David P. Scaer, Th.D.
Holder of the David P. Scaer Chair of Systematic and Biblical Theology
Chairman of Systematic Theology
CTQ Editor
david.scaer@ctsfw.edu
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Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Sig Becker Essay Used To Teach Justification at M...":
An essay by David Scaer linked below is another example of the horrible effects UOJ has on the ability for a man to remain faithful to Christ's Word.
You'll see how foundational the UOJ teaching is that if you deny Universal Justification you've destroyed the gospel. Again, proof that UOJ is another and different gospel than the Gospel of Christ, Justification by Faith Alone.
Essay by Prof. David P. Scaer, The Third Use of the Law, Resolving the Tension. There is much that could be contended with in this essay. The scythe of UOJ cuts a wide swath through the Word of God. I've provided quotes from the last few pages of the essay as they bring out some of the more heinous errors. All quotations are found on Page 20-22,
http://www.ctsfw.net/media/pdfs/scaerthirduseresolvetension.pdf
VI. Gospel Over Law: A Resolution in Pieper If there ever was a theologian of the gospel, it was Francis Pieper, who never tired of saying that the gospel is a word of God superior to the law.d9 This forced him to wrestle with how contradictory words could both claim to be God's word. The dilemma was a crux theologorurn, a question which theologians are incapable of answering.50
BM - UOJ's contradictions with the rest of Scripture have now been embraced as dilemma's incapable of being answered.
52 ...God is doing what he really wants to do in the gospel, while in the law he is doing only what he has to do. An answer is already present in the definition of law as opus alienurn, God's foreign or strange work? Condemnation and threat no longer belong to his essence."
BM - Hebrews 13:8, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever." How can Condemnation no longer belong to God's essence? He is perfectly just and unchangeable. God said, "The wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23)." John 3:36, "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." UOJ believes in a different god and not the eternal God of the Bible which hasn't changed. Because UOJ has rejected the Holy Spirit's faith as the God ordained means to reconcile us to Christ, and through which He washes us in the blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, they go about to establish their own way to righteousness, Romans 10:3, "For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God."
(52) ...Claiming that God still counts sin against the world denies both the atonement and justification. By Christ's atonement all mankind appears to God as righteous...but subjective justification has no life of its own; it makes objective justification personal, which is only a facet of the universal atonement.
BM - 1 Cor. 6:9a, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?" Note how UOJ condemns Justification by faith alone saying that it is dead and lifeless only obtaining it's purpose from UOJ's declaration that Christ's righteousness, innocence and blessedness was comingled with the carnal, unbelieving world who are under the Law before faith, before the Holy Spirit works through the Means of Grace.
Cont...
Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Sig Becker Essay Used To Teach Justification at M...":
Cont...
55 Whoever denies objective justification reduces justification to the act of believing and does not believe in it at all. Logically, he denies the atonement and preaches that man is responsible for his sins.
BM - John 8:24, "I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins."
58 This view is not without difficulty because it makes the law the last or eschatological word of God in the judgment. This means that for unbelievers God reinstates the law. This would nullify the atonement and deny objective justification; however, these are fixed realities with God. If they were not, Christ would lose his place of prominence as the all-in-all. The answer to this dilemma lies in seeing unbelief as not one sin among others, but the final sin (and in a sense the only sin) by which the unbeliever cuts himself off from salvation.
BM - Galatians 3:24, "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith." You see how UOJ has perverted the Word of God. Since UOJ has the whole unbelieving world justified without faith then the Law has become obsolete - useless to the point where UOJ removes the Law from unbelievers and then says God "reinstates the law". But Scripture says that only after faith are we no longer under the Law. Galatians 3:25-27, "But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." UOJ screams "NO!" because Justification by Faith Alone rejects Objective Justification. I say, "Amen." The elimination of the Law creates a contradiction for UOJ since how does God execute righteous judgment upon unbelievers if He's already declared them sinless. UOJ then states that unbelievers are then only guilty of unbelief which is the unforgivable sin for which the sinless are condemned to Hell. But every person was guilty of the sin of unbelief when they were conceived. Scripture even states that unbelievers will be forgiven if they do not continue in unbelief. 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."
UOJ is a false gospel and stands condemned by God. 2nd Cor. 4:4, "In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."
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GJ - Scaer promotes his own personality cult at The Surrendered Fort. But, I have never heard of someone serving a named (endowed) chair named after himself. Usually the chair honors a dead person.
In America, the endowed theology professorships always go to heretics and apostates, so Scaer's position is doubly earned.
Robert Preus wrote his last book, Justification and Rome, to fight against the growing papalism at Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne. Scaer is one of those professors sinuflecting to Rome, doubtless grinning as his graduates join Rome or Constantinople soon after graduation. Some only wait a few hours.
I took a class from Scaer. When Klemet Preus asked for examples of logical fallacies recently heard, for Klemet's homework, I quoted examples from Scaer. Klemet grinned and said, "No fair. That was too easy using Scaer."
Scaer's class was a class in Scaer, not in theology. Several of us have noticed that Missouri moved from disgust over the Enthusiasm of Church Growth to their infatuation with every form of Roman Enthusiasm. Rather than reclaim Luther and the Book of Concord, they want to throw themselves on the neck of the pope, weeping, hoping the terms of reconciliation are mild.
Enthusiasm does not breed anti-Enthusiasm but more palatable forms of Enthusiasm.
Notice that Scaer is an expert on Pieper, who never got justification right. The UOJ Enthusiasm of Walther and Pieper paved the way for the Fuller Enthusiasm of Church Growth, which was dominated (among Lutherans) by the LCMS.
No coincidence!
Missouri set aside the efficacy of the Word and the Means of Grace for Walther's propositions, but they did not catch hold right away. Pieper's Brief Statement of 1932 was the turning point, establishing an anti-Gospel as the Gospel, and his Dogmatics reinforced that new teaching.
Receptionism came from the same errors. The Syn Conference figured out that the hand was efficacious in Holy Communion. The moment the elements touched the hand of the communicant (even females!) they were the Body and Blood of Christ.
Why did no one do a face-palm and ask, "Why are we teaching such nonsense?!" Because the nonsense all made sense, given the foundation of Enthusiasm, divorcing the Holy Spirit from the Word.
UOJ is the thread uniting the Syn Conference and ELCA today, and Enthusiasm is the theological reason for the abandonment of the Gospel in the name of universal absolution.
