By His perfect life and His innocent sufferings and death Jesus has redeemed the entire world. God thereby reconciled the world to Himself, and by the resurrection of His Son declared it to be righteous in Christ. This declaration of universal righteousness is often termed "objective justification." One has this justification as a personal possession and is personally declared by God to be righteous in Christ when he or she is brought to faith in Him as Savior. This is often called "subjective justification". If the objective fact of Christ's atonement is not personally received by faith, then it has no saving benefit for the individual. We reject as unscriptural any teaching that people can be saved apart from faith in Jesus Christ. See 1 John 2:2, 2 Cor. 5:19, John 1:29, 2 Pet. 2:1, John 3:16-18, 2 Cor. 5:19, Rom. 4:25, 1:17 and 5:1-2.
And yet, the same congregation speaks of the Means of Grace:
We confess that God has instituted certain Means of Grace through which He announces and bestows the forgiveness of sins and the blessings of life and salvation, and through which the Holy Spirit works faith in the individual sinner to receive these blessings.
The previous paragraph stated that the entire world has been declared righteous, so grace comes to every single person without means. Luther called that Enthusiasm, separating God's Spirit from the Word. The Book of Concord called it Enthusiasm, confirming Enthusiasm as the foundation of all false doctrine. The Wisconsin Sect and the Little Sect on the Prairie lovingly call this form of Enthusiasm Universal Objective Justification.
Not one passage in the Bible speaks of justification without faith, forgiveness without Means.
Where did this ELS-WELS-LCMS schmozzle of contradictory, man-made opinion come from? More will be revealed in the coming weeks as the Ichabod research team unveils startling but logical sources. Doubtless more research will be needed to support some claims. Intellectual influence is a tough subject.
As orthodox, confessional Lutherans, we embrace as our primary confessions of faith the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church contained in the Book of Concord of 1580, namely, the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds; the Augsburg Confession and its Apology; the Smalcald Articles (including the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope); Luther's Small and Large Catechisms and the Formula of Concord (Epitome and Solid Declaration). We accept these Confessions, not in so far as but because they agree with Scripture, and we believe that they are a correct exposition of the teaching of God's Word. Adherence to these confessions, drawn from Scripture, is in keeping with St. Peter's exhortation: "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have" (1 Pet. 3:15). See also Heb. 13:7-9a.
The above paragraph is the repeat-after-me formulation, but those words contradict what was written above. The sacred cow of WELS-ELS-LCMS is UOJ, which is nowhere to be found in the Book of Concord. LutherQuest (sic) used to try proving UOJ from the Book of Concord. That was more of a ludicrous quest.
What about Chemnitz, or Gerhard? Melanchthon? UOJ fans used to cite Gerhard dishonestly, but they also quote the Bible deceptively, so the minor gambit is not as blasphemous as the major move: inventing a universal declaration which is invisible to everyone but the brainwashed.
What about Robert Preus? He rejected UOJ, citing Calov, whose works are crusty enough with age and obscure enough to fool most people into believing that someone over in Europe, someone orthodox, actually promoted UOJ.
More later. I appreciate the interest many people have in this topic. UOJ is declining with the Church Shrinkage Movement.
