Some Excellent Quotes That Parallel My Thoughts about the Walther-Pieper Disaster - Objective Justification, aka Universal Objective Justification aka General Justification aka Justification of the World

 Franz Pieper was Walther's parrot,
just as Walther was Stephan's.

Hi Greg,

This next quote is from Dr. Leander S. Keyser, chapter 3, in, Election and Conversion. A Frank Discussion of Dr. Franz Pieper’s Book on “Conversion and Election,” with Suggestions for Lutheran Concord and Union on Another Basis published in 1914 by the German Literary Board, Burlington, Iowa.

Enjoy!

Alec

But what is the impression made upon one who carefully reads Dr. Pieper’s book? That another doctrine has been introduced, not only as the chief one, but also as the regulative one; as it were, the major premise. That doctrine is the doctrine of the divine decrees, the divine sovereignty, election, predestination. This is the beginning and the end, the principal view-point; it controls everything; it never for a moment slips out of sight; all other doctrines must take a secondary place. Even faith is treated meagerly, is subjected to election, is taken quite out of the sphere of freedom, and is so misconceived as to be made a mechanical thing, instead of the ethical and spiritual act it is always represented to be in the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions. According to this dissertation, man is not elected in view of the fact that he accepts Christ by faith, but he both has faith and is justified because he has been elected unto salvation from eternity by a mysterious decree. If we mistake not, this is reversing the Lutheran order, making divine sovereignty central, and crowding justification by faith off to one side. Luther and his co-laborers did not begin with an insoluble mystery pertaining to the Godhead before the world was, but with the plain and simple revelation of Christ and His way of justification by faith; and then, if they wanted to work back to the mysteries, they would judge them all in the light of the simple revelation. It was the Calvinists who began with the divina decreta, and made everything else subservient to God’s absolute sovereignty. We beg pardon for having to say it, but just in this one respect the Missouri view-point is more like that of the Calvinists and less like that of the Lutherans. We hasten to say, however, for fear of misunderstanding, that Missouri’s explanation of the doctrine of election itself is far from being Calvinistic; is, in fact, anti-Calvinistic, as has been shown. Are we not correct in saying that the central and regulative principle of our Missouri friends is election, not justification by faith? Just note how little faith is discussed in this treatise; how little it is urged; what a small and insignificant place it occupies in comparison with election; how it must ever step aside to make room for predestination; how belittlingly the intuitu fidei is represented, as if faith were a matter of small importance; note, too, that justification is scarcely mentioned in the entire production; and yet with Paul the great question was how a man could be accounted righteous before God. This is the doctrine, too, that saved Luther and made him the reformer he was; the doctrine to which he always gave the primacy in his theological system. Does any one suppose that he ever would have made Rome tremble, that he ever would have changed the currents of religious and civil history, if he had spent much of his time in debating the order of God’s decrees in eternity? Indeed, he always deprecated controversies on this very subject, as any one may see by reading the quotations presented in Jacobs’ “Summary of the Christian Faith” (pp. 576-580).

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"Looking upon faith as a matter of merit is the fatal error of Missouri. It colors her whole theology. How a body of Lutherans, studying the Bible, the confessions and the Lutheran dogmaticians, could get such a mistaken conception of simple saving faith is indeed a mystery to us. We need not go back to the eternal divine decrees to find mysteries. If faith is the free gift of God, as the Bible maintains, how can it be a matter of merit? And if, after it has been divinely bestowed or enabled, it simply takes God's gratuity, it surely can claim no desert." – From Chapter 4, Keyser

How often do you hear the Stormtroopers quote from the Augsburg Confession or the Apology? Luther greatly admired Melanchthon's ability to express Justification by Faith.

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And this one - 

"How much the Bible makes of faith! How little, comparatively, of election! Everywhere Christ insisted on faith and belief, while scarcely more than half a dozen times does He refer to "the elect," and almost always in passages whose interpretation is more or less difficult. Note how often faith is mentioned in the epistles. Two of Paul's epistles – Romans and Galatians – were expressly written to prove that men are justified by faith, and not by the deeds of the law or their own righteousness. The letter to the Hebrews devotes a whole chapter – the 11th – to a panegyric on the heroes of faith. It declares that "without faith it is impossible to please Him; for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of all them that diligently seek Him." Our point is that faith is the outstanding doctrine of the New Testament, and therefore should take precedence of a doctrine like election, which is treated more incidentally."

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GJ - When I entered LCMS colloquy, the norms often mentioned were Walther and Pieper. Oddly enough, I first met Kincaid Smith, who left the LCA for the LCMS, then Missouri for the ELS. He was completing a DMin in Church Growth at the Ft. Wayne beehive, a seminary under Robert Preus that gave out DMins in Church Growth - and proud of it. The faculty even endorsed Church Growth Principles, as Marquart wrote.

 Have you ever read such nonsense?
This is clearly mission creep, which began with Knapp and his Halle bunch, then expanded under Stephan and Walther, and reached the ultimate in hyperbole here. And yet they bow before UOJ and cannot say the words Justification by Faith.

When I began my exit from the LCA, UOJ had flared up with the WELS Kokomo Statements, and I eventually went to a conference at the farm where it began. So I know how much lying WELS did to kick out two families and then blame them for the conflict.  The heretic pastor, Papenfuss, Pope's Foot, has never been disciplined because WELS loves false doctrine and hates Biblical teaching.

The quotations above are a good summary of the WELS-ELS-LCMS-CLC (sic) leadership. Look at how inbred this dogma is -

1. Bishop Martin Stephan only had a call because he was a Bohemian Pietist (see Zinzendorf). He never finished his college degree - like Pope John the Malefactor, who had to grab one when he was installed as their NT teacher at the Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie.
2. CFW Walther somehow got a call in the rationalistic state church but always associated with Pietists, first through one guru (who died), and then with Martin Stephan. They were not true-blue Lutherans, but true-blue Pietists. Keep that in mind. Stephan hosted cell groups, even illegally - outside the parish itself.
3. Walther learned Universalist justification from Stephan, who went to Halle University, where this was taught. Walther taught this version, the Easter absolution of the world, his entire life.
4. The Stephanites did not leave Europe for religious freedom. They had too much already. They left because the authorities put Stephan and his mistress on trial, put him under house arrest, and gladly let him go. He left with his only healthy child and his mistress, plus the people he gathered as a wolf in sheep's clothing. 
5. Walther and his brother kidnapped their niece and nephew. CFW let his future mother-in-law go to jail while he escaped from the police. She was part of his deception there, and again when he organized the Perryville riot.
6. Walther was every bit the control freak that Bishop Stephan was. Once the leader was properly threatened, robbed, and kidnapped, Walther solidified his leadership and became the Pope, in charge of multiple parishes at once, the seminary, publishing, etc.
7. Walther made sure a new graduate of his seminary became the professor of dogma. That was Franz Pieper, three years out of seminary. Young but compliant. The Walther-Pieper cabal grew and took over the LCMS-WELS-ELS.
8. Ever notice that Walther edited his Walther-Baier compend as a dogmatics text book? Here is a summary about Baier, who was definitely removed by time and association from the Wittenberg crew. Why not Chemnitz, who studied under Luther and Melanchthon? And who appointed Walther lord over everything but the Frauenverein?