Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Calvinistic Substance, Pietistic Style

 When was the first time the UOJ Stormtroopers used this quotation from Robert Preus' book? Never!

Edward Preuss was a Missouri professor until he joined Rome. Neuhaus also went from UOJ to UOJ/Rome.


Some people catch onto the contradictions in Universal Objective Justification right away. Does anyone ask where the U came from? WELS seems to be obsessed with Universal Objective Justification, which is both redundant and new. Perhaps the Objective Justification term makes the ELS/LCMS more "confessional," though they cannot find their OJ in the Confessions.

This dogma belongs in the Calvinistic shoebox because it combines two of the worst parts of that dogma.

  1. Unconditional Election - UOJ is election without faith.
  2. Irresistible Grace - UOJ is grace without faith.


Naturally, a foul dogma squeezed out of the cankers of Calvinism and Pietism will have numerous contradictions. Various names for this WELS-ELS-LCMS disorder have justification in their title, all signifying a declaration of forgiveness without faith. That is their Helen of Troy, the unfaith that launched a thousand essays.

  • OJ
  • UOJ
  • Justification of the World
  • General Justification

Their dank muttering is contradictory because they start with a crippled vocabulary. Justification in the New Testament always means a declaration of forgiveness, and it is always connected with faith. The same is true of the Book of Concord, Chemnitz, Gerhard, and others. The Atonement has many synonyms, such as propitiation, expiation.

So these MDiv graduates, with little Latin and less Greek, want us to fall for their con-game. "OJ is not the Atonement," they say. But OJ foolishly merges the Atonement with Justification, to produce the sterile offspring, the mule named OJ, UOJ, etc etc. And they glory in "without faith."

 The acrobatics fail to convince. If only the editors of the Formula of Concord knew as much as WELS!