Brett Meyer and others--you know who you are--have encouraged me to publish the UOJ essays, lest these treasures of heresy be lost to history. They represent a smug, anti-Christian, anti-Confessional attitude that explains much of what is happening right now.
Here is an interesting contrast. Most WELS/ELS/CLC laity do not know about these essays. If a layman has read any of them, that person is an exception. I have been linking them for some time, mostly because of Brett's comments. Something told me I should publish them for more exposure. The laity are responding in shock.
In contrast, most of the seminary graduates have read these essays. In WELS, the essay file is their BoC - Butchering of Concord, a new set of confessions supplanting the Lutheran Symbols.* The best and brightest heretics get their offscourings added to the WELS BoC. New Ager Jeske is one such honoree. So is the bored-again Atheist Curtis Peterson (formerly LCMS CG pastor, formerly WELS CG pastor, formerly married).
Anyone who gets acquainted with these essays will see how the same quotations are recycled with the care and devotion of aging hippies reusing their trash piles.
The ELS is expected to follow suit by parroting these essays, and they do.
UOJ advocates reveal their vile nature by claiming to teach justification by faith, but their real joy in life is undermining justification by faith and the Means of Grace. Read the absurdities below.
WELS used DP Beckman to excuse the joint leadership conference at Snowbird - ELCA/WELS/LCMS. The explanation du jour was, "If we don't spend the money, someone else will get it." Another excuse was, "They force us to spend the money that way." And finally, without cracking a smile, they said, "You know, they do not have to give it to Lutherans. They can give the insurance money to anyone they please." And they do. Habitat for Humanity and The Salvation Army are recent Thrivent grant recipients. So are the worst pastors in WELS.
WELS Pastor Beckman, Guilt-Free Saints in Hell, Pages 1-4.
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Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Just A Vacation Book - Or Two":
Joe Krohn touches on a critical and important point of discussion. UOJ teaches that the whole unbelieving world has been declared righteous and justified. ALL sins that Christ paid for have been forgiven every man, woman and child.
Why then does anyone go to Hell? UOJ teaches that the unforgivable sin is Unbelief. That is the sin that God didn't forgive. Unbelief is the sin that Christ didn't pay for, that His righteousness didn't cover.
Then the question must be asked, "Who was born into this world without being guilty of unbelief?"
Romans 11:32 For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.
Everyone was born with the sin of unbelief. Then we ask, "Where is it written that the sin of unbelief isn't forgiven?"
Romans 11:23 And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again.
The essence and foundation of UOJ is Universalism. It doesn't matter that someone teaching UOJ denies it, it teaches that the whole world is forgiven, Justified, declared righteous and saved eternally "because that's what Christ came to do". The whole doctrine falls apart when Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions are faithfully applied.
4 comments:
(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
DP Dave Beckman? When was he DP?
Do you possibly have him confused with former DP Walt Beckman?
BTW - that reminds me. It's Vernon Harley you often allude to (not "Hartley"). Former missionary in S. America. Openly criticized Kokomo. Son teaches at St. Croix Lutheran; daughter a WELS member in Marietta, GA. Wife still living in Fairmont, MN.
I have his Greek bible. Going to peruse the margin notes on Romans.
Hi KC.
Does his wife still live on Tilden in Fairmont? I visited them.
Have we met?
You can always send me email:
gregjackson1948@qwest.net
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