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| The efficacy of the Word permeates the Scriptures, Luther, and the Book of Concord. Efficacy is absent in UOJ. |
- I deny palm-reading.
- I reject astrology.
- I question revelations from the souls suffering in Purgatory.
And I make it a habit to repudiate Objective Justification and its impoverished cousin Subjective Justification whenever I can.
The UOJ Enthusiasts start from the perspective of their favorite categories - OJ and SJ. Neither one is found in the Scriptures, the Book of Concord, Luther, Melanchthon, Chemnitz, Chytraeus, or Leyser. Their beloved OJ was thrashed by Leyser (Book of Concord editor) and A. Hunnius.
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| The definition is an explanation of Knapp by the Calvinist Woods, thus OJ and SJ are Calvinist terms. WELS excommunicates people for NOT being Calvinists. Think about it. |
Looking through my museum of Lutheran and Protestant books, I find the first mention of OJ and SJ in the published lectures of Georg Christian Knapp, Halle University, translated into English by Woods, a Calvinist superstar. My own copy was printed in English years before Bishop Martin Stephan, STD, and Pope Walther landed in New Orleans. The book is still in print.
Stephan studied at Halle and taught Walther his concept of justification, which greatly relieved Walther and literally saved him from death. Walther and his gang of clergy had been under the sway of a morbid, oppressive Pietist. When Kuehn got a call and promptly died, the Walther circle switched over to Stephan together. Cell groups can be quite cohesive. Stephan was a lot more fun, with all his young, female groupies, but future bishop and founder of the LCMS was another control freak. Stephan and Walther created the template for the abusive Lutheran pastor - think my way or you are going to Hell.
The beloved categories of OJ and SJ are from Knapp - not the Bible, the Book of Concord, or any sound Lutheran book The explanation of the categories is from his non-Lutheran translator. How about that, Walther fans?
The UOJ Enthusiasts keep anathematizing Lutherans for not using the terms deployed by a Calvinist. How is this for ironic humor - the terms worked their way into German publications and Walther endorsed them later. Achtung - Walther fans - the pope who warned against any outsider, the man who blamed Stephan's infidelity on the bishop's wife - he borrowed the Calvinist's terms and endorsed them for LCMS use.
On Facebook I keep seeing that Walther quotation, aimed against Methodist hymns. But where was his warning against Calvinist terms in a Halle Pietist's book? The Great Kidnapper kidnapped those terms for his own group. They were not widely accepted. F. Pieper taught them and the Walther-Pieper circle made them canonical.
That is the problem with published theology. The footprints are everywhere. Deny justification by faith? - the old catechisms only taught Luther's justification by faith. Promote UOJ as older than Adam and Eve? - baloney - UOJ has a birth date and a place. We have one fixed datum, and that datum is extremely important. Knapp was the last of the old-fashioned Halle Pietists. He was a giant of his time, even though his book was almost unreadable. That same German book became standard in English for all Protestants in America. When they went to seminary, Knapp was in their library. As the Protestants became more liberal and rationalistic, two justifications merged into one - universal forgiveness and salvation.
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| The cutie next to Karl Barth is his live-in mistress, Charlotte Kirschbaum. Karl's wife, Nellie is on the right about six feet away, like Mrs. Stephan, shoved aside for a younger girl. |
The modern Protestant theologians are Schleiermacher and Karl Barth. Schleiermacher matches Knapp in readability. Barth is the superstar for 20th and 21st century theology. Karl and his Commie mistress are also the key theologians for Fuller Seminary.
The 19th century was not an age where every pastor published a book every year. Even recently, a printed book was an expensive budget item. Books used to cost $10,000 and more for an initial printing. Print-on-Demand means the same book can be published for no initial cost. The Knapp book was on pastors' bookshelves in German and English throughout the 19th century, and people still read it today, thanks to widespread use of coffee, colas, and other stimulants.
Why should a Calvinist's explanation of a Pietist's theology be normative for me or any other Lutheran? The reason most people react against OJ and SJ is the efficacy of the Word (never mentioned by the UOJ Hive). People read God's Word and understand that Christ died for our sins. Their believe and receive God's declaration of forgiveness - justification by faith.
But, as Jon Buchholz' advisor has said, OJ and SJ have to be carefully presented, the way Jael explained things to Sisera (Judges 5:26). Once Jael-ed, the UOJ pastors (and precious few laity) persecute justification by faith: hounds of the Lord in their own minds but hounds of Hell in reality.
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| Jael's explanation left a deep impression on Sisera. |
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http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2011/10/wels-reformation-summary-from-ac-v.html
This was published almost one year ago, for Reformation, 2011.
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| Calvinist Leonard Woods Jr. created the language of Objective Justification and Subjective Justification in his famous 1831 translation of the Georg Christian Knapp dogmatics textbook from Halle University, still in print today. CFW Walther endorsed the double-justification OJ/SJ language decades later. |
AC V has left a new comment on your post "What Huber and Knapp Have Accomplished In the Olde...":
Your Reformation celebration “WELS Connection” for today: “The history of UOJ in WELS”
We begin with Leonard Woods (1807-1878), born in West Newbury, Mass., graduated at Union College in 1827 and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1830. His translation of Georg Christian Knapp's Christian Theology (1831-1833) was long used as a text-book in American theological seminaries. http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Leonard_Woods
Woods and Andover Seminary were Calvinist.
This is the footnote Leonard Woods (Remember he was a Calvinist) put in his translation of Knapp’s Christian Theology under the article “The Scripture doctrine of pardon or justification through Christ as an UNIVERSAL and UNMERITED favor of God”:
"This is very conveniently expressed by the terms objective and subjective justification. Objective justification is the act of God, by which he proffers pardon to all through Christ; subjective, is the act of man, by which he accepts the pardon freely offered in the Gospel. The former is universal, the latter not."
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| Knapp was educated at Halle University, the center of Pietism, and closely associated with August Hermann Franke. |
Who was Georg Knapp whose Christian Theology textbook was so acceptable to Calvinists that is was “long used as a text-book in American theological seminaries”? Knapp was a theologian at Halle University in Germany in the late 1700s. Halle was a “Lutheran” University and a hotbed of Pietism and Rationalism.
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| Tholuck, a rationalist and Universalist, was Hoenecke's mentor at Halle University. |
Here’s the “WELS connection”:
Tholuck mentored Adolf Hoenecke who attended Halle as a student. Hoenecke often credited Tholuck for bringing him to faith http://www.studiumexcitare.com/content/66). Adolf Hoenecke was the first WELS Seminary professor beginning in 1866 when the Seminary was in Watertown, then in 1878 when it was in Wauwatosa, WI. His dogmatics notes, modified by Prof. John Schaller and later Prof. John Meyer and recently by the Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary staff, remain the basis for dogmatics studies at the Seminary.
http://www.studiumexcitare.com/content/66
To sum it up:
Halle University (Pietism/Rationalism) + Knapp (theology acceptable to Calvinists) + Tholuck (Influencial Rationalist/Pietist) + Hoenecke (UOJ in 2 Cor. 5:19) + Schaller (“Wauwatosa Gospel”) + Meyer (unbelievers are saints) + Kuske (“God declared all people righteous” Catechism Question #253) + Bivens ("all are sinners and all are justified," FiCl Oct. 2011) = UOJ today in WELS.
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GJ - That is an excellent summary of the history of the Objective Justification and Subjective Justification terms, along with their association with Halle University. Halle, as the center of Pietism, was associated with Biblical studies, Christian faith, and missions. Orthodox Lutherans opposed Pietism, but the later years changed the adversaries. Halle became the center of rationalism in Biblical studies (Semler), and believers were considered Pietistics and mystics in an overwhelmingly rationalistic 19th century, when Stephan and Walther came over.
The ethnic Lutherans coming to America were allied with Pietism and unionism because the alternative was the rationalistic state church opposing them. The Augustana Synod Swedes and the Norwegians had that in common with Saxon Immigration Society in Perry County and St. Louis. The Buffalo Synod was another Pietistic exodus.
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| Pietist Johann Jakob Rambach was educated at Halle University. |
Jay Webber quoated Rambach, the Halle Pietist, against Chemnitz, the senior editor of the Book of Concord::
I can understand why Chemnitz would read 1 Timothy 3:16 in this way. But his reading does not rule out what I would consider to be a necessary corrolary to such a "personal" justification of Jesus. The 18th-century Lutheran theologian Johann Jacob Rambach makes the following observation in his Ausfuehrliche Erklaerung der Epistel an die Roemer (p. 322), regarding the Lord's payment and satisfaction of sinful humanity's "debt" to God:
"Christ was in his resurrection first of all justified for his own person, Is. 50:5, 1 Tim. 3:16, since the righteousness of God declared that it had been paid and satisfied in full by this our Substitute, and issued him as it were a receipt thereof; and that happened in his resurrection, when he was released from his debtor's prison and set free. But since the Substitute was now justified, then in him also all debtors were co-justified."
Later in that commentary Rambach also writes (in a way that shows that he has 1 Tim. 3:16 in mind):
"The justification of the human race indeed also ocurred, in respect of the acquisition, in one moment, in the moment in which Christ rose and was thus declared righteous; but in respect of the appropriation it still continues till the last day."
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GJ - The origins of UOJ are a combination of Calvinism and its midwife, Pietism. Samuel Huber was the first Lutheran to claim that the entire human race was absolved in the resurrection of Christ. He was a "former" Calvinist who was repudiated by Polycarp Leyser, an assistant editor of the Book of Concord. Why do Olde Synodical Conference Lutherans teach Huberism, which was utterly rejected by the Concordists still alive when he failed at teaching universal absolution?
Pietism lacks the foundation of the efficacious Word in the Means of Grace, because all Pietists believe the real church is the cell group, which gives energy and power to the congregation, which is nothing more than a convenient place to organize the cell groups. That is why the Sacraments and the sermon mean so little to the Lutheran CGM and Emergent Church efforts. The outward appearance of the congregation is necessary for foot traffic, but the real church is the cell group (small group, Bible study group, share group, care group, koinonia group, prayer group).
Calvin taught that the Holy Spirit works separately from the Word and Sacraments. In fact, the Word and Sacraments are useless unless the Holy Spirit happens to drop by and do his work, according to the Swiss Reformer's published works.
The Olde Synodical Conference represents the triumph of Pietism, rationalism, and Calvinism.
LutherRocks has left a new comment on your post "WELS Reformation Summary - From AC V":
Outstanding work. Thanks for posting.
I remember hearing on more than one occasion when I was into CGM...people these days vote with their feet. How upside down is that? We cater to their feet? Or this one...the unchurched come to church for the wrong reasons and end up staying for the right reasons...huh? And the 'poor miserable sinner' is left unattended to...
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GJ - And where are the "orthodox Lutheran leaders" opposing this Dreck, Joe? They are scheming to start more businesses under the cover of the synod - like coaching, estate planning (their own), etc.
