Bible Translators Theologians Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (October 25, 1811 – May 7, 1887) was a German-American Lutheran minister.

C. F. W. Walther was born a pastor's son in Langenchursdorf in the Kingdom of Saxony (part of modern-day Germany).

Out of a strong religious commitment, he immigrated to the United States in 1838, initially as a follower of Martin Stephan.

He was also the head pastor of the four Saxon Lutheran congregations (called the Gesammtgemeinde) in St. Louis (Trinity, Holy Cross, Immanuel, and Zion).

During his college years in Leipzig he contracted a near-fatal lung disease and had to interrupt his studies for six months.

He soon, however, found himself at odds with the rationalistic government of the Kingdom of Saxony because he believed that it had departed from the faith and practice of historic Lutheranism and promoted false doctrine.

The lack of orthodoxy also caused many other conservative Lutherans to oppose the Saxon government's liberal religious policies.

Walther and several hundred of the other dissenters came together under the leadership of a pastor holding similar views—Martin Stephan from Dresden.

After the fall of Stephan, the group of immigrants was deeply disturbed and unsure whether they were still a Lutheran congregation after having left the authorities and church hierarchy in Germany behind.

A log cabin college, which Walther helped to found, opened in December 1839 in Altenburg and eventually developed into Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

Perhaps his best known work is The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel, which is a transcription of a series of evening lectures he gave at the seminary.