Bruce Church on Rydecki versus Kilcrease

Melanchthon's eloquent statements about justification by faith are abundant in the
Augsburg Confession and the Apology.

bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Pruning Makes Us Productive, According to John 15:...":

Rev. Rydecki vs. Kilcrease on Bondage of the Will:

See the paragraph that starts out:

"One of the most profound difficulties arguing with the Anti-OJ crowd..."

http://www.faithalonejustifies.com/brief-response-to-dr-kilcrease/  

Kilcrease:
One of the most profound difficulties arguing with the Anti-OJ crowd is that they have no understanding of this dialectic (I’ve treid (sic) to discuss Bondage of the Will with them, and none of them have read or have any appreciation for its content). When you start as they do with the idea of OJ as a generalized abstract relationship that God has with the world, rather than who God is and what he has done in means of grace (as opposed to the God of the law or the hidden God) then obvious (sic) the assertion of OJ is going to sound very odd indeed.

Rydecki:

I can only speak for myself, but I have read Bondage of the Will several times.  I read it again recently to see what I must have missed, since Dr. Kilcrease seems to think it supports his position.  On the contrary, I found only one arrow after another shooting at the heart of UOJ.  I wonder to what extent Dr. Kilcrease understands Luther’s dialectic.

Are we to believe that “objective justification” is “who God is”?  Are we to believe that objective justification is “what he has done in the means of grace” for those to whom the means of grace have never been applied? Is it part of God’s nature that He has already acquitted all sinners and declared them to be righteous?  If one wishes to say that God’s nature is to forgive or to be gracious, no one argues with that, since it is clearly revealed in Scripture.  But to say that God has already forgiven and declared all sinners righteous apart from the means of grace and apart from faith is to fabricate things about God that He has not revealed in His Word.  This must be the “hidden God” who has (without revealing it in Scripture) forgiven all men without faith in Christ!  The revealed God has said that He is the Justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom. 3:26).

Bondage of the Will would be an interesting discussion sometime. One quotation for now will suffice: 

This pair of statements by Paul, that “the righteous lives by faith” (Rom. 1:17), and that “whatsoever is not of faith, is sin” (Rom. 14:23), stand confirmed.  The latter follows from the former; for if it is only by faith that we are justified, it is evident that they who are without faith are not yet justified; and those who are not justified are sinners; and sinners are evil trees, and can only sin and bear evil fruit (Revell edition, p.301).

The SynCon UOJ fanatics are so locked in the Walther mentality
that this graphic has been used as a good example of Lutheran theology.

---

Daryl Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Bruce Church on Rydecki versus Kilcrease":

With regard to Rydecki's quote from Bondage of the Will, Melanchthon puts it this way (Apol. Art. IV, Conc. Trigl. p141): "...we maintain this, that properly and truly, by faith itself, we are for Christ's sake accounted righteous, or are acceptable to God. And because 'to be justified' means that out of unjust men just men are made, or born again, it means also that they are pronounced or accounted just. For Scripture speaks in both ways. Accordingly we wish first to show this, that faith alone makes of an unjust, a just man, i.e., receives remission of sins.