Gospel vs. Bible? MacKenzie says no; "fundamentalist" straw man; ironies (Part 3 of 3)

[2020-03-30: added pictures, and note on Prof. Lane]
     This concludes from Part 2 (and Part 1), a short series unraveling the confusing teaching emanating from LC-MS teachers since the Walkout of 1974. — In this segment we get some welcome relief from a current professor at CTS-FW, Dr. Cameron MacKenzie (↗).  This blog has harshly criticized Dr. MacKenzie for his 2011 CTQ essay supposedly in honor of C.F.W. Walther.  

And so it was quite surprising to read MacKenzie's essay "The Source of Biblical Authority: Gospel or God?" in the 2017 CPH book Defending Luther's Reformation: Its Ongoing Significance in the Face of Contemporary Challenges.  I made note of several passages from this essay (all emphases are mine, red text is my comments).
1) Page 104 :

"The Bible is powerful to save because of the Gospel. However, in Luther’s thinking the authority of the Scriptures does not come from the Gospel but instead that authority guarantees the Gospel. We know what the Gospel is because the Scriptures tell us."

2) p. 105 – the source, the foundation, of the Gospel:

"Although the writing of the New Testament followed the first preaching of the Gospel, the apostles and evangelists intended their written works as norms for subsequent preaching. In short, we know today what the Gospel is because we find it in the written Scriptures."

3) p. 106 – MacKenzie brings out the true Luther on the source of Scripture's authority:

"…Luther relied on the Scriptures to define the Gospel and did so by means of particular passages or proof-texts, we might say. Clearly, the implication of this procedure was that a person should know that this is the Gospel because the Scriptures teach it concretely in specific places and with particular words."

4) p. 107 – on a layman armed with Scripture:

“… Luther wrote against Eck and defended the proposition: 'A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a council without it.'”

5) p. 113 – Luther on a so-called "divine-human" authorship of Holy Scripture:

"Luther did not ignore the human authors. In fact, he referred to them often, but he regarded them as instruments of the Holy Spirit who was speaking through their words. 'The Scriptures, although they too are written by men, are neither of men nor from men but [are] from God.'" [Did MacKenzie get this Luther quote from Walther?]

6) p. 118-119 – on "biblical fundamentalism" and "Fundamentalists":

"It is… quite another to launch an attack on those who hold to the infallibility and inerrancy of the Scriptures.… it raises questions about what he [Timothy Wengert, co-author with Robert Kolb] thinks of Luther's belief in the infallibility of the Bible. Was Luther also guilty of importing a definition of truth into Scripture when he said things such as “The saints could err in their writings ... but the Scriptures cannot err”… Do statements like these display a “fundamentalist” attitude? Furthermore, because of its divine origin, Luther also contended that Scripture could not contradict itself: “It is certain that the Scriptures cannot be at variance with themselves.”… As do many modern fundamentalists, Luther affirmed a six-day creation".  [I wonder that Profs. David P. Scaer and John T. Pless call MacKenzie a "fundamentalist" behind his back!]

IRONIES
There are so many ironies in this wonderful essay that I can only begin to cover them on this blog. I would ask Prof. MacKenzie the following pointed questions:

1) Should you not be contending against professors at your own Concordia Theological Seminary-Ft. Wayne instead of an ELCA professor? Profs. David P. Scaer (doctor evangelicus) and John T. Pless ("a Lutheran approach to the Scriptures in distinction from Fundamentalism") are quite out-spoken in their anti-Fundamentalist position on "biblical fundamentalism".

- - - - - - -   read the balance of ironies and conclusion in the "Read more »" section below   - - - - - - -

2) Although you rightly used Luther to support your position, and you call on several theologians for the same, yet why did you not also reference Walther and/or Pieper as they taught this just like Luther? Are they unmentionable in today's LCMS? Since Walther was so strong on Holy Scripture, why then did you state in "honor" of him in 2011 that "Anyone who has read just a little bit of Walther knows that his theological method routinely involved citations from Luther on doctrinal issues". Why do you honor Walther this way? Was Walther not true to Luther when he cited him? Shouldn't you now be questioned in the same way that you questioned Walther?

3) Did you know that in the same book as your essay there was another essay, one by Prof. Jason D. Lane, Concordia-Wisconsin who stated (p. 155): "For a corrective to some of Pieper’s arguments and critique of his tendency toward Fundamentalism, see Hermann Sasse" (Lane references a retracted writing of Sasse, "Letter 14"). Should you not be also "corrected" by Hermann Sasse?

4) Shouldn't you be contending against your Pres. Matthew Harrison? In his "Prelude" to his book of Sasse's Letters to Lutheran Pastors vol. 1, p. lxxxvi-lxxxv, he encouraged his readers to "find themselves growing in… the certainty of the Gospel', while admitting that 'Sasse never was comfortable with the Missouri Synod's doctrine' on Scripture". Isn't that practically impossible?  How do you reconcile this with your essay that asserts that Scripture's "authority guarantees the Gospel"?

5) Did you know that a co-essayist with one of your references, Armin Buchholz, said this about Luther in East Asia, that his "law and gospel dialectic [can be a corrective] to the fundamentalist view of Scripture in general"? Isn't this "law and gospel dialectic", à la Werner Elert, the teaching of your LC-MS against the "fundamentalist view of Scripture", just like Wengert?

      Why go on?  No, Prof. MacKenzie, your theology in this essay is not the teaching of the LC-MS, as much as you attempt to show otherwise in your 2017 essay to be "defending Luther's Reformation".  It is not the teaching of today's LC-MS as I have clearly demonstrated in Parts 1 and 2, and elsewhere.  And I must tell you that when you are no longer a professor at your seminary, you will be relegated to the same "dust bin" as your former colleague Prof. Eugene Klug. You will be called a "fundamentalist". You will be forgotten… but not by Christians desperate for the truth of the Gospel "in accordance with the Scriptures" (1 Cor 15:3-4).