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).

Gospel vs. Bible? LC-MS official teaching (Part 2 of 3)

      This continues from Part 1, a short series unraveling the confusing teaching emanating from the LC-MS teachers since the Walkout of 1974. — In this segment, we demonstrate that the false dichotomy of "Gospel versus Bible" is again the firm, official teaching of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. 

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      In Dr. Samuel Nafzger's Confessing the Gospel textbook (CPH, 2018), he states explicitly what is to be taught officially to the future pastors of the LC-MS. The following is an excerpt (indented) from p. 739, interspersed with my comments in red text:

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      “Accordingly, the adequacy of faith is intimately linked to the inerrancy of Scripture, which necessarily becomes for many the “watershed doctrine” on which the church stands or falls. 

Luther blasted Erasmus for his “obscurity of Scripture” and answered Erasmus’s charge that Luther should “preach Christ crucified” instead of teaching against “free will”. See Prof. Eugene Klug’s “Saving Faith and the Inerrancy of Scripture” (🔗, Springfielder October 1975), p. 206. On p. 209, Klug states: “When Scripture is described as a medley or composite of divine and human elements, of truth and error, then the Good News itself, the Gospel, is no longer safe.”   

A straw man
"Gospel versus Bible"

Nafzger makes light of the Inerrancy of Scripture.  He creates a “straw man” argument that devalues the foundation of the Gospel. This explicitly denies that the Gospel comes from God in His Word. Nafzger pits a faith in divine inerrancy against the “proclamation of the gospel”. This is exactly the charge of the so-called “moderates” in the LC-MS against “old Missouri”. Where is the praise of those who defend Inerrancy?  There are none.  Then one must question Nafzger/LCMS’s “proclamation of the gospel” for it cannot be guaranteed to be a divine message, you are just to believe it without the foundation of Holy Scripture – pure Enthusiasm. One must question a "gospel" that has lost its foundation.

“Confessional Lutheranism, in opposition to this view [of Carl Henry], …

Again, this is a "straw man" argument. Nafzger sets up the Reformed theologian Carl F. H. Henry's view (fundamentalist?) as his target, yet he discounts Luther’s strong defense of Holy Scripture. Luther never set up the Bible as something “not the object of faith” as Nafzger (and Jacob Preus III). It is revealing that Nafzger singles out the Reformed yet leaves Roman Catholics untouched in his defense of “confessional Lutheranism”.

“… regards Scripture as the source, rule, and norm for the proclamation of the gospel 

In other words, NOT the Gospel, only the "proclamation of the gospel". This is clearly meant to cut off faith in “inerrancy”, and thereby Inspiration as unnecessary. But, as Pieper teaches Christian Dogmatics volume 1, p. 312, there can be no witness of the Holy Ghost… without the Word of the Apostles and Prophets.

“…in all its articles and for the administration of the sacraments, the means 

“Scripture” is “source, rule, and norm” but maybe it is not divine since faith in “inerrancy” is unnecessary to believe the gospel.

“…through which the Holy Spirit works to create faith. 

Neither Luther nor Confessions nor old Missouri taught this way.  This teaching only comes from the “growing number of systematic theologians” (p. 739), like Dr. Nafzger, Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus III and the LCMS in general.

“Accordingly, Jesus Christ, and not the Bible as God’s special revelation, is the object of faith”.

It is both-and, not the either-or of Nafzger’s false dichotomy, his brand of “confessional Lutheranism”. Franz Pieper admits in his Christian Dogmatics vol. 1, p. 313-316, that missionaries are to preach the Gospel, then adds: "And when faith in Christum 'crucifixum' has once been created, there is no need to worry about securing faith in the divinity of Holy Scripture." Pieper says that once there is a true faith, a faith in the Universal, Objective Justification of the world, then faith in the Scriptures automatically follows.  Pieper's statement charges today's LC-MS as preaching a faulty "gospel", a "gospel" based on a "divine-human word". This faulty "word" creates what Luther calls a "monster of uncertainty". So to divorce “the Bible” from “Jesus Christ” is to proclaim a false Christ, because it, at minimum, weakens the “foundation of the prophets and apostles”. And the “Jesus Christ” that Nafzger’s LCMS proclaims is weak for it does not preach a pure Gospel, but a "gospel" without a firm foundation of Holy Scripture, which, again, is essentially pure Enthusiasm (Luther's Schwärmerei). 

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      One could wonder that the light of God's Word is going completely dark in Pres. Matthew Harrison's LC-MS, but then one reads one of the essays in the book Defending Luther's Reformation (CPH 2017), that is a complete surprise… in Part 3.

Gospel vs Law, or vs Bible: LCMS false dichotomy – Part 1 of 3

      What is a "dichotomy"?  Merriam-Webster defines it thus: "a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities". This is a useful tool to unravel the teaching in today's LC-MS institutions.

      Franz Pieper taught that

“There are ... but two religions ... the religion of the Law, or of man’s own works, and the religion of the Gospel, or of faith in Christ” (Christian Dogmatics, vol. 1, p. 10, 19)

So Pieper's teaching has the Christian "dichotomy" of Law versus Gospel.  And although God's Law in the Holy Scriptures is to be taught in the Church, yet it is only faith in the Gospel that can save.  This is popularly known as the teaching of "Law and Gospel". Another version could be stated

"Gospel versus Law".

This dichotomy is clearly taught in the Bible – Ephesians 2:8-9 and Galatians 2:16 come to mind.  Luther clearly taught it, for example in his sermons (see here).  All Christian doctrine, so far as it is Christian, teaches this.

      Although it would seem that the LC-MS teaches this, yet they also teach something else.  In 1986, Jacob A. O. Preus III (son of J.A.O. Preus II, former LC-MS president), wrote the following in his doctoral thesis, >> p. 133 <<:

“The Lutheran confessional understanding of the inerrancy of Scripture is significantly different from that found among many Reformed or fundamentalist theologians. … The inerrant Bible, therefore, is not the object of faith, but Jesus Christ and His vicarious satisfaction are the object and the source of certainty of faith. It is therefore from the perspective of faith that the Confessions view Scripture as being without error.”

One may understand the following "dichotomy" from this assertion:

"Gospel versus Bible"

So faith in the Gospel saves, not faith in the Bible.  Preus claims that this is the "Lutheran confessional understanding", but offers no explicit evidence from the Book of Concord directly stating this dichotomy.  So he separates "Christ" from the "inerrant Bible" and creates a dichotomy of these two to create his "Lutheran confessional understanding", an assertion that I will call a False Dichotomy. The Lutheran Book of Concord never creates this dichotomy. There is no dichotomy between these two.  Momentrix explains further what a "false dichotomy" does:

"This fallacy is common when the author has an agenda and wants to give the impression that their view is the only sensible one. Readers should always be suspicious of the false dichotomy.

Franz Pieper warned against this "false dichotomy" in Lehre und Wehre 1890 (emphasis mine):

"To fight for the doctrine of justification [i.e. the Gospel] and for Holy Scripture and the Christian religion amounts to one and the same thing.… Furthermore, as regards the understanding of Scripture let me say: Theologians who err in regard to the doctrine of justification are sitting not in Scripture, but before a closed door, no matter how diligently they may study and quote the Bible. To those who do not understand the doctrine of justification the Bible is merely a book of moral instructions with all manner of strange side issues."

Dr. Preus would certainly not admit to erring on the doctrine of Justification.  So then why would he make this substitution:

"Gospel versus Law" – Biblical dichotomy (Gal. 2:16) is transformed into

"Gospel versus Bible" – Preus/LC-MS dichotomy (false dichotomy).

Preus's low view of Holy Scripture in essence takes the Bible's focus of the Law's ineffective nature to save and substitutes the Bible's ineffective nature to save, a foreign teaching to Christianity, the Lutheran Confessions, Luther, Walther, and Franz Pieper. Could it be that this false dichotomy indicates a weakness in the proper distinction of Law and Gospel? — In the next Part 2, we find that this teaching is not isolated in the LC-MS. 

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