S
spina1953
Guest
Hi Topper I like what you posted and has lots of information tat makes interesting points!!The celebrated Lutheran Theologian Paul Althaus continues his comments on Luther’s dealings with the NT canon:
“In 1522 Luther writes that he can find ‘no trace’ of evidence that the Revelation of John ‘was written by the Holy Spirit’, that is, inspired. He places it in a category with the Second Book of Esdras. In accordance with this, Luther also changed the traditional order of the New Testament books. He placed those just named with Jude at the end of his Bible. ‘They have from ancient times had a different reputation’ and do not belong to the ‘true and certain chief books of the New Testament……After 1530, he even omitted the sharpest phrases in the ‘Preface to James” (for example, “Luther therefore did not intend to that the congregation should continue to read these judgments. For himself and in speaking before his theological students he maintained his judgment of James even later. In this, however, he was for the most part more concerned with preventing his Roman opponents from continually using James as an argument against the Reformation gospel than he was about the letter as such. In 1530 he replaced the completely negative 1522 Preface to the Revelation of St. John, with another which interprets the book in terms of the history of the church and shows its continuing value for the church, But for the rest of his life, he continued to put different values on the books which he had put together at the end of his Bible than on the ‘main books’.” Althaus, Theology, pg. 84-5
Luther thought that it was within his purview to change just about everything he didn’t agree with. Why not meddle with the traditional order of the NT books? Placing the ones that he didn’t care for at the back of the NT would reinforce to his readers that they were not ‘equivalent’ to those that he preferred and called the ‘main books’. Here again we see Luther displaying a lack of respect for well accepted Scripture, but (again) showing that he didn’t really have a very good idea what was written by and Apostle and what was not. Of course, we have to remember that Luther had developed a criteria by which he could determine what was and what was not canonical/inspired. Those things which did not ‘Preach Christ’ were (to him) clearly not canonical. And what was the most important thing about ‘preaching Christ’? Teaching Salvation by Faith Alone of course? James, which teaches against SBFA, was dealt with harshly by Luther.
Interestingly Althaus mentions that Luther was more concerned with the polemical aspects of his judgment of James than he was “about the letter as such”.
Rev. Louis Bouyer was a French Lutheran before he converted to Roman Catholicsim. He wrote his excellent book “The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism” as a Catholic.
“Luther was the first to have to recognize that all of the writers of the New Testament, other than St. Paul, deal a crushing blow to the theological structure (salvation by faith alone) he tried to build on the later. He had to rid himself of the express teaching of the Epistle of St. James by calling it an ‘epistle of straw’ – strangely inconsequential in one who claimed to restore the Scriptures to their place of supreme authority. Blinded as he was by the so-called Pauline character of the structure he had erected on a few texts taken apart from their context, he did not see that St. Paul contradicted his system (salvation by faith alone) no less formally than did St. James. After more than three centuries, all serious exegetes are obliged by all the evidence to accept this fact; there is not a single Protestant author whose works are of scientific value who disputes it. Extrinsic justification, a justification independent of any interior change (as Luther proposed), of any new capability given to man to perform acts pleasing of themselves to God, is so far from being a Pauline doctrine this it is quite irreconcilable with the whole body of his teaching.” Bouyer, pg.174
As for Luther’s being a credible interpreter of early Christian in his ‘quest’ to determine the authenticity of the NT Canon:
“According to his (Luther’s) knowledge of early Christian literature, there was a sizeable gap in time between the writers of the New Testament and the earliest Church Fathers. Luther regarded Tertullian, who died in 230, as the earliest writer in the church after the apostles………he apparently did not know the writers who later acquired the title “apostolic fathers”. He was therefor, able to invoke the historical and chronological argument in a form no longer available to theologians of the twentieth century.” Pelikan (Lutheran to EO convert), “Luther the Expositor”, pg. 83-4
This of course means that Luther was unaware of the 17 Early Church Fathers who proceeded Tertullian, or their writings. How weird is it that Tertullian became a heretic (a Montanist) and Luther thought he was the first Early Church Father?
Question: Would Luther have made such disrespectful comments and judgments about Holy Scripture, partly on the basis of the ancient Church, if he had realized how poorly educated he was on the ancient Church (the Early Church Fathers)?
Given Luther’s astonishing lack of knowledge about the early Church, why would Lutheranism have followed his lead and his judgments about those 4 books of the NT?