Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "WELS Gospel Ministry - An Obvious Farce":
(W)ELS practice emphasizes the supremacy of the clergy over the laity, as though the Christians within the congregations were not of the priesthood of all believers, and the finality of the clergy's declarations concerning doctrine and practice, as though every Christian didn't have the right, the responsibility, the mandate by Christ, to test the spirits and hold them accountable to Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions.
Here's a response from a (W)ELS pastor who embodies the classic (W)ELS approach.
Brett,
This is the last correspondence from me to you on this subject. It is my impression that you are trying to convince me that what I and others are teaching about OJ is wrong and that you yourself are not willing to be taught the truth. What I teach is the truth and I'm telling you that it is the truth. Evergreen is a WELS/ELS school and what is taught in the religion department is taught accordingly. Your concerns are much bigger than Evergreen or Holy Trinity. You stated that the ELS/WELS and LCMS are wrong on the doctrine of OJ. You should address your remarks to the leaders of those synods, the seminary president, the District President, the head of the religion department at MLC. The error you espouse is an old heresy going back to the Garden of Eden and Satan's question, "Did God really say?" It goes back to the time of the Reformation and the Ohio and Iowa Synods. It's interesting that you didn't mention ELCA. Do they have it right in your opinion? Also, just because the Lutheran Confessions do not say a lot about OJ doesn't mean it's not true. The controversy at the time was about salvation by grace alone, by faith alone, by Scripture alone, which would naturally bring the focus on subjective justification. I'd encourage you to look at Romans 3:23-24, Romans 5:9-11, Romans 5:18-19, Romans 4:25, II Corinthians 5:19. I'd recommend that you read pages 22-60 in "Our Great Heritage," Volume 3. I'd like to leave you with just a couple of quotes from the above referenced pages:
"Martin Luther once said that those who do not believe God's message of forgiveness will someday find out how surely their sins were forgiven even though they did not believe it."
(Luther's Works 40:366f)
Cont...
"God forever remains the God who punishes all sin, and at the same time he is forever the God who forgives every sin. And only the person who by God's grace has in the vicarious atonement of Christ found a way to believe both truths worships the God of the Bible." (p.53)
"But, sad to say, there are some Lutherans who want to be conservative and orthodox and yet find it very difficult to say with equal fervor and vigor that God has forgiven the sins of all men in Christ." (p.53)
"And yet many Lutherans still labor under the delusion that God does not forgive us unless we believe. Instead of seeing faith as nothing more than the spiritual hand with which we make the forgiveness of God our own, they see it as a reason why God forgives us. They believe that Christ has indeed provided forgiveness for all men, that God is willing to forgive them, but before he really forgives he first of all demands that we should be sorry for our sins and that we should have faith. Just have faith they say, and then God will forgive you. All the right words are there. The only thing wrong is that the words are in the wrong order. God does not forgive us IF we have faith. He has forgiven us long ago when he raised his Son from the dead." (p. 59)
Finally, "If forgiveness were dependent on faith in the sense that God does not forgive until we believe, we would always have to be sure that we are believers before we would be sure that we are forgiven." (p.60)
In your last comment to Mr. Rodmyre you said, "God says that those who pervert the gospel of Christ by preaching another gospel are accursed. Objective Justification is another gospel."
God will judge who is preaching another gospel!
In Christ, on whose account God has justified, declared righteous, or acquitted, the whole world of sinners,
Pastor James Humann
(W)ELS
September, 2008
