You Owe Jay for Defending the Doctrine of the Emergent Church
When 1 Timothy 3:16 says that the Lord Jesus was "justified" in the Spirit in his resurrection and exaltation, is the word "justified" being used there in the exact same way, and to make the exact same point, as when the Bible says elsewhere that Abraham (or anyone) was or is "justified" by faith? Should we not consider that there may be more than one Biblical usage or application of this term? And is it really necessary to say that only one of these usages or applications is correct, and that any other usage or application is "demented"?
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Pastor Webber,
I think that would be confusing connotation with meaning. The term "Justify" might be used in Scripture in a number of different connotations though it carries the same meaning. But of course a different connotation implies a different topic, so the meaning has, in a sense changed. So, to apply one connotation's sense-meaning to another is what we call "Equivocation". So no, that doesn't give use license to use the term "justify" any way we want.
Putting the best construction on the topic is to suggest that UOJ is guilty of ambiguous illogical language. UOJ's error, distinct from equivocation, is redefinition. It uses the word 'justify' to refer to the universal work of Christ, which (although Christ did pay for All sin) does not affect individuals. If you believe that God only affects individuals through the Word, start from there: weigh the language used to describe UOJ against the notion that "God only chooses to deal with man" through Word. I think if you divorce yourself from "The way we've always talked about things" and focus on what the doctrine in question means plainly, I think you will see quite quickly that it is load of horse manure. God has chosen The Cause to be his Word. The Effect is that some come to faith and have Christ's Righteousness imputed to them (are justified). Without The Cause there can be no Effect.
The worst construction on UOJ is to take people at their own words, discerning that they actually believe falsely, like Walther or Becker, that God has declared every person Righteous whether or not they ever believe. And even though it may be putting the worst construction on it, that approach is totally reasonable because the plain, simple dictionary definition of "justify", and the hundreds of Scripture references telling us that man is Justified by faith alone.
Andy Groenwald
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GJ - Laymen convinced me to study UOJ, and I gathered hundreds of quotations on both sides of the issue. General Justification, Objective Justification, and UOJ all mean the same thing - universal forgiveness of sin, universal absolution. The meaning of a term is decided by context. Andy is a bit innocent about that, but he is correct in pointing out the error of using a misleading, imprecise, and erroneous term.
Thy Strong Word began the erosion, when I published what UOJ really means. Before that, people were allowed to think it was a synonym for the Atonement.
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LPC has left a new comment on your post "Another Body Blow To Universal Objective Justifica...":
Sophistry starts to gain a foot hold once the meaning of words are allowed to be redefined, stretched like a garter or a rubber band.
I find it hard to be nice when it is obvious that the spin they put on UOJ is opportunistic.
LPC
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GJ - The latest is the deception that OJ and SJ are not two justifications but two sides of the same coin. Their analysis reminds me of mercury, whose blobs separate and join again, impossible to grasp, especially toxic for those who like to play with it.
