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| WELS leaders wanted to feature Kent Hunter (Fuller drive-by DMin) and Waldo Werning at a conference. People rebelled enough to have it cancelled. UOJ is the dogma of the Church Growth Movement. |
LPC has left a new comment on your post "Enoch as a Man of Faith":
Dear Dr. Greg,
I have just been thinking.
UOJers do not take seriously Luther's critique of human beings. Luther taught that we neither fear, love nor trust God. To Luther this was the problem.
UOJers rather than confronting the problem eliminates faith by definition and fiat.
UOJers teach that effectively we are saved by grace, period. This is contrary to Eph 1:8 which says we are saved by grace through faith and not of ourselves. That passage itself also teaches that even faith is not of ourselves, yet the argument of Walther and Co says that if faith is emphasized, faith is from ourselves. So they have imported their own philosophical paradigm into the discussion which is foreign to the way Scripture teaches about faith.
UOJ is insidious in that it maligns faith. For UOJ faith is empty and there is nothing to it. Thus in practice, it does not encourage the believer to deal with his lack of faith, to pray , to knock at God's door, to seek, to ask from God. Yet Jesus encouraged us towards these things.
LPC
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GJ - You are right again, Lito. No wonder you were banned so early from the Steadfast Lutherans (sic).
Their double-talk has them emphasizing grace, which they pronounce GRACE! But they are saying that everyone is already saved - they only need to realize it (rationalism) and "accept God's acceptance," to use Paul Tillich's wording.
As the woman said to Peter, "You are a Galileean. I know that accent."
KJV Matthew 26:73 And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also
art one of them; for thy speech bewrayeth thee.
"Your accent makes it obvious." Jackson Living Translation.
I know the accent because I spent years studying modern Protestant theology while attending conferences where the same language was spoken. The complaint about the old fashioned TV evangelists was "They never teach GRACE!" That meant - "They never teach the absolution of the world, that everyone is already forgiven."
I have heard or read various UOJ gurus expressing this sentiment - "We are justified by GRACE!" That needs to be said with emphasis and a frown, as if correcting a small child.
Throughout the Word of God, we are justified by faith. Throughout the Confessions, we are justified by faith. After the Book of Concord, the Huber opinion was eviscerated by Leyser and his orthodox Lutheran group. Huber was kicked off the Wittenberg faculty for teaching the current WELS-LCMS-ELS-Andrew-Preus position.
Justification by faith does not war against God's grace, but UOJ turns God's grace into a tragic farce. Hitler is a guilt-free saint. Every child in the world is born forgiven, but only some are baptized.
