SpenerQuest often sputters about synodical nonsense. Last year, Concordia Seminary in St. Louis - "the best seminary in America" (Herman Otten) - hosted Tullian Tchividjian as their Reformation speaker. Tulian had no less than two adulterous affairs during his tenure at D. James Kennedy's Coral Gables church. He blamed them on his wife, just as Walther blamed Stephan's affairs on Mrs. Stephan. What a leader Walther was!
No surprise there about St. Louis. Years ago, the "best seminary in America" had its president adoringly interviewing Leonard Sweet and posting the video for all to see. Sweet is honored and praised by all the Church Shrinkers, who continue to reduce their synods to compost for recycling in the Age To Come.
Currently, "the best seminary in America" is promoting their next Reformation speaker, a professor from Yale Divinity who dedicated one of his books - "To my father, a Pentecostal minister who admired Muslims, and taught me as a boy that they worship the same God as we do."
But this is truly repugnant - LutherQuest (sic), Christian News, the LCMS, WELS, ELS, CLC (sic), and ELCA will all celebrate the Reformations's 500th Anniversary while agreeing with the Universalists that everyone on earth is forgiven and saved.
Reader:
The other is from WELS's Meditations, March-May 2014, for Monday, 17 March 2014. The howler is in the second column which reads: "No matter what you did yesterday -- or failed to do -- and no matter what you will do tomorrow, God has forgiven you."
I had Luther's Galatians Commentary in the car, so I was reading it while waiting for Mrs. I's appointment to be done. I reached the point where the statement in the graphic above is made. How can anyone with an IQ above room temperature advocate Universal Objective Justification?
The 3rd chapter of Galatians begins with Paul no longer calling them brothers or saints, but Galatians:
Galatians 3 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?
2 This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
This could easily be addressed to the Lutheran leaders in America. One LCMS DP said something like this about a candidtate, "I cannot stop someone who rejects UOJ. It is not taught in our catechisms, only in the WELS Kuske catechism." As one LCMS pastor told me, "If UOJ is the the LCMS position, then I can name 500 Missouri pastors who teach justification."
The genius of the apostates is their ability to control the synodical structures and work with ELCA while pretending to be the real Lutherans, the orthodox, the noble warriors holding up the flickering flame of fidelity to the Confessions. So much drama, so little substance.
From time to time, the Stormtroopers say, "We are really talking about the same thing," but they reveal the opposite by silencing justification by faith at every opportunity. And they insist that their precious UOJ is the Chief Article of Christianity, the Master and Prince and Judge of all doctrine. These UOJ claims represent cult behavior.
I was trying to imagine how UOJ might be a misunderstanding of Biblical teaching, but I cannot. However, I give the errorists credit for pulling off a massive bait-and-switch operation.
The New Testament verb, "to justify" is a declaration. God declares people righteous, so the Stormtroopers simply move the emphasis from faith to all people. They instinctively know what they are doing by falsely accusing justification by faith of limited atonement. They have combined the atonement with justification, so "dying for all" becomes "all are forgiven."
This UOJ merger of doctrines introduces countless contradictions, because justification by faith is the Master and Prince, the Judge of all doctrine. Since the UOJ Stormtroopers have justification wrong, they are also wrong in promoting:
- Receptionism, the magical dogma where bread alone and wine along are also the Body and Blood of Christ by virtue of being touched by hands and lips.
- Church Growth - nothing about the Word is efficacious, so man must dream up tactics, methods, tricks, bait, and rewards to get people into church and tithing.
- Women's ordination. It's popular, so why not?
- Worship and religious projects with every denomination, because everyone is forgiven.
- Worship and religious projects with every world religion.
- Everything is adiaphora.
