The unauthorized history of Hitler as a Darwinist

_{Denyse O'Leary

November 1, 2013

Culture, Darwinism, News}

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I’m happy to announce that my article, “The Role of Darwinism in Nazi Racial Thought,” has just appeared in German Studies Review (Oct. 2013 issue), one of the most important journals publishing on German history.

Here’s the Abstract:

Historians disagree about whether Nazis embraced Darwinian evolution. By examining Hitler’s ideology, the official biology curriculum, the writings of Nazi anthropologists, and Nazi periodicals, we find that Nazi racial theorists did indeed embrace human and racial evolution. They not only taught that humans had evolved from primates, but they believed the Aryan or Nordic race had evolved to a higher level than other races because of the harsh climatic conditions that influenced natural selection. They also claimed that Darwinism underpinned specific elements of Nazi racial ideology, including racial inequality, the necessity of the racial struggle for existence, and collectivism.

A bit from the Intro:

Many historians recognize that Hitler was a social Darwinist, and some even portray social Darwinism as a central element of Nazi ideology. Why, then, do some historians claim that Nazis did not believe in human evolution? George Mosse argued that human evolution was incompatible with Nazi ideology, because Nazis stressed the immutability of the German race. More recently Peter Bowler and Michael Ruse have argued that the Nazis rejected human evolution, because they upheld a fixed racial type and racial inequality.4 Nowhere is this irony more pronounced than in the work of Daniel Gasman, who claimed that Hitler built his ideology on the social Darwinist ideas of Ernst Haeckel, but simultaneously argued that Nazis rejected human evolution. How is it possible to embrace social Darwinism, while rejecting Darwinism and human evolution? Anne Harrington suggests that the Nazis liked some elements of Darwinism, especially the struggle for existence, but not human evolution. Robert Richards agrees, claiming that Nazi racial ideas “were rarely connected with specific evolutionary conceptions of the transmutation of species,” even though they bandied about the term “struggle for existence.” In another essay Richards went further, arguing that Hitler and the Nazis completely rejected biological evolution. The notion that the Nazis could embrace racial struggle without believing in evolution seems plausible at first, especially since Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a forerunner of Nazi racial ideology, embraced this position. However, the claim that the Nazis did not believe in the transmutation of species and human evolution runs aground once we examine Nazi racial ideology in detail. In this essay I examine the following evidence to demonstrate overwhelmingly that Nazi racial thinkers embraced human and racial evolution:

1) Hitler believed in human evolution.

2) The official Nazi school curriculum prominently featured biological evolution, including human evolution.

3) Nazi racial anthropologists, including SS anthropologists, uniformly endorsed human evolution and integrated evolution into their racial ideology.

4) Nazi periodicals, including those on racial ideology, embraced human evolution.

5) Nazi materials designed to inculcate the Nazi worldview among SS and military men promoted human evolution as an integral part of the Nazi worldview.

This should pretty much end the discussion but won’t because the issue isn’t about the massive evidence that Nazis were social Darwinists but about defending Darwin’s sacred name from the sacrilegious facts.

Note: Weikart explains how he first got involved with this matter here:

Actually, at first, he wasn’t interested. While living in Germany some years ago to improve his German, he was mainly interested in the nineteenth century. He doubted that he would uncover anything new about the Third Reich. For one thing, in his view, it was an overworked field. But then he discovered one neglected point:

[A]s I investigated the history of evolutionary ethics in pre-World War I Germany, I noticed—to my surprise—remarkable similarities between the ideas of those promoting evolutionary ethics and Hitler’s worldview. This discovery (which happened around 1995) led me to investigate Hitler’s worldview more closely, and this research convinced me that I had found something important to say about Hitler’s ideology.

One wonders if Weikart will ever be forgiven for documenting it all so carefully, in the faces of all those who want to explain it away.

Comments

KF, Yes. Very nicely put into context and articulated! Pulling this all back into the orbit of the original topic, one can see the attempt by AH to justify and combine his antisemitism, nationalism, and socialism under a consistent idealistic philosophy, which included Darwinism for scientific support. This philosophy was antithetical to Judeo-Christian beliefs, but pandered to German loyalties and tradition. All humans, not just Germans, look for these "from first principles" methods for constructing value systems---Japanese Bushido and Enlightenment Deism immediately come to mind. It reminds me of the following passage in Scripture:
My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. Jeremiah 2:13 (NIV)
Nowadays, the fashionable blend seems to be Environmentalism, Socialism, and Neo-Darwinism (although the US seems to have embarked on a new, world crusade for sexual tolerance). The new trinity will once again usher in (pun intended) statist oppression in the name of these ideals. Even to the end, many Germans believed that Hitler was an idealist and visionary, but that some of his supporters went to extremes. Who will be the next visionary? - QQuerius_{November 16, 2013
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F/N: A further clip from Weikart, illustrating attitude to Creationism and to core Christian ethics in academic-scientific nazi circles:
Der Biologe, which from 1935 to 1939 was an official organ of the National Socialist Teachers’ League, before being taken over in 1939 by the SS Ahnenerbe, published many articles attacking creationists, both before and after the SS took it over. One such article was by Konrad Lorenz, who expressed amazement that anyone could doubt evolutionary theory. He argued that evolutionary theory is the best antidote for belief in human equality and thus buttressed Nazi racial thought. Lorenz also argued that the Christian command to love your neighbor as yourself is an evolutionary imperative, too: “Since for us the race and Volk are everything and the individual person as good as nothing, this command is for us a completely obvious demand.” [--> The confusion in this remark boggles the mind, if the individual is as nothing to love one's fellow ZERO as one loves oneself as a ZERO, means that one can act as one pleases as the individual has no value, only the superior race as a self-preserving breeding group.] Lorenz clearly believed that evolutionary theory reinforced Nazi racial doctrines, including racial inequality and racial solidarity (collectivism). 63 In 1939 the journal carried a chart showing the areas of research undertaken by the SS Reich League for Biology. The first category listed was phylogeny, and anthropology was included as a specialty under this category. 64 Thus evolution, including human evolution, was front and center in their research program. [pp. 548 - 9]
Nazism is simply not in accord with a creation anchored ethic that sees us as made in God's image, loved by God, valued enough to be redeemed at astonishing cost, and commanded to love one's equals in nature as one loves oneself even across racial, religious and ideological divides. And, frankly, if man is the product of time, chance and the impersonal, through a cosmos that happens to throw up carbon chemistry self replicating automata, which then by blind chance and mechanical necessity somehow vary and self-improve, ending up at us, for the moment, what value does the individual have? What worth or rights beyond might and manipulation make 'right,' and so it is struggle for power that determines how one should be treated? On evolutionary materialism, ethics is dead, and man is dead. So is mind. Yet more reasons to look twice, nay thrice, ten times and more . . . before we blindly leap. KFkairosfocus_{November 16, 2013
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Q, Since this thread seems to have acquired a definite theological cast, I will make some observations on James' remarks.
(NB: I do so very reluctantly as this provides grist for the mill of those who will ruthlessly use such to provide pseudo- justification for their notion and toxic talking point that design theory is simply creationism dressed up in a cheap tuxedo, and thus in their minds a trojan horse for Christo-fascist right wing theocratic totalitarian nazi-like tyranny. That is the real underlying rhetorical context for ever so much of what is going on above. This first neglects that nazism and broader fascism are actually starist ideologies, i.e. of the LEFT, indeed Nazi can be properly expanded as National Socialist German Workers/labour Party. Mussolini was of course a man of the left. Fascism is right only in the sense that it is not as far left as communism, in a world that c 1920 - 30 saw socialism as the wave of the future. It was men like Schumpeter, Mises and Hayek who pointed out no. Second, the accusations that Creationism points to right wing theocracy -- also a deliberate echo of Islamist radicalism and terrorism -- refuses to attend to the actual history of the major contribution of Bible rooted Christian faith, thought and people to the rise and spread of modern liberty and democracy. It consistently refuses to acknowledge the core of Christian ethics, as I have again had to underscore as I am not satisfied that LT has done more than a tactical retreat here rather than accepting that his notions about Christianity and Christian ethics are radically wrong to the point of irresponsible and willfully divisive and polarising defamation. And that is before we get to the point that the attempt to conflate design theory with creationism is founded, frankly on calculated lies -- they plainly believe in Big Lie agitprop tactics -- from the NCSE/ACLU etc, and vicious ill intent to smear design thought with the results of an earlier successful smear of Creationism. That ill-intent has been embedded in ill-grounded and unjust court decisions, and policy. FYI, design theory is about the question, as to whether there are reliable empirical signs of design in the natural world, ranging from the physics of the cosmos to origin of life to origin of body plans, the molecular biology of the cell, and more; with functionally specific complex organisation and associated information as the pivotal exhibit. What objectors cannot answer on observational evidence, is the point that, reliably, such FSCO/I traces to design, and on analysis of configuration spaces and search challenges in the gamut of time and atomic resources for solar system to observed cosmos, there is no plausible way blind chance and mechanical necessity can or do give rise to such FSCO/I. But, design routinely produces FSCO/I. Under such circumstances, ruthless [or even amoral or nihilistic], ideologically committed advocates will often resort to distractive toxic red herrings led away to strawmen soaked in ad hominems and set alight to cloud, poison, confuse and polarise the atmosphere, so that he original question is lost in the poison, quarrelling and confusion. That is the context in which LT tried to smear "Christianity" from comment no 1 above, whether or not he will admit it. (And insofar as there are religious or atheistical teachers or advocates and the like who in zeal to smear the Christian faith have spoken in terms like LT raised above, they have gone far wrong and need to retract, correct, and frankly apologise then abandon such toxic, slanderous talk.) Remember, too, in recent months I have been falsely accused of being a nazi, and the design movement and this site have also been similarly accused in sites set up to oppose UD. And, serious actions have had to be taken at length in response. So, please understand some of why I keep on saying that UD is not a proper place for extended theological- hermeneutical- exegetical- doctrinal debates, especially multiple sided scriptural debates. I will do as I will below only because it seems necessary to clear up an already existing exchange that may leave dangerous polarisations and misunderstandings in its wake.)
Okay, let me try to clear matters up a bit, on grounds that this is sufficiently unfamiliar that it is worth the risk of the above to provide some perspective. In Ac 15, there is an internal debate over what is to be done with Gentiles. The unauthorised party from Jerusalem argued they have to be come Jews in order to be saved, Paul and Barnabas argued no, on justification by faith; backed up by their recent journey and its results. That was in Antioch, Syria (Paul's missionary base and a church that was of mixed Jewish and Gentile character having been founded c 3 - 35, and strengthened c 45 - 47, sending missionaries c 47 - 48 . . . onward being a major Christian base for centuries [one of five main patriarchates]), after they returned from their first major Missionary Journey. A delegation was sent to Jerusalem [c. 48 - 49], and we ended up with the first church council, with the college of apostles and elders hearing both sides and coming to a decision, stated by James. The focal issue was not ethical as such, but on the nature of justification. Accordingly, let us note Peter's decisive input, based on his then fairly recent experience with Cornelius the Centurion, his family and friends, where he had gone to preach to them under a vision, as Ac 10 - 11 records. He describes the circumstances under which the Spirit was poured out on them in power then draws theological conclusions and infers to the issue of whether Gentiles need to become Jews in order to be saved. First, backdrop:
Ac 15:1 But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” 2 And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. 3 So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers.[a] 4 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. 5 But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.”
In Jerusalem the, council gathers:
15:6 The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter.
Peter's input based on actual experience of the Spirit poured out, not debate points:
15:7 And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. 8 And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, 9 and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.
Notice the timing in the actual event, in Caesarea:

Ac 10:30 And Cornelius said, “Four days ago, about this hour, I was praying in my house at the ninth hour,[d] and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing 31 and said, ‘Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your alms have been remembered before God. 32 Send therefore to Joppa and ask for Simon who is called Peter. He is lodging in the house of Simon, a tanner, by the sea.’ 33 So I sent for you at once, and you have been kind enough to come. Now therefore we are all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord.” 34 So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, 35 but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. 36 As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all), 37 you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed: 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. 39 And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, 40 but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, 41 not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. 43 To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Notice what happens just then, and the aftermath. Namely, the heavenly interruption -- for, all heaven breaks loose:
44 While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word.
Notice the timing, even as Peter was speaking about the consequences of trusting in Christ, and being forgiven as a consequence. The reaction & response show the depth of prejudices that had had to be broken through:
45 And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. 46 For they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter declared, 47 “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” 48 And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to remain for some days.
After they returned to Jerusalem, there was a challenge to explain themselves, and Peter responds:
11:1 Now the apostles and the brothers[e] who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party[f] criticized him, saying, 3 “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.” 4 But Peter began and explained it to them in order: 5 “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision . . . " . . . . 11 And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. 12 And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man's house. 13 And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter; 14 he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.’ 15 As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. 16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 17 If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way?” 18 When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

So, let us see how Peter applies this lesson by direct demonstration of the timing of and thus conditions for justification, in the Council of Ac 15, as he continues speaking:
Ac 15: 10 Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? 11 But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”
So, the rest is summing up and conclusion:
15:12 And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.
After this, James sums up and discusses the issue of unity and not causing unnecessary offence in so doing:
15:13 After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. 14 Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. 15 And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, 16 “‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, 17 that the remnant[b] of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things 18 known from of old.’ 19 Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, 20 but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. 21 For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.”
In short, gentiles do not need to become Jews in order to be saved. Similarly, as there are certain particular matters that are known issues or points likely to cause alienation, we underscore:
(i) there must be a clear separation from all idolatry and things tainted thereby (e.g. idol feasts for trade guilds) (ii) Sexual ethics must be in accord with Creation Order, i.e. "Heb 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous." (iii) No unnecessary offence should be caused to Jews by abusing freedom in Christ: "Rom 14:14 As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. 2 One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. [--> meat may easily have been slaughtered at temples to idols, so only vegetables are utterly "safe'] 3 Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him . . . . 13 Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother."
In short, these are applications of core moral principle, argued out based on them, when they need to be argued out. We must realise that the overarching principle and premise is relationships of pure love to God and man, from which we get principles of ethics and from which detailed precepts and steps of wisdom and self restraint where abuse of liberty may harm another, apply. But at the same time, the one who would bind others unduly, should realise there are such things as areas of freedom, which are quite extensive. (I think here of e.g. those who would say that as NT texts do not mention use of a musical instrument, such is forbidden and against the will of God in worship. With all due respects to those who under certain traditions have come to think this is from God: nope!) KFkairosfocus_{November 16, 2013
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KF, It's interesting to contrast the belief-based creeds with the behavioral requirements of the early Messianic community. Ya'akov (James) says the following:
“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.” Acts 15:19 (NIV)
A very different outlook in my opinion. - QQuerius_{November 15, 2013
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PPS: When it comes to core Christian theology, perhaps the best general summary is the Nicene Creed of 325 and 381 -- yes, it was re-issued and reinforced after fifty years of debates and issues:
We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. And we believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen
(A summary on the point by point scriptural basis is here.) The hebraic, scriptural roots are obvious. Indeed, it pivots on 1 Cor 15:1 - 11 in light of Isa 53 [and with Genesis in the background], with support materials addressing Creation, the Christian understanding of the complex unity nature of the one true, living God [cf. here on], and also the culmination of history. But, kindly note, this is for record, not to entertain more and more distractive side tracks led away to strawmen soaked in toxic ad hominems and inviting the spark of polarising words. KFkairosfocus_{November 15, 2013
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PS: It seems, there is a continued argument that requires some attention to core Christian ethics and theology. On ethics, it is indisputable that the charter statement is the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Mt 5 - 7 , given by Jesus in Galilee, given as a rabbi teaching his disciples on their expected manner of life, standing foursquare in the hebraic tradition. Let me excerpt certain particularly illuminating parts that lead up to and illuminate what Jesus highlighted as the pivot of Biblical morality, the Golden Rule (which he of course draws from Moshe):
The Sermon on the Mount Mt 5:1 Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. The Beatitudes 2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. 7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. 8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons[a] of God. 10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Salt and Light 13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. 14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that[b] they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Christ Came to Fulfill the Law 17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Anger 21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother[c] will be liable to judgment; whoever insults[d] his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell[e] of fire. 23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift . . . . Retaliation 38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic,[h] let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. Love Your Enemies 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers,[i] what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect . . . . 6:7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.[j] 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done,[k] on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread,[l] 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.[m] 14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses . . . . 7:1 “Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. 6 “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you . . . . The Golden Rule 12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. 13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy[q] that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. A Tree and Its Fruit 15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. I Never Knew You 21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ Build Your House on the Rock 24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
It is quite plain that this is the intentional touchstone of Christian ethics, to the point where to neglect these words is viewed as suicidal folly. And, it is a commentary on core scriptural principles of ethics found in the OT, going on to emphasise inner transformation and helping one another in growth. The premise is that we are children of a common Father, our Lord and God, the only Lord and God. The further premise is that his word must guide us and must be fulfilled in our lives in light of Christ's commentary and the underlying teachings. Further to this, we are to make God's holy, loving, caring perfection our target. And more like that. In this light, we can hear again -- there seems (sadly) to be a great reluctance to accept what should be patent, and what any fair minded reading would immediately yield -- the great messianic rabbi Paul, teaching the gentiles (in accordance with Isa 52 - 53 which envisions: "so shall he sprinkle[c] many nations . . .") as represented by the Athenian elites and the obviously present onlooking crowd of ordinary people eager to hear the latest ideas:
Ac 17:22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,[c] 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’;[d] as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’[e] 29 Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” [He was interrupted at this point . . . ]
And again, in his most extensively theological letter, we read -- let me use the AMP instead of the usual ESV:
Rom 13:8 Keep out of debt and owe no man anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor [who practices loving others] has fulfilled the Law [relating to one’s fellowmen, meeting all its requirements]. 9 The commandments, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill [--> sense being, murder], You shall not steal [--> this cuts clean across Nazism and its darwinism rationalised aggression, grand theft and genocide right there], You shall not covet (have an evil desire) [--> no coveting so-called Lebensraum], and any other commandment, are summed up in the single command, You shall love your neighbor as [you do] yourself. 10 Love does no wrong to one’s neighbor [it never hurts anybody]. Therefore love meets all the requirements and is the fulfilling of the Law.
The context in light of the Sermon on the mount is obvious, and the onward Hebraic scriptural frame and anchorage in our being equally made in God's image as neighbours should be patent. Save, frankly, to those too stirred up and hostile to see or hear straight. It is time that that regrettable warping be corrected and fully acknowledged as corrected. Beyond, I need only mention, that Jesus taught by the parable of the Good Samaritan that our brotherhood and neighbourliness do and must extend across racial, theological, religious and hereditary enmity divides. Let me be plain: Nazism is completely at odds to core Christian moral principles and precepts, as should be evident to anyone who has taken trouble to simply read the major ethical teachings of the NT. In that context, Jesus' warning against wolves in sheep's clothing as cited is specifically and highly relevant. Christianity as represented by its foundational ethics is utterly antithetical to nazism. Those who have misrepresented it as though it is a major root of what Hitler et al believed and taught are in grave error and need to definitively retract and repudiate such assertions and insinuations. And yes, in the long history of Christendom, too many have failed to live up to such principles, and some have even taught in contravention to them. The same can be said of those corrected by the OT prophets. And indeed, any movement, institution, party, nation or civilisation can be said to have its fair proportion of moral failings, wrongs and crimes. That reflects the moral hazard of being human, which is the exact reason why we need to be restrained by the inner governance of principles and it is why we need governance in community, which itself must be restrained by justice as a guiding star. And, it is why we must mark teachings, ideas, worldviews and theories that embed moral hazards that undermine sound morality, and it is why we must handle such with extra caution and vigilance lest they let loose great evils. I dare to say, this plainly includes both classical and modern forms of Darwinism as a grand theory of origins, and it especially includes scientism and evolutionary materialism. That is part of why it is necessary to make a sober study of Nazisn, as a case of just how bad it can get. KFkairosfocus_{November 15, 2013
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F/N: Given a clear intent evident all around not to see unwelcome facts, it is unfortunately necessary and even vital to hammer home the facts and clench over the nails, to firmly anchor our understanding. That is, if we refuse to learn the lessons of history we will be doomed to repeat or echo its worst chapters. So, though often painful, we must take a clear-eyed look at what its sobering facts teach us from the mistakes, errors, crimes and blunders of the past. (And yes, that specifically includes learning from the sins and errors of Christendom, cf. here on to see how I think this should shape a basic systematic theology study.) Major premise: we neglect, ignore, reject or dismiss such hard-bought, soundly rooted lessons at our peril. So, painful though it be, I insist on continuing on the main topic from the OP. For, these lessons teach us what we need to learn about science, education, policy influence of science, science and ideology, and ethics. Thence, frankly, reformation. Let us therefore now see how Weikart speaks of Hitler's views, and why:
In his writings and speeches Hitler regularly invoked Darwinian concepts, such as evolution (Entwicklung), higher evolution (Höherentwicklung), struggle for existence (Existenzkampf or Daseinskampf ), struggle for life (Lebenskampf ), and selection (Auslese). In a 1937 speech he not only expressed belief in human evolution, but also endorsed Haeckel’s theory that each organism in its embryological development repeats earlier stages of evolutionary history. Hitler stated, “When we know today that the evolution of millions of years, compressed into a few decades, repeats itself in every individual, then this [modernist] art, we realize, is not ‘modern.’” 18 In his view, then, modernist artists were atavistic individuals who remained at a more primitive stage of evolution. [p. 541] . . . . Hitler clearly thought the Nordic race had evolved, as he explained in a 1920 speech, “Why We are Anti-Semites.” The Nordic race, Hitler averred, had developed its key traits, especially its propensity for hard work and its moral fiber, but also its physical prowess, due to the harsh northern climate. He was not arguing that climate directly caused a change in biological traits (because he embraced hard heredity). Rather he thought that in the harsh climate only the strongest, hardest-working, and most cooperative individuals could survive and pass on their traits. The weak and sickly, as well as those who refused to labor diligently, perished in the struggle for existence. This struggle made the Nordic race vigorous and superior to races that evolved in more hospitable climes. 21 Clearly, then, Hitler did not think the Nordic race had always existed or was created in some pristine, unchanging state. [p. 542]
Between these cites, Weikart discusses the clip from the Nation and Race chapter in Mein Kampf, translating key terms as indicated. (And even if one softens "evolution" to "development" the context makes the matter utterly clear -- evolution and onward higher evolution of especially the Nordic race through natural selection, sexual selection by women choosing acceptable mates, and -- ominously -- the fox having no pity on geese and the cat having none for mice.) In short, regardless of other influences and their sources, it is quite evident that: 1 --> Nazism, in general reflected the general views in Germany on darwinist (as opposed to Lamarckian . . . the alternative that seemed to be around) evolutionary origins of life and of humans in particular. 2 --> This is specifically true of the principal leader and ideologue, Hitler. 3 --> This was entrenched as a premise in political speeches, key books, and pamphlets drawn from such. 4 --> It was embedded in state controlled education, which actually aimed to have students imagine that darwinist core principles of survival of the fittest and ELIMINATION of the unfit by contrast were "self-evident." Citing again:
In 1938 the Ministry of Education published an official curriculum handbook for the schools. This handbook mandated teaching evolution, including the evolution of human races, which evolved through “selection and elimination.” It stipulated, “The student must accept as something self-evident this most essential and most important natural law of elimination [of unfit] together with evolution and reproduction.” In the fifth class, teachers were instructed to teach about the “emergence of the primitive human races (in connection with the evolution of animals).”
5 --> This is of course a case where the appeal to self-evidence is being used fallaciously, reflecting a still too commonly encountered tautological and question-begging formulation of the concept of natural selection. 6 --> This is then reinforced by loaded conceptions as to what "fitness" means that take on menacing proportions when it is blended with the notion of Nordic superiority and elimination of the allegedly unfit. 7 --> In this context, the attack on mixing of races as frustrating the yet higher evolution of the superior seen as the will of nature, takes on a demonically mystical cast. 8 --> Where also, we must not overlook that breeding and selection to breed the best is set in a specifically evolutionary context, that is attempts to use this to divert from the darwinist context are misinformed, at best. 9 --> Let us therefore again -- with clearer eyes -- read the excerpt from the Nation and Race chapter (Bk I Ch 11 I believe) in Mein Kampf as Weikart cites and comments on it, again clipping 122 above:
Evolution plays a central role in the chapter in Mein Kampf on “Nation and Race,” which was the only chapter published as a separate pamphlet, thus circulating widely to promote Nazi ideology. 19 In that chapter Hitler explains why he thinks racial mixing violates evolutionary principles:
Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher evolution of organic living beings would be unthinkable. 20
A few lines later he continues:
In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less deter-mined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species’ health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher evolution.
Thus, Hitler opposed miscegenation because it hindered evolutionary progress, which for him was the highest good. Since the whole point of this passage is to apply these principles to human racial relations, it is apparent that Hitler believed that humans had evolved and were still evolving. Hitler’s racial policy aimed at advancing human evolution.
In short, it is quite plain -- once we cease from reading into the text to avoid what it plainly teaches, goes out of its way to emphasise in fact. We need to face the facts, recognise the moral hazards in darwinism, and address the ethical and worldview issues that such hazards raise in light of such horrific living recollection history. And, let us determine to do so before that now elderly generation moves off the scene. KFkairosfocus_{November 15, 2013
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LarTanner, This is an enjoyable discussion regardless of whether we come to agreement. I promise that I will answer your questions and issues as carefully and honestly as I can.
And maybe even worse still: If one expression from a fraction of the total work is open to misinterpretation, then how must we view the total work? After all, this is not a matter of a textual variant. Surely, we should probably (reasonably and appropriately) be cautious about any interpretation of the text.
Your kal v'chomer argument is acknowledged, and yes, you're right. While the p'shat is often clear, there are many facets and pitfalls in the Word of God. Sometimes there is no exact word match between languages, sometimes there is a cultural, historical, or textual context to be aware of, or a rendering of an aphorism, adage, or colloquial expression to understand. Thus, sometimes a paraphrase is more accurate than a word-for-word translation. I often find myself referring to other translations (you can compare them at http://www.biblegateway.com). I also look at Hebrew usages and context in the Tanakh to help me understand the range of meaning in a Hebrew word. This is often very difficult.
The big gaping hole that we are identifying here is our lack of ability to assert confidently the meaning that the original tellers intended to convey to their historical audience.
Yes. And I believe in the living Word of God that requires reverence, wisdom, and humility to discern, and the guidance of the Ruach HaKodesh to apply it to our lives.
Maybe in the span of time (decades) from the Roman execution of Jesus to the emergence of the Johannan version of events, a similar kind of break had already irrevocably occurred.
Yes, this is very possible. I understand that there are many untranslated letters from this time that might shed more light.
Hmm. Do you take the text to be inerrant but the interpretation of that text to be fallible?
Both the translation and the interpretation of the text is fallible. And some people twist the Word of God to the harm of many and to their own destruction.
Wouldn’t a truly inerrant text — if one is to go to the trouble of making it inerrant — also be open to only one, true interpretation at all times?
Not necessarily. First of all, in Jewish tradition, there is the PRDS---different levels of meaning. Then, there are the "riddles of the wise," as mentioned in Proverbs, and finally, I believe there are reasons why God intended the Word of God to be spiritually rather than intellectually unlocked in our hearts.
Some Jews embraced the “new” covenant, others held to a [refinement in the] form of Judaism, one without a temple or [animal] sacrifices, called Rabbinic Judaism.
Ok. If God raised up Moses to provide the complete details of Torah, built on a legacy of earlier covenants sealed with blood sacrifices, how much more would God provide a prophet or the Messiah if the temple and the atoning sacrifices were to be changed!
I appreciate your attempt to make Judaism and Christianity children of the same parent, but it cannot be so.
No, I'm really not attempting to do this. Sorry for offending anyone, but I believe that God's desire was to see Judaism become Messianic Judaism, and not be superseded by a new Gentile temple and priesthood in Rome, or any other equivalent. Rabbi Sha'ul, also known as the Apostle Paul, describes the humility required of the Gentiles in his letter to the Roman church (chapter 11, start at verse 16): http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans%2011&version=CJB You may well ask "What happened?" Regarding The Thirteen Principles of Jewish Faith, I will tell you as honestly as I can what I believe in regarding each one:
Belief in the existence of the Creator, who is perfect in every manner of existence and is the Primary Cause of all that exists.
I believe this with all my heart, all my soul, and all my mind.
The belief in G-d’s absolute and unparalleled unity.
There is one and only one God as the Shema says. Notice that the Shema uses the word echad for unity, not yachid. I have a spirit, soul, and body, but there is only one of me. Jews understand that the Ruach HaKodesh is God, not a second God.
The belief in G-d’s non-corporeality, nor that He will be affected by any physical occurrences, such as movement, or rest, or dwelling.
Jesus said "God is spirit; and worshippers must worship him spiritually and truly.” This is what I also believe. But is it impossible for God to walk in the garden of Eden, or to have lunch with Abraham?
The belief in G-d’s eternity.
God created time, thus He is eternal.
The imperative to worship G-d exclusively and no foreign false gods.
I believe in all 10 commandments---none have passed away.
The belief that G-d communicates with man through prophecy.
Yes, and through the conviction or inspiration of the Ruach HaKodesh as certainly was the case with the prophets.
The belief in the primacy of the prophecy of Moses our teacher.
Yes, until Messiah comes. Moses said, "Adonai will raise up for you a prophet like me from among yourselves, from your own kinsmen. You are to pay attention to him. (Deuteronomy 18)
The belief in the divine origin of the Torah.
They are the oracles of God entrusted to the Jews. (Romans 3)
The belief in the immutability of the Torah.
Jesus said, "Yes indeed! I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not so much as a yud or a stroke will pass from the Torah — not until everything that must happen has happened." (Matthew 5:18) I believe this too.
The belief in G-d’s omniscience and providence.
This appears throughout the scriptures, and I trust it as well.
The belief in divine reward and retribution.
Yes. Everyone must appear before God, but no one can stand without atonement for sin.
The belief in the arrival of the Messiah and the messianic era.
Yes, as is affirmed in prophecy---Messianic Judaism. For example, in Daniel 9, it says that Messiah will come before the temple is destroyed.
The belief in the resurrection of the dead.
Yes, even as David also affirmed.
Much as KF asserts an unshakable ethical core to Christianity, I think Rabbinic Judaism sees the 13 principles as the eternal core of Jewish belief.
Which of these 13 were not believed by Moses and the Patriarchs, or by Jesus and his talmidim? Kind regards, - QQuerius_{November 15, 2013
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Querius (185:)
It’s actually even worse than that. I think most Christians are still unaware of who the Judeans were, much less the origin of the term “Jew.”
And maybe even worse still: If one expression from a fraction of the total work is open to misinterpretation, then how must we view the total work? After all, this is not a matter of a textual variant. Surely, we should probably (reasonably and appropriately) be cautious about any interpretation of the text. The big gaping hole that we are identifying here is our lack of ability to assert confidently the meaning that the original tellers intended to convey to their historical audience.
It would otherwise be nonsensical that Jesus, who was a Jew along with all his disciples who were Jewish, after preaching and teaching an audience that was predominantly Jewish, would then have a confrontation with (drumroll) “The Jews” (gasp).
No, I don't think it would be nonsensical. John makes use of duality fairly often, so the contrast of Jesus and the Jews/Judeans seems par for the course. An illustrative analogy: American Democrats have confrontations with American Republicans, even though they are all Americans. Even now, within the GOP, the Tea Party has become a distinct sect that has some choice words about the Republicans. Maybe in the span of time (decades) from the Roman execution of Jesus to the emergence of the Johannan version of events, a similar kind of break had already irrevocably occurred. You say --
As far as the translations are concerned, I believe they were rendered in good faith, albeit in partial ignorance of the complexities of the culture of the time.
Hmm. Do you take the text to be inerrant but the interpretation of that text to be fallible? Wouldn't a truly inerrant text -- if one is to go to the trouble of making it inerrant -- also be open to only one, true interpretation at all times? Finally, this:
Some Jews embraced the “new” covenant, others held to a new form of Judaism, one without a temple or sacrifices, called Rabbinic Judaism. Both of these Jewish sects were derived from and a dramatic deviation from the earlier form of Judaism. So the question becomes which fork to take, and for what justification.
Well, I think an orthodox Jew would say that part of your statement above could be expressed differently: Some Jews embraced the “new” covenant, others held to a [refinement in the] form of Judaism, one without a temple or [animal] sacrifices, called Rabbinic Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism asserts itself to be not a derivation or "dramatic deviation" of earlier Judaism but a necessary evolution brought by the destruction of the Second Temple, diaspora events, the development of formal talmudic and midrashic practice, and the emergence of Christianity. I appreciate your attempt to make Judaism and Christianity children of the same parent, but it cannot be so. Are you familiar with the thirteen principles of faith by Maimonides?
1. Belief in the existence of the Creator, who is perfect in every manner of existence and is the Primary Cause of all that exists. 2. The belief in G-d's absolute and unparalleled unity. 3. The belief in G-d's non-corporeality, nor that He will be affected by any physical occurrences, such as movement, or rest, or dwelling. 4. The belief in G-d's eternity. 5. The imperative to worship G-d exclusively and no foreign false gods. 6. The belief that G-d communicates with man through prophecy. 7. The belief in the primacy of the prophecy of Moses our teacher. 8. The belief in the divine origin of the Torah. 9. The belief in the immutability of the Torah. 10. The belief in G-d's omniscience and providence. 11. The belief in divine reward and retribution. 12. The belief in the arrival of the Messiah and the messianic era. 13. The belief in the resurrection of the dead.
Rabbinic Judaism sees itself, in my opinion, as a formalization of what Judaism has always believed and been. Much as KF asserts an unshakable ethical core to Christianity, I think Rabbinic Judaism sees the 13 principles as the eternal core of Jewish belief.LarTanner_{November 14, 2013
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F/N 2: Let us (again) document that embrace of Darwinism as related to human evolution, in the strategic context of education: ========== >>Evolutionary biology had been well entrenched in the German biology curriculum long before the Nazis came to power (this is why it was so influential on Nazi ideologists). The Darwinian explanation for evolution was the most prominent theory taught in German schools, though it was not uncontested. The biology curriculum under the Nazi regime continued to stress evolution, including the evolution of humans and races. The Nazi curriculum and texts espoused Darwinism and rejected Lamarck-ism, which it sometimes castigated as Marxist, because it flew in the face of the Nazi stress on hard heredity. In 1938 the Ministry of Education published an official curriculum handbook for the schools. This handbook mandated teaching evolution, including the evolution of human races, which evolved through “selection and elimination.” It stipulated, “The student must accept as something self-evident this most essential and most important natural law of elimination [of unfit] together with evolution and reproduction.” In the fifth class, teachers were instructed to teach about the “emergence of the primitive human races (in connection with the evolution of animals).” In the eighth class, students were to be taught evolution even more extensively, including lessons on “Lamarckism and Darwinism and their worldview and political implications,” as well as the “origin and evolution of humanity and its races,” which included segments on “prehistoric humanity and its races” and “contemporary human races in view of evolutionary history.” 22 The Ministry of Education’s 1938 biology curriculum reflected the biology cur-riculum developed by the National Socialist Teachers’ League in 1936–37, which likewise heavily emphasized evolution, including the evolution of human races. The Teachers’ League document, authored by H. Linder and R. Lotze, encouraged teach-ers to stress evolution, because “The individual organism is temporary, the life of the species to which it belongs, is lasting, but is also a member in the great evolution of life in the course of geological times. Humans are also included in this life.” Thus evolution was supposed to support the Nazis’ collectivist ideals—the importance of the species or race over the individual. This biology curriculum called for teaching plant and animal evolution in classes three and four and human evolution in class five. Of the ten topics required for biology instruction in the upper grades, one was evolution and another was human evolution, which included instruction on the origin of human races. 23 All the biology texts published in Germany in the late 1930s and early 1940s needed official approval of the Ministry of Education, and all provided extensive discussion of evolution, including the evolution of human races. Jakob Graf’s 1942 biology textbook has an entire chapter on “Evolution and Its Importance for Worldview.” Therein Graf combated Lamarckism and promoted Darwinian evolution through natural selection. He claimed that knowing about human evolution is important, because it shows that humans are not special among organisms. He also argued that evolution substantiates human inequality. In the following chapter on “Racial Science” Graf spent about fifteen pages discussing human evolution and insisted that humans and apes have common ancestors. 24 >> ========== You can bet that if this is what was embedded in the schools, it was there for a strategic ideological/worldview reason and was intended to dominate the society, shaping it in the way the leadership -- ultimately der Fuhrer -- wanted. When this is multiplied by what we can see in Mein Kampf and what we saw from Darwin, the lineage is plain and the intent is even plainer. There is a moral hazard in Darwinism that has to be faced, even before we get tot he issue of the patent amoralit6y of evolutionary materialism that has been warned about as long ago as Plato in The Laws Bk X. And given the responsibilities of scholarship on such a vital piece of history, this alone is decisive. What is embedded in schools is an instrument of state policy, especially in a totalitarian regime. This has to be squarely faced, acknowledged and soberly addressed, not resisted derided and dismissed. The best context for that in my mind is that we need tot each basic principles of right reason, critical thinking skills, core ethics and in that context address both the strengths and weaknesses of science methods in achieving useful knowledge, and the responsibilities of science in society with key case studies -- which should include Chemical warfare in WWi and since, biological warfare, the Nazi and eugenics etc movements, and the nuke weapons issue, , in an age that looks to science for guidance. Sorry, but one sided indoctrination on "climate change" is not good enough, not by a long shot. Indeed the above may well serve to rebalance that one too. (As in, for just one instance, computer simulations and models are not equal to empirical reality, nor can they replace it in scientific investigations.) KFkairosfocus_{November 14, 2013
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F/N: Weikart continues, in a context of noting that this is -- obviously -- not the sole line of influence involved in the rise and actions of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP, aka Nazis): =========== >> Not only will my analysis help us understand better the rationale behind Nazi racial policies, which were intended to improve the human species biologically, but it will also help illuminate the interaction between German science and Nazi ideology. Despite many recent studies showing the close rapport of the Nazi regime and Ger-man scientists, and despite many recent works rejecting the notion that Nazi ideology was pseudoscientific, as most historians used to think, even today some scholars are still loathe to entertain the idea that key elements of Nazi ideology could have been in harmony with the thinking of leading German scientists. Indeed the Nazi embrace of Darwinism in their racial ideology demonstrates the influence of science on Nazi ideology. Nazi racial ideology was largely consistent with the scholarship on race taught at German universities. This makes even clearer why so many German anthropologists and biologists supported Nazi racism—they were already committed to it before the Nazis came to power. If this is so, why have some historians mistakenly argued that Nazis denied human evolution? First, we need to recognize that this issue has not received much atten-tion. Many historians mention the Nazi embrace of social Darwinism, but they do not explore the scientific underpinnings of it. Paul Weindling points this out, stating that “historians have been loath to engage with the biological sciences. Historians of Nazi Germany have curiously not seen race within a scientific framework. . . . The biology of race remains relatively unexamined.” 10 This may seem odd in light of a spate of recent works arguing for the primacy of biology and race in the Nazi worldview and the many recent studies of scientists under Nazism. However, even if Weindling is overstating the case a little, he is largely correct: the study of Nazi racial ideology and of German biologists under the Nazi regime have not connected sufficiently. Nonetheless, some historians have noticed the importance of human evolution in Nazi racial ideology. Christopher Hutton argues that Darwinism was a crucial element of Nazi racial ideology. 11 Uwe Hoßfeld’s and Thomas Junker’s important work on biologists and anthropologists under the Nazi regime also helps illuminate the connections between evolutionists and the Nazi regime, though their emphasis is on the scientists more than on Nazi ideology. 12 One reason some historians (such as Mosse and Bowler) have erred is because of a mistaken belief that the Nazi insistence on hard heredity entailed a rejection of evolution. Hard heredity—the idea championed by German biologist August Weismann—is the idea that environmental influences cannot affect hereditary traits. Weismann rejected the Lamarckian idea that organisms can evolve by pass-ing on acquired characteristics to their progeny. The Nazis continually insisted that heredity cannot be directly affected by the environment, charging that Lamarckism was a Marxist doctrine. The Nazis’ embrace of hard heredity is not antievolutionary, however, since Weismann was a leading evolutionist. When the Nazis occasionally claimed that the Nordic race had been unchanged for thousands of years, they were not claiming that it had been immutable over geologic time. Walter Gross, head of the Nazi Racial Policy Office, clarified this point in an essay on “The Racial View of History.” After bashing Lamarckism, he reminded his readers that even though racial traits do not change over historical time, “selection and elimination” (“Auslese und Ausmerze,” a phrase often used by German evolutionary biologists to mean natural selection) do alter racial traits. 13 Most Darwinists admitted that as far as we could tell, humans had not changed significantly during the past several thousand years. The evolutionary anthropologist Otto Reche admitted that human races had not changed significantly in the past 20–30,000 years. 14 By rejecting Lamarckism and insisting on hard heredity, Nazi racial theorists were consistent with the best science of their day (in this case). Another reason some historians have erred is because they think Nazis would have rejected a common ancestor for the various human races, because a common origin would imply human equality. This is an anachronistic view, for in the early twentieth century, most German Darwinists emphasized racial variation and inequality, not racial equality. Haeckel and many other Darwinists saw evolution as evidence against human equality, not supporting it. As I will show, many Darwinian biologists, such as Konrad Lorenz and Hans Weinert, argued that Darwinism supports racial inequal-ity. Nazi racial theorists believed that the Nordic race had diverged from other races far enough in the past that it had diverged considerably from other races. They also explained that natural selection was the process driving the evolution of the allegedly superior Nordic race [--> traced to particularly severe selection pressure in a harsh environment, presumably that of the ice age and beyond]. >> =========== So, here Weikart addresses key misconceptions that would lead to a misreading of for instance the pivotal text in Mein Kampf. We would also be well advised to recall that the original subtitle of Origin was or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for existence. A pattern of thought that Darwin clearly extended to human varieties. We need to appreciate that race -- almost, sub-species on the way to species -- was seen as an index of fitness, and that elimination of the allegedly less fit was expected, most plainly by Darwin in Ch 6 of Darwin's 1871 Descent of Man as already cited:
Man is liable to numerous, slight, and diversified variations, which are induced by the same general causes, are governed and transmitted in accordance with the same general laws, as in the lower animals. Man has multiplied so rapidly, that he has necessarily been exposed to struggle for existence, and consequently to natural selection. He has given rise to many races, some of which differ so much from each other, that they have often been ranked by naturalists as distinct species . . . . At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
These words clearly set a frame in which the line of thought Hitler tapped into developed in Germany. And, frankly given Eugenics and the like, elsewhere also. Let us never forget that early Nazi "race hygiene" laws were rooted in American antecedents, in I think California. The moral hazard involved swings into play long before we come to the gates of death camps. We need to face the history, not play games to divert its lessons. While I am at it, I am in no wise using these moral hazards of Darwinism to undermine the theory. That has long since fallen of its own weight as an account of origin of body plans due to a 150 years long want of adequate, empirically substantiated mechanism that can account for the functionally specific complex organisation and associated information (much of it CODED -- as in, language) required to form new body plans by incremental steps driven by blind chance variation and differential reproductive success. That is multiplied by the systematic absence of the implied intermediates in the fossils, and again by the Lewontinian ideological imposition of question begging a priori materialism that indeed implies something like darwinism but only prevails because serious alternatives are ruled out a priori. To which, we must add the utter absence of a credible explanation for the origin of cell based life, which requires a solution to the same FSCO/I problem. So, the whole tree of life icon -- the first one of evolution, collapses from root to trunk to branches and sub branches. So, the actual issue on the table is history of ideas and their consequences, which has little to do with whether or no an idea is actually sound. Many a ridiculously fallacious ideology has had major impact on history. Too often, devastating. So, that strawman can be set aside. The issue at stake is the links from Darwin's thought as a dominant intellectual and cultural influence, multiplied by a receptive situation and associated moral hazards, to Hitler. And the reason for it is the simple one that we had better learn from appalling history lest we repeat it or even echo it. In a context where -- tracing to the lingering dominance of the same basic ideas on origins and associated worldviews -- there seems to be considerable resistance to learning from the history. Or even refusal to acknowledge that well substantiated facts are facts. Which is an obvious red flag issue. KFkairosfocus_{November 14, 2013
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LarTanner, First of all, please know that I appreciate good observations and intelligent questions.
But let’s say we agree that all and everywhere the text really means “Judeans” instead of “Jews.” Would you agree that it has taken a long, long time to get people to see what the proper interpretation ought to be?
It's actually even worse than that. I think most Christians are still unaware of who the Judeans were, much less the origin of the term "Jew." Before running across Dr. Stern's translation, I thought the references to "the Jews" meant something like self-identified SuperJews(tm) . . . with PhDs. ;-) It would otherwise be nonsensical that Jesus, who was a Jew along with all his disciples who were Jewish, after preaching and teaching an audience that was predominantly Jewish, would then have a confrontation with (drumroll) "The Jews" (gasp). Know that as a Christian, I believe that the Jews were and still are God's chosen people, who were entrusted with the oracles of God. Even if many Jews are atheists, God has a special love for them, will never ever abandon them! As it is written by the prophet Isaiah (chapter 49, CJB)
Sing, heaven! Rejoice, earth! Break out in song, you mountains! For Adonai is comforting his people, having mercy on his own who have suffered. “But Tziyon says, ‘Adonai has abandoned me, Adonai has forgotten me.’ Can a woman forget her child at the breast, not show pity on the child from her womb? Even if these were to forget, I would not forget you. I have engraved you on the palms of my hands, your walls are always before me.”
It is also my belief as a Christian, that any empire, ruler, politician, or petty bureaucrat who tries to harm Jewish people as a group is from the devil and is trying to thwart the writings of the prophets and the promises of God. As such, the enemies of the Jewish people are promised swift destruction, as has happened repeatedly in history. As far as the translations are concerned, I believe they were rendered in good faith, albeit in partial ignorance of the complexities of the culture of the time. Dr. Stern attempts to address these issues on several levels.
Finally, as a messianic Jew Stern is ideologically committed to converting Jews into Christians. Do you think it’s possible he’s looking for ways to make the NT as palatable to Jews as possible?
Technically, he wants to bring the light of God's love and salvation to convert unatoned Jews (and Gentiles) into completed, Messianic JEWS. But, answering your question directly, I'd say yes, he does, but he must hold himself to the highest ethical standards. When I first read the Complete Jewish Bible, the translation of "the Jews" to "the Judeans" made me highly suspicious for the same reason that you mentioned. After studying the subject, I came to the conclusion that the translation was reasonable and not forced.
Modern Judaism teaches that God spoke directly to Israel, gave them the Torah, and taught Moses the instructions for proper interpretation–a chain of transmission that remained unbroken from Moses to modern rabbinic Judaism. Do you contend that Modern Judaism is in error on these teachings?
Great question! In the Tanakh, you see an unbroken succession of covenants and dispensations that included Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. Furthermore, there are prophetic references to a mysterious personage named "Messiah." These are facts. The covenants were different, and seem to progress in some fashion. Then Jesus came along and said some pretty surprising things, which you've perhaps read. For example, what do you think that Jesus meant when he said,
“Don’t think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete. Yes indeed! I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not so much as a yud or a stroke will pass from the Torah — not until everything that must happen has happened. So whoever disobeys the least of these mitzvot and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys them and so teaches will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness is far greater than that of the Torah-teachers and P’rushim, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven!" Matthew 5:17-20 (CMJ)
Then, when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans about 40 years after Jesus was crucified (the Roman method of execution), there was another remarkable change, a "fork in the road" so to speak. Some Jews embraced the "new" covenant, others held to a new form of Judaism, one without a temple or sacrifices, called Rabbinic Judaism. Both of these Jewish sects were derived from and a dramatic deviation from the earlier form of Judaism. So the question becomes which fork to take, and for what justification. Regarding "anti-judaism," you might be interesting in reading this link: http://orthodoxmessianic.blogspot.com/p/introduction.html - QQuerius_{November 14, 2013
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Chalciss - Thanks for the kudos, also the very appropriate table talk quote. kairosfocus - Great overview and summary . . . and for the focus. While this long discussion has focused on Darwinism (and Eugenics) on Adolph Hitler's program and the embodiment of his ideas and prejudices into public policy, the more pertinent issue is the potential impact of current and future scientific philosophy. In my opinion, without a strong moral anchor, any number of Draconian measures can be considered imperative. For example - The environmental impact of the relentless expansion of the human population is a clear threat to life on the planet. - The human genome has been compromised by an expanding number of defects that would ordinarily have been eliminated by natural selection. - Scientists have gained the ability of genetic modification and a planned scientific selection process that includes genetic screening; this ability suggests an overarching biological mandate to do so. As a result of these observations, there are scientific conclusions that will be made, which will be implemented as public policy by politicians with political goals in mind. - QQuerius_{November 13, 2013
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Lar Tanner quoting Richards
It can only be rampant ideological confusion to maintain that the alleged connection between Hitler’s ideas and those of Darwin and Haeckel, ipso facto, nullifies the truth of evolutionary theory or renders these evolutionists, both long dead before the rise of the Nazis, morally responsible for the Holocaust.
In the first instance, no one has argued that Hitler's behavior "nullifies" evolutionary theory. In the second instance, it doesn't matter a whit whether or not whether Darwin or Haeckel was dead or alive when Hitler was being influenced by their "scientific" views. Your writer is very confused. Lar Tanner
Richards demonstrates that Hitler and his minions rejected evolutionary biology. What’s more, Richards shows, the Nazis used sources who themselves rejected Darwin in building a specious racial theory.
How could Richards demonstrate something that isn't true. Show me how he demonstrates it. You cannot show it because he does not demonstrate it.
Richards addresses claim after claim and, going back to the primary sources (including, of course, Mein Kampf), shows that the influence of Darwin on Nazism and Nazi eugenics was negligible at best.
Ridiculous. From Chapter 11.
Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable. In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species’ health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher development." ". . . since the inferior always predominates numerically over the best, if both had the same possibility of preserving life and propagating, the inferior would multiply so much more rapidly that in the end the best would inevitably be driven into the background, unless a correction of this state of affairs were undertaken. Nature does just this by subjecting the weaker part to such severe living conditions that by them alone the number is limited, and by not permitting the remainder to increase promiscuously, but making a new and ruthless choice according to strength and health." . . . the rigid law of necessity and the right to victory of the best and stronger in this world.
This is pure Darwin, both the ideas and the technical terms. Hitler is here using Darwinian "science" to justify his genocidal program.StephenB_{November 13, 2013
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PS: More to follow, it is not this prof vs that one or some "random" bloggist, but documented facts. For instance, ponder the implication of the warning on raw evo given by Wells above, then think of Time Machine as an exercise on critiquing Eugenics and making a further point on elitism with the twist that the lower classes turn the upper classes of England into sheep bred for slaughter. Remember, Wells is by and large before the worst excesses happened so he foresaw the problem and shouted a warning. So, what should we be saying after the fact What ARE vwe actually saying? Why? (Also, for enjoyment and significant details with key illustrations, have a look at the Lecture embedded here as a FYI.)kairosfocus_{November 13, 2013
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C: Thanks. UD is not really a proper venue for a largely theological debate, but I thought this is an issue where there is a lack of familiarity that calls for more than a short dismissal. KFkairosfocus_{November 13, 2013
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FYI: More on the debate and Weikart's argument in outline: ========= >> How is it possible to embrace social Darwinism, while rejecting Darwinism and human evolution? Anne Harrington suggests that the Nazis liked some elements of Darwinism, especially the struggle for existence, but not human evolution. 6 Robert Richards agrees, claiming that Nazi racial ideas “were rarely connected with specific evolutionary conceptions of the transmutation of species,” even though they bandied about the term “struggle for existence.” 7 In another essay Richards went further, arguing that Hitler and the Nazis completely rejected biological evolution. 8 The notion that the Nazis could embrace racial struggle without believing in evolution seems plausible at first, especially since Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a forerunner of Nazi racial ideology, embraced this position. However, the claim that the Nazis did not believe in the transmutation of species and human evolution runs aground once we examine Nazi racial ideology in detail. In this essay I examine the following evidence to demonstrate overwhelmingly that Nazi racial thinkers embraced human and racial evolution: 1) Hitler believed in human evolution. 2) The official Nazi school curriculum prominently featured biological evolution, including human evolution. 3) Nazi racial anthropologists, including SS anthropologists, uniformly endorsed human evolution and integrated evolution into their racial ideology. 4) Nazi periodicals, including those on racial ideology, embraced human evolution. 5) Nazi materials designed to inculcate the Nazi worldview among SS and military men promoted human evolution as an integral part of the Nazi worldview. >> ========= In short the game plan is to suggest a picking from a smorgasbord of ideas, so blame can be spread around, tainting as it goes. Then, rhetors will be able to come along and divert attention to preferred targets should anyone be so uppity as to suggest that something like Hitler's statements in the Nation and Race chapter show a significant history of ideas root. Tut tut, you didn't do your homework, it's really CHRISTIANITY and Lutheranism to blame. So there. Why do I put it so strongly? Because the decisive evidence is not so hard to find, Hitler co-wrote a book that said it in so many words and turned the pivotal chapter into a pamphlet. So, if there is not a willingness to face the moral hazard in Darwinist thought that led to Social Darwinism, eugenics and some pretty sordid behaviour in a lot of places, then something is wrong. Seriously wrong. If over the years, I had found that responsibility and sobriety, I would take a different track. But, that is not what I have seen, over and over again. So, I am in the mode, not by preference, of confronting advocates over their unmet challenge of social and moral responsibility. (Don't forget, my home discipline is in some ways responsible for worse -- nukes; which came too near to blowing up the world at least twice. A sober responsibility to be learned from.) That is why I think it is important to listen carefully to Weikart, not try to club him down or trash him or dismiss him. I find that H G Wells -- a student of Huxley -- was at least concerned, as we can see from opening remarks from War of the Worlds, which inverted the superior race game and put the matter in sharper focus by setting the "Saxons" of England as the inferiors targetted for destruction:
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water . . . No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us . . . . looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas. And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them. And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?
I can respect this, at least it recognises the problem and warns. Would that we had heeded the warning, which is repeated in Time Machine and with a focus on Science out of ethical control in The Island of Dr Moreau (IIRC). But it seems few were paying serious attention. (Let us not forget the impact of Dickens' novels.) KFkairosfocus_{November 13, 2013
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Speaking of alternative views, here is a brief quote from pp. 196-7 of Robert Richards' (U. Chicago) new book, Was Hitler a Darwinian?:
The strategy of those attempting to show a causal link between Darwin’s theory and Hitlerian ideas about race runs, I believe, like this: the causal relation of influence proceeding from Darwin to future Nazi malevolence justifies regressive epistemic and moral judgments running from the future back to the past, thus indicting Darwin and individuals like Haeckel with moral responsibility for the crimes of Hitler and his minions and thereby undermining evolutionary theory. Now the validity of this kind of moral logic might be dealt with straightaway: even if Hitler had The Origin of Species as his bedtime reading and clearly derived inspiration from it, this would have no bearing on the truth of Darwin’s theory or directly on the moral character of Darwin and other Darwinians. Mendelian genetics became ubiquitous as a scientific foundation for Nazi eugenic policy (and American eugenic proposals as well), though none of the critics question the basic validity of that genetic theory or impugns Mendel’s moral integrity. Presumably Hitler and other party officials recognized chemistry as a science and utilized its principles to exterminate efficiently millions of people. But this hardly precludes the truth of chemical theory or morally taints all chemists. It can only be rampant ideological confusion to maintain that the alleged connection between Hitler’s ideas and those of Darwin and Haeckel, ipso facto, nullifies the truth of evolutionary theory or renders these evolutionists, both long dead before the rise of the Nazis, morally responsible for the Holocaust. [Emphasis added]
Richards demonstrates that Hitler and his minions rejected evolutionary biology. What's more, Richards shows, the Nazis used sources who themselves rejected Darwin in building a specious racial theory. Richards addresses claim after claim and, going back to the primary sources (including, of course, Mein Kampf), shows that the influence of Darwin on Nazism and Nazi eugenics was negligible at best.LarTanner_{November 13, 2013
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That's fine, KF, but please do remember that Weikart is not the only scholar on the subject and his view is not definitive. Are you interested in reading others on the same subject? A fair review of the present thread shows that you keep trying to characterize my argument, as when you suggest in 173 that my claim amounts to "Nazism as Christian in character." When you say things that are so flagrantly opposite what I have actually said -- much like what you accuse Nazism as having done to Christianity -- and that can be easily verified above, I struggle to determine whether you are a liar or just hopelessly ideological. I always taught my students to read first what a writer actually says before trying to establish what s/he means. You would do well to heed this lesson.LarTanner_{November 13, 2013
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LT: Pardon, but your track record in this thread speaks loud and clear, and not to your advantage. Since we can all scroll up and see, I leave it at that for now. I guess it is time for a second clip from the Weikart article, on substance. KFkairosfocus_{November 13, 2013
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KF & Q: Fantastic posts & great scriptural references. Kudos! This person LarTanner is basically trying to inflict guilt on Christianity by quoting Nazism. Time and again Hitler has renounced Christianity and has been open about his hatred such as this one:"The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity." — Adolf Hitler, from Hitler's Table Talk (1941-1944) Apparently this poster 'LArTanner' is engaging in sophism and is deceitful, has not divulged its own religious views, and sounds like a pantheist/polytheist trying to argue Abrahamic religions. Keep up the great work in speaking the truth in the gospels to the lost!Chalciss_{November 13, 2013
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KF (172), Oy.
One of the most important responses to those who insistently and toxically side-track a discussion is to refuse to be distracted; even, in cases where the side-track — for want of easy access to corrective information — requires some attention.
I am not trying to side-track discussion. From comment #1, I added an important and true clarification to Weikart's text. After all these comments, what you have neither refuted not acknowledged is the simple truth that Nazi ideology incorporated Christianity. Did the Nazis twist Christianity? Yes? Did they violate much of its ethical core? Yes. Did they attack other Christians and Churches (something not uncommon among different Christian denominations, by the way)? Yes. We are in agreement over virtually everything except for the idea that Christian beliefs and institutions were part of the materials the Nazis used in building their ideology. I already showed you their Principle 24 of the Twenty-Five Points (1920):
We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race. The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: common utility precedes individual utility.
It simply will not do, KF, to try barricading "positive Christianity" by saying it's not True Christianity, as this is a classic No True Scotsman attempt. The plain and incontrovertible fact is that some Christians have and do apply the core teachings differently than you would like. This is not to besmirch or tarnish Christianity, nor is it meant to reduce Christianity to one time, place, and people. But If we are going to talk about Nazi ideology then for sake of completeness and accuracy there is a Christian element to contend with. That's a fact, and I think I have enough of having to repeat this. So I'll stop now. But let's move on. When you quote Weikart --
Historians disagree about whether Nazis embraced Darwinian evolution.
This statement should tell you that this topic is controversial, unsettled, and open to various interpretations. The same is true of the Nazi embrace of Christianity. When you, KF, say --
The key significance of this is that it shows an important lesson of history about how a scientific enterprise influences social, ethical and political thought. Also, here, showing a moral hazard of the scientific thought. Which raises the issue of the dangers of scientism.
I agree. And science is not alone in influencing "social, ethical and political thought." Religious beliefs, controversies, and institutions also have influence. There are many other influential forces besides; the greater point is not only the dangers of scientism but rather the dangers of dogma and orthodoxy in all forms. Surely you can agree with this last bit? For every Darwin quote you have on "the savage races" I have Pope Nicholas V, with his Dum Diversas (1452)
we grant to you full and free power, through the Apostolic authority by this edict, to invade, conquer, fight, subjugate the Saracens and pagans, and other infidels and other enemies of Christ, and wherever established their Kingdoms, Duchies, Royal Palaces, Principalities and other dominions, lands, places, estates, camps and any other possessions, mobile and immobile goods found in all these places and held in whatever name, and held and possessed by the same Saracens, Pagans, infidels, and the enemies of Christ, also realms, duchies, royal palaces, principalities and other dominions, lands, places, estates, camps, possessions of the king or prince or of the kings or princes, and to lead their persons in perpetual servitude, and to apply and appropriate realms, duchies, royal palaces, principalities and other dominions, possessions and goods of this kind to you and your use and your successors the Kings of Portugal.
And Romanus Pontifex (1455)
The Roman pontiff, successor of the key-bearer of the heavenly kingdom and vicar of Jesus Christ, contemplating with a father's mind all the several climes of the world and the characteristics of all the nations dwelling in them and seeking and desiring the salvation of all, wholesomely ordains and disposes upon careful deliberation those things which he sees will be agreeable to the Divine Majesty and by which he may bring the sheep entrusted to him by God into the single divine fold, and may acquire for them the reward of eternal felicity, and obtain pardon for their souls. This we believe will more certainly come to pass, through the aid of the Lord, if we bestow suitable favors and special graces on those Catholic kings and princes, who, like athletes and intrepid champions of the Christian faith, as we know by the evidence of facts, not only restrain the savage excesses of the Saracens and of other infidels, enemies of the Christian name, but also for the defense and increase of the faith vanquish them and their kingdoms and habitations, though situated in the remotest parts unknown to us, and subject them to their own temporal dominion, sparing no labor and expense, in order that those kings and princes, relieved of all obstacles, may be the more animated to the prosecution of so salutary and laudable a work.
Again, my point is not to indict Christianity or to ignore the great and many humanitarian/civil equality struggles that people of all faiths and non-faiths have taken on, but rather to agree with you on the moral hazards of many an -ism. I agree wholeheartedly that "Ideas plainly have consequences," and that we ought to remain vigilantly "concerned and critical." In many regards you and I have the same mission.LarTanner_{November 13, 2013
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Querius (171) --
No, in context, the text is referring to *Judean* Torah teachers and pharisees, not Jews in the sense that you’re using the term.
Well, there are very many different contexts in John, some of which seem to support "Jew" better than "Judean." But let's say we agree that all and everywhere the text really means "Judeans" instead of "Jews." Would you agree that it has taken a long, long time to get people to see what the proper interpretation ought to be? Or are you saying that all along clerics and laity alike have known the proper interpretation "Judeans" and somehow only recently people have become confused? Finally, as a messianic Jew Stern is ideologically committed to converting Jews into Christians. Do you think it's possible he's looking for ways to make the NT as palatable to Jews as possible? Modern Judaism teaches that God spoke directly to Israel, gave them the Torah, and taught Moses the instructions for proper interpretation--a chain of transmission that remained unbroken from Moses to modern rabbinic Judaism. Do you contend that Modern Judaism is in error on these teachings?LarTanner_{November 13, 2013
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F/N: Lead to Wikipedia on Hitler's religious views,following up from SB at 25 supra:
Adolf Hitler was raised by an anticlerical, sceptic father and a devout Catholic mother. Baptized and confirmed as a child in Austria, he ceased to participate in the sacraments after childhood. In adulthood, Hitler became disdainful of Christianity, but in seeking out and in trying to retain power in Germany, he was prepared to set aside his views on religion out of political considerations. He repeatedly stated that Nazism was a secular ideology founded on science.[1] It is generally accepted by historians that Hitler's post war and long term goal was the eradication of Christianity in Germany.[2][3] The adult Hitler did not believe in the Judeo-Christian notion of God, though various scholars consider his final religious position may have been a form of deism. Others consider him "atheist". [--> a vague pantheistic view with occultic influences -- don't forget his court astrologer -- seems more like it to me] The question of atheism is debated, however reputable Hitler biographers Ian Kershaw, Joachim Fest and Alan Bullock agree Hitler was anti-Christian. This view is evidenced in sources such as the Goebbels Diaries, the memoirs of Albert Speer, and the transcripts edited by Martin Bormann which are contained within Hitler's Table Talk, an influential translation of which was completed by historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. During his early career, and for a variety of reasons, Hitler made various public comments against non-Nazi atheistic (i.e. "Bolshevik") movements, and in favour of so-called positive Christianity (a movement which purged Christianity of its Jewish elements and instilled it with Nazi philosophy). Once in power, the Hitler regime sought to reduce the influence of Christianity on German society, though by 1939, and with the encouragement of the Nazi Party, only around 5% of Germans had declared themselves neo-pagan deists (gottglaubig) or atheists.[4] The majority of the three million Nazi Party members continued to pay their church taxes and register as Christians.[5] [--> speaks volumes -- none of it good -- on their ignorance of core Christian theology, ethics and the scriptures] In his semi-autobiographical Mein Kampf, Hitler makes religious allusions, but declares himself neutral in sectarian matters and supportive of the separation between church and state, while criticising political Catholicism. He presents a nihilistic vision, in which the universe is ordered around principles of struggle between weak and strong, rather than on conventional Christian notions long prominent in Germany. [--> as in what has been repeatedly cited and which stands in the Darwinist view of human evolution as widely held at the time] While campaigning for office in the early 1930s, Hitler offered moderate public statements on Christianity, promising not to interfere with the churches if given power, and calling Christianity the foundation of German morality. [--> so, we are right to identify big lie tactics] In power, the Hitler regime conducted a protracted Struggle with the Churches. [--> as in, now that I have power . . . especially after panicking the parliament to grant him 7 year dictatorial powers after the Reichstag fire] Hitler moved to eliminate political Catholicism, while agreeing a Reich concordat with the Holy See which promised autonomy for the Catholic Church in Germany. Hitler then routinely violated the treaty, moved to close all Catholic organisations that weren't strictly religious, and permitted a persecution of the Catholic Church. He launched an effort to co-ordinate German Protestants under a unified Protestant Reich Church under the Deutsche Christen movement [--> The German Christians targetted by the Barmen Declaration] , but the attempt failed and was resisted by the Confessing Church. [--> In short, the attempt in the blog to smear Christianity in general with the follies of that movement is at best ill-informed and at worst a cynical lie and slander] He angered the churches by appointing the neo-pagan Alfred Rosenberg as official Nazi ideologist, and generally permitted or encouraged anti-church radicals such as Himmler, Goebells and Bormann to conduct their persecutions of the churches. [--> Notice the already linked on long term plans] Smaller religious minorities faced far harsher repression, with the Jews of Germany expelled for extermination on the grounds of racist ideology and Jehovah's Witnesses ruthlessly persecuted for refusing military service, and any allegiance to Hitlerism. Kershaw wrote that few people could really claim to "know" Hitler - "he was by temperament a very private, even secretive individual", unwilling to confide in others.[6] In Hitler's Table Talk Hitler often voiced stridently negative views of Christianity. Bullock wrote that Hitler was a rationalist and materialist, who saw Christianity as a religion "fit for slaves", and against the natural law of selection and survival of the fittest.[7] [--> Consistent with the cited] Richard J. Evans wrote that Hitler used a Nazi variant of the language of Social Darwinism to persuade his followers that what they were doing was justified by "history, science and nature". [--> Note the cite again] Biographer John Toland, while noting Hitler's antagonism to the Pope and Catholic Church hierarchy, drew links between Hitler's Catholic background and his antisemitism.[8] Steigmann-Gall saw a "Christian element" in Hitler's early writings; and wrote that while use of the term "positive Christianity" in the Nazi Party Program of 1920 is commonly regarded as a tactical measure", he himself believes that it was "more than a political ploy for winning votes" and instead adhered to an "inner logic" [--> Yes, subvert and corrupt what you cannot immediately directly overthrow] - though anti-Christians later fought to "expunge Christian influence from Nazism" and that the movement became "increasingly hostile to the churches", but never quite "uniformly anti-Christian".[9] [--> Political messianism, becoming a lord in contention with God etc are all anti-christian, and to disguise it in a heresy raises the other meaning of the term: counterfeit] Following meetings with Hitler, General Gerhard Engel and Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber wrote that Hitler was a believer. Kershaw cites Faulhaber's encounter as an example of Hitler's ability to "pull the wool over the eyes of even hardened critics". Laurence Rees concludes that "Hitler's relationship in public to Christianity - indeed his relationship to religion in general - was opportunistic. There is no evidence that Hitler himself, in his personal life, ever expressed any individual belief in the basic tenets of the Christian church".[10]
In short it is not well substantiated to view Nazism as Christian in character, and it is utterly irresponsible or cynically deceitful to suggest that such is the case in the teeth of evidence so strong that Wikipedia (which is notoriously ideological and largely anti-Christian itself) has to concede as above. KFkairosfocus_{November 13, 2013
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F/N: One of the most important responses to those who insistently and toxically side-track a discussion is to refuse to be distracted; even, in cases where the side-track -- for want of easy access to corrective information -- requires some attention. Let us therefore remind ourselves of the focal issue from the OP and its significance. Namely, that, per Weikart's abstract:
Historians disagree about whether Nazis embraced Darwinian evolution. By examining Hitler’s ideology, the official biology curriculum, the writings of Nazi anthropologists, and Nazi periodicals, we find that Nazi racial theorists did indeed embrace human and racial evolution. They not only taught that humans had evolved from primates, but they believed the Aryan or Nordic race had evolved to a higher level than other races because of the harsh climatic conditions that influ -enced natural selection. They also claimed that Darwinism underpinned specific elements of Nazi racial ideology, including racial inequality, the necessity of the racial struggle for existence, and collectivism. 1
The key significance of this is that it shows an important lesson of history about how a scientific enterprise influences social, ethical and political thought. Also, here, showing a moral hazard of the scientific thought. Which raises the issue of the dangers of scientism. The moral hazard in question comes out in root documents, for instance we see how Darwin wrote in his 1871 The Descent of Man, ch 6:
Man is liable to numerous, slight, and diversified variations, which are induced by the same general causes, are governed and transmitted in accordance with the same general laws, as in the lower animals. Man has multiplied so rapidly, that he has necessarily been exposed to struggle for existence, and consequently to natural selection. He has given rise to many races, some of which differ so much from each other, that they have often been ranked by naturalists as distinct species . . . . At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
Darwin was addressing fossil gaps, and did not seem to recognise the serious moral hazard just exposed or that it demanded a serious and immediate response. Doubtless he would have been shocked by what happened only seventy years later, driven by the onward development of the social darwinism just laid out in outline. Similarly in 1881 he wrote a Mr Winston Graham as follows:
I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago, of being overwhelmed by the Turk, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.
This is a full decade on, and it is even more clear that he was speaking of conflicts between "races" of man, of the white races as the more civilised and superior, and of the wiping out of "lower races." Again, the consequences loom. As we come back to Weikart, let us notice, again, where this went to in Germany (noting that at the same time it gave rise to a eugenics movement with which Darwin's family was involved with for many years). Clipping 122 above -- studiously ignored above -- of course: ************ >> Evolution plays a central role in the chapter in Mein Kampf on “Nation and Race,” which was the only chapter published as a separate pamphlet, thus circulating widely to promote Nazi ideology. 19 In that chapter Hitler explains why he thinks racial mixing violates evolutionary principles:
Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher evolution of organic living beings would be unthinkable. 20
A few lines later he continues:
In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less deter-mined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species’ health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher evolution.
Thus, Hitler opposed miscegenation because it hindered evolutionary progress, which for him was the highest good. Since the whole point of this passage is to apply these principles to human racial relations, it is apparent that Hitler believed that humans had evolved and were still evolving. Hitler’s racial policy aimed at advancing human evolution. >> ************ In the lines Weikart did not cite, we find:
The consequence of this racial purity, universally valid in Nature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races, but their uniform character in themselves. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc., and the difference can lie at most in the varying measure of force, strength, intelligence, dexterity, endurance, etc., of the individual specimens. But you will never find a fox who in his inner attitude might, for example, show humanitarian tendencies toward geese, as similarly there is no cat with a friendly inclination toward mice . . .
Immediately, we see an attempted justification as following the alleged law of higher development through survival of the fittest [and extinction of the allegedly unfit to live -- life unworthy of living . . . ], of a predatory mentality which in ideational context leads straight to aggressive war to wipe out and replace inferior races. Such as the Poles etc. With of course Jews being involved; the Jews of Poland are half the Jewish holocaust already, and another 2 million Poles -- overwhelmingly Catholic, Christians -- died at the hands of Hitler and co. (Pope John Paul II was a survivor of that war.) But it is not just Nazism that is implicated. We can see how rapidly and deeply eugenics triumphed among elites in the name of science, becoming embedded in national policy and law for decades. And the logos for the Eugenics conferences bear a telling definition:
Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution
With roots being in fields such as: genetics, biology, medicine, psychology, psychiatry, geology, statistics, law and politics. In short we see here a science in society issue that was intended to shape policy and be embedded in law. Evolutionary materialist scientism and its fellow traveller ideologies have potential -- and, if we will listen to the ghosts of the past, historical -- consequences and lessons that reach far and wide that we had better understand and respond to appropriately. So, we must hear with concern declamations such as this from Richard Lewontin:
To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists, it is self-evident [[--> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . ] that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality, and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [[--> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [[--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [[--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [And if you think this cite from a well known NYRB article of Jan 1997 is quote mined -- the usual attempted accusatory side-track, read here.]
As well as this from Dawkins:
In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pitiless indifference . . . . DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. [“God’s Utility Function,” Sci. Am. Aug 1995, pp. 80 - 85.]
That is we see ideological impositions dressed up in the lab coat, that would inject into our general thought, education systems, public policy etc a view that is question-begging, openly dismissive of other views and utterly amoral. Such opens the door to the sort of nihilism and domineering destructive factions Plato warned against 2350 years ago in The Laws, Bk X:
[[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [[i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order-earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them . . . After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only. [In short, evolutionary materialism premised on chance plus necessity acting without intelligent guidance on primordial matter is hardly a new or a primarily "scientific" view! Notice also, the trichotomy of causal factors: (a) chance/accident, (b) mechanical necessity of nature, (c) art or intelligent design and direction.] . . . . [[Thus, they hold that t]he Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [[Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT.] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might [[ Evolutionary materialism leads to the promotion of amorality], and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [[Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others [[such amoral factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless tyranny], and not in legal subjection to them.
Ideas plainly have consequences, and in this case potentially destructive ones. We have a right to be concerned and critical. Nor should we be intimidated by the dressing up of these ideas in a lab coat. To argue for common descent is one thing, to question-beggingly insist on censoring scientific thought by imposed a priori materialism dressed up in the lab coat is another. And to lead on from such materialism (whether or not dressed in a lab coat) to its logical consequence, amorality, is yet another. So, we must be prepared to reflect on worldview and methodological issues, evaluating whether or not such an imposition is reasonable or censoring of alternatives that would otherwise be seriously considered. We must also be prepared to deal with moral hazards implicated by these ideologies and presented in the guise of consequences of science. In that, the case study of Darwinism, social darwinism and its historical consequences through not only Nazism but eugenics and more, is vital. At least if we are willing to face the issue that understanding the truth about hard-bought lessons of history gives us a guide for being prudent as we try to build our own future. KFkairosfocus_{November 13, 2013
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LarTanner asserts:
there is a relentless repetition of hoi Ioudaoi that has, I think, an unmistakable effect of making the Jews appear to be a homogeneous group (they weren’t) and violently hostile to Jesus (we don’t really know).
No, in context, the text is referring to *Judean* Torah teachers and pharisees, not Jews in the sense that you're using the term. LarTanner asks:
How does Stern address 8.44?
Paraphrasing Stern, in 8:44, Jesus is through with these self-righteous Judean religious leaders who claim Abraham as their genetic father. In response to their veiled accusation that Jesus was illegitimate, Jesus counters that being a genetic descendent is inconsequential compared to being a spiritual descendent.
"But as for me, because I tell the truth you don’t believe me. Which one of you can show me where I’m wrong? If I’m telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Whoever belongs to God listens to what God says; the reason you don’t listen is that you don’t belong to God.” The Judeans answered him, “Aren’t we right in saying you are from Shomron and have a demon?” Yeshua replied, “Me? I have no demon. I am honoring my Father. But you dishonor me. I am not seeking praise for myself. There is One who is seeking it, and he is the judge. Yes, indeed! I tell you that whoever obeys my teaching will never see death.”
Palestine was divided at that time into Galilee, Samaria (Shomron), and Judea. Jesus spent most of his time in Galilee, traveled through Samaria, and was in intense conflict with the Judean religious leadership, especially around the Judean town of Jerusalem. Here's a link to the Complete Jewish Bible translation: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%208&version=CJB - QQuerius_{November 12, 2013
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PS: Jn 8:44 in context (and bearing in mind both the OT prophetic rebukes to Israel and the underlying context fr Ch 6 of former disciples who had turned against Jesus):
Jn 8:31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 33 They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” 34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. 38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” 39 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, 40 but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. [--> I.e. this is, are you about to try killing a prophet authenticated to you by adequate signs and by speaking in accord with already acknowledged revelation preserved in Scripture, yet again?] This is not what Abraham did. [--> Exploits the characteristically Hebraic thought that "Son of X" reflects the characteristics of X] 41 You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father-even God.” [--> An implication and insinuation that he was born of adultery, rather than the prophesied birth of a virgin, and yes there is a debate, with the Septuagint rendering underscoring the legitimacy of the reading, Virgin.] 42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. 46 Which one of you convicts me of sin? [--> in context, blasphemy worthy of death] If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? 47 Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”
In short the issue, as usual is that of hearing and heeding the voice of God, vs the sad pattern of killing the prophets who brought unwelcome correctives. Reading out of context allows injection of an alien one, racial hatred of Jews. In short this is all cut from the same cloth as the wrenching of Mark 3:6 as was already pointed out and studiously ignored. Enough of correction on a side track [the corrective point has been more than adequately made], time to return to focus as highlighted in the OP. KFkairosfocus_{November 12, 2013
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LT: It is quite clear that the Barmen declaration targets Nazism and nazification of the churches as heresy. Such would by immediate implication call Nazified thought under the correction of scripture, which includes its antisemitism, political messianism, attempt to subvert the Christian faith in Germany, and the imposition of Hitler as another lord in opposition to Jesus. It also very explicitly commits to the Lordship of Christ only and reformation based on his teachings. (Or, have you forgotten that Christians under pagan Rome were accused of and executed for disloyalty as they would not go to a pagan altar and toss in a pinch while saying "Caesar is lord." That echo is just beneath the surface of the Declaration.) Yes, there is no programmatic declaration on any and all topics, the document is primarily (and perhaps too narrowly) theological. Though it must be reckoned that that was the strength they had and could stand on. There is indeed a strategic blunder in the wider context (I suspect c 1934 no-one realised just what they were dealing with; we have the benefit of hindsight). Niemoller is after all is said and done, the one who after surviving the camps said that his silence when they came for unionists, communists and Jews is what opened the door that when they came for him there was no one left to speak up for him. Notice, however the actual implication of the focus:
8.01 The Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church met in Barmen, May 29-31, 1934. Here representatives from all the German Confessional Churches met with one accord in a confession of the one Lord of the one, holy, apostolic Church. In fidelity to their Confession of Faith, members of Lutheran, Reformed, and United Churches sought a common message for the need and temptation of the Church in our day. With gratitude to God they are convinced that they have been given a common word to utter. It was not their intention to found a new Church or to form a union. For nothing was farther from their minds than the abolition of the confessional status of our Churches. Their intention was, rather, to withstand in faith and unanimity the destruction of the Confession of Faith, and thus of the Evangelical Church in Germany. In opposition to attempts to establish the unity of the German Evangelical Church by means of false doctrine, by the use of force and insincere practices, the Confessional Synod insists that the unity of the Evangelical Churches in Germany can come only from the Word of God in faith through the Holy Spirit. Thus alone is the Church renewed . . . . 8.14 As Jesus Christ is God’s assurance of the forgiveness of all our sins, so, in the same way and with the same seriousness he is also God’s mighty claim upon our whole life. Through him befalls us a joyful deliverance from the godless fetters of this world for a free, grateful service to his creatures. 8.15 We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords–areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him. 8.16 – 3. “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body [is] joined and knit together.” (Eph. 4:15,16.) [Barth et al]
This intentionally creedal confession rejects as heresy the nazification of the church and the nazi party behind it, and underscores that genuine renewal is biblical and in line with the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of the truth in love. As long since shown above [never overthrown, just rudely mocked via ad hominem], anti-semitism is directly and explicitly contrary to the core ethical and theological teachings of the NT, and the wider Bible. Wherein 39 of 66 books as Protestants group it, are the hebraic OT. And in the NT, in Romans -- Barth's major stomping grounds! [in the most strongly theological book in the NT] -- we may again read this on relations and attitudes between Jews and Gentiles:
Rom 11: 17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, 18 do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. 19 Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” 20 That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.
That is, Paul here echoes a theme of fruitfulness vs unfruitfulness that Jesus built on from Isa 5, in Jn 15 -- root-stock and fruitful/ unfruitful branches. Though, Paul shifts the species from the Vine to an Olive tree to bring in a further point. Namely, we Gentiles must always remember that if a branch refuses to bear genuine fruit through the Spirit because of unbelief [i.e. willful disbelief leading to rejection of the life giving sap], it will be removed. And if the natural ones were so removed, the grafted in wild olive branches even moreso . . . as is so plainly happening in Europe and North America today; a trend that may make Heinie's prophetic comment from 1830 sadly relevant again. And as a bonus, as a didactic device Paul has an imaginary, rhetorical conversation with a Christian antisemite. One of correction. So, in context of known NT teachings on the matter, and contrary to your source, Barmen does demonstrably directly imply rejection of antisemitism as contrary to the Lordship and Spirit of Christ, in light of Scripture. And, the reference to renewal by the Word implies that where Christians have fallen down, we are to get back up through the sanctifying action of listening to and heeding said Scriptures. The proper Christian attitude to unbelieving Jews is therefore, per direct teaching, respect, concern (thus, by direct implication, prayer) and expectation of eventual restoration in good time by the grace of God. Not rage, contempt or hate. Exactly 180 degrees out of alignment with the attitude of Nazism. No great surprise there. And, BTW, if you read in context, Q's point on a contrast between Galilean and Judaean Jews has a point. Jesus' primary base of support is clearly Galilee and the centre of opposition is Jerusalem and environs. It is after Pentecost in Jerusalem that there is an evidently conscious shift of focus to Jerusalem. Though, a later Roman Emperor would interrogate descendants of Jesus' family who per the report were farmers in the Galilee. It is of course noteworthy that you have studiously avoided direct parallels to the prophetic critiques of elites and people in the OT that I have sampled. Let me now go to the prince of the prophets, Isaiah, in Chs 5 and 53:
Is 5:1 ????????Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2 ????????He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. 3 ????????And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 4 ????????What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? 5 ????????And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. 6 ????????I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and briers and thorns shall grow up; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. 7 ????????For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry! 8 ????????Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no more room, and you are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land.
This of course builds up to:
Isa 5: 20 ????????Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! 21 ????????Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! 22 ????????Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink, 23 ????????who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right! 24 ????????Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will be as rottenness, and their blossom go up like dust; for they have rejected the law of the LORD of hosts, and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. 25 ????????Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people, and he stretched out his hand against them and struck them, and the mountains quaked; and their corpses were as refuse in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still. 26 ????????He will raise a signal for nations far away, and whistle for them from the ends of the earth; and behold, quickly, speedily they come! 27 ????????None is weary, none stumbles, none slumbers or sleeps, not a waistband is loose, not a sandal strap broken; 28 ????????their arrows are sharp, all their bows bent, their horses' hoofs seem like flint, and their wheels like the whirlwind. 29 ????????Their roaring is like a lion, like young lions they roar; they growl and seize their prey; they carry it off, and none can rescue. 30 ????????They will growl over it on that day, like the growling of the sea. And if one looks to the land, behold, darkness and distress; and the light is darkened by its clouds.
In short, judgement by defeat and exile for apostasy, unbelief and unfruitfulness that inverts right and wrong, true and false. (The echo in the fate of Germany is not a coincidence, as Heine -- BTW, a Jewish Christian -- foresaw c 1830.) But all of this is preliminaries. We now come to -- note discussion here -- one of the main prophetic bones of contention between Jews who saw Jesus as Messiah and those who rejected him as such:
Isa: 52:13Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted. 14As many were astonished at you— his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind— 15so shall he sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand. Isa 53:1 Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. 8By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? 9And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. 10Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. 11Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.
700+ years before Jesus of Nazareth. The roots of the Christian theology of the Atonement are not hard to discern, nor why in the earliest Christian creed -- c. 35 - 38 AD -- we may see the appeal to fulfillment of prophecy as a major focus [ cf. here on on that in light of attempts to read in a very different way], namely:
1 Cor 15: 1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you-unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
Thus, the explicitly Hebraic and scriptural roots of the gospel are plain, as is the anchorage in 500+ witnesses (~ 20 identifiable by name) in an official declaration that can readily be dated to AD 35 - 38, in an Aramaic circle [Note how the nickname is rendered Cephas, not Peter]. That is, Jerusalem. There is a theological division between Christians [whether Jewish or Gentile, whether C1 or C21] anf Jews, but it is equally explicit that this is a debate in the context of a common life-giving holy rootstock, with branches -- whether Jewish or Gentile -- accountable for fruitfulness, and even after being broken off on account of willful unbelief there is the concern and hope of restoration. Which echoes a consistent theme from Moses forward that identifies a tendency to drift off from roots. As we look on examples from Moses on, we find that the critiques of elites and their followers in the NT are entirely consistent with the OT prophetic tradition. Indeed, such critiques are consciously within that tradition, of Jews speaking to Jews in the name of God and calling to repentance in light of looming judgement. For instance, observe the very first recorded Christian Sermon not preached by Jesus, Peter at Pentecost:
Ac 2: 14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. 15 For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. 16 But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: 17 ????????“‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; 18 ????????even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. 19 ????????And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; 20 ????????the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. 21 ????????And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ 22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know- 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it . . . . 32 This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. 33 Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing . . . . 36 Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” 37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” 40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
Yes, Peter addresses his fellow Israelites with an emphasis on the issue that yet again the nation has killed none of its prophets, showing itself crooked [a direct echo of the song of Moses]. Yes, in so doing he speaks of the Gentiles involved as lawless men. Yes, he highlights prophetic scriptures including that of pouring out the Spirit -- which drew the crowd. Yes, he calls attention to Jesus as not just a prophet but the promised messiah, who was unjustly crucified by the Gentile overlords with the connivance of leaders and crowd alike in Jerusalem. To wrench such out of context and export them to a context of projected racial hostility to Jews as a people is scripture-twisting. Such should cease. And instead of steady drumbeat repetitionjs of unsubstantiated accusations that "Christianity" is to blame for Hitler, we should recognise that insofar as Christians were caught up in antisemitism or nazism, that was in disobedience to Scripture, NT Scripture. Indeed, in the case of the German Christian movement, genuine Christians enmeshed were demonstrably caught up in a movement of heresy. Something to be regretted among the sins of Christendom, but reflective of precisely the inclination to apostasy warned against by the apostle. After this, we can now determinedly walk back from this distractor to the material facts being distracted from, i.e. derailment of a discussion must not be allowed to succeed. KFkairosfocus_{November 12, 2013
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Querius, The meaning of the Greek hoi Ioudaoi in John can in some cases be "the Judeans." It varies by context. But in John particularly there is a relentless repetition of hoi Ioudaoi that has, I think, an unmistakable effect of making the Jews appear to be a homogeneous group (they weren't) and violently hostile to Jesus (we don't really know). The Jews are the people who reject Jesus (1.11), persecute him (5.16), seek his death (8.40), expel believers from the synagogue (9.22), plot Jesus' death (9.49-52) and persecute Jesus' followers (16.2). How does Stern address 8.44?LarTanner_{November 12, 2013
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KF, you say
That double anchorage is why the Barmen Declaration was cast in terms of a theological declaration against heresy.
Yet even the Barmen makes no explicit statement against antisemitism, as even Weikart admits in his critique of a book on Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas:
Metaxas also claims that the Barmen Declaration, which was the doctrinal statement of the Confessing Church, rejected anti-Semitism. In reality, the Barmen Declaration does not mention anti-Semitism at all, and many scholars have criticized it for this.
Don't get me wrong, I genuinely admire Barmen, and Barth and Boenhoeffer too. I do not and have never said that there was a unified Christianity behind the Nazis. Very many Christians saw Nazism as incompatible with the core teachings of the faith. But others have not seen it so. As I have indicated at least once before, the substance of Jesus' ethical teachings -- insofar as they have been related to history through later writings -- have never been the issue I have focused on here so much as to whom and when such teachings applied. You say of me that I am --
determined to invidiously associate Hitler with the Christian church that you are unable to listen to evidence that shows that his behaviour was indisputably antichristian, not only ethically but theologically.
I have listened to the evidence, and I have been aware of it for some time. In some respects I agree with you, but you also have a clear bias yourself: understandably, you in no way want Hitler's Christianity to find any legitimacy as Christianity. Unfortunately, you cannot have this. Let's imagine that Hitler's program arises in 1097 instead of 1933 and following. In 1097, at the dawn of what R.I. Moore calls a persecuting society, Jews become a target of religiously motivated violence. Many seek to protect the Jews, on economic, religious, and fellow-feeling grounds. In some ways the period from 1097 to 1944 has a troubling consistency when it comes to the Jews and Judaism: ambivalence to full acceptance of Jews and ambivalence to hostility against Jews. KF, I have in this thread sought to engage your arguments and clarify and refine to find common ground. StephenB called it "changing my story," but I backed off of the stronger "defame" for "negativity" when it came to written perceptions of Jesus' conflict with the Pharisees. I have incorporated Barmen into our wider discussion. Have you even conceded the existence -- ever -- of Christian negativity against Jews and Judaism? Have you acknowledged that the New Testament has been a source of validation for some hostility, even if to you such validations have been misreadings or misinterpretations of the text? Maybe you have indeed made such a concession and acknowledgement, but to me it seems like you insist on explaining all the bad stuff away. Yet I also wish to be fair: So tell me, what are the true sources of antisemitism?LarTanner_{November 12, 2013
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