The Rules versus The Synod Rules

The charges are definitely stickical,
When all the rules followed are Biblical.

Anonymous said...(Bailing Water:

Making a charge stick against the Church and Changers will prove next to impossible when it comes to heresy. C&Cers can bob and weave, rationalize, and mislead with the best since facts and reasoning must be checked at the door. The insidious harm comes in shifting the focus from the efficacy of the Word to the efficacy of marketing and buildings while draining WELS’ coffers. They threaten to render the synod anemic and unable to continue

January 23, 2009 4:04 PM

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GJ - Yes and no. I have heard this excuse before. I was able to prove Floyd Luther Stolzenburg a heretic with one question - "If an evangelism effort fails, is it because the wrong methods were used?"

Stolzenburg jumped in and said, "Yes!" and began to explain.

DP Mueller said, "No," only to have Kuske jump in and defend Floyd's doctrine, as he always did.

Mueller had to talk over his vapid VP and point out the Biblical doctrine of the Word.

Previously, Mueller promised that if I proved Stolzenburg a heretic, LPR would be shut down.

Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, Mueller, Kuske, and Schroer all insisted that it never happened. At another meeting to silence me, Schroer said, disingenuously, "I have nothing in my notes."

Their problem was that I told a lot of people what happened, so the officials were caught in another lie. But what was one more lie in a string of them?

Zehms and Stolzenburg--aided and abetted by Mueller-Kuske--caused so much damage in Colubmus with their precious Church Growth Movement that LRP was finally shut down. The goal all along, as Wally Oelhafen explained, was to get Floyd a call in the Wisconsin Synod. No effort was spared. Wally, with "I love CGM" tatooed on his right deltoid, was in Kuske's corner.

So they supported Stolzenburg in getting a call to an independent Lutheran congregation. He is still there.

The moral of this story is - it depends on which rules are followed. The Wisconsin sect has a thousand unspoken but understood rules. If purely doctrinal questions are asked and follow up questions are permitted, the heretics could be identified in a few minutes.

For instance, Kelm has paraded his love of Reformed doctrine for decades. At 64, is he going to find a way out of his published errors? Why is he in fellowship with the Willow Creek Association? WELS supposedly left unionism in the 19th century. Kelm and Parlow brought it back officially at St. Mark, Depere. Trapp did the same at his Willow Creek franchise, jointly operated by WELS.

Bruce Becker has attacked the efficacy of the Word alone. One of his latest communications asked congregations what worked in addition to the Word. He insisted on hiring Kelm and adding to the synod's financial burdens.

When the synod politicians start explaining how difficult it is to deal with a pastoral adulterer (with clout) or a heretic, the sect rules are being followed. So this will really depend on which rules are normative.

WELS Layman Questions

The marks (notae) of Pietism.

Dear Dr. Jackson,

Greetings, from yet another disgruntled WELS layman. I wasn’t sure how to ask you a long question on theology. Do you like them to be asked through Ichabod? Anyway, I really appreciate your hard work: you have done a great service to laymen everywhere who would otherwise be left in the dark. I am very close to leaving the synod, but, for some reason, I have gotten hung up on how justification relates to election. I’m not sure if that should hinder my withdrawal; I suppose, if the WELS is suffering from a specific false doctrine which they’ll never change, that would make me lose more hope than if they were just suffering from pietism.

I have read TSW, especially chapter five, quite thoroughly. I think I am close to understanding justification. What made me think about justification in relation to election was a little reference in an article by Jacob A. O. Preus, “Martin Chemnitz on the Doctrine of Justification,” http://www.wlsessays.net/files/PreusChemnitz.pdf on p. 7,

[The Council of] Trent urged that “justification does not consist only in the remission of sins and free reconciliation, but it also includes the renewal of the mind and the will through the Holy Spirit.” This, of course, is a perversion of the distinction between law and Gospel and makes our justification before God contingent in part on our obedience to the law. It was this very error, creeping back into Lutheranism, which caused Walther, Pieper, H. A. Preus, and others to stress the objective aspect of reconciliation and justification.

But, with my resources limited to the WLS essay file on the web (and Ichabod, of course) I cannot find any reference as to how the Election Controversy led Missouri and the WELS to stress objective justification, at least in WELS essays. (I know you have been focusing on A. Hoenecke’s historical connection to UOJ on Ichabod, but in other essays dealing with the controversy, he isn’t even quoted mentioning justification at all. So could it have been that important to them?) I know that this is the one of the most difficult areas of theology, where we reach the obvious limitations of our reason and the revealed will of God. But none the less, it was important enough for Lenski to write against, and since few understand him today as well as you do, I would like to ask you the following:

Should your view of election affect your view of justification?

Do you agree with the stance that Lenski and the Ohio synod took in the Election controversy?

Or was he wrong on election, and right on Justification?

Here are some quotes that I have found in two WELS essays on the subject:

From The Election Controversy in the Synodical Conference By R. Dennis Rardin: http://www.wlsessays.net/files/RardinElection.pdf p. 32.

Lenski’s rejection of objective or universal justification results from his belief in election iniuitu fidei. Calling faith a cause or condition of election warps its role as purely an organon leptikon. Lenski simply gave faith the same role in justification as he gave it in election—to him it became a cause or condition of justification.

From The Doctrine of Conversion By T.R. Adascheck: http://www.wlsessays.net/files/AdascheckDoctrine.PDF p. 2

The Ohio and Iowa Synods also taught that man's conversion was entirely due to the grace of God. But they limited this grace. They taught that it was effective only in those who offered natural resistance to God's grace, while it was ineffective in those who offered willful resistance.

p.3:
Dr. Lenski repeatedly uses the expression "natural and willful" resistance. They teach that natural resistance is present with all men when the grace of God approaches, but this natural resistance can be overcome by the Holy Ghost. It is not obstacle to conversion. But willful resistance that they define as a mysterious wickedness that goes beyond the natural depravity of man, the Holy Ghost cannot overcome.

On the Chronicle of the Predestinarian Conflict By G.Fritschel as quoted and translated by a seminary student http://www.wlsessays.net/files/SchroederHoenecke.pdf on p. 19

Fritschel is commenting on Hoenecke’s second thesis of election which is: “2. The eternal election of God is the cause of the faith of the elect.”

However, the election did not happen in view of the faith of the elect. One sees (here most decidedly Missouri’s doctrine is pronounced) that not the general gracious will of God concerning all men, but the special grace of election of only a certain few is designated as the source from which faith flows forth. The result is that those who are not predestined cannot even come to faith; and one sees therefore that it was completely true, when Prof. Loy explained in The Lutheran Standard that the second thesis contained “an open denial of Lutheran doctrine.”

It is interesting to note that in the two articles by Hoenecke included in this student’s paper, not one mention is made of Objective Justification. The first article is from the Gemeinde-Blatt in 1878, Volume 13, Number 9. “Wenn Gott allein die Menschen bekehren kann und muß und solches thut ohne des Menschen Zuthun, woher kommt es denn, daß so viele Menschen unbekehrt bleiben?” and the other article is from the April 15, 1880 issue of Evangelish-Lutherisches Gemeinde Blatt, Volume 15, Number 16. entitled “Zur Lehre von der Gnadenwahl.”

Thanks,

WELS Layman

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GJ - I would not be in a hurry to quit WELS over this issue. Many laymen are well read on this subject and forcing the issue. Besides, the other synods are also wedded to UOJ through Walther and Pieper. Hoenecke has been largely ignored, especially by WELS. If they take any longer to translate his slender Dogmatik, it will be too late. Christ will return sooner than they can finish.

Lenski did not agree with OJ at all. As he wrote, no one is justified--apart from faith--in the Bible.

A researcher I know has already found the two justifications in a Pietistic dogmatics book widely used in Germany and America, in use in English for about 60 years in America. There are earlier instances, my scholarly friend says. I do not have all the material, which will be revealed in the fullness of time.

Simply put, the two justifications are not found in the Bible, Luther, the Book of Concord, Chemnitz, Melanchthon, or the later orthodox theologians. What Jack Preus wrote is pure hooey. Robert Preus finally backed away from UOJ in his final book.

I will write a book on this, but not in 2009. I am trying to gather background information now.

I hope my review of the History of Pietism will help provide more insights about this. There may be some synodical exceptions, but I think all the Lutherans in America passed through Pietism before coming here, and many stayed with it. That started with the Muhlenberg tradition (ULCA, LCA) and continued with Scandinavian Lutheran migration and the LCMS.

Because of Pietism, the efficacy of the Word in the Means of Grace was neglected, even ignored, in the Synodical Conference.