Dr. Reinhold Krause, a Berlin pastor associated with the extreme wing of the Nazi movement, has called down a summary rebuke from the Reichsbishop by a very curious salvo on the Old Testament. He uncompromisingly demanded "elimination of the Old Testament as a religious book . . and rejection of all ecclesiastical leaders who do not stand 100 per cent upon the platform of National Socialism." I can only interpret this demand as a suggestion that there is a heady and dangerous impasse between the political theory of the Old Testament and that of the Hitler party. How far is our thunderer justified?.

Well, let us go for a moment to St. Augustine's treatise on the City of God, v. 19, where the deity, in all wisdom, says, "Per me reges regnant et tyranni per me tenent terram," "through me kings rule and tyrants hold their power." Later, in the Sententiae of St. Isidore of Seville, iii 48, we find a long explanation of the sanctions of the tyrant's rule centering around a dictum of the Prophet Hosea "I shall give them a king in my wrath." Gregory the Great, in his commentary on the Book of Job, insists that the ruler, whatever be his weight or fineness, must not only be supported, but reverenced as a limb of God. More, in his Regulae Pastoralis iii 4, he praises David's forbearance with Saul, and ordains that "admonendi sunt subditi, ne praepositorum suorum vitam temere judicent, si quid eos fortasse reprehensibiliter vident"; in hasty translation "subjects must be admonished not to judge rashly of the conduct of their rulers, even if they see them, by chance, acting reprehensibly." In Ambrosiaster's "Quaestiones Veteris et Novi Testamenti", XXXV, the ruler "Honorandusest, si non propter se, vel propter ordinem"; "he must be honored, if not for himself, then for his position." And so it goes, everywhere in the standard ecclesiastical commentary on the Old Testament, as well as in the Old Testament itself, this same submission to the ruler is ordained.

The Professors Carlyle, in their "Medieval Political Theory in the West," I, 157, trace the doctrine to three causes, the correction of anarchy in the primitive church, the relation of the Church to emperors after Constantine, and the influence of the Old Testament ideas on the sanctity of the ruler. On p. 159, they continue "We may at least reasonably say that the tradition of Israel provided the centre around which such opinion took definite shape and form." Indeed, it is impossible to read the Old Testament and feel that Hitler's autocracy, of single party ballots compounded, would have flourished anywhere so well as in Israel. Dr. Krause should not allow his hatred of the Jews to blind him to that great bulwark to Nazi political theory which the Old Testament provides. He should demand that it be read by every young German, as the Reichsbishop, a cleverer man, has already done. I do not know if his doctorate was earned in Church History. Certainly it was not earned in the College of Propaganda. POLLUX.