Luther's Hatred for the Jews

Dr. Couch, how could Martin Luther be so mixed up in his mistreatment of the Jewish people? He wrote terrible things about them because they did not receive Christ as their Savior. Luther was filled with hatred and yet he prayed three or four hours a day. Also, he thought the book of James should not be in the canon of Scripture. This all seems inconsistent with someone who studied and prayed so much! ANSWER:  We can all be impacted by the culture and by the voices that we hear on a continual basis, that are contrary to truth. The people of Luther's day were haters of the Jewish people, and Luther followed what was happening in his society.    God generally does not give us revelation of things that we should find out for ourselves. That is, He does not reveal to us the laws of chemistry or physics. With such things we have to go through a process to learn about. So with the issue of God's working with the Jews. Luther was not reading his Bible carefully enough to be able to set aside his hatred of the Jews.    To put it another way, Luther could have known of the passage of Scripture: "From the standpoint of the gospel [the Jews] are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God's election [of the Jews], they are beloved [in His sight] for the sake of the [ancient Jewish] fathers" (Rom. 11:28). Luther in his hatred went against this passage found in the book of Romans.    On the matter of the book of James, Luther objected to it because he felt the book was saying that salvation comes by human effort, human works. He did not interpret James properly. James is saying that we are "justified by works" in the sight of men, though we are "justified by faith" in the sight of God! On one hand, he felt James was part of the Bible, though it had its problems, yet it should be seen in a lesser light because of what he felt was a contradiction.    Harrison says this about Luther and the book of James: "It was not included in the Muratorium canon and was generally ignored until Jerome and Augustine give it their endorsement. Its place in the canon seemed to become secure with its inclusion by the Third Council of Carthage in A.D. 397, but at the beginning of the modern period it was questioned by Erasmus and others. Luther's attitude was one of distrust and disappointment because he found it out of agreement with Paul's teaching on justification by faith. He gave it a secondary position [though still Scripture] and labeled it 'a right strawy epistle.'"    Luther did not have all the information and input that we have today historically. So we have to give him a pass in his understanding, and also in the understanding of others.      God's desire is to strengthen us by His Spirit "in the inner man" (Eph. 3:16) in the spiritual realm but He does not give us objective truth—this we have to dig for!    Thanks for asking.    Dr. Mal Couch  (Sept. 2010)