Languages and Prep Schools

Americans are anti-language training.

A pastor needs to know various languages: Hebrew, Latin, Greek, German. A number of WELS pastors said, "You know German!?" I said, "You graduated from seminary and didn't learn it?!"

Latin can be taught in the sixth grade, using the Gospel of John. Translate without a pony. Learn the words and grammar by reading. Translate the words known and guess the rest. Reading the Gospel of John in Latin will be a good start for all Latin training. It is a good father-son activity.

One language start per year is plenty.

Greek should follow Latin. The grammar is quite similar. The Gospel of John in Greek is perfect for learning New Testament Greek. The idea should be read the New Testament like a newspaper, not "translate" while reading. The pony has to be chucked. No one can learn a language with a pony or with an interlinear crutch.

German is heavily reliant on Latin. The Gospel of John provides the vocabulary and basic grammar. By the way, grammar is derived from literature, not literature from grammar. Show me a grammar expert and I will show you a non-writer.

My prize student was asked, "How do you know it's subjunctive?"

He responded, "Because it looks funny." Try that in Greek, Latin, and German. Subjunctives do look funny.

A good translator looks at groups of words to make sense. A grammar weenie parses one word at a time. Grammar weenies get good grades, become language teachers trying to produce more weenies, a good example of making disciples.

Language immersion is the only way to really learn a living language. The Army does that very well. Eat, sleep, talk, read the same new language. The brain switches over so that the new language is no longer really translated. It is just known and understood. That would put the weenies out of a job, so they keep on slaughtering the innocent, making them hate all language training.

Hebrew is not tough but can be turned into a difficult language. Hebrew is absolutely essential for understanding the Old Testament. I asked to study Hebrew at my LCA seminary. The dean said, "Why?" Jonah or another simple book is a good start for Hebrew. The best teacher is one who knows and loves Hebrew. Watertown had an excellent professor of Hebrew. The men left college with a solid knowledge of Hebrew. They knew Greek and probably some Latin. Our son could speed-translate Latin, German, Greek out loud, faster than I could follow the text. He could follow Spanish TV and translate back and forth in Mexico. He knew Hebrew quite well.

I did what I could for his language training. MLS and Watertown (now Luther Prep) contributed their share. His mother contributed a rare genius for language and a photographic memory, which he inherited. Then he got involved in computer languages, which were easy compared to human language.

WELS AnswerMan Not Apt to Teach

"With regard to textual criticism, KJV advocates take the illogical position that the relatively recent manuscripts which were available to the church in 1611 are more reliable than the much older manuscripts that have become available to us since. They also fail to appreciate that the manuscripts used to produce the KJV—including the manuscript tradition known as the Textus Receptus—are themselves the products of textual criticism. If Erasmus, Tyndale, Luther, or the scholars who produced the King James Version had had access to the Greek papyri or the Dead Sea Scrolls, it’s impossible to imagine that they wouldn’t have used them."

This is one, dumb paragraph. WELS pushed pastors out of the ministry for favoring the KJV, which was formerly the standard in all LCMS and WELS congregations, in all the English-speaking world.

The KJV is really a version of the Tyndale translation. He was burned at the stake for his work, prefiguring the fate of others who wanted a good translation. The NIV is a joke, constantly changing from bad to worse, increasingly feminazi in its butchered renderings.

Returning to the stupidity expressed by AnswerMan - the KJV relies on the enormous body of Byzantine texts, thousands of them. The Byzantine Empire was highly literate, Christian, and Greek-speaking for 1,100 years. So what would they know about Greek manuscripts, eh AnswerMan?

The modern text critics base their work on three goof-balls. Wescott and Hort were told to produce a new translation but to leave the text alone. They made up a bunch of rules which are fatuous but still followed - and they create their own text of the New Testament. Tischendorf was the other fake. He "discovered" two New Testament manuscripts which he declared to be the best of all. One was at a monastery on Mt. Sinai. The other came from the Vatican. The two sources do not agree but have similar tendencies. Many scholars are suspicious of people who make their names discovering something by accident. Neither manuscript has a known origin. I am not saying they were forged. They are like the Shroud of Turin, appearing conveniently late in history.

When you read the NIV, look for all the verses cut out. A committe of five votes on them. If the vote goes 3-2 against the verse, color it gone.

Missouri and WELS have made a bundle from the NIV, a unionistic effort involving two WELS seminary professors, gobs of Pentecostals and Baptists. Free trips to Israel. Nice perks for unionists and compromisers.

The new edition of Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant has exactly one (1) verse from the NIV. The NIV is completely anti-sacrament. Surprised?

Synodical Schools Good and Bad

The Good
Prep schools are synod supported high schools designed to give a classical, European style education to future teachers and pastors. Religion is almost completely banned from public schools (except for Islam and Hinduism) but the Christian faith remains an integral part of prep school education. They do not need committee approval to sing a Christmas carol in December. Chapel services are a normal part of the day and an excellent potential for Lutheran worship education.

Money should never be an issue with a prep school student. Those who have less money should feel no more burden than the children of wealthy parents. A fair system attracts the broadest spectrum of students while a cash-hungry school will tend towards selecting only those who can afford it.

No one is ever going to replace a prep school. A private school is not the same. Many started out with a religious background, but that receded when the school became a proving ground for high society. Chapel, yes. Taken seriously, no. The public high schools are now so low in academic content that most should be shut down.

Church Growth = School Shrinkage
Church Growth leaders hate the schools because a traditional Lutheran educational system assumes the efficacy of the Word. Church Growth gurus are self-loathing snobs. They want to evangelize the fashionably foreign, flitting about from one exotic country to another. They do not want their own children educated to spread the Word. Anyone with an IQ above room temperature can see the anti-Christian roots of Church Growth, so the Enthusiasts hate intellectual rigor. Prep schools offer the potential of creating genuine Lutherans while the Fuller fans want Baptists and Pentecostals.

The Bad
The WELSian tendency to keep making the same mistakes has led to a culture of hazing.
The sadistic hazing is tolerated, even welcomed by the prep school staff. After all, they were hazed and hazed others. One seminary professor laughed when he told about the boy suspended from the window by his legs. They let go by mistake and he plunged head-first to the ground - from the second floor. Some hazing can be harmless and fun - make my bed, carry my books. Other hazing is insanely evil. The trouble is - dealing with the problem is called ratting. They have punishments for anyone who tells. That is why the typical WELS pastor is so timid. The preps and upper level schools (especially the seminary) have promoted a culture of conformity through intimidation. That is now working against the prep schools and college. SP Gurgel only needed to show up at Issues in WELS to suppress the attendance by 150%. He scowled when he should have been listening, but he got his agenda across: "Do not offend the Great and Terrible Oz!" That works better with money coming in.

Needless to say, some people remember painful experiences with hazing. They are not allowed to say it, and they are not going to go all out to fund the sadists they remember so well.

The Ugly
The area high schools have grown in number and have drained off resources and students from the preps. New Ulm once had a prep. Now they have an area high school. Phoenix has a fair number of congregations, but the nearest prep is in Wisconsin. So Phoenix has an area high school. The experts in demographics might have anticipated treating all regions equally instead of putting two preps in Wisconsin and then closing one. Regionalism is stronger in WELS than any other synod. Virtually all the leaders and professors are from the Watertown prep. That sounds like an exclusive sorority, doesn't it.

Shamelessly Copied from Issues in WELS

I found this at Issues in WELS. They copied it from a previous report.

An Interesting Thought from 1961 by Benjamin Tomczak
(6-25-07)

I was taking a look at the Proceedings of the 1961 synod convention (as I'm sure many of us have been lately), and I came across an interesting report from the Prep Course at Northwestern College (pages 65-68, if you're curious).

It appears that at that time, they were addressing concerns about the curriculum at the prep schools and the value of doing things the way they were doing them. The defense they offer for maintaining the prep school system is one that we can, should, and must make today as well. I find it interesting that these thoughts from nearly 50 years ago still ring true. I offer them here without further comment:

"Are we trying to teach too many different subjects during the eight years? If we were trying to specialize in some one language, or in history, or science, the answer would be Yes.

"But our purpose is not to specialize to train experts in one field; our purpose is rather to supply the student with the fundamentals of the subjects with which he should have some familiarity as a pastor, and to give him the tools that he can use later if he wants to concentrate on one subject. We must remember that many of the boys now in our school will one day be called upon to teach in our schools and colleges. The very nature of our whole system requires that we train our own teachers and professors as well as our pastors. We cannot avoid inbreeding. We have to lay the foundation now for the work as pastors, teachers, professors that our boys will one day have to do. Of necessity that foundation will to be rather broad.

"Why continue to teach German and Latin? It ought to be taken for granted that a Lutheran pastor who bears the name of Luther proudly should be able to read and understand Luther's language as we have it in his translation of the Bible, in our hymns, and in the originals of our confessions, such as the Catechism and the Augsburg Confession.

"As for Latin, there is no medium that is so suited to illustrate the meaning of the grammar of all languages as the Latin language. Latin is the enemy of ambiguity and obscurity. It is the source of many thousands of English words. Instruction in English, German, Greek always rests heavily on the foundation laid in Latin. A good foundation in Latin makes the mastery of all other languages easier.

"Can the course not be changed so as to make it possible for public high-school graduates to enter our college to prepare for the ministry? Suppose we waive all foreign language requirements for admission to the freshman year of college in order to make it possible for high-school graduates to enter without a handicap and with no loss of time. What would follow? After not many years our synodically operated preparatory schools would be dead. Parents would not send their sons away to school when the Synod lets them know that they can get all they need for admission to college at home, at less cost, and at less effort to the boy. In effect, this would make the public high school our preparatory school for the ministry until we had our own high schools spaced throughout the Synod. And finally, it would be impossible to start Latin, Greek, and German, all at once in the freshman year. Something would have to go, and that something would be two languages…

"Can the area high schools not take over the work now done by the synodically operated high schools in Watertown, New Ulm, Saginaw, and Mobridge? Area high schools will always be under pressure to give the kind of course that the parents in the area and the vast majority of students desire and ought to have. A course that definitely points to the ministry will be demanded by relatively few. The smaller schools will find the cost of providing special classes for these few a heavy burden. Preparatory schools should always have the broad financial support provided by the entire Synod, should have the backing of the whole Synod when times are bad, and should be under synodical, not local, control.

"There is no compelling reason to be observed in the quality and the ability of the students in our schools, nothing in the conditions under which we are operating, nothing in the financial status of our Synod, nothing in the laws of the State that would make it necessary or advisable to make a radical change in our course of studies. On the contrary, everything that is happening in the world would rather argue that we develop as soundly educated a ministry as we can. Our course is intended to develop a teaching, preaching ministry. It is a course that tends to preserve us from becoming a church of the social Gospel that spends its strength in the interest of social, physical, and economic welfare.

"It we give up the languages we shall find that the vacant space that they leave will soon be filled with the popular subjects - social studies, psychology, psychiatry, community welfare, and so on. The experience of seminaries and colleges that have lost interest in the languages proves this to be the case.

"We must not weaken our preparatory departments, because in the degree in which we weaken them we weaken the college, and consequently also the theological seminary and the ministry."