MARTIN LUTHER ON SACRED SCRIPTURE Christ taught:“For I testify to every one that hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If any man shall add to these things, God shall add unto him the plagues written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from these things that are written in this book.”[60]Luther teaches:“To my mind it (the book of the Apocalypse) bears upon it no marks of an apostolic or prophetic character. . . Everyone may form his own judgment of this book; as for myself, I feel an aversion to it, and to me this is sufficient reason for rejecting it.”[61]“If your Papist annoys you with the word (‘alone’ - Rom. 3:28), tell him straightway, Dr. Martin Luther will have it so: Papist and ass are one and the same thing. Whoever will not have my translation, let him give it the go-by: the devil’s thanks to him who censures it without my will and knowledge. Luther will have it so, and he is a doctor above all the doctors in Popedom.”[62]Luther had a perverse habit of freely falsifying scripture to justify his purposes.“The history of Jonah is so monstrous that it is absolutely incredible.”[63]“The book of Esther I toss into the Elbe. I am such an enemy to the book of Esther that I wish it did not exist, for it Judaizes too much and has in it a great deal of heathenish foolishness.”[64]“Of very little worth is the Book of Baruch, whoever the worthy Baruch might be.”[65]“...the epistle of St. James is an epistle full of straw, because it contains nothing evangelical.”[66]“That epistle of James gives us much trouble, for the papists embrace it alone and leave out all the rest. Up to this point I have been accustomed just to deal with and interpret it according to the sense of the rest of the Scriptures. For you will judge that none of it must be set forth contrary to manifest Holy Scripture. Accordingly, if they will not admit my interpretations, then I shall make rubble also of it. I almost feel like throwing Jimmy into the stove, as the priest in Kalenberg did.” (Luther, The Licentiate Examination of Heinrich Schmedenstede, July 7, 1542.)It is worth noting that while Luther claimed for himself the right to interpret scripture according to his own view, and claimed that he was intelligent enough to judge anyone and everything by scripture alone yet he openly affirms that “We cannot claim to fathom completely the meaning of a single verse of Scripture; we succeed in apprehending only the A B C of it, and even that imperfectly.” (Luther, Table-talk, trans. Gustave Brunet, Paris, Garnier, 1844, pg. 288.)And again he states: “Let no one believe himself competent to understand Holy Scripture, unless he has, for a hundred years, governed the Church with the Prophets, with Elijiah and Elisha, St. John the Baptist, Jesus Christ and the Apostles.” (Luther, Table-talk, trans. Gustave Brunet, Paris, Garnier, 1844, pg. 290.)
Posted on: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 02:02:53 +0000
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