Posted by xprotestant on August 12, 2008 at 18:08:09:
An Inerrant and All-Sufficient Bible?
Having severed himself from Catholic tradition and its claim to apostolic authority, Luther found it necessary to base his authority on the Bible. In his 1519 debate with Catholic theologian Johann Eck at Leipzig, Luther denied final authority in matters of faith to tradition, councils, and popes, saying that the Bible was his authority. Eck responded with the words of Augustine, "I should not believe the Gospel did not the authority of the Church lead me thereto." Luther replied that it was the Bible that had brought the Church into existence, being a revelation of Christ. Historically, this is incorrect; Christ founded the Church, but none of the books of the New Testament were written during the Savior's sojourn in mortality.
Despite his heavy reliance on the Bible as the source of truth, Luther did not believe it was inerrant. He cast doubts on some traditional dates and authorship of biblical books and questioned the Mosaic authorship of parts of the Pentateuch. He rejected the Solomonic origin of Ecclesiastes and declared Job to be mere allegory. Kings, he said, was "more to be believed than Chronicles"1 and Esther was "without boots or spurs." Of 2 Maccabees (a book in the Apocrypha), Luther wrote, "I am so hostile to this book and to Esther that I could wish they did not exist at all; for they judaize too greatly and have much pagan impropriety."2 He further declared "The third book of Esdras I throw into the [river] Elbe." He also had serious questions about the book of Jeremiah, Jonah, and the Song of Solomon (also called Song of Songs). Of Jude, he wrote, "He quotes sayings and stories found nowhere else,"3 and noted that "Although I praise the book, it is an epistle that need not be counted among the chief books."4
For the New Testament, Luther gave greater prominence to works that spoke of Christ and his redemption, such as Paul's epistles (especially Galatians and Romans), the gospel of John, 1 John, and 1 Peter. Despite his leanings toward Paul, Luther on occasion disagreed with the apostle. "My dear Brother Paul," he wrote in one of his commentaries, "this argument won't stick."5
Having placed emphasis on the New Testament books that glorified Christ, Luther ended up discounting four of the doubtful seven writings previously brought into question by Erasmus:6 Hebrews (because it refuses a second forgiveness to apostates),7 James (which declares that 'faith without works is dead'), Jude (which Luther thought derived from 2 Peter and gave no clear witness to Christ), and Revelation (which, he believed, was not clear, did not properly teach Christ, was neither apostolic nor prophetic, and was subject to personal interpretation).
Luther wrote, "St. John's Gospel and his first epistle, St. Paul's epistles, especially Romans, Galatians and Ephesians and St. Peter's first epistle are the books that show you Christ and teach you all that is good and necessary for you to know." He went on to call these books the "kernel and marrow of all books," but declared that "St. James is really an epistle of straw compared to them for it has nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it . . . [It is] not the writing of any apostle."8
Luther's disdain for the epistle of James was because James wrote of the importance of works coupled with faith, as opposed to Paul's emphasis on faith, and James "does not mention the Passion, the Resurrection, or the Spirit of Christ." Luther concluded his preface to James, "All of the genuinely sacred books agree in this that all of them preach Christ and deal with Him. That is the test to judge all books, when we see whether they deal with Christ or not, since all the Scriptures show us Christ (Rom. 3) and St. Paul will know nothing but Christ (I Cor. 15)," to which he added, "What does not teach Christ is not apostolic, even though St. Peter or St. Paul taught it; again, what preaches Christ would be apostolic, even though Judas, Annas, Pilate and Herod did it."9 By this standard, the Book of Mormon is scripture, for it testifies of Christ.
Luther's dislike of the epistle of James is best illustrated in these words from his Table Talk:
Let us banish this Epistle from the university, for it is worthless. It has no syllable about Christ, not even naming him except at the beginning. I think it was written by a Jew who had heard of the Christians but not joined them. He had learned that the Christians insisted strongly on faith in Christ, and so he said to himself, "Well, you must take issue with them and speak only of works," and so he does. He says not a word of the passion and resurrection of Christ, the text of all the other apostles. Moreover, he has no order nor method. He speaks now of clothes, now of wrath, jumping from one topic to another. He has this simile: "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." Mary, mother of God! He compares faith to the body, when it should be compared to the soul.10
In his 1522 preface to the book of Revelation, Luther wrote:
About this Book of Revelation of John, I leave everyone free to hold his own opinion. I miss more than one thing in this book and it makes me consider it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic . . . There is no prophet in the Old Testament, to say nothing of the New, who deals exclusively with images. For myself, I think it approximates the Fourth Book of Esdras. I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it . . . They are supposed to be blessed who keep what is written in this book and yet no one knows what it is, to say nothing of keeping it . . . My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book . . . Christ is neither taught nor known in it . . . Therefore I stick to the books which present Christ to me, clearly and purely . . . This is the way it has been with this book heretofore. Many have tried their hands at it. But until this very day they have also let it alone until now, especially because some of the ancient fathers held it was not the work of St. John the Apostle . . . For our part, we share this doubt."11
Most of Luther's reasons to reject Revelation are based on false assumptions. For example, Revelation does not deal "exclusively with images," though it has more of them than any other book of the Bible. Some Old Testament prophets also dealt with images and they play an important role in the books of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah, which share many similarities with Revelation. Luther's mention of 4 Ezra (4 Esdras) is a bit ironic, since he included it in the Apocrypha section of his Bible, though only some copies of the Vulgate (long the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church) included it.
Luther suggested that John's vision could not be understood nor its precepts observed. While that may be true to later generations, it is likely that the people in the seven churches to which the book was addressed understood it. Luther's declaration that "Christ is neither taught nor known in it" is clearly wrong, as anyone who has read Revelation can attest. Indeed, the preface to the book clearly testifies of Christ:
The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand. John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne; And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. (Revelation 1:1-6)
Christ is named 18 times in the book of Revelation, in addition to the passages where he is depicted as the "Lamb of God," the title attributed to him by both John the Baptist (John 1:36) and Peter (1 Peter 1:19). Indeed, it is in John's revelation that we find one of Christ's important titles, "Alpha and Omega, the first and the last" (Revelation 1:8, 11; 21:6; 22:13).
Luther removed James, Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation from their normal places and relegated them to the end of the New Testament, as not being entitled to the same status as other biblical books. In his New Testament table of contents, he numbered books 1-23 and then placed the four rejected ones without numbers. Tyndale followed Luther's order in his English translation, as did Coverdale in 1535. The Great Bible of 1519 put Hebrews and James back in their original positions, and this is the order kept in the King James Version, which was based on the Great Bible.
Luther was not the only reformer to reject portions of the Bible. Ulrich Zwingle opposed the book of Revelation, while Calvin denounced it as unintelligible and forbad his pastors at Geneva to attempt to interpret it.
Though later Protestants rejected the twelve books of the Apocrypha found in Catholic Bibles, they were included in Luther's Bible. In the 1534 edition, he called them "books not on a level with Holy Writ and yet profitable and good to read."12 He removed all of them from the Old Testament and placed them in a special section after the Old Testament, just as he moved questionable New Testament books to the end of that collection. The Apocrypha were included in the first (1611) edition of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible and were included in some editions as late as the 19th century. Even today, Cambridge University, which has long been the official publisher of the KJV or "authorized version," publishes the KJV version of the Apocrypha in a separate volume.
In view of the intense criticisms leveled against Latter-day Saint beliefs about the scriptures and revelation, it is somewhat ironic that Joseph Smith's view of the Bible accords rather well with that of Luther. In addition to the declaration in Article of Faith 8 ("We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly"), the prophet declared, "I believe the Bible as it read when it came from the pen of the original writers. Ignorant translators, careless transcribers, or designing and corrupt priests have committed many errors" (History of the Church 6:57).