Hi GK,
Thanks for your response.
I, for one, would certainly enjoy seeing book titles and index reference by book page, for such a list of books. I have maybe 50+ titles on the Holocaust. I have not read them all, but do not recall either Luther or Eck getting much coverage, though I’d expect Luther to have a higher page count. I’d like to see (assuming we have any overlap in titles; the thrust of the bookss may be different) how such a thing works out.
I have three books that were written about Martin Luther’s dealings with the Jews. Two of them were written by Lutherans and the other was written by a man who was (at the time), a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Lutheran Professor Eric W. Gritsch wrote “Martin Luther’s Anti-Semitism, Against His Better Judgement”. In this book, Gritsch had every opportunity to compare Eck’s Anti-Semitism with that of Martin Luther, thereby justifying somehow Luther’s horrific writings and actions. He does not. There is exactly one sentence about Eck:
“Luther’s famous Catholic opponent, John Eck, responded with “Refutation of a Jew-Book”, claiming that he had put his fingers into the wound of a child who was a victim of the Jewish ritual.” Pg. 27-28. Gritsch wrote nothing else.
Lutheran Professors Brooks Schramm and Kirsti I. Stjerna wrote “Martin Luther, The Bible, and the Jewish People”, which quotes and comments on 28 of Luther’s writings on the Jews. Unfortunately there is no index in this book but I do not remember any reference anywhere in the 200+ pages which refer to John Eck. They do though dispel the popular notion that Luther only turned against the Jews only when he was old and cranky:
**“A grim problem at the heart of Lutheran (and Protestant) origins, that of Luther and the Jews…… While efforts to absolve Luther as simply a man of his times – as one who merely passed on and perpetuated what he himself had already received from his cultural and theological tradition – have generally been jettisoned, there still persists even among the educated public the perception that the truly problematic aspects of Luther’s anti-Jewish attitudes are confined to the final stages of his career……Luther’s theological evaluation of Judiasm and the Jewish people remains essentially unchanged from the earliest stages of his career….**
When one reads Luther with a careful eye toward ‘the Jewish question’ (and without a predisposition to exonerate him), it becomes apparent that, far from being tangential, the Jews are a central, core component of his thought and that this was the case throughout his career, not only at the end.
If this is in fact so, then it follows that it is essentially impossible to understand the heart and building blocks of Luther’s theology (justification, faith, salvation, grace, freedom, Law, and Gospel, and so on) without acknowledging the crucial role played by ‘the Jews’ in his fundamental thinking.” Lutheran Professors Brooks Schramm and Kirsi, Stjerna, “Martin Luther, the Bible, and the Jewish People”, pg. 3-4
The authors point to the importance of understanding Luther’s beliefs about the Jews as a ‘core component of his thought’. Other authors have also pointed to the centrality of Luther’s beliefs on the Jews and its place in the whole of his theology.
Professor Christopher Probst wrote “Demonizing the Jews, Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany”. Suffice it to say that this book is full of shocking information, and that there is less than a page on Eck. This book is completely full of connections between Luther and the Holocaust.
Quite frankly, I have never seen a Scholar, including a Lutheran Scholar point to Eck and infer that what he wrote was in the same universe as what Luther wrote in terms of viciousness or impact on the Jews. The only place I have ever seen anything close to that is on a severely anti-Catholic (and pro-Luther) site, which is written from the perspective that Catholics are not Christians. Unfortunately, we sometimes see the ‘evidence’ from that site posted here as if it were unbiased facts, without of course, ANY of Eck’s text or any specifics of any kind - nothing but hollow inference. The claim that Eck’s anti-Semitism was as bad as Luther’s, or he did as much damage to the Jews as did Luther’s, does him a huge disservice. Of course, having defeated Luther at Leipzig, the most important debate in Christian history (but almost completely unknown in lay Protestantism), Eck has been vilified by Protestants and especially Lutherans for hundreds of years.
**“Eck….was perhaps the most feared disputant of the German academic world. Protestant historians have repaid Eck for the relentlessness with which he pursued Luther and his followers by four centuries of abuse.” **Robert Herndon Fife, “The Revolt of Martin Luther”, pg. 331
I see comparing Eck to Luther on this matter as being ‘abuse’. This is not to say that Eck’s sentiments on the Jews are to be admired. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I consider Richard Marius to be the best of all of Luther’s biographers. I agree with him that:
**“……it seems foolish and even immoral to seek to mitigate or explain away or cover over his (Luther’s) prevailing hatred of the Jewish people.” **Pg. 372. Comparing Eck to Luther is exactly what Marius was talking about.
For the record GK, I have no real interest in dragging out all of the horrific things that Luther recommended actually happen to the Jews on this thread. By the same token, I am not willing to allow Eck to be slandered by comparing him to Luther on the matter of the Jews. There are plenty of specifics which can be posted about Luther if need be.
God Bless You GK, Topper
