 |
| Professor Kurt Marquart |
When people mentioned "the Marquart essay," I thought they meant the one given at Trinity LCMS in Bridgeton, Missouri.
Apparently they meant the one in the Preus festschrift, which I have reproduced as PNGs (pings).
Strangely, he went farther than Deutschlander in ascribing UOJ to the Book of Concord, so I can see what his MDiv graduates are so fond of the same absurdities.
Some time ago, LaughQuest tried the Ambrose quotation on their skunk-patch audience. I quoted the passage immediately afterwards, to show how they were deliberately deceiving their readers.
This is their precious UOJ, copied from the Marquart essay:
Book of Concord, Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, The Righteousness of Faith:
103] Here and there among the Fathers similar testimonies are extant. For Ambrose says in his letter to a certain Irenaeus: Moreover, the world was subject to Him by the Law for the reason that, according to the command of the Law, all are indicted, and yet, by the works of the Law, no one is justified, i.e., because, by the Law, sin is perceived, but guilt is not discharged. The Law, which made all sinners, seemed to have done injury, but when the Lord Jesus Christ came, He forgave to all sin which no one could avoid, and, by the shedding of His own blood, blotted out the handwriting which was against us. This is what he says in Rom. 5:20: "The Law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." Because after the whole world became subject, He took away the sin of the whole world, as he [John] testified, saying John 1:29: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world."
But they omit, as Marquart did, the section following immediately afterwards.
---
"And on this account let no one boast of works, because no one is justified by his deeds. But he who is righteous has it given him because he was justified after the laver [of Baptism]. Faith, therefore, is that which frees through the blood of Christ, because he is blessed "whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered," Ps. 32:1,104] These are the words of Ambrose, which clearly favor our doctrine; he denies justification to works, and ascribes to faith that it sets us free 105] through the blood of Christ. Let all the Sententiarists, who are adorned with magnificent titles, be collected into one heap. For some are called angelic; others, subtile, and others irrefragable [that is, doctors who cannot err.] When all these have been read and reread, they will not be of as much aid for understanding Paul as is this one passage of Ambrose.
106] To the same effect, Augustine writes many things against the Pelagians. In Of the Spirit and Letter he says: The righteousness of the Law, namely, that he who has fulfilled it shall live in it, is set forth for this reason that when any one has recognized his infirmity he may attain and work the same and live in it, conciliating the Justifier not by his own strength nor by the letter of the Law itself (which cannot be done), but by faith."
Besides this crime of ripping a quotation out of context, they follow the assumptions of Marquart, which contradict the Scripture and baffle anyone not inducted into UOJ thinking.
I kelmed this from Brett Meyer, who kelmed it from the essay.
“Logically there is
here at least the suggestion of a circle: On the one hand forgiveness is the
result of faith, and thus comes after faith, and on the other hand it
is the object of faith and therefore goes before faith.
One way of resolving
the paradox would be to say that by forgiveness as object of
faith here is meant not
anything actually existing before faith, but simply the principle of how sin is
or will be forgiven, namely by grace through faith. Forgiveness then would not
in any sense exist before faith. It would occur as soon as faith accepted the
principle that forgiveness occurs in this way. Thus, forgiveness as the
object of faith would not be
anything past or completed, but something essentially future or present. This
line of reasoning, however, suggests another "feedback circuit": "I am forgiven
when I believe that I am forgiven when I believe that I am forgiven, etc." page
3
Here is another false
UOJ statement:
It is very dear here
that forgiveness, in the form of the absolution, exists before and independently
of faith, and creates or gives birth to it. Forgiveness or absolution (that is,
the Gospel itself) creates faith; faith merely receives or accepts forgiveness.
Absolution can exist without faith (although its benefits of course go to waste
unless faith receives them), but faith cannot exist without absolution. Page
4.
The Formula of Concord is lucid. This Marquart essay is opaque, a transparent effort to promote a dogma that gets lamer as time goes by, doubtless because the current crop of Enthusiasts are repeaters of class notes.
Ironically, the festschrift tried so hard to promote UOJ in honor of Robert Preus, but Hardt and Marquart simply revealed how shallow the argumentation is.
They go beyond the clear meaning of Scripture. Marquart definitely gives "forgiveness" the meaning of absolution, the declaration of forgiveness.
The Scriptures and the Confessions can use "forgiveness" in the sense of the atonement, but nowhere is the atonement confused with justification by faith. The two are separate. (The UOJ Enthusiasts scream "Limited Atonement" without a shred of evidence.)
So we have the same word - forgiveness- taken two different ways. One way is the Scriptural and Confessional use - Christ is our righteousness. He has paid for the sins of the world with His death on the cross. That is the Gospel, the reconciliation, the message by which the Holy Spirit plants and sustains faith.
The false and misleading use of forgiveness is a merger of two terms - atonement and justification, making them the same thing - that God declared the entire world forgiven of sin the moment Christ died on the cross, or the moment He rose from the dead.
The Enthusiasts have not decided which Moment of Absolution is true, although they consider themselves to be great experts on the Word.
The current crop of MDivs have no trouble complaining about Luther and Lenski, but they cannot handle their professors being wrong about anything. Watch them go ballistic on their blogs, which prove they can type - but not write.
 |
| Finding the furtive UOJ gets increasingly absurd. Walther has many statements in Law and Gospel that puncture the extremes of UOJ today. General Justification - invented. Objective Justification - invented. UOJ - invented. |
 |
| Sodom, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and everyone who died in the Genesis Flood? Only in the NNIV, which WELS is still promoting. |
---
AC V has left a new comment on your post "Marquart's UOJ Essay in the Robert Preus Festschri...":
Right out of the gate, first paragraph, first sentence, first footnote, I think he's on to something:
The term "objective justification" has only recently come into standard Lutheran usage.1
Footnote:
1. The terminology "objective" and "subjective" here is not altogether happy since "subjective justification...is every whit as objective as objective justification"
Can we agree to consign the terms to a footnote in church history or to the circular file of unfortunate and misleading, if not erroneous theological terminology?
---
AC V has left a new comment on your post "Finding Another Piece of the UOJ Puzzle":
In case you don't understand it, "is not altogether happy" is a euphemism for:
"is a bad idea!"
***
GJ - I caught that, Acey, but we must take into account the lack of reading comprehension among UOJ fanatics. They are so unhappy with the Bible that they need the NNIV porno-mytho-mainline version to certify their false doctrine.
---
Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Finding Another Piece of the UOJ Puzzle":
While reading the Marquart & Co. essay last night it struck me what the UOJ doctrine's object of faith is. It is not Christ and His payment for the sins of the world. It is forgiveness. UOJ's faith is created by and focused on the person's forgiveness, justification and declaration of being righteous. Buchholz and Becker say the same thing, that faith can't be created by a promise but must have something that is already a reality for it to cling to. They reject the promise of the forgiveness of sins in Christ as being a reality. For UOJists it must be the already divinely pronounced absolution that faith can cling to. Marquart speaks of this as forgiveness or justification as the object of faith. This is wrong and leads people to reject the Holy Spirit's faith which does so much, works contrition over sin, causes the individual to die to sin and through faith in Christ rise to life under God's grace - quickening the spirit.
UOJ is a false gospel and the more these guys talk about it the more they expose their errors.
Maybe the Jesuit contingent in the (W)ELS and LCMS will be bold enough to write the official UOJ confession that every layman can read - but they are too afraid to talk about this heinous doctrine openly in their churches.
***
GJ - Brett, they use the straw man fallacy to build their straw palaces, all dedicated to UOJ.
KJV 1 Corinthians 3:12 Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay,
stubble; 13 Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be
revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.
Their work will turn to ashes - and much of it has already.
