Walther: Schriftprinzip! Foreword 1886 Lehre und Wehre, Part 1 (Dorpat; not one faculty protest; Baltic Protest)

[2020-09-01 fixed broken link; 2019-02-18: fixed missing underlining]
      I have mentioned several times my work of translating Walther's much quoted "Foreword" [Vorwort] to  the 1886 volume of Lehre und Wehre, the primary journal of doctrine and its defense. The work is now finished and I will begin publishing it in serialized form. — To say that the Inspiration of Holy Scripture is a burning issue in today's Church is an understatement for everywhere one turns in theological teaching and discussion, the truth of the whole Bible is questioned. This is well attested in LC-MS Pastor Philip Hale's 2016 book. Every Christian who covets certainty for their soul's salvation can never attain this certainty… apart from what God says. But this confusion should not trouble Christians for it has always been so, as we see a passionate Dr. Walther plead with his readers in a defense (Wehre) against “biblical, Lutheran scholars” who, while professing to be great defenders of the Bible, nevertheless maintain a mediating “balance” with the notion that the Bible contains errors, contradictions, etc.

      This work is a part of a trilogy, “Walther's Trilogy on Inspiration” during his final full season of teaching, 1885-1886:

1. “Walther's Evening Lectures on Inspiration” [2020-09-01 fixed broken link] translated by Prof. (emeritus) Thomas Manteufel, 
2. “Vorwort” (Foreword) to Lehre und Wehre 1886 (this translation), and 
3. 1886 Synodical Conference Report, (text) “Theses on the Divinity of Holy Scripture”, an essay that has Walther's authority even if Prof. A.L. Graebner was the official presenter.

There is overlapping subject matter between these three works, and I may point out some of these as space permits. I will give further information and comments along the way of what is planned to be a 17-part series.  There is much to say – I have worked on this translation over a period of many months. The following translation largely follows the original German pagination with only a few exceptions where broken footnotes across more than more than one page were combined.

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Translation by BackToLuther; all highlighted text, text in square brackets and in red font are my additions.

(page 1)  

Volume 32      January 1886.    No. 1.

Foreword.
(by C.F.W. Walther)

W. Volck

In February 1884, Professors Dr. W. Volck and Dr. F. Mühlau [Heinrich Ferdinand Mühlau, 1839-1914] in Dorpat [now Tartu] held two public lectures concerning the Bible in the auditorium of the university building in front of an invited gathering of the educated people of the city. [see also 1886 SCR] Volck dealt with the question: “To what extent is inerrancy to be attributed to the Bible?” Mühlau: “Do we possess the original text of the Holy Scriptures?” The former made it his mission to prove that the Holy Scriptures, however, contain all sorts of errors in historical, geographic, natural history and similar things. It is reliable only in so far as it is the document of the history of the salvation revelation. Nevertheless, in order to show how a reader of the Bible, or rather of the biblical expository (for the vulgar layman, who, of course, relies on the scientifically educated theologians), was nevertheless able to read the true from the erroneous Scripture, he declared:

“The separation of the area of the unmistakable from where error is possible, and further – to make distinction of the essential and non-essential in the Bible, the interpreter must judge all particulars of their contents according to their relationship to salvation, which is realized in the story reported by it. He must see whether and in what context it stands with the same.” The final decision as to whether something in the Scriptures is true or false, material or merely incidental, contains indifference, is in a sense God's Word or only a human opinion, therefore, belongs to the interpreter of Scripture, and of course only the one who has understood how to abstract from Scripture a strictly closed doctrinal whole, and can now state exactly what belongs to it, and what does not.

The latter, Prof. Mühlau, simply negated his question by saying that “none of the numerous duplications in the Old Testament, according to their words, harmonize completely among themselves”, and regarding the New Testament (page 2), “of the great multitude of manuscripts, two do not completely agree with each other”.

Had theologians who called themselves Lutheran published such statements representing the Holy Scripture as a book full of errors in the 16th and 17th centuries, so would however without a doubt all Lutheran faculties to a man at once protested loudly and solemnly. But what happened this time? Not one faculty of Lutheran name raised even a slight protest. Rather, they all say nothing about this to our knowledge. So they decided it as a great indiscretion to disapprove of Volck and Mühlau already stepping before the great lay audience with the teachings of the modern religious theological science of the Scriptures, likewise they decided to recognize the aforementioned as their proper representatives, that is of modern-believing theology. Therefore, the silence.

But while not a single well-known theologian of the present raised his voice against the Dorpat lectures renouncing the ground-breaking heresy contained therein, some modern-faith theologians, such as Prof. Dr. Luthardt in Leipzig and Prof. emer. Th. Harnack in Dorpat, the former in the notice of the relevant writings, the other in a separate writing, rather expressly and without reserve agreed with the entire contents of the Dorpat lectures.  

It was and is truly refreshing therefore that a whole district synod, that of the Livonian island of Oesel [Oesel is now Saaremaa in Estonia] through one of its members, Pastor N. v. Chr. Nolcken  from Prude on Oesel, published a well-motivated “Protest”, having made the decision by a formal order, “as their common consent”. This protest concludes with the following words:

“I for my person herewith register, as a member of our regional church and as an appointed servant of the same, my protest against our confessional (i.e. bound to the Symbols and the Bible) theological faculty of Dorpat [now Tartu] in two of its members (and witnessed on the part of others) who have apparently fallen from the Bible and are teaching this waste to the young theologians and spreading it in the congregations.  So God help me, that my soul should not have any fellowship with this! — Amen!” —  

God bless the dear man and the whole venerable Synod for this faithful testimony, and may He remember them on the Day of Judgment and renew the many tottering souls in their faith in the Book of all books redound. 1)

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1) Pastor von Nolcken reports in his edition of the “Protest” among other things: “It has come to my attention from Dorpat the painful complaint: that many were confused and saddened. A lady had said with tears about the Bible: (page 3) ‘I can not read it anymore!’ – Well – that will be required! – It was also strange to me that I had just received from Dorpat this spring (1884) the account of the blessed going out [Hingange] of a ‘Peace in the Country,’ which, of course, happened before those lectures had been held, but which contained a moment for which I can only relate to events in the university town with which the lectures in question are closely connected. It had, according to this report, called out to the dying, to awaken from the long agony: ‘Believe, believe, believe everything written in Scripture! Every word is truth!’ This is a sacred protest from the ‘narrow’ and ‘bigoted’ against the drift of academic stupidity that becomes unfit for faith and confession.”

= = = = = = = = = =   continued in Part 2     = = = = = = = = = = =

      I attempted to locate more information on the dear Pastor von Nolcken whom Walther praised in his "Protest" against all the famous German theologians, but was unable to.  Perhaps he can be judged to be among what Franz Pieper called the "little noticed pastors", the ones who will lead the Church in troubled times... like Pastor Philip Hale.  —  We are just getting started... for Walther is setting the stage for the greatest plea, in all of Christendom, in the last several centuries, for the truth of the Bible... in the next Part 2.

= = = = = = = = = =   Table of Contents   = = = = = = = = = =
Dedicatory post - to Pastor Philip Hale
Part 1 - Intro; Dorpat: Scripture has errors; German theologians - no disagreement; Protest!
Part 2 - Walther's first response, names well-known German theologians (von Hofmann, Kahnis, etc.)
Part 3 - Walther's damnamus: “worst false prophets"; Luther, new Inspiration theory? Kolb devalues Scripture
Part 4 - Luther a “modern theologian”?; Pieper's defense; Tholuck's error; Barnbrock
Part 5 - Myths of Luther: "hay, straw, stubble", "epistle of straw"; James Swan
Part 6 - Luther says: 4 Words, 5 Testimonies (Walther’s short lists of Luther quotes)
Part 7 - Hijack Luther? Luther's building blocks; Jn 10:35, Franzmann: "None"; LCMS "laughingstock"
Part 8 - Thesis 1: “All Scripture of Holy Ghost” - Luther, not CTCR, Franzmann, Voelz, Paul L. Maier; Scripture from God
Part 9 - Thesis 1 (cont'd); "empty sham", "Heilsgeschichte" of von Hofmann, Bible verse ban; Becker's folly
Part 10 - # 2, 3 – What is a Prophet?; Nothing in Scripture without purpose; M. Becker folly, Pelikan fiction
Part 11 - #4 – INERRANCY! LUTHER!; Bible in a bag?; Gerhard Maier’s denial; Fred Kramer's defense
             (also attacks by CTCR 1963, Fred Kramer, Robert Kolb, Samuel Nafzger, Peter Nafzger)
Part 12 - #5 & 6 – No contradictions; 6. Bound to every letter; Arndt falters; Voelz ‘doubts’
   Excursis: Manteufel's 2 essays: UOJ-1998; Walther on Scripture-2004 (unauthorized); "move out"… or not?
Part 13 - #7 simple, minor things; #8: sexual matters; Schroeder/"Moderates" vs sola scriptura
Part 14 - #9 – Lack of proper order?; Reu's reticence; Boehme's defense
Part 15 - #10: Natural History; #11: Chronology of Bible; the surprising Preus brothers
Part 16 - #12 – NT is the proper interpreter of OT; LC-MS/CTCR – “accommodational” for Jesus
Part 17 - #13 Even if cannot understand…; Walther's Warning; Franzmann's/LC-MS smokescreen
Part 18 - Walther's Other "Thirteen Theses" – Luther's Doctrine of Inspiration of Holy Scripture