Webpage  Luth-2      Page 21         TO INDEX

LUTHER THE BARBARIAN

.

 This page on Luther will show how the above title is not unwarranted.  And at the same time I ought to condemn the history writers that spoke falsely concerning Luther.  For it is one thing to speak the best of people, of which I also am guilty, but to knowingly conceal the truth is outright deceit.

From the very start at a young age, attempting to learn what all and who all were contradictory to the word of God, I came to say to myself, it would take you more than a lifetime to figure that out.  And so I concluded to forget them, and learn only what is the word of God, and whatsoever be contrary to it shall be of error.

But I know that I am naive, the trusting soul, and to always think the best of everyone, and by what I read or heard of Luther from the various sources, even coincidentally of his own works, he seemed to have a good knowledge in the milk of the gospel, that is to say, Christ Jesus in salvation by faith.  As for the rest he is like most to speak too much for too little.  

I then having composed most of my work, there was this thing lacking, the record of the men Godly or otherwise in the period after the apostles and their successors, to the current day.  And with the advent of my notebook (laptop) it gave me an eye on the world, able to access the whole world for a library.  

Accordingly, I searched the records of that period, and it was most distressing to learn how few Godly persons there have been with a record.  And it became clear to me that the Lord had called it sufficient from the hands of His apostles, and a few of their successors.

What then may be said of Luther and the reformation of that time? Before him it was "works without faith", then by Luther it became "faith without works."   The reformation therefore in Luther was no more than a stone turned over.  And who then or how were the Godly ones educated and taken?  

Before that century the Lord drew His people out from among the heathen, and irrelevant of the schemes of the roman papacy.  And afterwards to this day the Lord still draws His people out from among the idolatry, and barbarianism of the protestants together with the roman catholics.

In effect it does not matter what churches there are, or by what scheme they operate, the Lord knows His own, and draws them accordingly by His will and His own counsel.  For each and every one of them were taught of the Lord, and of none other, as it is written: "They shall all be taught of His Holy Spirit."  

My mother for example, how was she educated?  She went to a church building in name descended after Calvin, but the people in it were no more Christian than the stones of the structure, or worse as I may quote in her own words; "How these appeared yet harden than the stones."   

And how was I educated?  Name me the person if you will, and you shall be in error.   But what I did find when the Lord had called me, and I went to a local church, - how its preacher not only hated the word of God, but with a passion.  And that viper had the gall to stand before the people as if he were pious.

I shall now insert some extracts of Luther's words by way of that schoolteacher noted in my previous page, whose stomach must have been stronger than mine to endure the filth of what I came to call "barbarian" of Martin Luther.  And while I at first purchased a great deal of his works, when I learned the truth about him, I destroyed the entire lot. First therefore shall be his words by way of introduction, with my comments as noted,

Quote. "Small as the present volume is, I feel the reader needs some kind of explanation. I am neither a scholar nor a politician, neither a theologian nor a professional author. I am an ordinary schoolmaster, a teacher of French and German. This fact explains the shortcomings of which I myself am only too fully aware.

=========

God, on the other hand, seemed to him “a master armed with a stick”. “God did mischievously blind me”; “God often acts like a madman”; “God paralyses the old and blinds the young and thus remains master”; I look upon God no better than a scoundrel”; “God is stupid” (“Table Talk”, No. 963, W1, 48)

Strange sayings from the mouth of the reformer! But stranger still are his references to God and Christ when it comes to Luther's own shortcomings. We shall see later his own attitude to sex and morality. But he excused his own adultery—to quote merely one more example—by the teachings of Christ. 

“Christ”, says Luther, “committed adultery first of all with the woman at the well about whom Saint John tells us. Was not everybody about Him  saying: `Whatever has he been doing with her?” Secondly, with Mary Magdalene, and thirdly with the woman taken in adultery whom He dismissed so lightly. Thus even Christ, who was so righteous, must have been guilty of fornication before He died” (“Table Talk”, 1472) (W2, 107).

========

More than once he condemned in his violent language, reason and a reasonable approach to matters. “Reason is the Devil's greatest whore; by nature and an manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom. . . . Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism. . . . She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets” (E16, 142-148). 

There are many more sayings in the same sense, though not always so dirtily phrased. “Usury, drunkenness, adultery—these crimes are self-evident and the world knows that they are sinful; but that bride of the Devil, `Reason', stalks abroad, the fair courtesan, and wishes to be considered wise, and thinks that whatever she says comes from the Holy Ghost. She is the most dangerous harlot the Devil has.” “Reason is contrary to faith”, he writes elsewhere. “Reason is the whore of the Devil. It can only blaspheme and dishonor everything God has said or done” (E29, 241).  

So it goes on and on. 

==========

Since Luther had this curious idea that our actions have no connections whatsoever with our thoughts, and that as long as we think in a Christian way, we need not behave accordingly, it is not surprising that he did not hesitate to authorize the commitment of sins. “What does it matter whether we commit a fresh sin?” he asks sarcastically. “Faith cancels all sin” is his simple counsel. “No other sin exists in the world save unbelief,” is his doctrine. Indeed, his old enemy, Satan, is once more coming to light in order to give an excuse to sinners. “Sometimes it is necessary to commit some sin out of hatred and contempt for the Devil.” “What matters if we commit a sin?” (E16, 254).

A strange doctrine! Indeed, he frequently demands that one ought to commit a sin. “Be a sinner, and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still.” Not only men, but the Saints and Apostles must be sinners. “The Saints must be good, downright sinners.” “The Apostles themselves were sinners, yea, regular scoundrels…I believe that the prophets also frequently sinned grievously” (E62, 165).

========

This, then, is Luther's somewhat curious interpretation of Christianity—an interpretation which he translated into full practice in his own life, as I shall attempt to show.

The explanation is simple: Luther encourages them in their vices. True, at times he lectures and gives them moral “pep talks”, but his own life was so typically German, without any restraint, that it is more than convenient and agreeable to the average German to look up to the Reformer as a shining example with whose habits he is only too willing to comply.

But, as we have seen before, he has always a very easy way out. It just does not matter whether we commit a sin or not. “You owe nothing to God except faith and confession. In all other things He lets you do whatever you like. You may do as you please, without any danger of conscience whatsoever.” Thus a remedy for his “burning flesh” is easily found. “The sting of flesh may easily be helped so long as girls and women are to be found.” “The body asks for a woman and must have it”; “to marry is a remedy for fornication” (see Grisar, “Luther”, vol. iv, p. 145).

========

It is therefore necessary not merely to look at Luther's more theoretical sayings on sin, but to see how the Reformer lived himself, for it is his example which the Germans were taught to follow—and followed. I shall thus try to show, in turn, Luther's attitude towards temperance, sex, and truth—three subjects on which true Christian ethics can know no compromise, and without which no Christianity, in any sense, seems possible to me.

=========

But what he has to say about women is still worse. “The word and work of God is quite clear, viz. That women were made either to be wives or prostitutes” (W12, 94).

I know of no more loathsome saying. Throughout Luther's writings I have found the same spirit. “God does not take from man and woman their special fashioning, sexual organs, seed and its fruit; a Christian body must generate, multiply, and behave like those of birds and all animals; he was created by God for that, thus where God performs no miracle, man must unite with woman and woman with man.”

What happens to the woman is of no consequence to Luther. “Even though they grow weary and wear themselves out with child-bearing, it does not matter; let them go on bearing children till they die, that is what they are there for”(E20, 84).

=======

But the Reformer surpasses himself when he says: “If you do not want, someone else does. If the wife does not want, take your servant” (E20, 72).

Luther himself has several of these escaped nuns living with him. But he does not intend to marry. In November, 1524, he writes: “Not as though I do not feel my flesh and my sex, for I am neither of wood nor of stone, but I have no inclination to marry.” One of these nuns, Catherine von Bora, tried to marry one of Luther's friends. But it is clear that his own relations to her were anything but blameless. In April, 1525, he refers to himself as “a famous lover” who has “three wives” but “no intention whatsoever to marry”.

Less than two months later, without any warning, he most suddenly decided to marry Catherine von Bora. Why, can only be left to the imagination. “The Lord plunged me suddenly while I still clung to quite other views into matrimony,” he confesses. “God willed that I should take pity on her,” is another of his explanations. He is even frank enough to say that he had “no love nor passion for her”. Lastly, his usual excuse for his strangest actions is not lacking. “I married in order to spite the Devil”.

I give few comments. I let the Reformer speak for himself. I shall not give any details of the way he behaved after he was married. But surely Luther's attitude in his writings and his personal behavior towards women and marriage are rarely found even in the most depraved men, never in any human being who pretended to lead anything like a Christian life—not to speak of a “reformer”.

(Leonard:  Depraved is another term that suits Luther, or son of the devil.  And how could anyone ever have thought of him as a reformer or a Christian?  Lies and deceit by all of them who knew his writings, and by all of the priests or ministers that stood, and to this day stand before the people under his name.  For these at least should have read his words, and how could they possibly continue in that manner without a firm condemnation and removal of his name?)

I no sooner learned this and I removed whatever I had on him on the web other than this.  

============

One of the most fundamental, if not the most fundamental, principle of Christian ethics is to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Absolute and complete truthfulness is demanded. Without it there can be no Christianity.

The familiar picture which we have of Luther shows us the Reformer as the upholder of truth and truthfulness. “Luther the truthful”, he has been called more than once. And many of his sayings on the subject are indeed lovely and beautiful. “To my mind,” he said once, “there is no more shameful vice on earth than lying.”

But once more a close study of his teaching and behavior will show us that he contradicts himself, to what an extent the very opposite is true. And to my mind, this opposite attitude of Luther's towards truth was not merely the usual one, but one which appealed most to the Germans.

(Leonard: And now his dealings with the people, his faithful followers, which in all essence he betrayed and came to murder them.)

=========

Peasants”, Luther declared, “are no better than straw. They will not hear the Word and they are without sense; therefore they must be compelled to hear the crack of the whip and the whiz of bullets, and it is only what they deserve. We must pray for them that they may become obedient; but if they do not, pity is of no avail here; we must let the cannon-balls whistle among them, or they will only make things a thousand times worse."

A strange way to talk about his most faithful followers! But once Luther had made up his mind which side he was going to back, which side it was more profitable to back, his violence knew no limits. On May 6 of this fatal year Luther published his pamphlet, “Against the Peasant Bands of Robbers and Murderers”, which Funck-Brentano has described as a “horrible document which it is impossible to read, not only without disapproval but without disgust. 

The Reformer, who always had the Gospel on his lips, now talked of nothing but killing, torturing, burning and murdering the very people whom his work had driven to rebel.” Let us listen to the Reformer, the so-called champion of Christian freedom.

To kill a peasant is not murder; it is helping to extinguish the conflagration. Let there be no half measures! Crush them! Cut their throats! Transfix them! Leave no stone unturned! To kill a peasant is to destroy a mad dog!. . . Our princes must in the circumstances regard themselves as the officers of the divine wrath which bids them chastise such scoundrels. 

A prince who failed to do so would be sinning against God very badly. He would be failing in his mission. A prince who in such circumstances avoided bloodshed would become responsible for the murders and all the further crimes which these low swine might commit. It is no longer a question of tolerance, patience, pity. It is the hour of wrath and for the sword; the hour for mercy is past.”

Luther is full of similar advice.

=========

And Luther surpasses himself when he exclaims: "How strange times are when a prince can enter heaven by the shedding of blood more certainly than others by means of prayer!" And he ends with the peroration: "Come, dearly-beloved lords and nobles, strike them, transfix them, and cut their throats with might and main. Should you find death in so doing, you could not wish for one more divine, for you would fall in obedience to God and in defending your like against the hordes of Satan."” 

I know of no example in history (with the exception of Hitler'' famous, or rather infamous, June 30, 1934) where a man turned in such an inhuman, brutal, low way against his own followers—merely in order to establish his own position, without any reason. Treason of any kind is, in my opinion, honorable compared to Luther's change of colors.

============

No, Luther would not retract a single word of his pamphlet or apologize for it as the offspring of momentary passion. Instead, he began to elaborate his new political theory, a theory which was so readily accepted in Germany. “Scripture speaking figuratively”, wrote Luther in 1526, “calls rulers drovers, taskmasters, and scourgers. Like the drivers of donkeys, who have to labor the donkeys incessantly with rods and whips, or they will not obey, so must the ruler do with the people; they must drive, beat, throttle, hang, burn, behead and torture, so as to make themselves feared and to keep the people in check" (E15, 276).

The princes obeyed. A “brutal revenge” took place. Typical is the assertion of one of the princes: “I hope we are now going to play with heads as the boys play with marbles.”

==============

The lot of the poor peasants was worse than horrible. “Captains and overlords vied with each other in the ferocity of the punishments inflicted on the inhabitants of the conquered districts. The mildest way for the victims was to have their heads chopped off with an axe. Many, both men and women, had their tongues torn out; others had their fingers chopped off. The executions took place in public squares, the wives and children of the condemned being forced to witness the horrible spectacle at sight.”

 Some of the princes made all their subjects who had taken part in the revolt kneel in groups, and then mowed them down with artillery. Others crowded them into the cellars under their castles, where they died of suffocation in the most terrible stench. “Historians have estimated the number of poor wretches put to death in this way at about 100,000. The victorious landowners used to amuse themselves by playing bowls with their heads” (Funck-Brentano).

The whole of Germany seemed to collapse. But Luther did not care. “What I teach and write remains true though the whole world should fall to pieces over it” (W18, 401).

Nor did the Reformer feel any sympathy of any kind for the victims of the atrocities committed by his orders. “'Why treat the peasants so cruelly?' I am asked,”, wrote Luther in May, 1525; “let them all be killed. In such circumstances is it not God Himself who by our hands, hangs, breaks on the wheel, blows to bits and decapitates.”

The immediate results were obvious. “The peasants sank back into their servile conditions.” “The practical outcome of the great popular movement was deplorable. The condition of the common people became even worse than before.” “A general and rapid decay of intellectual life was the natural result.”

 ======== 

Many, too many, historians do not look at it, ignore it. And yet it is here that the true Luther reveals himself. Ever since the Peasants' War the Reformer maintained the same brutal attitude. Take, to quote merely another case (but there are many more), the way in which he treated the Anabaptists.

But in 1535 Luther was at the peak of his power and tolerated no other belief, no other religion, no other leadership, but his own. So he recommended the same treatment for the Anabaptists as he had previously urged should be applied to the peasants. 

“The principal thing”, he said, “required to protect the people against the devils who were teaching through the mouths of the Anabaptist prophets was in the case of the common people compulsion by the sword and by the law . . . the law with its penalties rules over them in the same way that wild beasts are held in check by chains and bars, in order that outward peace may prevail amongst the people; for this purpose the temporal authorities are ordained and it is God's will that they be honored and feared.”  

Once more Luther encouraged the secular authorities to commit the worst atrocities. “Many Anabaptists were beheaded with the express approbation of Luther, who regarded their heroism in the face of death as proof of diabolic possession.”

=========

And further from the author in his judgment.

So far I have attempted to show that luther (lower case) certainly did not represent that mythical, better Germany—that Germany which loves peace and tolerance, which really tries to fit into a truly Christian brotherhood of nations. I have tried to prove by many quotations from the mouth of the Reformer that he is more than contradictory, to say the least. I have never denied that he did say many very Christian things about love and peace, against war and persecution; for Christian virtues, and against human vices. All this, indeed, is true.

But he also said, taught, and lived the very opposite. He denied by his own life Christian virtues, he lied, drank, and lived in sin; he disliked and abhorred reason; he praised and advocated war; he encouraged absolutism, and gave the rulers a power they had never enjoyed before; he insisted on a brutal oppression of the common man, and after the liberation of the Renaissance, he produced a slave-mentality among his followers which even the Roman Catholic Church had never forced upon its members; he preached and practiced a violent anti-Semitism and extermination of the Jews which remain unsurpassed even by Hitler; he was the founder not merely of modern nationalism in its most evil form, but of the very nationalism inside Germany which has proved so utterly destructive every since.

============

Shortly after the war was declared in 1914, the leaders of the German (Lutheran) clergy wrote a bloodthirsty pamphlet which they entitled: “To the evangelical Christians abroad”. It was full of lies, distortions, mischief—all done in the name of martin luther. They explained why they fought, why they had no hesitation in slaying and oppressing their “Christian brothers”.

That was too much even for Oxford professors. They gave the lutherans the reply they deserved. It was published during the last war as an Oxford Pamphlet, and it is one of the most remarkable and truest documents ever published by English scholars. It was signed by all the Oxford Professors in Theology, people like Bishop Gore, Dr. Spooner, and so forth. In this document the Oxford theologians give a reply to the Lutherans for their condoning of “savage reprisals against the civil population of Belgian towns and villages,” and similar typical German atrocities.

After the Nazis came to power, the lutherans supported Hitler. To them the State—as ordained by luther—was infinitely more important than the Church or Christianity. An English Churchman who went to Germany in order to investigate had to admit that “in no single case could I find any evidence, even when members of the militant Bekenninis-Kirche (Niemoeller movement) were questioned, of any interference on the part of the civil authorities.” (This, in 1938!)

Of course not! For every lutheran was a strong supporter of Hitler. What could be more typical than Pastor Niemoeller's confession when he first opposed Hitler: “We are not driven by care for our Church, but by care for the Third Reich!”

These, I would emphasize are merely a few very superficial glimpses at the history of the Lutheran Church from Luther to Hitler. Many volumes would be needed to write the complete shameful history of the last four centuries.

=========

It was left to Houston Stewart Chamberlain first to couple the names of luther and Hitler. Since then whole libraries of books have been published which show how Hitler translated luther's ideas into action. “Hitler”, said General Lietzmann in 1933, “is the greatest German, who can only be compared to luther.”

Less than three years later, Hitler came to power. His atrocities against the Jews, his denying of all Christian values, shook the Churches of the civilized world. Above all, people like Deissmann were wholehearted supporters of Hitler. Germany was strong enough; they did not have to play their double-game any longer. The German Lutheran God could again be preached from the theological Chair of the University of Berlil.

=========

It must have been a great and severe shock to people like the Bishop of Chichester. He, I am convinced, is thoroughly faithful to his Christian principles. But, if I may be allowed to criticize a learned and humanitarian dignitary of the Church of England, in his idealism, in his desire to see a truly Christian fellowship of man, he and his followers were too much inclined to ignore the blatant facts, to live in a world of dreams—with fatal consequences for the very cause they are living and working for.

In his famous Christian Church in Dahlem, Pastor Niemoeller was preaching. Some, but only the mildest of his sermons under Hitler are available in an English translation. Thousands of Jews and non-Aryans, Socialists and Communists were murdered or committed suicide, more were tortured to death in concentration-camps. 

The whole of the Christian world outside Germany prayed for the pitiable victims. Not so Pastor Niemoeller. Not one word of protest from him. On the contrary, he thanked the Fuehrer! “We again feel ourselves created beings. Profession and social standing, race and nationality are to-day again being regarded by us as important facts!” He, the true Lutheran, tells his congregation of the “divine call in the (Hitler's) spiritual revolution which is beginning to take place throughout the whole of our nation” (“First Commandment”, pages 58-59).

Indeed, he does not hesitate to pronounce the words that “the German luther is more important to Germany than the Jewish Rabbi of Nazareth”.

=========

Let me sum up. First of all, I have to repeat my thesis: I do not believe myself, nor have I wanted to give the impression, that luther and lutheranism are the sole source of our present-day troubles. Economic, political, geographical, and many other causes have to be taken into account if we want to explain the destructive present-day mentality of the Germans, which is above all other causes to blame for the misery in which the modern world finds itself twice within a third of a century.

I did not mean for one minute either to deny that there are things that are good and laudable in Luther—that he pronounced and taught some very fine things which, if they had become the ethical standard of modern Europe, might have brought us peace and prosperity instead of war and misery. All I maintain is that luther and his doctrines are one of the causes why Europe could follow such a fatal road—that luther, the man and his teaching, had many disastrous sides, as well as good ones. This negative aspect of lutheranism is not only generally ignored, but is just the very aspect which as influenced German ethics and standards.

luther, who is generally shown as a demigod, was nothing of the kind, and his influence was anything but godly. An evil and dangerous legend has been spun round the man and his work. “It is most mysterious how complete the victory of the Luther-legend has been.”

luther himself led a most immoral life, and destroyed the moral standards of his time. The result of luther's teachings and his life during his own time was “general moral and religious chaos”. With his denial of reason he produced a complete “decay of intellectual life”. Neitzsche, as so often, describes luther best when he calls him “a barbarian of the intellect”.

Taken from: http://www.tentmaker.org/books/MartinLuther-HitlersSpiritualAncestor.html

Or for an alternate view, entitled; "Why luther?"   

http://www.askluther.com/pages/whyluth.htm

Or for more on Luther, punch up "luther's works."

By Leonard.

There is no way to ascribe any good to luther, that son of the devil, even for all the correct words which he may have spoken.  None of his good deeds will be remembered for all the filth that proceeded from him. Therefore also I have deleted and removed whatever men might reckon for good, and left only his disgrace to be remembered upon him.  

The roman papist along with the heathens, and some of the Jews before the time of luther had their pleasure with the sons and daughters of the Lord in the most cruel manner they could think of.  

And luther in that respect became a coworker with the papist to the same end, for I shall certainly not excuse him as the instigator for the brutal murder of all these many persons, and as such their murderer alike.

And with luther gone the papist took over to butcher anyone with the name of protestant.  For these protestants, not all of them but many of them, were not anything the likes of luther, since quite obviously the kingdom of heaven was never for barbarians, nor for blasphemers, or liars, or cheats, or murderers.

And what does the future hold now that the papist gave up on persecuting the protestants?  Look at their bedside manners, they are now sleeping in one and the same bed. 

Wherefore the glory or the demise of the real Christians in days soon at hand, will be of that one same bed, of the two sisters committing infamy with each other.   And their husband is soon to come to drive them out of their bed and into the streets to practice their villainy upon the sons and daughters of the Lord.  But their time will not be long, yet it will be painful.  

Whosoever has an ear let him hear.

Next page