This episode of Issues Etc (audio linked) asked for $300,000 from congregations to continue their world-wide ministry. Holy moly, I am blogging for free and they are soliciting a small fortune to support the doctrinal foundation of ELCA and the Church Growth Movement.
Pastor Rolf Preus and Pope John the Malefactor (Little Sect on the Prairie) agreed about everyone forgiven without faith, without the Means of Grace, but Pope John kicked out Rolf anyway, by threatening Rolf's congregation.
Rolf has been stuck on Universal Objective Justification for a long time. In this interview, Todd Wilken scattered rose petals before this ambiguous and misleading presentatation of false doctrine.
Rolf danced around the central tenet of UOJ, which is found in the Brief Confession of the LCMS - that God has declared the entire world free of sin. Although Rolf kept insisting that message is found in the New Testament, he did not identify a single verse where God said, in effect, "I don't care if you have never heard the Gospel or never believed the Gospel, you are all forgiven anyway. Faith in My Promises is irrelevant."
Someone who separates grace from the Means of Grace is an Enthusiast.
In a startling display of doctrinal ineptitude, Wilken and Preus tried to associate Calvin's limited Atonement opinion (Christ dying only for the elect) with justification by faith.
Neither pastor conceded that Lenski wrote consistently against their UOJ opinion, that Rolf's dad repudiated UOJ in his final book, Justification and Rome.
UOJ is from Pietism, from Reformed doctrine. Clearly, Walther borrowed UOJ from his Pietistic circle. Double justification was in print in America before Walther landed in Perry County. Norwegian Pietism was quite comfortable with this new, oddball twist on justification.
The dishonesty of this conversation shows a studied indifference to scholarship. Unfortunately, graduates of The Surrendered Fort are full of themselves, because the faculty teaches them that they are the greatest. (Ditto - Our Lady of Sorrows, St. Louis; The Sausage Factory, Mequon; The Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie, Mankato; and The Beehive, Eau Claire). Wilken and Preus imagine there are two sides to the issue: UOJ and Calvinism.
A Lutheran layman recently made this point, and a Jew in my class said almost the same thing - there is no scholarship among Protestants today.
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rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "Issues Etc Needs $300K a Year To Help Teach Univer...":
Many years ago, I had objective justification explained to me this way by a vicar from the Sausage Factory, "we are all saved, but unbelievers forfeit their salvation". Make sense to those who accept UOJ, I guess.
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GJ - I removed the Issues, Etc. icon from the blog. Wilken's poor grasp of Christian doctrine is additional evidence of the state of Lutheran apostasy.
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L P has left a new comment on your post "Issues Etc Needs $300K a Year To Help Teach Univer...":
This is the reason I am not able anymore to be a supporter though they were instrumental in my becoming Lutheran. I used to send support and listen, now I just listen.
This has made me sad. Because as I listened, they are talking about 2 justifications, one without faith, the other through faith. This is logically inconsistent. Either you are justified without faith or justified through it.
They get into this conundrum because they collapse Atonement with Justification.
Calvinists collapse the two also but arrive at another conclusion.
Amazing, these Lutherans are doing the same - collapsing Atonement with Justification.
LPC
9 comments:
UOJ is a doctrine of reason created and perpetuated by men who reject the faith of the Holy Spirit.
Pastor Rolf Preus made these statements during my discussion of UOJ to all the Universalists on Luther Qwest:
"When you reject objective justification, you have no real atonement or redemption. You have no gospel. When you make the truth of the forgiveness of sins contingent on faith, you destroy forgiveness, faith, indeed the gospel itself.
You speak as if you have found the truth. But you haven't. To deny
objective justification is to render redemption, propitiation,
atonement, etc. utterly meaningless. There can be no absolution without objective justification."
Preus: "Nobody who teaches objective justification says that the unbeliever has the righteousness that God demands."
AZ/CA DP Buchholz: ""God has declared the entire world righteous." This statement is true, as we understand it to mean that God has rendered a verdict of "not-guilty" toward the entire world. It is also true—and must be
taught—that the righteousness of Christ now stands in place of the world’s sin; this is the whole point of what Jesus did for us at Calvary."
Pastor Rolf Preus provides the introduction to his relative H.A. Preus' article linked below on UOJ against Confessionally faithful Professor Weenaas.
http://www.christforus.org/Papers/Content/HermanAmbergPreusonJustificationofWorld.htm
Many years ago, I had objective justification explained to me this way by a vicar from the Sausage Factory, "we are all saved, but unbelievers forfeit their salvation". Make sense to those who accept UOJ, I guess.
I publicly said to Rolf on the occasion when this picture was snapped, that I regretted that he was no longer in the ELS. That was about 3 years ago. I still feel that way today. I have, since surgery, lost about 120 lbs.
Norman Teigen
ELS layman
What is with all the emphasis on UOJ? Any lunkhead should be able to "get it."
What will teaching universalism accomplish? It simply looks like more waste.
UOJ was explained this way:
The ship has sunk (by sin) and we're all floating in the ocean. Christ offers to throw everyone a lifeline and pull them to his lifeboat. Some reject it because they want to swim to shore by themselves.
1 Timothy 4:7-16, "But refuse profane and old wives' fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe. These things command and teach. Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee."
It is a rejection of pure doctrine to cling to the false gospel of UOJ. It is also a rejection of pure doctrine to embrace anyone who takes it upon himself (and remains unrepentantly so) to connive and deceitfully remove a man from his position as a called Minister of the Word. The majority of the ELS and WELS watched with little or no objection as ELS synod president John Moldstad proved himself an Antichrist by coercing a congregation to remove Pastor Rolf Preus from his Christ appointed call after they voted that Pastor Rolf Preus was for them a faithful Pastor.
Anonymous 3:37pm - UOJ defenders love to explain their central doctrine in Pop-Up book style. It's the only way to describe such a baseless, anti confessional and heretical teaching.
Even though WELS DP Jon Buchholz promoted this false gospel at the 2005 WELS Convention he himself admits that the Bible doesn't say what he says it says. (nice sentence)
DP Jon Buchholz:
"God has forgiven the whole world. God has forgiven everyone his sins." This statement is absolutely
true! This is the heart of the gospel, and it must be preached and taught as the foundation of our
faith. But here’s where the caveat comes in: In Scripture, the word "forgive" is used almost
exclusively in a personal, not a universal sense. The Bible doesn’t make the statement, "God has forgiven the world."
"God has forgiven all sins, but the unbeliever rejects God’s forgiveness." Again, this statement is true—and Luther employed similar terminology to press the point of Christ’s completed work of
salvation.16 But we must also recognize that Scripture doesn’t speak this way."
"God has declared the entire world righteous." This statement is true, as we understand it to mean
that God has rendered a verdict of "not-guilty" toward the entire world. It is also true—and must be
taught—that the righteousness of Christ now stands in place of the world’s sin; this is the whole point of what Jesus did for us at Calvary. However, once again we’re wresting a term out of its usual
context. In Scripture the term "righteous" usually refers to believers. "
This is the reason I am not able anymore to be a supporter though they were instrumental in my becoming Lutheran. I used to send support and listen, now I just listen.
This has made me sad. Because as I listened, they are talking about 2 justifications, one without faith, the other through faith. This is logically inconsistent. Either you are justified without faith or justified through it.
They get into this conundrum because they collapse Atonement with Justification.
Calvinists collapse the two also but arrive at another conclusion.
Amazing, these Lutherans are doing the same - collapsing Atonement with Justification.
LPC
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