Fundament 7: Arminianism; Synergism in Lutheranism; Piepkorn: "merciless", "monotonous"

      This continues from Part 6 (Table of Contents in Part 1), a translation of Franz Pieper's essay on the foundation of the Christian faith ("Das Fundament des christlichen Glaubens"). — Now we move to the category of the Reformed churches that Chuck Smith, founder of Calvary Chapel, identified as encompassing those who have “Methodist, Nazarene, and other Arminian-influenced backgrounds”.  There are very many Reformed sects in America… who knows how many of these are Arminian-influenced?… perhaps the majority of them? And to think of it – these have their basis in the later position of the author of the Lutheran Augsburg Confession.  Pieper bares all in this segment.

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Text preparation and translation by BackToLuther using DeepL, Google Translate, Microsoft Translate, Yandex Translate. All bold text is Pieper's emphasis. All highlighting, red text, and most text in square brackets [ ] is mine.

Das Fundament des christlichen Glaubens.

The Foundation of the Christian Faith.

[by President Franz Pieper, Concordia Seminary; continued from Part 6 - page 99]

And what about the foundation of the Christian faith in the other division of the Reformed fellowships, the Arminian Reformed? In contrast to the Calvinist Reformed, they want to teach [page 100] the general grace extending to all people.

But for their part they now restrict the grace of God in another way, namely in the way that they teach that man's conversion and salvation do not depend on God's grace alone, but also on the fact that man participates in his part for the attainment of grace and salvation. God's grace is only a partial power (vis partialis) for the conversion of the human will. The divine grace can only assert itself successfully with human participation, non posse exire in actum sine cooperatione liberae voluntatis humanae. 38) Thus the attainment of the grace of God and salvation does not come on the sola gratia, but also, and crucially, on man himself, starting to stand for his participation, his self-determination, self-decision, better behavior in comparison with other people. But the grace of God and salvation does not even exist where this is a factor for its attainment, and a faith that is based on this foundation or is dependent on it is a human imagination that plunges into doubt and despair in every serious challenge.

And yet, this scripturally unsound and bleak Arminian-Reformed doctrine also emerged within the Lutheran Church. And very soon. Melanchthon was quite a good theologian as long as he followed Luther's guidance from God's Word. But when he learned to feel and strived for independence from Luther, his philosophy “plagued him”. He wanted to be wise beyond God's Word. He did not want to calm himself down by what Scripture teaches, namely that those who are lost are lost only by their own guilt, whereas those who are saved are saved only by God's grace. Rather, he wanted to explain by human reason why not all people are saved. He could have won the explanation sought in Calvin's way by denying, as Calvin did, the general grace of God and the general salvation of Christ. But Melanchthon did not like this “explanation”. But because he thought he had to “explain” (necesse est) it, he chose the explanation that was later officially written on the flag of the Reformed Church by the Arminian party. He denied the “by grace alone,” the sola gratia. He taught: “Since the promise of the Gospel is general and not contradictory in God's will, there must necessarily be in us [men] a cause of difference why Saul is rejected, why David is accepted, that is, there must be in the two a different behavior (actio dissimilis)”. 39) Melanchthon taught three causes of conversion (tres causae conversionis), two outside and one inside man. He made, next to the Holy [page 101]

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38) Thus the Apology of the Confession of the Remonstrants 1630, p.162 b. 

39) Loci, ed. Detzer I, 74.

Spirit and the Word of God, the human will (the voluntas non repugnans, the facultas se applicandi ad gratiam) to be a contributing cause of conversion. It was for this reason that in the second half of the sixteenth century the Lutheran Church experienced a hard, more than thirty-year struggle. It was necessary to recoup this “by grace alone” in the doctrine of conversion and eternal election. 

The truth completely triumphed. In the second and eleventh articles of the Formula of Concord the rubbish of the synergism of Melanchthon and the Philippists is thoroughly swept away. With clear testimony, the Formula of Concord expels the synergistic fog that wanted to settle over the Reformation Church. She calls to the Church of God: No tres causae conversionis, but conversion to God is the work of God the Holy Spirit alone, for which he uses preaching and hearing of the Word of God as the means and instrument ordered by God. The Formula of Concord complains, 40) that “Since also the youths in the schools have been greatly perplexed de tribus causis efficientibus, concurrentibus im comversione hominis non renati, that is, by the doctrine of the three efficient causes of the conversion of unregenerate man to God, as to the manner in which they, namely, the Word of God preached and heard, the Holy Ghost, and the will of man, concur”. And in a positive statement it adds “that conversion to God is a work of God the Holy Ghost alone, who is the true Master that alone works this in us, for which He uses the preaching and hearing of His Holy Word as His ordinary [and lawful] means and instrument. But the intellect and will of the unregenerate man are nothing else than subiectum convertendum, that is, that which is to be converted, it being the intellect and will of a spiritually dead man, in whom the Holy Ghost works conversion and renewal.” The Formula of Concord therefore also calls us into the Church: there is no acquiesce by man to grace (facultas se applicandi ad gratiam), but man, according to his natural nature, resists, also knowingly and willingly (etiam sciens volensque), the action of the Holy Spirit “until he is enlightened, converted and regenerated by the Holy Spirit”. 41) There is therefore also 42) no “different behavior” (actio dissimilis) and no different guilt, but if those who become converted and saved compare themselves with those who remain unconverted, they must confess the same guilt (eadem culpa) and the same evil behavior against God's Word and the action of the Holy Spirit. “Nos cum illis collati et quam simillimi illis deprehensi.” [page 102]

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40) M. 610, 90. Trigl. 915, 90. [BoC here]  

41) M. 589, 7; 593, 20. 21. [Trigl. 883, 7; 889, 20-21; BoC here, here]

42) M.716, 57ff. [Trigl. 1081, 57 ff.; BoC here]

If we Christians, in a hired comparison, assume a different behavior and a lesser guilt on our part, we would leave the foundation of the Christian faith,  the sola gratia. “For no injustice is done those who are punished and receive the wages of their sins; but in the rest, to whom God gives and preserves His Word, by which men are enlightened, converted, and preserved, God commends His pure [immense] grace and mercy, without their merit.” [§ 61, BoC here]  Finally, the Formula of Concord also testifies: what goes beyond these two revealed in God's Word, namely beyond one's own guilt on the part of those who are lost, and beyond sola gratia on the part of those who will be saved, is to be recognized and left unexplored as a mystery in this life which is unsearchable for human knowledge. So thoroughly and all-round, the Formula of Concord sweeps out the synergism of Melanchthon and his followers. It forbids the attempt to explain the way Melanchthon proceeded. It also most emphatically rejects the factors in which Melanchthon found the desired explanation by teaching: There is no tres causae conversionis, no facultas se applicandi ad gratiam, no different behavior and no different guilt on the part of those who convert and become saved, but among them there is the same guilt and the same evil behavior. — Nevertheless, synergism, with its doctrine of different behavior and its different guilt on the part of those who convert and become saved, has repeatedly re-emerged in the Lutheran Church in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, as in other countries, especially in the United States, has claimed the right to exist within the Lutheran Church. 

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      Pieper's teaching above is what Fuerbringer earlier labeled as one of his greatest strengths in discussions with opposing Lutheran groups in America – his ability to expose their hidden synergism (see Part 6, "Pieper as Theologian").
Piepkorn… or Pieper?

  Arthur Carl Piepkorn, in his 1977-1979 4-volume Profiles in Belief: The Religious Bodies of the United States and Canada lists several hundred "Protestant" church bodies outside of Lutheranism. Volume 2 lists dozens of divisions within what were considered the major branches of the Reformed groups: 

• Episcopal / Anglican, 
• "Reformed" / Presbyterian, 
• "Radical Reformation" groups – Congregationalists, Mennonite, Baptists, etc.,  
• Methodists.  

Volume 3 lists about 188 Holiness and Pentecostal church groups in America in the 1970s. Volume 4 lists dozens more under the headings of "Evangelical" and "Fundamentalist". Piepkorn's work may appear astounding to some.  Union Theological Seminary's Robert Handy, in the Introduction to Volume 2, p. xix, wrote that Piepkorn

"mercilessly reports on many, many small denominations,… later volumes will continue to spell out the details of the more than seven hundred religious bodies on the North American scene. It is good to have all this information in one place; … a diversity that in some respects contributes to the trivialization of organized religion. Probably most of us feel that this price of freedom is worth paying, but the litany of diversity does grow long and monotonous."

Piepkorn's "mercilous" reporting ends up being only a "litany of diversity… long and monotonous."  But Franz Pieper keeps it simple: The Reformed groups in America and their doctrine are either "Calvinist", "Arminian" synergism, or a mediation between these two subdivisions in doctrine.  And their "distinctives" against Lutheranism are much more than a "trivialization of organized religion".  Rather they destroy the foundation of the Christian faith. — In the next Part 8, Pieper continues his drive to expose the poison of Synergism.

“Walther as Churchman”, by L Fuerbringer (1 of 5); Altenburg Debate- Walther compares to Luther

[2019-10-08: added picture of Pastor Schieferdecker at bottom]
      Yesterday, October 3, 2019, Concordia Seminary announced that President Dale Meyer was retiring.  But that “Concordia Seminary” is far different from the one which began in 1839 – 180 years ago –, different from the way it was even in 1936, 83 years ago. —

      As far as I know, the following essay by President Ludwig Fuerbringer from the October 1936 issue of Concordia Theological Monthly (CTM) has not been translated and published in English.  It took me some time to decide to do this because of Fuerbringer's theological weaknesses, some of which show in this essay.  But the farther I went with it, it became clear that he reveals some aspects of Walther and the Old Missouri Synod that may not have been covered elsewhere.  The year is 1936, over 5 years after Pieper had passed away, and Ludwig may have just wanted to keep the memory of the father of Missouri alive for a younger generation.  But as I progressed with this translation, I wondered that even he noticed, in 1936, rumblings of unrest in the Synod and the Synodical Conference, and wanted to defend against erring brethren, especially in the areas of Church and Ministry.  But the hint of unrest will come later.

      The reader may note that I have rearranged the footnotes to follow their immediate paragraph, not the page, so that they are closer to their original reference, making it easier to follow.  I have inserted notices of page breaks of original CTM German language publication in <red markings>.

      Now I begin a 5-part series from the last President of Concordia Seminary to have any claim to the name "Old Missouri", an essay about the first President, and founder of the Missouri Synod.

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Original German essay in CTM, vol. 7 (October, 1936), p. 721-730, full text here. Text preparation and translation by BackToLuther using DeepL, Google Translate, Microsoft Translate, Yandex Translate. All bold text is Fuerbringer's emphasis. All highlighting, red text, and most text in square brackets [ ] are mine.

Walther as Churchman. *)

L. Fuerbringer, 1931

[by Ludwig Fuerbringer]

*) This present issue appears as a Walther issue especially considering that in October [25] 1936 one hundred and twenty-five years have passed since Walther's birth. — The Editor.

The present issue of our journal describes Dr. C.F.W. Walther's activities and merits for the Lutheran Church in general and for the Lutheran Church of our country in particular, following the fact that it was just fifty years ago that he actually completed his teaching and ministry with the close of the season at the St. Louis seminary in June 1886 and the meeting of the Detroit Synodical Conference the following August. For although he began his lectures again in September of that year and even served as a speaker at the meeting of the Western District of our Synod in October and concluded the topic that had been dealt with in this district since 1873, he was already a sick man and had to stop teaching and writing immediately afterwards, until the Lord introduced him to the rest of the blessed by a gentle, blessed death on May 7, 1887. In other articles Walther is described especially as a theologian and preacher, which were without doubt the most outstanding activities in his manifold and richly blessed ministry. But it seems to us to be of importance to present in a special way his work and his merits as a churchman, especially with regard to the design of our church system, which has now passed a nearly hundred-year trial. Quite rightly, outsiders have acknowledged that his church governing activity and his outstanding organizational skill, if I may use these terms, did not in the least influence the formation of the American Lutheran churches. And if I sometimes weave in personal observations in this description, one will find this explainable if one considers that the <page 722> number of those who are still personally Walther’s pupils is decreasing from year to year.

Walther had already held church office in Saxony, as is well known, and was very soon reappointed here in America as a pastor, first by that part of the Saxon emigrants who constituted themselves as a congregation in Perry County, Missouri, in Dresden, and then after the early death of his older brother Otto Hermann Walther as a pastor of the old Trinity congregation in St. Louis, the mother congregation of all St. Louis congregations. Walther maintained this parish office even after diversions had taken place and four districts had been gradually established and these had appointed their own pastors. These districts formed an entire congregation, and Walther was the main pastor or head pastor until his death. Walther was never merely a theoretician, but was always intimately connected with the life of the congregation and, as the longest serving President of our Synod (first from 1847 to 1860 and then from 1864 to 1878), was also in close contact with the life of the Synod. Walther possessed just excellent talent also in this part of his career, and I believe to be able to say that also the leader of the Saxon emigrants, Pastor Martin Stephan, recognized this and perhaps feared it.

Walther's talent as a practical church leader was already quite evident at the so-called Altenburg Colloquy [or Altenburg Debate] in April 1841. For even if it was above all a question of doctrine, namely whether the emigrants were still a proper church after the various aberrations they had taken, this question of doctrine had an eminently practical significance. And there it was Walther, who especially proved with convincing clarity in the eight famous theses to the skilled jurist Dr. Adolf Marbach that the emigrants were still a church, and thus carried off the victory and resisted the great confusion in this play. A few years later, Pastor A. Schieferdecker, who witnessed the disputation, said in a synod speech: 

“It did not take any more than that to free consciences from severe distress, to restore the almost sunken faith in many hearts and to make it alive as if out of death. It was the Easter Day of our hard tested churches where, like the disciples of old, they saw the Lord again and were filled with joy and hope in the light of His grace and in the power of His resurrection. There are still many present here who certainly remember this day with thanksgiving tears toward the merciful God. There are still quite a few of the faithful fighters present here who at that time stepped on the battlefield for the cause of Christ and his poor, torn flock, even the dear brother” — that was Walther — “whom God needed to be the noblest instrument in his cause. As important and significant as <page 723> the Leipzig Debate of 1519” — that was Luther's Disputation with the Roman Dr. Johann Eck — “for the Reformation became, as important — I dare say it confidently — this Debate held here at that time” (in Altenburg) “for the whole subsequent formation and shaping of our Lutheran Church here in the West” (of America) “has become. What was then won and fought for as the jewel of truth has proved its worth in all the subsequent struggles that our Synod has waged.” 1) 

And the German pastor R. Hoffmann, who is otherwise far away from us, says in a now quite rare writing, The Missouri Synod in North America, 1881, of this very moment: “In this misery, when one believed that one was no longer a Christian congregation at all, but a gathered mass, lost in time and eternity, there it was one man who saved them, that same Ferd. Walther.”

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1) More details about this disputation can be found in J. F. Köstering's book Auswanderung der sächsischen Lutheraner im Jahre 1838, [Google Bks] pp. 40-54, and in C. Hochstetter's Die Geschichte der Evangelisch-lutherischen Missouri Synode in Nord-Amerika und ihrer Lehrkämpfe, pp. 28-40, where the theses are also printed. Schieferdecker's synod speech can first be found in the “Second Synod Report of the Western District” of 1856, p. 7-8.

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      The material above has been covered by numerous other historians, but it is well for every Christian to be reminded of the importance of Walther's work for the American church. Pastor Schieferdecker's stirring comparison of Walther, at the Altenburg Debate, with Luther, at the Leipzig Debate against the Romanist Johann Eck, is not diminished by Schieferdecker's own later weakness of theology.  Pastor Schieferdecker later stumbled on the doctrine of millenialism (or chiliasm) but was then restored to the truth… by Walther. — In Part 2, we hear again Walther's teaching on the freedom of the congregations and the Synod's limited advisory role.

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Part 1 – This introduction; Walther's Altenburg Debate like Luther's Leipzig Debate

Part 2 – Freedom of congregations; Synod only advisory - Pfotenhauer stands firm

Part 3 – Against Romanizing; invisible Church; one True Visible Church; Local Congregation

Part 4 – Walther's Hymnal, Agenda (Order of Service); Loehe's Romanizing

Part 5 – Synod conventions - "so powerful", ”deep, lasting impression” on pastors, lay people

Fundament 6: Reformed, first the Calvinists; Calvary Chapel example

      This continues from Part 5 (Table of Contents in Part 1), a translation of Franz Pieper's essay on the foundation of the Christian faith ("Das Fundament des christlichen Glaubens"). —  Although Pieper praised the Presbyterians perhaps the most among the Reformed camp, yet he pulled no punches when it came to their Calvinistic doctrines.  B.B. Warfield attempted to paint the Reformed doctrine as essentially no different from Lutheran theology in one of the encyclopedias, yet Pieper points to a glaring difference in this segment.  Pieper admired the Presbyterians for their stand in the 1890s for the Holy Scripture, but he certainly shows them here where that breaks down when their teaching denies… John 3:16. — Pieper keeps his subject matter simple and avoids enumerating all the hundreds of Reformed sects in the USA.  He covers the two divisions among the Reformed – Calvinism and Arminianism.  All the Reformed sects follow either of these, or attempt to mediate between them. I review one of those Reformed sects below following Pieper's essay.

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Text preparation and translation by BackToLuther using DeepL, Google Translate, Microsoft Translate, Yandex Translate. All bold text is Pieper's emphasis. All highlighting, red text, and most text in square brackets [ ] is mine.

Das Fundament des christlichen Glaubens.

The Foundation of the Christian Faith.

[by President Franz Pieper, Concordia Seminary; continued from Part 5 - page 97]

The Reformed sects and the Foundation of the Christian Faith.

The Reformed fellowships  are divided into Calvinists and Arminians. That's how they divide themselves. The great American Reformed dogmatist William Shedd goes so far as to divide even all Christendom into Calvinists and Arminians. According to Shedd there are only “two great systems of theology which divide evangelical Christendom, Calvinism and Arminianism”. 28) The Lutheran Church, which in its confession rejects both Calvinism and Arminianism, is denied the right to exist. Another important American Reformed dogmatist, Princetonian Charles Hodge, joins Shedd in his judgment. Hodge declares the doctrinal position of the Lutheran Church “illogical” and untenable. 29)

Let us now first imagine how the foundation of the Christian faith stands with the Calvinistic Reformed. The characteristic of the Calvinist Reformed is that they deny universal grace (gratia universalis). Calvin thinks that God earnestly wants to make about twenty percent of mankind saved. He had created the remaining eighty percent to damnation. 30) Likewise the Westminster Confession of Faith of the Presbyterians: “Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called . . . but the elect only.” 31) The Princetonian dogmatist Charles Hodge also very vigorously limits God's will of grace and redemption through Christ to a small part of humanity.  Hodge, in terms of expressions, is not such a ruffian as Calvin, who speaks of “excessive ignorance”, “childishness” and “dullness” on the part of those who teach a general will of God's grace in Christ. 32) Hodge [page 98]

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28) Dogmatic Theology, I, 448.       

29) Systematic Theology, II, 325.     

30) Inst. III, 21, 5; 24, 12. 

31) Chap. III, 6.

32) Inst. III, 23, 1. 

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is more polite in his expressions. But [the doctrines of] only a partial will of grace of God and only a partial redemption by Christ he also holds to firmly and adds that it is against God's honor and dignity to accept a general serious will of grace of God and a general redemption by Christ. Hodge writes: 

“It cannot be supposed that God intends what is never accomplished; that He purposes what He does not intend to effect; that He adopts means for an end which is never to be attained. This cannot be affirmed of any rational being who has the wisdom and power to secure the execution of his purposes. Much less can it be said of Him whose power and wisdom are infinite. If all men are not saved, God never purposed their salvation and never devised, and put into operation, means designed to accomplish that end.” 

And specifically in relation to Christ's merit, Hodge adds: “If equally designed for all men, it must secure the salvation of all.” (Systematic Theol., II, 323) 

What becomes of the foundation of the Christian faith in this doctrine? Christian faith is, as our confession, the Apology, rightly says, fides specialis, that is, individual faith or personal faith, whereby a person who has come to know his sins refers to his person the grace or forgiveness of sins acquired by Christ for all men. Only “this faith, whereby everyone believes for his person (unusquisque) that sins are forgiven him for Christ's sake and that God is reconciled and gracious for Christ's sake, obtains forgiveness of sins and justifies us”. (M. 94, 45. [Apology IV(II) Trigl. 132-133, § 45, BoC here]) 

But the Calvinist denial of the general will of grace and of the general reconciliation through Christ's merit deprives this faith of the foundation which is inevitably necessary for it. Admittedly, as long as a person is still in a state of carnal security, has not yet awakened a conscience, it is quite irrelevant to him whether the grace of God extends to only twenty percent of humanity or to all human beings. But when the conscience wakes up, when the terrores conscientiae come, when the condemnation judgment of the divine law is felt in the conscience, then the twenty percent Calvinist grace fails completely. Then, under the pangs of conscience of the divine law, the sinner will count himself among the eighty percent of mankind for whom God will not save them and for whom Christ did not die. He will perish in despair if it cannot be proclaimed to him from the Scriptures that the grace of God in Christ extends to all men without exception. 

Calvinist must
become Lutheran

The Reformed themselves admit that. A more recent Reformed theologian, Matthias Schneckenburger, shows in his “Comparative Presentation of the Lutheran and Reformed Concept of Doctrine” 35) [page 99] that the Calvinist Reformed, who is seized by real knowledge of sin, must become Lutheran if he is not to die in despair in the challenge. Schneckenburger says: “The Reformed doctrine is in practice always pushed to the Lutheran side.” In short, the Calvinistic-Reformed doctrine of a grace that extends to only about twenty percent of the people destroys the foundation of the Christian faith. The fact that in the course of time millions of people from the Calvinistic-Reformed camp have nevertheless also been saved has primarily a two-fold reason. Some had never absorbed the deadly soul poison of the [doctrine of] only a partial grace of God, because their preachers were mostly very silent about the official doctrine, which so resolutely reads a denial of the gratia universalis. Others, who had absorbed the poison in themselves, have excreted it again in fear of conscience and death, because they were reproached with scriptural passages that testify to the general grace of God, albeit partly only out of embarrassment. In order to hold fast to the inevitably necessary foundation of the Christian faith, the Lutheran Church therefore confesses in the Formula of Concord: 36) “We must in every way hold sturdily and firmly to this, that, as the preaching of repentance, so also the promise of the Gospel is universalis (universal), that is, it pertains to all men”. 

How sturdily and firmly Luther held to the gratia universalis in order to hold fast the foundation of the Christian faith can be seen from the following concrete account: 37) 

“You may say: ‘Who knows whether Christ also bore my sin? I have no doubt that He bore the sin of St. Peter, St. Paul, and other saints; these were pious people. Oh, that I were like St. Peter or St. Paul!’ Don’t you hear what St. John says in our text: ‘This is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’? And you cannot deny that you are also part of this world. . . For if you are in the world and your sins form a part of the sins of the world, then the text applies to you. All that the words ‘sin,’ ‘world,’ and ‘the sin of the world from its beginning until its end’ denote—all this rests solely on the Lamb of God. And since you are an integral part of this world and remain in this world, the benefits mentioned in the text will, of course, also accrue to you.” 

Each one of us has also experienced more or less clearly that the foundation of his faith would have disappeared if he had not been allowed to cling to the one hundred per cent grace that excludes no sinner. 

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35) I, 200 ff. [or  I, 264 here]     

36) M. 709, 28 ff. [XI. Election, Trigl. 1070-1, §28, BoC here]

37) St. L.VII, 1717 ff. [Am. Ed. 22, p. 169]

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      One of the Reformed sects in America today was started by Chuck Smith († 2013), his popular Calvary Chapel movement which falls into the category of "mediating" between the two Reformed divisions.  In his book Calvary Chapel Distinctives, p. 121-122 he stated:

“We’re neither ‘Five Point Calvinists’, nor are we Arminian.  We do believe in the security of the believer. We don’t believe that you can lose your salvation because you lost your temper or told a lie and, as a result, need to go forward next Sunday night to repent and get resaved. … So we seek to take a balanced position rather than getting on one side and pressing the ‘Five Points of Calvinism.’ When you take hard stands on these non-foundational issues, you’ll just empty your church of all of those who have Methodist, Nazarene, and other Arminian-influenced backgrounds. Why would you want to do that?”

Smith, while attempting to avoid  the labels, admitted that "we seek to take a balanced position", which means he does not reject outright either position. He may not take "hard stands on these non-foundational issues" but neither does he demonstrate that some of these "non-foundational issues" actually destroy the foundation of Christianity. — In the next Part 7…

Martin Noland denies Universal Justification (UOJ)

Logia 1996, vol. 5, no. 4, p. 64
"Objective Justification—Again"
by Martin Noland
(picture c. 2012)

      Continuing my series of posts (Drs. Kolb and Detlev Schulz) demonstrating the LCMS opposition to a pure understanding of the Lutheran Doctrine of Justification, I offer the following quote of Rev. Dr. Martin Noland in the journal Logia, vol. 5 (1996), no. 4, p. 64 (emphasis mine): 

“It does not follow that because the human race is reconciled to God that each and every individual is reconciled.”

This blog has called out Dr. Noland numerous times, but this quote gets to Noland's core problem, his difficulty with the heart of Christianity. This quote explicitly denies Universal Justification or Universal Reconciliation.  One could assume that Dr. Noland is talking about "subjective justification", but he himself begins this statement with universality, "the human race is reconciled to God". Noland then asserts a statement of fiction and places himself dangerously close to another earlier theologian that Franz Pieper identified as an apostate, Johann David Michaelis.  I call on Dr. Noland to explicitly deny his 1996 clear statement and confess the true Lutheran Doctrine of Justification. Only then can he truly teach (*) what "Grace" really means, as Pieper taught.