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| Birds of a feather do flock together: plagiarists Paul McCain and Tim Glende - UOJ fanatics. Jack Kilcrease writes his own bilge - no one would claim his clunky prose. |
Why would I want to debate Kilcrease? – Another response to his posts about me | Faith Alone Justifies:
Pastor Paul Rydecki - Why would I want to debate Kilcrease? – Another response to his posts about me
Again someone alerted me to another one of Dr. Jack Kilcrease’s posts about me. Let’s see what the good doctor has to say this time (Dr. Kilcrease’s words are in blue):
As some of you are aware, Rev. Rydecki responded to some of my criticisms of his theology last October. I didn’t find out until much later, namely because he neither told me, nor did he come on my blog to address the criticisms that I made. You can find his response here on his blog:
Nor was I informed of any of Jack’s writings about me until someone else alerted me to them. I don’t read Jack’s blog, if I can help it. It’s like taking a philosophy class. I’m more interested in Biblical theology.
1. I find this response rather disappointing in a number of ways. First of all, much like most of my opponents (with, interestingly enough, the exception of Herman Otten and his two page long attack article on me in the Christian News!) Rydecki wasn’t willing to debate me directly. He never came onto my blog to respond to my arguments. I guess I’m a bit puzzled why he was relatively shy about an actual debate.
I don’t recall being “challenged” to a debate, unless it was in one of Dr. Kilcrease’s posts that I didn’t read. But honestly, I don’t view Dr. Kilcrease as an “opponent,” much less as an authority on Biblical doctrine. I view him as an educated philosopher, and I have no interest in debating philosophy.
2. I could go point-by-point with argument he makes against me, but there’s really no sense in that. For whatever reason (I can’t publicly speculate about it) he doesn’t want to engage any of my arguments. A precondition to me responding directly would be for him to present counter-evidence or meaningful refutations the things that I said. He simply doesn’t do that.
The conscientious reader can decide for himself whether or not I “do that.” Dr. Kilcrease chooses not to even acknowledge the Biblical points I made in my brief rebuttal, much less refute them. Do I first have to concede that Dr. Kilcrease is right and I am wrong? Would that satisfy for him the precondition for a debate? Sounds like fun.
He mostly does a couple of different things: He personally attacks me. For example, he says I don’t take the Formula of Concord serious because I’m not ordained and therefore never took a vow to uphold it.
What nonsense is this? I know many non-ordained men and women who take the Formula of Concord just as “serious” (sic) as I do. I wasn’t criticizing Dr. Kilcrease for being a layman. I was criticizing him for being a philosopher who views himself as unbound to old and irrelevant formulations like the Formula of Concord. I was criticizing him for pretending he’s better at making theological distinctions than the Reformers were. I say he doesn’t take the Formula of Concord serious (sic) because he labels it as insufficient for the modern understanding and presentation of the article of justification. I did, however, suggest that he may feel he has more freedom to play around with language since he never actually took a vow to uphold the language, as we do when we are ordained into the ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
Everyone who reads my writing knows that I take all the Lutheran Confessions very seriously and uphold them (also, as a LCMS Christian day school teacher and church elder, I am actually sworn to uphold all the Lutheran Confessions, if that means anything to him!).
No, it doesn’t. If he would speak like the Formula and the rest of the Confessions speak about justification, it would mean something to me. If he would recognize the language of the Holy Spirit as normative for our language, and if he would recognize himself as bound to the Lutheran Confessions as the sufficient and unchangeable norma normata of Lutheran doctrine, then it might mean something to me.
The sitting president of the United States is “sworn to uphold” the Constitution of the United States. That, too, means little to me.
He generally takes sentences I write out of context and then attacks them in a rather ad hoc fashion. The sentences function in larger arguments that he apparently has decided not to respond to (again, I don’t know why!). The oddest example of this is the claim that I don’t really understand the The Bondage of the Will based on the fact that I uphold OJ. He then just sort of gets mad and says that he’s read the book, and understands it. He doesn’t even attempt to overcome the objection that I make about his lack of consideration regarding how Luther understands divine agency in that work.
Jack, Jack, Jack. The last thing I am is mad, and I challenge Dr. Kilcrease to demonstrate from my words in that section of my response where I display being “mad.” This is an obvious deflection. But here, let me repeat my words from that section, and let the good doctor deal with the actual words of Luther as he discusses justification:
I can only speak for myself, but I have read Bondage of the Will several times. I read it again recently to see what I must have missed, since Dr. Kilcrease seems to think it supports his position. On the contrary, I found only one arrow after another shooting at the heart of UOJ. I wonder to what extent Dr. Kilcrease understands Luther’s dialectic.
Are we to believe that “objective justification” is “who God is”? Are we to believe that objective justification is “what he has done in the means of grace” for those to whom the means of grace have never been applied? Is it part of God’s nature that He has already acquitted all sinners and declared them to be righteous? If one wishes to say that God’s nature is to forgive or to be gracious, no one argues with that, since it is clearly revealed in Scripture. But to say that God has already forgiven and declared all sinners righteous apart from the means of grace and apart from faith is to fabricate things about God that He has not revealed in His Word. This must be the “hidden God” who has (without revealing it in Scripture) forgiven all men without faith in Christ! The revealed God has said that He is the Justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom. 3:26).
Bondage of the Will would be an interesting discussion sometime. One quotation for now will suffice:
This pair of statements by Paul, that “the righteous lives by faith” (Rom. 1:17), and that “whatsoever is not of faith, is sin” (Rom. 14:23), stand confirmed. The latter follows from the former; for if it is only by faith that we are justified, it is evident that they who are without faith are not yet justified; and those who are not justified are sinners; and sinners are evil trees, and can only sin and bear evil fruit (Revell edition, p.301).
Lastly, he accuses me on a number of occasions of slander. Why? Namely because I draw out the implications of his positions and show how the implications are problematic for other articles of the faith. He seems confused by this and assumes that I am attributing the positions to him which he does not actually hold. Again, in every case that he accuses me of slander, I’m doing no such thing. Rather, I’m showing the internal inconsistency of his position: I know he doesn’t believe these things- that’s the point! If he followed the premises of his theology to their logical conclusions, he would- but he doesn’t! This is of course normal procedure in academic debates regarding philosophy and theology. Oddly enough, he seems unfamiliar with this fact (though he appears to not be alone in this among Jackson’s followers!: http://extranos.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-fallacy-of-c-f-w-walther-and-his.html).
The specific statement made by Kilcrease that I called slanderous was this:
Therefore, for Rydecki to be correct, faith wouldn’t have an object, because it wouldn’t have a word to believe in, just the bare historical event of the atonement without any divine promises of forgiveness attached to it.
I demonstrated in my response why this statement was slanderous and pointed out the good doctor’s fallacies in making such a claim. Kilcrease asserts that my teaching gives faith no object. I demonstrated that I most certainly do teach, and have always taught, that faith has an object. He should deal with my arguments rather than simply asserting that I have none. This was part of my response, which Kilcrease apparently doesn’t wish to address:
Faith has an object, and His name is Christ Jesus, the Lord Our Righteousness, the one Mediator between God and man, who, by His obedience and innocent death has made satisfaction for all sins and has acquired the benefit of righteousness for all men, so that if all men were to believe in Him, then all men would be justified (as A. Hunnius puts it). But to acquire a benefit for someone and to apply or give that benefit to someone is not the same thing. Sinners are justified, not when the benefit is acquired for them, but when it is applied to them. This is Theology 101. It is also Augsburg Confession, Article IV.
And faith has numerous sure words in which to believe. I would like to hear Dr. Kilcrease explain why any of the following promises are inadequate:
Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.
“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
“Whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.”
And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”
3. Overall, I find Rydecki a bit unusual.
On that, we are agreed. 
He’s obviously an honest person and bright enough to translate all that German and Latin. Nevertheless, he’s chosen for some strange reason to make a series of unsustainable arguments.
I appreciate the recognition of honesty. But what are these unsustainable arguments? Why are they unsustainable? Is this a reference to my pointing out that there isn’t a single Scripture reference that teaches that God has already justified (in any sense of the word) all unbelievers?
My personal theory (and bear in mind I have no way judgment the truth or falsehood of my supposition) is that something else is going on here. I have evidence, but it is merely suggestive.
Oh, I can’t wait to hear this. Kilcrease is moving from the realm of philosophy to the realm of psychology. This should be good.
First, note that the whole objective justification debate isn’t really an intellectual debate in a normal academic sense. In most academic debates, there is a kind of give and take. One side mounts arguments and evidence and then the other mounts them. Depending on the ambiguity of the evidence, one side eventually wins, or, there may be a draw.
“Intellectual debate”? Is it supposed to be? Does he mean, like the debate between the Lutherans and the Catholics in 1530 and 1531? Was there a “give and take” there between the Lutheran Church and the RCC? Was one side eventually proclaimed “the winner”? Or was it, perhaps, a “draw”? Or what about the Examination of the Council of Trent? Did Rome finally have to concede the victory to Chemnitz? Was it a draw?
No, because it wasn’t an academic debate. It was a fight for the truth of Scripture. Lutherans confess with Luther and Chemnitz. Catholics confess with the pope and their own theologians. Christ will reveal “the winner” and “the loser” when He comes and will destroy the man of lawlessness with the breath of His mouth. I am not interested in “winning” an intellectual debate. I want to be confessing and believing the Truth when Jesus comes again.
But in the OJ debate one side demonstrates the falsity of the other side’s premise almost immediately (usually this has to do with the observing the the term “justify” is being used in distinctive manners with regard to OJ and SJ. BTW, this is not equivocation, since the term is qualified by the adjective “objective” and “subjective”) and then the argument is pretty much over.
I’m still baffled that the doctor continues to defend his “distinctive use” of the word “justify.” As I said in my first response, I recognize that he is doing this. I simply question his right to do this with the Holy Spirit’s language, and I question the “concept” he has generated of an already-pronounced absolution on all unbelievers. And making up words like “objective” and “subjective” and tacking them onto one’s argument does not make the argument stronger; it makes it weaker. Perhaps Dr. Kilcrease could do us the favor of producing a Bible in which he could “blue-letter” every use of the word forgive/justify where he believes it to mean “OJ” and “red-letter” every use of the word where he believes it to mean “SJ.” I wonder what such a Bible would look like.
The anti-OJ folks then proceed to ignore all arguments made by the pro-OJ and repeat themselves over and over again, never even attempting to account for the fact that their initial premise was self-evidently false if one understands the terminological distinctions involved. Jackson and his crowd are an extreme versions of this, Rydecki is a softer version of it (for example, notice his blog is purely devoted to translating early Lutheran texts and noting that they don’t use later terminological distinction between OJ and SJ, as if this was somehow a meaningful measure of the doctrine being found there! He seems to have little appreciation that terminology and doctrinal concepts are distinct realities!).
How can I make this clearer for Dr. Kilcrease? The reason why I am so enamored of the early Lutheran texts is that I believe they (and the Holy Spirit and the Apostles and Prophets) were right not to make the later terminological distinction. And conversely, I believe that those who later added the terminological distinction were misguided and wrong to do so.
4. When the situation is like this, the issue is clearly (as my old high school psychology teacher used to say) “psychological” and not “logical.” In a word, if one is arguing with a reasonably intelligent person and yet they persist in believing something which is self-evidently false, then there’s obvious something else going on.
Here again is another reason why I will not carry on a regular “debate” with Dr. Kilcrease. He has already declared himself the winner of any future debate. He claims that to hold to a “justified solely by faith” position or to point out the fallacies in his arguments is to “believe something which is self-evidently false,” and then goes on to psychoanalyze the person who is so delusional as to disagree with him. Thanks, but no thanks.
Here’s what I think may be the case: notice that all the persons involved with the anti-OJ forces have some sort of ax to grind against the various church hierarchies in American Lutheranism (Jackson and Rydecki most notably against the WELS- bear in mind that both individuals turned against the WELS hierarchy long before they got on the anti-OJ bandwagon). They also are distraught about the decline of the Lutheran Church in America, which they blame the institutional hierarchy. Their concern is therefore may not really about justification per se, but about a certain perceived institutional crisis and its source. They need a master explanation for the institutional crisis and also a club to use against the institutions from which they feel alienated.
The psychoanalysis is out in full force. Actually, Dr. Kilcrease may be onto something, but unfortunately, he has put the cart before the horse. In my case, I am not distraught about the decline of Lutheranism. I am, rather, invigorated and encouraged by the true confession of the Christian faith that the historical Lutheran Church espouses. I am disturbed (though not crushed) when people try to tamper with that historic faith under the guise of Lutheranism, and yet I expect this to happen, because it has always happened in the Church, as the Pharisees and their ilk changed the tenets of “Judaism” under the guise of “Judaism.” They assured their hearers that their innovations were “the real Jewish teaching.” I know and expect that this will happen in the Church until Christ comes again.
Secondly, he puts the cart before the horse, as if I (I cannot speak for others) first grew disenchanted with the synodical institution for personal reasons, and then had to come up with some good-sounding reason to be disenchanted with it. That is precisely backwards. I have seen how the institution has moved away from sound doctrine in some areas and refuses to be admonished or corrected. Rather than deal with doctrine exegetically (and historically), the synod(s) now deal(s) with doctrine institutionally and seem(s) addicted toa priori arguments based on self-reference. I recognize this as a fatal problem with the synods, and therefore have grown disenchanted with them. That led me to me speaking my mind rather openly, and that led to the synod growing disenchanted with me.
The issue of OJ is a useful one for them, because like all other human beings after the Fall, their psychological default mode is legalism and self-justification. “If only grace was less free!”, they say, “we could really get things done! People would know that they really, really needed to repent! People wouldn’t engage in such bad behavior! We could strong-arm the situation and turn it around!”, etc.
These are unconscionable arguments from Kilcrease, and I will charge him with slander again for inventing these weird teachings and putting them in my mouth (e.g., “they say”) or even in my vicinity. I have never said or implied any such thing, and I don’t know of anyone who opposes UOJ who has ever said or implied anything like this. Or does he really think that we’re making grace “less free” by saying that God is the Justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom. 3:26)? Does he really think we’re making grace “less free” by teaching that all unbelievers stand under God’s condemnation while all believers in Christ stand justified? What, because I teach that all have sinned and are justifiedsolely through faith in Christ, I am engaged in legalism? Simply remarkable. This man calls himself a theologian. Epic fail.
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