Someone asked about Koehler and UOJ. The synodical conference began recycling the same old Pietistic bromides for decades, and that set the stage for the attack on the Bible's authority, unionism, and Church Growth. UOJ is a symptom of Lutheran avoidance or denial of the efficacy of the Word.
Read Reu on Luther and the Scriptures. Reu was dealing with the inerrancy issue, which the proto-LCA leaders were promoting (Franklin C. Fry, ULCA president, then LCA president, LWF president, Mr. Protestant). Inerrancy and efficacy overlap so much that one is necessarily the mother or daughter of the other.
Following Zwingli and Calvin, the Reformed deny the efficacy of the Word but assert its inerrancy - at least, at first. Fuller Seminary, where so many ELCA-LCMS-WELS-ELS pastors studied, began with a weak statement on inerrancy. They up and tossed that out, just when Olson's hero, Donald McGavran, stepped in with his statistics and his famous book, Misunderstanding Church Growth.
Synodical Conference Lutherans felt comfortable studying at Fuller Seminary because Holy Mother Synod failed to teach the efficacy of the Word. Their Pietism gave them all a conjoined status with the Reformed. They shared the same denial of efficacy, just as conjoined twins share a leg, liver, or heart.
How did the Synodical conference invent Receptionism, the cracked notion that the elements of Holy Communion become the Body and Blood of Christ once they are received? (Did they jingle a bell every time someone touched the elements?)
Sig Becker loved Receptionism and UOJ. QED - he pioneered Church Growth at the Sausage Factory.
Robert Preus promoted UOJ and Church Growth at the same time. Unlike his unscholarly sons, he continued to study and repudiated UOJ in his last book. Dan and Rolf are so dense that they edited his book, so we are told, and failed to understand what their daddy wrote.
The same bad theology and lazy exegesis of Receptionism allowed Lutherans to teach, covertly, that everyone in the world was already forgiven, without the efficacious Word: Universal Objective Justification.
How did hundreds of Lutheran clergy listen to marketing advice, without running out the door screaming? The first time I wrote "Questions and Answers about Church Growth" in Christian News, about 100 letters came pouring in, when normally a letter or two was unusual.
Receptionism, UOJ, and Church Growth all represent an implicit denial of the efficacy of the Word. All three are pure Enthusiasm, the separation of the Word from the Holy Spirit, the basis for all false doctrine.
UOJ and Receptionism once had the advantage of being a secretive doctrine known only to clergy. How could anyone remember the idiotic arguments long enough to refute them? That changed when the Internet allowed people to read the offensive arguments 24/7. One pastor said he identified UOJ wrongly with the Atonement and changed his language when he read Chapter Five of Thy Strong Word.
Likewise, the B. Teigen book against Receptionism awakened Lutherans from their doctrinal slumber. The synodical reaction to Teigen's book was just as hostile as WELS-ELS-LCMS reaction to my criticisms of CG doctrine.
When the ELS-WELS leaders said, "We don't know the Moment of Consecration," they should have been drop-kicked into Willow Creek.
That is also why women's ordination is promoted in the ELS, WELS, and LCMS. Given the denial of the Biblical doctrine of the Word, anyone in a robe will do. Fighting against women's ordination is foolish when the same spineless leaders will not fight for the most basic doctrine of the Bible, a doctrine clearly taught by Luther, Chemnitz, and the Book of Concord.
