Below are an abstract and the outline of an essay that you can download at this link.

Abstract

In a Systematics III lecture at Concordia Seminary on how to bring an unbeliever to faith in Christ, the professor portrayed Francis Pieper as holding that one must first persuade an unbeliever of the inspiration and authority of Scripture, and only then, on that secured foundation, lead him to sin, Christ, and salvation. This paper examines how the professor reached that portrayal, sets it against Pieper’s own words, and assesses its fairness and the method that produced it.

The professor derived the attributed position not from anything Pieper wrote about evangelism, but from the arrangement of topics in the Christian Dogmatics: Pieper treats prolegomena and Scripture first and reaches Christ and soteriology only later. Reading that sequence as a claim about evangelistic priority, the professor reinforced it with Pieper’s historical context—writing amid the rise of higher criticism—and with analogy and contrast rather than citation, while conceding the inference was his own (“I tend to think he did”). He then associated Pieper’s starting point with biblicism, bibliolatry, fundamentalism, and rationalism, and set it against his own “Christ-first” approach, which he credited to Luther and Childs.

Pieper’s own exposition, including the very Prolegomena assigned for the lecture, states the contrary. “In dealing with an unbeliever we cannot begin with an attempt to convince him of the divine authority of Scripture. We must first bring him to the knowledge of his sins and to faith in Christ” (I.137–138); the recognition of Scripture follows as a consequence of faith, and Pieper calls this sequence the only way. His account of missionary practice (I.313) and his rationale in the doctrine of the testimonium Spiritus Sancti (I.312; I.268–269) confirm it. Several moves the professor claimed as his corrective—Christ first, Scripture confessed afterward, submission as childlike faith rather than enforced external authority, the appeals to John 10 and to Luther—are Pieper’s own. On the question at issue, the professor and Pieper stand in substantially the same place.

The representation is therefore not merely inaccurate but inverted. The essay argues that the error is methodological rather than malicious and identifies three faults. First, a “flyover” interpretation conducted from the table of contents rather than the text. Second, a confusion of categories: a dogmatics is ordered by logical priority (the principium cognoscendi), evangelism by pedagogical and pneumatological priority (Christ as principium essendi); “first” means different things in each, and the two orders need not coincide. Third, an innuendo effect, by which juxtaposing the attributed position with biblicism and its cognates—without flagging the shift as separate from the exposition of Pieper—invites students to draw a damaging inference the professor never directly asserts.

Outline

Abstract

1. Introduction
2. How the Professor Derived His Interpretation
3. What the Professor Says His Own Position Is
4. Synopsis of the Professor’s Moves
   • Argument from arrangement
   • An openly conceded inference
   • Argument from historical context
   • Analogy and contrast rather than citation
   • Extension into a larger cluster
5. What Does Pieper Himself Say?
6. Representation or Misrepresentation of Pieper
7. Assessment
   • Flyover interpretation
   • Confusion of dogmatics and practical theology
   • Innuendo
   • Ignorance of the publication sequence
8. Conclusion