David Jay Webber, LQ:
The teaching of "objective justification" in Synodical Conference circles was clarified earlier than the election controversy, in the context of a dispute over absolution that involved the old Norwegian Synod and other Scandinavian Lutheran groups. The question was: Is absolution a wish that sins be forgiven, or is it a powerful impartation of forgiveness, to be received in faith? The Norwegian Synod and other orthodox synods said it was the latter.
Absolution was confessed as conveying to penitents a justification and a forgiveness that was already an objective reality for them - not just a potentiality - by virtue of the death and resurrection of Christ. This was not a new doctrine, but it was an accentuation and re-emphasis of the old Lutheran doctrine of the keys and of the means of grace, as necessitated by new pietistic and synergistic departures.
Marquart is correct when he says that the terminology that was devised at this time "grew out of" the disputes with Rome and Calvinism in the Reformation era, even though the terminology itself - in so many words - did not come from the Reformation era.
 |
| Gausewitz Catechism? Nope. LCMS German Catechism. Nope. LCMS KJV Catechism - still being sold. Nope. |
***
GJ - The term "general justification" was used by the Pietist Burk and cited by Hoenecke.
The OJ/SJ terminology appeared in the English version of Knapp (Halle University, where Bishop Martin Stephan studied). Woods, the translator, was a celebrity Calvinist, a super-star in America.
The Scandinavians were all Pietists, and the Missouri Synod was (and is) Pietistic.
Webber's sloppy claims are offered without a shred of evidence. The bizarre OJ/SJ terms are peculiar to the Synodical Conference (tm) because Walther took over the Stephan cult and imposed the Stephan scheme on everyone. The OJ dogma came from Halle, but that did not keep Missouri from making it worse and more extreme in each generation.
 |
| Anyone who does not report the sexual abuse of minors is guilty, according to the law in most states. |
