Addendum: @Dave refers to the Romans 8 paragraph only once, and only to restate his chronology. He never tackles the clause that matters for the moral inability argument.
Where he mentions it: In reply to my exegesis he writes, "In that same passage (Romans 8:8-11), it says that with the Spirit of God you have Christ … You receive the Spirit
as a result of faith" (emphasis added). A few lines later he repeats the claim, tying the Spirit's "placing us into Christ" to a post-faith baptism. That is the sum total of his engagement with Romans 8:7-8.
As we can see, he skips verse 7 entirely. The flesh-governed disposition is hostile to God, does not submit to God’s law, and indeed cannot—a three-fold statement of moral inability that explains why those in the flesh cannot please God (v. 8). My thesis rests precisely on that logic: If pleasing God is impossible for the natural man (i.e., unregenerate), then faith, which pleases God, must follow regeneration. Dave never comments on verse 7 at all, so the inability premise went unanswered.
The in-flesh / in-Spirit antithesis: Paul does not present two stages in a believer's life, but rather two existential spheres: the flesh-governed disposition of the unregenerate ("in the flesh") versus the Spirit-governed disposition of the regenerate ("in the Spirit" (v. 9). By introducing a chronological gap—faith first, Spirit later—Dave turns this ontological either–or into a temporal before-and-after without showing where the text authorizes that move.
He quotes verses 8–11 to prove that indwelling comes after faith, but the paragraph itself gives no causal sequence. It says only that if the Spirit dwells in someone then he belongs to Christ; it never says the dwelling begins
because he first believed. Galatians 3 and Ephesians 1, which Dave imports to supply that timing, address covenantal sealing, not the initial quickening that resolves the inability described in Romans 8. In short, he shifts the discussion from
why the flesh cannot believe to
when believers are sealed, leaving the original impossibility untouched.
Although he references Romans 8:5-11, he bypasses the critical data in verses 7-8 and never engages the moral inability argument drawn from it (and elsewhere). My earlier assessment therefore stands: the core problem—how an in-the-flesh person can exercise saving faith before the Spirit intervenes—has remained unaddressed.
