The same tendency continues in its most extreme form in the books of Christa Mulack. Making use of the religious psychology of C. G. Jung, she has postulated a concept of God that includes feminine characteristics, commensurate with and inspired by the cabala. This she contrasts with what she calls the Yahwistic picture of God, which, in its patriarchalism, animosity to nature, and belligerence, she sees as the ultimate basis for the general crisis of ecology and civilization in the modem world. She argues that the hatred of women in the Hebrew Bible points to structural similarities between women's path of sacrifice through world history and Jesus' path of sacrifice through the streets of Jerusalem. Jesus himself, who had proved to be an "arrogant Jew" in his encounter with the Canaanite woman, needed the instruction of women to "come to the essence of his teachings. In retrospect, it turns out that the annihilation of the Jewish people in the Holocaust was nothing other than a delayed consequence of the "Yahwistic system of death.""
These opinions, advocated by popular academic authors, have been disseminated on a far greater scale by Franz Alt, a well-known journalist who joined the peace movement from the wing of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) concerned with traditional values. His bestseller, Jesus: Der erste neat' Man (Jesus: The First New Man), strengthens the stereotype of a Jewish religion founded upon violence. Alt bases his case upon the writings of a renowned religious psychologist, Hanna Wolff, who in numerous books contended that Jesus archetypically embodied the principles of modern tolerance and individuation. For Christians, the consequence of this had to be the rejection of Old Testament scriptures, among other things."
This Jungian tradition also marks the Old and New Testament exegeses of Eugen Drewermann, a Paderborn college professor and Catholic priest barred from duty, whose unusually prolific production of lengthy books has amazed the public for years. Against his professed intentions, Drewermann's psychological reading of the Bible disseminates anti-Judaism. He tries to emphasize that the Jews are to be protected from antisemitism. On the basis of his historically uncritical exegesis grounded in narrative archetypes, however, he necessarily arrives at the conclusion that the Pharisees so frequently libeled in the Gospels do, in fact, embody the neurotic, petty, dark side of human existence." A recent careful analysis of his entire oeuvre shows that Drewermann's controversial work is indeed essentially
Of the authors cited above, Drewermann can best claim to be an academically trained theologian. But it is remarkable how, almost without exception, all these authors rely upon dated exegetical and historical analysis-literature that often enough originated in that era when erudite Christians submitted to the National Socialist state, willingly or at least without protest. It is surely not so much a matter of bad will as insufficient sensitivity to the history of German theology when feminist authors indiscriminately adopt the positions of men like the orientalist Hartmut Schmokel or the New Testament scholar Leonard Goppelt," or when a progressive author like Drewermann cites the former SS man Ethelbert Stauffer, of all people. Though purportedly guided by historical and philosophical principles of analysis, the massive critique of Christianity and Christian-Jewish monotheism undertaken by Drewermann and others has developed a momentum that obstructed their ability to critique their own theological tools.
Admittedly, it would be unfair to attribute these erroneous positions solely to insufficient theological training. Because of its critical Christian consciousness, academic feminist theology also stirred up anti-Jewish prejudice. In particular, the Tubingen theologian Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel is unrestrainedly eager in this respect. But it should also be noted that, more recently, serious academic feminist theologians have worked more carefully on these issues; in particular, Katharina Kellenbach, Marie Therese Wacker, and Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz should be mentioned.32
Finally, heated debates about pacifism and Israel during and after the Persian Gulf War should be mentioned. In particular, such debates disrupted the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft Juden and Christen" task force at the German Evangelical Kirc{ten tag-a controversy that found literary expression in a sharp polemical exchange between the Jewish theologian Edna Brocke and the leftist Protestant Jurgen Moltmann.33 Here Moltmann opines that nothing justified the military crushing of Iraq, he questions the justification of a universal concern for the particular existence of Israel, and, finally, he claims that justice must not be sacrificed to partisanship for Israel. Clearly, this prominent leftist Protestant theologian has not grasped the renewal of Christian theology. His conclusion that he is only able to read the Tenach (the Hebrew Bible) and its texts (described as "texts of terror") in the light of the gospel-"as the early in the light of the later ... in this redemptive light they seem shocking to me"-is sheer, classic anti-Judaism, resting upon the substitution theory.'
The Outlook
This conflict shows that the renewal of Christian theology in Germany, particularly Protestant theology, is only in its beginning stages, despite decades of preliminary work by a few. The second EKD study in 1991, "Christen and Juden II," goes further than the first in many respects; it insists energetically that the points of difference may not be repressed and otherwise wrestles with the problems of solidarity with the state of Israel." In Catholicism, whose official pronouncements are less pluralistic, the gradual rethinking process was accompanied primarily by Old Testament exegetical and historical works-works that are equally as thorough as Protestant works, but less radical in their revision of fundamentals."
As both its adherents and opponents have discovered, the renewal of Christian theology in its relation to Judaism involves nothing less than a fundamental revision of Christianity itself and the revision of directions that, in the course of almost two millennia, have led to catastrophic results. Today, at the end of the Christian era, this revision also offers a path of reorientation: the way back to the roots. The other path, primarily advocated by ecumenical theologians, strives for an openness to all religions-from the far eastern systems of belief to the African or Oceanic natural religions. It cannot be said whether a Christianity that has reconsidered its Judaism will have anything in common with a Christianity for whom the Hebrew Bible is neither more nor less significant than the Bhagavad-Gita or the holy book of Maya. It can be predicted, though, that a Christianity that reaches out to all the religions of the world will hardly be in a position to preserve its Jewish roots. Under the banner of National Socialism in Germany, one sector of the church made such an attempt at synthesis. Ultimately, the failure of this approach led to the gradual theological rethinking I have described here.
Chaoter': Robert P. Eric~'~~en and Susannah He!Trhei
1. Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 58.
2. Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Collins, 1992).
3. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996).
4. Gotz Aly, Peter Chroust, Christian Pross, Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene, trans. Belinda Cooper (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Ernst Klee, "Euthanasic" On NS-Staat: Die "Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens" (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1983).
5. Hereafter we will delete quotation marks around "Aryan." Readers should note, however, that it is a racist term, a hypothetical construct with no identifiable relation to reality.
6. For a discussion of these events, see Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). See also Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
7. Philip P. Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood he Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon, and How Goodness Happened There (New York: Harper & Row, 1979).
8. Saul Friedlander, Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good, t
rans. Charles Fullman (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1969).
9. Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy Toward German Jews 1933-1939 (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1970).
10. Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 61.
11. David Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion Under Nazism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 73.
12. Ibid., 122.
13. Ibid., 127, 142.
14. Ian Kershaw, The "Hitler Myth ": Image and Reality in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution, 145; and Martin Broszat, Hitler and the Collapse of Weimar Germany, trans. Volker R. Berghahn (New York: Berg, 1987).
15. Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution, 120-21, 133-34, 146.
16. Ibid., 147.
17. Ibid., 146.
18. Ibid.
19. See, for example, Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel, "The German Churches Face Hitler: An Assessment of the Historiography," Tel Aviver Jahrbuch fur Deutsche Geschichte 1994 (Tel Aviv, 1994), 433-59.
20. See Clemens Vollnhals, Evangelische Kirche and Entnazifizierung 1945-1949: Die Last der nationalsozialistischen Vergangenheit (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1989).
21. Peter Mathesen, The Third Reich and the Christian Churches (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans, 1981), 100.
22. Susannah Heschel, "Church Protests During the Third Reich: A Report on Two Cases," Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 10, no. 2 (1997): 377-88. See, for example, the letter written by Walther Schultz protesting the Nazi Party order that the swastika be used only in official party contexts and be removed from church institutions. Undated correspondence, Berlin Document Center, Schumacher Collection on Church Affairs, T580, R. 42; also in Bundesarchiv Koblenz, BA R4311/150, fiche no. 3.
23. Carl Amery, Die Kapitulation; oder, Der rcal existierende Katholizismus (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1963, 1988); translation published as Capitulation: An Analysis of Contemporary Catholicism, trans. Edward Quinn (London: Melbourne, Sheed and Ward, 1967).
24. Jehovah's Witnesses were referred to in Nazi Germany as Bibelforscher (Bible Students), based on their earlier official name, International Bible Students Association.
25. See, for example, Christine King, The Nazi State and the New Religions: Five Case Studies in Non-Conformity (New York: Edwin Mellon Press, 1982); and also Brian R. Dunn, "The Death's Head and the Watchtower: Jehovah's Witnesses in the Holocaust Kingdom," Jack Fischel and Sanford Pinsker, eds., The Churches' Response to the Holocaust, Holocaust Studies Annual, lI (Greenwood, Fla.: The Penkevill Publishing Company, 1986).
26. Martin Luther, On the Jews and their Crimes (1543).
27. Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
28. Abraham Geiger, Das Judentuni and seine Geschichte (Breslau, 1865), 117-18.
29. Ernest Renan, Life of Jesus, trans. Charles Edwin Wilbour (New York: Carleton, 1864), 300.
30. Ibid., 325.
31. Ibid., 224-25.
32. Geiger, Das Judentum and seine Geschichte, 198.
33. Theodor Keim, Geschichte Jesu nach den Ergebnissen heutiger Wissenschaft (Zurich: Drell Fussli, 1875); Adolf Hausrath, Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte. Erster Ted: Die Zeit Jesu (Heidelberg: Bassermann, 1868); Emil Schi rer, Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Zeitgeschichte (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, 1874); second edition published as Geschichte des jiidischen Volkes On Zeitalter Jesu Christi (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, 1886-1887); 3rd edition published in 1898.
34. Adolf von Harnack, What Is Christianity? trans. Thomas Bailey Saunders (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 47-48; originally published as Das Wesen des Christentums (Berlin, 1900), 30-31.
35. Leo Baeck, "Romantic Religion," in Judaism and Christianity: Essays by Leo Baeck, trans. and ed. by Walter Kaufmann (Philadelphia, 1958),192,189-292; originally published as "Romantische Religion," Festschrift zum 50 jahrigen Bestehen der Hochschule fiir die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Berlin, 1922), 1-48.
36. Rudolf Bultmann, Primitive Christianity in Its Contemporary Setting, trans. by R. H. Fuller (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), 66, 68, 79.
37. Ibid., 72, 77, 78.
38. Ernst Kasemann, "Protest!" Evangelische Theologie 52, no. 2 (1992): 177-78.
39. Theophil Wurm, Letter to Bruderrat, 17 January 1949, Landeskirchlichesarchiv Darmstadt, Bestand 36/73, cited in Christoph Raisig, Die kirchliche Schuld-dns z'erhinderte Gesprdch (Duisburg: Ludwig Steinheim Institut fiir deutsch-jildische Geschichte, forthcoming). All translations are our own unless otherwise indicated.
40. Berlin 1960: Bericht fiber die vierte Tagung der zweiten Synode der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland von 21. bis 26. Februar 1960, published by Auftrag des Rates von der Kirchenkanzlei der EKD, 257; cited by Raisig, Die kirchliche Schuld, 81.
41. Friedrich Wilhelm Marquardt, Von Elend and Heimsuchung der Theologie: Prolegomena zur Dogmatik (Munich: Kaiser, 1988), 138.
42. Jorg Zink, Neue Zehn Gebote (Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag, 1995).
43. Christa Mulack, Jesus: Der Gesalbte der Frauen (Stuttgart: Kreuz, 1987), 155-56.
44. Jurgen Moltmann, Experiences of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 22.
ChaDter Robert P. Eric'-en
1. The issue of willing participation in brutality toward Jews is discussed in Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Collins, 1992); and also in Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996). Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), highlights the surprisingly small number of Gestapo agents in Nazi Germany and the large percentage of indictments and prosecutions initiated on the basis of denunciation by private citizens.
2. Paul Althaus, Die deutsche Stunde der Kirche, 3rd ed. (Gottingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1934), 5. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.
3. Ibid., 19.
4. [bid., 7.
5. Paul Althaus, "Kirche, Volk and Staat," in Kirche, Volk and Staat, ed. Eugen Gerstenmeier (Berlin, 1937), 30.
6. Paul Althaus, Kirche and Staat nach lutherische Lehre (Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1935), 29.
7. See relevant citations in Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 108.
8. Please note that the terms "Aryan" and "non-Aryan" are controversial. They do not represent historical reality, but rather the dreams of antisemites who want to believe in their own racial purity.
9. Paul Althaus and Werner Elert, "Theologische Gutachten fiber die Zulassung von Christen judischer Herkunft zu den Amtern der deutschen evangelischen Kirche," Theologische Bldtter 12, no. 11 (Nov. 1933): 321 ff. The statement signed by Bultmann and the Marburg faculty is found in Theologische Bldtter 12, no. 10 (Oct. 1933): 289ff.
10. Paul Althaus, "Kirche, Volk and Staat," 18.
11. Paul Althaus, Kirche and Volkstum: Der vdlkische Wille im Lichte des Evangeliums (Giitersloh, 1928), 34. Note that this statement precedes the National Socialist regime by five years.
12. Gerhard Althaus, interview by author, 30 September 1982.
13. See, for example, Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler, 142-43.
14. Emanuel Hirsch, "Ich werde Hitler wahlen!" Gottinger Tageblatt, 9-10 April 1932. Hirsch signed this letter on 8 April 1932.
15. Emanuel Hirsch, Das kirchliche Wollen der deutsche Christen (Berlin: Max Grevemeyer,
16. Hirsch's NSDAP membership number was 5,076,856 and his supporting member of the SS number was 216,529. Berlin Document Center, Partei Kanzlei Korrespondenz file.
17. See Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler, 167-77.
18. Interviews with Professors Hermann Dorri
es (14 October 1972), Gotz Harbsmeier (13 October 1972), Joachim Jeremias (14 October 1972), and Wolfgang Trillhaas (2 November 1982).
19. See my discussion of these events in Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler, 191-93.
20. Hans Martin Muller is one of those advocating a rehabilitation of Hirsch's work. See Christliche Wahrheit and neuzeitliches Denken: Zu Emanuel Hirschs Leben and Werk (Tubingen: Katzmann, 1984). Muller also edited and introduced the fiftieth anniversary edition of Hirsch's work, Das Alte Testament and die Predigt des Evangeliums (Tubingen: Katzmann, 1986).
21. Emanuel Hirsch, Die gegenznartige geistige Lage tm Spiegel philosophischer and theologischer Besinnung (Gottingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1934), 114.
22. Ibid., 161-62.
23. See Wolfgang Tilgner, Volksnomostheologie and Schopfungsglaube: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966).
24. Emanuel Hirsch, Deutschlands Schicksal, 2nd ed. (Gottingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1922), 142-43.
25. Emanuel Hirsch, "Theologisches Gutachten in der Nichtarierfrage," Deutsche Theologie, 5 (May 1934), 182-92.
26. Emanuel Hirsch, Das Wesen des Christentums (Weimar, 1939), 158-65.
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