The Deadly Deception Called Antisemitism

Just as a cancerous cell will grow and metastasize if not rooted out of the host body, so does the deadly deception called antisemitism. This cancer continues to grow larger and larger until it smothers everything in its path, feeding on the many deceptive lies that have been swallowed by the masses throughout history.

What is Antisemitism?

Antisemitism is the prejudice against or hatred of Jewish people, according to a series of articles located in the Holocaust Encyclopedia, which you can read here.

Antisemitism is a form of bigotry and racism. It often takes the form of discrimination against and persecution of Jews. Antisemitism has repeatedly led to serious and deadly violence against Jewish people, which is why I call it the deadly deception.

This deadly deception, antisemitism, drove the Holocaust. How? By the spreading of cancerous lies and propaganda, called the Big Lie, coined by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. These were deadly lies that were repeated over and over and eventually accepted as truth.

The Holocaust (1933–1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators. Which, unfortunately, included the Church.

The Deadly Deception of Antisemitism in the Early Church

The Scriptures state in Deuteronomy 19:15, “One witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits; by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established.”

Below are 3 “witnesses” whose writings reveal how the early Church Fathers fueled the deadly cancer of antisemitism. Links are provided so you can continue to read their findings.

The Three Witnesses

#1- Ed Gaskin

In a Times of Israel article titled The History of the Church and Antisemitism Ed Gaskin wrote:

“Religious institutions, which should serve as moral beacons, have instead often been used to justify profoundly immoral and evil acts. From the early Church Fathers to Martin Luther and the Nazi-era ‘German Christians,’ Christian doctrine has been wielded both as a weapon of persecution and as a tool of resistance. Throughout history, biblical interpretations have reinforced discrimination, leading to forced conversions, expulsions, pogroms, and, ultimately, the Holocaust.

During the rise of Nazi Germany, the majority of Christians either supported Hitler or remained silent—choosing complicity over moral courage. As Christianity distanced itself from its Jewish roots, hostility toward Jews became ingrained in Christian teachings.”

Gaskin explains:

Antisemitism within Christianity did not emerge in the earliest days of the church but developed as Christian theology evolved and political power was consolidated. In the Apostolic period, there was little evidence of widespread antisemitism among early Christians. However, as Christianity distanced itself from its Jewish roots, hostility toward Jews became ingrained in Christian teachings.

The early Church Fathers played a significant role in shaping these views. They blamed the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Jesus, reinforcing the belief that Jews were an inherently sinful, apostate people…By the third century, the fusion of church and state meant that dissent from Christian doctrine was equated with treason against the ruling government.

By the fourth century, open hostility toward Jews became commonplace in Christian preaching. One of the most virulent voices was John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, who likened synagogues to pagan temples and described them as brothels and dens of vice. This demonization made Jews perpetual outsiders in Christian society, paving the way for violent discrimination.

Read more of his eye-opening article here.

#2- Mitch Glaser

Mitch Glaser, a Jewish follower of Jesus Christ, wrote in his article titled Jewish Evangelism in Light of a Negative History states:

“The primary reason Jewish people today will not easily consider the possibility that Jesus is the Messiah is because of the historically negative relationship Jewish people have had with Christianity. Growing up in a Jewish home, I was sure of two things: that Christians did not like Jews, and Jesus was not the Messiah… and I knew that the two were intertwined.” 

Glaser goes on to say:

“The seeds of antisemitism were sown by the antagonism of early Christian leaders toward Jews and the Jewish religion. A famous example is John “Chrysostom” (Golden-Mouth), Archbishop of Constantinople (349-ca. 407), whose stirring sermons moved many listeners. But when he turned to Jews and Judaism, his mouth was anything but golden.

From Origen to Augustine to Luther and Calvin, harsh and negative rhetoric was often used against the Jewish people by Christian leaders. This attitude towards the chosen people reached a high point in Luther’s treatise entitled On the Jews and Their Lies, where he called for the burning of Jewish religious texts and more.”

“Their private houses must be destroyed and devastated; they could be lodged in stables. Let the magistrates burn their synagogues… Let them be forced to work… We will be compelled to expel them like dogs in order not to expose ourselves to incurring divine wrath and eternal damnation from the Jews and their lies… We are at fault in not slaying them.”   – from History of Antisemitism: Is This Part of the Church?

Read more of Glaser’s article here.

#3 – Ron Cantor

Our third witness, Ron Cantor, wrote the following article, titled “Reconciling the Antisemitism of the Church Fathers with Their Devotion to Messiah,” for the magazine Kesher, a Journal of Messianic Judaism, on April 30, 2023. In it, he stated:

In this paper, I will seek to reconcile these two realities. Can you love Jesus and hate his people? …the anti-Jewish sentiment out of the mouths of those who are considered heroes of the faith is shocking—particularly when Paul argues that the Jewish people are to be loved for bringing the gospel to the nations (Romans 1:16, 11:28). We have to ask: will the Messiah return for an antisemitic Bride?

Disgracefully, “for nearly two thousand years… the Christian world relentlessly dehumanized the Jew, enabling the Holocaust, the ultimate consequence of this dehumanization, to take place.”²

Abraham a Sancta Clara, the populist seventeenth-century Viennese Catholic preacher… claimed, “After Satan, Christians have no greater enemies than the Jews…Abraham a Sancta Clara believed that Jews had changed God into the devil and were themselves devils. Thus, at the intellectual heights of European Christendom, as in its lower depths, Jews ceased to be living human beings.³

We can find such feelings in the writings of Luther, and they trace back to the Church Fathers.

“Origen, St. Jerome, Chrysostom, and others argued that God was punishing the Jews with perpetual slavery for their murder of Jesus.”⁴

Cantor begins by showing that the Fathers had a genuine relationship with God. He states: “At least their rhetoric would lead us to conclude that.” Then he shares comments by the same men regarding the Jewish people. He selected Justin Martyr, Origen, John Chrysostom, and Augustine. All of these men, to greater and lesser degrees, displayed passion and conviction for the gospel.

The Deadly Deception of the Early Church Fathers

Justin Martyr

According to Cantor, in Charles McGrath’s tome, Christian History, he explains, in the most benign way, Justin’s argument for why God supposedly moved the Sabbath to Sunday.

“Justin explains that the community gathers on Sunday, or the first day of the week, both because it was the day of creation and because this was the day on which Jesus rose from the dead.”⁶  Sounds innocent enough until you read Justin’s actual words, addressed to the Jews of his time.

The custom of circumcising the flesh, handed down from Abraham, was given to you as a distinguishing mark, to set you off from other nations and from us Christians. The purpose of this was that you and only you might suffer the afflictions that are now justly yours; that only your land be desolated, and your cities ruined by fire, that the fruits of your land be eaten by strangers before your very eyes; that not one of you be permitted to enter your city of Jerusalem. Your circumcision of the flesh is the only mark by which you can certainly be distinguished from other men… As I stated before, it was by reason of your sins and the sins of your fathers that, among other precepts, God imposed upon you the observance of the Sabbath as a mark.⁷

In reality, Justin saw the Jewish Sabbath and circumcision much like the “Jewish Badge”⁸ (the yellow armband with the Star of David) that Nazis, and the French and British before them, forced Jews to wear. People could distinguish Jews from non-Jews to persecute them. And why was this distinguishing mark given to the Jewish people? “Because of your sins,” says Justin.

Martin Luther

For whatever reason, academia has often ignored the anti-Jewish sentiment, not only in the Church Fathers but also in church history. Why?

Authors Charles McGrath and Stanley Burgess deal extensively with Martin Luther in their books, yet neither one mentions the virulent anti-Semitism of his later years or his book entitled The Jews and their Lies. Below is one of the more well-known quotes from the book:

First, their synagogues should be set on fire… Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed… Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer-books and Talmuds… Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more…Fifthly, passport and traveling privileges should be absolutely forbidden to the Jew…Sixthly, they ought to be stopped from usury [charging interest on loans]…Seventhly, let the young and strong Jews and Jewesses be given the flail, the ax, the hoe, the spade, the distaff, and spindle, and let them earn their bread by the sweat of their noses…

We ought to drive the rascally lazy bones out of our system…Therefore, away with them…To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden—the Jews. ¹⁰

Origen

Origen blames the entire Jewish race for the death of Jesus.

We may thus assert in utter confidence that the Jews will not return to their earlier situation, for they have committed the most abominable of crimes, in forming this conspiracy against the Savior of the human race . . . hence the city where Jesus suffered was necessarily destroyed, the Jewish nation was driven from its country, and another people was called by God to the blessed election. ⁴⁸

Origen “formulates a negative judgment against the Jews of his time, who are, he says, ‘entirely abandoned, having nothing of what they formerly held sacred, not even a sign that there is anything divine among them’ and are ‘punished more than others’ for their failure to recognize the one their prophets had foretold.” ⁴⁹

John Chrysostom

In my research, I found many agree that the most vicious rhetoric, however, comes from John Chrysostom, known as the Golden-Mouth.

Christians from his congregation in Antioch attended synagogue and often celebrated Jewish holidays alongside members of the Jewish community. Likewise, Jews were invited to participate in the celebrations of the Christian community.”⁵⁰

Wow, what a novel ministry idea. However, Chrysostom felt threatened…what if Christians could be swayed?

According to the Scriptures, “Out of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). Therefore, Chrysostom was spewing deadly deception as he stated:

The synagogue is worse than a brothel, it is the den of scoundrels and …wild beasts…the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults…the refuge of brigands and debauchees, and the cavern of devils. It is a criminal assembly of Jews…a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ, a house worse than a drinking shop…a den of thieves, a house of ill fame, a dwelling of iniquity, the refuge of devils, a gulf, an abyss of perdition… I would say the same things about their souls… As for me, I hate the synagogue… I hate the Jews for the same reason. ⁵¹

Chrysostom also delivered a series of homilies “Against the Jews.”

Of the homilies, James Parkes writes that Chrysostom preached that “God hates [the Jews], and indeed has always hated them. But since their murder of Jesus, he allows them no time for repentance.”⁵² 

Here are some direct quotes:

• God hates the Jews, and on Judgment Day, He will say to those who sympathize with them: “Depart from me, for you have had doings with My murderers!” (Sermon VI)
• How dare Christians have the slightest doings with Jews, those most miserable of all men! They are lustful, rapacious, greedy, perfidious bandits, pests of the universe. (Sermon VI)
• Why are the Jews degenerate? Because of their hateful assassination of Christ. (Sermon VI)
• I hate the synagogue and abhor it. (Sermon I)
• We must hate both them and their synagogue. (Sermon I)

Augustine

The influence of Augustine on Christian anti-Judaism was profound. He used theology to shape “the Jew.” Jeremy Cohen calls this the hermeneutical Jew.

“The Christian idea of Jewish identity crystallized around the theological purpose the Jew served in Christendom.” ⁵³

Augustine and many of the other Christian theologians who will increasingly build upon a Christian theology of Judaism, or more properly, anti-Judaism, never encountered actual Jews. They were responding to an image, a hermeneutical Jew, a Jew that was conjured up in their minds based primarily on their reading of Scripture. ⁵⁴

Augustine says:

By the evidence of their own scriptures, they bear witness for us that we have not fabricated the prophecies about Christ…It follows that when the Jews do not believe in our scriptures, their scriptures are fulfilled in them while they read them with blind eyes… It is in order to give this testimony which, in spite of themselves, they supply for our benefit by their possession and preservation of those books [of the Old Testament] that they are themselves dispersed among all nations, wherever the Christian Church spreads. ⁵⁵

In Closing

How sad that it did not take Satan long to twist God’s Word against God’s chosen nation, Israel. Satan is the master of deception after all. His deception is off the charts today. He knows his time is short. In his mind, the only way to stop Jesus from returning is to wipe Israel off the map. Are you guilty of helping him with this goal? If so, it’s not too late to repent and follow Jesus Christ. Here is how to begin your new life.

However, the actual beginnings of hatred of the Jewish people can be found in the book of Genesis. We will look into that area in my next post.

Wondering what was Cantor’s conclusion to the question Can you love Jesus and hate his people? Find his answer here.

Until next time. I am Passionately Loving Jesus, the Anchor of my soul!

Maranatha!

Sources

• A History of Antisemitism. This is a modern evil with very deep roots.
• Holocaust Encyclopedia Series: Antisemitism – US Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Antisemitism in History: From the Early Church to 1400
• Reconciling the Antisemitism of the Church Fathers with Their Devotion to Messiah
• The History of the Church and Antisemitism
• History of Antisemitism: Is This Part of the Church?