Book Review: Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions

If you have ever wanted to read the Lutheran Confessions, this book is ideal. It is easy to read, with a good layout to give the eye a rest. The art work enhance the book, especially the use of the original woodcuts used in the original printings of the Small Catechism.

Now, a group called "Jesus First" is having a quarrel over words with this edition. In an article by Bruce A. Cameron, entitled "Whatever It Is, It's Not a Translation: CPH Alters Luther's Words", faint praise is given to the book:

"Concordia Publishing House (CPH) recently released Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions: A Reader's Edition of the Book of Concord. It comes at a good price, with a handsome appearance, and based upon C. F. W. Walther's old--but still valuable--idea that every Lutheran household should own and read the Confessions."

But then the criticism comes:

It also recasts Dr. Martin Luther's concluding commentary on the Apostles' Creed in the Large Catechism (II,66) into a novel wording, unknown in The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod before 2002 or 2003, and unknown elsewhere to this day.

Here is a translation of Luther's words from the German:

These articles of the Creed, therefore, divide and separate us Christians from all other people on earth. For those outside of Christendom, be they heathen, Turks, Jews, or false Christians and hypocrites, even though they believe in and worship only one true God, yet know not what His mind towards them is, and cannot expect any love or blessing from Him. . . For they have not the Lord Christ. . .

Here is CPH's new rendition:

Even if we were to concede that everyone outside Christianity--whether heathen, Turks, Jews, or false Christians and hypocrites--believe in and worship only one true God, it would still be true that they do not know what His mind is towards them.

This is not a translation. It is, in fact, an alteration.

(Note: Emphasis from the original article and is not mine.)

I'm not sure I see all that much difference in the two versions, except that the new version in this book doesn't state "For they have not the Lord Christ." The other difference is that the older versions (several others were cited in the article) seem to acknowledge that non-Christians worship a "one and true God." This new version states "even if we were to concede." Is this a major

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