Grace and the Enthusiasts

Absolved without the Means,

Absolved without the Means,

What a glorious feeling,

Enthusiastic genes!

DK has left a new comment on your post "Garland of Roses - From WELS CG Supporter":

Hi Professor!
Maybe this is the wrong place to ask this but... I was reading the Art. IV in 'Apology' this afternoon and was struck how 'initial grace' sounds so much like what UOJers claim.

"In order not to by-pass Christ altogether, our opponents require a knowledge of the history about Christ and claim that he merited for us a certain disposition or, as they call it, "initial grace", which they understand as a disposition inclining us to love God more easily. It is clear, however, what they ascribe to this disposition, for they imagine that the acts of the will before the disposition and those after it are of the same type. They imagine that the will can love God, but that this disposition stimulates it to do so more freely."
Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Tappert p 109, paragraph 17, Augsburg Press.

I know it's not a direct parallel to UOJ but I would be curious to know what you think of this--and if you can shed any light on the history behind this comment. It seems applicable to the UOJ discussion in some way.

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GJ - Reading the Apology now? That is a good sign. I would love to see the UOJ Stormtroopers explain their pet theory from the Apology.

All Enthusiasts have this in common - they draw their insights apart from the Word of God. They depend on human wisdom, human tradition, dreams and visions. The doctrine of Purgatory is drawn from Plato, the Apocrypha (which does not support it anyway), and various dreams people had.

The Apology was written to defend the Diet of Augsburg's Confession, 1530, so it was directed at Roman Catholics. Luther's Galatians Commentary is very good in dealing with all the Roman Catholic arguments about grace.

Rome taught then and still teaches that God gives people grace to accept grace. This merited disposition is very complicated to unravel and explain. In short, it is grace before the Means of Grace.

You have hit upon an important similarity with Universal Objective Justification. The Pietist Knapp and his followers (Walther, Pieper, J. P. Meyer, Papenfuss) agree that the entire world has received grace before and apart from the Means of Grace. Everyone is absolved. Everyone in Hell is a guilt-free saint.

UOJ Stormtroopers cannot make sense of their theory, because they still use the old Lutheran categories after emptying them of any meaning. Everyone is absolved, but everyone is a sinner. All people in the world are "justified," but they need to believe they are already justified. Confession means learning they were already forgiven, before they confessed their sin. UOJ reminds me of the hash the junior high cafeteria used to serve us. No one knew what was in the hash, and no one could tell. We all agreed it was unpalatable, as UOJ is.