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| Rogues Gallery - Faces behind CTG Top Row - Paul McCain UOJ fanatic; Cheesehead Matt the Fatt and Mrs. Matt the Fatt; Waldo Werning CN Snitch and Church Growth Plagiarist. Bottom Row - Karl Barth and his Commie mistress Charlotte Kirschbaum, the official theologians of Fuller Seminary and the LCMS faculties; CFW Walther, being without actual sin, was assumed into heaven and is venerated as a saint. |
Confessing the Gospel: A Lutheran Approach to Systematic Theology; two volumes, Concordia Publishing House, 2017 - way overpriced at $90. Lacking Scripture, authors, and topics indices. Very much in the style of Braaten-Jenson's pathetic Christian Dogmatics, influenced by the same Pietism and Calvinistic rationalism.
Here are some initial impressions:
This bolus of Barthian nonsense is a complete waste of time and money. If God allows the earth to last another century, the last remaining believers will laugh the bilge produced by the LCMS-WELS-ELS.
The Table of Contents reminds me of the pastoral theology book in WELS, which uses "shepherd" so often that a student satire included a final chapter - "The Shepherd Finds a Shepherdess." Everything in CTG is "confessing" and yet the organization is hopelessly chaotic and repetitive. If they gave the main topics (loci in Latin) in a traditional order, their mischief would be obvious to any reader.
Various parts of the books that I have read are identical to the game played by modern theologians - "Let's play with these religious words and see what we can do creatively."
And yet, all these giants of scholarship (!) return to the dog's vomit, Walther's Universal Objective Justification. Doubly worse is the fake venture in Justification by Faith, volume 1, p. 568.
Five pages of blarney oscillate betwee UOJ and Justification by Faith, using justification alone for the UOJ crowd, which they parade as the real deal. Justification by Faith is simply a diversion until the wizards cast their spell with Universal Justification, etc. So many terms for the same false doctrine!
Volume 1, page 563, the magician's cloak swoops, the cane taps, the eye winks, and...
To understand the role of faith in the justification of the sinner, one must first recall the significance of objective justification or universal reconciliation, namely, the divine proclamation that God has accepted the sacrifice of his Son for the sins of the whole world, that his wrath has been appeased, that he is reconciled to the whole world, and that as a result he has issued a full pardon for all humanity. Since this pardon is unconditional, it is clear that faith cannot be a cause of one's justification.
[GJ note - I said last Sunday that the mark of all modernistic, rationalistic mainline theologians was this - pitting faith against grace, saying grace must be unconditional or it is not faith. Thus their case for unbelievers - like them - enjoying God's grace. How sweet, how sick.]
And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.
Genesis 15:6 KJV
For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.
Romans 4:3 KJV
And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him;But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. Romans 4:23-25 KJV
And the summary of Romans 4 -
5Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
2 By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Look for follow-up review pieces, in the sticky post, left margin.
