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MARTIN LUTHER: “CONCERNING THE JEWS” BY DR. HANS WIERSMA AUGSBURG UNIVERSITY, MINNEAPOLIS, MN Luther’s original intent with the 95 Theses was to arrange an academic debate regarding the effectiveness of “indulgences.” Luther’s critique of the Church’s practice of selling what amounted to a “fastpass” to heaven struck a chord all over the Holy Roman Empire. Within weeks of their initial appearance, the 95 Theses were printed and reprinted all over Europe. Over the next three years, Luther’s criticisms of the Church’s official teachings expanded to other, more central subjects. Consequently, Luther was called on the carpet. He was given several opportunities to renounce his writings and recant his teachings but he would not. Luther’s teachings, centered on the notion that “a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law” (Romans 3:28), inspired other reform-oriented teachers and political leaders. The Protestant Reformation was on! I was 25 years old when I read my first Luther biography: Luther the Reformer: The Story of the Man and His Career, by James M. Kittelson. The book had been recommended to me by a friend. I read it as a recent college graduate who had little to no idea what he wanted to do with his life. Fast-forward twelve years. I found myself returning to school to begin doctoral studies in Church History under the tutelage of—wait for it—James M. Kittelson, the man who wrote the Luther biography that had so influenced me more than a decade earlier. I co-authored the second edition of the book. My parents immigrated from The Netherlands to the U.S.A. in 1958; I was born in 1961, making me a first generation American. Growing up, my parents would tell many stories about the old country, about our diverse European ancestry, about life in Holland, about surviving the Nazi occupation, and about the difficult years of rebuilding after the Second World War. One story about my ancestry involves how my maternal line went from Jewish to Catholic to Protestant in just three generations. My great-grandmother’s Jewish family was converted to Catholicism under persecutions in the eastern part of Poland. When my great-grandmother grew up, she married a Catholic man and moved westward, ending up in The Netherlands and giving birth to a daughter—my grandmother. Because of the early death of my great-grandmother, my grandmother was placed in a convent. My grandmother, therefore, was raised to become a nun. However, a copy of Martin Luther’s Commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans had been smuggled into the convent. As the story goes, my grandmother read Luther’s work in secret and, on the day she finished, walked out of the convent never to return. She later married an Amsterdam banker, a Protestant (my grandfather) and eventually, I became a Lutheran pastor who went on to get a PhD in Church History with a specialty in the Reformation and Martin Luther. JUNE 2017 | THE CHOSEN PEOPLE | 4 ILLUSTRATION IS THE ‘RINTFLEISH’ POGROM IN SOUTHERN GERMANY 1298


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