Lecture 18.docx

It\'s been about 23 years ago. One of my closest friends back in the UK was at that point a rabbi. We were on faculty together. And he asked me to write an article on Luther and the Jews. And I tried and abandoned it. On the grounds it became clear to me that this is an issue that is exceptionally d...

It\'s been about 23 years ago. One of my closest friends back in the UK was at that point a rabbi. We were on faculty together. And he asked me to write an article on Luther and the Jews. And I tried and abandoned it. On the grounds it became clear to me that this is an issue that is exceptionally difficult to address from a historical perspective. And I felt at the time I was just not a good enough and experienced enough historian to even attempt it. That I needed to spend time just working on becoming a better historian before I could revisit the issue. The danger with addressing Luther and the Jews is because we cannot come at the issue without Auschwitz and Belsen and the final solution. The danger of coming to Luther and the Jews is twofold. On the one hand one can go in wanting to exonerate him from any responsibility for the Holocaust. On the other hand one can go in wanting to blame him for the Holocaust. The problem is that neither of those are particularly good questions for historians to begin with. But if you take the Holocaust out of the picture the danger is that in doing so you\'re already taking a kind of unacceptable moral stand. That\'s the problem. So the question of Luther and the Jews always really intrigued me. It actually intrigued me from even before I became a Christian in that I read the book that happens to be one of the most influential books for pinning responsibility for the Holocaust on Luther. And that is the rather, it\'s now outdated but in 35\... 40 years ago, this was every school, it was the one big book that every schoolboy had read. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by the American journalist William Shira. Shira was a fascinating figure. He was an American journalist, New York Times or something, during the 1930s. So he witnessed firsthand the rise of Nazi Germany. And then in, I think it was about 1961, he published this sort of thousand page history. of the Third Reich. It\'s brilliantly written. He was a journalist who could really write and you read it and it\'s an absolute page-turner of a history. Very outdated now of course. There\'s been a lot of archives studied since then. He wrote this just a little bit out of a decade after the events that he was describing. But early in this book he talks about German antisemitism and he gives a kind of genealogy of German antisemitism. And he points to the connections between Luther and Wagner, of course. Richard Wagner, the great composer and radical artist of the 19th century, was also a vigorous anti-Semite. And he points to a number of other\...there was a weird Englishman, a Houston Stuart Chamberlain, a very strange man. I don\'t mean this as a chauvinistic point but he was born English but he wished he was German. He learned German, he became more thoroughly at home in Germany than he ever was in England and he was a vigorous anti-semite and as an old man was part of the circle of the young Adolf Hitler. And of course Hitler himself was connected to Bayreuth where the Wagner Festival takes place. knew Cosima Wagner, Franz Liszt\'s daughter, who was married, Wagner\'s widow. So, Schyra sort of teases out something of this genealogy, and he traces it back to Martin Luther. Because in 1543, Martin Luther writes a notorious treatise on the Jews and their lies, in which, among other things\... Luther calls for the locking of Jews into their synagogues and the burning of them down to the ground. Would have been easy to dismiss as that\'s just Luther\'s typically bombastic rhetoric at one point, if it wasn\'t for the fact that that stuff really happened then in the 1930s and the 1940s. And Luther\'s writings were a staple, his writings as Jews became a staple of Nazi propaganda. I wrote a little book, Histories and Fallacies, a few years ago, which was, I wanted to write a book for undergraduate students at universities to help them do history. Get out from under some of the crazy theory that\'s sort of bogging the discipline down and just write good history. And in one of the chapters, I took Holocaust denial as my example because I think, you know, if you can\'t prove the Holocaust happened, you can\'t prove anything happened. You know, six million people disappear from Europe. They\'ve got to have gone somewhere. If you can\'t prove the Holocaust, then really history is up as a discipline. We can\'t prove, we can\'t demonstrate anything beyond a reasonable doubt. So I spent a little while doing research into Holocaust denial and I was really rather depressed at the number of Holocaust denial sites are very depressing as a genre anyway. Two things depressed me about many of the ones I came across was one, so many of them professed to be Christian. I think Biblebeliever.org. whatever the Australian end is, was a Holocaust denial site when I went there. And the other thing that depressed me was this was where you could go to download Luther\'s writings on the Jews. Holocaust denial sites typically link to Luther\'s writings on the Jews. So there\'s definitely a connection in the modern world between Luther\'s writing on the Jews and the Holocaust. Question is then, how do we deal with this? And I raise it on a course like this for two reasons. One, I raise it for the pastoral reason that I think if you ever mention Luther you will get feedback. Austin was telling me last night over dinner that he\'d given a talk on Luther at his church Sunday school and he\'d had a sort of\... that somebody had emailed him a very, very critical email, why are you teaching on this anti-Semite at your church? So you will come across it, I think, as an issue in your church if you ever mention or teach Luther. Probably in this year, 2017 being the 500th anniversary, you may come across it more common. I certainly experienced, whenever I give a Sunday school talk at another church on Luther, it\'s always the first question that was asked from the congregations. The one thing everybody knows about Luther, that he hated the Jews. So these days when I do my Sunday School talk, I introduce something of that into the talk to set myself up to answer that question. I also raise it because it\'s an interesting question that allows us to explore some aspects of historical method and to think about how to do history. That reason why I abandoned the project 22, 23 years ago is what makes the question interesting from a historian\'s perspective. One of the attractions of history to me is it\'s like a whodunit. My wife and I are addicts of European crime drama, you know, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, even Icelandic crime drama, a real geeky kind of interest. But we love the complexity of the stories, the whodunit aspect. To me, one of the attractions of history is history, it\'s puzzles. It\'s problem solving. You find\... You find something in history and you want to know why. How can I explain this? What\'s going on that this thing looks like this and happens at this particular moment? History is a detective puzzle for me. And the question of Luther and the Jews poses an interesting detective puzzle, which we\'ll come to in a little while. But first of all, I want to give some background. First thing to know about Luther. And the Jews is anti-Jewish feeling is not invented by Luther in Europe. There is already several centuries of anti-Jewish sentiment deeply embedded in European culture. For example, in the 13th century, 1290, the Jews are expelled from England, an expulsion that will actually only be lifted in the 17th century. There were Jews in England, but they had to live undercover. If you\'ve ever read, I love, there were some of those novels of Sir Walter Scott. You know, sometimes it\'s just great to read a novel with a straightforward plot with goodies and baddies and chivalry and the bad guy gets it in the end. That\'s Sir Walter Scott. Ivanhoe, in the novel Ivanhoe, Ivanhoe is cared for by a Jew and his daughter who are living incognito. Because the Jews have been expelled from England. We also know that in European literature from the 12th century onwards we find the emergence of what\'s called the blood libel. Sarah Palin used the term some years ago. I can\'t remember how she used it but I remember thinking at the time that\'s not the correct way of using it. You\'re just referring to slander. The blood libel is something very technical. The blood libel is\... refers to stories that claim that Jews kidnap little Christian babies and sacrifice them, crucify them and drink the blood and this sort of thing. These stories start to circulate from the 12th century onwards in Europe. That\'s actually quite important for a literary assessment of Luther\'s writings on the Jews. So the 12th century onwards the blood libel becomes a standard part of anti-Jewish propaganda in Europe. It\'s actually fueled in part by, you know, it\'s the dark side of a good thing. The 12th century, 11th, 12th century onwards, Christian preaching starts to focus much more on the cross than it had done previously. When you think about it\... We have a cross-centered piety. It\'s not hard to move from a piety where you emphasize the crucifixion to a world where you start to think about who put Christ on the cross. And anti-Jewish feeling seems to somewhat feed off this cross-centered piety in a perverted sort of way. So from the later Middle Ages, 12th century onwards, there is a rising anti-Semitism in Europe. We find it in Spain, of course there\'s significant Jewish population in Spain. I mentioned earlier in the week that Spain is interesting at the Reformation because Spanish Catholicism is more self-conscious about itself than you find elsewhere because there are alternatives, there are borders in Spain. You bump up against Islam, you bump up against the Jews and therefore you have to know who you are because\... who you are is not necessarily the default position. We know there was a lot of anti-Jewish feeling in Spain in 1391. A series of massacres of Jews takes place and forced conversions to Christianity. And Spanish literature abounds with the myth of the Jewish fifth column. That the Jews are there, exist, are plotting to subvert society. It goes back to what I said about the Anabaptists. Why are Anabaptists feared? Because you can\'t assimilate them into a world where civil society is built on the idea of everyone being baptized as soon as they enter the world. The Jews like the Anabaptists present a problem. Think about hippies in the 60s. Think about communists in the 50s. The fear, you know, communists were those who pledged their allegiance to the party and not to the Commonwealth. Not to the civic state and were therefore regarded as, rightly so, as subversive and dangerous. The Inquisition, of course, starts at the end of the 15th century and much of the focus of the Inquisition in Spain is on Judaism. So there is, what I\'m saying is, as I\'m building towards Luther, the first thing we need to do when we approach Luther is ask, is he the beginning of the story? Well, no, he isn\'t. Luther\'s appearing as part of the anti-Jewish European story after some 400 years of anti-Jewish sentiment. Beginning of the 16th century, there\'s an interesting incident surrounding the, it\'s called the Reutlin affair. the Royclin affair 1510 that doesn\'t appear to be very clear that better yeah the Royclin affair 1510 man called Johannes Feffer corn Johannes Pfefferkorn. He\'s Jewish and he converts to Christianity. I think he becomes a Dominican. Is it before the Reformation, of course. And Pfefferkorn begins a campaign for the destruction of Jewish literature. And he is opposed by the humanists. Ultimately the Emperor Maximilian, the Holy Roman Emperor, hires Johannes Reuchlin to produce a report on Jewish literature. Phepocorn wants it all destroyed. Reuchlin incidentally is the uncle of Philip Melanchthon, so he\'s part of a prestigious intellectual family. Reuchlin is the outstanding Hebraist of his day. So as far as Europe goes, he is the expert on Hebrew Bible. And also on rabbinic texts. And Roy Klin brings the report back and argues that Jewish literature should not be destroyed. Why do I tell this story? Because this story has gone down in the sort of the, in history as being a battle between a sort of self-hating Jew, Feffa Korn, and a philosemite, Roy Klin. In actual fact, the story is more complicated than that. Feffa Korn wants Jewish literature destroyed because he fears that the Rabbinic commentaries on the Old Testament, because they don\'t see Christ in the Old Testament, will prevent the conversion of the Jewish people to Christianity. So his reasons are not really anti-Jewish reasons at all. They\'re kind of evangelistic reasons. Wrong-headed, I think. But they\'re evangelistic reasons. Royclin\'s argument, now there\'s no doubt in my mind that Royclin wants literature preserved because he\'s a scholar and scholars like literature preserved. But Royclin\'s argument for the preservation, his public argument for the preservation of Jewish literature is that we need the world to see, we need to preserve this so that the world can see just how wicked and perverse the Jewish interpretation of Scripture is. So Royclin, when you look at the details, he\'s no phyllosemite. He\'s no philosemite. He\'s part of the general background anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish tradition of Europe at that time. That\'s all background to Luther. Okay now I want to introduce the what I call the you know the who done it aspect of the problem. A general, what I\'m going to articulate now is an extremely useful general principle. for when it comes to doing history. And it\'s this. The conventional doesn\'t really need to be explained. It is the unconventional that needs to be explained. What do I mean by that? If you go to England, you will find, as I mentioned this thing in the D Min class, you will find, you go into a home in England, there are doors on every room. That\'s because traditionally we like our privacy. If you visit my house, I\'m not going to show you around my house, I\'m going to escort you from the door to the sitting room and all of the other doors will be closed so that you cannot see how I live my life. If you go to England you will probably be more likely to be offered tea than coffee. If you go to England and you switch on sports on a Saturday afternoon, you are more likely to see what we call football, what you call soccer, or perhaps cricket, although cricket is generally played sort of during the week rather than weekends, or rugby, then baseball, or basketball, or hockey, which we actually call ice hockey because hockey in Britain is played on the grass typically, and we have to distinguish it from ice hockey by calling your hockey ice hockey. Is any of that weird? Not really in an English context. You don\'t have to explain that. Saying, well, I was in England is actually quite an adequate explanation for all of those things. Why? Because those are the conventions of English life. If I\'m in England, I do not need to explain the conventions of English life. If I visit England and I go into a house, though, and it\'s open plan, and I\'m offered coffee rather than tea, and I switch on the television and it\'s baseball not cricket. This is creeping, you know, one of my big, big, big hatreds is the American habit of wearing blue or grey suits with brown shoes. We never have done that in England. I say it\'s creeping into England now. But to me that\'s a sartorial abomination. Why? That\'s just not done in England. If I go to England and I see a man wearing a blue suit and brown shoes living in an open plan house watching baseball rather than cricket and drinking coffee rather than tea, that needs explaining. That needs an explanation. That\'s the strange thing. It is the unconventional, the unexpected that needs explaining. That\'s a good principle for doing history. One of the things is it means that when you\'re doing history, one of the first things that one does when you start looking at a particular period is you learn the conventions of that period. In order to do history properly, you need to learn the conventions of that period so that you can understand how people think and so that when you start reading texts and you start looking at behavior in that period, you know what is normal so that when somebody behaves out of the normal, that\'s what attracts you. That\'s what you zero in on and that\'s what you want to spend your time explaining. Well, let\'s move to Luther then. We\'ve done a lot of preparation. What I\'ve done thus far in this class is essentially establish as a norm in Western Europe in the late Middle Ages anti-Jewish feeling. Everybody hates the Jews. Everybody hates the Jews pretty much. Even Royclin hates the Jews. And that\'s the framework that I\'m then going to use when I come to examine Luther\'s attitude to the Jews. Is there anything unconventional about Luther\'s attitude to the Jews? Well, yes there is. But it\'s not his treatise of 1543. The treatise of 1543 on the Jews and their lies is the one that everybody talks about and focuses on. You go to the church in Wittenberg and if you look above the door there is what they call the Judensau over the door of the church. What is the Judensau? It\'s a gargoyle or carving in the shape of a pig with a rabbi with his arm, pardon the expression, but shoved up the pig\'s backside and a group of Jewish children suckling at the pig\'s teats. Massively offensive. Violently anti-Jewish, vile anti-Jewish thing. In fact after the war there was some discussion as to whether to tear, to start destroying the Judensau on German churches because it was a signal of saying, Jews not welcome. And it was decided that no, they would keep these there as a reminder, as a reminder of the legacy of certain strands of medieval and early modern Christianity. And the Judensau is still there, but the Judensau needs no explanation. It\'s just a particularly vile representation of the conventions. Luther\'s 1543 Treatise, that\'s not the one I\'m first interested in explaining. The one I want to explain, or needs explanation, is the 1523 Treatise that Jesus Christ was born a Jew. Now that\'s the Treatise that nobody talks about relative to Luther and the Jews, but it is fascinating. It is fascinating because it is such a decisive break with the conventions of the day. This is a positive Treatise, basically saying to Christians, it\'s a kind of outreach manual in some ways. Basically what Luther says is, Christians need to be really good neighbours to the Jews in their town. In order to win a hearing for the Gospel, they need to be kind and nice and welcoming to Jews because that is the way that they will win space for a hearing, for a presentation of the Gospel. It\'s a great treatise. It\'s a remarkable break with convention. It raises a question. In fact, it raises two questions in the sort of the whodunit puzzle. Why did he write it? The unconventional needs explanation. Why did he write it? Why did he so break with convention? And two, why does he change his mind in such a violent way by 1543? And I think the answer to those questions is one and the same actually. I think the answer is this and it goes back to the point that I\'ve been pressing a number of occasions during this week. I think Luther believes he\'s living at the end of time. I think he believes that Jesus is about to return and for him the Reformation is this great, we would say, revival of Christianity right at the end of time. And one of the marks, one of the things that must take place for Luther before Jesus returns is what? Conversion of the Jews. Conversion of the Jews. And so Luther in 1523 is writing a treatise to combat the anti-Jewish sentiment of his day in order to facilitate outreach to the Jews that will bring the Lord back. Why does that connect to 15? Well, why does he change his mind? After 1525, Luther becomes increasingly disillusioned with the corruption of the Lutheran Church. The debates and the bust-up with Zwingli and the Reformed. Catholicism is rallying itself and reviving and consolidating and pressing back. The Emperor has refused to subscribe a Lutheran confession. Luther himself, and let\'s not underestimate this, you know, he\'s getting old. Getting old is ghastly enough from a physical perspective in the 21st century. It would have been terrible in the 16th century. These people were dying every day of their lives physically in some ways. Luther becomes very disillusioned and I think it dawns on him that the Reformation is not the revival at the end of time. And he looks for somebody to blame. And there are four groups in his later years that he singles out for blame for the setbacks the Reformation is suffering from. The radical Anabaptists who are just crazy people. The Papists. Who refuse to accept Luther\'s understanding of justification by grace through faith. The Turk. The idolatrous Turk who\'s hammering in from the the East. And the Jews. The Jews. So in 1540, in the late 1530s, only the early 1540s, Luther does a 180 on his attitude to the Jews. All of that is to say we need to, you know, it\'s to sort of set this up the question, set up the question. Now I think we\'ve done enough groundwork, hard groundwork, to ask that question about well what is the connection then between Luther and the Holocaust. That\'s a better way of framing it, you know, did Luther cause the Holocaust? It\'s far too naive a question in some ways. What\'s the relationship between Luther and the Holocaust? Well first of all I think we have to say when we come to his 1543 treatise. It\'s very conventional. It even contains the blood libel. Much of the stuff that Luther is saying about the Jews is entirely conventional. Luther of course is a very gifted writer, which means that when he writes it has a pungency that it may not have and a sophistication it may not have when somebody else writes. We can certainly say though that Luther writes very pungently but in a very conventional way about the Jews in 1543. So, first thing I want to say is we can clearly not pin the Holocaust on Luther one on one. Luther is writing as part of an ongoing tradition, anti-Jewish feeling. Secondly, I want to add a further complication to the issue. As a historian I want to come at it and I want to say, okay, but is anti-Jewish sentiment is it always the same in all times and all places? And I think the answer is no. Jump to 1936 and the passing of the so-called Nuremberg laws in Germany. The Nuremberg laws were the effectively the constitutional legal basis for what will become the Holocaust. The Nuremberg laws stripped the Jews really of their citizenship. them. They can\'t emigrate because they don\'t have papers, but they don\'t have any civil rights in Germany because they\'ve had those stripped from them. It becomes the legal basis for the Holocaust. Incidentally, one of the key drafters of the Nuremberg laws went on to hold high office in the post-war German government of Konrad Adenauer. It\'s very interesting the relationship between immediate post-war Germany and Nazi Germany. It\'s a complicated and somewhat tormented one. But the Nuremberg Laws are interesting because they actually make a very significant point. One of the key things in the Nuremberg Laws is this. If you convert to Christianity, if you repudiate your Judaism, if you convert to Christianity, it makes no difference. It makes no difference because the problem, this is completely bogus science of course, but the problem is one of blood. The problem is one of blood. It\'s not one of religious conviction. It\'s one of blood. The Nazi campaign against the Jews was predicated on biological racial theory that really comes to its own in the 19th century. That\'s why you may have noticed in this lecture I\'ve tried on the whole to avoid the language of antisemitism when referring to Luther. because anti-Semitism is, it\'s specifically racial in its orientation. The question is, and this is where, you know, scholars of Lutheran and the Jews, this is where they zero in, the question is, is Luther\'s hatred of the Jews, which as we\'ve seen is conventional European hatred of the Jews, is it racial? That\'s the key question. And the answer, I think\... is basically no. Now there has been some pushback on this idea recently. I think it is slightly more complicated than has typically been made the case, but the basic answer is no. Because if a Jew converts to Christianity in the 16th century, the problem is dealt with. The problem has effectively gone away. Now\... There\'s been some evidence recently. There\'s a very good book, I mentioned it earlier in the week, published, it\'s a King\'s College London dissertation. It\'s published by the Institute for Holocaust Studies. It was written by, I think it\'s actually a PCA pastor named, an RTS graduate, Reformed Theological Seminary graduate who went to London to study, do a history PhD in London, did his history PhD on the use of Martin Luther\'s writings by the Nazis in the 20s and 30s. It\'s called Demonizing the Jews, the name of the author eludes me, but Demonizing the Jews published by the Institute for Holocaust Studies is a study of Nazi propaganda in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the things he does there that is quite intriguing is that he does produce some evidence that if you converted as a Jew in the 16th century to Christianity, you were still at times mocked a little bit for your physiognomy. Treated a little bit like a second-hand, a second-class Christian, which indicates there\'s a little bit more than a purely religious issue going on in the 16th century. But it\'s nothing like 19th century racial theory. The problem is basically solved if you convert. Basically solved. So I think one of the things when we come here, this blunt question of, did Luther cause the Holocaust? One of the things we have to say is, well, there\'s this\... big broad stream of anti-Jewish becoming anti-Semitic sentiment in Europe goes right the way back to the 12th century of which Luther\'s later writings on the Jews are a pretty conventional if somewhat extreme example. And secondly we have to reckon with the great transformation in the 19th century with the arrival of racial theory as transforming the understanding and the basis for anti-Jewish sentiment. You know, I\'ve just spent 35 minutes outlining all of this stuff. Now I come back to that question. How do we connect Luther to the Holocaust? Well, I would say I would connect him this way. I would say that Luther is an example, a historic example, of a tradition of anti-Jewish sentiment in Western Europe, which culminated in the Holocaust. Or culminated in Nazi Germany and then in the Holocaust 1942 and afterwards. Did Luther cause the Holocaust? No he did not. The Holocaust would have happened if Luther had never existed. Can we exonerate him? No we cannot because Luther is part of that tradition that culminates in the Holocaust. So I think we really have to step back and say you know. Luther, no he didn\'t cause the Holocaust but he\'s part of the problem that culminated in the Holocaust. Now the question you you\'re likely to face if you if you speak on Luther in your churches. First thing is something, but wasn\'t Luther a violent anti-Semite? My first response to that would be well well let\'s talk about anti-Semitism. You know what exactly is it and and make the issue more complicated you know it\'s too simple a question. You\'ve got to complicate it, I think. One of the tasks of a historian is always to make things more complicated than they first appear, because things always are more complicated than they first appear. Secondly, I think we should not be in the game of trying to justify what Luther wrote. Even by the standards of the time, even though it\'s conventional, it\'s pretty extreme. So even if we were to historicise Luther, it would be difficult to get him completely off the hook as just a man of his time. He\'s a pretty extreme man of his time. Thirdly, I think I\'d want to say, you know, but this was Luther held this position everybody else did. How difficult is it to break with traditions? Are there not prejudices that you and I have that are difficult to break with because everybody holds them? Who knows in 400 years time what view we hold now might be regarded as thoroughly unacceptable then. So I think that can be part of the answer. What I think one should not do\... is simply try to get Luther off the hook. I actually don\'t think as Christians we do ourselves any favors in hiding skeletons in the cupboard or sweeping dirt under the carpet. It is better to give an honest answer on these things. And then I myself would track to the, you know, Luther made some disastrous mistakes. But that was always the risk with a guy like Luther, because of the kind of personality that he was. You don\'t get the tough guy at Worms or the Invercarwit sermons of 1522 without running the risk of the lunatic of 1543. Oh, and by the way, he did write this great treatise in 1523 that Jesus Christ was born a Jew, so there was a moment where he kind of broke with the culture of his day on this issue. So it may not satisfy people, but I don\'t think we should allow the anti-Semitic jive to stand in its simple form. It\'s a whole lot more complicated than that, and I think the relationship between Luther and the Holocaust cannot be decided in a straight sort of, did he cause it or didn\'t he? In some ways, that\'s a silly question. It\'s the wrong question. The question is, what, you know, where did the Holocaust come from? It comes out of a strong tradition of anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish feeling in Europe of which Luther was a part, and not insignificant literary part, but only a part. Yeah. No, it\'s a European thing. You know, the Jews were regarded mainly because as I said they weren\'t baptized. What do you do with people who, it\'s the same problem with the Anabaptists, what do you do with people who aren\'t assimilable to society as you understand it to be constituted? You persecute them generally, burn them, drown them, exile them, you get rid of them, you shunt them off somewhere. You know, Luther and Zwingli not as notorious for their anti-Jewish feeling, but I\'m pretty sure if you dug in their works you\'d find it there. It\'s entirely conventional. The problem with Luther is he becomes so fixated on the Jews towards the end of his life, and some of his extreme rhetoric, which at the time was rhetoric, looks like prophecy in the light of when we look back through the Third Reich, yes synagogues were being burned down. with people inside them. It\'s hard to read Luther\'s anti-Jewish treatise. I don\'t think we should minimize them, nor should we allow them to destroy everything that he\'s done, if I could put it that way. Yeah, I mean the 1523 treaties arises out of that. There are Jews in the area. But his frustration is that they won\'t see Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. They won\'t see Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. Yeah? How were those treaties received? I think at the time Luther\'s anti-Jewish rhetoric is not particularly controversial. Because everybody hates Jews. It\'s extreme by the standards of time, but you know when he uses the blood libel He\'s only using an established convention It would be like you know maybe 500 years from now We\'ll look back on an MSNBC broadcast or a Fox broadcast to think wow it\'s pretty extreme But at the time nobody noticed because so many people were saying pretty similar things Yeah from the 1930s. That would be a lot to do with Luther Bean. Yes, another part of the story that I haven\'t connected of course is that Luther comes to prominence in the late 19th century in Germany because Germany is building an identity and expanding its empire. And that\'s why if you go to Germany, the great statues of Luther all date from the 19th century. And although he was a tiny chap, they\'re all huge. He\'s a Hercules in these statues. It\'s interesting, there\'s a giant statue of Luther in Baltimore. I ran the Baltimore Marathon several years in a row and one year we come around the corner around about mile 19, which is a tough time in the marathon because you pretty much burned all your body, the sugars in your blood there and you\'re starting to break down bits of your body that shouldn\'t be broken down in order to fuel the last\... six miles. So it\'s possible you could hallucinate. And I come around the corner and there\'s this giant statue of Luther staring at me on top of this pole. I think, man, I must be hallucinating. I did a bit of a search after the race and I found out that it was whacked up in the 19th century as part of the ethnic conflict that was going on. I think between, I can\'t remember if it was between the Germans in Baltimore and the Italians in Baltimore or the Germans in Baltimore and I think the Irish in Baltimore. and putting up a great big statue of Luther was a way of sticking it to the Irish Catholics in the late 19th century. So Luther\'s statuary is popping up all over the place as a way of sticking it to the opposition in the 19th century. Yeah? Do you have any dealings with talking with converted Jews about this issue? Any recommendations? There\'s a Jewish couple that just showed up a few weeks ago at our church. Okay. I was just wondering about that. I have not. I think I have had people come to me and say, my non-Christian relative says they can\'t believe in Christianity because of Luther and the Jews and you guys. So I do have a little reading list that I give to people, recommended reading, if it\'s a serious objection for them, if it\'s not just somebody grabbing hold of something to go to Christian with. If they\'re seriously interested in exploring the topic, there is good literature out there. Particularly a book by Heiko Obermann. Obermann, who was the greatest Reformation scholar, maybe of all time, but certainly in the 20th century, wrote a book, Antisemitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation. That is an extremely good book. As I said, this demonizing the Jews book will perhaps lead to some modifications, slight modifications of Obermann\'s thesis because he\'s very strong on this is a religious problem, not a racial problem. And therefore the relationship between Luther and the Holocaust is necessarily complicated. I think it\'s anti-Semitism in the age of Renaissance and Reformation. He deals with the Reuklin controversy, he deals with Luther and the Jews. As I say, I think it\'s a fascinating question as well because it allows you to think\... You have to be very self-conscious in the way you do history when you think about something like Luther and the Jews. Because the chances of getting theoretically beheaded because you\'ve said something wrong, they are great. This isn\'t arguing about whether somebody painted their house blue or red at a certain point in history. The moral stakes are very high when you\'re dealing with issues like the Holocaust in history. It\'s very easy to make a misstep. I got into trouble a few years ago for really bashing\... Rush Dooney, the founder of Theonomy in the United States, was a Holocaust denier. In his Institutes of Biblical Law he\'s very clear. He says only 300,000 to 600,000 people died in the Holocaust. They died of disease, they were not systematically destroyed. And if you know anything about Holocaust denial, the historians he cites, it\'s just a gift. These are skinheads. These are basically skinheads that he\'s citing. I did a little article on this and of course the Theonomist got really, really angry about this. But he\'s a Holocaust denier. My view is, if you deny the Holocaust, it\'s like denying the famines in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. I cannot respect you as a historian because it is very clear to me that your perverted politics are absolutely driving your interpretation of history at that point. And you have no claim to competence as a historian. So to build a movement like Theonomy on the basis of skinhead history, that\'s all I need to know about the movement. Yeah? You mentioned the working synagogues. Was there any similar violent language written toward the other groups, the Turks, Anabaptists didn\'t do the right thing? I don\'t know about that. I read from the decision in the Zurich Rathaus relative to the Anabaptists earlier, they\'re to be drowned. If they refuse to submit their children, they\'re to be killed. They\'re to be killed. They\'re to be killed. They\'re to be killed. They\'re to be killed. They\'re to be killed. They\'re to be killed. They\'re to be killed. They\'re to be killed. If they refuse to submit their children for infant baptism, they are to be tried. and condemned without appeal, and then they are to be taken into the lake and drowned. Did Luther use violent language? Oh, yeah, Luther loves violent language. Oh yeah, I mean the harsh book against the peasants. It\'s one of Luther\'s real weaknesses. And his language gets more violent the older he gets. The book by, somebody was telling me about the Rhetoric and the Reformation, the book by Peter Matheson, the Rhetoric of the Reformation, has a section in there on how. Luther\'s language gets more and more extreme the older he gets. That\'s part of getting old I guess. I said to the Damingos, when I turned 40 it was great because I thought, man I can be closed-minded now. I don\'t have to be over-minded about anything anymore. Maybe I\'ll tell you this but I ran the, a friend and I in church ran an obstacle mud race last year with two of the younger girls from church and at one point we were being beaten by this all-girl team. And I turned to my friend and I said, there\'s just no way. I don\'t care if it kills me. I\'m not being beaten by an all-girl team. And the girls who were running in our team looked at me and I said, I know that\'s sexist, but it\'s OK, because I\'m too old to know better. I\'m a general, we just don\'t know any better. So. I hope that\'s helpful because I say that\'s one of the major, one of the majorly problematic things with Luther is his attitude to the Jews. And racism is such a hot-button topic and I know that at the extreme ends of things it can tend to be very silly and trivial at times. But I think that on the whole the question, you know, questions surrounding the Holocaust, these are not trivial questions. And when somebody in our church or somebody from outside the church asks about Luther and the Holocaust. It\'s a question that merits a serious reply. I think that the person who asked that question merits respect in a serious reply. And, you know, if you simply blame Luther for the Holocaust or you try to completely exonerate him, then I think you\'re going about it all wrong. You\'re going about it all wrong. Okay, we\'ll take a five minute break and then we\'ll reconvene and I\'ll take questions then on when I won\'t do the post-Luther stuff. What I want to do is just give you a chance to ask any questions about anything I\'ve said this week and ask about the papers, et cetera, et cetera. Let\'s look at any kind of housekeeping things because this is the last chance you\'re going to get to, directly get to me. You can get me by email, ctruman at wts.edu. So if you have email questions, but the last chance you get to operate with my real presence, as opposed to my merely spiritual presence, will be now.