This continues from Part 2 (Table of Contents in Part 1) in a series presenting an English translation of Walther's major essay on the Inspiration of Holy Scripture in the Missouri Synod's chief theological journal, Lehre und Wehre. — Walther lets loose in this segment with his massive charge against the deniers of Inspiration. Even now, as I have read this again, Walther practically jumps off the page in outrage over modern theologians. If you are struggling as a Christian with either the outright denial of Inspiration or equivocation on it by its supposed defenders, then Walther is for you.
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Translation by BackToLuther; all highlighting, text in square brackets and red font are my additions; underlining follows Walther's emphasis.
Lehre und Wehre, vol. 32, January, p. 6-8: "Foreword" by C.F.W. Walther
Now it is true that every believing theologian, in his salvation, joins with the utmost seriousness in the struggle for the highest treasure of the Christians, which God has given to man according to the gift of his Son. Woe to him who is reckoned among the theologians and yet does not want to realize that this is above all his profession, to preserve the common Christian on what the faith, and thus the salvation and blessedness, is based – the “foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone”!
Woe unto him who wants to be reckoned among the theologians and on the other hand imagines that just for that reason he must as such contend above all that its full freedom remain assured unto science! Just in this lies the deepest ground for the ever more complete apostasy of modern theology from the revealed divine truth and for the complete transformation of the Christian religion into a human science, namely, that modern theology no longer wishes to be a habitus practicus θεόσδοτος [“God-given”, i.e. autopistos] (a supernatural skill crafted by the Holy Spirit) [ref. Pieper’s essay], but “the scientific self-consciousness of the Church” (Kahnis) or “the ecclesiastical science of Christianity” [ref. this blog post part 3a], which have nothing to do with religion, as “personal behavior”, with the guidance to salvation and with piety (Luthardt). But we say with Luther: “It is better for learning [Wissenschaften, literati] to be destroyed rather than religion, if learning refuses to be a servant and desires to tread Christ under foot. If we allow this, we will be guilty of trampling Christ, and He will (if we will not) awaken others who will be bold, for Christ will reign.” (see. de Wette Luthers Briefe, IV, 545.) [St. Louis Edition, XXIb, 1911-1912, June 28, 1534 to Nicholas Amsdorf; see this blog post and this blog post; German text; Latin text]
Thus Lehre und Wehre will continue to testify not only, as hitherto from the beginning, on the doctrine of the divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, but will also fight with ever greater seriousness against all the falsifications of this cardinal doctrine of Christianity and warn our dear Christian people of their enemies, as of the worst false prophets of our time, and show the terrible abyss to which they lead, in which thousands and thousands have fallen, and thereby faith, God's grace, soul and salvation have been lost on sand and mud.
Since a "foreword" offers too little space to present the entire doctrine of the inspiration of Holy Scripture, to justify it and to defend it against all objections, this is for our Lehre und Wehre (page 7) reserved for other occasions. It is only permissible for us to say here that it is incomprehensible, and we would almost say ridiculous, that one wants to make Luther himself the representative of the new theory of inspiration.
So writes for example Prof. Dr. Luthardt in his Kompendium der Dogmatik: “Luther, with the strongest emphasis on Scripture as the Word of God, at the same time combines a vivid demonstration of its human origin; ‘No doubt, the prophets beginning at Moses, and to the last prophets, at first have studied and written up their good thoughts prompted by the Holy Spirit into a book. But whether the same good, faithful teachers and researchers use in Scripture sometimes hay, straw, and stubble, and not only build with silver, gold, and precious stones, nevertheless reason remains, and the other is consumed by fire.’ (Preface to [Wencelius] Link’s Annott. on Moses. [StL 14, 148 ff; not in Am. Ed.])” The same writes in his Theol. Literaturblatt [p. 411 and here, E.L(uthardt). review of Lehre von der heiligen Schrift, by Prof. Dr. W. Volck] of 23 October 23 of the previous year: “Against that outer and basically pietistic (!) view” (of the divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures), “widespread in lay and pastoral circles as the supposed and only safe view, while they rather make the authority of Scripture not safe but uncertain (!), he” (Volck) “represents the truly religious [view] in the sense of Luther.” Kahnis writes: “In Luther's judgment on Scripture, the strictly supernatural and the free-human view intersect.” 1) Die Lutherische Dogmatik. 1861. I, 665, line 25.) Dr. [Rudolf Friedrich (no pic on web)] Grau, professor in Königsberg, writes:
“With [Johann Georg] Hamann himself we extend the hand, on rationalism and orthodox dogmatics, out to Luther. We must also stand as Luther, free and bound at the same time (!) to the Holy Scripture.” (Entwickelungsgeschichte des Neutestamentlichen Schrifttums. Gütersloh. 1871. I, 18.; text) [August Hermann] H. Cremer, Professor of Greifswald, writes of the time of the Reformation: “No one thought of denying their” (Scripture) “authority. Only to their application was there dispute. From this it can be explained that with the Reformers themselves, as with their contemporaries and in the immediate period after the Reformation, we have exactly the present conception of inspiration without further discussion of the relationship between the two factors interacting in the creation of the Holy Scriptures, 2) and without limiting the extent to which the work of inspiration is to be found. Without limiting the extent – because on the one hand the Holy Scripture is for Luther a book in
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1) The word “intersect” is evidently to be merely a polite expression of the fact that Luther, as an inconsequential thinker, soon judges inspiration.
2) It can be seen from this that modern synergists consequently teach a synergism, not only for the generation of faith, but also for the creation of the Holy Scripture. [ref. this blog post]
which ‘a single letter, indeed, by some tittle, is more and greater than heaven and earth’, on the other hand he knows how to speak of hay, straw, and stubble, which the prophets have lost in their own good thoughts, of an insufficient argument of the Apostle Paul Gal. 4:21. ff. (‘Too weak to sting’) and others” (Real-Encyklopädie von Herzog, 2nd edition, under “Inspiration”, Bd. VI, p. 753. [sic, 754) [Note that F. Pieper is quoted in Warfield’s TP&PR also on this same passage and explains further: Latin text.]
Those now that recall here Luther's opinion on the Antilegomena, as for example he calls the Epistle of James “an epistle of straw, compared to these others” (the epistles of Paul and Petri) (XIV, 105; StL 14, 91; LW 35, 362), and from this Luther's purported free views on inspiration, we pass over here since even the weakest mind can see without much thought how foolish it is to conclude from a derogatory judgment of Luther about a writing that he did not consider canonical, to conclude what free views he had on the inspiration of the writings he considered canonical, while the opposite is true from that judgment. Although the question deserves to be discussed afresh, with what right Luther distinguishes the Proto-Canonical books of the Holy Scripture from those of deutero-canonical books as he does, yet as I said, this question does not belong here and will, God willing, on another occasion be discussed again in this our theological journal. [As it was by Pieper in 1893 in LuW] Compare for example what is already in the second year of Lehre und Wehre p. 204-216 where the question has been answered: “Is the one to be declared a heretic or dangerous false teacher who does not consider all the books in the New Testament collection to be canonical?” [ref. Pieper's essay on same subject; 2019-01-20: quoted in Christian Dogmatics I, p 292]
= = = = = = = = = = continued in Part 4 = = = = = = = = = = =
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| Two Trajectories: J.A.O Preus & David Preus Strength and Weakness |
Dr. David W. Preus, former president of the American Lutheran Church (ALC) and cousin to Dr. J.A.O. Preus, in his book Two Trajectories- J.A.O Preus and David W. Preus p. 56 quotes Ronald Hendel's book The Book of Genesis: A Biography:
“Luther's contrast between 'law' and 'gospel' in Biblical texts makes it clear that many texts — those that simply relate to 'law'—are irrelevant for Christians. Hence his famous remark that the Epistle of James is an ‘epistle of straw’...”
Walther calls the 19th century German theologians who used the same erroneous notion of Luther's phrase “epistle of straw” less than “even the weakest mind”. So what would he say today of those who brazenly continue to use this same discredited assertion?
Walther published many other articles defending Holy Scripture, but I wonder that this “Vorwort” contains his harshest condemnations of the “worst false prophets of our time”. There was (and is) no greater defender of "The Inspiration of Scripture" in recent centuries than... C.F.W. Walther. In the next Part 4...
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2019-01-20 – Addendum: Dr. Robert Kolb – "the weakest mind"?
Dr. Kolb, in his 2016 book Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God, gave a false defense of Luther's phrase "epistle of straw". On pages 83-84, after asserting "...(Luther) did not regard all the Spirit’s words as performing the same task and thus equally valuable", Dr. Kolb states:
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2019-01-20 – Addendum: Dr. Robert Kolb – "the weakest mind"?
“That is why he [Luther] could call the Epistle of James an epistle of straw while deeming it worthy of his praise, 'a good book because it establishes no human teaching but assiduously sets forth God’s law' despite its failure to focus on Christ’s saving work.”Dr. Kolb, like the erring German theologians, makes no mention that Luther's comment "epistle of straw" was based entirely on the fact that Luther did not at that time consider the book of James as canonical. Kolb attempts to use this comment of Luther to try to establish that not "all bits of ...(Scripture) were of the same significance in God’s saving activity." (p. 83) But Holy Scripture teaches
"All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness," 2 Tim. 3:16.
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