Pieper & Walther on... misuse of Luther (Part 5)

See parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 for previous portions of this series.

Now comes an interesting point made by Pieper and Walther on the misuse of Luther's writings:

However, Walther also warns about the misuse of quotations from Luther.  He says:  “The bare appeal on Luther's opinion is dangerous, when one generates the appearance that one requires faith on Luther's authority.  The preacher must have proved the thing already from God's Word and Luther then [only] as a witness appears.... One should make it with quotations from Luther like hymn verses which one also does not cite rather until one has made the thought on the point; then the quotation comes as a strong end.”

Indeed!  No one knows Luther unless they believe the teaching of Scripture first.  This is the great divide and shows why most modern theologians and commentators don't know Luther.  This is why I have to Go Back... back... back to the old (German) Missouri Synod.

Walther's advice was made to a group of pastors who could not be considered adversaries of Luther.  But this warning against the misuse of quotations from Luther applies also to a whole group of adversaries.  

• Roman Catholics – always caricature Luther's sayings to attempt to refute him; the problem is Luther based his polemical writings on Scripture and the pure Gospel.
• Julius Streicher & the Third Reich – whose misuse of Luther had nothing to do with Luther's spiritual basis but rather a worldly basis.  Pieper and Walther had already exposed the un-Lutheran, anti-Christian character of Germany's theologians... Germany had already largely abandoned Christianity.     Here's a question for all the writers and references on the Wikipedia site about Luther and his so-called "anti-semitism": Why did the Romans devastate and remove the Jews from their homeland? Was it because the Romans were Christians?
• Jews – who will always and forever use Martin Luther as a lightning rod against Christianity.  But Luther's comments were spiritual and based on Scripture, and not based on "racism" or "anti-semitism", whatever that means.

Luther knew he would be misquoted but that did not stop him from writing what he did.  Luther would not care that his name is being raked through the mud... not in the least.  No, his care was only for the Christian faith.

The next Part 6 is on the diligent reading of Luther.