CPH at 150: The New Catechism + Explanations

Last updated on: September 12, 2019 at 8:50 am By Gene Veith

Concordia Publishing House celebrated its 150th Anniversary yesterday. Though CPH now offers some 10,000 products, its foundational publication has always been Luther’s Small Catechism, one of the most succinct and eloquent explanations of Christianity in all of Christendom, designed both to teach the faith to young and old and to serve as an inexhaustible devotional manual.

In honor of this celebration and as an example of both the continuity and the innovations that characterize the ministry of CPH for the last 150 years, I want to draw your attention to the new edition of Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanations, now also available as an app for your phone!

Historically, the catechism used to instruct Christians consisted of three major texts: the Ten Commandments, the Apostle’s Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. Then various explanations and questions & answers used in teaching these texts became attached to or even took the place of those primary documents, resulting eventually in various “catechisms” according to the different Christian traditions.

Medieval catechisms tended to follow the order of the Creed, the Prayer, and the Commandments, emphasizing that obeying the Law is the main focus of the Christian life. Luther put the elements in a different order: First Law (the Ten Commandments); then the Gospel (the Creed); and then the relationship with God in the Christian life (the Lord’s Prayer). Luther also added the Biblical texts regarding Baptism, Confession and Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper. He also attached a “Table of Duties,” consisting of Biblical passages about vocation. Catechumens learned the Word of God, with Luther’s catechism helping them to personally understand and apply that Word, so that they could answer the repeated question, “What does this mean?”

Luther’s Small Catechism is, indeed, “small”–it has been printed in a tract of only 24 pages–making it a marvel of theological brevity, yet richness. But it has often been accompanied by commentary, proof texts, and other material.

Lifelong Lutherans will remember the blue book and later the maroon book they used in confirmation, the Small Catechism with Explanations that go back to the work of Heinrich Schwan (1819-1905), the third president of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (who is credited by Wikipedia–incorrectly [see comments]–with installing America’s first Christmas tree in a church).

In 2017, CPH published the Catechism with new explanations. It would never have occurred to Rev. Schwan that Christians would have to deal with controversies over abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, cohabitation, and the like. The new explanations apply the Cathechism–as well as an abundance of Scriptural passages–to those issues, as well as other 2st century concerns.

What is most striking to me is the new edition’s organization. Each part of Luther’s Catechism is followed by an explanatory section “The Central Thought” followed by “A Closer Reading of the Small Catechism,” giving additional explanations and Scriptural support for what Luther was teaching. Then follows a section “Connections and Applications,” which applies the teaching to our lives today. Because the Catechism’s purpose is not just educational and doctrinal but devotional, the treatment of each part ends with a Psalm, a hymn, and a prayer.

Notice the structure: we move from learning the content, to understanding the content, to applying the content. This follows the tenets of classical education (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and makes for unusually thorough learning. Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanations thus functions as a stand-alone curriculum for teaching the faith. In addition to being a doctrinal and moral reference book and a devotional manual.

I know, I know, this new edition came out two years ago, but we just discussed it in a reading group of area church workers that I take part in. Though I was one of the many readers of the material as it was being prepared, I didn’t really study the final product before now.

We also read two articles from a special issue of the Concordia Journal on the Catechism that I would recommend: Gerhard Bode’s Knowing “How to Live and Die: Luther and the Teaching of the Christian Faith” (on Luther’s writing and use of the Catechism) and Pete Jurchen’s “Why Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanations Is a Tool Uniquely Suited for Parish Education” (by one of the editors, explaining how this edition was designed and how it can be used to teach the faith).

And just as the original Catechism made good use of the media technology of its day, namely, the printing press, this new version is also making good use of today’s media technology. The app for Luther’s Small Catechism, updated last month, includes additional study and devotional materials. It also allows for easy sharing of passages on social media and e-mail. It also includes translations in various languages.

The app for Luther’s Catechism itself is free, but if you want the new explanations and accompanying material from the 2017 edition, which is 429 pages long in the hard copy, that costs $7.99.

Go here for the Android version.

Go here for the Mac version.

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The Church and Coercive Power

Last updated on: September 7, 2019 at 2:50 pm By Gene Veith

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Can the church use coercive power–either its own or that of the state–to achieve its spiritual goals? Most Protestants, but not all, have historically said “no.” But Roman Catholics have historically said “yes.”

In a discussion of President Trump’s messianic praise as “the second coming of God” and “the king of Israel,” Rev. Ben Johnson says that some Christians really think in those terms, looking “to a secular ruler for deliverance” and pursuing “salvation by politics.” Instead, Rev. Johnson, an editor with the free-market Acton Institute, recommends that Christians promote religious liberty and influence the culture by proclaiming and living out the Gospel, rather than through coercive power.

In the course of his article, Rev. Johnson cites something I did not realize, that the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church does have a role for the exercise of power that coerces people to adhere to the teachings of the church.

From Ben Johnson, The ‘King of Israel’: The Caesar strategy or cultural renewal?:

Blurring the lines of Church and State distorts both institutions. This can be seen clearly among Catholic integralists, who would deputize bishops to arrest heretics and schismatics. Thomas Pink, a philosophy professor at King’s College London, writes: “[A]ccording to traditional doctrine, the [Roman Catholic] Church has the right and authority” to enforce its jurisdiction over all baptized Christians “coercively, with temporal or earthly penalties as well as spiritual ones.” (Emphasis added.) Non-Catholic Christians may be punished by the Church for certain acts of “heresy, apostasy, and schism” in order “punitively to reform heretics, apostates, or schismatics, or at least to discourage others from sharing their errors.” Pink adds, ominously, that the Church has the “authority to use the state as her coercive agent.” (See also Pink’s response to our friend, Fr. Martin Rhonheimer.)

This violates the Gospel, which demands that human beings accept divine mercy of their own free will. A coerced faith is no faith. Heresy police would be more compatible with certain Islamic interpretations of dhimmitude than the Christian, patristic doctrine of religious liberty.

[Keep reading. . .]

The author is referring to Thomas Pink’s article in First Things, Conscience and Coercion, in which he shows that Vatican II’s affirmation of religious liberty means that the state may not coerce belief. The church, however, may, holding coercive power over the baptized, with the right to employ the state for its purposes.

From a Lutheran perspective, for the church to have authority over the state is a violation of the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, and for the church to exercise the power of coercion in its ministry is a confusion of Law and Gospel.

This does not mean, though, that coercive power is always illegitimate and ungodly. The state is also a divinely-established institution, whose purpose is to exercise power so as to restrain evildoers and make it possible for fallen human beings to form a society. The state’s purview is the first use of the Law, curbing external sin by means of lawful magistrates, rewards, and punishments, though such external and coerced obedience can never make a person internally righteous, which is possible only through the faith that comes from the church’s proclamation of the gospel of Christ.

God works through the vocation of the governing authorities to restrain the external effects of sin, just as He works through the vocation of pastors to bring about the forgiveness of sins. Ordinary Christians, citizens of the eternal Kingdom of God, also have vocations as citizens of God’s temporal Kingdom.

Thus it is fitting for American Christians, as individuals–not the corporate church, as such–to be involved in politics and to exercise power to curb such evils as abortion and other cases of child abuse. It is not necessarily idolatry for Christians to work through the existing governmental systems to do so, even though this may involve certain compromises with the governing authorities.

But it is idolatry if we put our faith in them. As Luther explains in the Large Catechism, explaining the First Commandment, whatever you put your faith in is your god:

A god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the [whole] heart; as I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust be right, then is your god also true; and, on the other hand, if your trust be false and wrong, then you have not the true God; for these two belong together, faith and God. That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.

Christians must not “put their trust”–that is, their faith–“in princes” (Psalm 146:3), but this does not mean rejecting princes and the power they exercise altogether.

The Lutheran doctrine of the Two Kingdoms–typically ignored by both sides of the debates–shows how we can affirm freedom without rejecting the state altogether, how we can affirm the nation without turning it into an idol, and how we can affirm political action without politicizing the church.

Illustration by Lucas Cranach, “A King Kisses the Pope’s Feet,” in Christ and Anti-Christ via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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On Sex and Boundaries

Last updated on: August 24, 2019 at 2:44 pm By Gene Veith

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Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias offered a terrific answer to questions about sexual morality.

He was asked in an interview about the hardest questions he is asked about the Christian faith. Zacharias said that he used to be asked factual-type questions about whether or not God exists, creation vs. evolution, whether the Bible is true, etc. [That would reflect the modernist preoccupation with rational truth.] Today, though, he says, “the questions are more existential.” Why do I exist? What’s the purpose of my life? Is my life worth living? [These are the postmodernists’ questions. Notice how the doctrine of vocation can speak to those most urgent questions today: (1) God made you. (2) Your purpose is to love and serve the neighbors that God brings to you in your various callings in your family, workplace, communities, and church. (3) God is present in these callings and works through you and through the people who love and serve you.]

Then Zacharias said that one of the difficult questions he keeps getting today is how he can justify sexual morality as taught by Christianity. Here is how he answers them:

“All the questions you ask can only be answered after you have found the answer to the first question: Why you actually exist,” he noted. “And when you find that that relationship with God through Jesus Christ, as I believe, then all the other questions are justified and the answers are forthcoming.”

In addition to meaning, RZIM hears questions about sexuality, in some form, at every forum.

“Sexuality is the toughest one to deal with,” Zacharias conceded, “but let’s remember it this way. It’s a gift, but it’s a gift that has parameters. It is possible to break it. It is possible to find fulfillment in it.”

The Christian scholar points to when people say things to him such as, “If two people really love each other, that’s all that really counts.”

“Well, then I ask ‘Why did you leave it at two? Why did you qualify it by love?'” he adds. “You’re already setting boundaries that sexuality is not without boundaries, so as a follower of Jesus Christ, I take His boundaries as the guidelines to enjoy the gift with responsibility, otherwise you can break it.”

I think that’s a brilliant and perceptive answer! Here are some further thoughts about it.

Although people today are rejecting traditional sexual boundaries–that sex should only be between married couples; that sex should only be between couples of the opposite sex–they still recognize other boundaries. Most people agree that one should not have sex with children. One should not have sex with animals.

Today the major boundary is consent. One should not have sex with someone who does not consent. (Children and animals cannot consent, so that is why those practices are wrong. Lack of consent defines rape. It also defines sexual assault, sexual harassment, and the various violations of decency noted in the #MeToo movement.

Christian sexual morality agrees with all of these boundaries, including consent. (There could be no marriage, in traditional church law, without the consent of both parties, which is why the marriage liturgy requires saying, “I do.”)

But there are problems with consent being the only boundary. For one thing, consent is an act of the will (in line with postmodernism’s pro-choice ethic, in which something is moral only if it is chosen). And the will is an internal motion, which cannot be directly perceived. Thus, today’s legal wrangles over whether there was consent or not.

Also, consent is complicated and multi-leveled. When Harvey Weinstein threatened to ruin a young actress’s career if she didn’t have sex with him and to advance her career if she did, and the actress decided to give in to the pressure, was that consent? Yes, she made her decision. But overall, no, since she was being coerced.

A more workable boundary, which includes these others, would be objective and easily discernible. And that’s what Christian sexual morality gives us.

Photo: Ravi Zacharias by TMDrew [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)] via Wikimedia Commons

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“God Hates Visionary Dreaming”

Last updated on: August 7, 2019 at 8:55 am By Gene Veith

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You’ve got to read Chase Replogle’s article in Christianity Today entitled Bonhoeffer Convinced Me to Abandon My Dream. He tells about “leadership” classes in seminary, encouraging him to develop his “vision” for ministry. He came up with a vision for the ideal church that he wanted to build some day. But after his seminary, his attempts to fulfill that vision kept failing.

His dream was to build a relevant, contextualized megachurch. “We would meet in some industrial space with lots of wood beams, single-origin coffee, and a massive rear projector at the back of the stage.” But he ended up as the pastor of a tiny congregation that met in his basement.

Discouraged, he tried to find other options. “I wanted to go somewhere adventurous. I wanted to build something great. I wanted to achieve something impactful for the kingdom. ”

Then he happened upon Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book on Christian community, written on the occasion of the Nazis closing down his seminary. It’s entitled Life Together.

Whatever my reason for starting the book, I was entirely unprepared for four words on page 27: “God hates visionary dreaming.”

Bonhoeffer continued,

It makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Bonhoeffer seems to be applying Luther’s critique of the self-aggrandizing “theology of glory” as opposed to the “theology of the cross.” But what is the solution? Rev. Replogle kept reading:

Thankfully, Bonhoeffer offered a better way: gratitude. “Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship … we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients.”

The pastor’s first call is not to envision a church but to receive one. We lead by discerning how Christ is forming a community and by being one of the first to accept that fellowship with gratitude. The pastor is not an entrepreneur. We are called to a project already underway. . . .

The starkness of Bonhoeffer’s warning opened my eyes to this new kind of pastoral vision. It forced me to finally see the congregation already in front of me. . . .

Bonhoeffer convinced me to abandon dreaming. A church is never abstract. A congregation is never a demographic goal or an imaginary gathering. We are not called to a possibility, but to God’s work at a specific moment, in this place, with these people.

God is building his church; our gratitude comes from the joy of being in on it. The weight of forming and building a church is more than we can bear—the stories of pastors crushed beneath the work they’ve constructed are endless—but being called to a work God has initiated is a wonderful grace. Pastoral ministry is a gift, not an achievement.

[Read the whole article. . . ]

Furthermore, I would argue that this distinction between fulfilling one’s dreams and gratefully receiving God’s gift applies to all vocations!

How does this principle apply to marriage, parenting, work, and citizenship?

Photo: Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Wissen911 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)] via Wikimedia Commons

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Restoring the Dignity of Physical Labor

Last updated on: July 28, 2019 at 5:36 pm By Gene Veith

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The popular TV shows used to portray blue collar workers. (Ralph Kramden the bus driver; Laverne and Shirley in the beer factory; Al Bundy selling shoes.) Today TV characters tend to be doctors, lawyers, psychologists, entertainers, office workers, and other white collar workers. So observes Jeff Haanen, who says that physical labor has fallen in cultural esteem and that the church needs to help restore the dignity of manual labor.

Haanen, writing in Christianity Today, is reviewing The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America by Manhattan Institute scholar Oren Cass. That book analyzes the way America’s surging prosperity has by-passed the working class, whose standard of living has been going down, accompanied by all kinds of social dysfunction, from a dramatic decline in marriage rates to widespread addiction to hard drugs. Cass does not blame the economic gap on “the rich,” but on government policies that unintentionally have made it difficult for blue collar workers to support families.

Haanen summarizes the book’s arguments:

The critical issue, says Cass, a policy expert affiliated with the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, is that we’ve prized consumption over production. We’ve built a larger “economic pie” and attempted to redistribute its benefits to those left out rather than build a labor market that allows the majority of workers to support strong families and communities.

Cass’s central idea is that “a labor market in which workers can support strong families and communities is the central determinant of long-term prosperity and should be the central focus of public policy.” Cass calls his big idea productive pluralism, the idea that “productive pursuits—whether in the market, the community, or the family—give people purpose, enable meaningful and fulfilling lives, and provide the basis for strong families and communities that foster economic success too.”

Cass offers some policy proposals as to how that might be done, for example, municipalities offering wage subsidies instead of tax breaks when they lure businesses and changing our educational system so that it does not privilege college careers and takes training in crafts and trades seriously.

Cass also criticizes the way that blue collar work is getting little respect:

“Waiters, truck drivers, retail clerks, plumbers, secretaries, and others all spend their days helping the people around them and fulfilling roles crucial to the community,” writes Cass. “They do hard, unglamorous work for limited pay to support themselves and their families.” Why shouldn’t we admire those who do harder jobs for lower wages on a broad scale? We’re capable of doing this with police officers, teachers, and firefighters. Why shouldn’t the work done by trash collectors, housekeepers, and janitors deserve the same degree of respect?

What especially struck me in Haanen’s review is his call for the church to play a role in restoring that respect.

I. . .wanted to hear more about the moral, emotional, and spiritual elements that make for both healthy laborers and healthy labor markets. Tim Carney’s Alienated America makes the case—from sociology, political science, and research, not theology—that local churches are the critical element in the renewal of America. If churches account for 50 percent of American civic life, as Robert Putnam famously pointed out in Bowling Alone, do they not also have a central role in reviving the fortunes of American workers, many of whom experience the pangs of meaninglessness and loneliness?

In a time when economic divides mask the growing dignity divide between professionals and the working class, between prestigious high-wage jobs and unspectacular low-wage jobs, the church can and must play a central role in reviving a vision for work.

I like Carney’s book, which tries to answer “Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse,” citing the problem of “failing social connections.” The author raises the question, “Should you be more worried about a church closing in your town than a factory closing?” and calls church “America’s Indispensable Institution.”

As for the church recovering the value of physical labor, this has to do, of course, with rediscovering the doctrine of vocation.

Ironically, some writers on the subject suggest that vocation only applies to “fulfilling” white collar careers, while the hard, painful ways of making a living are demeaning and meaningless. See, for example, this. Jeff Haanen himself raises the concern about those in the “faith and work” movement who neglect or even denigrate blue collar work, as I address here.

The Bible itself admonishes us “to work with your hands” (1 Thessalonians 4:11). As Haanen says,

Turning the other cheek, doing hard and dirty work, and being overlooked by the world—these are familiar notions to those of us who worship a carpenter and a washer of feet. Christians should join in Cass’s call to restore the dignity of work in America, rounding out his policy argument with the rich resources of our own tradition.

Another thing we can do is encourage the binge watching of Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs.

Image from Amazon.com

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A New Bible Translation (by Lutherans)

Last updated on: July 22, 2019 at 6:30 pm By Gene Veith

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I received a review copy of a new Bible translation: the Evangelical Heritage Version. It is the work of a group of scholars, pastors, and laypeople associated with the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS) and is being published by Northwestern Publishing House.

The translators say that the EHV is not intended just as a “Lutheran Bible,” but that–like Luther’s pioneering translation which served as a model for the whole array of vernacular translations including the English versions of Tyndale and the King James Version–it is intended for all Christians.

Let me tell you about it, based on information from the website of the Wartburg Project, the organization responsible for the translation, and my own survey of the Bible.

Balanced and Flexible

I like the translation principles followed in the project. Instead of imposing a single policy to govern every translation decision, the translation aims at balance and flexibility.

The translation is eclectic when it comes to translation philosophies, sometimes using literal readings and sometimes using the dynamic equivalent approach (using phrases to fully capture certain meanings).

The EHV says that it uses gender-inclusive language when the original meaning is inclusive and exclusive when the original meaning refers to only one gender.

Instead of exclusively using either the relatively late but well-attested by the church Textus Receptus or the earliest but little-used manuscripts, the EHV draws on them both, including the “longer” readings (such as the long ending of Mark, the Woman Taken in Adultery in John) of the later manuscript tradition), while also taking advantage of earlier manuscript readings.

Since the Bible includes both formal and informal styles, the EHV adjusts its style accordingly. When the Bible talks about sex and “bodily functions,” it sometimes uses euphemism and sometimes uses “coarse” expressions, so the EHV follows suit.

The EHV retains theological words of the church, such as “justification,” but it sometimes offers new terms that better explain the meaning (such as “the Dwelling” instead of “the Tabernacle” and “Bread of the Presence” instead of “showbread.”

Faithful

The WELS and ELS denominations are highly committed to the inerrancy of Scripture, and this conviction is evident in the translation.

The EHV retains language that has become important to the Church in its creeds and liturgies. For example, it says that God “gave his only-begotten Son” instead of his “one and only Son” (NIV) or his “only Son” (ESV). “Only-begotten” is not only the time-honored reading of the KJV, but it ties into the Nicene Creed and preserves an important aspect of orthodox Christology. (See my discussion of that here.)

The EHV makes clear the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament instead of obscuring them as some modern translations have done.

The EHV seeks to preserve figurative expressions when they are used in the original languages. (But not always the same figurative expressions. Its rendition of Genesis 4:1–accurately rendered in the KJV and ESV as “Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived” [KJV]–is “The man was intimate with Eve, his wife.” This is not just replacing a euphemism with a more commonly-known euphemism. “Know” as a metaphor for sexual relations carries a profound teaching about sex in God’s design. The metaphor–not just its meaning–is inspired language and should be retained.)

A Lutheran Bible?

Though the translators insist that the EHV is not just a “Lutheran Bible,” nor any sort of official translation of WELS or ELS, most Lutheran theological emphases are evident, as one would expect.

The translations of the relevant passages reflects a high view of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

The distinction between Law and Gospel, the substitutionary atonement, justification by faith, and other teachings that characterize–but are not limited to–Lutherans are well-supported by this Bible. (See the ingenious way the EHV handles James 2:24, which seems to reverse Galatians 2:16 by saying that we are justified by works after all: “You see that a person is shown to be righteous by works and not by faith alone.” The EHV shifts from “justification” language to the related “righteousness” language.)

And yet, sometimes the “Lutheran” reading is surprisingly absent. What most translations render as “You must be born again” (John 3:7) can just as legitimately be rendered “You must be born from above.” Indeed, the Greek carries both meanings, as Nicodemus construes “anothen” as “again” and Jesus focuses on the other meaning. (See my discussion of this here.) Lutherans, being, like Calvinists, divine monergists believe that God creates faith through Word and Sacrament as a gift of the Holy Spirit. We are born “from above,” and this is the reading of the EHV.

And yet, in a closely-related passage in the same Gospel, the EHV accepts a non-monergist reading. The ESV rendering of John 1:12-13 is as follows:

¹²But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, ¹³who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

That verse 13, saying that the children of God are not born “of the will of man” is a pretty decisive refutation of “decision theology,” the notion common to many evangelicals –specifically, those of the Arminian persuasion–that we choose, by an act of our will, to be “born again.” But the EHV translates the phrase according to the Arminian interpretation: “or of a husband’s will.” As if the passage were referring only to physical sex and birth, and as if birth comes from the husband’s decision.

Also coming out not so strong as I would like are passages related to the doctrine of vocation, which, for Lutherans is an extremely important teaching, amounting to the theology of the Christian life. Here is a key passage for that teaching, an accurate rendition of 1 Corinthians 7:17 from the ESV: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.” Compare that to the EHV version: “However, each person is to live in the situation the Lord assigned to him—the situation he was in when God called him to faith.”

The context of the passage discusses marriage, being a Jew or a Gentile, being a “bondservant” or a free citizen. . . .These are not “situations” but vocations. The EHV reduces “calling” to the call to faith, completely eliminating the additional sense of the word that God calls us to the “life” that He has assigned us, where He has “stationed” us to live out our faith in love and service to our neighbor.

So, setting aside my disappointment in some of these readings, we can see that the reading that best serves Lutheran theology is not always the one chosen for the EHV, that the translators were trying to render what they believed the original languages meant apart from their theological preconceptions.

Conclusion

So the Evangelical Heritage Version is an interesting and helpful translation. I want to read more of it. I can see that, like other new translations, it can “defamiliarize” texts that I have become so used to that I have probably stopped reflecting on them as they deserve.

Lutherans will appreciate it, but so can non-Lutherans.

Whether we need more translations, whether there can be a problem when each theological tradition has its own favored Bible, and which is the best of the currently-available versions–those are separate questions that we might take up later.

The New Testament and Psalms in the EHV has been available for awhile and can be found on Biblegateway.com. The Kindle version is available from Amazon. But now the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments, has been released by Northwestern, the publishing arm of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. As of this moment, it’s not on Amazon–though it probably soon will be–but it’s available through Northwestern.

If any of you have used this new translation or are familiar with the project, I’d love to hear from you here.

Illustration: EHV logo from Wartburg Project Facebook page

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