Tensions Mount as People Await the Latest Lame Excuses For Universal Absolution without Faith. Boycott the Emmaus Conference

Jay Webber, Marvin Schwan Adjuct  Professor of UOJ,
will offer subtle, nuanced, masticated versions of rationalistic Pietism
at the Emmaus Confence. Valleskey will smile benvolently.

What do WELS, the ELS, and the LCMS have in common? They all had their trotters in the trough for Marvin Schwan's money. WELS is so Biblical that they named buildings after the unrepentant adulterer, whose greed and selfishness led his first wife to end her own life. Leaving his wife and the mother of his children, he married the wife of one of his staff. Of course, a couple of "Scriptural" divorces had to be purchased from the Synodical Conference, not unlike the Roman Catholic Pauline and Petrine escape clauses, aka annulments

His Excellency, First Deputy of Frozen Food, left this world a billionaire, but gave his first wife only $1 million and a Cadillac in the divorce. That was not even coffee money for him, and yet he gave $15 million to John Shep for the Ukraine fiasco, not including the missing cheese factory.

The second Mrs. Schwan became a Lutheran while married to St. Marvin but reverted to Romanism 15 minutes after the commital service of the sainted Marv. Have you witnessed a better argument for money as THE Means of Grace? It converts and when gone, unconverts.

Marvin Schwan is invisible on the Internet.
This is the only photo I could find - a bit dated.

Jay Webber must have known these details, because he told the WELS/ELS leaders that I passed the Forbes article on Marvin Schwan's divorce to Herman Otten. According to Otten, Mrs. Schwan saw the Christian News reprint of the article and gave up in despair. I wondered why the ELS/WELS fussed over Marvin's divorce coming out in CN. The excuse Webber offered was, "Nobody reads Forbes" when I said it was universally known with Forbes printing the $1 million/Caddy story with a photo of Marvin laughing his ascot off.

The back story is that Mrs. Schwan did not know how her husband double-crossed her until CN came in the mail. Certainly it looked like double-mockery, leaving her and giving her 1/4 of 1% of his net worth, since Forbes had him at $400 million at the time. The accidental reading of the Forbes story must be the reason Webber was anxious to blame me (and conveniently blackball me in the WELS/ELS sects). How do I know he did? He told me. I consider it a blessing not to be associated with the degenerate leaders who wept tears over Marvin's grave while kicking dirt in his wife's face - "a Scriptural divorce."

You should have heard Wayne Laatinen offer his praise for Schwan, not only for Marv's "Scriptural" divorce, which Wayne knew all about, he solemnly declared.  Laatinen also told me what a fine example Marv was to other donors to WELS - the ice cream man was not like that Columbus guy.

I wish I had enough money to buy the same absolution and heavenward send-off from WELS, the ELS, and the LCMS. They never stop trashing me, and I have been married for 45 years. One wit says WELS students are told they will burst into flames if they read this blog.

Jay Webber lived off Marvin's guilt-money as he traveled in luxury to Europe and on to the Ukraine. Webber and Church Growther Roger Kovaciny kicked John Shep out of the episcopal office, emulating the Great Walther who extended the Left Foot of Fellowship to Bishop Stephan. Why do Church Growth and UOJ keep coming up in Webber's storied career?

 Jay told me that the ELS calls Mequon "The Sausage Factory"
for the sound-alike graduates all coming out the same.
His explanation for WELS  is -
Our "Weaker Evangelical Lutheran Sibling."
John Shep told me Webber genuflects to the ELS whenever Jay
is 100 miles from Mankato or closer,
but makes fun of the leaders the rest of the time.
"He is a cat person, is a lover of old books and freshly-brewed coffee, has a dry sense of humor, and doesn’t get enough exercise." 

The UOJ Arguments Are Easily Dismissed

I cannot be quoted or referenced, but I am the only one in the debate with a PhD in theology from Notre Dame and an STM in Biblical studies from Yale University. I have published books and articles about theology for the last 45 years, a number in the areas of comparative doctrine, where one expression of faith is compared to another. WELS published and sold my Liberalism, Its Cause and Cure. They also distributed Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant by carton, after heavily promoting the book. Some publishers include various Lutheran synods, the Augustana Historical Society, Northwestern Publishing House, and the Conference for the Spiritual Well-Being of the Elderly.

Jay Webber and Jon Buchholz only have MDivs and never progressed beyond repeating the errors learned from the heirs of Walther. My PhD simply means Teacher of Philosophy/Theology. In the Middle Ages and the Reformation, theologians earned the degree and then published. A degree does not make one a scholar, but very few pastors devote  extra years to advanced coursework and reading hundreds of books, only to start on the dissertation and read many hundreds more.

Some of the scholars I have learned from, in lectures, in the classroom, and in doctoral work include Martin Marty, Roland Bainton, Nils Dahl, Paul Holmer, Stan Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Frank and Elisabeth Schuller-Fiorenza (now at Harvard), and a few others. That background does not make me infallible, but I do have perspective and practice in discussing theology and arguing doctrine with a wide variety of professors, pastors, priests, and laity. I especially value my conversations and correspondence with laity, because they are not programmed to agree to advance their careers.

In Christ
Webber tries to argue that the entire world is forgiven "in Christ," as many other UOJistas do, but "in Christ" only refers to believers.

Objective and Subjective Justification
As far as I can determine, the first and most important use of these two terms came from the Calvinist translator of the Halle Pietist Georg Christian Knapp. The terms traveled back to Germany and found the blessing of Walther, who was a Pietist himself, not a Lutheran.

Raised for Our Justification
Anyone can read what this means by looking at the plain words of the entire sentence.

Romans 4:23 Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him;

24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;

25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.

No one wants to yell that phrase anymore, because the argument collapsed.


1 Timothy 3:16
Webber likes the Pietists Rambach and Quistorp on this passage, which says a lot about UOJ and where it belongs. He preferred the Pietistic version to what Martin Chemnitz wrote about the same Scripture. No genuine Lutheran - before Pietism - believed and taught that Christ's resurrection absolved and saved the entire world.

Their only example is Samuel Huber, a former Calvinist (to be kind) who was smashed like a bug for the same line of reasoning, shortly after the Book of Concord was published. Like the UOJistas of today, Huber could not stop yakking about universal absolution.

Faith
The UOJ Stormtrooper have a two-fold argument, doubly perverted and erroneous. 

1. They argue that faith is a work of man, which is stupid and anti-Biblical. The Gospel Promises generate and nurture faith through the Spirit at work in the Word. Therefore, they constantly warn against justification by faith, which is the Gospel itself, the hope of man, the Promise of eternal life through Christ's atoning death and victorious resurrection.
2. Secondly, their version of faith is faith in UOJ, faith in the entire world being saved without faith.

Here is a list of their idiocies, which I have copied verbatim from their own sources. Read Walther below and see if he is not saying:

• Faith in UOJ.
• One must make a decision for UOJ.

"No matter what you did yesterday -- or failed to do -- and no matter what you will do tomorrow, God has forgiven you."
WELS's Meditations, March-May 2014, for Monday, 17 March 2014.

"That faith, which, as we considered in the preceding chapter, is wrought in us by God (Col. 2:12; Eph. 1:19), is firmly based upon the fact that we are justified, that our sins have been forgiven. Justification, just like its opposite, condemnation, is a judgment of God (Rom. 5:18, 19). It is a judicial act of God in which He, as the Judge of all, pronounces a verdict of acquittal upon all sinners." 
Edward Koehler, Justification, Objective and Subjective

"Objectively speaking, without any reference to an individual sinner's attitude toward Christ's sacrifice, purely on the basis of God's verdict, every sinner, whether he knows it or not, whether he believes it or not, has received the status of saint."
WELS Kokomo Statements, JP Meyer, Ministers of Christ

"After Christ's intervention and through Christ's intervention God regards all sinners as guilt-free saints."
WELS Kokomo Statements, JP Meyer, Ministers of Christ

"When God reconciled the world to Himself through Christ, He individually pronounced forgiveness to each individual sinner whether that sinner ever comes to faith or not."
WELS Kokomo Statements, JP Meyer, Ministers of Christ

"At the time of the resurrection of Christ, God looked down in hell and declared Judas, the people destroyed in the flood, and all the ungodly, innocent, not guilty, and forgiven of all sin and gave unto them the status of saints."
WELS Kokomo Statements, taken from an earlier conflict over justification

“When Paul uses the word ‘reconciling’ here, [2 Corinthians 5:19] he clearly means that forgiveness of sins is really imputed to ‘the world.’"
Pope John the Malefactor, Lutheran Sentinel, 1996.

"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."

The Calvinist Leonard Woods translating the Halle Pietist Geoge Knappe, 1831.

There is not one for whose sin and death he did not die, whose sin and death he did not remove and obliterate on the cross...There is not one who is not adequately and perfectly and finally justified in Him. There is not one whose sin is not forgiven sin in Him, whose death is not a death which has been put to death in Him...There is not one for whom he has not done everything in His death and received everything in His resurrection from the dead. 

(Karl Barth,Church Dogmatics, IV, 1, 638, cited with approval, Carl Braaten, Justification, p. 140.)

"For God has already forgiven you your sins 1800 years ago when He in Christ absolved all men by raising Him after He first had gone into bitter death for them. Only one thing remains on your part so that you also possess the gift. This one thing is--faith. And this brings me to the second part of today's Easter message, in which I now would show you that every man who wants to be saved must accept by faith the general absolution, pronounced 1800 years ago, as an absolution spoken individually to him." 
C. F. W. Walther, The Word of His Grace, Sermon Selections, "Christ's Resurrection--The World's Absolution" Lake Mills: Graphic Publishing Company, 1978 p. 233. Brosamen, p. 138. Mark 16:1-8.

We proclaim boldly, “Jesus Saved,” past tense, finished, certain. 
Jon Buchholz, WELS Convention Essay

"The justification of the human race indeed also ocurred (sic), 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."
Jay Webber, quoting a Halle Pietist with approval, Intrepid Lutherans

UOJ and Church Growth?
Weirdly the same.
ELCA smiles.