CHIQ's fiction against Pieper, also Cyclopedia; Walther & Scripture, Part 3 of 3

[2020-02-18: added Appendix on Prof. Jason D. Lane]
      This concludes from Part 2, (Part 1), a 3-part series on the importance of Holy Scripture in Walther's theology. It also follows Part 20 of my "Das Fundament" series on the same subject matter. — LCMS teachers and writers continually make the claim that Walther put the Scripture Principle in a lesser role than his teaching of the "formal principle" or the teaching of the Gospel, "justification by faith".  They do this especially to attack Walther's successor, Franz Pieper.

A recent example of this came in the Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, Spring 2009, p. 31-51, in an essay by LCMS Pastor Dr. Richard Blythe (Senior Pastor, St. Paul, Trenton, Michigan), “The Missouri Synod and the Changing Definitions of Fundamentalism”.  On page 35 Blythe writes:

“Walther emerged as the leading voice in the Missouri Synod. … But it was during Francis Pieper’s era that the Synod’s theology on the doctrine of Scripture was emphasized.” – CHIQ, 2009.

This is an explicit charge that Pieper departed from Walther on the importance of Holy Scripture, overemphasizing it compared to Walther – a charge demonstrated to be pure fiction. Prof. Erwin Lueker († 2000), the well-known LCMS editor of the Lutheran Cyclopedia and the online Christian Cyclopedia, also made this same charge against Pieper in 1972 (CTM, April 1972, p. 210):

"In the first part of the 20th century greater emphasis was given to the ‘inerrancy’ of Scripture."

Lueker was referring especially to Pieper in this assertion.  But Pieper was rather following Walther's passionate defense of Holy Scripture, and teaching the true Lutheran faith as he did so.  Even Ludwig Fuerbringer's history of Pieper's theology, far from proving Blythe's assertions, rather proved the opposite. Now in 2009, Pastor Blythe (and Concordia Historical Institute) was only promoting what his teachers had taught him at Concordia Seminary and he finds himself teaching fiction like the "Walkout" crowd taught, along with Prof. Lueker.  They are all promoting fiction as… church history.

      But Prof. Carl S. Meyer († 1972), the great LCMS historian, is a little more honest with his readers than the above two.  His charge of "biblicism" against Walther was actually accepted by Walther in his time.  Walther accepts this label in its primary meaning – an adherence to the Scripture Principle, and it confirms that he was a true Lutheran, instead of his accusers. What?… Blythe (and his teachers), and Lueker, and Meyer were not true Lutherans in their church history?
      There is an unhappy conclusion that one draws from Walther and Pieper's teaching – that those who would deny the full Divinity of Holy Scripture, including Rev. Dr. Richard Blythe, and practically all teachers in today's LC-MS who rail against being called a "biblicist" or "fundamentalist", are actually putting their Christian faith in jeopardy.

==> Why would Concordia Historical Institute promote such fiction?
= = = = = = = = =  APPENDIX  = = = = = = = = =

2020-02-18: Add to the above list of those promoting fiction against Franz Pieper the name of Prof. Jason D. Lane (🔗), Assistant Professor of Theology at Concordia University Wisconsin. In the 2017 CPH book Defending Luther’s Reformation, Lane stated the following (p. 155):

"For a defense of Luther’s view of inspiration against modern criticism, see Franz Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, trans. J. T. Mueller (St. Louis: Concordia, 1950), 1:276-98. For a corrective to some of Pieper’s arguments and critique of his tendency toward Fundamentalism, see Hermann Sasse, Sacra Scriptura: Studien zur Lehre von der Heiligen Schrift, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Hopf (Erlangen: Verlag der Ev.-Luth. Mission, 1981), 314-16."

Strangely Prof. Lane references a writing of Sasse that he "retracted". [2020-03-30]