"Therefore God, 'who is rich in mercy' [Ephesians 2:4], has had mercy upon us and has set forth a propitiation through faith in the blood of Christ, and those who flee as suppliants to this throne of grace He absolves from the comprehensive sentence of condemnation, and by the imputation of the righteousness of His Son, which they grasp in faith, He pronounces them righteous, receives them into grace, and adjudges them to be heirs of eternal life. This is certainly the judicial meaning of the word 'justification,' in almost the same way that a guilty man who has been sentenced before the bar of justice is acquitted."
Martin Chemnitz, Loci Theologici, 2 vols., trans. J. A. O. Preus, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1989, II, p. 482. Ephesians 2:4.
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GJ - I bought this book, still a typescript, through Jay Webber and Paul McCain. They were convinced it would never be published. Since both MDivs from Ft. Wayne are ardent UOJ advocates, I wonder, "Did they ever read this work? If they did, do they have any reading comprehension skills? Any doctrinal discernment?"
3 comments:
Pr. Greg,
This is great quote from Chemnitz which says without faith there is no forgiveness i.e. no justification.
LPC
I've really enjoyed Chemnitz' Loci Theologici. I was (and still am) translating mixed typeset & hand-written Latin, Greek, and Hebrew from that massive tome. That book was my first time wading into original-language Lutheran writings (not to mention that it was intimidatingly massive laying on my desk. I looked like a monk with my nose in that book for two months).
I translated sections that Preus did not touch. Painstaking work, but very edifying. Lesson learned: There's no better way to learn Lutheran confessions than to hear it from the horses' mouths.
If you want to strike at the heart of the UOJ error, its not about "given but not received" or "declaring the whole world righteous," because those are only symptoms... its imputation. Its clear that the Confessors taught and understood from the Scriptures that in order not to violate His own justice, God does not declare someone to be righteous without some intervening righteousness, namely Christ's. It is clearly taught in Scripture and addressed multiple times in the Confessions that this imputation takes place by faith, because faith is that thing which is reckoned/imputed for righteousness (Romans 4). This is where the UOJ error falls apart, because it teaches that God imputed (or is imputing) Christ's righteousness to all mankind from eternity. So then the question becomes, "To what is this righteousness imputed? What is reckoned for righteousness?" This is the fundamental error of UOJ - imputation.
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