BWC1c: Scripture sufficient, Tradition not needed; Internal Testimony, TSSI, etc.; Apocrypha; Koran

      This continues from Part BWC1b in a series (Table of Contents in Part BWC1) presenting Walther's edition of Baier's Compendium of Positive Theology. — Continuing our…

Notable Quotes: (Italics follow the original. All quotes not from Baier were from Walther's additions.)

80: Quenstedt: "Holy Scripture is sufficient by itself to prove all the dogmas of faith, and there is no need to add to it either the Roman Pontiff or the consent and authority of the Church, or human reason, revelations and private visions."

82: Quenstedt: "This principle of the pontiffs: 'Whatever the Roman Pontiff determines is infallibly true', first of all cannot be, it is clear from this, because they try to prove it from another source, namely from the Scripture itself, St. Matthew 16:18."

85: Balduin: "When even the regenerate want to argue about matters of faith from the principles of reason, then their reason is said to be corrupted."

 87: Calixt: “There are two principles: the authority of the divine law, and the tradition of the Catholic Church [i.e. Tradition, the theme of Prof. Biermann. Calixt was known to be heterodox.]…To this Kahn says: “When Calixt spoke of two principles in the Church, Scripture and Tradition, this was evidently at the expense of the Protestant principle of Scripture and was once again an approximation to the Roman Church.” [Dr. Benjamin Mayes incredibly argued otherwise! See here, p. 295 ff.]

91: Von Hofmann and his "I" theology: "But where do I find the faith by which I interpret the Scripture, if not in myself?"

95: Baier: "not only the sublime things that surpass the grasp of human reason, but also all the other things contained in Scripture, were inspired by God…"

96: Augsburg Confession: "Why does Scripture so often forbid making and hearing traditions?"

101: Antithesis: R. F. Grau: "the Holy Scripture…did not originate in a purely divine manner, as if the Holy Spirit, as the sole author, had dictated to the human writers, as mere scribes or instruments, both the content and the very words".

100-105: Walther quotes, in addition to the earlier Calvin, many later German "Lutheran" theologians in Antithesis to Baier's teaching of divine inspiration: R. F. Grau, Kahnis, Thomasius, von Hofmann, Luthardt, Delitzsch, Kurtz, Dieckhoff, and Philippi.

107: Chemnitz: "And so that the people of God might be certain that this Scripture was not brought by Moses by human will, but was divinely inspired, God, by very many stupendous miracles, attested to Moses's authority both before, after, and during the very writing."

110: Luther: "But the Jews, most pestilential of men, frequently pervert the meaning of the prophets by their points and distinctions"

115: Baier: "the reading of Scripture was also granted and commended to all indiscriminately, and this by divine command (Deut. 6:6–7)"

116: Quenstedt: "2. In the so-called Inquisition, nothing is more heretical and capital than the reading of the Bible."

119: Baier: "Holy Scripture does not derive its authority from the Church, since the Church was not its author"

122: Baier: "Scripture does not use the blandishments of words and the coloring of secular eloquence, adapted to captivate the minds".

126: Baier: "that the Holy Scripture so clearly and distinctly shows the way of reconciling a sinful man to God, which no other religion or writing teaches."

130: Baier: "As for the Muhammedan religion, it is a mixture of various religions, which is self-contradictory and, when compared with Christianity, is forced to submit". (Walther then gives a long quote from the Koran.)

135: Baier: "This full assurance is the benefit of the Holy Spirit, who, as Augustine says, has a chair in heaven and teaches hearts from within". [The internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, or TSSI in Latin: see Pieper, C.D. I, 313; Noland, Scaer, Tepker deny this teaching, calling it Calvinistic.]

136: Quenstedt: "A demonstrative regress is when we proceed from a confused cognition to a distinct one. When we prove the authority and divinity of the Holy Scriptures from the intrinsic testimony of the Holy Spirit, and from the Holy Scriptures we prove the testimony of the Holy Spirit, we do not commit a circle, but it is a demonstrative regress." [Another Lutheran teaches TSSI.]

138: Baier: "the testimony of the Church alone does not suffice; rather, the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, or His operation, efficacious through Scripture itself, must also here concur."

142: Kromayer: "We believe that this writing is inspired not because of the testimony, but through the testimony of the Church." [Against the Papists.]

144: Chemnitz: "Thus Origen says that he learned from the paradosis (παραδώσει, by tradition) that the four Gospels are undisputed in the universal Church". [The place for "Tradition" in the Church.]

146: Hollaz: "Cicero gravely says in his speech Pro Archia Poeta: 'Greek is read in almost all nations, while Latin is confined to its own borders, which are indeed narrow.'"

149: Baier: Apocrypha "are not to be brought forward when the canonical Scripture is required; although otherwise they are not to be completely hidden, but are to be read profitably"

152: Chemnitz: "the Council of Trent, in its fourth session, decrees as follows: 'If anyone does not receive the entire books, with all their parts, as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate edition, for sacred and canonical, let him be anathema.'"

NOTE: Gemini reports the following Papist doctrines supported by the Apocrypha: 1. Purgatory and Prayer for the Dead, 2. Intercession of Saints, 3. Almsgiving as a Penitential Act, etc.. See also Mark Surburg's blog post of 4 years ago > HERE <.

In the next Part BWC1d we conclude the Notable Quotes from Volume I, then present the full text.

Walther on the Apocrypha: "bad crumbs" (Purgatory)

      The subject of the Apocrypha books comes up at times. If one queries the search engines one is faced with much secondary information, opinions, and confusion among the populace. On the teaching of the Catholic Church Wikipedia reports: 

"Many of these texts are considered canonical Old Testament books by the Catholic Church, affirmed by the Council of Rome (382) and later reaffirmed by the Council of Trent (1545–1563)". 

So when I ran across C. F. W. Walther's comments on this subject, I took note of it. This was included in his essay to the 1873 Western District and his comments are most instructive. In this essay, Walther quotes John Gerhard as he refutes the pope's disrespect of the sacred Scriptures. Walther's comments are in parentheses. Gerhard points out how the popes achieve this (from page 46): 

"2. By appending to the certain and immovable Word of God presented in the canonical books the apocryphal writings, which contain uncertain and false assertions".

(This is very important. We also have the apocrypha in our Bible book, e.g. Jesus Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Maccabees, etc.; but it is stated above that they are not to be regarded as Holy Scripture, but only to be read carefully. From them we can read what the Jewish church believed after the appearance of the prophets up to the time of Christ, which otherwise the common people would not know at all. But they also contain many falsehoods. It says that the witch of Endor brought the real Samuel out of death, that a certain Rhazis performed a great heroic deed with his suicide, that Judas Maccabeus did well to send two thousand drachmas to Jerusalem as a sin offering, and that it was a good and holy opinion to pray for the dead that their sins might be forgiven. Of course, when the Roman priests read about the 2,000 drachmas, they thought: "This is a good passage, we must not delete it from the Bible," and they looked at the 2,000 drachmas with one eye and at purgatory with the other. The Book of Tobit then also condones shameful sorcery. Even though the Apocrypha contains a lot of valuable things, these are still very bad crumbs. The Roman Church, however, insists as much on the acceptance of the Apocrypha as on that of the Book of Isaiah or the Psalter, because it thinks it can prove purgatory, its sorcery at their consecration and the like; whereas anyone who knows history knows that the Apocrypha was never recognized by the Church of the Old Covenant. We have received the Old Testament from the Jewish orthodox Church, but in this Testament there is no Jesus Sirach, no Book of Tobit, no Books of the Maccabees, and so on. The Old Testament church already had these books, but they were not recognized as divine books. They were not originally written in Hebrew, but in Greek, and some of them only exist in Latin. In short, the papists are lying when they say that the Apocrypha is as good a word of God as the other books. We do not recognize them and give God the glory by not imputing to Him books that He did not make. For it is a great ungodliness for someone to write a book and put another name on the title, such as "Luther". But it is a small sin to write on it: "This book is from God", when it was written by men from their own spirit.) 

It was most instructive that Walther gives examples of falsehoods in the Apocrypha.

Does the Roman Catholic Church still teach Purgatory? 

• Yes, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, p. 268 (see here, sections 1030-1031). 

Do they still use the Apocrypha to justify this doctrine? 

• Yes, see section 1032 here., p. 269.

Do they also use Holy Scripture to justify this doctrine?

• Yes, falsely using 1 Cor 3:15 and 1 Pet 1:7 (see here). These do not speak of an intermediate period after death for "purification". Papists use the Apocrypha against Holy Scripture.

Does the Roman Catholic Church teach that the Apocrypha are inspired?

• Yes, section 1032 explicitly states "…Sacred Scripture: "Therefore [Judas Maccabeus] made atonement for the dead" (Footnote 609: 2 Macc 12:46). The Apocrypha is identified with "Sacred Scripture".

      Many within the LC–MS attempt to soften the view of today's Roman Catholic Church, that it has changed for the better since the days of the Reformation. But we can see by the above that it has only become more deceitful by attempting to mask their doctrine by mixing false Apocrypha teaching with Holy Scripture. — May Walther's clear instruction provide Christians with the tool that they need to refute all false doctrine:

Sola Scriptura!