Recovering Lost Truths - Missouri and WELS Once Taught Justification by Faith. No, Really They Did.

 

I stopped by our chapel this morning. I like to start early on the Epistle and Gospel, so I can start planning hymns and the sermon. We use the historic readings, which go back to the earliest days, not Rome's three-year cycle, which all the Lutherans follow. The excuse was that ministers grew tired of using the same lessons year after year. How could they? ELCA preached social activism and WELS-ELS-LCMS on the glories of Holy Mother Synod. Has anything changed? 

Writing Thy Strong Word - 21 years ago - proved to me that the so-called Lutherans were not teaching from the Scriptures or studying the Word at all. They fell into the pool of melted metal called dogmatics. In Lutherdom, that began nobly with men like Chemnitz and Gerhard dealing with topics like the Trinity, the Sacraments, with Scriptural exposition. 

That explains why Walther and his spear-carriers avoided Luther and despised Melanchthon. Both Reformation leaders could defend Justification by Faith from the Scriptures alone, either with thunderbolts or perfectly clear explanations. 

The dogmaticians loved most by the false teachers of today - the OJists and Church Growthists - are as far away from the Scriptures as possible. Walther pushed Baier, who is best known for being promoted - yet edited conveniently - by CFW himself. Something is true because Baier wrote it? I imagine that few today could offer more than a five second bio of Baier. Jay Webber's favorite is a known Pietist and Objective Justification source, possibly more obscure than Baier.

[Webber quoting Marquart naming Pieper genuflecting to Walther citing Baier] - 

The 1872 essay itself documented its continuity with standard-bearers like Quistorp, Gerhard, “Rohrberg” (which Hardt, p. 77, corrects to “Norborg”) and others (my translation, pp. 21 ff.). Hoenecke was right: “Of universal justification our dogmaticians do not treat separately [besonders], but they do [treat of it] occasionally” (Dogmatik III:354).¹²

 Missouri, WELS, and ELCA mocked the Reformation and celebrated themselves.

 Calvin, Rambach, and Stephan gave Lutherdom Objective Justification and dogmatic STDs.

 Look for this at your local Goodwill store.

The Preus Crime Family ran on the same agenda, piling up dogmatics citations and slogans based on mis-interpreting the Scriptures. The results today are a 400 page enormously large Small Catechism and the boggy, verbose, Dogma-tanic. 

Book Review of Thy Strong Word

Gerald Parker

5.0 out of 5 stars Magisterial Defense of Truly Confessional Lutheranism

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2007

Verified Purchase

I am a layman, not a theologian, but I have read fairly widely in the literature of Lutheranism, my heritage faith, so I do not hesitate to praise with the highest encomia possible this very fine and much-needed book that refutes the errors of latter-day North American Lutheranism, alike the unbelieving "liberalism" of the E.L.C.A. and E.L.C.i.C. as well as the pseudo-conservatism (which falsely poses as Confessional) of the denominations deriving from the old Synodical Conference (most notably the L.C.M.S., W.E.L.S., E.L.S., and the L.C.M.S.' sister sect, the Lutheran Church Canada), which have betrayed genuine Confessional Lutheranism with their bizarre speculations embodied in the theological paradigm of "Universal Objective Justification and Subjective Justication" (U.O.J.), which Ptr. Dr. Gregory Lee Jackson anathematises and disproves, as well he should do, showing these heinous false speculative ideas to be being neither Scriptural nor Confessional, and, hence, not genuinely Lutheran at all. (Coming back to this review to revise it some, I would point out that Jackson has written and published a separate book, one that handles the matter suberbly, on the U.O.J. heresy, titled "Luther versus the U.O.J. Pietists: Justification by Faith".) Jackson also scathingly and realistically savages the venal "Church Growth Movement" tendencies in all forms of this hemisphere's Lutheranism, liberal and pseudo-confessional alike.

There are magnificent defenses of "genesio-Lutheran" Confessional teaching versus the claims of what Ptr. Dr. Jackson calls the "Reformed" (by which he includes all non-Lutheran Protestantism and sectarianism, rather than only, more properly, the teaching of other genuinely Protestant churches that follow the doctrinal teachings of Martin Bucer, especially, and of Jean Calvin, as well as the Three Forms of Unity and Westminster Standards that so principally, soundly, and moderately codify them confessionally). Jackson's defense of the Lutheran and hence Orthodox Christian "Means of Grace" is a stunning refutation of the claims of Baptists, Pentecostals/Charismatics, the loud-mouthed "Fundamentalists" who are so fundamentally wrong, the so-called "Neo-Evangelicals", Campbellites/"Restorationists", and other "cheap white [or black] theological trash") by explicating from the Scriptures (using, wisely, the Authorised "King James" Version, free of the sectarian bias that afflicts to one degree or another the modern versions in English of the Bible) the true Lutheran and biblical teaching about Holy Baptism and the Eucharist (Holy Communion, Mass). For the fine defense of Lutheran sacramental theology alone this book would be worth the purchase, but there is so much more as well!

A fault, a minor but nonetheless somewhat irritating one, is Jackson's intemperately vituperative assaults on other Lutherans and their squabbles and peccadillos over relatively minor matters of turf, petty corruption, and so forth which, really, are of only passing interest or importance compared to the major issues that this book addresses, something that inevitably will cause this book become a bit dated in that regard. (That said, though, Jackson`s comments on such matters are reasonable and, I believe, true.) Dr. Jackson's book is already a classic of Lutheran exegesis and sound doctrinal teaching.

A note of warning is in store for those who purchase the book second-hand; the earliest printing of this book had some pagination and binding irregularities, but even a copy with these defects is worth having, since they do not affect any of the most important passaages of the book.