Spiritual Warfare: Lessons for Lutherans from the Rise of the Third ReichI have five months to complete the paper and have only a vague idea of where it will end up. Some of you at least have borne with me these past several years as I developed my three novels, based upon events of the Great Depression decade leading up to the frightening events of World War II. In the process I have had to look again and again at National Socialism and life in Germany during the 1930s. As a result those events, we Americans were drawn into the most deadly war in the history of mankind, a war that led to the deaths of over 60 million!
As I move through the research I will share some observations with you. I'm especially concerned about this topic because I'm both a Lutheran and have Germanic genealogy on my father's side. My mother traced her lineage back to Great Britain. In any event that makes me an Anglo-Saxon. But what concerns me more is my Lutheran heritage. I've asked myself again and again how the home of the Reformation led by Dr. Martin Luther could become also the home of Nazism? I believe my answers will be found in the Scriptural teachings that there is a spiritual war being waged between God and the forces of darkness.
My research today took me to a book by A R Victor Raj, The HinduConnection:Roots of the New Age, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1995, reviewed in Logia, Vol. V:1 by Pastor Larry Nichols, of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Greenville, Rhode Island. Dr. Raj was raised in India in a Lutheran household and ordained into the holy ministry in 1975. He has taught at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis since 2008.
Dr. Raj tells us that Hinduism is the foundation for the New Age movement. In turn, the New Age movement is the New Testament of Hinduism. He discusses how the philosophy and theology of religion, the study of psychology and sociology all paved the way for a thoroughgoing secularism that was so much a part of the twentieth century and still is in the twenty-first. What interests me is Raj's reference to Madame Helena Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy and seen by many New Agers as the precursor the that movement today.
The New Age movement is gnosticism revived. The church of the fourth century challenged gnosticism by emphasizing the clear teaching of the New Testament that Christ is both God and man, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the heavenly Father. And yet this same Christ came down to be one with us in the person of Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary.
What happened to nineteenth century Lutheranism in Germany that she lost her connection with this historic Christian faith?
"What happened to 19th century Lutheranism?" As Karl Barth pointed out, it was "theology's dependence on modern religious philosophy, its positive attitude to science, culture and art, and its sympathy with mysticism, its stress on 'feeling'." (quoted from the "Oxford Dictionary of The Christian Church"). Barth said there was a need to bring theology back to the principles of the Reformation. .
ReplyDeleteWhat was needed in the 1950's is what is needed today. Again, quoting from The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian church: "It was to be a return to the Prophetic teaching of the Bible, of which he (Barth) believed that the Reformers were the most authentic exponents.
. ...Harold H.