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Saturday, April 22, 2017

Dogmatik: Walther (& others) refs in books, lectures (Part E); Stoeckardt's Romans book published: "general or objective justification"

      This continues from Part D (Convention Essays) my project of listing Franz Pieper's references to Old Missouri Synod writings in his Christliche Dogmatik (Table of Contents in Part A).
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      The following is an exhaustive listing of all references to "old Missouri" books, of Walther, then also all other teachers: George Stoeckhardt (or Stöckhardt), Martin Guenther (or Günther), and E.A. Brauer.  The last table adds a listing of references that Pieper used of what apparently were unpublished lectures of Walther.
This Google Doc may be directly accessed >>  here  <<.

This Google Doc may be directly accessed >>  here  <<.

Prof. George Stoeckhardt
A quick review of the second table above will show that after Walther, the most quoted author was the venerable Prof. George Stoeckhardt.  But although most of Stoeckhardt's German works had been translated into English, surprisingly his greatest exegetical work on the book of Romans was apparently only partially translated.  So I began an extensive project to get more public exposure to this dear teacher of the Church.



The first task was to get his German book to be available to the public online -- strangely it was not included in any of the major repositories such as Google Books or HathiTrust.  It is now available at Archive.org  >>  here <<.

Romans by G. Stoeckhardt
transl. by Edward W. Schade
edited by Otto F. Stahlke
(now in Archive.org)
But the greatest surprise was that although most of Stoeckhardt's commentaries had been translated (see WorldCat here and here), unfortunately his book on Romans was apparently only partially translated into English.  I mean "apparently" because the CTS-FW bookstore has sold a book that purported to be the "complete text" (see cover at right).  But upon further examination, it only included chapters 1 through 8 out of a total of 16 chapters.  What I have discovered is that all 16 chapters were translated but only in a hand-written format, not typed.  What was sold in the bookstore was a transcription of only the first 8 chapters.

Commentary on Romans
(handwritten translation)

Some were misled (like me) into thinking that a full translation was never completed, but it was.  After procuring a library holding, I was able to scan it and upload it to Archive.org -- see title page at left.



  After some re-checking, it appears, again, that this entire work of Stoeckhardt was translated but never fully transcribed by Stahlke.  So I began to do this work, only in the hopes that someone else will take the time to complete it.  The following shows the progress made so far:
The beginning of chapter 9 is at page 314 >> here <<.


This Google Doc may be directly accessed >>  here  <<.

      The purpose of this detailed explanation is not to show how clever I am, nor am I trying to put the CTS-FW Bookstore printshop out of business.  It is presented in the hopes that some faithful adherents of "old Missouri" will also treasure the work of Stoeckhardt enough to carry on the final work of transcribing the balance (chapters 9-16) of his marvelous work on Romans.  Any serious parties who would like to collaborate on this project may contact me so that I may give them access to an editable version of this Google Doc.
      But before I leave the dear Stoeckhardt, I would point out again, that he was much more than the extraordinary exegete for our modern times, he brought out the doctrine, or the dogmatical nature of Holy Scripture, better than all previous and subsequent exegetes.  And what teaching is he primarily known for?  I will let him speak (p. 239-240) on Romans 5:18-19:
The passage treated above, vv. 18-19, is the locus classicus for the doctrine of the general or, so-called, objective justification. Here the Apostle teaches and testifies expressis verbis , that the righteousness of life has been made available for all mankind and that the many have been placed before God as righteous, as already stated in v.16: that from the offenses of many there has come "righteousness: δικαιώμα", and that all men have been justified and absolved of all their transgressions. Most modern expositors, and some ancient ones, refer these apostolic words to the believers; that is, to all those who through faith belong to Christ. They make the comment that such a restriction is self-understood. But that is pure arbitrariness. When one permits himself to apply such glosses to the text, all trustworthiness of exegesis disappears. In these three sentences, faith is not mentioned with a single syllable
Did you hear what Stoeckhardt just said?  He said that the Holy Scriptures teach that God is already reconciled to the whole world, including unbelievers, before faith!  The scoffers will scoff at this, but this is the heart of Christianity!  I could not believe that God was reconciled to me until He showed me by His Word that He was already reconciled to the whole world! (cf. 2 Cor. 5:19). [2017-05-14: see also Stoeckhardt's 1888 Lehre und Wehre essay "General Justification" translated by Otto F. Stahlke and published in 1978 CTQ here.]

      In the last Part F is a table of all of Pieper's many references to the Baier-Walther Compendium.

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