Altlutheraner

In several volumes of the American Edition of Luther’s works, there are statements like the following (from volume 12):

The translators strove to make Luther speak English even as he endeavored to make the sacred authors talk German. The archaic literary forms have been removed and obscurities of earlier translations cleared up. Where necessary, whole paragraphs have been recast to fit the logical structure of modern-day prose composition.

It is this last clause that, in addition to the express goal to not translate all of Dr. Martin Luther’s available writings, has moved the author to undertake a quite laborious work: the complete translation of all of Luther’s works into English. To this end, the author is pleased to announce that he has at hand copies of every volume of the St. Louis Edition of Luther’s works, with which he shall, over the next several years (probably several decades, given his lack of unlimited funds), produce English translations of Luther with the goal of providing the English-speaking Church with an unabridged, unrevised Luther.¹ May God bless this endeavor, that it may richly serve His saints. Amen.

To give the reader a taste of what he can expect in the coming years, I present here the contents of each volume:

• The first two volumes contain Luther’s exposition on Genesis, which he completed shortly before the end of his earthly life
• Volumes three through nine contain Luther’s expositions on the Old and New Testaments
• Volume ten contains the Reformer’s catechetical writings and sermons
• Volumes eleven through thirteen contain the house and church postils
• Volume fourteen contains forewords and historical and philological writings;
• Volumes fifteen through seventeen contain documents pertaining to the history of the Reformation from the years 1517 to 1546
• Volumes eighteen and nineteen contain dogmatic-polemical writings against the Papists
• Volume twenty contains dogmatic-polemical writings against the Sacramentarians and other fanatics, as well as against the Jews and Turks
• Volume twenty-one contains Luther’s letters together with the most important letters addressed to him and some other strikingly interesting documents from the years 1507 to 1546
• Volume twenty-two contains the Table Talks
• Volume twenty-three contains the main subject indexes and the indexes of sayings

1. Although there are machine translations of the St. Louis Edition readily available online, because they are done by machine, they do have several noticeable defects (though these should not be overstated), which it would not be to the point to enumerate here.