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Sunday, January 20, 2013

Response to CPH warning letter...

Related to my posting (Dec. 14, 2012) of download links of the in-copyright volumes Essays For The Church by C.F.W. Walther, I have received an emailed warning notice letter from an official at Concordia Publishing House on January 10, 2013.  I had not noticed it until now. It was attached to the following email text:
Dear Sir or Madam:
Please see the attached document and respond at your convenience.  Thank you.

God's Blessings,
Norma
Norma Muench
Intellectual Property Specialist
copyrights@cph.org | P: 800.325.0191 | F: 314.268.1243
First of all, I have removed the download links at CPH's request.  Apparently they noticed my warning to them of this tragic situation created by them – I see I got their attention.  Actually, I'm a bit surprised it took them so long – these books are only 20 years old and were a huge effort (over 600 large pages!) to present to the members.

I'm sorry, CPH, for disturbing your "celebration" of Walther...  I was only trying to help you in your "celebration".  I'm sorry for cutting into the rights you have to Walther's English translations.  Upon your request, I'll turn over 100% of the profits I have earned from this endeavor.

OK, I'll leave you to your normal duties... whatever they are.  Surely they include a massive effort to be
"...presently engaged in releasing a new set of Walther's works, ...  "Essays for the Church" will be included in this new series."
=========================
==>> Personal note to Norma Muench:
In the administration of your official duties, did you know that Walther said the following in these books? (Vol. 1, pg 54):
Question:
“How is it that the consciousness that the Evangelical Lutheran Church alone is entrusted with the pure doctrine of justification has largely disappeared even within this our church?”
Answer:
5. A fifth part consists of those who have indeed recognized the ungodly nature of [Protestant] union (der Union), but now, over against the Reformed, lay the main stress—instead of on the pure doctrine of justification—on outward churchianity, on the visibility of the true church, on its ceremonies, rules, and constitution, on the office [of the ministry] as a special rank created by ordination and [on] its privileged dispensation of grace, on the ex opere operato effectiveness of the sacraments (i.e., by the mere use of them, regardless of faith), and so forth. And in part, besides all this, they either are themselves given to various favorite errors that have become fashionable in our time among the so-called “faithful,” e.g., chiliasm, the hades doctrine, etc., or at least want particularly these heresies to be tolerated in the church as relating to open questions, and in this connection often try to create and preserve in dictatorial fashion (treiberisch) a legalistic piety.
To Norma Muench:
Walther is speaking here of matters of spiritual "life and death".  And the largest English translations of Walther's essays are currently unavailable from CPH.  I suggest you find a copy of these books of Walther in your library there (or a bootlegged file copy of my downloads) and sit down and read them... and discover what the pure Gospel means -- UniversalObjective Justification.  Then, and only then, will you know what "God's Blessings" truly are.  If you want to hear from someone personally, go find Prof. (emeritus) Thomas Manteufel and have him explain it to you.
=========================

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Old Missouri library – Der Lutheraner downloads (Part 2a)

[2024-03-02: Full OCR digital text and English machine translations available at later posts - Part 1 (Walther years), Part 2 (post Walther years), etc.; 2021-04-22: updated several volumes to Google Books, some are blue bold; 2021-04-13: updated volumes 56, 57 to Google Books; 2017-12-2: added link to Table of Contents in Archive.org; 2017-5-06: added Google Books vols. 72-72; 2017-03-24: see new comment. Working on malfunctioning "Box.com" download links! -- Will advise here when these are fixed. ~~ 3/25 -- see added temporary links; 
==>> 3/28 -- added ALL links to new uploaded Archive.org copies]

This continues from the previous Part 1 which presented download links to the entire series of the periodical journal Lehre und Wehre.  In this post, I am providing the links to the scanned copies of much material from the volumes of Der Lutheraner.  This periodical tended to lose its spiritual nature in the later years and so I was selective in what articles I scanned.

In a blog post of March 2012, I reviewed the other website devoted in part to the translation of early issues of Der Lutheraner by Pastor Joel Baseley and his Mark V Publications.  I notice that at this time he is offering a full English translation of the first 3 volumes from 1844 to 1847.  Much of the material in these volumes is from Walther himself and is a wonderful resource.  But although Baseley's translation work is helpful, it is not near enough for me.  Walther's material is so wonderful, I want much more...  I want it all!

To aid in going through the vast material in this periodical, I produced a Table of Contents file for most of it and entered the data from the Index pages where available – not all volumes had indexes.  I added hyperlinks for ease of navigating the 90 volumes.  Here are downloads for both the DOC file and converted PDF file – in both original German (well edited) and English (roughly translated by Google Translate):
[2017-04-26: see this later post for the full publication of these files]
I separated out the Indexes in this file:
  • DL-Indexes only-hyperlinked.DOC       (1.4 MB - German)
  • DL-Indexes only-hyperlinked.PDF        (1.4 MB - German)
  • To get an English version, the reader must copy sections into Google Translate for now – I may update to add English files later.  A basic problem with this is that an alphabetized German index will not correspond with an alphabetized English version.  (Can someone help me on this?)
Some of these volumes are available for download from books.google.com,  These are marked in red and/or BOLD font. (Send a private message for my scanned copies of the Google Books versions. -- see below, now uploaded all to Archive.org)
Der Lutheraner – download links (23-100 MB, ~ 4GB total)
  1,    2,    3,    4,    5,    6,    7,    8,    9,  10    (1844 – 1854)
11,  12,  13,  14,  15,  16,  17,  18,  19,  20,   (1854 
– 1864)
21
,  22,  23,  24,  25,  26,  27,  28,  29,  30    (1864 
– 1874)
31,  32,  33,  34,  35,  36,  37,  38,  39,  40    (1875 
– 1884)
41,  42,  43,  44,  45,  46,  47,  48,  49,  50    (1885 
 1894)
51,  52,  53,  54,  55,  56,  57,  58,  59,  60    (1895 
– 1904)
61,  
62,  63,  64,  65,  66,  67,  68,  69,  70    (1905 
– 1914)
71,  72,  73,  74,  75,  76,  77,  78,  79,  80    (1915 
– 1924)
81,  82,  83,  84,  85,  86,  87,  88,  89,  90    (1925 – 1934)
(Updated links May 6, 2017 – some OCR text files – see updated blog post)
=  = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 

2017-03-25: alternate Box.com links - all my scans:
  1,   2,   3,   4,   5,   6,   7,   8,   910, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40
41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60
61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80
81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90

Archive.org uploads -- not from Google Books, my own scans [finished 2017-03-28]:
2017-12-2: Table of Contents PDF also now on Archive.org
with hyperlinks! Open PDF since their viewer does not allow active hyperlinks.
  1,   2,   3,   4,   5,   6,   7,   8,   9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40
41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60
61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80
81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
As an incentive to dig into this periodical, I present below Walther's announcement of the first meeting of the Synodical Conference in volume 28, page 184:
Proceedings of the first meeting of the Evangelical – Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America at Milwaukee from July 10 to 16, 1872.
   This report has just left the press. It has 75 pages and contains the opening sermon and a detailed log of the proceedings: 1) about our task in relation to the English population of our country; 2) on the doctrine of justification; 3). over home missions etc.  Notably, the proceedings on justification should (on pages 20–68) give the report a value not small by the fact that this sweet heart doctrine is not treated by dry theological teaching, but practically speaking, that every one which desires something for his soul's salvation, he will find plenty of what he seeks. Members of our Synod can get this report through our agent Mr. M.C. Barthel and his commissioners for 20 Cents . W. [Walther]
The "proceedings on justification" are sometimes referred to as the essay "Synodical Conference Report 1872", or "SCR 1872".  This is the foundational document of the Synodical Conference... and what was the subject?  The Doctrine of Justification.  Prof. Kurt Marquart translated and published this but erroneously identified the author as Prof. F.A. Schmidt.  The actual author was none other than the writer of the above notice in Der Lutheraner.  Do you see how Walther prefers the subject matter to take precedence over who the author was?  Do you see how important this Doctrine of Justification was to Walther?

Do you want more incentives to dig into Der Lutheraner issues?  See Part 2a on the next post in this series. [Part 2a never completed]
[There is another blog post (here) that gives more information, but this is the main download post.]
(Part 3 continues this series with the Convention Essays of Walther and Pieper)

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Old Missouri library – Lehre und Wehre downloads (Part 1)

[2019-03-07: added link to Archive Table of Contents; May 24, 2017 – upgraded link to "Lehre und Wehre" Table of Contents file; May 11, 2013 – most volumes in Google Books – see this later post2017-03-29: The Table of Contents (Inhalt) is now available online here.; 2017-03-31: Changed malfunctioning Box.com links to Archive.org downloads -- now fixed)

In the previous post, I advised the completion of uploading the balance of the entire St. Louis Edition of Luther's works, apart from those volumes publicly available at Archive.org.  Why was it called the "St. Louis" Edition?  Because it was the home city for the old (German) Missouri Synod.  It was the home of Concordia Seminary and its teachers.  The heart of Luther had moved from Germany to America, America's heartland.

And from these same teachers came a wealth of German writings of their own: I reviewed some of these before (and listed the many essays) in a previous post):
  1. Essays – Synodical Conventions
  2. Essays – District Conventions
  3. Essays – Synodical Conference conventions
  4. Der Lutheraner periodical
  5. Lehre und Wehre periodical
There were also publications in English – they did speak English as well as German.  But I consider almost all of their English publications as secondary to their German ones.  Why?  Because Walther and Pieper published almost exclusively in the German language and they were the ones who "gathered the luminous rays of the Gospel" the best.  Here are the English language periodicals:
   A) Theological Monthly
   B) Lutheran Witness

In another old post, I provided a download of most of Franz Pieper's writings in Lehre und Wehre.  I will duplicate that download here and also provide a PDF version along with the original DOC file:
2017-03-05: updated DropBox links; 2017-05-24: updated Table of Contents; 2017-12-17: re-arranged listing; 2019-03-07: added link to copy on Archive.org
In this post, I am providing the links to the scanned copies of the entire series of volumes of Lehre und Wehre.  Most of these volumes are available now for download from Google Books (in green font) , some of these with EPUB text in green bold font.  Others are available from Archive.org, especially for the later years.

Lehre und Wehre – download links (30 - 57 MB)
  1,    2,    3,    4,    5,    6,    7,    8,    9,  10    (1855 – 1864)
11,  12,  13,  14,  15,  16,  17,  18,  19,  20    (1865 
– 1874)
21,  22,  23,  24,  25,  26,  27,  28,  29,  30    (1875 
– 1884)
31,  32,  33,  34,  35,  36,  37,  38,  39,  40    (1885 
– 1894)
41,  42,  43,  44,  45,  46,  47,  48,  49,  50    (1895 
 1904)
51,  52,  53,  54,  55,  56,  57,  58,  59,  60    (1905 
– 1914)
61,  62,  63,  64,  65,  66,  67,  68,  69,  70    (1915 
– 1924)
71,  72,  73,  74,  75                                       (1925 
– 1929)
Index for volumes 1-28: 1847-1881
         (updated May 11, 2013 – most volumes in Google Books)

Again, who should care about these old volumes from so long ago, in the German language, and in the old fraktur font?  Because this is the heart of the old (German) Missouri Synod...  beautiful Christian teaching is brought out in these volumes, and Franz Pieper makes numerous references to these volumes in his Christian Dogmatics textbooks.

In the next post Part 2a, I plan to make available the complete downloads for the old Missouri's well known periodical, Der Lutheraner.

Friday, January 11, 2013

St. Louis Edition – complete downloads finished

In a previous post, I reviewed the many online resources for the works of Martin Luther.  In that post, I began a process of providing download links for my scanned copies of the St. Louis Edition of Luther's works.  I have now completed the uploading of all the remaining volumes that I could not find available for downloading elsewhere:
Volumes 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13b, 15, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23

So between Archive.org and my Luther Resources blog page, you can now download and have all of the St. Louis Edition at your fingertips.

Again, who should care to have this German edition in the fraktur font by the old (German) Missouri Synod?  Because:
1) the old (German) Missouri Synod carried the true spirit of Luther to our times
2) there are many references to the St. Louis Edition in Franz Pieper's Christian Dogmatics and other German Missouri Synod publications
3) the Weimar Ausgabe (WA, Weimar Edition) is suspect in its spiritual judgments of Luther, especially in its later volumes
4) the free online translation services can give quick glimpses of Luther's thoughts in English where there are no other translations published yet.

Because I have discovered that Box.com offers 15 GB of free online storage space, I will now be adding many more downloads of my scanned publications from the old (German) Missouri Synod in upcoming posts.  In the next post is the publication Lehre und Wehre.