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| A. Hunnius thrashed and trashed the universal righteousness of Samuel Huber. The Wittenberg faculty kicked Huber off the faculty. Mequon promotes the same falsehood for which Huber was punished. |
theologia crucis: Samuel Huber: The Red Herring in the Objective Justification Debate:
The anti-OJ forces [GJ - say it, say it, you old Jesuit - the justification by faith Means of Grace Lutherans] on the Internet take early Lutheranism's rejection of his heresy has sign that they would have also rejected the later 19th century Lutheran distinction between objective and subjective justification. There are a couple of problems with this claim: 1. Walther in the Baier compendium specifically rejects Huber's doctrine (in fact he has a whole section on it!). 2. Huber did talk about a universal justification, but his heresy was more about and a reaction to the doctrine of election. Advocates of OJ such as Walther always taught particular election. 3. Moreover, since Huber claimed that justification was not merely pronounced to all (objective justification), but communicated to all (functional universalism), he has virtually no place for subjective justification. This would pretty much destroy the entire point of the distinction between objective and subjective justification.
'via Blog this'
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By describing "damnation" as an attribute of the divine will, I assume you are referring to a predestination to damnation. In regards to getting people damned, God obviously does will those who reject divine grace to be damned.Reply
Overall, I take your question to be: How to we overcome the aporia between the reality of the universality of grace and the particularity of election.
My response would be: We don't. The Bible says both things and so, therefore, although we cannot resolve it, we must accept that both are a reality. Why, although God wills the salvation of all, he only predestines a specific number is a great mystery. We'll find out in heaven. For now, it is our duty to proclaim the gospel to all without distinction and also to give those who have faith the assurance of their predestination. Trying to resolve things either way would send people back to works. Either 1. By saying the difference between elected and damned is that they did the good work of making their decision for Jesus. 2. Or by saying that becuase they have the signs of election, they can rest assured that they are among the elect- i.e., Calvinism's practical synergism. -
Not exactly. Predestination comes a good distance down the logic chain. The assignment in God's antecedent will is simply a way of dealing with the notion that damnation remains real even after salvation in Christ becomes real. You've assigned it equally to God's will—though you assign it to God's consequent will, and assign to human volition a respect from God that I don't see in evidence. Certainly we reject grace, but if God damned all those who reject grace there would be no salvation whatever, because we have no natural power to accept grace or receive it. But neither do we have any natural power to reject grace and make it stick. My point about damnation was that accepting human cooperation there is just letting original human capability in the back door instead of the front. (Which you've also just done.) Which is why Dort slams both doors shut, hard.Reply
The problem with Huber isn't his universalism. That's not what turns gospel into law—you can proclaim gospel as an unconditional word, and it remains God's grace, with no conditions whatsoever, and cannot thereby become law. The point at which it becomes law, as in Huber, is the point at which you suggest that we have the capacity to reject grace and merit damnation (as Huber did, and as you just did). At which point you must actively accept (i.e. not reject) in order to receive the gospel. Which puts law and therefore works as the gate to grace.
A true unconditional divine universality is the only alternative I can see to a true unconditional divine particularism (as Dort articulates). Or else you must assert that God is contrary by proclaiming one universal action and another limited one. Or you must allow merit in as a basis for the limitation, even if it is demerit, in order for God to be consistent. There must be a reason, beyond the simple divine will, for God to will both universality and limitation. Can you show me a true alternative beyond these? -
More to the point, I was asking a Lutheran instructor with Lutheran bona fides for a Lutheran answer, and you gave me the predestination of a number, and the suggestion that damnation is consistent with the gospel, and you gave me a god who wills universal salvation but settles for limited election, and handwaved "eschatological mystery" in place of logic. Could you try and do better, specifically as a Lutheran responsible to the confessions?
So, why aren't we universalists, if we believe there can be no human limitation on grace, and we do not believe in human capability as something relevant to God's action for us in Christ? Can you justify the aporia as genuinely God's doing, and not an artifact of bad theology? How does it square with the gospel?
Thanks!
---LPC has left a new comment on your post "theologia crucis: Samuel Huber: The Red Herring in...":
As you can see Jack has managed to muddle up Frost's fair comments.
Jack the hero of McCain (since McCain knows nothing but bull on theology) has had the fine training in Jesuit style sophistry.
I admire Jack's training indeed, he does follow after the sophisticated sophistry that one can only get in a Jesuit school.
Well done Jack, your teachers must be proud of you, you are applying their method but now to confuse well meaning Lutherans.
LPC
***GJ - I follow Jack - out of curiosity.
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Pastor emeritus Nathan Bickel has left a new comment on your post "theologia crucis: Samuel Huber: The Red Herring in...":
LPC -
I read you comment response about Dr. Jack Kilcrease, - him managing "to muddle up Frost's fair comments." [Your apt description]
It just so happened that I returned [online] from the Steadfast site, as I haven't checked it in awhile. There was nothing new worth reading (except Brett Meyer's comments) on that Pierce article - "Is the World Saved Apart from Faith?" I find Mr. Meyer to be quite consistent. Also, consistent is that CPH McCain fellow. His comments, though, are of an odious nature. I wasn't going to comment at all, but, I came across one of McCain's putrifying verbal droppings, that I must have missed several days ago. He made up a quote and attributed it to me. Such was his low-down action. Come to think of it; he isn't apparently satisfied with just plagaizing. No - he has to put words in other people's mouths.
Well, anyway - here was my response to the lactating Mother Mary graven image St. Bernard admirer enthusiast. [ http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2012/08/serious-laughter-from-paul-mccain.html ]
I will add here, that my submitted comment hasn't been approved as yet (the last time I looked):
Here's where it stands:
>>>>>>>>>>> September 4th, 2012 at 22:25 | #8 Reply | Quote
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Rev. Paul T. McCain :
Bickel, fortunately, is no longer a pastor in The LCMS.
If he were, I’d gladly bring him up on doctrinal charges and make sure he is expelled.
“Let’s not talk too much about the Cross, the Resurrection, the world’s redemption and the atoning once for all sacrifice for sins. Let’s focus instead on “faith” as the human response to God’s grace.”
With their own words, they condemn themselves.
Rev. McCain – You do yourself dirty by making up your own quotation and then attributing it to me. That’s nasty by any decent standard. You should be ashamed of yourself. But, I don’t think at this point, that depth of humility is within your puerile grasp.
Pastor emeritus Nathan Bickel
http://www.thechristianmessage.org
http://www.moralmatters.org <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
But, now - Dr. Cruz (LPC) - You mention that "Jack" [Kilcrease] [is] "the hero of McCain." And, if Kilcrease manages to "muddle up Frost's fair comments," - that leads me to believe that this unsavory practice has caught on with CPH Rev. McCain. McCain apparently is Kilcrease's mini me of screwing up what someone has said. Horrors! Consequently, I would hate to meet any McCaininites [disciples of McCain]. I can just imagine how they also are prone to muddle what is said, also!
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LPC has left a new comment on your post "theologia crucis: Samuel Huber: The Red Herring in...":
Pr. Nathan
If one is justified, forgiven without faith then, what prevents a person from going low down on the gutter as McCain does?
LPC
On the one hand, you have the thoroughgoing Calvinist particularism, which says that there is no conflict between atonement and election because both are coincident divine acts over which we have no influence, and they happen to be limited in scope. And on the other, you have an insistence on universalism of atonement, but an ongoing belief in damnation that mandates some level of particularism. And in a perverse solafidianism, the Arminians choose to keep double-predestination and make election conditional on not screwing up the reception of faith.
And what you describe here suggests that Huber goes for a universalism predicated on not failing—which means that like the Arminians, he asserts the real possibility of a fall from grace by human will and action.
It seems to me that if you're going to go universalist, you cannot stop midway, or you wind up with some positive or negative version of synergism. (Antergism?) The Calvinist position chooses, in double-predestinarian fashion, to go whole-hog particularist to fix this problem, and assign everything to the divine will and nothing to Man (besides Adam and Christ).
Objective and subjective justification walk a fine line in not falling into the same trap. And perhaps it's odd that I should find Barth a better exemplar of this position than many of us! In saying that faith matters, we do say something like what the Arminian position of 1610 attempts to—that it is faith that saves, and that faith is a God-given grace, and not our doing. But instead of speaking about faith, we speak about Christ as the objective reality of God's act, and the Spirit as the subjective reality of God's act. And we refuse, by and large, to talk about damnation as though it had a reality, because human failure is not in any way determinant of human destiny.
Jack, even if Huber did it wrong, what keeps us from functional universalism, and how do we walk that line without believing in damnation and attributing it to the divine will?