# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1862_S271
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lic. Ströbel on the Revision of Luther's Bible. 271

should draw from his assertion the simple, obvious conclusion, namely that the divine Word is thus eternally inaccessible to the unlearned. How much unsalted twaddle about a necessary improvement of the Bible this rare man could have spared himself, if, instead of anathematizing me and lecturing a Nägelsbach, he had once seriously reflected on why he actually holds the German Bible to be word of man and work of man, and the Hebrew-Greek to be Word of God and work of God. An appeal to prophetic-apostolic authority avails as little here as belief in Buxtorf's [doctrine of] inspiration — and perhaps Stier does not even get as far as these two proofs. If he and his friends were once to analyze precisely the thoughts on which their judgment in the revision question tacitly depends, they would arrive at the result that God's Word can be spoken neither in the tongues of men nor of angels, neither in Hebrew nor in Greek, because it consists in the unutterable words which the Apostle in his rapture indeed heard, but could no more speak than could any other man. They would perceive the close connection of their ideas with those of those "heavenly prophets" and enthusiasts who at the time of the Reformation wished to be "sharp judges between letter and spirit"; who, in opposition to Luther, regarded only the "inner" word, the voice of the Holy Spirit in the heart, as God's Word, and treated the "outer" word in Scripture and preaching disdainfully, as "pure and simple" word of man and "poor shouting from the pulpit" — in whose footsteps Zwingli and Calvin too, with their followers, together with all Pietists and neo-believers, have walked and still walk to this day. Furthermore, Stier and his fellow friends of revision (among whom, however, neither the Canstein Bible Institute nor the scholars named by it may be reckoned) would, upon strict self-examination, arrive at the insight that, according to their basic views, Holy Scripture, through every version — even the most successful and most error-free — is constantly transformed into its specific opposite, that is, from God's Word into word of man; — that for this reason no Bible translation whatsoever is to be tolerated in the Church, for who may offer Christendom word of man instead of Word of God? — that even the original text itself, insofar as Masoretic and critical judgment has decided and still decides about it (thus after all only in part and in places), can count only as word of man; — and finally, that these gentlemen themselves, who indeed press hard for a version faithful in word and sense, but reserve for themselves the right of a Zwinglian, Unionist, philosophical, and so forth, interpretation of the original text, thereby proclaim this text eo ipso to be word of man, flowing from a human spirit and therefore also to be interpreted from a human spirit. Their alleged reverence for God's Hebrew-Greek word is — merely alleged, merely feigned, in truth just as small as their respect for God's German word. — Here I already hear in advance the high-and-mighty Calvinistic