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Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Concordia Publishing House and false honoring of Walther - missing books!

I have just discovered a most troubling omission by Concordia Publishing House (CPH) regarding their current offerings of C.F.W. Walther's writings. Not only have they repackaged the previous offerings thereby causing confusion but they have apparently dropped a major publication entitled Essays For The Church in 2 volumes published in 1992.  Here are pictures of the covers of both volumes:

These are still in some libraries:
  • Concordia Theological Seminary (CTS), Walther Library here
  • WorldCat here shows 23 libraries worldwide with these 2 volumes, but with wrong cover picture (see my review there).
  • Valparaiso University Library here
  • Concordia Seminary Library, St. Louis2 (COSL) BX8011.W2913 1992 here [updated Dec. 22, 2013]
It is not even listed with Amazon which lists most books even if they don't sell them.  [updated 2017-03-05:] It is now listed on Amazon here. Volume II (1877 - 1886) is incorrectly identified in Google Books and CTS Walther Library with an incorrect picture of the front cover!  Volume I (1857-1879) is correctly identified in Google Books but without a cover picture.

I can hardly believe this... these 2 volumes were the largest publication of English translations of Walther's convention essays.
So much of Walther's works have not been translated - several books of sermons, articles in Der Lutheraner and Lehre und Wehre, and several more essays.  But at least these 2 volumes of Essays for the Church were a major work published by the modern English LC-MS... and now they are not available for purchase.  But CPH sees fit to publish President Matthew Harrison's recent translations of Walther's essays and letters, a rather small sampling.  And Concordia Publishing House presumes to honor Walther with their "bicentennial celebration"! Maybe someone should ask the head of CPH, chief "cyberbrethren", why the inconsistency.
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2 comments:

  1. Rev. Paul T. McCainMarch 14, 2012 at 4:49 PM

    It would have been helpful for you to have checked with CPH you would have been informed that we are presently engaged in releasing a new set of Walther's works, pulling together all the previously different formats, shapes, sizes, into a consistent set of books. "Essays for the Church" will be included in this new series.

    You might want to modify your blog post to reflect this information.

    ReplyDelete
  2. BackToLutherMarch 21, 2012 at 6:34 AM

    I will not modify my original blog post and will keep it as a testimony to this evidently temporary situation of lack accessibility and confusion concerning Walther's Essays For The Church. See my next post regarding the above comment.

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