Forrest Bivens, WELS, could not even write his own introduction for his disastrous UOJ essay. He had to plagiarize Mark Zarling's equally bad effort. |
No Lutheran leader today will let the words "King James" pass his lips, except to complain about the KJV translation.
Many excuses are offered for all the new ones. The Bible salesmen work like the agitating little sister one Yale professor wrote about. She would start something in the car, like, "The sun is so bright it hurts my eyes." No one thought so until she said that. Soon everyone was responding according.
All agitators work that way. "I really hate the thees and thous," they say. That is so comical, coming from a Germanic synod - not that anyone in seminary knows German anymore. If they did, the concept of thou (du) and word endings - which are now sparse in English - would make sense. And they might explain that to those who object.
But bring out a new Bible translation, every week, and the publishing houses can sell them like strawberry Pop-tarts.
One excuse is "The KJV came from Calvinists." That is especially comical, because the WELS-LCMS partnership loves the NIV (pan-denominational) and the ESV (a Calvinist editor for the old RSV).
The KJV, in fact, came from Tyndale, who worked in Germany during the Lutheran Reformation to produce his first English Bible. Thus the KJV is a fine representative of Luther-style translating, with precision, rather than the dynamic equivalence of the modernist failures. In other words - accuracy of translation versus
- Inserting words never in the text,
- Erasing words that are in the text plus,
- Mistranslating words to change the meaning of the text - all failures of the RSV, NIV, etc.
In the NIV, which is now official in WELS, thanks to the corruption of the DPs, the Fullerism of the faculties, and the lethargy of the laity,
- The Sacraments have disappeared entirely.
- UOJ has emerged from Romans 3, by a miracle of invention - "all" are justified.
- Testament in Hebrews 9 is Calvin's covenant.
- The English language has been taken down to surfer dude eloquence, you know, like, um. cool.