“He neither removed any books from his German translation of the Bible nor did he “distort” it to “serve his needs”.”
So you’re claiming that Luther’s Bible included the deuterocanonicals in the Old Testament in the proper place which would show he believed they were canonical? Really?
And you don’t think that Luther treated several books of the NT as less than canonical scripture? Then how is it that that is still a strain with in Lutheran though among “even by orthodox Lutheran teachers”? http://cyclopedia.lcms.org/display.asp?t1=a&word=ANTILEGOMENA
And about Romans 3:28: Philip Schaff (a Protestant) asserts in his book, In The Protestant Spirit of Luther’s Version:
“The most important example of dogmatic influence in Luther’s version is the famous interpolation of the word alone in Rom. 3:28 (allein durch den Glauben), by which he intended to emphasize his solifidian doctrine of justification, on the plea that the German idiom required the insertion for the sake of clearness. But he thereby brought Paul into direct verbal conflict with James, who says (James 2:24), “by works a man is justified, and not only by faith” (”nicht durch den Glauben allein”). It is well known that Luther deemed it impossible to harmonize the two apostles in this article, and characterized the Epistle of James as an “epistle of straw,” because it had no evangelical character (”keine evangelische Art”).” http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/7_ch04.htm
Moving the goalposts? Luther DID include the Apocryphal books in his German translation of the Bible and he placed them in a separate section just as, hold your hat...JEROME did. Just as the Jewish theologians did who translated the Bible into Greek (the Septuagint). Jerome prefaced these books by saying in his commentary on Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus:
As, then, the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it also read these two Volumes (Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus) for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church."
And he states in his preface to the books of Samuel and Kings:
"This preface to the Scriptures may serve as a "helmeted" introduction to all the books which we turn from Hebrew into Latin, so that we may be assured that what is not found in our list must be placed amongst the Apocryphal writings. Wisdom, therefore, which generally bears the name of Solomon, and the book of Jesus, the Son of Sirach, and Judith, and Tobias, and the Shepherd are not in the canon."
In his preface to the Daniel he states:
"I say this to show you how hard it is to master the book of Daniel, which in Hebrew contains neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three youths, nor the fables of Bel and the Dragon; because, however, they are to be found everywhere, we have formed them into an appendix, prefixing to them an obelus, and thus making an end of them, so as not to seem to the uninformed to have cut off a large portion of the volume." From http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2011/10/did-jerome-change-his-mind-on-apocrypha.html
As for what Luther thought or did not think about canonical books, he came to terms with their divine inspiration as he studied them further. A good idea for those who presume that God would ever contradict Himself.
I have a question for you. Why do you bring up Luther so much? Is he like some kind of talisman that is supposed to shut up all the "Protestants" in the thread? How many times must we explain that Luther isn't the Pope of Protestantism - he was far from the only reformer? We see him as a fallible man that sincerely loved the Lord and that love compelled him to try to effect change in the church he also loved. I believe even your magesterium has been making moves to resolve the issues over Martin Luther (see http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article2099032.ece) Any plans to stash that dogeared card?