“GERMAN CHRISTIANS.”

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 335, 16 January 1937, Page 6

“GERMAN CHRISTIANS.”

Truth Of Bible Not Important

To Lutherans.

It. is difficult for the ordinary nonGerman to take seriously the effort that is being made in Geimany to prove that the German is a pure Aryan, remarked the Rev. John Paterson, Stratford, when the cable, published yesterday, stating that a new version of the Gospel of St John has been issued by the Bremen group of the Nazi minority in the Evangelical Church, who are self-styled “German Christians,“ was referred to him by a “Central Press” .representative this morning. This movement, along with its ac-

companiment, the violent hostility to the Jew, had been taken up by a section of the Lutheran 'Church in Germany and part of this movement is the re-editing of the New Testament and the throwing overboard of the whole of the Old Testament, continued Mr. Paterson. Lutheran Church. It was to be remembered that the Lutheran Church had always been violently national in its outlook. At the reformation Luther had accepted the principle that the rules of a state could distinctly fix the religion of his subjects and the Lutheran. Church has always been subservient to the State, even teaching that the State as such was not bound by normal principles demanded of the individual. That the right of the State to exist over-rode other normal considerations. German Christians. This principle the “German Christians” were carrying out at the behest of Hitler, but it was thoroughly in accord with their philosophy. For at least two generations, a very large number of leading theologians in Germany had held that religious ideas are not related to historical fact but to their value for spiritual purposes. That, for instance, it matters little whether the facts of thq New Testament are historical or not, their value depending entirely upon their effectiveness in embodying moral and spiritual ideas. Consequently these men found no difficulty in altering the story of the Gospels to suit their present ideals. To the ordinary man such playing the fool with historical documents was an absurdity but looked at with the peculiar point of view of these German theologians it was a perfectly valid method of re-arranging history to suit their own purposes. Gospels of John. They felt particularly at liberty to . take this course with the Gospel of John which they regard as being a spiritual romance written originally with little respect for historical fact to teach certain doctrines which developed in a school of Christian mystics thriving in the second century A.D. The< whole movement was akin to the British Israel theory held by so many Englishmen to-day, said Mr. Paterson in conclusion. What had happened was that since the Great War blatant jingoism had become so discredited that in order to make itself respectable it seems to camouflage itself with the Arus of religion.