Albert Einstein’s views on Jesus, the Gospels and the Christian Church
Many people use Albert Einstein as an ICON for Science and rightly so. But many do not know his views on Christianity. No, he was not a Christian but he held certain views about Jesus, the Gospels and the Christian Church. In an interview in the Saturday Evening Post, we find the following dialogue:
“To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?
As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.
Have you read Emil Ludwig’s book on Jesus?
Emil Ludwig’s Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot [a witty remark].
You accept the historical existence of Jesus?
Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”
~Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929
Einstein wrote a letter to the Episcopal Bishop Edward R. Wells in 1945 concerning the behavior of the Christian Church during the Holocaust. He stated:
“Being a lover of freedom I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Only the church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”
~Baltimore Evening Sun, April 13, 1979
