04 March 2007

Gotta love Luther

So, I'm working my way again through this piece by Schroeder and I can't get beyond the Luther citation from Table Talk. You see, Ed gives it out of the Weimar Edition. So is it German or Latin? It's Germtin or Latman. I love it! I won't bother reproducing the quote, but here is how Dr. Luther spoke at the table. The G stands for a German word, and the L for a Latin one:

GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGLLL
GLLLLGGGGGGGGLLGGGGGGLGGGGLGLGGG
GGGGLLLLGLLLGGGGGGGGLLLLLGGGGGGLL
LLLGGGGLGLLLLLLLGGGGG.

He TOTALLY mixes the languages together as though they were one. It's a hoot and a half!

4 comments:

Rev. Paul T. McCain said...

Luther's use of Latin so freely shows how fluent he was in it. We simply can not even comprehend being so fluent in Latin like this. And we consider ourselves so "advanced" over against Luther. The man and his contemporaries could run circles around us when it comes to language, rhetoric and dialectic. We just have no idea.

It is why, for instance, David Benke and his supporters went so terribly wrong in trying to use that passsage from the Large Catechism, Part I, par. 66 to dare to suggest Luther is asserting that non-Christians, Jews, Turks, etc. actually do believe in and worship one true God.

We simply have lost the skills that were commonplace in Luther's day.

And more's the pity.

William Weedon said...

Pastor McCain,

His scholarship simply shames me. We truly do stand on the shoulders of giants in these latter days. I can't tell you the number of times I have read him and had to stop and read it again and again to just GET what he was saying; his mind was simply an astonishing gift of God.

And more astonishing than his mind per se, was the insight God granted him into the distinction between the Law and the Promises. That's what the passage I was parsing out there was all about. His description of his "breakthrough" - but as a hermeneutical breakthrough. Great stuff Schroeder pulled out.

Anonymous said...

It is a goodly thing to have 'discovered' Ed's scholarship and pastoral touch.

On the Crossings site, hit the search for 'Augsburg Aha' or 'sweet swap' under both Schroeder and Bertram,,,,, there's a wealth of material there. Best Law / Promise stuff to be had,,,,, I started with it eons ago at VU where Schoreder and Bartram had written the four intro Theo courses, two each on the pericopal Epistles and Gospels,,,,, and all four required for graduation.
Bye the bye,,,,, watching Piepkorn write a Patristic citation on the board, left hand Latin and right hand Greek, simultaneously was truly something else.

William Weedon said...

Fr. Hank,

I think I've enjoyed that band of merry men ever since, as a teen, my pastor recommended to me *The Lively Function of the Gospel* - and I remember how it opened my eyes. Didn't Ed write the article on hermeneutics in that? Or was it Betram? Cannot remember. But I do remember Korby's unbelievably great essay on worship in that volume. THAT was life changing.

I confess to not having kept up with much of their work, though. So it's still good to see them doing some great stuff.