It should be kept in my mind that Luther’s later anti-Jewish tracts were written from a position different than current concept of anti-Semitism. Luther was born into a society that was anti-Judaic, but it was not the current anti-Judaic type of society that bases it racism on biological factors. Luther had no objections to integrating converted Jews fully into Christian society. He had nothing against Jews as “Jews” as a race. He had something against their religion because he believed it denied Christ.
Dr. Heiko Oberman points out, “One thing must be clearly understood: Luther was anti-Jewish in his repeated warnings against the Jews (of any race) because of it denied the Christian Gospel and thus Christ. But Luther was not an anti-Semite or racist of any kind because- to apply the test appropriate to his time- for him a baptized Jew is fully Christian and because it matters not at all to him whether an advocate of the Jewish religion was Jew or Gentile."
Lutheran scholar Eric Gritsch echoes Oberman’s point: “Luther was not an anti-Semite in the modern racist sense. His arguments against the Jews were theological, not biological or racist." Gritsch goes on to point out the origin of biological anti-Semitism: “Not until a French cultural anthropologist in the nineteenth century held that humankind consisted of ‘Semites’ and ‘Aryans’ were Semites considered inferior. Alfonse de Gobineau’s views were quickly adopted by European intellectuals and politicians, and Jews became the scapegoats of a snobbish colonialist society in England, France, and Germany. The rest is history- including the Jewish holocaust perpetrated by Adolf Hitler and his regime. National Socialists abused Luther to support their new racist anti-Semitism, calling him a genuine German who had hated non-Nordic races.”
In his article “Luther’s Attitudes toward Judaism,” Carter Lindberg provides an excellent example proving Luther’s anti-Jewish writings were not motivated by biological racism. Lindberg says, “More to the point is Luther’s stance on religious intermarriage. In his criticism of the medieval Catholic canonical prohibition against a Christian marrying a Jew, Luther wrote, "Just as I may eat, drink, sleep, walk, ride with, buy from, speak to, and deal with a heathen, Jew, Turk, or heretic, so I may also marry and continue in wedlock with him. Pay no attention to the precepts of those fools who forbid it. You will find plenty of Christians—and indeed the greater part of them—who are worse in their secret unbelief than any Jew. A heathen is just as much a man or a woman—God's good creation—as St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Lucy, not to speak of a slack and spurious Christian."
Rather than being motivated by biological factors, Luther’s criticisms were motivated by theological concerns. Luther directed intensely abusive language against Anabaptists, lawyers, the papacy, and the Jews, the issue never being race but theology. The Jews had a religion based upon works righteousness. When Luther attacked these groups, he felt he was attacking the devil- the underlying spirit of works righteousness.
Equally, he was opposed to any sense of racial superiority. In his last expositions on Genesis in 1544, Luther makes it explicit that no one has the right to boast on their race or lineage: “Accordingly, the Jews have no grounds for boasting; they should humble themselves and acknowledge their maternal blood. For on their father’s side they are Israelites; but on their mother’s side they are Gentiles, Moabites, Assyrians, Egyptians, Canaanites. And by this God wanted to point out that the Messiah would be a brother and a cousin of both the Jews and the Gentiles, if not according to their paternal genealogy, at least according to their maternal nature. Consequently, there is no distinction between Jews and Gentiles, except that Moses later separated this people from the Gentiles by a different form of worship and political regime. Moreover, these things were written to make it known to all that the Messiah would gather the Gentiles and the Jews into one and the same church, just as they are joined by nature and consanguinity.”
In his commentary on Galatians 3:28, Luther explains we are all equal. No particular people has any right to claim special privilege before God: “ ‘There is neither magistrate nor subject, neither professor nor listener, neither teacher nor pupil, neither lady nor servant.’ For in Christ Jesus all social stations, even those that were divinely ordained, are nothing. Male, female, slave, free, Jew, Gentile, king, subject—these are, of course, good creatures of God. But in Christ, that is, in the matter of salvation, they amount to nothing, for all their wisdom, righteousness, devotion, and authority.”
Luther’s most well known anti-Jewish writing was On The Jews and Their Lies. It is often quoted and cited as the clearest example of Luther’s anti-Semitism. Interestingly though, this very document proves that Luther was not a biological anti-Semite, he was not against the Jews as people, nor did he seek for their extermination. In that treatise, Luther launches into a long section against any notion that the Jews are better than anyone else. He puts forth an alleged popular anti-Jewish argument that they thanked God that they were not born gentiles or women. In arguing against this caricature, Luther mocks those who think any one particular people is better than another: “…[T]he Greek Plato daily accorded God such praise and thanksgiving—if such arrogance and blasphemy may be termed praise of God. This man, too, praised his gods for these three items: that he was a human being and not an animal; a male and not a female; a Greek and not a non-Greek or barbarian…Similarly, the Italians fancy themselves the only human beings; they imagine that all other people in the world are non-humans, mere ducks or mice by comparison.”
