A Lutheran publication recently carried an article entitled, LUTHERANS HAVE ABANDONED THE APOSTLE PAUL, SIGNED ON WITH AUGUSTINE INSTEAD
Scripture tells us everything that can be shaken will be shaken so that which cannot be shaken shall remain. (Hebrews 12:27-29). In I Corinthians 15:46, God’s normal progression is 1st the natural, then the spiritual. In the movie “Evan Almighty,” everything that man created was destroyed and everything God created was saved.
Recently, there was a mighty shaking in the natural, as seen in this picture of the Minneapolis bridge collapse on IH 35. Interestingly, I just traveled that road from Austin, Texas about a month ago, and the Apostle Paul ministered on universal reconciliation there in Minneapolis. My Lutheran friend, Dr. Jack E. Jacobsen has become a catalyst for a spiritual shaking right there in Minneapolis with the Lutheran denomination
THE ARTICLE READS: A Lutheran pastor and global missionary has a message for his denomination. Dr. Jack E. Jacobsen, who served congregations in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota, and is a one-time missionary to Nigeria says, Lutherans have abandoned the Apostle Paul and his promise that God intends ALL people to be saved.
Instead, says Jacobsen, Lutherans have preferred the teachings of Augustine, who taught some people are destined for eternal life, but not others. He argues that Lutherans endorse this view through their doctrine of election.
In The Theology of St. Augustine, A Biblical Analysis of Church Doctrines, a booklet he has self published, Jacobsen says, “Church Fathers [who] lived after Paul, and before Augustine, had a universalistic theology. [They believed] that our universal God would bring his universal creation back unto himself.”
Jacobsen quotes the church historian, Howard F. Vos, who says of Origen, one of the church fathers who lived after Paul’s death, “[He] believed the souls of ALL that God has created would someday return to rest in the bosom of the Father.”
In a challenge to his own denomination, Jacobsen says, “Let us abandon in our churches the theology of Augustine and let us repent and return to the teaching of God’s Word, to the prophets of the Old and New Testaments, and especially to Paul.”
“Augustine saw election for some,” he argues. “Paul saws ALL of mankind elected to know their Creator and Redeemer by the revelation of the Holy Spirit.”
Copies of The Theology of St. Augustine are available by sending $3 to him at 8617 Edinbrook Crossing, Apt 315, Brooklyn Park, MN 55443. Also there was a previous posing about Dr. Jack on July 14, 2007.