While he was certainly not alone in being a clergy member persecuted by the National Socialists, a Pastor named Zedlacher was arrested not just for breaking Nazi policy, nor for protesting Hitler's treatment of the Jews, the Church, or the mentally retarded and others, but for doing something Lutheran pastors had done for years: teach the Book of Romans, just as it had always been taught since the first days of the apostles.
The Book of Romans, written by the apostle Paul, or Saul of Tarsus, was to the Christians of Rome (Rms 1:7) around the year A.D. 56-57, from Corinth. (bible.org). The book encompasses more than one topic, including morality, the Plan of Salvation, the Civil duties of the Christian and the State, divine election, and a number of chapters focusing on the Mystery of the Jews. The Epistle was written toward the end of Paul's journeys and life, although the exact means and place of Paul's death is debated, ranging from dying in Spain during a later journey to being executed in Rome by Nero after being blamed for the the fire which consumed Rome. Whatever the true account is, the Book of Romans has been a mainstay of Christianity from the beginning of baseline doctrine, and both a blessing and troubling to heads of State for just as long.
This was no less true for the Third Reich, which in its twisted attempts to sedition the Bible towards their political/social aims and objectives, both used the book of Romans in part to garner 'befehlsnotstand' or blind obedience to the State and which also sought to erase the effect of teaching in Romans particularly about the Jews.
Goebbels, Kittel, Grundman and others began to redefine and interpret, or perhaps more accurately 'morph' traditional Lutheran doctrine and a basic understanding of the Gospels and rest of the Scriptures into an acceptable form for the Reich which would not contradict Reich teachings. While Jesus was retained as an example of the Aryan prototype of a 'Superman' and reinterpreted as having
Aryan/Greek lineage via his speaking 'Aramaic' and living in the mixed Northern area of Israel near what was before Hazor, in Galilee and Nazareth, Paul was much more ostracized doctrinally and relegated to the level of a degenerate Jewish influence on the gospels, a self-effacing, introverted rabbi who was not in line with the thinking of the 'New Germany' which the Reich sought to bring about.
By those who wished for an untainted and pure 'Nazi' doctrine in the German Church (DC), Paul, then in all his epistles was at the very least 'suspect' and was thought by the worst to be leading the German spirit into degeneration and a lack of national sense and pride, by teaching such decadent concepts as
"...for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Phil 1:21"
Acceptable Passages the Nazis 'morphed'.
While there are numerous 'reinterpretations' of doctrines by the Deutsche Christen, two that are eminent are that of Romans 13, and the teaching of the sin nature (e.g Rms 6:6).
"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. 2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinace of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."
The passage goes on to talk about being afraid of the 'power' and declares that the rulers or authority of a nation are 'ministers' of God, meaning not clergy, but powers that retain the order of the world appointed by God. Now, this passage is a standard teaching of Christianity, that the State in which one dwells, has God-given authority, and we are to obey that authority as one obeys God. Drive the speed limit, following building codes, live out the Ten Commandments, etc, are all examples of divine appointments of the authority of civil law which we are to obey. For all of Christianity, though there is a constant dialogue regarding obedience when the laws of man, of the State contradict or conflict with the laws and obedience to God as they so often have in history. Zealots who tore the eagle off the Temple in the first century, Christians who refused to toss coins or light incense to Emperors, or even modern day pastors who refuse State registration of churches have all encountered those times when to obey God meant to disobey the State. The Nazis, however left no option for that latter issue.
Romans 13 was used by the Nazis to inculcate the perfect obedience Germans were to strive for. Bonhoeffer, who with Niemoller and others resisted the DC, wrote
The church has three possible ways it can act against the state. First, it can ask the state if its actions are legitimate. Second, it can aid the victims of the state action. The church has the unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society even if they do not belong to the Christian society. The third possibility is not just [to] bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself. [narrated by Klaus Maria Brandauer: excerpt- 2003 documentary film, Bonhoeffer}
However while Hitler applied the tenets of Rms 13 to bring about the 'führerprinzip' in the German Church and people, and while Robert Ley declar
"The Party lays total claim to the soul of the German people...and hence we demand the last German, whether Protestant or Catholic..."
There was nonetheless fervent opposition, and the observation early that Hitler and his men meant to replace the Christian Church and headship of Christ with 'another Gospel' and the headship of the State: To those Church circles that raised their voices in protest this totalitarian structure of the Nazi regime presented a double threat to the very existence of the Church. First, the pseudo-religious and pseudomessianic character of Nazism was calculated to weaken the Church from within and to mislead the Christian community, especially its youth. It became increasingly clear to these circles that the Nazi racial doctrine - which Hitler and also the "Deutsche Christen" had called positive Christianity in their first formulation as early as 5 May 1932 - constituted a kind of additional gospel of messianic redemption that ostensibly strengthened Christianity as an institution and as a religion of revelation. Secondly, this pseudo- messianic and pseudo-religious authority that the Nazi regime arrogated to itself was able by means of its repressive measures to curtail the influence of the Church and even to reduce it to silence. This danger was perceived at an early date by the "Bekenntnissynode der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche" in its Botschaft (Part I, par 2, 5) adopted by the Conference held in Berlin-Dahlem 19-20 October 1934, which stated:
"The National Church that the Reich's bishop has in view under the slogan: One State - one People - one Church, simply means that the Gospel is no longer valid for the German Evangelical Church and that the mission of the Church is delivered to the powers of this world.... The introduction of the Fuehrer principle into the Church and the demand of unconditional obedience based upon this principle are contrary to the Word of Scripture and bind the officials of the Church to the Church regiment instead of to Christ... [3]-(Manybooks: The Grey Book by Johan M. Snoek)
Romans 13 then was acceptable to the Nazis in verses 13:1-8, the edicts to obey the State as divinely ordained, but Hitler had no thought of sharing his 'lordship' with Christ or anything or one else: Fosdick noted Hitler's declaration in On Being Fit to Live With: Sermons on Post-war Christianity
We want no God but Germany
And Bonhoeffer, the Confessing Church pastors and others such as Barth in writing the Barmen Declaration upon the requirement of an absolute loyalty oath, declared what sounds odd now, but was oft repeated by resistors: "No Fuhrer but Christ", i.e. No Lord but Christ. Indeed the Barmen Declaration of those who opposed Hitler declared:
We reject the false doctrine that there could be 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.3. "Let us, however, speak the truth in love, and in every respect grow into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body is joined together." Eph. 4:15-16
and
....We reject the false doctrine that, apart from this ministry, the Church could, and could have permission to, give itself or allow itself to be given special leaders [Führer] vested with ruling authority.[Barmen Declaration]
2Cr 5:17 Therefore if any man [be] in Christ, [he is] a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. Eph 4:22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;
Rom 6:6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with [him], that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
The Nazis however infused the doctrine of the 'Old Man' of sin and corruption with the 'Jew' and an earlier root race. Since the 'old man' is unregenerate, and the Jew is unregenerate in their eyes, the twisted logic is that the 'old man' is the 'Jew Within'. In Nazi doctrine of the DC, when a believer comes to Messiah and is made new, into a 'new man', he 'eradicates' the 'Jew Within'. While it is only a movie, the doctrine is alluded to in a movie called the Ninth Day, the story of Father Jean Bernard, who is allowed out of Dachau to attend a funeral, but must return or his fellow prisoners will be killed. In a discussion asking him to recant his beliefs during his brief time out by a Nazi official, the discussion alludes to the eradication of the 'Jew Within'. Further indication is in the following passage:
...the Jew still abides within us, and that as long as we have not annihilated the Jew within ourselves, our survival will remain in the balance...cited in The Cult of art in Nazi Germany By Eric Michaud, Janet Lloydthe personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew. -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf) cited at http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler.htm
"The internal expurgation of the Jewish spirit is not possible in any platonic way. For the Jewish spirit as the product of the Jewish person. Unless we expel the Jewish people. Unless we expel the Jewish people soon, they will have judaized our people within a very short time." - Jackel, Hitler's Worldview, p. 52; from a speech at Nuremberg, January 13, 1923
We will continue with Part II of "Why the Book of Romans Troubled the Nazis" and examine why so many were persecuted and imprisoned or worse for teaching it, and whether there are implications for today's political climate. ekbest