ABSTRACT
Luther’s rejection of the Biblical command to love God with one’s heart, mind, and soul derives from his pessimistic anthropology. Helpless as sinners yet “justified” (exculpated) by God, we are ever prone to sin. Denying free will, Luther claims we are beasts of burden ridden either by God or by Satan. His dogma of fides sola, faith alone as receptivity to grace, demotes Christian agape, love as selfless esteem and reverence for God, neighbors, enemies. Faith empowers; love weakens. Not even through Christ nor through the Holy Spirit can one truly love.
These negations lead to his attacks upon the Semitic religions: he mocks Islam in his glosses on al-Koran, and he denounces as “false” all Jews who reject Christ as foretold by their prophets; “true” Jews are those like Paul and himself who accept Christ’s sacrifice for their redemption. These denigrations, not Luther’s toadying to German princes, are his greatest flaw, extending his lovelessness from God to faithful others.
Nietzsche hails Luther’s foundational German via Biblical translation but rejects his Pauline theology as deluded adherence to words not correspondent to facts: faith, grace, God, immortality. The two concur in aesthetics, communal hymns as fervent affirmations of the suffering man-God, Dionysos/Christ.
