Missourian! 4: A Missourian wants to be…; Who attacks them? Biblicism?… or “ink theologians”?

      This continues from Part 3 (Table of Contents here), a series presenting Walther's Foreword to the 1872 Der Lutheraner on the term “Missourian”. — Mr. "Missourian", Walther himself, tells us, and the world, exactly what a Missourian is... and what he wants to be. And he could not resist quoting Luther in an extended supporting footnote.  Luther was never far from Walther's thoughts.  — Then Walther reaches the reason for his essay: Missourians are attacked, but why?
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Taken from Der Lutherner v. 29 (1872), p. 1-2, 9-10. Translation by BackToLuther using DeepL, Google Translate, Microsoft, Yandex. Underlining follows Walther’s emphasis. All hyperlinks, highlighting, text in square brackets [ ] are mine.

Foreword (“Vorwort”)

Twenty-ninth year of Der Lutheraner.
[by C.F.W. Walther, part 4 of 5]

● A Missourian does not believe, like many newer theologians, that the Christian Church should seek to become ever more enlightened and to explore new doctrines of faith; rather, he believes that the true Church of Jesus Christ always had the same faith, the same doctrine, that already the apostolic Church possessed the whole pure doctrine of the Gospel, and that through his Reformation Luther, too, did not bring up any new doctrine, but only the doctrine that the apostolic Church had already brought forth and brought to light.*) 

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*) Luther once gave the following testimony about this in his famous sermon in Leipzig in 1545: 

“Isn't it distressing that the Lord Christ's Word, indeed the word of the holy fathers and prophets from the beginning of the world should mean a new faith for those who boast of themselves Christians? For we preach nothing else, nor will we preach anything else, than what you yourself read in the Scriptures of the Prophets and Apostles. Nor should one accept and hold to be articles of faith what every impudent monk makes up every day…  and on the other hand the Gospel doctrine should be called a vain new thing. Why? Because they did not preach nor know it 20 or 30 years ago, nor knew it; they do not want to know that this is the doctrine and faith proclaimed 1500 years ago by Christ's birth and 5000 years ago before the beginning of the world by the Fathers and Prophets and clearly founded in Holy Scripture.” (XII, 1865; St. L. XII, 1434-1435, § 26; not in Am. Ed.) 

A few years earlier (1541) Luther had written against Duke Heinrich von Braunschweig in his treatise [“Against Hanswurst”]: 

“We invent nothing new, but hold and remain true to the ancient word of God, as the ancient church had it. Therefore we are, together with the ancient church, the one true church, which teaches and believes the one word of God. So the papists once more slander Christ himself, the apostles, and all of Christendom when they call us innovators and heretics. For they find nothing in us but what belongs to the ancient church—that we are like it, and are one church with it.” (XVI, 1059.) [sic - XVII, 1659, § 24; St. L. XVII, 1324, § 24; Am. Ed. 41, p. 196]

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● A Missourian therefore does not want to raise up anything new, but to return with Luther and the whole Lutheran church of the sixteenth century to the church and doctrine of the apostles. What the Christians believed at the time of the Apostles and at the time of Luther, 

● that a Missourian wants [Page 10, Column 1] also to believe; what they have taught and confessed, that 

● a Missourian wants to teach and confess; he wants to reject and condemn what they have rejected and condemned; he wants to live as they have lived; he wants to walk the way they have walked; he wants to be saved as they have been saved. 

● A Missourian wants neither to be stricter nor better than the first Christians and than the Reformation Christians. In short, 

● a Missourian wants to be nothing in doctrine and life but a Christian, as the Apostles described them and as the proper Christians really were at the time of them; And that is because since four and a half centuries [3-½] the old Christian Lutheranism, the old Christian doctrine Lutheran doctrine, the old Church Lutheran Church, the orthodox Christians Lutheran Christians or Lutherans are called, so 

● a Missourian wants to be a Lutheran Christian or a Lutheran, and this without falsehood, without mischievousness, without reservation, without ulterior motives, in reality, in truth, from the bottom of the heart.

Here our opponents will say: If this is really so, if a Missourian is really nothing else to be understood than a true, apostolic, orthodox, Lutheran Christian, then you who are called Missourians are yourselves bad Missourians. To this we first answer the following: When once in 1528 Lutherans in the lands of the hostile Duke George of Saxony were asked by him to say “whether they wished to abandon the Lutheran doctrine”, Luther explained himself and gave them the advice: “Luther taught many things that Duke George himself praised. So Luther himself did not want to be Lutheran etc., without teaching the Scriptures purely.” (XXI, 233.234.) [Source unknown] Thus we also explain so-called Missourians: that a true Missourian wants to be nothing but a true Lutheran Christian; therefore a Missourian also doesn't want to be Missourian himself, without teaching Holy Scripture purely with Luther and the Lutheran Church and lives as a true Christian according to God's Word. If, however, one continues to invade us here, and now says: But do not you Missourians have to admit yourselves that you really reveal yourselves only too often as people who are by no means in the same condition as you yourselves describe a true Missourian, then we answer the following: After Luther (in 1530), in his interpretation of the 118th Psalm, testified that it was a miracle before our eyes if someone believed that Christ was the cornerstone, and how angry and heavy it had become for him and still becomes daily for him to grasp and keep this cornerstone, he added: “Men may call me a Lutheran, but they misjudge me; or at best I am a poor and weak Lutheran. May God strengthen me!” (V, 1802. f., § 129) [St.L. V, 1242, § 129; Am. Ed. 14, 98] So we Missourians must now also say: We may be called Missourian; but they misjudge us, or at best we are poor, weak Missourians.

But here we have to say: Would to God that we Missourians were really only attacked where we are not really Missourian! We would throw away our weapons in a hurry and humiliate ourselves by revoking them. For though we really want to be in sincerity of heart what is called a Missourian, yet of course we experience daily how far, how far we are from the goals we have set ourselves. But what happens? Not what is un-Missourian, but just what is genuinely Missourian, what is truly Christian-Lutheran, that is what we are attacked for.

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      In Walther's day, the attackers were primarily famous German mediating theologians.  To find today's attackers against old Missourian teaching, one need look no further than the teachers of the LC-MS.  The Missourian reliance on the Bible is directly attacked by Dr. Samuel Nafzger, author of the section "Holy Scripture" in the new LC-MS doctrinal textbook, Confessing the Gospel.  Dr. Nafzger states (page 686, emphasis mine): 

“To suggest that the gospel derives its truthfulness, power, or authority to work faith in human hearts from the scriptural documents as such must be rejected as biblicism”.

By this statement, Dr. Nafzger essentially separates Christ from His Word. But Holy Scripture says (Eph 2:20) that the Church is "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets".  Nafzger thereby closes off his LC-MS from any connection with Missourian roots, even Lutheran roots.  It was John Eck, the papist and antagonist of Luther, who "called the Lutherans ‘ink theologians’ (theologi atramentales) because they believed that all Christian doctrine should be derived from Scripture." (Robert Preus, The Inspiration of Scripture, p. 207)  Why does Nafzger fight against Holy Scripture so hard? —  In the next Part 5 we learn why the Missourians were attacked in so many ways...