1.) There are those who try to style Hitler out to be some kind of Christian and/or hero that we should really admire since he stood up against the Bolsheviks. We can certainly admit that the evil of Hitler was to be preferred to the evil of Stalin and maybe even the evil of FDR and Churchill but to say that Hitler was “Christian” or a “Hero” is just nonsense. The man says here, “I do not care in the slightest about the articles of faith.” To not care in the slightest about the articles of faith makes one a anti-Christ. Hitler was nobody for Christians to esteem and the last thing we want is any form of German National Socialism to be resurrected anywhere in the West. Did you see the word “Socialism?”
Of course my convictions run deep here because a German National Socialism policy here would mean the required murder of my Cerebral Palsy Grand-daughter by the National Socialist State.
2.) If a modern Hitler showed up at Westminster-Cal. @ Escondido and said in a chapel service; “I’m not having clerics sticking their noses in worldly affairs,” the chapel may well collapse from the resounding reverberations from the Amens coming from the faculty. A modern Hitler is just the kind of Magistrate that the R2K chaps could get behind.
3.) Another reason we see to eschew those who want to praise Hitler is the fact that he says here that the state is to be the absolute Master. Typical Fascism. Everything inside the State. Nothing outside the State. Biblical Christians worth their salt want nothing to do with that kind of mindset. Biblical Christians do not concur that the State is to be the absolute Master. Biblical Christians insist that God has ordained different jurisdictions of authority where sovereignty is entrusted to different covenantal heads as that sovereignty is handled consistent with God’s revealed Law-Word. Magistrates handle swords. Fathers handle rods. Pastors/Elders handle keys. The state is not the absolute Master.
You want to be R2K? Then live with the idea that should a Hitler come along with this mindset you are his lackeys.
You wouldn’t take scripture out of context to reinforce a broader theology. Neither should you take Adolf Hitler’s words out of context to claim he was advocating for an absolute power of the state.
“The best kind of organization is not that which places a large intermediary apparatus between the leadership of the movement and the individual followers, but rather that which functions with the smallest possible intermediary apparatus; for it is the task of such an organization to transmit a certain idea which originated in the brain of one individual to a multitude of people, and to supervise the manner in which this idea is being put into practice. From any and every point of view, therefore, the organization is only a necessary evil. At best it is only a means to an end; at the worst, an end in itself. Since the world produces more mechanically-minded beings than idealists, it will always be easier to develop the form of an organization than its substance; that is to say, the ideals which it is meant to serve.” p. 240. [ also see Calhoun’s, ‘Speech on the Force Bill’]
Adolf Hitler, ‘Mein Kampf’, Murphy translation
For National Socialism the state was not and end in itself. This distinguishes them from the Italian fascists.