Luther’s Translation as Pastoral Care

00:00
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Luther decides pretty early on when he discovers the Gospel that the thing that’s going to reform the church is not him, not a university, not any church figure, but it’s going to be the Word of God itself. 

00:25
Rich Rudowske
Welcome to the Essentially Translatable podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible Rranslators my name is Rich Rudowske. I’m the Chief Operating Officer here at LBT. 

00:32
Rich Rudowske
Today we are marking Reformation Day, and welcome Dr. Erik Herrmann to the podcast. Dr. Herrmann is Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Historical Theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, where he is also the Director of the Center for Reformation Research and the Director of Concordia Theology, an online platform in Concordia Seminary’s theological research and publication department. Check that out concordiatheology.org. We got together to talk about Luther’s Bible translation and Reformation as a program not only of correcting theology, but more importantly, of reforming pastoral care in the church. And as you’ll hear, many of the things that we take for granted today about our practice of the Christian faith find their genesis in this time of reformation, especially the central role of the Bible and of preaching. Enjoy today’s conversation. 

01:29
Rich Rudowske
Welcome to a special reformation edition of the essentially translatable podcast. Our guest today is Dr. Erik Herrmann, chairman of Department of Historical Theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. And we’re going to talk about Martin Luther and the Bible here in Reformation 2020. So welcome to the podcast. 

01:48
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Thank you. It’s great to be here. 

01:49
Rich Rudowske
So tell us a little bit about yourself. First of all, we like to always have our audience get to know our guests and how you got involved in history. I don’t really know a lot of folks when they’re little kids who say, yeah, I want to be a history professor. So how did we get here to doing history at Concordia Seminary? 

02:04
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Yeah, well, I guess it has to do with, I guess, my interest in Martin Luther when I started studying for the seminary. And that probably started a little bit before in college. I grew up Lutheran. My parents were immigrants from Germany. And so, yeah, we grew up in a Lutheran church. And yeah, as I started reading Luther, like a lot of us do at the seminary, became really interested in this theologian as a teacher for the church, as someone that has some unique insights and is never boring to read. And I found that a lot of the questions I had centered around some things that he brought up. So when I decided I want to do graduate work, I thought I could find myself not getting bored for the necessary period of time by studying Luther. 

02:53
Rich Rudowske
And how long have you been at Concordia Seminary? 

02:56
Dr. Erik Herrmann
So I’ve been teaching here since 2005, so 15 years now. And, yeah, teaching in the history department here. 

03:01
Rich Rudowske
All right, let’s kind of jump into talking Reformation and Luther. So at the point of the Reformation. At the point of the Reformation, when Luther comes along, what is the state of the usage of the Bible at that point? I guess before the Reformation, it’s standing in theological studies, how it’s used. Tell us a little bit about that. 

03:21
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Yeah, so on the eve of the Reformation, the Bible, of course, is still the central text for the church, but it is mostly still being used in Latin. So the Bible being used in church is Latin translation, and kind of the official text of the church is in Latin. And by this time, that was a good move back when everybody spoke Latin. But by this time, there are so many developed languages that only the educated can read the Bible or even understand it when it’s read. So there are vernacular translations of the Bible, that is, Bible translations in a variety of other languages, German and French and English, but they’re not endorsed or supported by the church. 

04:06
Dr. Erik Herrmann
And so they tend to be sort of these kind of rogue projects, and they certainly don’t have any particular sanction, and they’re usually not very good translations either, so that none of them really catch on. 

04:16
Rich Rudowske
So then when folks study theology, how far do they go with the Bible? And is it the main focus of their theological study at that time, or is there something else? 

04:26
Dr. Erik Herrmann
So to become a theologian in Luther’s day is to go through university, and the progress of that curriculum or that program illustrates, I think, the place that the Bible had landed in theology. So you begin by studying philosophy, and then after that, you do what’s called cursory lectures on the Scripture and that is basically you take a book of the Bible and you read the received or authoritative commentary on the scriptures. It’s called the gloss. And then after that, then you start to study and lecture on theological textbook that was popular at the time called Peter Lombard’s Sentences. It’s four volumes of systematic theology, really, and that is the culmination of your theological training. So if you just sort of imagine its philosophy as a foundation Bible, as the next step, and then the final step, the culmination is this systematic theology textbook. 

05:29
Dr. Erik Herrmann
And actually, the careers of theologians in the universities tended to be a lifetime of lecturing on that systematic theology textbook. So just kind of imagining it that way. The Bible is a means to an end rather than the central focus of theology. It’s always been an authoritative text for theology, but here it’s certainly not the matter that people are looking at and focusing on. 

05:53
Rich Rudowske
Okay, so then when we think of Luther being an Old Testament professor in his early career, at least that’s where he’s at, that sort of middle ground, a middle spot there. After philosophy, he’s teaching on the Old Testament text. 

06:08
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Well, no, actually. So Luther goes through that whole process, and even at that time writes to friends and talks about how he sort of fondly enjoyed that period of lecturing on the Scriptures. But now he’s got a lecture on this other stuff. Once he becomes a doctor of theology in 1512, then it’s his turn as a doctor of theology to set the agenda of what is going to be lectured on. And he chooses not Lombard’s sentences or systematic theology, but to lecture on the Psalms. And he begins by lecturing on the Psalms for two years, and then he lectures on Romans, and then he lectures on Galatians and then Hebrews. In other words, Luther decides from the beginning that the Bible is going to be the center of his lecturing task. And so at that point, he’s not doing these cursory lectures. 

06:56
Dr. Erik Herrmann
He’s doing it as a theologian, and it’s shaping the way in which he believes theology should be done in the university, which then has a trickle down effect from his perspective on how the faith is going to be taught, even at a parish level. 

07:09
Rich Rudowske
Right? Yeah. So theologians then, as you’ve described, will at least touch on Scripture, but then go somewhere else. For the average person in the parish, what is their exposure to the Bible at this time? 

07:23
Dr. Erik Herrmann
The exposure to the Bible in the parish is usually through preaching or some devotional material that’s passed on. And it’s just really dependent on whether or not they actually have a Biblical preacher or not. The central feature of worship isn’t really preaching at that time, but the priests performing the Sacrament. So there isn’t a lot of exposure. And the exposure that is there tends to be just on the lectionary readings. When Luther first found the Bible at the university, he was surprised at how large it was, that there were stories in there he had never heard his entire life. 

08:00
Rich Rudowske
So when people think of the Reformation, and it was a big deal three years ago for the 500th anniversary, they think at least of the launch being the 95 Theses being posted on the door of the castle church, or however that worked, what’s your take on that. 

08:17
Dr. Erik Herrmann
As the start of the Reformation, the 95 Theses? It’s a decent starting point, at least. It’s this. It’s the time that Luther became a public figure, and so the ideas that he started promoting now, other people were paying attention. Of course, it was a time of immediate conflict, and so that’s part of it as well. But I would say the other thing that’s helpful for us is that the 95 Theses is an effort of Luther to conduct theology for the sake of pastoral care. I mean, that’s the real interesting feature for him, is indulgences, is bad pastoral care. And so it’s helpful for me to see, I think, for all of us to see that the Reformation begins as a dispute over proper care of souls. 

09:01
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, and that’s a huge distinction. I think what you’re saying is that there could have been or there may be folks that are really focused on the academic elements of theology, but Luther saying, okay, but there’s all these regular people in the care of their souls at stake, and who’s attending to that. Is that a fair statement? 

09:20
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Yeah. And I think that even Luther’s interest in changing the way things are done at the academic level is motivated by how he personally understood the Christian faith growing up and in the monastery. In other words, he recognized that there was a pastoral urgency to getting this right and so he felt like reforming the church began first there, but it would immediately have effects upon the people which shaped the various projects he did, including the translation of the Bible itself. 

09:49
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. So walk us through how we get from Luther and the 95 Theses to his translation of the Bible. A little bit about the timeline and how we get from one to the other. Yeah. 

09:59
Dr. Erik Herrmann
So I think Luther has a set of reforming projects that he wants to carry out, first at the university, and then he starts working on devotional material. And this is, of course, after he really becomes confident in what the gospel is. In one sense, the 95 Theses is an interruption of that work. He feels like he’s distracted by it, at least by the controversy. But as it unfolds, he realizes that all of this is part of this larger project of restoring and reforming proper pastoral care. And the way to do that, he sees, is to reshape the preaching and the centrality of scriptures in the lives of individual people through preaching, devotional literature, everything. So he almost programmatically takes on every major devotional practice or worship practice and reshapes it according to a new understanding of the gospel. 

10:52
Dr. Erik Herrmann
And so by the time you get to the culmination of this case against Luther, which we all know, 1521, the Diet of Vorms, where he has a stand against the emperor and the papacy. He’s already been taking on a few small translation projects that he can squeeze in along the way. And then when he is whisked away after that hearing, he’s kidnapped to protect him and brought to the Wartburg castle. Then some people think he’s dead, nobody knows where he is, and he has the chance now to sit down and do some work on translation and devotional literature, which is what he does. 

11:31
Dr. Erik Herrmann
His two main projects, while he’s at the Wartberg, is writing a series of sample evangelical sermons in German, with some instruction on how to read the Gospels, and then a translation of the New Testament, which he amazingly accomplishes in about eleven weeks. (Wow.) And it’s seen as one of the most significant moments, not only in translation history, but in German literature. The method that he uses and the staying power of that translation shapes the rest of his work. 

12:06
Rich Rudowske
So talk a little bit about the method, I guess, and why it was such an effective translation. And is it still used to this day, or at least some dated revision of it? 

12:17
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Yeah, the Luther Translation. And of course, there are revisions of it from his own life. And then later, I think the latest revision of it was in the 20th century, mid-20th century, but it’s still considered the Luther Translation. It’s still the primary translation. So I think his significance is, first of all, a real understanding of how and his real interest in how German expression works. So his goal was to translate not just word for word, but I think maybe in translation theory, we talk about it as a dynamic equivalent. I think maybe is the phrase that’s often used in translation. He’s interested in, as he says, making these resistant Hebrew professors or prophets speak in authentic German. And he does spend time when he’s at the Wartberg, going down to the market to hear the way in which the common person speaks. 

13:16
Dr. Erik Herrmann
What are the phrases that they use? And he grows up as a peasant, so he’s not a German elite, even though he’s highly educated. And so he feels like he has some common sense of the way in which people speak. But then when he actually, after this, when he translates the rest of the Bible, he surrounds himself with a good group of folks, four, five, six people. And he says sometimes they spend an entire month just one verse, trying to get the phrases right so that the ideas are meaningful in the German language. And that’s also the point of controversy, is that he’s accused of changing the bBiblical text in some places significantly. But his argument is, this is how you make it meaningful in the German tongue. 

14:01
Rich Rudowske
So this Bible translation, then, if we think about the Reformation as more than just the singular event or just the nailing of the 95 Theses, but this process that takes, well, decades or more, what is the role of this Bible translation in the Reformation in Germany and then elsewhere? 

14:18
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Luther decides pretty early on when he discovers the Gospel that the thing that’s going to reform the church is not him, not a university, not any church figure, but it’s going to be the Word of God itself. Naturally, Luther’s bringing the Bible into the German language allows potentially everyone to be able to now access the fullness of the text. And so the goal that all might be taught of God is realized when they can actually hear and listen and read the Word of God. Of course, you have to be able to read, and literacy is not as prominent. And so one of the major efforts of the Reformation is to establish schools. It becomes an educational movement, including public schooling, is really initiated. 

15:05
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Establishing schools for both boys and girls so that it’s possible to read the Scriptures as well as being productive members of society. So the impact of translating into German also is a wave of an educational movement. Secondly, the translation itself doesn’t just shape the German language or the German understanding of the Scriptures, but especially the English translations are deeply indebted. Tyndale studied Luther’s translation very closely and saw it as the paradigm for his own translation into English. Sometimes he translated verbatim, Luther’s own introductions and prefaces to each book of the Bible. And of course, Tyndale himself was a genius and very talented, and so was Coverdale, Miles Coverdale and the folks that worked on the King James Bible in the 17th century. But Luther’s translation was seen as the paradigm. The decisions that he made were often followed very carefully and closely. 

16:04
Dr. Erik Herrmann
So in many ways, it shaped the whole Reformation in especially the place that the Scriptures placed in the life and piety of everyday Christians. 

16:15
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, and I think that’s really an important thing to highlight, is that a number of assumptions that we, as Lutheran Christians or evangelical Christians have today about what happens when you go to church, the worship life of the church, the access to Scripture and personal devotion, life, these things all find their origin in this process of this Reformation of pastoral care. Right? 

16:39
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Yeah, exactly. And even the notion that the sermon is a central feature of what we do when we come together in church was not the main characteristic of worship on the eve of the Reformation, but with a Bible that is translated into language and preaching and exposition of the scripture chapter by chapter, something that’s a hallmark of Protestant experience of worship. All of that finds its root in this pastoral care project of reform. 

17:09
Rich Rudowske
One of the favorite Luther quotes to folks around Lutheran Bible Translators is from this letter he writes to Johannes Lang, where he says, “I wish that every village had its own interpreter and that this book alone would live in the hands, eyes, ears, and hearts of all people.” When did he write that statement? How does that speak to the situation and what Luther was trying to accomplish? 

17:33
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Yeah. Johannes Lang was a close friend of his, and he was with him in the university. He’s an Augustinian monk, just like Luther, and Lang eventually left Wittenberg and went back to Hereford. And Luther would regularly update Lang on what he called their collective project of reform. They kind of discovered the Gospel together and he wrote all the way through 1520 on his plans of translating the Bible into German along these lines. And again, what’s so beautiful about that statement and what you can see is sort of resonating behind what Lang and Luther were hoping to do is all of their work was to just reshape the piety and deepen the Christian faith of all people. And that moving the Bible into as the central text of Christian life, rather than all these other devotional texts, was seen as the way to do this. 

18:28
Dr. Erik Herrmann
It was a real reliance upon the power of God through the word to change people’s hearts. 

18:33
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. And I think the advent of inexpensive printing and access to personal copies of Scripture, again, every time I hear about this period of time and what Luther and others were accomplishing, it’s just amazing how much of what we take for granted. So this was a new thing in Christian history and human history, to have this ready access to print material. 

18:53
Dr. Erik Herrmann
No, that’s fright. And, of course, the printing press was invented in the 15th century, and one of the first major texts that Gutenberg printed was the Scriptures. Then, of course, they are still trying to figure out the best way and fastest, most efficient way to do it by the time you get to Luther’s period. And in many ways, Luther is a catalyst for this, because he’s printing smaller works and works that are exciting. Printers have to figure out how to make things inexpensively and quickly. And so the scriptures benefit from this flurry of printing technology so that they can be made inexpensively for not just the elite princes to have their own special Bible, or just churches to have their own lectionary. 

19:38
Dr. Erik Herrmann
But common people who can read now can get small and affordable texts of scriptures, usually not entire texts, but portions of text, until Luther finally gets the whole thing translated in the 1530s. 

19:51
Rich Rudowske
To what extent was Luther sort of, do you think, cognizant of this technology and really trying to take advantage of it, versus, he just kind of got swept up in it because it was there, and people just took his stuff and ran with it. 

20:04
Dr. Erik Herrmann
I think that most people who study this recognize that Luther was aware of the benefit of the printing press and exploited it in a know. Intentionally exploited it. So they got a printing press. In Wittenberg, he worked with the local court artist to help create illustrative woodcuts for a lot of his. Everything that he printed, whether it was a little treatise or a pamphlet, or finally, the magisterial 1534 Bible that had 117 woodcuts by Crannick. So he saw it as a technological tool that needed to be leveraged for the Gospel. And there’s actually been some recent books about how he and Crannick created the idea of a title page in which you could see from a distance, oh, that’s clearly a Luther pamphlet, because it’s got his name prominently printed on there. A brand, really, in a sense. 

20:58
Rich Rudowske
Okay. 

20:59
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Yeah. 

21:00
Rich Rudowske
So if Luther was around in the 21st century, would he be using social media, you think, and capitalizing on that, or how do you think that translates? 

21:09
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Yeah, the analogy between the printing press as the new medium for communicating ideas and how we do it today with social media, Facebook, Twitter, all of those things, that connections actually was made quite frequently at the 500th anniversary. And I think that’s a valuable analogy. Obviously, social media can be used in damaging ways, but Luther would have leveraged this as a way to get the Word of God out faster and more efficiently in a way that could have only dreamed of in the 16th century. So he was very progressive in that sense. 

21:47
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. So some more recent translation theory, and like this, with English Bibles, there’s always this ongoing conversation about dynamic equivalence versus literary equivalence or literary function. So some writers say that Luther’s translation theory was based on the idea that the whole translation had to support the central theological tenet of salvation by grace through faith alone and maybe that he made adjustments in translation because he wanted to be sure that doctrine shone through. And then some folks say, maybe that’s not a good translation principle. Would you say that’s a fair characterization of Luther’s work? It’s kind of a contrast between, there’s the work of biblical exegesis for proclamation and teaching, but then there’s expectations for translation theory, that you represent the ideas of a text without necessarily resolving ambiguity unduly. And there’s always that tension there. 

22:40
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Yeah, I appreciate the distinction. So, Luther, there’s a real tension for Luther. On the one hand, he really wants, and in some places, he retains kind of clunky, wooden literalism. Even though he could resolve it in certain ways, he feels mean. He has a real devotion to the letters of the text. Right. On the other hand, because he sees this as an act of pastoral care, the most important point of Scripture is not just having Scripture, but grasping it, being grasped by it, and hearing clearly the central message of it. So just having a Bible for Luther and as many passages you can, is not the important thing. What’s important is the Christ in Scripture, of which he says Scripture is sort of like the swaddling clothes or manger of Christ that holds Christ. 

23:37
Dr. Erik Herrmann
But the thing that saves isn’t the Bible, it’s the Jesus of the Bible. And so in that sense, he’s unapologetic about making sure that what is the most important thing in the scriptures, which is derived from the Scriptures, he doesn’t feel like he’s imposing an alien thing. He got it from the Scriptures themselves, would be as clear as possible. And if that means he adjusts the words, adds a word or leaves out a word so that it communicates that clearly. And of course, the most famous example of this is the addition of the word alone. In Romans 328, we hold that one is justified by faith alone, apart from the works of the law, and the Word alone isn’t there. But he justifies that, no pun intended, by arguing that this is actually a…the way the German language works. 

24:27
Dr. Erik Herrmann
And secondly, that is Paul’s point. And to get that across as clear as possible is a greater benefit than to be literalistic. 

24:37
Rich Rudowske
Right? Yeah. So he, in a sense, makes the argument that it is implicit in that original text, but a German speaker would make it explicit. So he has to be more natural to make that right. So one of the things I find ironic, I guess, is that Luther was so passionate about the central point or the central role of Scripture in the life of theological formation, in the life of the church and the life of the priesthood and the laity, that he wanted to put it front and center. He wrote voluminously. And then as his life went on, people got really interested in starting to catalog all of his work and his writing and to publish that. So, like today, in the English language, the CPH and fortress set of Luther’s works is slated to have something like 80-plus volumes. 

25:26
Rich Rudowske
And there’s several German editions, I’m sure, the Viamar edition being one of the most prolific. How big is that thing? 

25:34
Dr. Erik Herrmann
That’s over 100 folio volumes. 

25:36
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. In his lifetime, this starts to happen, and I love that. The first time they’re going to publish this edition of Luther’s works, they ask him to write an introduction to it. Tell us a little bit about what he says in the introduction to Luther’s works. 

25:52
Dr. Erik Herrmann
So the irony doesn’t escape Luther, either. I mean, he thinks this is really ridiculous. His whole project is to bring the Scriptures as a central text and to not be so excited about texts that are written by sinful human beings. And here they are trying to collect and study his own works so he knows it’s going to happen against his better wishes and judgment. So he writes an introduction that basically instructs people on how not to read him, but how to read the scriptures. So he first talks about how we finally got to the point where we can actually read the Bible in our own language, and now we want to replace it with all these dumb works by this guy named Martin Luther. So I’ll use this introductory preface space to tell you how best to read the Bible. 

26:38
Dr. Erik Herrmann
And there he says that the best way to read the Bible is to recognize that one does it in prayer. One does it by deeply and daily meditating upon the words of scriptures, trusting that the Holy Spirit that you’ve prayed for will illuminate you and change you through that. And then when life strikes you, when you are filled with all the things in the world that seem to contradict the words of God that you have read, it drives you back to prayer and back to scripture. So the entire christian life is this circular return to relying upon the promises and word of God. If you read a little Luther in between, it’s best to forget it and move on to the Bible again. 

27:21
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, I love, and as you mentioned, Luther is kind of fun to read, and he says, sort of resigned, like you said, like, okay, very well, let the project proceed then. But I make one request of the reader, that he not let the reading of my work in any way hinder his reading of the Bible. And for me, I read that a long time ago and have taken that to heart. Every time I think I want to dig into some Luther, I say, okay, where am I at with reading the Bible? To at least give Dr. Luther one of his requests. 

27:53
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Yeah, the Reformation historians are the sort of worst transgressors of this principle. Obviously, we end up spending all of our time trying to figure out what Luther said about it. But, yeah, the irony is there, and again, sort of exhibits, how central the idea of pastoral care and the reformation of souls is to this entire project. 

28:16
Rich Rudowske
So what do you think Luther might say about the current state of Biblical literacy or Bible usage in our churches and the academy today? 

28:25
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Oh my. Probably something similar to what he said in the 1520s. He translated the Bible into German and sermons were being promulgated. And then they visited the churches and realized that nobody knew anything about the Christian faith. And he was so distressed. And he wrote a catechism and did some more works to try to illustrate this. But on the one hand, I think he’d be pleased at the capacity of Western society to access the Scriptures. I mean, the widespread literacy would be seen as a gift of God from his perspective. The fact that people who can read don’t read the scriptures or know so little about it, even Christians, would be seen as one of the most egregious neglects of a gift. 

29:15
Dr. Erik Herrmann
Yeah, and I think a lot of teachers of the faith share that frustration on how do we help people become more biblically literate? There are more things filling our ears and competing for our time than in. Yeah, that’s a great challenge. 

29:35
Rich Rudowske
All right, well, I want to say thanks for your time with us today. We’ve been talking with Dr. Erik Herrmann from Concordia Seminary on a special reformation edition of the essentially translatable podcast. Thanks for being with us today. 

29:46
Dr. Erik Herrmann
It was a real pleasure. Thank you. 

29:52
Rich Rudowske
Thank you to Dr. Erik Herrmann from Concordia Seminary for joining us on the podcast today. I’m struck by what a gift we have in our ready access to Scripture in so many forms and how in a sea of information coming at us in so many media everywhere all the time, we still have the opportunity to be taught of God, as the Scriptures say, directly from his Word. What a privilege to take that word in our hands and have God speak straight to our hearts. And what a privilege to continue that reformation work with the Christian church all over the world that anyone who wishes may encounter God through his word and the language they understand best. Thank you for listening to the Essentially Translatable podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible Translators. 

30:35
Rich Rudowske
Look for past episodes of the podcast lbt.org/podcast or find us and leave us a good rating on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow Lutheran Bible Translators social media channels on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Or go to lbt.org to find out how you can get involved in the Bible translation movement and put God’s Word in their hands. The Essentially Translatable podcast is edited and produced by Andrew Olsen and distributed by Sarah Lyons. Executive Producer is Amy Gertz. Podcasts artwork designed by Caleb Rodewald. Music written and performed by Rob Veith. I’m Rich Rudowske. So long for now.