Is Benke Telling the Truth About Luther and Allah?

By: Rev. Jack Cascione
If we are to believe Atlantic District President David Benke, Luther would have prayed with those who worship Allah, Baal, Dagon, and Ashteroth as an act of Evangelism.

With Benke's interpretation of Christianity, we wonder why Jesus didn't pray in the Roman Temples or in the Arena with those praying to idols.  Why didn't Paul pray on the Acropolis and Elijah with the Priests of Baal as an act of Evangelism?

LCMS Atlantic District President, David Benke, defended his praying with Moslems in Yankee Stadium to a layman from Kokomo, Indiana with the following statement.

"The Muslim God is also the true God (there IS only ONE TRUE GOD, right?) but worshipping [worshipped] in an inadequate way."

Latter Benke defended his position with the following quote from the Luther's explanation at the end of the Apostles' Creed in the Large Catechism as follows:

"These articles of the Creed, therefore, divide and distinguish us Christians from all other people on earth.  All who are outside the Christian church, whether heathen, Turks, Jews, or false Christians and hypocrites, EVEN THOUGH THEY BELIEVE IN AND WORSHIP ONLY THE ONE, TRUE GOD, nevertheless do not know what his attitude is toward them.  They CANNOT BE CONFIDENT OF HIS LOVE AND BLESSING. Therefore they remain in eternal wrath and damnation, for they do not have the Lord Christ, and, besides, they are not illuminated and blessed by the gifts of the Holy Spirit." Luther wrote these words in 1529.  Benke added the emphasis.

Four years earlier, Luther wrote three pages on this same subject in his Commentary on Deuteronomy, Volume 9, pages 52-55.

The question is, "Did Luther mean what Benke means or has Benke misapplied
Luther's words?"

Rather than talk about the Moslems, Luther raises the question of idolatry about the Canaanites, and the Moabites in the same manner.  He writes: "The Moabites and other nations did not worship demons because they knew that they were demons, but they believed that they were serving the true God."

Luther says, "But their godlessness consisted in this, that they took over the true name of the true God and worshiped Him with ceremonies not commanded by God but devised by themselves."

Again Luther says, "And the god whom they so devise and shape for themselves is not the true God but an idol of their heart, under which they worship the devil, the teacher and father of this lie (John 8:44). And so with their false imagination they indeed worship idols and demons under the name of the true God."

Luther explains why all those without faith in Christ, including Moslems, practice Godless worship as follows:

"Therefore where there is no Word of God, there is no true knowledge of God; where there is no knowledge of God, there are godless ignorance, imaginations, and opinions about the true God, as though He were pleased by this and that which we choose strictly for ourselves. And all these are godless forms of worship. Through them one does not attain the true God but dreams and idols of the heart in His place and name. These, however, are strange gods, namely, demons who teach these opinions."

In support of his view that the heathen like the Moabites and Moslems worship the true God, Luther sites Romans 1:21. "This is what the apostle touches on in Rom. 1:21 ff.: 'For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened, etc.' I say they knew God, that is, THEY HAD THE KNOWLEDGE THAT THERE IS SOME KIND OF DIETY. The efforts with which they worshiped idols in the place of God demonstrate this. For if they had not had a knowledge of a deity, they could not have assigned deity to idols or applied to it the name of God."

For Luther saying "Allah" is not better than saying "Baal," or "Dagon."  He writes: "To these they give different names, and they call God now Baal, now Ashteroth, now Dagon, etc., just as we do when we call God Benedict, Francis, Dominic, and chiefly the pope; . . ."

When Luther says that the heathen worship the true God, he means that they recognize there is some kind of God out there.  However, they are not really worshipping the true God in the sense that they are having their prayers answered by the true God.

1 Timothy 2:5 "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;"

Acts 4:12 "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."

Benke writes as if the Moslems are somehow being heard by God and actually worshipping Him according to the Law instead of the Gospel.  This is totally false.  They are worshipping an unknown deity according to Romans 1:21.

The Lutheran Confessions teach, that the highest worship is the forgiveness of sins.  Moslems have no true worship of God. "The woman came with the opinion concerning Christ that with Him the remission of sins should be sought. This worship is the highest worship of Christ." (Concordia Triglott page 163)

When Luther says that Moslems are worshipping the true God he doesn't mean they are receiving anything or even worshipping in an "inadequate way". Their prayers violate the First Commandment, are void, and God does not answer.  No one comes to God except through faith in Christ.

Benke twisted Luther's meaning as if there was something valid in Moslem worship and Allah is indeed another valid name for the true God.

Luther writes: "Therefore every man who falls away from the knowledge of Christ necessarily rushes into idolatry; for he must invent a form for God that does not exist anywhere, as the Carthusian trusts that because of his observance of his monastic rule, and the Turk that because of his observance of the Koran, he pleases God and will receive from Him the reward for his labor." (Luther's Works (American Edition, 26:396-399.)

And again Luther writes: "Thus a Jew who observes the Law with the intention of making himself pleasing to God through this obedience is not worshiping the God of his fathers; on the contrary, he is an idolater, adoring a dream and an idol of his own heart that does not exist anywhere." (Luther's Works American Edition, 26:396-399.)

February 26, 2003