M. Suzuki's Bach Passion of St John

I so love this rendition of J. S. Bach's Passion of St. John, BMV245.
You will enjoy this, it has English subtitles.
One thing I notice about J. S. Bach as a writer and a Godly composer. Bach does not leave the story out there, he brings the story down to you. An example is the denial of Peter when he repented. Towards the last of the 1st Part we hear these words...


Jesu, blicke mich auch an,
Wenn ich nicht will büßen;
Wenn ich Böses hab getan,
Rühre mein Gewissen!


Jesus, look on me as well,
When I feel no sorrow;
When I wickedness have done,
Stir thou up my conscience!

Steadfast Lutherans- your neighbourhood Lutheran Pub?

I often listen to music while I work and I wondered off to Issues Etc.

The episode I was listening had a few seconds sound grab from Steadfast Lutherans (sic)(Waltherian/Antinomians).

Here is what the sound advertisement said, I quote...

Imagine SteadfastLuthearn.org as the Internet version of a Lutheran Pub. Your neighbourhood Lutheran Pub, that is, where the finest Lutheran conversation is going on in every table and at the bar, sometimes contentious but always informative... we are only serving Wittenberg ale...etc.

Are you a bit unimaginative? Why would you use the motif of a pub to advertise your religious website? Don't you have any other ideas you can use to attract listeners to your website? Is that the best you could do? Can you not use other analogies to get the listeners interested in your website?

I did not realise there is such an animal called a Lutheran Pub. This reminds me of my Pentecostal years. You go to a "Christian" barber, a "Christian" butcher, a "Christian" mechanic, a "Christian" this and that.

Unless of course, being Lutheran is understood to have the propensity to be imbibed; and that advert shows your desire to be relevant, relational and even missional. Unless of course, you understand that it is tradition and normal for a Lutheran to be a bit tipsy and that is just being Lutheran! Not to be like that is just unLutheran.

Well of course, if you are a UOJer, God has forgiven you even before you repent and believe and that includes before you got intoxicated also. You are of course proud of your lack of sanctification and no big deal if those Evangelical pietists get offended. The main thing is you show off  your liberty in your "Gospel". You need to take pride in your justification, your "freedom" (from the Law, if you asked me).

Don't get me wrong, over here, I have been to the pub about 10 times. One time I worked in a country town and I went to the pub to buy lunch; over here, the cheapest lunch meals are found in a pub.

Don't get me wrong either, I often have a glass of wine with my meal specially in special occasions, like yesterday. I went to a wedding and I enjoyed the finger food with a glass of white. It made the food delicious.

But please do not slap me in the head because of those. Rather, kick me in the head for my lack of deft when it comes to imagination.

Walther: The closer to Luther the better the theologian...unless

I have been looking over the Net on some striking Walther quotes.

How many times have I heard the famous C. F. W. Walther quote - the closer to Luther, the better the theologian?

Walther is held up as a guru by Synodical Lutherans; this pastor even said that the closer one is to Walther, the better is the theologian.

There is one example of fanatic if you ever want to find one.


During Walther's controversy on the doctrine of election, learned men frequently quoted to Walther the fathers of the Lutheran church.  Here is what Walther said, you can find the full quote in here.

The principal means by which our opponents endeavor to support their doctrine, consists in continually quoting passages from the private writings of the fathers of our Church, published subsequent to the _Formula of Concord_. But whenever a controversy arises concerning the question, whether a doctrine is Lutheran, we must not ask: "What does this or that 'father' of the Lutheran Church teach in his private writings?" for he also may have fallen into error;


Those words of Walther are an epitome of the quip - take my advice, I am not using it.

In reality, what Walther really meant in practice was - the closer to Luther, the better the theologian, unless, the theologian teaches against me (because the said theologian must be in error).

The words in red are my interpretation of his behaviour on how he handled criticism. In fact his UOJ followers have the same attitude towards their critics... they must be wrong.

When a person falls for a fallacy, one does not stop at swallowing just one fallacious argument. The person invariably swallows the next one and the one after that and so on and on.

Here is another Walther quote from this site and IMHO, shows that Walther and Huber were cut from the same cloth.

We are not reconciled to God when we believe, but we are already redeemed, are already reconciled to God, so that we believe.  This is also true regarding justification.  The whole world is already justified in Christ.  Faith is not the condition under which we are justified but the way and means by which we become partakers of the justification which God has long ago given us

There is the fallacy of misreading Romans 4:25.

A fish is caught through its mouth.

Happy Bachday to you

March 31st was the day when J. S. Bach was born. So happy bach-day to you.

Sometimes I listen to Lutheran Public Radio, Sacred Music to the World. Some of the hymn versions they play lately leave me depressed.  I am sorry for the fans of this Internet station, that is just honestly how some of the hymn versions they have been playing affect me. For example, the tempo of those versions do not match the lyrics of the hymn. It somewhat undermines the truth found in the hymns.

This is not my experience with Bach's cantatas. It is hard to be gloomy even if the music had a somber message. In 2009, my eldest daughter gave birth to a disabled boy. He has cerebral palsy. Each morning as I went to work (I had a software development contract then), I had to struggle getting out of bed. When I get to work, I would play Bach's music again and again as I worked. It got me out of depression and mind you I had experienced some serious ones in the past.

Have a listen to this BWV75

Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan,
What God does ,that is done well,
Dabei will ich verbleiben.
I shall keep to this thought.
Es mag mich auf die rauhe Bahn
It may be that on the rough road
Not, Tod und Elend treiben;
I shall be driven by distress, death and misery;
So wird Gott mich
yet God will
Ganz väterlich
just like a father
In seinen Armen halten;
hold me in his arms;
Drum lass ich ihn nur walten. (Samuel Rodigast 1674, Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan.)
therefore I let him alone rule over me.

Bach, I get ya and thank ya

The church I go to has a Bach foundation and it sponsors Bach's cantatas in the divine service. They have cantatas at a minimun I think 6 times per year.

A few weeks ago I went with my missus even though I had to wake up quite early in the morning, it was worth it. Now, as you know, I must not name the church because I am like Peter Parker, the Spiderman; those who are associated with me could get hurt. The people I criticise can be nasty.

The cantata for that Sunday was BMV 40.  I am listening to it as I type.

In Scripture we read,1 Corinthian 14

¹⁶ Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest?

Well it was a blessing that they printed the cantata both in English and German.  Since I can sight read music, I could follow the singers as they sang. The music was in the bulletin. I understood what was being conveyed by the cantata, as I looked at the English translation.

I tell you I was extremely edified and my heart was bursting in praise to God. It was beautiful, Bach was indeed a genius, the words and music as it were dropped down from heaven. I do not mind saying  even in a facetious way, I got a "religious experience".

Many years ago, when I was getting my degree in Religious Studies, my Greek professor said to me that doing scholarly work in the original Biblical Languages requires one to learn either German or French. If you confine yourself to English, you will miss the other results other scholars from other countries have discovered, since there are lots of scholarly work in those languages.

I am toying learning German so I can read Bach's music and Luther's writings but I only have 24 hours in a day, so what to do?

Bach, I get ya, and I thank God for ya. You are a good Lutheran contribution to the world.

The semester is on next week and so blogging will be slow.

UOJ - the source of antinomianism

UPDATED:
I have Evangelical friends in USA. I felt their shock when I told them I have become Lutheran.
What I know horrified them was the thought I have become antinomian. These friends of mine seeing Lutherans in their midst and how they behave, believe that Lutherans are antinomians.

To them, they are "anything goes" Christians. Well of course, anything will go. For if you have been taught that God has ALREADY forgiven you before you were born, before you even believe and before even the Sacraments got applied to you, why won't anything go? Why won't anything go if you are forgiven even before you could repent and even believe? What sin is there that would make you uneasy when that sin has already been forgiven even before you commit it? Nothing.

UOJ does not produce trust, or Biblical faith. Rather it produces assent similar to what the Devil has, an agreement. Notice how UOJers malign faith. Sometimes, I sense their real hatred for the concept.

Since UOJ does not produce faith and since it is to them believing already what is there, it does not bring a change in the one who has "faith". So by Biblical teaching, the faith they speak of does not justify and since there is no justification and there is no consequent sanctification. Hence antinomianism.

If there are American Lutherans who are bothered by the antinomianism in their camp, they should look at the tree,  and examine its fruit.

UPDATE:
Let me categorically say that lest you think antinomianism is my MAJOR objection to UOJ, then you are absolutely wrong about me. My MAJOR objection to UOJ is simple - it is CONTRARY to the Scripture and the Confessions. Antinomianism is just one of the fruits of a MAJOR error. For as can be expected false doctrine leads to false behavior.

Jack's weird definition of debate

Dr. Jack Kilcrease complains (or so thinks) that Rev. Rydecki does not want to debate him. Now how did Jack Fallacious come up with that conclusion? Well folks, it is.because Pr. Paul does not post comments in his blog to answer his fallacious claims. How weird is that definition of non-debate?

There must be something wrong in his comprehension if he did not see some of the points Rydecki enumerated in Faith Alone Justifies.

Jack made the same claims that I do not debate him directly. But why do you think that? Well I stopped posting my rebuttals in his blog because he does not publish them. Other times I am too busy to take bad arguments seriously. Answer not a fool according to his folly, so the Scripture says in Proverbs 26:4.

I got a life outside the Internet. I know a year or so ago, I encountered LC-MS UOJ defenders at Steadfast Waltherians. As a result of that I got banned from posting. Do not make a mistake we do not debate.

So what do people like me or Rev. Rydecki do? We publish our rebuttals in our own blogs. Apparently for Jack, this is not called debate?

You might say it is not a live debate but we are debating you Jack. In as much as we have been posting rebuttals in our blogs, this is as much debate as there is one in the Internet world. There is a time to speak and so sometimes I do answer a fool according to his folly Proverbs 26:5.

Jack, I know you are reading this blog, and you know well I do not moderate my blog as a general rule. I only step in when I see profanity in the post. Please do not be ridiculous to claim we do not debate you because we do not post comments in your blog, that is another fallacy which you manufacture. The posts we have in our blogs are rebuttals to UOJ and your defense of it.

Americans singing a Filipino folk song

Just to take a break from the fight, here is something cross cultural.
It is a song about a field butterfly. They sang it really good, they gave me goose bumps.

I am amazed, they pronounced the words so well. They sang it like Filipinos do.

Well done!

The fallacy of C F W Walther and his disciple Jack "The Strawman" Kilcrease

Universal Objective Justification (UOJ) started with a fallacy and so it still produces more fallacies even today. JBFA people discussing UOJ errors with a UOJ adherent need to first step back and give the UOJ adherent a course on Critical Thinking 101. When you point to a UOJ a fallacy, the UOJer treats it like water off a duck's back, it just does not hit them like normal people would.

In fact if you examine the posts and comments here and you look at how a UOJers interact with us, you will soon discover UOJers do not have a capacity to evaluate a fallacy.

For a clue on logical fallacies you can find a good read here.

A few days ago, I responded to a post by found at Intrepid Lutherans found here.

There I was responding to a comment that the BoC Writers may have fallen into error in their own writings. In the election controversy ignited by C. F. W. Walther and based on his on account, his opponents were quoting to him the understanding of the BoC Lutheran “Fathers”. Here is what he said…

The principal means by which our opponents endeavor to support their doctrine, consists in continually quoting passages from the private writings of the fathers of our Church, published subsequent to the _Formula of Concord_. But whenever a controversy arises concerning the question, whether a doctrine is Lutheran, we must not ask: "What does this or that 'father' of the Lutheran Church teach in his private writings?" for he also may have fallen into error;

Indeed they may have, but the issue is not to state what in general is possible, but to demonstrate clearly in actuality where they erred against Scripture on a particular subject. The fallacy of Walther above is what can be called “If you do not believe me you are a heretic” fallacy. This is another force of argumentum ad baculum. This is a form of bullying, psychological bullying.

What else was Walther saying – if the Fathers disagreed with me, it is they that is in error not me. The test is not to put the Fathers first on the stand, rather the test is first put Walther on the stand.

Walther was an arrogant churchman, and so is his modern fan – Dr. Jack “Fallacious” Kilcrease, to which I now turn.

In his post found here, he titled it To Reject Objective Justification is to Reject Election.

As usual, Jack’s post is overflowing with fallacy, it is a lot of fun dissecting it and using it when I give a course in Critical Thinking. He provides me plenty of material for a seminar I would like to give and I would entitle as – How to argue like a bad Theologian.  I do not have time that is why this took a few days to write but I will give you a few samples. These few examples are warning enough for you not to be misled by false reasonings:

1.     The first fallacy is found by observing the title of the post. Remember I just spoke about argumentum ad baculum? The title sets the reader up to swallow a fallacy called argumentum ad consequentiam, the negative form.

2.     The false testimony “He [me, LPC] does not believe in it [election]” is so pregnant with fallacy, in fact a very abysmal attempt to put me – an anti-UOJer in a bad light.  He was able to conclude this because of the quote I just made?  This is the usual tertium non datur fallacy, the denial of a 3^rd possibility fallacy. Jack “The Strawman” Kilcrease wants you to believe there is a false dilemma.  It is just like saying  - if you do not believe in the Democratic Party’s policies, then you must be a Republican. Huh? Are there not independents in USA? That is the form of reasoning Dr. Strawman wants you to follow.

3.     He then says “Believers are only bound to writings that serve as a public confessions of faith and not necessarily to the private writings of a particular theologian”. This is the non sequitur fallacy. I do not subscribe to the private writings of particular theologians as if they were a confession also.  This is jumping the shark fallacy.  Jack is the one who misunderstands when one uses the quotation of the Fathers and so Walther misunderstood too in quickly dismissing them. Rather the writings were being used to support an argument, it is not because the opponents of Walther subscribe to them as a confession. This is Jack’s favorite fallacy – The Strawman fallacy. He makes arguments on my behalf or asserts them as if I was doing them and then tares them down. Voila!  The point is disposed (so he thinks).

4.     He then says, “In other words, if in response to Christ's death God does not speak forth a universal word of reconciliation, but simply pronounces reconciliation on those who believe, we are left with two options”, he is again setting up the believer to accept false dichotomy. Let me illustrate, they say if you reject OJ you must believe in Limited Atonement. Do Brett Meyer, Dr. Jackson and Pr. Rydecki and Pr. Bickel believe in Limited Atonement(LA)? I was a Calvinist! I know what Limited Atonement is when I see one. Jack has no clue as to the Scriptural arguments being used by Calvinists to support LA.

5.     Lastly Jack shows his own self-negation of his title post which is a thesis he believes in. He says, “In a word: rejection of OJ also compromises the Lutheran doctrine of election (something I do not think Paul Rydecki appreciates, since he still claims to believe in election!)”. Dear folks, here he provides a counter-example to his own thesis, by his admission! We know Rev. Rydecki rejects OJ yet by Jack’s very own admission, he states Pr. Paul still believes in election. A fish is caught in the mouth. Jack negated the thesis title of his post. So Jack illustrates how fallacious he himself is.

I see he has lots of registered followers. I pity those folk who admire him.They do not know they are following a "blind man".

Faith alone justifies

I am very much impressed with the scholarship shown by Rev. Paul Rydecki.

In case you have not realised yet, Pr. Rydecki started a blog of his own and he entitled his blog
Faith Alone Justifies. Click on the link to be directed there.

I have read some of Pr. Paul's expositions and how he handles the Biblical text. He is brutally honest and that what makes an exegete competent in his work. A quick survey of what Lutheran pastors and theologians are doing in the Anglo world will reveal that majority of them are into Historic Theology followed by few who are into Systematic Theology. You can count with your fingers the Lutheran scholars and pastors that are into Exegetical Theology and that is a shame.

These disciplines have their place but a church body that have no focus in Exegetical Theology becomes weak and will not be able to jump in to resolving controversies.

This is the reason why UOJ gained further ground in the Western Lutheran churches; the Lutherans there have thought that all exegetical issues are now moot and void, since C. F. W. Walther has spoken. So what is happening today? Well we have what might be called theology by proxy. What I mean is that they do not do the hard work of going deeper in interpreting the Biblical text, what they do is just find out what so called authority said on a topic and by default they adopt the pontifications of that so called "accepted authority". It is a type of Romanism in a small scale. So the Lutherans pick their own little pope like Walther and find out what he said and then settle the question based on that.

This is so far from what Luther did. Indeed scholars I read say that one of the many contributions of Luther was the use of the grammatico-historical method of finding out what the text of Scriptures say. In other words, putting the text into its context and drawing out the meaning of the text based on that.

This is one of the reasons that the Synodic Lutheran is thrown to and fro by any wind of doctrine that comes along, Eph 4:14. They have done their theology by proxy rather than doing it on their own. You do not need to be a Greek expert to handle the Scripture, you just need a faithful translation.

Going back to Pr. Rydecki's work, I find it a joy to read his expositions and translations. This is my opinion: between the work of Dr. Jack Kilcrease (who admits that UOJ practices equivocation) and Rev. Paul Rydecki, the latter exhibits sound and trustworthy scholarship in my book. So I would go to Rev. Rydecki's insights all the time and pray God keeps him trustworthy.

Will the real oddball please stand up?

I, along with Dr. Jackson, the Ichabod, have been called an oddball by a Lutheran Internet blogger. The actual quote by Martin Yee can be found here, at Beggars All Reformation run by a good Internet acquaintance, James Swan.

No one calls you an oddball unless the person is opposed to what you stand for and since I am known as an anti-UOJ, I can only assume that the gentleman who called me by that label must be pro-UOJ. I am not deluded in thinking I am well liked by people, I am not. Now,  I have been to his blog and I could not detect if he has his own articulation of UOJ since most of his posts are bits and pieces of items normally from various authors, i.e., theologians or scholars, and since he recommended to James Swan to read Marquart on UOJ, I can safely assume Yee accepts the authority of the UOJ masters.

So let me consider some of the creative ways UOJers are using Scripture to promote the idea that all have already been justified, declared righteous and hence, forgiven automatically at the Cross.

The first attempt was in Romans 4:25. In this post I have outline why their favorite verse does not teach their theory but rather that if an individual swallows such interpretation, he/she must swallow other inconsistencies against Scripture. Indeed, this is where the Synodic Lutherans of USA are quite peculiar to the rest of the Lutheran world. In fact, they are peculiar also to the rest of the Protestant world.  Only the subscribers to UOJ take Romans 4:25 to mean that by that verse the whole world even those yet to be born are already justified.

The second one is Colossians 2:14 found in this blog post by a member of Steadfast Lutherans [sic] (so they call themselves) found here.  Let me repeat what was said and let me put my emphasis on a bad interpretation of Col 2:14

This is to say, there would be nothing real for faith to receive and cling to. When we talk about the objective nature of justification, the terms used relate to Christ’s work as it satisfies the legal requirements of the Law with the whole of mankind in view. That is, the record of debt against the world, with all its legal demands, has been blotted out (Col 2:14), the sins of the world absolved, and this pardon is now freely offered to all in the Word and Sacraments. Some will receive through God given faith this gift to their joy, while others will sadly continue to reject this gift to their own damnation (Mark 16:16)

I have reacted to this interpretation and you will find my counter discussion of this found in my posts, here and here. I have continued to reflect on this passage over the past months and in this occasion I shall add more argument why Col 2:14 is being misused in that quote.

According to Pierce, by virtue of Col 2:14, all legal demands against the world are gone; the Law has no more teeth to bite anyone. Something fishy is going on in here because the word “world” is being used without qualification.  Is this true, that the world has already been absolved of the Law’s demands? If so, why do we baptize anyone? Scripture says that sin is transgression against the Law. If the Law has no more claims on anyone, even perhaps a Christian, why do we confess our sins and why do we have the promise that if we confess them God, cleanses and forgives (1 John 1:9)?

If we read the whole context of Col 2:14, i.e, verses 8-14 inclusive we see that St. Paul was referring to the Christian, it is only to the Christian where the demands of the Law have been thwarted because as v.12 says he/she has been baptized, meaning the sinner has been incorporated into Christ by that Means of Grace. St. Paul was addressing the Christian living in Colossia. The thwarting of the Law’s demands happens only to the believer and not to the whole world without qualification.

This is sometimes where I find how UOJers are like Calvinists in the reverse order. When the Bible uses pronouns, like “us”, we” and they are a referent to the Christian, the UOJer interprets it to mean the whole human race. On the other hand when the pronouns “us”, “we” as a generic referent to the human race, the Calvinists confine it to believers.   It is only through the JBFA Lutheran that I find there is consistency and respect for the language of Scripture.

Scripture interprets Scripture, in fact according to St. Paul which I have stated in the said posts, it is the Christian who is not under the Law, because he is now under grace -  Romans 6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.

Who is now under grace? It is the believer, the sinner who trusts in Christ. It is the one united with Christ who is freed from the claims of the Law because he/she has died with Christ in baptism. The Law has no more claim on dead people yet only those in whom the Means of Grace have been applied are the ones declared dead by St. Paul in Romans 6.

So here once again, we see a peculiar way of taking Scripture found in Col 2:14.

Please do not get me started on Ephesians 2:15.  Luckily no one has yet attempted to say the same thing in the Ephesian passages.

So I say, who is the real oddball here? The UOJ Lutheran or the JBFA Lutheran?

Confessional blah blah

Whenever I encounter a Lutheran identifying himself as "confessional", I go catatonic.

What does that mean? It does not mean the person believes in JBFA, it usually means the person believes the opposite; it usually means the person is a Universal Objective Justification adherent, i.e. a Huberite.

Take the case for example of "Lutheran" bloggers in the Internet. You will often read about them going on and on about the ancient traditions of the church discussing finer points of detail and so on. In fact, such people careless about whether or not UOJ is true or false. Often they think this is a minor point of disagreement. So they go to war on the liturgy, they go to war on lots of peripheral issues, they go fighting about what is minor -- always considering that the major issue is done deal already. They consider the doctrine of justification as something that can be set aside, because they think they got this down pat right.

You see when you become a UOJer everything becomes boring, you need something to get excited about.

So what is happening in Lutheranism is something I have seen before in Charismanic Evangelicalism.  When I was in it, the "in" word was "Reformed" so and so. That prefixing of identifying one's self with such a label is a way of getting traction, a way of getting an audience, you might say. It is a way of saying - look man, I am cool.

So when I read folk in Lutherdom saying "I am confessional" etc etc blah blah, often the cynical side of me comes out, I do a lot of LOLing. Because my friend, what some really mean by that is that they are really "synodical", meaning they are a follower of their synod and their synod's extra Biblical pronouncements.

The word "confessional" has been polluted. What matters if you ask me is not what the label one tacks on to oneself, what matters is what really the person believes and teaches and confesses. The label worths nothing.

When you think justification is no longer an issue, my theory is that you will fight for something else.

LPC

Mourning with you

UPDATED:

About 80% of the readers of this blog come from U. S. A.

Dear friends, my heart goes out to you. Like you I am also in pains I feel the hurt with what just happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

My prayers go out to those who have been directly affected by this tragedy.

This is Christmas, it is in general a sweet time for children. This is a terrible tragedy for those parents who lost their kids in this senseless act.

UPDATED:

TURN OFF THE NEWS.......



"Morgan Freeman's" brilliant take on what happened yesterday :

"You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why.

It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed
people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

CNN's article says that if the body count "holds up", this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.

You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news."

________

Apparently Freeman denies ever saying this in his Facebook. I wish he had said it because there is more truth to the above critique than we care to admit. We should give credit to whoever hacked into his account - he might as well, come out and own up to it because there is some brilliant insight in that piece.

LPC

You can end your career by just one paragraph

I am loyal to my alma mater. She is good to me. She gave me free education and also provides me with paid work from time to time.

A refreshing aspect is the culture of my faculty where the only description I have is that of egalitarianism. It does not matter what your title happens to be, you stand on the merits of your ideas and that is where you are judged.  Even those more senior than you treat you as an equal.  They do not treat you like a kid.  I remember one particular seminar when our dean spoke. As typical there is Q & A at the end of a public lecture. I was impressed of how the dean was allowed to suffer due to the cogency of the questions thrown at him, even by junior lecturers.  No one is sacred. No one is treated like a god or a guru.

In university world rankings, my university used to be among the top 50 but lately she has dropped to the 60s group. Of all the universities here, she has the most controversial history.

This year we are commemorating the 10^th year anniversary of the shootings that happened in 2002. That year a disturbed Chinese student open fired in his economics class. From memory, he killed two of his classmates. A couple of professors went in to subdue him. That is probably the most significant incident but there is another one.

Around that year too, the Vice-Chancellor of my university was forced to resign. The VC is like your CEO, while the Chancellor is like your President. The first is like the Prime Minister while the second is like your Head of State having more a ceremonial role. Why did he have to resign?

The story went that our ex-VC was guilty of plagiarizing several times.  The first couple of times were when he was not even our VC yet and they happened 20 years before coming to our university! One might say that happened in the past it should not count. Not so. The third incident was discovered by one of our professors while reading the VC’s book on the connection of drinking with alcoholism.  This book was also published many years before he stepped into our university. The ex-VC authored his book but he copied some sections word for word even punctuation from another book. It was so appalling that the professor who discovered this labeled the act as an act of serial plagiarism. In the end none of the Council members (Board of Trustees) needless to say, he was asked to resign.

 In academia, you can really end your career by one act of sloppy or lazy referencing. It does not seem to be the case in the world of Internet theology blogging.  It seems church people and theologians have a very poor standard compared to academia.

Hunnius proves Steadfast Waltherians are Huberites

UOJers, all of them, teach that there is a justification that has occurred 2000 years ago to the whole human race. Since this occurred before you were born, then this occurred outside of faith. They call this objective justification.

What is the favorite Scripture they use to promote this?

 It is Romans 4:25. They believe right here in this verse, St. Paul is teaching a justification that occurred without any reference to faith

 Here is an example.

 1.) From again Steadfast Waltherian group found here, Jim Pierce writing:

In wrapping up my answer, we can talk about the entire human race, or the world, being justified—just as the Scriptures do (Ro 4:25)—as the action God took in response to Jesus’ resurrection from the dead where the Law is concerned

2.) From my interaction with one adherent of UOJ:

ME: "Joe it is different because Brett and I do not believe in the starting point that there is justification that has happened FOR all men without faith or without regard to faith. That is difference. The difference is that we do not posit or assert a universal justification." 
Joe: You are speaking against Romans 4:25.

3.) Again from a post just recently by a Steadfast Waltherian blogger found here. To prove the existence of an objective justification that occurred outside of faith, the blogging pastor says this (apparently taken from Francis Pieper):

Romans 4:25: He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. “To refer to the words: Who was raised again for our justification,” to the so-called subjective justification, which takes place by faith, not only weakens the force of the words, but also violates the context.”3

It is evident just from the sampling on how Romans 4:25 is being used that without a doubt, UOJers in general and the Steadfast Waltherians in particular believe in a justification that occurred without reference to faith.

What does Aegidius Hunnius say?


Hunnius : 
Thesis 6
Hence Paul, when he expressly discusses justification in Romans 3 and 4, does not know of a justification apart from faith, and especially as Galatians 2 plainly says, "Man is not justified except by faith in Jesus Christ."


Did you read that? According to Hunnius, in Romans 3 and 4, St. Paul DOES NOT KNOW OF A JUSTIFICATION APART FROM FAITH.

Since UOJers are quoting Romans 4:25 to prove this, and obviously verse 25 is part of Romans 4,  these people I quoted above KNOW of a justification without faith.  Here Hunnius, a well known old orthodox Lutheran assails them or they boldly contradict him.

This is where American Synodic Lutherans are peculiar to the rest of the Protestant world.  It is only they who take Romans 4:25 that way. They are also peculiar amongst the rest of the Lutheran world! According to Bruce Church if we count the Lutherans who believe this stuff, there are only 2.5 Million of them who teach this stuff, out of some 45 Million (or so) Lutherans in the world.

The Hunnius quote I provided proves that the Steadfast Waltherians are Huberites or at least shares the conviction of Huber on this point...and that is not a good thing. If I were you I won't get involve with that. False teaching is a dangerous thing and we ought to be fearful of it. I know I am.