Pastors' Roundtable for Thursday, April 30, 2009. Todd Wilken; Pastor David Boisclair of Faith and Bethesda Lutheran, St. Louis, MO; Pastor Charlie Henrickson of St. Matthew Lutheran, Bonne Terre, MO.
David Boisclair has left a new comment on your post "David Boisclair, STM, Assigns Dr. Luther, Melancht...":
I find it a tragedy that in this day and age when most people find Christianity irrelevant, and that is Christianity in its least identifiable form (e.g. Unitarianism), that those who claim to be confessional Lutherans are at each other's throats for what may be a "war of words" (Logomachy). Of those of us who teach the scriptural doctrine of Objective Justification (sic) also teach salvation by grace through faith alone. No one receives the forgiveness of sins apart from God-wrought saving faith in Jesus Christ. I wonder if we are misunderstanding one another. All in all it is a pity.
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GJ -
Writing under the pseudonym of David Clearwood, LCMS Pastor David Boisclair stated:
Pastor Rydecki, I know heterodoxy when I hear and see it, and you are most certainly guilty of it. I shake off these calumnies that you put on me.
You confuse Law and Gospel; you limit Christ's atonement, and you pervert the Scriptures and the Confessions by yours and Gregory Jackson's doctrine. You also bear false witness against those who believe, teach, and confess the Synodical Conference's doctrine, that is the Scriptural and Confessional doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
The Synodical Conference doctrine is the pattern of sound words, not your doctrine. As far as I am concerned I apply Romans 16:17 to you and to all who agree with you.
You confuse Law and Gospel; you limit Christ's atonement, and you pervert the Scriptures and the Confessions by yours and Gregory Jackson's doctrine. You also bear false witness against those who believe, teach, and confess the Synodical Conference's doctrine, that is the Scriptural and Confessional doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
The Synodical Conference doctrine is the pattern of sound words, not your doctrine. As far as I am concerned I apply Romans 16:17 to you and to all who agree with you.
I do not claim to be a confessional Lutheran, because it is a meaningless term today. Richard J. Neuhaus, a product of LCMS education, called himself a confessional Lutheran until he became a Roman Catholic priest. The faculty members of Luther Seminary (ELCA) consider themselves confessional Lutherans, too.
According to Clearwood (nee Boisclair), the apostles were tragic and pitiable creatures, because they discussed doctrine openly when the entire Roman Empire was pagan and almost as corrupt as America today.
Let him who would teach theology first learn the English language. The following is an incomplete and muddled sentence that makes no sense. If only Clearwood would write clearly:
Of those of us who teach the scriptural doctrine of Objective Justification (sic) also teach salvation by grace through faith alone.
The Fox Valley UOJ stylists write the same way, so I should send the message there for a translation. Incoherent rage has a way of shaping words.
First of all, there is a position that can be elevated beyond the description of personal opinion - justification by faith alone. The straw man or Aunt Sally logical fallacy is bit too worn to be trotted out again in favor of universal absolution.
UOJ, the Helen of Troy in the Synodical Conference, is universal absolution, as enshrined in the Brief Confession of 1932, to wit, the entire world has been declared forgiven.
Scripture teaches that God has already declared the whole world to be righteous in Christ, Rom. 5:19; 2 Cor. 5:18-21; Rom. 4:25...LCMS, Brief Confession, 1932
There are several flavors of UOJ and some creative, bizarre applications of it, but that is the central thesis. For the UOJ Stormtroopers, the atonement is identical to the declared forgiveness of the entire world - without the Holy Spirit at work in the Word, without faith.
Like Stephan's syphilis, the bishop's Halle-bred version of justification (UOJ - Easter absolution) spread through the Synodical Conference by personal contact. Stephan taught UOJ to Walther and the clergy circle. They taught it to others. But justification by faith survived in the German Missouri catechism, the Gausewitz, and the KJV catechism.
Boisclair and the rest cannot have their UOJ and call it justification by faith, because they have already concluded that every pagan idol worshiper, snake-charmer, and polytheist is already forgiven. They are forgiven before birth, as Cascione and McCain say in harmony with the papist Eduard Preuss.
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| Walther liked to write "yea even" so this post is Waltherian in its many yea evens. |
Pastor Paul Rydecki must have come to his own conclusions about justification by faith, because he published on Hunnius when I was still thinking that was the Latin name for Atilla. I knew about P. Leyser, who squashed UOJ like a bug, but Hunnius was a mystery to me.
That is not a symmetrical argument, to call justification by faith a personal opinion tragically dividing the last few remaining Christians on earth, and to identify UOJ falsely with Lutheran doctrine or with with Synodical Conference teaching.
The hero of Kokomo, Papenfuss, confessed that he knew nothing of UOJ until he matriculated at the Sausage Factory in Mequon. WELS did not hyperventilate about UOJ until they had Gausewitz safely buried and forgotten.
Bob Preus taught UOJ at Ft. Wayne, as David Scaer still does, but Preus eviscerated the UOJ arguments in Justification and Rome, a turnabout still to be admitted by his sons.
LCMS education is so blighted that Todd Wilken calls justification by faith "Calvinism" with a chuckle, proving he does not grasp Calvinism or Lutheranism.
The biggest logical fallacy of the UOJ Enthusiasts is their special pleading:
Special pleading, also known as stacking the deck, ignoring the counterevidence, slanting, and one-sided assessment,[1] is a form of spurious argument where a position in a dispute introduces favourable details or excludes unfavourable details by alleging a need to apply additional considerations without proper criticism of these considerations. Essentially, this involves someone attempting to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc. without justifying the exemption.[2]
I have published, verbatim, the learned essays of their best and brightest. Sometimes I have laboriously converted PDFs into readable posts, moving the footnotes around and making nonsense appear pleasing to the eye.
But where do these UOJ Stormtroopers list the arguments of the other side? I see no evidence of them bothering to quote an alternative viewpoint. They are like the children who cite 18 reasons why they have to go to Disneyland, but react with shock and accusations if their parents try to offer objections to the plan.
The reliance on logical fallacies, to support UOJ, is amusing. I am banned and denounced on various "Lutheran" discussion sites, which means anyone is free to agree on UOJ alone. Likewise, all those who offer a justification by faith statement are silenced, erased, and ridiculed as a "you morons" (Steadfast Lutherans).
Steadfast Lutherans should be called 1984 Lutherans, because entire threads are erased and tossed down the memory hole. Comparisons to Animal Farm are just as tempting. Snarling Yorkies are positioned to bark at anyone who departs from the One True Unfaith.
Today I learned - confessional Lutherans do not sign their names when they confess. They use pseudonyms to denounce people by name.
I also learned - the Brief Confession of 1932 is so good and perfect and pure that it sets aside and replaces the Word of God and the Book of Concord, yea even - common sense. For example, the Romans chapter on justification by faith is cited to prove the entire world has been declared forgiven - just the opposite of what Romans 4:24-25 teaches.
"Boys - we need a new paraphrase to get around these problems. Order up the New NIV. That will solve all our problems. Thanks."
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| Art by Norma Boeckler |
