STOP CPH’S MOVE TO
PROMOTE ESV IN LCMS
Christian News, Vol. 48, No. 46, November 22, 2010
The time has come for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, particularly the Board of Directors of Concordia Publishing House, to stop CPH’s Paul McCain’s all out drive to get the LCMS to use the English Standard Version of the Bible in all of its publications.
Last week McCain on his Cyberbrethren blog included items showing him promoting the ESV and then a string of non-Lutherans giving their reasons why they believe the ESV is accurate and in the language of the people. McCain says that the ESV is following in the great legacy of Tyndale and the King James translators. He notes that Tyndale was influenced by Martin Luther. The preface of the ESV says much the same, adding that the ESV is also following the legacy of the Revised Standard Version of “faithfulness to the text and vigorous pursuit of accuracy” with “simplicity, beauty, and dignity of expression.”
Christian News and many others, including Paul Burgdorf’s Confessional Lutheran have shown that the RSV translators were higher critics of the Bible. Almost all rejected such doctrines as the deity and virgin birth of Jesus Christ. The publishers of the ESV sya it is 91% RSV. A few of the most flagrant errors in the RSV were corrected. However, both McCain and the LCMS’s Worship Commission insisted that both the RSV and ESV are thoroughly accurate.
Although CN was told that McCain seldom places anything on his blog which takes issue with what he says, CN sent this notice to McCain’s Cyberbrethren in response to McCain and others making their statements promoting the ESV:
A review of the ESV in the Concordia Journal of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis (April, 2005) said: “The text of the English Standard Version ‘feels’ antiquated, if that is the desired outcome. However, the use of archaic English is not helpful. . .” “The advanced reading level almost makes this translation difficult to read. . .” “the AAT provides a more readable and understandable translation. . .”
The ESV is 91% the RSV, copyright by the National Council of Churches. The preface of the RSV says: “The RSV is not a new translation in the language of today.” The Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly (Fall, 2006) said that in many places the ESV “sounds quite stilted.” Mark L. Strauss of Bethel Seminary, San Diego, who has been a consultant to several Bible translations, says that the ESV “is not suitable as a standard Bible for the church. This is because the ESV too often fails the test of ‘standard English.’” A survey (Christian News, August 24, 2009, pp. 16, 17) comparing the AAT and ESV showed that some 90 percent who responded preferred the language and doctrinal accuracy of the AAT over the ESV. The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (Vol. 46, #3, 531) said that the ESV “is somewhat archaic”. Its language is not the language of contemporary communication, which makes it too difficult to read for many in the Church and will lead to misunderstanding on the part of others. Herman Otten
Christian News has a long history of publishing letters and articles by critics who claim Christian News does not tell the truth. LCMS’s bureaucrats often suppress the criticism and the truth.
McCain, who refuses all letters and calls from the CN editor, did not include CN’s response to the promoters of the ESV.
CN has shown for decades that no translation of the Bible is more like Martin Luther’s than Beck’s An American Translation of the Bible. No translation is more accurate on predictive messianic prophecy, presenting Christ at the heart of both the Old and New Testament, and the sacraments.
Reproduced in this issue from the LCMS’s 2010 Convention Workbook are overtures 2-10 “To Publish Orthodox Christian Translation of Bible” (pp. 156-157) and “To Instruct CPH to Stop Using ESV” p. 157.
“Report and Overtures Correlated With Resolution” on pp. 177-179 of the LCMS’s 2010 Convention Proceedings list no resolution adopted by the convention responding to these overtures. It appears as if once again some synodical officials suppressed the truth about a matter far more vital than all the talk about restructuring.
Christian News sent a copy of the AAT to each member of the convention committee which was to deal with the ESV, AAT ad Bible translations. CN suggested that McCain have CPH send a copy of the ESV to all members of the committee. CN pleaded with the committee members to compare the AAT with the ESV. No member of the committee acknowledged receipt of the Bible or expressed any thanks for the Bible.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
BONHOEFFER DENIED THE RESURRECTION AND DEITY OF JESUS CHRIST
A Call to Refute “Scripture and Myth in Dietrich Bonhoeffer”
BONHOEFFER DENIED THE RESURRECTION AND DEITY OF JESUS CHRIST
Christian News, Vol. 48, No. 45, November 15, 2010
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who denied the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is now considered by Concordia Seminary, St. Louis as “perhaps the most important Lutheran Theologian since Martin Luther” (p. 8). When the Bonhoeffer centennial was celebrated in 2006 at both LCMS seminaries those who said they had the evidence to show that Bonhoeffer’s Christ was not the Christ of the Bible were denied an opportunity to present their evidence. The great scholars were not interested in the evidence. Both seminaries refuse to consider what Raymond Surburg, Cornelius Van Til and Richard Weikhart had written about Bonhoeffer’s theology.
Richard Weikart of the University of Iowa wrote in “Scripture and Myth In Dietrich Bonhoeffer” (Fides Historia 25,1 [1993]): “Thus Bonhoeffer saw all biblical language as problematic and in need of demythologizing. The entire Bible is myth, not just miracles.”
“Bonhoeffer identified the resurrection history as mythology but ‘this mythology is the thing itself’ Bonhoeffer said he out-demythologized Rudolf Bultmann, the famous demytholigizer of the Bible. The entire article is in this issue pp. 9ff).
Concordia Publishing House, particularly under Paul McCain, has been an enthusiastic promoter of Bonhoeffer. Its current catalog includes a full page of Bonhoeffer books, 10 published by ELCA’s Fortress Press and one by CPH. Christian News has sent “Scripture and Myth In Dietrich Bonhoeffer” to both LCMS seminaries and LCMS President Matthew Harrison, inviting them to respond. How is it possible for them to promote a theologian who denies the deity and resurrection of Christ and the historic Christian faith?
BONHOEFFER DENIED THE RESURRECTION AND DEITY OF JESUS CHRIST
Christian News, Vol. 48, No. 45, November 15, 2010
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who denied the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is now considered by Concordia Seminary, St. Louis as “perhaps the most important Lutheran Theologian since Martin Luther” (p. 8). When the Bonhoeffer centennial was celebrated in 2006 at both LCMS seminaries those who said they had the evidence to show that Bonhoeffer’s Christ was not the Christ of the Bible were denied an opportunity to present their evidence. The great scholars were not interested in the evidence. Both seminaries refuse to consider what Raymond Surburg, Cornelius Van Til and Richard Weikhart had written about Bonhoeffer’s theology.
Richard Weikart of the University of Iowa wrote in “Scripture and Myth In Dietrich Bonhoeffer” (Fides Historia 25,1 [1993]): “Thus Bonhoeffer saw all biblical language as problematic and in need of demythologizing. The entire Bible is myth, not just miracles.”
“Bonhoeffer identified the resurrection history as mythology but ‘this mythology is the thing itself’ Bonhoeffer said he out-demythologized Rudolf Bultmann, the famous demytholigizer of the Bible. The entire article is in this issue pp. 9ff).
Concordia Publishing House, particularly under Paul McCain, has been an enthusiastic promoter of Bonhoeffer. Its current catalog includes a full page of Bonhoeffer books, 10 published by ELCA’s Fortress Press and one by CPH. Christian News has sent “Scripture and Myth In Dietrich Bonhoeffer” to both LCMS seminaries and LCMS President Matthew Harrison, inviting them to respond. How is it possible for them to promote a theologian who denies the deity and resurrection of Christ and the historic Christian faith?
Thursday, November 4, 2010
BONHOEFFER: DENIED RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
Intellectual Snobs Ignore Christian News
BONHOEFFER: DENIED
RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
Christian News, November 8, 2010, Vol. 48, No. 44
www.christiannewsmo.com
“Surburg, Maier, Bonhoeffer and the Holocaust” on page one again shows how highly Dietrich Bonhoeffer is being praised in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Concordia Seminary, St. Louis has said in a news release that Bonhoeffer is “the most important theologian since Martin Luther” and “the most important theologian of the 20th Century.” Last week CN noted that a Bonhoeffer book was used for devotions by the entire seminary. The LCMS’s Lutheran Witness insisted that Bonhoeffer was a confessional Lutheran. The LCMS’s Concordia Publishing House in its catalog has a full page featuring some ten books by Bonhoeffer and one published by CPH praising Bonhoeffer as a great Christian and Lutheran. One of CPH’s biggest displays is the one on Bonhoeffer’s books.
Christian News has repeatedly published evidence that Bonhoeffer demythologized the Bible, rejected the resurrection of Christ as a fact which actually happened in ordinary calendar history, and repudiated historic Christianity.
Kurt Marquart noted that intellectual snobs simply refuse to accept as fact something in a publication they despise regardless of how truthful it is. They refuse to read anything by someone they despise. Concordia Seminary, St. Louis vs. Otten Case Book of Documentation arranged by Kurt Marquart includes “A Respectful, Friendly, But Urgent Appeal to the Faculty.” It says: “NEO-ORTHODOXY, EXISTENTIALISM, LUNDENSIANISM: Through their written works such men as Barth, Brunner, Tillich, Aulen, Nygren, and others, are teaching almost as effectively on this campus as if they had been formally called to this seminary as theological professors.”
Bonhoeffer was not on the list because the St. Louis professors 50 years ago were so ignorant about the most important Lutheran theologian since Luther and the most influential theologian of the 20th Century they never mentioned him. Today Bonhoeffer should be added. Today’s seminary professors appear to be far better informed and scholarly.
CPH should publish another book on Bonhoeffer. This one should include the lengthy scholarly articles CN has published on Bonhoeffer’s theology by 1) Raymond Surburg and 2) Cornelius Van Til, 3) Valen Sendstad’s The Word That Can Never Die, formerly published by CPH and 4) Scripture and Myth In Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by Richard Weikhart of the University of Iowa in Fides et Historia 25, 1 (1993): 12-25.
Valen Sendstad showed in his book that Karl Barth, who greatly influenced Bonhoeffer and was praised by him, denied the Trinity.
Here are a few statements in the Fides et Historia article about Bonhoeffer:
“Bonhoeffer was thoroughly imbued with biblical criticism and always rejected attempts to dispense with it. In 1933 he wrote that the doctrine of verbal inspiration of scripture must be rejected in favor of biblical criticism.”
“Barth considered the Bible a testimony to the history of God (Geschichte), not a record of events in the world. Thus he called the resurrection of Jesus an ‘unhistorical event.’ He asserted in 1920 that ‘it is beside the point even to ask whether they [miracles in the Bible] are historical and possible. They make no claim to being either. They signalize the unhistorical, the impossible, the new time that is coming.’”
“Barth’s distinction between Historie and Geschichte also translated into a dichotomy between time and eternity.”
“The Barthian influence on Bonhoeffer’s conception of biblical history is evident already in the summer of 1925. Concerning the resurrection of Jesus, Bonhoeffer wrote that ‘it is . . . senseless and crude to make of it a bare historical (historische) fact, for God wants to appear in history (Geschichte). The resurrection occurs in the sphere of faith, of revelation; every other interpretation takes for it its decisive character: God in history (Geschichte).’ In a lecture in 1928 Bonhoeffer stated that the Bible is filled with material that is historically unreliable. Even the life of Jesus is ‘overgrown with legends’ and myth so that we know little about the life of Jesus. Bonhoeffer concluded that ‘Vita Jesu scribi non potest’ (the life of Jesus cannot be written). Barthian influence is especially pronounced in Act and Being, in which Bonhoeffer explained that Christian revelation and proclamation is never concerned with events of the past, but rather with those occurring in the present and oriented toward the future.”
“Other writings of the middle period of Bonhoeffer’s life make clear that he had no intention of upholding the historicity of scripture. In discussing the first three chapters of Genesis in Creation and Fall (1933) he criticized the idea of verbal inspiration and maintained that the biblical author was restricted by the state of knowledge when it was written. The Garden of Eden is a mythical world and the story is picture language to convey truths which can never be grasped in themselves.”
“To avoid misunderstanding he added a clarifying note denying the literal resurrection of Jesus in the past.”
“According to Bonhoeffer, the resurrection and other events in the Bible are thus not true as empirical facts of history.”
“Picture language of the sort suggested by Bonhoeffer might also be called myth, and he explicitly made this connection. He welcomed the works of Bultmann and deplored the negative reaction accorded to his project of demythologization. Bonhoeffer wrote:
“My view of it [demythologizing the New Testament] today would be, not that he went ‘too far,’ as most people thought, but that he did not go far enough. Not only the ‘mythological’ concepts, such as miracle, ascension, etc. (which are not in principle separable from the concepts of God, faith, etc.) but ‘religious’ concepts generally are problematic. You cannot, as Bultmann supposes, separate God and miracles, but you must be able to interpret and proclaim both in a ‘non-religious’ sense.”
“Thus Bonhoeffer saw all biblical language as problematic and in need of demythologizing. The entire Bible is myth, not just the miracles.”
“Bonhoeffer identified the resurrection and all biblical history as mythology, but ‘this mythology is the thing itself!’”
“Bonhoeffer’s stance toward God’s role in the world seems just as paradoxical as his stance toward scripture. In the case of scripture, he denied any necessary metaphysical reality behind language, while in the present world, he denied any metaphysical reality beyond the world. God’s transcendence is not some metaphysical transcendence, but is a transcendence within the world. In explaining his position Bonhoeffer used extremely paradoxical language:
“God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. . . The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God.”
“It is little wonder that conflicting interpretations of Bonhoeffer abound.”
“He still conceived of the Bible as a book of religious truths in mythological language that had no necessary connection with empirical historical or scientific truths. His rejection of Barth’s ‘positivism of revelation’ and his desire to move beyond Bultmann make him a strange ally indeed of American evangelicals.”
Father Richard Neuhaus, who was highly praised in the St. Louis seminary’s Concordia Journal by David Benke, commended Bultmann’s demythologizing. Neuhaus denied the inerrancy of the Bible, justification by faith alone, and was a universalist. It is time the great scholars of the LCMS’s seminaries start reading articles and books which expose the truth about such liberals as Bonhoeffer and Neuhaus.
BONHOEFFER: DENIED
RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
Christian News, November 8, 2010, Vol. 48, No. 44
www.christiannewsmo.com
“Surburg, Maier, Bonhoeffer and the Holocaust” on page one again shows how highly Dietrich Bonhoeffer is being praised in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Concordia Seminary, St. Louis has said in a news release that Bonhoeffer is “the most important theologian since Martin Luther” and “the most important theologian of the 20th Century.” Last week CN noted that a Bonhoeffer book was used for devotions by the entire seminary. The LCMS’s Lutheran Witness insisted that Bonhoeffer was a confessional Lutheran. The LCMS’s Concordia Publishing House in its catalog has a full page featuring some ten books by Bonhoeffer and one published by CPH praising Bonhoeffer as a great Christian and Lutheran. One of CPH’s biggest displays is the one on Bonhoeffer’s books.
Christian News has repeatedly published evidence that Bonhoeffer demythologized the Bible, rejected the resurrection of Christ as a fact which actually happened in ordinary calendar history, and repudiated historic Christianity.
Kurt Marquart noted that intellectual snobs simply refuse to accept as fact something in a publication they despise regardless of how truthful it is. They refuse to read anything by someone they despise. Concordia Seminary, St. Louis vs. Otten Case Book of Documentation arranged by Kurt Marquart includes “A Respectful, Friendly, But Urgent Appeal to the Faculty.” It says: “NEO-ORTHODOXY, EXISTENTIALISM, LUNDENSIANISM: Through their written works such men as Barth, Brunner, Tillich, Aulen, Nygren, and others, are teaching almost as effectively on this campus as if they had been formally called to this seminary as theological professors.”
Bonhoeffer was not on the list because the St. Louis professors 50 years ago were so ignorant about the most important Lutheran theologian since Luther and the most influential theologian of the 20th Century they never mentioned him. Today Bonhoeffer should be added. Today’s seminary professors appear to be far better informed and scholarly.
CPH should publish another book on Bonhoeffer. This one should include the lengthy scholarly articles CN has published on Bonhoeffer’s theology by 1) Raymond Surburg and 2) Cornelius Van Til, 3) Valen Sendstad’s The Word That Can Never Die, formerly published by CPH and 4) Scripture and Myth In Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by Richard Weikhart of the University of Iowa in Fides et Historia 25, 1 (1993): 12-25.
Valen Sendstad showed in his book that Karl Barth, who greatly influenced Bonhoeffer and was praised by him, denied the Trinity.
Here are a few statements in the Fides et Historia article about Bonhoeffer:
“Bonhoeffer was thoroughly imbued with biblical criticism and always rejected attempts to dispense with it. In 1933 he wrote that the doctrine of verbal inspiration of scripture must be rejected in favor of biblical criticism.”
“Barth considered the Bible a testimony to the history of God (Geschichte), not a record of events in the world. Thus he called the resurrection of Jesus an ‘unhistorical event.’ He asserted in 1920 that ‘it is beside the point even to ask whether they [miracles in the Bible] are historical and possible. They make no claim to being either. They signalize the unhistorical, the impossible, the new time that is coming.’”
“Barth’s distinction between Historie and Geschichte also translated into a dichotomy between time and eternity.”
“The Barthian influence on Bonhoeffer’s conception of biblical history is evident already in the summer of 1925. Concerning the resurrection of Jesus, Bonhoeffer wrote that ‘it is . . . senseless and crude to make of it a bare historical (historische) fact, for God wants to appear in history (Geschichte). The resurrection occurs in the sphere of faith, of revelation; every other interpretation takes for it its decisive character: God in history (Geschichte).’ In a lecture in 1928 Bonhoeffer stated that the Bible is filled with material that is historically unreliable. Even the life of Jesus is ‘overgrown with legends’ and myth so that we know little about the life of Jesus. Bonhoeffer concluded that ‘Vita Jesu scribi non potest’ (the life of Jesus cannot be written). Barthian influence is especially pronounced in Act and Being, in which Bonhoeffer explained that Christian revelation and proclamation is never concerned with events of the past, but rather with those occurring in the present and oriented toward the future.”
“Other writings of the middle period of Bonhoeffer’s life make clear that he had no intention of upholding the historicity of scripture. In discussing the first three chapters of Genesis in Creation and Fall (1933) he criticized the idea of verbal inspiration and maintained that the biblical author was restricted by the state of knowledge when it was written. The Garden of Eden is a mythical world and the story is picture language to convey truths which can never be grasped in themselves.”
“To avoid misunderstanding he added a clarifying note denying the literal resurrection of Jesus in the past.”
“According to Bonhoeffer, the resurrection and other events in the Bible are thus not true as empirical facts of history.”
“Picture language of the sort suggested by Bonhoeffer might also be called myth, and he explicitly made this connection. He welcomed the works of Bultmann and deplored the negative reaction accorded to his project of demythologization. Bonhoeffer wrote:
“My view of it [demythologizing the New Testament] today would be, not that he went ‘too far,’ as most people thought, but that he did not go far enough. Not only the ‘mythological’ concepts, such as miracle, ascension, etc. (which are not in principle separable from the concepts of God, faith, etc.) but ‘religious’ concepts generally are problematic. You cannot, as Bultmann supposes, separate God and miracles, but you must be able to interpret and proclaim both in a ‘non-religious’ sense.”
“Thus Bonhoeffer saw all biblical language as problematic and in need of demythologizing. The entire Bible is myth, not just the miracles.”
“Bonhoeffer identified the resurrection and all biblical history as mythology, but ‘this mythology is the thing itself!’”
“Bonhoeffer’s stance toward God’s role in the world seems just as paradoxical as his stance toward scripture. In the case of scripture, he denied any necessary metaphysical reality behind language, while in the present world, he denied any metaphysical reality beyond the world. God’s transcendence is not some metaphysical transcendence, but is a transcendence within the world. In explaining his position Bonhoeffer used extremely paradoxical language:
“God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. . . The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God.”
“It is little wonder that conflicting interpretations of Bonhoeffer abound.”
“He still conceived of the Bible as a book of religious truths in mythological language that had no necessary connection with empirical historical or scientific truths. His rejection of Barth’s ‘positivism of revelation’ and his desire to move beyond Bultmann make him a strange ally indeed of American evangelicals.”
Father Richard Neuhaus, who was highly praised in the St. Louis seminary’s Concordia Journal by David Benke, commended Bultmann’s demythologizing. Neuhaus denied the inerrancy of the Bible, justification by faith alone, and was a universalist. It is time the great scholars of the LCMS’s seminaries start reading articles and books which expose the truth about such liberals as Bonhoeffer and Neuhaus.
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