Reply #61: The problem with your reading of that particular bit of Luther is, of course, that you [View All]

[struggle4progress]

do not really read the whole piece: otherwise, you should have to explain aspects of Luther's lengthy conclusion, in which he asserts that the gospel cannot be promoted by violence, and cites Jewish scripture to make his point:

... not only do we foolish, craven Christians and accursed Goyim regard our Messiah as so indispensable for delivering us from death through himself and without our holiness, but we wretched people are also afflicted with such great and terrible blindness as to believe that he needs no sword or worldly power to accomplish this ... In this respect, the great seducers Isaiah, Jeremiah, and an the other prophets do us great harm. They beguile us mad Goyim with their false doctrine, saying that the kingdom of the Messiah will not bear the sword ... For .. Isaiah 2:2 prophesies concerning the Messiah ... "He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Similar sorcery is also practiced upon us poor Goyim in Isaiah 11:9: "They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord. We poor blind Goyim cannot conceive of this "knowledge of the Lord" as a sword, but as the instruction by which one learns to know God; our understanding agrees with Isaiah 2, cited above, which also speaks of the knowledge which the Gentiles shall pursue ... The proof of this is before your eyes, namely, that the apostles used no spear or sword but solely their tongues. And their example has been followed in all the world now for fifteen hundred years by all the bishops, pastors, and preachers, and is still being followed. Just see whether the pastor wields sword or spear when he enters the church, preaches, baptizes, administers the sacrament, when he retains and remits sin, restrains evildoers, comforts the godly, and teaches, helps, and nurtures everyone's soul. Does he not do all of this exclusively with the tongue or with words? And the congregation, likewise, brings no sword or spear to such a ministry, but only its ears. And consider the miracles. The Roman Empire and the whole world abounded with idols to which the Gentiles adhered ... and yet the tongue alone purged the entire world of all these idols without a sword ... Do you not call this a kingdom, power, might, dominion, glory? ...

I do not consider this the best or clearest of Luther's work -- and I would happily consign it to the flames as unhelpful. But since you repeatedly drag this well-forgotten rant into public view here, I think it only fair as a purely historical matter to point out that Luther's intent ought to be judged from the piece in toto rather than by mere snippets from it -- and that Luther's concluding section is devoted to the notion that the apostles spread their gospel by persuasive tongue alone and not by any violence. The concluding section also exhibits Luther's tendency towards sarcasm, as when he (a churchman) refers to Isaiah's prophecies of peace as a wicked sorcery perpetuated upon the goyim by the prophets. One natural reading of the entire text is then, that it is an attempt to preach the gospel to the anti-semites and is laden with sarcasm intended to make the ears of his anti-semitic listeners burn with shame

<edit: no emoticons please>