[MUSIC]
The Apostle Paul, one of the most important figures in Christianity,
was not born a Christian.
He was born a Jew and was educated as a Rabbi before his conversion.
In Romans 9 to 11, Paul agonizes over the meaning of Jesus' arrival for
the covenant between God and Jews.
Is that old covenant still valid?
Have Jews in their rejection of Christ stumbled beyond the hope of recovery?
For centuries before Luther, the common Christian interpretation of these verses
stressed that Christianity renders Judaism irrelevant.
The gospel of Christ proclaimed to the world has made an end to the law.
According to this interpretation, Judaism finds its fulfillment in Christianity.
This interpretation of Romans 9 to 11 is called Christian supersessionism,
meaning the idea that Christianity has surpassed Judaism
and has rendered it no longer valid Like many Christian theologians,
Luther was a Christian supersessionist.
The common supersessionist interpretation of Romans 9 to 11 disregards the words
that Paul actually wrote in Romans chapter 11, verses 17 to 18,
“If some of the branches have been broken off and you, though a wild olive shoot
have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from
olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches.
If you do, consider this: you do not support the root, but
the root supports you.”
Paul compares Christianity to an olive shoot
that has been grafted onto the preexisting plant of Judaism.
Christianity hasn't replaced Judaism. It depends on Judaism for life support.
Many Lutheran theologians,
particularly German ones who had aligned themselves with the interests and
ideologies of the Nazis, took up Luther's interpretation of the passage.
Eminent theologians and scholars, such as Rudolf Bultmann, Wilhelm Stapel, and
Emanuel Hirsch, saw the relationship between the Old and
New Testaments entirely in terms of Luther's law/gospel distinction,
which they understood in a supersesessionist manner.
Supersession underpinned the theology of World War II German Christians who believed that
Christians replaced Jews as God's chosen people.
The Nazis turned supersessionism into an anti-Semitic program.
German Christians allied with the Nazis encouraged the erasure of
all Jewish elements in Christianity.
In conversation with the theology faculty in Jena,
the German Christians founded the Institute for the Study and
Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life.
The Institute had its official inauguration on May 6, 1939,
in the Wartburg Castle.
Active until 1942, the Institute undertook the work of removing
Old Testament references and Hebrew words from Lutheran hymn books,
creating a new Bible that consisted of the four gospels harmonized into one text,
and condensing specific parts of the New Testament Epistles with the Gospel of John
in order to underline Christian antagonism towards Judaism.
The new Bible excluded the Old Testament as well as Paul's autobiographical
comments referring to his Jewish origins.
The Institute de-Judaized Luther's hymns and
catechisms, the basic texts for German Lutherans for four and a half centuries.
Militarizing these texts with images of Nazi soldiers
meant to exemplify heroic sacrifice.
New prayers were added asking God to bless the fatherland.