Luther Examined and Reexamined: A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for RevaluationDau, W. H. T. (William Herman Theodore)
Religion
Luther Examined and Reexamined: A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation
Dau, W. H. T. (William Herman Theodore)
Luther, Martin, 1483-1546
All this happened under the most Christian rule of the Popes. The
characteristic temper of the Jew in the Middle Ages, his fierce hatred
of Christianity, his sullen mood, his blasphemous treatment of matters
and objects sacred to Christians, are the result of the treatment he
received even from the members and high officials of the Church. Now
here comes Rome in our day asserting the kindness and generosity shown
the Jews by their Popes, because these afforded them shelter in the
Ghetto of the Holy City! How differently, they say, was this from the
treatment accorded the Jews by Luther. Why, these Catholic writers do
not tell the hundredth part of the truth about the attitude of their
Church to the Jews in the Middle Ages.
Let this be remembered when Luther's remarks about the Jews are taken up
for study. He is very outspoken against them; his utterances, however,
relate for the most part to the false teaching and religious practises,
to their perversion of the text and the meaning of the Scriptures, and
to the blasphemies which they utter against God, Jesus Christ, and His
Church, and to the lies which they assiduously spread about the
Christian religion. In all that Luther says against the Jews under this
head he is simply discharging the functions of a teacher of
Christianity; for Scripture says that it was given also "for reproof"
(2 Tim. 3, 16). No one can be a true theologian without being polemical
on occasion. In another class of his references to the Jews Luther
refers to their character: their arrogance and pride, their
stiffneckedness and contumacy, their greed and avarice, which makes
their presence in any land a public calamity. Though their church and
state has long been overthrown, and they are a people without a country,
homeless wanderers on the face of the earth, they still boast of being
"the people of God," and are indulging the wildest dreams about the
reestablishment of their ancient kingdom. They are looking for a Messiah
who will be a secular prince, and will make them all barons living in
beautiful castles and receiving the tribute of the Goyim. One may reason
and plead with them and show them that their belief contradicts their
own Scriptures, that their Talmud is filled with palpable falsehoods,
and that their hope is a chimera; but they turn a deaf ear to argument
and entreaty, and turn upon you with fierce resentment at your efforts
to show them the truth. Although they know that their habits of grasping
and hoarding wealth, driving hard and unfair bargains, their hunting for
small profits by contemptible methods like hungry dogs searching the
offal in the alley, rouses the enmity of communities against them and
causes them to become a blight to all true progress, to honest trade and
business in any land where they have become firmly established, so that
laws must be made against them, still they blindly and passionately
continue their covetous strivings. When Luther observes the corrupting
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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