August Pieper on German Language Lutheranism
The Wauwatosa theologian gets it right:
"In the German language lie all the roots of genuine, solid, strong Lutheranism and Christianity, in the English, not one. Tear this plant forcibly from the soil of the German language, and it will become a dry tumbleweed driven by the wind against the fence. We must hold fast to the German language in church and school as long as there still are those who can be edified better in German than in English. In our training-schools for pastors and teachers we must cling to the German language until Judgment Day…O that the Lutheran Church, especially as it becomes an English speaking church would guard against this moralistic gospel and common sense Christianity of the Reformed as against the devil himself! O that we might say to them until Judgment Day as Luther said to Zwingli, "You have a different spirit than we!" This gospel of the sectarian churches is nothing else than the authority of the blind but proud human reason over the Gospel of Christ. If we as a Synod were already dominated by the Reformed spirit of reason, then no study of Scripture, be it ever so intense, could produce a spiritual renewal in us, but would become mere modern criticism of the Bible and rob us of our faith."
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