I am working my way through Luther's Galatians Commentary for the adult class I am teaching.
I will soon place all the Galatians Abraham statements in one post, for good reason. One of the main arguments promoting UOJ is Romans 4:25, by omitting Romans 4:24, and by ignoring Romans 4 altogether. The Enthusiasts act as if part of one sentence, misinterpreted, can stand as the linchpin of their dogma.
But, say the opponents, what does Romans 4 have to do with Galatians?
Answer - The Bible is God's revelation of one unified truth, without error or contradiction. What the Holy Spirit teaches in Galatians is no different from the divinely inspired words of Romans. One way to test exegesis is to match up meanings in parallel passages.
No one is free to adopt a peculiar reading--contradicting the Word of God--even if it is several decades old and endorsed by one's blood relatives.
No entity and no author can establish dogma. That attitude is pure papalism - that a seminary professor or District President can establish doctrine from the shrine of his heart.
Romans 4:25 is connected with 1 Timothy 3:15 to advocate the universal absolution and salvation of mankind, through the exegesis of Rambach, the Halle Pietist and hymn writer. Jay Webber and his catechumen, Jon Buchholz, favor the Rambach spin, which contradicts what Martin Chemnitz wrote about 1 Timothy 3:15.
The Brief Statement of 1932, which was the beginning of the end for the LCMS, cites Romans 4:25 in its promulgation of Objective Justification.
If the Romans 4:25 is fully exposed, the entire SynConference fraud is also revealed as a smoke-filled hall of mirrors. Walther grabbed the Zinzendorf-Pietist cult from Bishop Stephan and made himself the new Pope of Perryville.
Not everyone followed the RePietisten* Movement of Walther. The newly arriving German immigrants, who found a denomination waiting for them, were conversant in Luther's German - and not so prone to fall for UOJ. Gausewitz and many others managed to produce catechisms without UOJ mentioned or taught.
The current attitude about UOJ (Rolf Preus, Jay Webber, Paul McCain, John Moldstad, Jack Cascione, WELS Conference of Popes)-- to pursue, silence or hunt down justification by faith ministers--would never have worked in earlier days, because most people knew that they were justified by faith alone.
Facing the false and Satanic approach to Romans 4 would mean accepting the bad leadership of CFW Walther and the obstinate apostasy of the WELS, ELS, and LCMS.
Here is a little test of their precious UOJ, which they think is the primary sign of the purity and orthodoxy of the SynConference - to wit:
They need one more "all" in Romans 3 to make their case that all have sinned and "all" are justified. Naturally, the Greek text does not have that second "all" because the Scriptures do not teach Universalism or UOJ or demi-semi-crypto-Unniversalism. So who provides that precious "all," the one word they need for their dogma?
The New NIV does - in Romans 3. But is the New NIV the product of WELS and Missouri? No. It is the product of the ecumenical, mainline feminist denominations.They all worked together to produce the New NIV, a bobble so bad the Southern Babtists do not want its demonic cover to show up in the bobble department of their stores.
WELS woke up, floating on a mattress on a sea of UOJ iniquity...And. They. Were. Thirsty!
*The Walther approach is called Repristination, as if he brought Luther to American Lutherans. Har-dee-har-har. Walther never taught justification by faith and had to be Top Dog in everything, as the self-appointed supervisor of all Lutherans. I prefer my own term - RePietisten - because the Pietisten (The Pietist) was the favored magazine of the Augustana Swedish Lutherans. The Swedes were honest about their amalgamation of orthodoxy and Pietism. Walther was not, and admitted that maybe Stephan had some Pietistic leanings. And Benedict has some Catholic leanings, I noticed.
PS - the final blue sentence is a riff on a famous Voss sermon.
