What does an unregenerate heart lack that keeps a person from coming to faith?

[Josheb]

@Josheb
Thank you for posts #53 and #54!

Thank you for the kind words. The appreciation is appreciated.

Lacking the education you have,

It's about learning, not education. Anyone can learn.

I have a lot of studying to do!

Then get busy . Get out your Bible and examine every sentence I posted in those two posts. Verify their veracity. Let me know where I erred. Do that with everything you read. It can be time consuming but it'll help make the learning stick and it insulates us from bad teaching. I learn quite a bit from internet forum discussions, sometimes affirmatively and sometimes in antithesis.

 

[Josheb]

Why does God need to put up a road block for the construction of a road that only He Himself can build? It would seem to me that if God needed to move first, the road block would already be in place. Just do nothing.

Why God does or does not do something is not the subject of this discussion. The question is a red herring and any answer I'd provide would just take the discussion further afield of the op, but, more importantly, assuming that question is sincerely asked, the answer should already be known and if that is not the case then you should stop posting in this thread, take a break from posting in any forum and devote that time to studying the many, many times God put road blocks in people's way.

Focus.

"Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim,

otherwise

they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed."


I disagree. It may start as lust, or having fun with what appears to have no negative consequences, but people do bottom out, and they don't go to any of the anonymous' to find God, but to get help.

Are you aware how often you anthropomorphically psychologize scripture when it comes to salvation.

I disagree.

That is your prerogative, but is there an rational exegetical basis for the dissent? So far, the answer is decidedly, no. So do better. Question your own views before any attempt to sell them to others.

It may.....

Speculation is never sound exegesis (especially when it is not based on anything stated in scripture and comes from worldly origins) and it is never a rational basis for establishing sound doctrine and never a justifiable basis for persuasion.

....people do bottom out, and they don't go to any of the anonymous' to find God, but to get help.

(sigh) I am a recovering addict. I literally lost ten years of my life in my addiction. There are no recreational drugs I have not used and used frequently and in large quantities. I spent five years in rehabilitation because I was a hard-heading addict. In the beginning I attended AA because I was compelled to do so by the courts but I kept going many years after obtaining sobriety, many years after coming to Christ. Along the way, after many years of academic study, I became a professional counselor. I did my internship in a year-long residential treatment program (not a 30-day short-stay get-them-detoxed-only type place). When I began my practice I specialized in addictions (later switching over to marriage and trauma). I know a lot about AA and you do not need to waste time in this thread justifying mistaken views. If you were going to base anything relevant to this op on AA the best starting place would have been.....

Does God send anyone to AA?​

But your natural (pun intended) inclination is to human-centrical psychologize the matter instead of starting with the Creator. Presuppositionally, most of these ops start there. Try reading scripture Theo-centrically. Try understanding the world Theo-centrically.

 

[Eleanor]

Eleanor, do you think that I'm arguing against God's sovereignty? I'm just asking questions. Isn't this way better than beating up on Arminians?

Dave

Not seeing the merit in being inaccurate. . .

 

[Josheb]

The disciples could not understand some of the parables, like the Sower.

That is correct.

The COULD NOT understand. Now apply that to all other unsaved, unregenerate sinners. Unsaved, unregenerate sinners CANNOT understand some of the parables. But let's not equivocate because the Matthew text indicates they did not understand any of the parables and Matthew 13 has reported only one occasion when Jesus explained the parables. That is the chapter where we find the first mention of the word "parable." More importantly to this op, the reason they understood any parable is stated: the keys to do so had been given to them. It was not something natural to them. Absent the giving of those keys the COULD NOT understand.

They needed it to be explained in plain speaking.

No. They need the keys to be given to them. Otherwise no further explanation would have been any more salvifically salient than their inherent inability to understand. You have couched your interpretation in speculative psychology and not what the text states. Couching your explanation in speculative psychology you've ignored the one explanatory statement in the text: the mysteries had been granted to them. To all others it had not been granted. Had they not been granted those mysteries they'd have been like every other unsaved, unregenerate sinner on the planet = UNABLE to understand.

One could make the argument....

More rank speculation. More rank speculation that diverts from what is plainly stated in the text.

......that it's the parables themselves that make people unable to see of hear them. It's not like these disciples were born again.

If they saw the kingdom then they were born again. They may not have been born anew from above as modern-day fundamentalist evangelicals define the term but that is a problem of modern-day fundamentalist evangelicalism, not scripture. Be very cautious about sitting in God's chair and deciding the eternal disposition of people you've never met to arbitrate when they were and were not born anew from above. There are many huge problems with your point of view. Among them would be how ignorant people preached the gospel of the kingdom, why God would use such people, How God would act fruitlessly in the case of anyone thusly gifted NOT being born again, and why you would think that is the case when the gospel plainly, explicitly states the mysteries of the kingdom had been granted to them.

Matthew 13:11

New International Version
He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.

New Living Translation
He replied, “You are permitted to understand the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven, but others are not.

English Standard Version
And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

Berean Standard Bible
He replied, “The knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.

Berean Literal Bible
And answering He said to them, "Because it has been granted to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of the heavens, but to them it has not been granted.

King James Bible
He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.

New American Standard Bible
And Jesus answered them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted.

Mark 4:11

New International Version
He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables

New Living Translation
He replied, “You are permitted to understand the secret of the Kingdom of God. But I use parables for everything I say to outsiders,

English Standard Version
And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables,

Berean Standard Bible
He replied, “The mystery of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to those on the outside everything is expressed in parables,

Berean Literal Bible
And He was saying to them, "To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside, everything is done in parables,

King James Bible
And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:

New American Standard Bible
And He was saying to them, “To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but for those who are outside, everything comes in parables,

The underlying fact is that every single one of those disciples was summoned monergistically. Neither God nor Jesus asked any one of them if they wanted to be chosen. None of them were ever asked if they wanted to be called. Every single one of them was commanded to follow Jesus with an explanation they would obey and not a single person chosen and called failed to follow Jesus as purposed by God (including Judas). EVERYTHING you post is built on a monergistic foundation that gets ignored and everything built on that foundation is either speculative human-centric psychologization of scripture or very bad eisegetic interpretation.

They only had the Holy Spirit upon them, and that limited their understanding already.

Hmmm.... The Holy Spirit limited their understanding by not fulling birthing them anew. That would be monergism = God deciding what happens with/within His creatures.

What would have happened if....

Aside from the fact sound doctrine is not built on rank speculation nor anthropomorphic psychologization thereof, the fact is the speculation is asking us to ignore what is plainly stated. The essence of the inquiry is, "What if we ignore that part about God doing something?" The better question is, therefore, what if we did not ignore what is explicitly stated and based our views on what the text actually states? The answer to the questions is an unequivocal, "NO!!!" and the reason we know that is because no one is reported to have understood except those to whom knowledge and understanding has been given.

That seems to be.....

More speculation. More inferential treatment of scripture.

...what Isaiah is saying in 6:8-10. Rendered so that they could not see and hear, lest they believe, right? I'm not sure what piling on means. Are dead made more dead, etc., or are they're being able to believe if not hardened a hypothetical?

The hardened people were already hardened. That's why God further hardened them. This was not the first time that had occurred. The stroy of Moses and Pharaoh is an obvious example. Pharoah never had an opportunity to be anyone than who he was. Centuries before then God had told Abraham his descendants would be enslaved in Egypt for 400 years but God would release them and have them carry away the wealth of Egypt. When that 400 years expired it wouldn't have mattered who was Pharoah because that Pharaoh was going to be the Pharoah that presided over the economic destruction of his entire nation. On top of, inn addition to, all of that, scripture states Pharoah hardened Pharoah's heart and Pharoah again hardened Pharoah's heart, and he did it again and again and then God hardened Pharoah's heart. God did not ask Pharoah is he wanted to be the ruler that would lose all. He decided that matter before Pharoah was ever born. God did not ask Pharoah if he wanted his heart more hardened. He never gave Pharoah an option to not have it further hardened. Had God not hardened Phaorah's heart Pharoah still would have been the self-hardened, hard-hearted Pharoah who lost the slaves and wealth of Egypt.

So your "what ifs" are answered by scripture. The fact the questions are asked in absence of scriptures' answers is a huge problem. The fact that passages in the prophets, the gospels, and the epistolary are interpreted without the consultation of, or knowledge of, whole scripture is another huge problem. You openly set out to confront and question the views of others but that happens using a broken standard.

The already self-hardened people of Isaiah did not already perceive and understand and neither did they repent and be healed. They did not come to God and the only time anyone ever comes to God in the entire Bible is when God Himself rends the fabric of creation to work in those people for that purpose. It is God who brings His people back to the land He promised and He always does so in spite of the fact He would be completely justified if He killed them all and wiped their existence from the record of human history.

 

[Josheb]

All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God Romans 3:23 is a justification statement. Romans 3:11-13 (I'm sure, implied). What do you think about the statement that 'they all turned aside'? What did they turn aside from that made them that way, implying that they were not always like that?

How about you stop dodging the points made and stop asking red herring questions and stop psychologizing God's word? How about you start with what is plainly stated? How about you stop changing the subject to another verse before resolving the problems first brought to your attention?

The point made was that there are no autonomous people. There are only those who are saved and those who are not saved, those who are gifted and those ungifted. The implication of Romans 3:11-12 is that they turned away because they do not understand and the reason they do not understand is because they are not righteous (you left verse 10 out). A lack of righteousness (which is sin) begets a lack of understanding (which is sin because God originally made man knowing God and knowing Him in a right relationship which changed when sin entered the world), and none seek God in that state. They are profane, murderous, destructive people who do not know and have never known the path of peace. Paul samples from David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, and others to show that the condition about which he is writing is not one that is solely contemporary to his time period. The problem has existed ever since Genesis 3:7. They turned away from God.

Genesis 3:8 NIV
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

Jesus described this condition centuries later.

John 3:18-20 NIV
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.

Humans love darkness and WILL NOT come int the light. That is the problem to be solved. Humans cannot solve that problem by themselves because the problem is ontological. God, therefore, in His grace, has seen fit to intervene on our behalf for His glory even though none deserve it. Its is a gift. ALL of it is a gift. Every constituent element of salvation from sin and wrath is a gift. Left without that alternative every single human ever created after Genesis 3:8 simply plods through life as animated corpses in what they wrongly image is a life on their way to destruction.

The basic fact of scripture is that causality is rarely explicitly stated in scripture but where it is stated it is always reported to be God and not the faculties of sinful flesh or the volitional agency of the sinful, unsaved, unregenerate. No matter what you post it will always be posted atop that fact. It will always be posted atop the fact of the monergistic Christological covenant.

And you are not engaging that fact. The silence is avoidant. Many posters have asked you to provide an explicit example of what you post and we get only inferential examples based on speculations that ignore what is stated.

As it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one."

Dave

Yes, and it also states no one can come to Jesus unless the Father drags him there. It also tells us the flesh is sinful and the natural man CANNOT understand the things of the Spirit. IT tells us works do not save. It tells us God's salvific mercy is dependent on God's will and purpose and not dependent on how a man works or wills. It also tells us the thoughts of the flesh are hostile to God, the heart is darkened and God has given those who refuse to acknowledge the witness of creation over to their lusts.

The fundamental problem with your AA analogy is you couched it in the addict going to AA when scripture tells us no one seeks God. For you AA analogy to be correct you would have had to post no one goes to AA of their on volition; they have to be dragged there.

As was the case in the previous thread, there are way too many problems (conflicts with scripture and inconsistent reasoning) for this op to stand as true. As was the case with the previous thread, it has proven difficult for any respondent to get you to stick with and address the first things brought to bear on this op. In my case the very first point was that sinners desire to sin and sin is not like any other sickness known to humanity according to scripture . God chose Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then the Hebrews, and then the house of Israel and all the rest of the world went on about the business of sin, sinning, and denying God. None of them came to God. That is the screaming silence of whole scripture.

 

[Dave]

The text does not say, "hearing by faith." It plainly states, "hearing by the word of Christ." Therefore,

I said it backwards. I was replying to your claim that faith by hearing meant in post 47. Just switch hearing by faith with faith by hearing and then you can answer the post, if you like.

Furthermore, the faith through which a person is saved is gifted to that person by God (Eph. 2:8) and not a faith inherent to their own sinful flesh. Do not read fleshly faith into the text. That would be another interpretational error - an addition placed onto the text that is not supported by the text - on your part. Comparing others' prospective errors with errors of our own is nonsensical.

What Post 47 argues Romans 10 says is, "So salvific faith comes from the fleshly hearing of the sinfully dead and enslaved unregenerate non-believer, and that hearing is by faith, the faith of the sinful flesh." That's what we'd read if we placed your views into that verse. That is NOT what the verse states.


Now I tried to walk through this before in the prior op. Your first error is assuming this verse is about salvation from sin. It is not. These people - the people to whom the verse was written, the verse about whom the verse was written are all already saved people. The salvation about which Paul is writing has absolutely nothing to do with salvation from sin. In the prior thread you acknowledged these are already saved people. You acknowledged the letter was written to already saved people. What was not acknowledged is the fact the verse is written ABOUT already saved people. You are taking a verse written ABOUT already saved people and you're trying to apply it to unsaved people. You are taking a verse ABOUT another salvation and you're trying to apply it to salvation from sin.

In other words, there are five or six exegetical errors you are committing and continually committing despite the errors having already been brought to your attention multiple times.

In other words, you are replicating the same old run of the mill discussion had thousands of times in discussion boards. Sto making the same exegetical errors. Start challenging your own views before seeking to challenge others. Stop measuring others' views with erroneous views.

If faith came from eating bananas, it wouldn't change the fact the the Gospel message is believe and be saved. One does not rely on the other for it to be true. I'm simply asking questions and challenging your interpretations of Scripture. I told you that I would do that in the OP. So, if you want to argue against your the Arminian position go right ahead, but as you said, it's been gone over a million times in this forum already. But please don't assign your Arminian friend to me. you're the one who brought him into this discussion.

You may quote Romans 10 all you like but until you surmount the problem of the stated contexts the only result will be the run of the mill conversations has thousands of times in internet soteriology boards.

Yes, it tells the saints, the already saved and regenerate brethren, what to do after having heard the word of Christ. What it does not speak about is the unsaved. What it does not speak about is those living outside a God-initiated Christological covenant. It says nothing about those people.

Romans 10:11-17
For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes in him will not be disappointed." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on him; for "Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved." How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things." However, they did not all heed the good news; for Isaiah says, "LORD, who has believed our report?" So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.


Whoever believes in him will not be disappointed. Great. Show me the person scripture explicitly states believes in Jesus with His sinful unregenerate flesh and I will then read verse 11 with that in mind. Absent any such precedent in the Bible I will ask you to discard that interpretation and understand the question in light of the fact scripture never provides an explicit example of anyone anywhere ever doing that.

Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Great. Show me the person scripture explicitly states calls on Jesus with His sinful unregenerate flesh and I will then read verse 11 with that in mind. Absent any such precedent in the Bible I will ask you to discard that interpretation and understand the question in light of the fact scripture never provides an explicit example of anyone anywhere ever doing that.

Otherwise, "There is no one who calls on Your name, who stirs himself to take hold of You; For You have hidden Your face from us and have surrendered us to the power of our wrongdoings" (Isa. 64:7) is the context for Paul's writing and you need to challenge your interpretation of the verse, not mine.

How then can they call on him in whom they have not believed? They cannot.

Who has believed our report? No one! The only ones who ever believed were those in whom God was already at work for the purpose of their salvation. Faith, which is a gift of God and not of ourselves, comes from hearing and hearing comes by the word of Christ. Most people are ever hearing but never understanding because God has not provided them with the keys to the mysteries of the kingdom. He has, instead, handed them over to darkness and lusts on top of their already debilitating (lethal and enslaving) condition of sin.


And I can provide multiple examples of people believing God after God has been at work within them to that effect. The problem is this is your op, and the burden is on you to provide an example of the opposite: one person coming to God one his own with nothing more than the faculties of his sinfully dead and enslaved flesh, understanding the word of God salvifically with the ears and brain of sinful flesh that has been given over to its lusts, and calling upon Jesus with the volition of the same sin-filled, dead and enslaved, flesh.

Just one explicit example.

Challenge yourself before challenging anyone else. Go through the Bible and find at least one explicit example. Not one you infer to be the case. An explicitly stated example.

But Josh, there is no such example; you're unjustly limiting the discussion.

Am I? Do you not believe we should start with what is explicitly stated and build first upon that? Or do you think we should start with eisegetic inferences, add more inferential readings on top of that and build our doctrines that way?

Start with what is explicitly stated.

Show me the person explicitly stated to come to God salvifically, believing salvifically because of his sinful flesh and outside a monergistically initiated Christological covenant.

Or.....

Ask yourself why it is you believe in something that is not found explicitly stated in scripture.

Well, the Trinity is not explicitly stated.

No, that is not true. The word "trinity" may not be found in the Bible but there are several verses making equivalent statements between God and Jesus. More importantly, an appeal to silence (argumentum ex silentio) is not what you want to be building your argument on. Neither is a false equivalence between the silence of a sinful non-believer making himself a salvific believer and the Trinity.

Romans 10 does not state what you say it says. Paul is quoting from the prophets, not writing in a vacuum (and definitely not writing in the context of doctrines developed hundreds of years after his death).

Josh, this is me saying it, not Paul. I'm using Paul's words, but it's me saying it outside of any context. This is the Gospel message, the Word of faith that we preach.

"That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.""

Is that the Gospel message that we preach to the lost or not? A simple yes or no will do. Believe, and you will be saved.

Paul, speaking to believers, and speaking about believers, in Ephesians 1:13 says, past tense, that the way that they were saved was from believing. He even goes on to mention the sanctification that happens after that fact. That's what I believe that "redemption of the purchased possession" is talking about. But it doesn't change the Gospel message. Put it in any context, it's still the truth. Believe and be saved.

Ephesians 1:13-14 In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.

This idea is not unique to a few passages. Believe and be saved. I'll be waiting for your reply to my confession above.

Dave

 

[Dave]

Prove it.

Josh said "intellectual assent being salvific." Yet you claim in your definition of John 3:3, that one needs to be born again to understand, or to see. Meaning, they cannot even understand what they need to know to be saved, let alone desire it. Which brings us to the next thing...

Paul just stated he possessed volitional agency in his flesh BUT he could not find how to perform good. He could choose his favorite flavor of ice cream and which sandals to buy, but he was not able to find any good within that ability to will.

Today we call that "total depravity."

You missed the point that I was making. How can the flesh, even though it can't do what is good, desire to do what is good and right? That's interesting, don't you think? At the very least, maybe we should re examine some Scripture that seems to say the opposite. Like is Romans 3:10-12 really saying what we claim that it is? That's just an example.