"…they call Lutheran": not Kolb-Wengert, Tappert

 Today is the 92nd anniversary of the passing of Dr. Franz Pieper, June 3, 1931.  He was a Lutheran theologian, and so the following is in honor of him.

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      While reviewing Prof. Friedrich Bente's masterful Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, I came across a paragraph that ended with a quote from the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. On page 68 Bente says:

“True, even during the Reformation some Papists were incited to greater zeal in preaching and teaching. It was a reaction against the Reformation of Luther, who must be regarded as the indirect cause also of the formal improvement in the instruction of the young among the Romanists. To maintain their power, bishops and priests were compelled to resume and cultivate it. This revival, however, meant only an intensified instruction in the old work-righteousness, and therefore was the very opposite of the instruction which Luther desired and advocated. In the Apology, Melanchthon, after charging the Papists with totally neglecting the instruction of the young, continues: “A few among them now also begin to preach of good works. But of the knowledge of Christ, of faith, of the consolation of consciences they are unable to preach anything, moreover, this blessed doctrine, the precious holy Gospel, they call Lutheran.” (326, 44 [Ap 15 Of Human Traditions in the Church, § 42])

The last phrase, highlighted in green, struck me for it explicitly identifies who the Papists were calling "Lutheran": those promoting "the precious holy Gospel".  I decided to check this phrasing with the more modern translations of the Book of Concord by Theodore Tappert and Kolb/Wengert and found them empty of this important phrase highlighted in green above.

     The 1851 English Newmarket edition of the Henkel brothers included that last phrase, translating it as (Google Books):

“On the contrary, they call this blissful doctrine, this beloved holy Gospel, Lutheran doctrine.”

Here is what Bente's highlighted phrase above says in the original German text of the Apology 15, 42 (or 44):

“Etliche wenige unter ihnen heben nun auch an, von guten Werken zu predigen. Von der Erkenntnis Christi aber, vom Glauben, vom Trost der Gewissen können sie nichts predigen, sondern dieselbe selige Lehre, das liebe, heilige Evangelium, nennen sie Lutherisch.”

This is another example of what CPH Publisher Paul McCain charged, in 2006, against the modernist translations of the Lutheran Confessions: "numerous absurdities", distortions, mistranslations, "confusing", "misleading", etc.  So why did the LCMS teachers force the Tappert edition onto its pastoral students, and place an LC-MS imprimatur on the syncretistic Kolb/Wengert edition? — Much better to get the Triglotta, or McCain's Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions.