Martin Luther: If you value the gospel, learn Greek and Hebrew

My clickbait title is admittedly a paraphrase, but I think it gets at (part of*) the substance of what Luther actually said:

"For though the Gospel has come and daily comes through the Holy Spirit alone, we cannot deny that it has come by means of the languages, by which it was also spread abroad, and by which it must be preserved. ... In proportion, then, as we prize the Gospel, let us guard the languages. For not in vain did God have His Scriptures set down in these two languages alone—the Old Testament in Hebrew, the New in Greek. The languages, therefore, that God did not despise but chose above all others for His Word, we too ought to honor above all others. ... And let us be sure of this: we shall not long preserve the Gospel without the languages. The languages are the sheath in which this sword of the Spirit is contained; they are the casket in which we carry this jewel; they are the vessel in which we hold this wine; they are the larder in which this food is stored; and as the Gospel itself says, they are the baskets in which we bear these loaves and fishes and fragments. If through our neglect we let the languages go (which may God forbid!), we shall not only lose the Gospel, but come at last to the point where we shall be unable either to speak or write a correct Latin or German. As proof and warning of this, let us take the wretched and woeful example of the universities and monasteries, in which men not only unlearned the Gospel, but corrupted the languages so that the miserable folk were fairly turned into beasts, unable to read or write a correct German or Latin and wellnigh losing their natural reason to boot. ... Hence it is certain that unless the languages remain the Gospel must finally perish." - Martin Luther, "To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They Establish and Maintain Christian Schools" (1524) as quoted by Michael Gilleland.

* The other part could be paraphrased thus: If you value the gospel, encourage the study of the biblical languages by others if you are not able to study them yourself.

Martin Luther's Hermeneutic of Faith and Suspicion

I posted Martin Luther's 1522 "Preface to the Revelation of St. John" a month ago because it illustrates Luther's mid-way position between the patristic and medieval "hermeneutics of faith," on the one hand, and the wholesale hermeneutics of suspicion of the Enlightenment and its historical-critical heirs, on the other:

"For Luther, as for Erasmus and all earlier Christian hermeneuts, the disposition of the reader remains crucial: we must preface our reading with prayer and continue with the eye of faith, and our faith is thereby strengthened by our reading. But although his is clearly a hermeneutics of faith, it is also actually a hermeneutics of suspicion, at least in principle, for thereby we grow in faith in a typically circular movement from universal faith to particular inquiry and back to universal faith, which is strengthened in the process." - David Jasper, A Short Introduction To Hermeneutics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 59.

If Augustine would not stop until he found Christ in the text--by allegory if not in the literal sense, Luther was willing to discard New Testament books, such as James and Revelation, in which he could not see Christ.

My own working approach is to accept the canon on the basis of tradition. I assume the Spirit guided the selection of our 27 NT books, and I accept them as given as a rule of faith. I also happen to like Revelation--not least because of its fantastic visions and images.