I am not keen on educational theory and often exchange emails with a conservative from California on that topic. However, Bloom's taxonomy is still big in higher education and illustrates the reasons behind McCain's Enthusiasm.
The lowest level of education is repeat-after-me memorization. That is what seminaries teach MDivs, concentrating on why their synod is the only one and how their founders walked six feet off the ground, like the Remarkable Cure d'Ars, St. John Vianney. (That is my little joke, since the Purple Palace was built on land bought from Vianney High School in St. Louis.)
At Yale, Brevard Childs told me he could identify the date ministers graduated from seminary by their libraries. They never grew intellectually after ordination. The UOJ fanatics following Robert Preus.1 are proof of that maxim. They are stuck in 1987 and cannot face the obvious from Justification and Rome: Preus repudiated UOJ.
We all know that Walther and F. Pieper were infallible, so anyone questioning their infallible wisdom deserves the Left Foot of Fellowship, even if the Founders plagiarized the Pietists and George Christian Knapp. See also his translator, Leonard Wood.
L P Cruz has tried to help McCain see the errors of UOJ, but McCain wants his blog filled with comments from the UOJ claque.
The UOJ Stormtroopers endlessly repeat their slogans, avoiding the issue of the Brief Statement, to wit:
"Scripture teaches that God has already declared the whole world to be righteous in Christ, Rom. 5:19; 2 Cor. 5:18-21; Rom. 4:25; that therefore not for the sake of their good works, but without the works of the Law, by grace, for Christ's sake, He justifies, that is, accounts as righteous, all those who believe in Christ, that is, believe, accept, and rely on, the fact that for Christ's sake their sins are forgiven."
Therefore, the official LCMS position, based upon their own canonical Brief Statement, teaches Universalism and Enthusiasm. The entire world is absolved of sin, they claim. They make fun of the WELS Kokomo Statements but they teach the same thing. It is Calvin improving on the language of Zwingli, but it is still Enthusiasm. Their New Testament citations do not support their cause.
How did Missouri, WELS, and the ELS provide such a welcome for the Church Growth Movement? Answer - they already taught Enthusiasm.