Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1954, Page 48

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48 Proceedings of the Forty-Third Convention,

condemned creature, purchased and won me from all sins, from
death, and from the power of the devil,” ete. Surely no one would
want to charge Dr. Luther here with teaching that Christ merely
offered the payment of our debt and that the acceptance of this
payment is not included. Can a man be spoken of as truly redeemed
before the payment price has been agreed upon and accepted?
And can the divine decision to accept Christ’s offering and to
release the sinner from his guilt be looked upon as anything but
a juridical act of divine justice? Luther’s “redeemed” therefore
embraced justification.

And Dr. Bente also said: “According to The Statement of
1872, the universal and perfect redemption embraces within itself
the universal justification or the absolution of the entire world of
sinners” (Lehre und Wehre, LI [1905], 449); and: “One may well
say, therefore, that in so far as man is part of the entire redeemed
mankind, God is not angry with him; but in so far as he is per-
sonally an unbeliever, God is angry with him. ... If now someone
should ask, ‘Has the general mass of mankind been absolved and
not the individual?’ then you have to reply: ‘Notwithstanding the
fact that God is reconciled with all and with each individual, never-
theless a judgment of absolution or of condemnation must still be
passed upon each individual’ [Jedoch ueber jede einzelne Person
muss ein Gericht ergehen entweder der Absolution oder der Ver-
dammnis]” (ibid., p. 454).

Consequently it is going too far to say that “the Common Con-
fession does not teach objective justification, but merely a universal
redemption; for such an allegation implies that the redemption
of mankind does not embrace but excludes the actus forensis,
which it does not.

It is for this reason also that we cannot accept as valid the
position taken in Tract No. 3 of the honorable Wisconsin Synod,
entitled Every Sinner Declared Righteous. For further elabora-
tion see A Fraternal Reply from page 4 to page 6, 2d paragraph,
“.. cannot be charged to the Common Confession.”

That which follows on page 6 of A Fraternal Reply (third para-
graph, to end of page) is the answer to allegation No. 7, namely,
“that the Common Confession gives support to the thought that
justification occurs only when faith is already present.”

The answer to charge No. 6, “that the Common Confession still
leaves room for the thought that the justification of the sinner
is not complete until the missing factor of personal [subjective]
faith is supplied,” is found in Another Fraternal Endeavor,
pp. 10, 11: “And because the Common Confession .. .” to end of
second full paragraph, p. 11, “... a finished product, a verdict com-
pleted once for all.”

From what has thus been presented in Another Fraternal
Endeavor, A Fraternal Reply, the Lutheran Witness, and in this
essay it must be clear by now that one cannot with justice insist
on a rescission or repudiation of the Common Confession on the
ground that it does not clearly or unambiguously teach the Scrip-
tural dctrine of Objective Justification. That on occasion this
doctrine could perhaps be stated differently no one will deny.