Paul the Apostle in the Eyes of the Nazis

Paul the Rabbi

Saint Paul the Apostle, came to Salvation and belief on the Damascus road as the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him on his way to persecute Christians. Overwhelmed by the divine, he went on to write the Epistles, or letters to the Church which became the instruction and teaching for Christians for the next 2000 years. An educated scholar, he was either in the Sanhedrin or in line for the Sanhedrin and had been educated "at the feet of Gamaliel", the great Rabbi. His change from persecutor to one of the most surrendered servants of the Living God was remarkable. The Church has held him as a defining example for all Christians throughout time.

The Nazis however were not enamored of Paul at all, and found his influence in Christianity deeply disturbing. They referred to him as the "Rabbi Paul" to emphasize his 'jewishness' and decried his Jewish influence and call for selflessness as dangerous to Nazi Goals......

In a 1933 speech and subsequent writings, Goebbels decried Paul as having an 'inferiority complex' which was dangerous to the morale of the German Christian, and found Paul to teach in ways which would lead away from the goals of the Third Reich.

Part of the confusion for Germany's Christians at the time was a morass of mixed messages: some such as Deutsche Christen [DC] promoted the erasure of the Pauline epistles in Christian teachings; others, subjected them to humanistic interpretations, such as those in the Higher Criticism school [Bultmann] while others of the time kept to traditional but somewhat more liberal or mainline interpretations. The great pressure on Protestantism though to conform to the beliefs, objectives and unity of the Reich, saw a lessening of the teachings of the Apostle and a reinterpretation of the Christ of the Gospels. Among the criticisms and teachings regarding Paul and his epistles were the following:

Paul was seen as having an "inferiority complex" which was reflected in his writings. By this, the Nazis meant that he taught 'dying to self' a central theme in the Gospels and Epistles. The notion of counting others above oneself and surrender were distorted as demoralizing self abuse by the Nazis. Paul as Rabbi-Paul was a Jewish rabbi, and hence to the Nazis, reprobate. The Jews were seen not only as political foes bringing in degenerate culture and arts, and communism, but they were also seen by the Nazis as racial inferiors: they were part of an earlier root race which hindered a utopian realization for the Aryans. Paul was disparaged with all the negative terms the Jews of Germany faced. It is interesting to note that Jesus the Jew was 'rewritten' and reinterpreted as an Aryan with possibly a gentile father unknown to Mary, but the Nazis retained the jewishness of Paul and called for the ommission of the teaching of Epistle principles

How dangerous were the teachings of Paul? Dangerous enough in the Book of Romans for the Nazis to imprison pastors who preached it The book of Romans, for those not familiar, deals with the place of national Israel and believing Israel in relationship to believing Gentiles. Chapters 9-12, deal particularly with the critical doctrine of a slumbering Israel which will be brought to fruition in the future, in which the mysterious promise "All Israel shall be saved" will be kept in God's Divine wisdom. This teaching was dangerous to the Third Reich, as was the teaching of the ministry of mercy and longsuffering towards the Jews, and their place in history. Paul at one point concludes: "Hast God cast away the people whom he foreknew? God Forbid." and goes on to speak of their establishment in the fine equilibrium of God's timing, while the Gentiles are brought in who will believe. The book of Romans also talks about the oracles, promises, Word, and Messiah being distinctively Jewish, and necessarily Jewish, and about Christians being 'grafted' on to the vine or branch of Israel.

A Pastor is Beaten and Jailed for Teaching Romans 11

In 1937, with the encroachment on the German Church [Lutheranism], as mentioned elsewhere, the Church divided into what came to be known as the "confessing church", which stayed true to the principles and longheld doctrines of Salvation by Grace and Sola Scriptura¹; the 'DC' or 'DCK', the Deutsche Christen Kirche or German Christian Church which was an outright integration of National Socialism and Christianity, and a subgroup, the Thuringians, who held to some compromise and proposed the integration with the State which Kerrl and the Nazis went on later to use as a template for their foot in the church's door. In that year, Members of the Confessing Church wrote to Rudolf Hess complaining about the persecution of one of their pastors, , Pastor Zedelacher in Hamburg, an Austrian, regarding a Bible Study on Romans which he had conducted for which he was interoggated, beaten and later imprisoned. His crime? He portrayed, as most who teach the passage that Jesus was a Jew, that God was not finished with Israel, and that Christ's sonship of God "is a fundamental dogma of Christianity from the standpoint of the confessing evangelical Christianity. Their appeal for his release was based upon laws of religious liberty still extant under the Third Reich for German, Aryan citizens. However, these were also the points Kerrl argued with: Christ was an Aryan, the Jews had no place any longer, and the 'New' progressive Christianity would allow the Nazi platform to move forward.

The letter contains strong and demanding statements from the Evangelical sector. The release of the Romans-teaching pastor came upon the intervention of the Austrian consulate, but Zedelacher was expelled from the country on March 31, 1937.

Pauline Doctrines Which Came Under Attack

Much of this came around the same time that the Barmen Declaration was written, called the "shibboleth of the Christian faith" in which standard doctrines regarding Jesus' divinity and sovereignty and salvation were upheld as fundamental to the Christian faith by Barth who wrote from Switzerland. The tenets of the Pauline Epistles were under virulent attack by the Nazis, because they could not be rewritten or re-interpreted easily to fit Nazi doctrine, and because they dealt often with the Jews, the Jewishness of Jesus, and the Christians relationship with the Jews, which was taught as merciful and amiable. Goebbels, Hess, Hitler and others saw such teachings as dangerous at a time they were trying to dismiss all 'Jewish influence" including eradicating the Old Testament and Jewishness of Jesus. (seeMarcionism . Pastors who cooperated with the State, stayed away from the Pauline epistles, and Paul himself as mentioned before, was decried as an introverted rabbi whose teachings would undermine German morale. Remnants of such teachings as the Aryan Jesus (usually described as 'Aramaic', the area and language used in the part of Israel He was from), and the 'replacement of Israel' or "new testament only" Christianity remain today although usually not as caustic as then, although potentially still so. However, a careful study of Romans, Hebrews and other books pertaining to the Jews show God's clear unerased favor, and Jesus' jewishness is hard to question as his followers were Jewish as were his opponents, He taught from the Torah, and was constantly in the Synagogue or Temple, a feat unlikely if He had been less than what He said he was. The timelessness of the Epistles has remained undaunted though, and while false influence crept in during those years, true doctrine prevailed. to be continued