WELS has abandoned Gausewitz for Zwingli.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Duplicity in the WELS
An open letter to the Intrepid Lutherans...Last week Pastor Rydecki wrote this on Intrepid Lutherans when asked if he and the rest of the Intrepids believed in forgiveness before repentance; the question was posed in light of our rejection to being forgiven before birth/faith resulting in our excommunication from WELS:
Rev. Paul Rydecki said...
- I'll speak for myself, but it's the same thing we've stated all along (especially last year when we discussed justification in depth). Forgiveness of sins was acquired for all people of all times by the suffering and death of Christ. God truly desires all men to receive this forgiveness. This forgiveness is distributed by God in the means of grace, and is received by faith, created by the Holy Spirit through the means of grace. The one who believes in Christ believes because the Holy Spirit worked faith in his heart through those means, and that one is said to have the forgiveness of sins. The one who does not believe in God's Son is alone at fault for his unbelief, and is counted among the wicked, and his sins are not forgiven him. We must follow Luther in distinguishing between forgiveness acquired and forgiveness distributed. Was forgiveness acquired before repentance? Yes. This is the completed work of redemption. Is forgiveness distributed before repentance? That's a confusing and bad question. Better: Is forgiveness distributed apart from the means of grace? No, it is most certainly not. This belongs to the Third Article of the Creed and to the work of the Holy Spirit, who richly and daily forgives sins to me and all believers in Christ.
In his last paragraph he asks two questions. The first question is not so difficult that it needs a second question to clarify. In fact the answer to both is an unequivocal NO! If forgiveness needs the Means of Grace to be distributed than it can be assumed that the Means of Grace, namely the Word (the Law part) has done its work creating repentance which needs to be present for forgiveness to take place. This type of unnecessary rhetoric is what convolutes the otherwise simple doctrine of Justification and forces people to forsake a childlike faith to understand it. Stop making it all so esoteric.
All that aside, it is safe to say based on your confession, Pastor Rydecki, that you agree when I say that I was not forgiven of my sins before I was born since I had not heard the Word nor was I baptized (another form of the Means of Grace). And yet I have been excommunicated for saying the same thing you said on your blog.
Pastor Patterson has publicly preached that we were all forgiven prior to birth. I have provided a link to that sermon audio in a previous blog and am providing previous correspondences defending his confession and public teaching.
Here is a quote from a previous blog on LR:
May 26th he said: "If I understand all of your recent emails correctly, you wish to remain members of Holy Word only if you can convince us of the errors of our ways in regard to my preaching that "we were forgiven by God in Christ before we believed that we are forgiven"
From an email exchange of 4-4-2011: "But you have to understand that forgiveness, reconciliation, justification, atonement - all describe the amazing grace of God given for this whole world irrespective our faith or repsonse. (sic) God loves us all and forgives us all long before we do anything at all -"
From an email exchange of 2-4-2011. I could almost buy into this one, except when you hear what he preaches along with the more recent quotes, you can see he is equating justification with forgiveness as in universal absolution: "That the Bible speaks of justification by faith I will not disagree (how could I) but unless he had already done all the work objectively- then we have no hope - he objectively justified the whole world 2 Corinthians 5:19 and only those who beleive (sic) receive the benefits -John 3:16."
Somebody has some explaining to do. Only one of you is correct and I am on the outside looking in.
I am crying 'foul!'
