As many of you might remember, the translation of a sentence in the Large Catechism, in Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions was the cause of no little conversation and discussion in The LCMS. I’m pleased to report that we have now published a book on the translation of this sentence titled: One True God: Understanding Large Catechism II.66. It is a magnificent study, by Rev. Edward Engelbrecht, of this passage. There is a free study guide available for download. A free copy of this little book was sent to ever LCMS congregation. It is now available for sale from CPH.

Here is the first edition’s version:
"These articles of the Creed, therefore, divide and separate us Christians from all other people on earth. Even if we were to concede that everyone outside Christianity–whether heathen, Turks, jews, or false Christians and hypocrites–believe in and worship the one, true God, it would still be true that they do not know what His mind toward them is and cannot expect any love or blessing from Him."

Here is the second edition’s version:
"These articles of the
Creed, therefore, divide and separate us Christians from all other
people on earth. Even if [or: Even if we were to concede that] all
people outside of Christianity–whether whether heathen, Turks, jews,
or false Christians and hypocrites–believe in and worship the one,
true God, they still do not know what His mind toward them is and
cannot expect any love or blessing from Him."

The LCMS Commission on Doctrinal Review had originally indicated
they wanted us to return the text back to the original wording of the Concordia Triglotta. Here is that wording:

These articles of the Creed, therefore, divide and separate us
Christians from all other people upon earth. For all outside of
Christianity, whether heathen, Turks, Jews, or false Christians and
hypocrites, although they believe in, and worship, only one
true God, yet know not what His mind towards them is, and cannot expect
any love or blessing from Him; therefore they abide in eternal wrath
and damnation. For they have not the Lord Christ, and, besides, are not
illumined and favored by any gifts of the Holy Ghost.

After lengthy and fruitful conversation, the Commission on Doctrinal
Review withdrew their directive that we use only the text from the
Triglotta. Instead, it approved the most important part of our
translation — "Even if," and our removing the word "Although." They
also permitted us to put the other significant portion of our
translation in brackets with the very important little word "or" thus
indicating a perfectly acceptable alternative translation. So, in the
second edition the translation now appears as printed above. And at the
passage there is an asterisk pointing the reader to a note at the
bottom of the page: "See One True God: Understanding Large Catechism II 66
(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006). The Commission on
Doctrinal Review received this book and encouraged us to make it
available.

The importance of the "Even if" rather than the "Although" is that
this clearly indicates that Martin Luther is not here simply putting
forward as a fact the observation non-Christians do worship and believe
in the One True God. Instead, Luther is simply putting forward a
condition for the sake of argument. The usage here is a Medieval German
contrary to fact conditional phrase, which was a common rhetorical
device Dr. Luther uses. Rev. Engelbrecht’s thoroughly documents all
these things in his book. I would strongly recommend anyone interested
in pursuing any of this further obtain the book and read and study it.
It is fascinating and very helpful.

I come away from all this deeply and profoundly impressed by Dr.
Luther’s mastery of grammar, rhetoric and logic, the ancient arts of
oratory that are, frankly, nearly lost to us to day.

Why all this fuss over this phrase, some may wonder? Well, there was
an incident several years ago during which a few people in our Synod
latched on to the "Although" translation of Luther’s comment and tried
to use this inadequate English translation to indicate that Muslims in
fact do worship and pray to the one, true God. This comment led to no
little degree of conversation in our Synod and several journal articles
appeared from both of our seminaries. We were working on our edition of
the BOC at the time and recognized that there might possibly be some
better way to render Luther’s original so as to avoid this kind of
confusion and so we prepared the translation as we did.

Thankfully, the Commission on Doctrinal Review rose above the
politics and after releasing their original report, there followed many
months of careful conversation and discussion with them, in which each
point was carefully studied and discussed and compromises reached. The
Commission quite thoroughly rejected the claim that the first edition
was guilty of "false doctrine" as had been alleged, and they also
rejected the majority of the irresponsible claims made about the book
by two LCMS pastors. The result? A fine second edition that has the
distinction  of having the most official "nihil obstat" and
"imprimatur" available in The LCMS. A claim that can not be made for
any other recent translation of the Book of Concord in English.

There are now over 60,000 copies of Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions
in circulation. The response to the book has been very strong and
positive. We now have more Lutherans studying and reading the Lutheran
Confessions than ever before. A seminary professor a few months ago
came up to me and said, "McCain,
when I think about this whole incident, I’m reminded of one of
Shakespeare’s plays, ‘Much ado about nothing’ " He just smiled and
walked away.

Ah, the joys of life in the church militant, where, as one older
pastor told me, no good deed goes unpunished. I am comforted by the
powerful words of our Lutheran Confessions, in The Apology of the
Augsburg Confession [emphasis added]:

"We see the infinite dangers that threaten the destruction of the
Church. In the Church itself, the number of the wicked who oppress it
is too high to count. therefore, this article n the Creed shows us
these consolations that we may not despair but know that
the Church will remain until the end of the world. No mater how great
the multitude of th wicked is, we may know that the Church still exists
and Christ provides those gifts He has promised to the Church–to
forgive sins, to hear prayer, to give the Holy Spirit." (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Articles VII and VIII (IV), The Church, par. 9; Concordia: The Lutheran Confession [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006], p. 144)