Abstract
Luther’s political ethics has often been misinterpreted as teaching a dualistic separation between church and state which caused the believer to divorce religion and politics and to avoid involvement in public policy, indeed to remain passive even toward unjust government. Such a view of the Reformer’s teaching on the “two kingdoms,” or on the secular and spiritual realms, has included the charge that it paralyzed the German church so as to impede any viable political intervention in Hitler’s totalitarian regime.