Martin Luther's Anti-Judaism and Its Political Significance

Abstract:This study argues that Luther's treatise On the Jews and Their Lies demonstrates a consistently held anti-Judaism defined by a refusal to accept that Jews could remain in the world as Jews in the face of the Christian gospel. This basic anti-Judaism informed his violent polemics and his supposed "friendly" work on the Jews written earlier when he believed they would soon be converted. His anti-Judaism was integrated with his political thought. Spiritually, the Jews were the worst of the opponents of salvation by grace; politically, they were a suspect people nearly always in breach of the temporal government's laws over blasphemy. Based on this anti-Judaism, in the face of his failure to convert Jews to the Reformation, Luther came to conclude that Jews must be forced by the temporal authorities to either leave or face expulsion.