Latest response from
“Lutheran Layman”. Edit, post or not as you think best.
Hope you and Chris
have a good day today.
The A Team
Thanks for posting
the earlier question, “Is Justification by Faith wrong?”, and
the answers from LutherQuest. For whatever combination of
reasons, there seems to be a repeated accusation/false belief
that Book of Concord/Confessional Lutherans who are not
convinced of Objective Justification somehow consider their
faith a work. Alan Lubeck implies this when he writes:
These justification
by Christ crucified deniers deny one truth to pervert another
truth. Salvation/justification is by Christ alone, By faith
alone, by Scripture alone. Enough with trying to separate our
justification from the atonement of Christ already.
Can anyone point to
anything in the Book of Concord which states that faith is a
work? Can anyone point to anything any BOC confessing Lutheran
has ever said which implies that faith is a work? Nobody
believes this.
So going back to Alan
Lubeck’s statement, we all agree our justification can never be
separated from the atonement. However, do we all agree
that justification is not the same as the atonement?
If we do not agree, then we can go back to our Book of Concord
and find out which position is correct. They cannot both be
right.
The implication of
making the atonement equal with justification results in one of
two errors. (Lito Cruz) The Calvinist makes the Atonement equal
Justification, and so must limit the Atonement to explain why
only some are saved. This is the false teaching of Limited
Atonement. The Universalist says that when one is atoned
for, they are automatically justified, and so all are saved.
What is the value of
faith in either position?
Since we would all
agree that faith is a major aspect of the Gospel and all through
the Scriptures, there must be a big problem with the idea that
the atonement and justification are the same.
This seems like it
might be the heart of the difference. Maybe the Luther Quest
crew will choose to speak to this.
