I have studied some bits of predestination when I was a Charismaniac and turned Calvinist. I came with the conclusion that if I were to be a Calvinist, the only logical position is to be SupraLapsarian. Praise God I got delivered from Calvinism.
At any rate, today I reason that surely I must grant that if God knows everything, then surely God knew that I would believe when he presents the Gospel to me. I said, surely that must be granted. This is not being an Arminian, it stands to reason that if God foreknew, he knew everything beforehand including my standing up and sitting down, that includes my faith. The authors seems to argue for a neither Arminian nor Calvinistic understanding of predestination - hence, a Lutheran view.
The question is this - did God predestine us based on the foreknowledge of that faith? I have no Biblical data for this yet and I am of course very happy to learn. However, I now must grant the point that God knew my faith, nevertheless. Yet Calvinist do not put any weight to this. That is why when taken to final conclusion, you cannot distinguish God from Allah under those terms.
Calvinistic universalism goes like this - since God is Sovereign and since he wants all to be saved, his Sovereignty is never thwarted and so all will be saved.
When I read the articulation of Missouri based on the book Errors of Missouri, I have no doubts that Walther and Co have fallen into the Calvinist paradigm. Which is why I chuckle why they are allergic to Calvinists when in fact Calvinists would be happy at their articulation of predestination!!!
Glende's scholarship has nothing to offer, he simply says "ooh, Schmidt and Stellenhorn etc believe in intuitu fidei". He assumes by default it is wrong and he does not deal with the arguments of the authors. He offers no counter arguments and no counter data. The argument used is band wagon. What he can do is to get the best argument from anti-Missouris and shoot it down from Scripture but we do not see that in his posts. The teacher in me can not help but mark his posts down.
***
GJ - Calvinism easily passes into Universalism, as Lito observed. Karl Barth, the main theologian for Fuller Seminary, advocated Universalism in his Dogmatics. Actually, Barth's hawt mistress did most the writing.
UOJ is cowardly Universalism. If the Little Three keep promoting it, they will produce Universalists and atheists for the next generation. They already have. I know several key WELS Shrinkers who either open, loud atheists or pan-religionists.
The UOJ Advocates are Shrinkers, and the Shrinkers slaver over UOJ - Valleskey, Glende, Bivens, et al.
