Pastor Greg, another paper I have on my Kindle that I go back to every so often. 30+ pages of straw-man arguments, big words like “logomachy” and the dismissal of faith as anything other than a work of man.
It should be required reading after a paper like this (and some of the other recent ones posted) to read Vernon Harley on Synergism......and Romans, Philippians, the gospel of John, Galatians, Hebrews 11......
“In dealing with justification, the proponents of general justification seem to view faith only from this aspect, namely, of it being a work of man. That’s why they want it excluded from God’s act of justifying the sinner. That’s why it is considered synergistic by them to include faith even though our Lutheran Confessions clearly list faith among the three “necessary elements of justification” together with the “grace of God and the merit of Christ”
“If all men were justified, i.e., declared righteous, absolved at the resurrection of Christ, but if men must be justified again (subjectively) by faith in order to be finally saved from the wrath of God, then quite obviously God wasn’t at all serious in objective justification He didn’t really declare them righteous, give them “the status of saints,” nor remove His wrath from all.”
“...for if faith must first be ruled out of justification and justification must be made universal to avoid synergism and yet faith must ultimately be brought in via “subjective” justification so that man can be saved, then obviously this “work of man” (faith) must be the deciding factor in man’s final salvation. FAITH, the very factor first ruled out to avoid synergism, now must be added so that man can be saved. Who then is faced with the problem of synergism?”
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GJ - Pastor Harley's essays are linked on the left-column of the blog. To find them quickly there, use control-f then put Harley in the window.
