Good morning Greg,
Another amazing Ichabod! Loved all the Luther quotes. Great work.
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GJ - The "Party in the Fire Island Pines" fans seem to disagree. Is WELS divided? Yes. The Church and Changers have polarized the synod. But I hear that many young brains have not turned to mush. According to sources, the hot stuff for aging Boomers is not going over well with many college students.
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DK has left a new comment on your post "Atonement versus Justification Without Faith - The...":
Awesome post Professor! Thank you: Very enlightening.
You started by saying:
"Someone asked about the difference between the Atonement and Universal Objective Justification."
Were you referring to my question? I understand the difference between Atonement vs. Justification and completely agree with you about UOJ, but speaking to the nitty gritty semantics:
Are you suggesting that the statement "Justification by Grace, through Faith" isn't accurate or evidence of a misunderstanding about Atonement? Is "Justification by Faith" more accurate?".
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GJ - Various people ask about this and you were one of several who wanted more information.
Emphasizing grace is perfectly fine, and so is an emphasis upon faith. The UOJ Stormtroopers rail against faith, even though the Word of God is revealed to us so that we might believe in the Gospel as the revealed will of God. Luther encountered opposition because he said by faith alone, apart from the works of Law. The alone is understandable because of efforts to slide some form of works into the Word.
Let me try an analogy about the UOJ confusion. The Holy Spirit always works with the Word and never apart from the Word. However, we never claim that the Holy Spirit is the Word, that the Word is the Holy Spirit. The UOJ Stormtroopers identify, in a confusing way, the Atonement with justification/absolution. The Atonement is directly related to justification by faith, but they are not identical. I hope that helps.
2 comments:
An example of the WELS UOJ war on faith is their quotes from the Our Great Heritage. These two quotes were thrown at me from WELS Pastor James Humann, Evergreen Lutheran High School, Des Moines Wa.
"And yet many Lutherans still labor under the delusion that God does not forgive us unless we
believe. Instead of seeing faith as nothing more than the spiritual hand with which we make
the forgiveness of God our own, they see it as a reason why God forgives us. They believe
that Christ has indeed provided forgiveness for all men, that God is willing to forgive them, but
before he really forgives he first of all demands that we should be sorry for our sins and that
we should have faith. Just have faith they say, and then God will forgive you. All the right
words are there. The only thing wrong is that the words are in the wrong order. God does not
forgive us IF we have faith. He has forgiven us long ago when he raised his Son from the
dead." (p. 59)
Finally, "If forgiveness were dependent on faith in the sense that God does not forgive until we
believe, we would always have to be sure that we are believers before we would be sure that
we are forgiven." (p.60)
Brett Meyer
There are also other little odd variants of UOJ which emanate from the Reformed camp, natunnotrally. One that I heard was some nonsense called "salvific knowledge". Some Babtists use it as just another reason to withhold the Sacrament of Holy Baptism from infants. Their reasoning is that since infants are not developed intellectually, therefore they cannot know that they are saved, even if they are baptized. The Means of Grace are given short shrift, as comprehension is made a factor in salvation. It is akin to the false doctrine of the age of accountability. If it all sounds confusing, you are correct. It is.
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