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| Dr. Robert Preus |
I reproduced Robert Preus' essay here, which Cascione was keen to publish, to prove Preus taught UOJ.
Cascione avoided the real issue - that Preus rejected UOJ in his final book, Justification and Rome, even though his UOJ sons--Rolf and Dan--edited it. That was like asking house painters to touch up a Michelangelo, but the damage is done.
I was looking for my baby book, wherein my birth certificate resides, but I found a Preus essay on justification instead. The essay is "Justification as Taught by Post-Reformation Theologians," printed by Concordia Cemetery Press, dated March 26, 1982 on the last page. I believe LI made notes on this copy. Yes, it is stamped Bethany Lutheran Cemetery, another place where Lutheran doctrine dies.
Page 2 - "The term justification is never used as taking place prior to faith except in a few passing statements or by implication in the exegesis of certain passages. Rather it is said that justification was procured, obtained, acquired, and brought about."
The Turning Point
Nota bene: this next quotation, on page 7, is found in Justification and Rome, and I already have a graphic for it -
Abraham Calov:
"Although Christ has acquired for us the remission of sins, justification, and sonship, God just the same does not justify us prior to our faith. Nor do we become God's children in Christ in such a way that justification in the mind of God takes place before we believe."
[Apodixis Articulorum Fide, Lueneburg, 1684] Robert D. Preus, Justification and Rome, St. Louis: Concordia Academic Press 1997, p. 131n.
Rolf Preus will have to help me on this. He says his father always taught UOJ, but the Calov quotation obliterates UOJ. It was stated clearly in this essay and reproduced 16 years later in a book.
Also, Jay Webber and Paul the Plagiarist McCain both graduated from Concordia, Ft. Wayne, during this time. Did they learn anything from Dr. Preus? I think not.
Page 12 quotes the passage from Quenstedt, also found in Justification and Rome.
I will be producing a new set of graphics and posting them in the future.
Note what DP Buchholz wrote to me, August 28, 2008:
My concern with a denial of the acquisition of general forgiveness at the cross is not that we revert to limited atonement, but rather that we lapse into synergism, in which faith becomes one of the efficient causes of our justification. In my view, the error of Wisconsin is—in most cases—merely sloppy articulation by men who should know better, but it has its roots in a poor understanding of Luther’s distinction between forgiveness acquired (at the cross) and forgiveness distributed (through the Means of Grace). I’ve been on a bit of a crusade to try to enlighten people on this; you can see a sample at our district website, www.az-cadistrict.org, where there are some bulletin inserts in PDF format on the subject of Communion. (I welcome your constructive critique on those, as well, if you’d be so kind.)
A proper rejection of WELS Universalism, which they disguise as UOJ, means a "limited atonement" for the UOJ advocates in WELS and Missouri. Buchholz does not go down that worn trail, but lurches into synergism, even though J. P. Meyer aped synergism in his "make a decision for UOJ" book. Buchholz does not comprehend this locus on justification at all. Jay Webber is his theological expert? How biblical - a case of the blind leading the blind and both falling into a pit.
The language in the Bucholz email is so ambiguous that anyone could take refuge in the wording of one section or another - sloppy language indeed. In contrast, Preus articulates the differences with great clarity in his essay.
The UOJ advocates seem stuck on an infusion of grace, which they associate with the atonement. They quote Luther on inheriting an estate, as if the atonement were exactly the same as universal absolution (the Stephan-Walther error). The only possible way to interpret every single person on earth being forgiven, even before birth, is to advocate the anti-Biblical concept of grace being infused. Huber taught something like that, and the Concordists rejected his error, driving him from the Wittenberg faculty.
A sure sign of the error of UOJ is the persecution of Biblical justification by the Stormtroopers, starting with SP Schroeder and ending with DP Buchholz. They love to back their fellow Enthusiasts - like Jeff Gunn, Paul Kelm, Rick Johnson, and Tim Glende. If you want to know why WELS pastors are starving in true mission fields, look at the funding of those Fuller drones, who never get enough loot. If Rick Johnson is so successful, as he claims, why does he need even more money?
Why does WELS starve the debt-loaded Savoy, Illinois parish that Glende abandoned? But WELS has enough to buy a $500,000+ bar for Glende and Ski to play church in...near other WELS churches. Gollee, it's a good think they ran Gurgle out on a rail. He just blew money right and left.
False prophets love false teaching. Is the leadership of WELS false? Schroeder, the Conference of Pussycats, the cemetery and colleges? Look at what they support and watch what they persecute. The answer is there.
