ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 89 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Thank you, Dr. Maxwell. You've explained this doctrine pretty clearly. But I'm still thinking at my attempt yesterday to discuss this with the congregation member. Can you give us any recommendation about how to present this doctrine to people? I don't find it easy at all. >> DR. DAVID MAXWELL: That's kind of you to say that I presented it clearly. Although, it makes me worry a little bit because if it's too clear, maybe I didn't do my job correctly. But yeah, I can give you a few practical recommendations. And that is, first of all, don't start with election when you are describing the Christian faith. This is not the heart and center of the Christian faith. You start with justification actually or possibly original sin and moving to justification. John 3:16. You emphasize the means of grace. You emphasize the promises of Christ in the scriptures and the promises of Christ that he brings to us in the divine service through word and sacrament. That is where people get their confidence. And once they learn that and once they are able to reflect on that and appreciate that, then they are in a position to hear that what God is doing for them on Sunday morning in the divine service is actually something -- it's not something that God just recently decided to do. But this was his intention from the foundation of the world, that he was going to save them. And in that context, election would be very comforting to people. That they are in God's hand. That this was the plan from the beginning. And that what they are experiencing in church is all part of that plan, God's plan from the beginning. I would recommend Matthew 25 as a good text to try to get across the doctrine of predestination. Simply because it has that asymmetry to it. The sheep inherit the kingdom that was prepared for them from the foundation of the world. Whereas the goats go into a fire that was prepared not for them. Their condemnation was not prepared from the foundation of the world. But that fire was prepared for the Devil and his angels. So that gets that point across, that salvation is God's intent from the beginning. Condemnation is not his intent from the beginning. This is human responsibility. The Lutheran position -- by the way, I neglected to mention this -- is called single predestination because we believe God predestines people to heaven but he does not predestine people to hell. So I would recommend Matthew 25 as the best text to try and explicate this. And finally, returning to the point that we've made a number of times. This distinction between information and proclamation. When election is simply information, it can be very intimidating because it is confusing to people. And it is something that is -- bears directly on their salvation. So it's not a pleasant experience to be confused about that. But what's going to make it comforting is once you are ordained and you are in a position where you have the authority to preach the Gospel and -- on behalf of Christ to forgive sins, in effect what you're doing is you're electing people. So if somebody is concerned about whether they are elect or not, as a pastor you're in a position simply to elect them. Solves the problem. And you do that by bringing them the Gospel. You preach the Gospel. You preach the forgiveness of sins to them. And that brings salvation. And then as we reflect on that salvation, that was God's intent from the foundation of the world. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***