McNasty - The Fruit of UnFaith

I also copied separately, McCain's comments to review them. Here following is one of them. He is very nasty. Here, I quote what he said of him putting words in my mouth and then my terse response:

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

http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=22406&cpage=3#comment-420083

Paul McCain, a former Lutheran, a pastor 18 years ago,
posted a bowdlerized version of the Miraculous Lactation of the Virgin Mary,
featuring St. Bernard, called Mary's Troubadour, for his veneration.
Team Ichabod created this Photoshop.

***

GJ - Internet searches involve a lot of posts from atheists commenting on current affairs, where they mock Christian Faith. Atheists do not like any religion, but they have a special hatred for Christianity.

UOJ Enthusiasts sound very much like atheists because their unfaith is not much different from atheism. They are the last to admit it, but they engage in all the nastiness of the Left in politics. They want all opposition silenced, by force, and they have no shame in the tactics they use.

McCain is such a brave warrior. Pow, pow, the gunslinger says. He wanted an ELS layman excommunicated for a mild comment on Cyberbrethren. Pow, pow. He would have driven out Pastor Nathan Bickel. Pow, pow. The list of obnoxious statements grows. But wait - he told Rolf Preus to repent of his valid criticism of Holy Mother Missouri. UOJ Enthusiasts are Antinomians, so repentance is for suckers.

Luther - Without Faith

Not that the law is evil, for the law, circumcision, and such-like, are not therefore condemned because they justify not; but Paul taketh from them the office of justification because the false apostles contended that by them, without faith, only in the work wrought, men are justified and saved. 

This was not to be suffered of Paul, for without faith all things are deadly--the law, circumcision, the adoption, the temple, worship of God, the promises, all without faith profiteth nothing.

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but the faith of Jesus Christ.

Martin Luther, Kregel, Galatians 2:15-16, p. 65.

KJV Galatians 2:15 We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, 16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

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Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "The Promises Are Offered in the Gospel, And Faith ...":

UOJists revile the Scriptural teaching that the Gospel is a promise. Holding human reason high they believe that faith cannot be created in or by a promise. The source of their error is the belief that faith is a work of man. Proof is provided when enraged they scream that if man is justified - forgiven of all sin - by faith alone, then faith is synergistic. Funny that they have no problem with the faith they teach being required for eternal salvation but not the forgiveness of sins. It points back to the fact that the faith they have is the faith of demons and devils which is not the faith of the Holy Ghost worked in those men who have faith in Christ instead of UOJ's faith in the declaration of already being declared by God's divine verdict of not guilty, justified and righteous in Christ before they believe and in fact while they never truly believe.

No one teaches this heresy more clearly than (W)ELS Siegbert W. Becker:

But universal and objective justification is one doctrine whose place in the victorious Christian life is clear. Wherever men teach that faith comes first as a condition that must be fulfilled or a work that must be done or even as a fact that must be recognized before forgiven is bestowed or becomes real, men will be trained to look into their own hearts for assurance rather than to the words and promises of God. If my sins are forgiven only if I first have faith then I have no solid foundation on which to rest my hope for eternal life. I must then know that I have faith before I can know that my sins are forgiven.

But there are times when a Christian does not know that he has faith. And many people who think they have faith do not have it, and many that think they are not believers are believing children of God. In regard to our own faith we may be in error or filled with doubt. But there is nothing uncertain in the truth that is proclaimed in the Gospel. Your sin is taken away, wiped out, forgiven, cancelled, swallowed up in the empty grave in Joseph’s garden. To that we must cling. To that we can cling. On that we can build a solid hope that will not make us ashamed.
In times of temptation when I am no longer aware of my faith, when my heart tells me that I am an unbeliever, I have no place to turn for assurance if faith must come before forgiveness.

But if forgiveness comes first, if it is always there, if it is true whether I believe it or not, I do not need to know whether I have faith or not before I can cling to God’s promise. I know that my sins are forgiven whether I feel forgiven or unforgiven. I know that my iniquity is pardoned whether I believe it or not. And when I know that, then I know also that I am a believer. John teaches us that when he writes, “Brethren, if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things.” Take away objective and universal justification and you have gone a long way toward cutting the heart out of the Gospel message. Page 13
http://www.wlsessays.net/files/BeckerJustification.PDF

This is the comfort that the UOJists gloat about – the belief that when they no longer believe in Christ they are still assured of being forgiven and if they cling to being forgiven then they are saved.

For UOJists FAITH is a 5 letter four letter word.

The Promises Are Offered in the Gospel, And Faith Receives These Promises

A. Berean has left a new comment on your post "But I Thought a Billionaire Adulterer Was Holier T...":

It's odd how UOJ teaches that forgiveness and justification have been given to all apart from faith and apart from the Means of Grace, when the Scripture specifically says that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ is given to them that believe (Galatians 3:22). The Confessors understood this, and that's why they always spoke of the promise being offered to men in the Gospel, and given to them that believe.

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A. Berean has left a new comment on your post "The Promises Are Offered in the Gospel, And Faith ...":

I never grow tired of that Scripture term: the righteousness of faith (Romans 4:13). I don't know if I could use it enough, "the righteousness of faith...the righteousness of faith..."

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quercuscontramalum (http://quercuscontramalum.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "The Promises Are Offered in the Gospel, And Faith ...":

(from Luther's Commentary on Galatians 2:6, quoting the sentences immediately before those in your Pope graphic)

"I know that a Christian should be humble, but against the Pope I am going to be proud and say to him: 'You, Pope, I will not have you for my boss, for I am sure that my doctrine is divine.' Such pride against the Pope is imperative, for if we are not stout and proud we shall never succeed in defending the article of the righteousness of faith."

theologia crucis: Samuel Huber: The Red Herring in the Objective Justification Debate. Frost Frosts the Jesuit ELCA Convent School Teacher

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'

1. Matthew FrostSeptember 2, 2012 4:56 AM

   Sounds much like the reaction against Beza pushed him into a sort of Lutheran version of the Arminian problem.
   
   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?

   Reply
2. 
   Dr. Jack KilcreaseSeptember 3, 2012 1:40 PM

   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.
   
   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.

   Reply
3. 
   Matthew FrostSeptember 3, 2012 6:39 PM

   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.
   
   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?

   Reply
4. 
   Matthew FrostSeptember 3, 2012 6:59 PM

   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!
   
   

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   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
   

But I Thought a Billionaire Adulterer Was Holier Than the COP Put Together

God suffered Judas to fall away, and Saul, the first King He rejected, and you will find throughout the Scriptures that God oftentimes rejected those who in outward show were good and holy men.

If in these examples God seemth to be cruel, it was necessary that such fearful examples should be given, and also written. For this vice is naturally grafted in us, to highly esteem the persons and outward state of men, and more regard the same than the Word of God. Contrariwise God will have us fix our eyes, and to rest wholly upon the Word itself, He will not have us to reverence the apostleship in the persons of Peter or Paul, but Christ speaking in them, and the Word that they bring, and preach unto us.

Martin Luther, Kregel, Galatians 2:6, p. 50.

So True about Church Growth. Boomers Promoted, Boomers Approved. Some Boomers Murmured and Silenced Themselves

Satan as the Angel of Light

So the devil stirreth up wicked spirits and ungodly teachers, which at first allow our doctrine to be holy and heavenly, and teach the same with a common consent together with us; but afterwards they say, that further
mysteries of the Scriptures are revealed to them from above, and they are called for this purpose, to open them to the world.

After this manner doeth the devil hinder the course of the Gospel, both on the right hand and on the left, but more on the right hand, by building and correcting, than on the left by persecuting  and destroying; wherefore  it behooveth us to pray without ceasing, to read the holy Scriptures, to cleave fast unto Christ, and His holy Word, that we may overcome the devil’s subtilties. Ephesians 6:12

Martin Luther, Kregel Edition, Galatians 1:6, p. 22.

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GJ - The WELS District Popes never address false doctrine, but they do land on Luther's doctrine whenever and wherever they find it. They pounce fast, like sparrows on a june bug, and devour it, with wrath and malice in their eyes.

In contrast, they are mellow and compassionate when blatant false doctrine is preached and taught, from the pulpits and the sacred confines of the Sausage Factory in Mequon. DP Jon Buchholz criticized his fellow district popes for being spineless Boomers who did nothing about Church Growth and happy-clappy Seeker Services (borrowed from Willow Creek).

Buchholz took four long years, convening two different committees, to study the crafts and assaults of Jeff Gunn, Church and Change hero for copying Rick Warren so carefully. One committee wrote a critical report, astonished beyond measure at DP Buchholz leading the district into fervent welcome of Gunn and his CrossWalk (hide the Luther) congregation, spawned at ALA, where teacher Al Just knifed his innocent wife to death and pleaded innocent.

Wayne Mueller's boy is Church Growth? No Church Growth in WELS - Wayne Mueller.
Larry Oh! too.
Jeff Gunn - caught you. Grave consequences for you, bad boy.
Buchholz will put you on the WLC board, make you a WELS youth leader, and praise you
in his congregational newsletter. The horror! 

"Jesus is my rice," says WELS leader Jeff Gunn.
Rick Warren says, "Gunn is my Xerox."

District President Jon Buchholz Describes His Own False Doctrine So WELS

Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Thomas Cole's Landscape with Ruined Tower Illustra...":

The Steadfast discussion that just wrapped up was extremely beneficial. The errors of UOJ are endless and it is utterly impossible for the doctrine to remain in harmony with Scripture - primarily because it's source and foundation is not from Scripture. Anyone can read the exchange and see that the tenets of UOJ contradict Scripture.

Even (W)ELS DP Jon Buchholz' 2005 Convention essay promoting the false gospel of UOJ indicted itself:

Jon Buchholz, “In each example, the mark of heresy is to go as far as Scripture goes—and then to go one step further.” Page 7

"God has forgiven the whole world. God has forgiven everyone his sins." This statement is absolutely true! This is the heart of the gospel, and it must be preached and taught as the foundation of our faith. But here’s where the caveat comes in: In Scripture, the word "forgive" is used almost exclusively in a personal, not a universal sense. The Bible doesn’t make the statement, "God has forgiven the world."

"God has forgiven all sins, but the unbeliever rejects God’s forgiveness." Again, this statement is true—and Luther employed similar terminology to press the point of Christ’s completed work of salvation.16 But we must also recognize that Scripture doesn’t speak this way."

"God has declared the entire world righteous." This statement is true, as we understand it to mean that God has rendered a verdict of "not-guilty" toward the entire world. It is also true—and must be taught—that the righteousness of Christ now stands in place of the world’s sin; this is the whole point of what Jesus did for us at Calvary. However, once again we’re wresting a term out of its usual context. In Scripture the term "righteous" usually refers to believers."

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GJ - DP Buchholz has no grasp of the Means of Grace, but that should not shock anyone. If someone begins with human opinion as the standard of truth, then Biblical doctrine must be bent into that shape.

The human opinion is the odious Walther tradition from Halle University - the timid Universalism of the Pietists. Jesus rose from the dead and the entire world became righteous at that moment...or on Good Friday.

If children gave answers like that on confirmation exams they would be sent back for another year of instruction - or at least for another week at Confirmation Camp.

WELS got its Walther from the Wauwatosa braggarts. If we take their words seriously, they were just like a bunch of ELCA Biblical professors: set aside the Confessions and just make stuff up.

Did you know that the tiny Wauwatosa faculty was smarter than the editors of the Book of Concord? Oh yes. They were smart enough to find brand new doctrines, echoes of Halle, and so proud of them. They polished them up with endless cascades of words, and forced them on the innocent. If someone needs a dissertation topic, the connection between Wauwatosa, Northwestern College, and Seminex/ELCA would be fun to write and funner to read.

The essay quoted above is so outrageous that the audience should have shouted Buchholz down with laughter or jeers. That is the price of total conformity  in WELS. No one wants to say boo, and no one is allowed to think. That is why there is so little distance between the Buchholz essay and The CORE in Appleton.