The Root Of Antisemitism

Foreword from the Webmaster:

As Christians, we should not support Zionist Antichrist Israel, but neither should we hate the Jews as a people! The Apostle Paul loved his people the Jews and went out of his way to preach the Gospel to them. I believe all antisemitism comes from non-Christians, those who don’t know true salvation by grace in Jesus Christ.

This article is from the Converted Catholic Magazine of which former Roman Catholic priest, Leo Herbert Lehmann (also known as L.H. Lehmann) is the editor. It was first put online in PDF format by the LutheranLibrary.org.

IT HAS BEEN ESTIMATED that after the war the Jewish people in Europe, as a result of wholesale slaughter by the Nazi-Fascists, will be so reduced in numbers that they will never recover from their losses. Germany, even if it loses 20 percent of its population, can make up for its losses in another generation. But not the Jews.

This wholesale extermination of a people in the twentieth century, simply because of their religious background, is something that both Protestants and Catholics have much to be concerned about. For anti-Semitism is a religious problem, intimately bound up with the most fundamental belief of Christians. It stems from the death of Christ, the central and essential point of Christian soteriology. It is only in Protestant countries since the Reformation that Jews have ceased to be regarded as the ‘scapegoat’ for the responsibility and blame in connection with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Even in the United States, while the ruthless slaughter of Jews has been taking place in Europe, the Catholic press has kept up this accusation that the Jews killed Christ — as the picture (below), syndicated by the American Catholic hierarchy’s official N.C.W.C. News Service, shows. Implicit in this false accusation is an “explanation” of the horrors being meted out to Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe at that time.

It must seem impossible to Jews, and to Christians themselves if they give time to consider it, that the same death of Christ on the cross could bring the inestimable gift of salvation to one section of the human race, and at the same time be made the curse of another. Yet it has been officially pronounced by the Popes of Rome for centuries that the death of Christ forever made the Jews actual slaves of Christians whom the death of Christ made free. Here is how the great Pope Innocent III, and other popes for centuries after him, put it:¹

“Although Christian piety tolerates the Jews, whose own fault commits them to perpetual slavery… they must not be allowed to remain ungrateful to us in such a way as to repay us with contumely for favors and contempt for our familiarity… As they are reprobate slaves of the Lord, in whose death they evilly conspired (at least by the effect of the deed), let them acknowledge themselves as slaves of those whom the death of Christ made free.”

It must first be asked, is this true Christian teaching? Did Christ so plan that one part of the human race would be saved and made free and another part be made the slaves of those thus freed — all by one and the same act of his saving work? This teaching was dogmatized into the history of Europe by the Popes of Rome up till the time of the Protestant Reformation, and is the root cause of the slaughter of millions of innocent Jewish people that has taken place under Nazi-Fascist domination of Europe during the past five years. It must further be remembered that this ruthless slaughter was carried out by the Nazi-Fascist regimes to which the Vatican allied itself by solemn concordats — and to which it remains allied to this date. But it is not, and could never be, true Christian teaching.

The Protestant Reformation, out of which came democratic freedoms and equality before God of all human beings, put an end to this Roman Catholic teaching and established it so that the Jews, even while remaining Jews by race and religion, are the equal of Christians in their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is thus that Jesus Christ himself would have it, so that by justice, equality, love and kindness, the Jews might eventually be led to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. Christ himself was born a Jew and all his apostles and followers were Jews. He was put to death by Roman soldiers after sentence by a Roman judge. The priests of the Jewish religion — who played politics with the officials of the Roman government over the heads of their people, much as the Vatican does today — conspired to have Jesus put to death by the Romans. “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death,” they told Pilate (John 18:31). But the Jewish people had no more to do with it than the Roman Catholic people in America have had to do with the political intrigues of the Vatican with Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and other Fascist dictators.

Saint Paul was a Jew, though he claimed Roman citizenship. He taught no such doctrine that Jews were the slaves of Christians because they conspired in the death of Christ. In his desire to bring all to Christ he declared (Gal. 3:28): “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” But that was before the Romans took over control of the Christian church and established their juridical concepts of ‘interdict’, ‘delict,’ and hierarchical authority.

Jesus Christ died to save all who truly accept him as Savior. He died to set all men free, and by his death could have enslaved no one. No true Christian, grateful for having been made free himself by the death of Christ, could ever bring himself to believe that the act that made him free made his Jewish neighbor his slave. But it is only in predominantly Protestant countries that Jews have been able to exercise their equal rights with Christians before the law.

The solution of the problem of anti-Semitism awaits official recognition of similar rights for Jews from the Roman Catholic church and governments of Roman Catholic countries.

1. cf. Migne, Patrologia, Vol. 27, p. 1291. For other decrees of the Popes against the Jews, see our pamphlet: “How the Popes Treated the Jews.” [Available from LutheranLibrary.org —Ed]↩