GJ Note - The Wendland essay is 100% UOJ. But this selection may confuse readers because it begins with brilliant refutation of UOJ by the Ohio Synod. I have marked the refutation of UOJ in blue. Wendland's support of UOJ follows.
Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Introduction to WELS DP Beckman's Guilt-Free Saint...":
(W)ELSian Ernst Henry Wendland quotes an appropriate warning, by the Ohio Synod's Kirchenzeitung in its May issue of 1905, to everyone who teaches and defends the false gospel of Universal Objective Justification in his essay, Review of Common Confession Article VI-Justification given to the Biennial WELS Convention at DMLC, New ULM, MN in 1951.
(1) Reconciliation and personal justification are thrown together (by Missouri), so that nothing is left of an individual justification by faith. According to Missouri’s new teaching the whole world is justified, in fact, already when Christ completed his work of redemption. A different justification, which takes place when man comes to faith is not present according to this teaching. Thus the central teaching of Scripture and of the Lutheran church is destroyed. (2) According to this new doctrine of justification is already completed without faith, before faith ever enters into the picture. Faith limps behind. Man should only believe in a justification already completed a long time ago. Thus Missouri destroys the Bible teaching of a justification by faith. (3) It is no longer true according to this new doctrine that God first justifies in the moment that a sinner comes to faith. No longer - faith, then justification; rather centuries ago a justification of the whole world - now believe this! We shudder at this sin against everything sacred! God preserve these blinded creatures, who prate so about the clarity of Scripture, and condemn vigourously everything that doesn’t suit their fancy. Now through their own blindness they have fallen so deeply into the night of error! God have mercy upon the poor people who are no longer hearing the central teaching of Scripture, but rather a miserable fallacy, a poor figment of man’s own invention (Lehre u. Wehre, Vol. 51, p. 385 ff.) Page 3
E.H. Wendland goes on to clarify the heart of UOJ and dismisses Missouri's Brief Statement as too ambiguous in regards to declaring the whole unbelieving world forgiven, justified and righteous by God's divine verdict.
"Now we come finally to the Common Confession, where this doctrinal divergence has been supposedly resolved. As we approach it we naturally ask, “Will it contain an unequivocal statement on objective justification? Will it rule out the thought that faith is first necessary before any justification of God’s part is possible?”
We read: “By His redemptive work Christ is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world; hence, forgiveness of sin has been secured and provided for all men. (This is often spoken of as objective justification.)”
We readily agree that this first sentence is a statement which sets forth the Scriptural truth of universal redemption. We cannot say that there is anything unscriptural about it, as far as it goes. But we certainly cannot agree with the following parenthetical statement, that this sentence adequately and unequivocally covers objective justification. As a matter of fact, we cannot find the essential characteristic of objective justification mentioned at all, the fact that God “has already declared the whole world to be righteous in Christ” (cf. Brief Statement). “Secured and provided” do not convey the thought of an outright grant, declaring man as acquitted before the bar of God’s justice. Perhaps they can be interpreted in that light by members of the Missouri Synod. But they can just as well be interpreted by the American Lutheran Church to uphold their old position, that although God has secured and provided forgiveness of sin by the redemptive work of Christ, He does not actually justify or declare the sinner to be righteous until the first spark of faith is kindled in his heart. The ambiguity of the Common Confession’s definition of objective justification is so evident that we cannot see how it can be accepted as a final settlement of the old controversy."
http://www.wlsessays.net/files/WendlandJustification.pdf
Note the new URLs for essays. The old links will not work.
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GJ - I will publish the whole essay here soon. Read and weep, WELS/ELS members. Your pastors are trained in utter rubbish.
Missouri still tries to amalgamate UOJ with justification by faith. Its more recent justification theses were confused and contradictory but definitely anti-justification-by-faith.
