All this does is suggest to me you are not listening/understanding a word I say for I made a statement as I saw your theology work out in practical terms regarding regeneration and belief (post#86).
All this suggests to me is that if you would actually respond to what I say, instead of picking one thing out of my post to use as an accusation against me, we might actually get somewhere. This is what you chose.
What are the ramifications of what I believe? That statement tells me nothing except that you have determined what those ramifications are but do not articulate them.
And now you claim post #86, made long before the post you are responding to gave those ramifications.
No he doesn't need to be regenerated. How can God draw a person to Christ if believing is dependent on regeneration? You effectively have to have a person saved before the Gospel on that basis.
And complained that I did not answer that except to say there was no point in explaining it to you again. It has all been explained to you before. But since you insist: A man who is alienated from God by the fact of being in Adam, and is himself full of his own sins, cannot approach God who is holy, holy, holy. Nor does he have any inclination to. He has to be made holy and that can only be done by God. He has to be born in Christ. And he cannot be born in Christ----that is hear the gospel and believe it, unless God has made Him able to do so before he hears and believes. That is not saying that they are saved before they hear and believe the gospel. The hearing and believing is the union being established.
To say that God gives enough grace to everyone so all have the capacity to choose Christ, is a possibility should God choose to set redemption up in that manner. But I see great damage done to grace and what saving grace is, and to who God reveals Himself to be, iow it is inconsistent with the whole counsel of God and contradicts other scriptures. Which is all laid out in the portion of my post you simply ignored and did not address. Which is this:
What you don't understand is saving grace. What I can only assume is that you do not realize that God always accomplishes what He sets out to do and how that applies to saving grace. He set out to redeem a people and through them the entire creation, to rescue them and it from the hands of an enemy combatant. It is that He chose some and not all that you resist.
If He extends saving grace to save a people then that grace goes where He sends it and it does what He sent it to do. Save. Not offer salvation that can be accepted or rejected, but to save. If a person believes the gospel when he hears it, it is not because he chose to believe it but because He does believe it. And if he believes it, that is not an offer, for if he believes it he would not reject it. He does not send a smidgeon of grace, just enough to make a person capable of choosing Christ if they want to.
You might try addressing that after having considered it thoughtfully, and the discussion can actually become a discussion.
So I asked you specifically to supply the reason I was wrong and how you could justify what I thought was a reasonable conclusion (post#94). I'm still waiting for that answer but instead I get the above in quote.
I did. In the post you are responding to. The fact that you ignored it or maybe could not understand how that answered your question does not mean that I did not give it.
And then I see you say this to another poster which is not what I have been saying at all.
You have repeatedly said that Reformed teaches that God causes us to believe or makes us believe. Whether or not you have used the word forces I do not know, many do, but it amounts to the same thing.
Look, I think you are most probably a very nice person but you seem to be making far too many assumptions about me to be able to understand what I'm saying
I do not know where you get the idea that I am making assumptions about you. I am simply responding to what you post. You are assuming that I am making assumptions.
Add to that, you say things that to my mind, make no sense. For example:
We have been taken out of Adam and put in Christ who does believe God. If we are in Him then we do to, so we believe in the person and work of Jesus.
It isn't that they don't make any sense. It is that, by you own confession, it doesn't make sense to
you.
Who is really doing the believing here? You or Christ in you? Christ in us is our faith (He is the word) but he is not doing our believing. If He were, we would all believe the same thing. It's pretty obvious we don't but we all have a measure of faith. How much faith will be determined by how much truth we believe.
I do not understand how you can see what I said as saying Christ is believing for us. If we are in Christ it is because we believe---who He is and what He did. And if we are in Christ it is because we have been reborn in Him. Before we were born in Adam and alienated from God.
Here is the rest of the post that you failed to address:
But think about the ramifications of what you believe as I outlined above. You have God not saving anyone because He first loved them but only loving them if they do the right thing and because they do the right thing. You have God giving us in great detail the whole long process of arriving at the redemption of a people, the next step being the consummation of that and a restored creation, war over and won; all the way to the birth of the Savior and the history of His life of righteousness and teaching; of Him going to the cross in agony of suffering to die in the place of those God was giving Him. taking their just punishment on Himself; defeating the power of sin and death over those people; you have God going that far and then in effect stepping away from Christ and the one's He died for, leaving the effectiveness of His suffering and dying in the hands of man and his whimsical choices.
Don't worry about it. I know it is scary. I have been there myself having trusted my salvation to me making a choice. If you believe it is because God has chosen you and given you to the Son. That is a much more reliable place to rest one's trust.
Do you suppose you could address it so the conversation is more than mere accusation?
