The Medieval Inquisition: An overview.

[Albion]

Let me restate this...

I didnt mean to say all lutherans are anti-semetic......
Are any only God knows that!!
I said Luther and his writings and his instructions to his folowers were anti-simetic.......
Amd yes some did follow through on his intructions to persecute the Jews and yes it was rooted in Germany and the holacaust....

...and I believe that the posters who replied to you in disagreement wanted you to understand that everything that Luther said or wrote is not part of the faith of the Evangelical Lutheran church; and he is not seen by Lutherans as some kind of pope figure.

There have been Germans since the Reformation who were anti-Semitic, all right, and Frenchmen, Poles, Russians and other Europeans. But to place all this at the doorstep of Luther or Lutherans is an historical error.

 

[SolomonVII]

From what I recall, Luther assumed that the problem with Jewish conversion to Christianity lay with corrupt Rome. He was initially very positive to Jews, but later as Rome was no longer in the picture, and Jews were not converting to Rome-free Christianity, Luther began to blame the Jews for being obstinate to the truth.

Antisemitism has never been just one thing that always existed in the Church. We cannot read in the Final Solution of the Nazis into what Luther believed about Jews, or into the Inquisition for that matter.

 

[Root of Jesse]

The inquisition in Spain began in 1492....the exact same day Columbus sailed to America.....
Many docusments have shown Columbus to be a believing Jew or a messianic Jew though his race was hidden...because of the inquisition....
The Spanish inquisition targeted Jews Muslims and non-conforming christians.....

Protestants dont have a good footing here with Martin Luther writing obout persecuting Jews...
Written in 1543 "the Jews and their Lies"On the Jews and Their Lies - Wikipedia

Another note I do believe Pope John Paul??? apologized for the catholics church involvement in the inquistion and persecution of Jews and others in 2001?????

I dont believe I have heard of a Lutheran church leader apologize for their anti-semetism through thier Leader martin luther???????? but I could be wrong????

Sorry, the Catholic Church had very little to apologize for regarding the Inquisition. The purpose was to find false converts to Catholicism, and to determine who were real and who were not real Catholics. For the most part. Were there people who overstepped their bounds? Certainly. That's what the pope was apologizing for. The truth is, the Inquisition still exists today. If there were something bad about it, don't you think that it would have been abolished?

 

[SolomonVII]

The whole world, except maybe for the House of Islam, is moving away from the medieval and feudal systems of justice. We are much more interested in the lessons of humanism and religious tolerance now.
the thing about justice meted out by barbarians and semi-barbarians is that it tends to be barbaric. Modern sensibilities of what is fair and what is just were not applied in medieval times. Like open heart surgery or insulin, humanism had not been invented yet, and justice was doled out accordingly.
Ecclesiastical courts tended to be nominally more civilized than secular ones. The Church was the civilizing force in Europe in the days of the Spanish Inquisition after all.

 

[Kalevalatar]

Have Lutheran leaders properly apologized for this????

Well, what did you do to try to find out the answer to your question?

Perhaps you weren't born in 1983, which is when the Lutheran World Federation, representing 74 million Lutherans in 145 member churches in 89 countries including the world's largest Lutheran churches in Africa and the Nordic countries, apologized and renounced Martin Luther's antisemitism. A basic google job would have told you this and the fact that LWF members keep speaking against antisemitism past and present consistently.

 

[Traveling teacher]

Yes I have read of the apologies............

Probably should understand my background.....
I have been heavily involved in the messianic jewish ministry...for the past 30 years....
attended a messianic group for 3 years.....and still visit 1 a month for the last 25 years....
since we have moved.......
I have been to Israel many times over the last 20 years......

I am gentile but still have close brothers who are jewish believers......
I cant speak for them but maybe just for myself.......
Many if not most of the evangelical churches I have been in always hold up Luther as a hero
of the faith........
I believe holding him up as a hero without listed his antisemitism is what I object to.......
Not saying apologies didnt happen in the Lutheran church just in my realm of influence most evangelical protestant christians just believe he was this super -hero and have not Idea of his anti-semitic writings and influence against the Jews......

But I can tell you this most of the Jews and jewish believers I know are very awaire of this and the passiveness that catholic and protestant christians had during WW2.........

this rabbi lists his issues with Lutherans....specifically to remove anti-semetic symbols engraved inside Lutheran churches inside of Germany....Rabbi: Church should apologize for Luther's anti-Semitism

 

[SolomonVII]

Anti-semitic Lutherans and Catholics were anything but passive in their agressions against Jews in WWII.
On the other hand, the claim that Catholics were all passive in the face of the Holocaust is a false belief.

Post-war praise by Jewish leaders[edit]
Pinchas Lapide, a Jewish theologian and Israeli diplomat to Milan in the 1960s, wrote in Three Popes and the Jews that Catholics were "instrumental in saving at least 700,000 but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands."[131] Some historians have questioned this oft-cited number,[132] which Lapide reached by "deducting all reasonable claims of rescue" by non-Catholics from the number of Jews he claims succeeded in escaping to the free world from Nazi-controlled areas during the Holocaust.[133]

According to Rabbi David Dalin, in the aftermath of the war, Jewish leaders who hailed Pius XII a righteous gentile for his work in saving thousands of Jews included the scientist Albert Einstein, the Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Moshe Sharett, and the Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog.[134]

The Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, took refuge in the Vatican following the Nazi occupation of Rome in 1943. After the war he converted to Catholicism and took the name "Eugenio" in honour of Pope Pius XII.

On 21 September 1945, the general secretary of the World Jewish Council, Dr. Leon Kubowitzky, presented an amount of money to the pope, "in recognition of the work of the Holy See in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi persecutions."[135] After the war, in the autumn of 1945, Harry Greenstein from Baltimore, a close friend of Chief Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem, told Pius how grateful Jews were for all he had done for them. "My only regret," the pope replied, "is not to have been able to save a greater number of Jews."[136]

Catholic scholar Kevin Madigan interprets such praise from prominent Jewish leaders, including Golda Meir, as less than sincere; an attempt to secure Vatican recognition of the State of Israel.[137]

Anti-semitism and positive attitudes toward semites are both trends in the Christian church. No general statement about Catholics or Lutherans or any other Christian group will ever adequately reflect the diversity that still exists among Christians.
Those who recognize as much will also understand that ant-semitism is not something to be apologized for among Christians. Anti-semitism is something that needs to be actively fought

 

[kepha31]

Well, what did you do to try to find out the answer to your question?

Perhaps you weren't born in 1983, which is when the Lutheran World Federation, representing 74 million Lutherans in 145 member churches in 89 countries including the world's largest Lutheran churches in Africa and the Nordic countries, apologized and renounced Martin Luther's antisemitism. A basic google job would have told you this and the fact that LWF members keep speaking against antisemitism past and present consistently.

Thank you. I'm very glad to know that.

 

[Kalevalatar]

this rabbi lists his issues with Lutherans....specifically to remove anti-semetic symbols engraved inside Lutheran churches inside of Germany....Rabbi: Church should apologize for Luther's anti-Semitism

When this rabbi calls the World Council of Churches to directly address Luther's antisemitism in terms of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, perhaps the rabbi is uninformed and unaware that the general secretary of the WCC Tveit began the anniversary year by specifically talking about accountability and didn't leave Luther's antisemitism out of it. The World Council of Churches called upon its member churches to denounce antisemitism as a sin against God and man back in 1948 and has consistently condemned both historical antisemitism in Christian tradition as well as antisemitism in our time in all forms ever since.

Frankly, considering that there are whole lot of poorly educated Christians who know practically nothing about Luther, Reformation, or church history in general (let alone theology), who read neither the Bible nor any history books, I think it's far more important that the churches and faith communities keep speaking against all forms of discrimination and persecution we see today rather than making it into a shifting sand issue where no apology on behalf of a bunch of long dead guys is ever going to be "enough": "yes, they have apologized but..."

most evangelical protestant christians just believe he was this super -hero and have not Idea of his anti-semitic writings and influence against the Jews......

This would seem to have more to do with these people's being American born and bred than them being "Protestant Christians" or some such. How about better education, please?