I agree with all of your Post...
Do you agree that in Saint Peter's Pentecostal Sermon, it's Proof Regeneration Prevenes Faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
Yeah, I'm going to ignore the specifics of that wording because it is doctrinal language and the matter is not that complex.
What I will say is God saves, God saves with purpose, the purpose is His purpose and His purpose alone so, therefore,
if God regenerates a person, then He will also do all else that is necessary to ensure His work is completed. The idea that regeneration would/could ever occur without
also faith ensuing is not just unscriptural, it is nuts. We speak of the ordo salutis but that is a human construct. God saves. He does not partly-save. God acts monergistically, not synergistically. At no point is the Creator ever dependent on the creature. He spoke creation into existence and, if He so chose, He could speak you, me, Leighton, Flowers, and
everyone else out of existence and so radically out of existence that there'd be no memory of our ever having existed in the first place.
Here's something I recently shared with an inquirer in a PM.
Suppose you and I happen upon an unconscious body lying on a beach. We naturally go up to it and shake the body. We say, "
Hey! Hey! Are you alright?" and we check for a pulse (let's say it exists but we cannot find it!
), the rise and fall of the chest or an exhale from the mouth or nostrils and, again, there is breath, but it is so meager that were we to not intervene the person laying near death on the beach would die. The body is unresponsive.
The person does not know it
The person does not know they are near death and they do not know or
understand they will be gone if we do not intervene.
So, being good people who don't want anyone to die
, we perform rescue breathing and eventually the body resuscitates. The person awakes. Everyone is happy. We say to the person, "
Come with us and we will take you to the hospital and get you checked out."
It is ONLY at that point the previously unconscious person on his/her way to death has a choice.
The
person who had become a near-dead corpse lying on the beach had a will. Prior to the loss of consciousness that person had an ability to make choices. They could see and hear and understand but the minute the lost consciousness ALL the faculties of their will, all their volitional agency became irrelevant and useless. You and I could have preached the gospel until our mouth was parched and our breath labored but not a word of it would have any effect on the nearly dead person lying on the beach.
Having invited
the now living and breathing resuscitated person to go with us to be cared for further, they have a choice to say "Yes! Help me! Help me all you can! I will do all that you ask. OR they can just as freely say, "
No thank you. I appreciate having been brought back to life but can do the rest. I will go to the hospital if and when I have need to do so."
The Arminian/Calvinist or Provisionist/Calvinist or monergism v synergism debate
assumes the will of the sinner is relevant, not just salient but the minute the relevance of the will synergism falls apart and monergism alone can remain. This irritates synergists immensely because they cannot
prove the
sinner's will is relevant. They quote verse after verse but 1) all the verses they quote are people already living within a covenant relationship with God and 2) all the verses they quote are read
inferentially, not contextually. They take verses written by Christians to Christians
about Christians and try to apply them to the unregenerate non-Christian.
That is not how Bible exegesis works.
Think about the covenants that are mentioned throughout the Bible. Did God as Noah if Noah wanted to be chosen? Did God ask Noah if he wanted to be called? Did God ask Noah if he wanted to build an ark, witness the destruction, or be saved from the flood?
No!
Examine Abraham's experience. Before God chose Abram, did God ask Abram if Abram wanted to be chosen? No, God did not ask Abram
anything before choosing Abram. Dod God ask Abram if he wanted to be called? No. Did God ask Abram if he wanted God to initiate any covenant with him? No. Did God command Abraham with any stated report God would allow Abram to disregard the command to leave Ur? No, He did not.
How about Moses? Was Moses
asked if he wanted to be chosen? Was Moses asked if he wanted to be called? Was moses asked if he wanted to be commaned? Was moses asked if he wanted to be brought into the existing Abrahamic covenant?
No.
So we see the precedent God established for inclusion in any and all God-initiated covenant is...
God chooses monergistically.
God calls monergistically.
God commands monergistically.
God initiates the covenant monergistically.
And it is only
after the one chosen and called into the covenant is provided with any opportunity to make a choice (Noah builds an ark, Abraham perform circumcision, Moses leaves for Egypt, etc.). And most, if not all, cases we have some record of God already at work in these individuals long before they were ever called. Moses was prepared from the moment he was laid afloat in the river. Paul was raised in a Roman/Greek/Jewish family. Jacob was chosen before he was even born!
Yes, they did each have to make a choice but the choices came only
after they'd already been brought into the monergistically initiated covenant.
And most of what I just wrote goes way over the head of the average synergist. They are not prepared to hear it, much less understand it....... because their allegiance is first to a soteriology, not scripture.
I was the same way when I was first brought to Jesus like fishermen hauling a net full of fish out of the water.
Ephesians 2:8-10
- We are saved by grace.
- We are saved through faith.
- Having been created in Christ, we are saved for good works that God had planned for us to perform before He saved us.
Nowhere does scripture ever state we are saved
by faith. We are
justified by faith, not saved by it.
