From a Reader Who Loves Lutheran Books
Pastor,
What is your approach toward reading Luther's sermons? For example, do you find it most constructive to read them through entirely from beginning to end, or do you find it easier to read them in sections because they are so Biblically rich?
Also, I happened upon this brief quote from last Sunday's bulletin of an LC-MS church re. Holy Communion. Perhaps you're quite familiar with it; however, it was new to me:
"If now I seek the forgiveness of sins, I do not run to the cross, for I will not find it given there. But I will find in the Sacrament or Gospel the Word which distributes, presents, offers, and gives to me the forgiveness which was won on the cross" (Martin Luther).
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GJ -
I tend to read Luther's sermons over rather quickly the first time, then go back to sections. Biblical richness indeed. Sometimes I say to myself. "The text does not say that," but then I think about it different ways and how he sees the entire Bible as a unit. Ahh. One example is the widow in the widow's son was not thankful when her husband died because she still had a son to take care of her. She did not know her woe until the son died and Jesus unbidden raised him.
Here is a search on that beloved quotation, which they use for OJ.
The Atonement is not OJ! But they use all Atonement passages to prove Objective Justification or The Justification of the World. Funny how that dogma was never disclosed until Huber's Calvinism came to the forefront. And then the Calvinism of Pietism.
In Christ,
PS (Post Sending that message) - The key definition of the word Justification is "declaration." The UOJists say "OJ is not the Atonement." They are correct, because they have added their dogma to the Atonement, robbing Justification by Faith to honor their Father Below. So they say, without cause or source, that after the Atonement or the Resurrection (they are working this out, be patient) - God declared the entire world absolved of all sin and saved, without faith. In fact, they glory in "without faith." They consider their constant nagging about "without faith" to be the essence of the Gospel.
Thinking about this question today, I changed one word of the OJ dogma. What if we said, "God decreed the entire world forgiven and saved." That is Calvinistic language and the dank spirit of Enthusiasm - invented dogma from the throne of his rationalistic heart. This kind of thinking is what moved Samuel Huber - the "former" Calvinist - to say that everyone was already forgiven. Like Jay Webber, he could not stop saying it. But he was condemned for his evil dogma and driven away.
To be clear, Huber does not have the exact wording of Calvin, but the same spirit of error.
Webber simply returned to his Eastern liberal and Pietistic LCA roots when he joined the OJ train. The Pietistic Little Norwegians were fashioned from OJ and built on OJ.
Calvinism was the secret ingredient in Pietism, so obvious that Spener denied it. Whenever one cuts loose from the Biblical teaching of the Word's efficacy, some form of Calvinistic Pietism will emerge.
