Martin Luther, 418.