Is There A Middle Way With UOJ?

 

A few weeks ago, Pr Paul Rydecki (Confessional Lutheran Ministerium) alerted me to his response to Pr Magnus Sørensen's (COELC Superintendent) paper of 2017 entitled "The Justification of Christ as the Efficient Cause of Our Justification - The Narrow Lutheran Middle in the Controversy on Universal Objective Justification". 

Pr Magnus' associate, Pr Jake, a minister of COELC, gave me a link of this paper the first time it came out in 2017. Click the link here. I had a read of this paper and shared it with other ones who also reject UOJ. There Magnus believe that the UOJers are wrong and the JBFA people who are anti-UOJers are wrong too. Somewhere there is a middle view that avoids the two oppossite views. Frankly, the only word that came out of me after reading it was the word - mixed up. I apologise for this word that seems unkind, but I only use it for lack of better word I could find. Now this opinion will not surprize, Magnus. He and I both know that we disagree in many issues and I  was one time overjoyed when there were a couple of issues we agreed. In his paper, we will find a lot of historical context which traces how UOJ meant to be a good thing became bad. So many words have been invested to salvage a problematic teaching in the first place.The crux I think is in the use of this paper of Gerhard (and some from Calov). Specifically, this passage

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With respect to the actual absolution from sin. By delivering Christ into death for the sake of our sins, the heavenly Father condemned sin in His flesh through sin (Rom. 8:3). He condemned it because it had sinned against Christ by bringing about His death, even though He was innocent, and so He withdrew from sin its legal right against believers so that it cannot condemn them any longer. He also condemned it, in that He punished our sins in Christ, which were imposed on Him and imputed to Him as to a bondsman. So also, by the very act of raising Him from the dead, He absolved Him from our sins that were imputed to Him, and consequently also absolves us in Him, so that, in this way, the resurrection of Christ may be both the cause and the pledge and the complement of our justification. The following passages pertain to this: 1 Cor. 15:17, 2 Cor. 5:21, Eph. 2:5, Col. 2:12-13, Phil. 3:8-10, 1 Pet. 1:3.

(Gerhard, Johann, Paul A. Rydecki, and Rachel Melvin. Annotations on the first six chapters of St. Pauls Epistle to the Romans: in which the text is stated, troublesome questions are answered, observations are made, and passages that appear to be in conflict are reconciled as concisely as possible: with preface and general prolegomena on the Pauline Epistles by the same author. Malone, TX: Repristination Press, 2014.)

Pr Paul and I are known to each other through the Internet and it is of no mystery of course, that we agree with the judgement that UOJ is not in Scripture. Click his response here. On the side other resources are available to the reader here

1. Pr Rydecki relayed in his paper the great analogy of how OT atonement worked and how in the NT this is exactlty the same as what happens to Christ! I thought this was very insightful, useful and quite edifying. I suggest the reader take a good cue from that exposition.
2. As normally happens in Modern Lutheranism, people appeal to an authority and in this case the authority chosen is Gerhard. I note that Gerhard was not a BoC author, in fact, he was post-Concordian. Meaning, he came to the scene after the BoC. So, what is left when people argue by authority and not by Scripture as prima facie evidence? People wind up spending tons of energy exegeting what the "authority" said - energy meant for the Bible is diverted to energy finding support for one's theory from what an authority said. This is a very Waltherian tradition. Walther was a citation theologian.
3. In the quote above of Gerhard, just by reading, he was addressing the believers, is this not correct? So, how does one take those possessive pronouns like our there? Is this for the whole world? In fact Gerhard used the word 'believer' you can read it there. 
4. Some try to defend the Sørensen paper's UOJ by appealing to Hebrews 7 and 8. This is like grasping at the straws, a kind of hallugenic exegesis, ie seeing things that are not there.
5. The paper in my mind, upholds the authority of Scripture versus popular so-called Lutheran Fathers. See here and realize even the BoC says this.  I side with Rydecki, Gerhard's use of bondsman is not an analogy found in Scripture. The bondsman concept is not found in Romans 4:25. Gerhard was of course trying to be helpful but importing a concept not even in the text does not honor the text but obscures it. In the OT atonement, the sacrificial animal is never treated and does not even come to view, of it being a guarantor. We should not be surprized if a Lutheran theologian in the past, mis-speak, after all they were humans too. Besides who has declared them to be infallible? 

Personally I find Pr Paul Rydecki's paper a great service. I am glad he wrote it. 

So, the answer to the question, is there a middle way with UOJ? Answer: NO

I join Pr Paul in prayer that Pr Magnus might abandon the project of trying to prop up a problematic language on justification. It is not worth it because, its Biblical evidence is weak if not missing.(I heard Pr Magnus has got a modification of his 2017 paper - I'd rather hear it retracted)