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Birth Before Belief

Discussion in 'Calvinism & Arminianism Debate' started by tyndale1946, Jun 25, 2018.

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  1. 1689Dave

    1689Dave Well-Known Member

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    If salvation is conditional, it is not of Grace. You turn it into law when you make it conditional. And self-righteousness results in those who approach it this way.
     
  2. 1689Dave

    1689Dave Well-Known Member

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    You must take it all or none of it. Paul says the natural man cannot discern spiritual truth. And the Gospel is exactly that. Spiritual truth. Now you can hose it down into a law even Al Capone can keep. But he'll never discern the true Christ apart from the new birth. Many Jews worshipped Satan thinking their idea of YHWH was on target.
     
  3. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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    The lost Jews who still read and know the OT know the real Yahweh, as scriptures have revealed that to them, but unless they know Jesus as messiah, they know of Him but do not know Him in a saving fashion!
     
  4. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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    "R mitchell,
    said this:
    As if you name a "fallacy" instead of answering....let's try that:Redface

    Rm said these;
    Rm has committed the say the opposite of what the verse says fallacy, by ignoring vs.13 which explains vs.12
    vs13-13 Which were born, not of blood, .nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God
    speaking of 1 cor2...he says
    Here is the I have no idea what I am talking about fallacy, so I will invent my own version of the facts in complete opposition to God's revelation of truth

    The error continues;

    The I am off the rails fallacy.

    next;


    This is the I do not welcome biblical truth fallacy
    next;
     
    #144 Iconoclast, Jun 27, 2018
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2018
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  5. Jesus Saves!

    Jesus Saves! Active Member

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    Would you say salvation is conditional based on how we respond to the gospel?
     
  6. InTheLight

    InTheLight Well-Known Member
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    According to your beliefs, I suppose. But not according to the Bible.

    No, Paul says the natural man "cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God". What are these things? Says in verse 6 that these things are discussed among mature Christians, says in verse 10 they are the deep things of the Spirit.

    Objection! Irrelevant and a non sequitur.
     
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  7. Revmitchell

    Revmitchell Well-Known Member
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    The natural man doesn't mean lost it means those who rely on worldly wisdom rather than godly wisdom.
     
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  8. Benjamin

    Benjamin Well-Known Member
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    Your conclusion which you start with pretty much defines "question begging".

    It's also like saying that if someone offers you a gift and you reach out to take it that you've self-righteousness earned the gift.

    Your boogeyman accusation of Pelagianism is meritless.
     
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  9. Benjamin

    Benjamin Well-Known Member
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    If God is the judge of your response to His freely given offer of truth then His grace is conditional only on His judgment to provide mercy in loving grace which you did not work for, He did all the work, but you received it according to His will based on His judgment. You seem to deny His ways of judgment which must be based on something [volition] to be truth.

    (Deu 32:4) He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
     
    #149 Benjamin, Jun 27, 2018
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  10. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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    Complete denial of scripture...in the english or the greek
     
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  11. Benjamin

    Benjamin Well-Known Member
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    FYI, your interpretations are not scripture and you don't even speak Greek but blindly rely on others [Cals] to to interpret that for you. That said, we won't go into your methods of interpretion according to the use of English... ;)
     
  12. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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    His denial and false teaching is just that...in any language....Did I say what I wrote is scripture?..Where was that?:Cautious Can you and ITL perhaps show actually what I posted rather than what ...YOU SUGGEST i MIGHT POST.:eek:
     
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  13. Benjamin

    Benjamin Well-Known Member
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    You said he denies scripture. Are you aware of the accusation there?! In English??? Or have you said things like this so many times that it is simply habitual behavior? I said your interpretation is a NOT scripture clarifying the meaning "that" [your interpretation] is what is being denied, rather than your insinuation that he denies scripture.There is good reason that I would feel the need to make that distinction and this is that in English, that [deny scripture] is what you said. .
     
  14. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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    "Benjamin,

    Yes...it is a direct denial of scripture....here is his quote;
    Paul is contrasting the man under the dominion of the flesh...the natural man...with the man who God has saved and indwelt with His Spirit.
    Paul is consistent in his teaching on this...in all places...like here-

    5 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.

    6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

    7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

    8 So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

    9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.
    Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

    The natural man.....all men born in Adam do not come with the Spirit indwelling them.
    To deny this , is to deny directly the teaching of scripture....

    1 Corinthians 2:14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised: psuchikos de anthropos ou dechetai (PMI/PPI) ta tou pneumatos tou theou, moria gar auto estin, (PAI) kai ou dunatai (PMI/PPI) gnonai, (AAN) hoti pneumatikos anakrinetai; (PPI):

    Amplified - But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them [of progressively recognizing, understanding, and becoming better acquainted with them] because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated.

    Barclay - A man who has no life but physical life cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God. To him they are foolishness and he cannot understand them, because it takes the Spirit to discern them.

    NLT - But people who aren't Christians can't understand these truths from God's Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them because only those who have the Spirit can understand what the Spirit means.

    Wuest Expanded Paraphrase - But the unregenerate man of the highest intellectual attainments does not grant access to the things of the Spirit of God, for to him they are folly, and he is not able to come to know them because they are investigated in a spiritual realm.

    The truth revealed does not change because religious snowflakes do not like to hear it. This is not a mistake, but a deliberate falsehood being offered.....the text has no support for such a bogus idea....if you do not like it...find a" safe space" where you will not be confronted on falsehoods being offered as truth by someone who has posted more than anyone else on the BB.

    Nonsense.....RM has me blocked so...he does not react to what i post...he was inflicting this on others.
     
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  15. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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    But - Whenever you encounter this term of contrast, pause to ponder and ask what is being contrasted? The contrast is between the lost and the saved, respectively referred to as the natural man versus the spiritual man. We are all born natural men in Adam (Ro 5:12-note), but when we believe the "word of the Cross" (1Cor 1:18), we are transferred from our position "in Adam" to our eternal position "in Christ" (by grace through faith). As Peter says we "become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust (a description of the natural man's life)." (2Peter 1:4-note)

    A natural man - This person is lost, unsaved, unregenerate, devoid of the Spirit of God, one who has only physical life. In this passage Paul states that the only way a natural man can accept and understand the supernatural Word is via a supernatural Source, the Spirit of God.

    Adrian Rogers describes the natural man this way - Now, if you're a natural man and never have been born again—and a natural man is a man who's only had one birth. He was born into the natural world and he is bound by the material world. He's only had one birth and he can never ever know the things of the spirit of God until he has a second birth.

    NET Note on natural man (psuchikos… anthropos) - “an unspiritual person, one who merely functions bodily, without being touched by the Spirit of God.”

    Natural (5591)(psuchikos from psuche = soul) is literally "soulish" with affinity to natural sinful propensities, the person in whom the sarx, the flesh, is more the ruling principle. Psuche is the nonphysical element which makes one alive, conscious of the environment, and is to be distinguished from pneuma or spirit, which is a distinctive of man as the element of communication with God.

    Jude describe men who had crept into the assembly seeking to turn the grace of God into licentiousness (Jude 1:4-note) as "the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded (psuchikos), devoid of the Spirit." (Jude 1:19-note) And so the natural man does not have the Holy Spirit. Paul amplifies this in Romans writing "you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him." (Ro 8:9-note) And so the natural man does not belong to God, is not part of God's family, which explains why he cannot understand the "family language" so to speak. In 1Cor 2:12 Paul describes himself as a spiritual man who is the antithesis of the natural man, for the spiritual man has not received "the spirit of the world, but the Spirit Who is from God." In that same passage Paul presented another distinction between the spiritual and natural man, namely that the spiritual man (Paul speaking of himself) can "know the things freely given" by God, but the natural man cannot know (or understand) them (1Cor 2:14).

    Wuest - The word “natural” is the translation of a Greek word which Paul uses to describe to the Corinthian Greeks the unregenerate man at his best, the man whom Greek philosophy commended, the man actuated by the higher thoughts and aims of the natural life. The word used here is not the Greek word which speaks of the sensual man. It is the word coined by Aristotle to distinguish the pleasures of the soul, such as ambition and the desire for knowledge, from those of the body. The natural man here spoken of is the educated man at the height of his intellectual powers, but devoid of the Spirit of God. The word translated “receiveth” does not imply an active appropriation, but a certain attitude of passive acceptance when favorable, and of rejection if unfavorable. This man, whose powers of apprehension are limited to the exercise of his reason, does not admit these spiritual things into his heart. The reason for this rejection is that they are foolishness to him. (Ibid)

    Friberg summary of psuchikos = of life in the natural world and what pertains to it; (1) as governed by sensual appetites and lived apart from the Spirit of God natural, unspiritual, worldly (1Cor 2.14; Jude 1:19); (2) as being a characteristic of the earthly body physical, natural (1Cor 15.44); neuter as a substantive - what is physical (1Cor 15.46). Jude 1:19 calls the teachers of error worldly (lit. ‘psychic’) people, who do not have the Spirit. (Analytical Lexicon)

    Barclay - Even then it is not every man who can understand these things. Paul speaks about interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people. He distinguishes two kinds of men. (a) There are those who are pneumatikos. Pneumais the word for Spirit; and the man who is pneumatikos is the man who is sensitive to the Spirit and whose life is guided by the Spirit. (b) There is the man who is psuchikos. Psuche in Greek is often translated soul; but that is not its real meaning. It is the principle of physical life. Everything which is alive has psuche; a dog, a cat, any animal has psuche, but it has not got pneuma. Psuche is that physical life which a man shares with every living thing; but pneuma is that which makes a man different from the rest of creation and kin to God. So in 1Cor 2:14Paul speaks of the man who is psuchikos. He is the man who lives as if there was nothing beyond physical life and there were no needs other than material needs, whose values are all physical and material. A man like that cannot understand spiritual things. (His interests and aims do not go beyond physical life). (1 Corinthians - William Barclay's Daily Study Bible)

    As Dr DeHaan says "Regeneration… is a supernatural act of God whereby a spiritual creation takes place, and we behold things which are utterly unknown and must remain completely unknown even to the most cultured, sophisticated, educated of those of Adam’s race who have never experienced the new birth. And now we come to see the striking contrast in our Scripture. The natural man, the unregenerated man, sees none of these glories of this Book and of salvation and of God’s plan of redemption. He lives in an entirely different world, the world of sense and of sight, touch and sound. The tangible world is the habitat of the natural man in his unregenerate state, and he is, therefore, totally ignorant of the spiritual realm which transcends all of these things." (1 Corinthians Commentary)

    Barclay on natural man - He is the man who lives as if there was nothing beyond physical life and there were no needs other than material needs, whose values are all physical and material. A man like that cannot understand spiritual things.

    Chuck Smith on natural man - That is the way you were born, the nature you inherited from Adam. The theologians have a term, "The Adamic nature". It refers to what they term the unregenerate man. This is every man who has not be born again. Jesus said to Nicodemus, "You must be born again, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit." Paul in another place refers to the natural man as the old man. (Ro 6:6) "knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin" Paul described the characteristics of the natural man in Eph 2:2-3 and Eph 4:17-19. (Chuck Smith Sermon Notes)
     
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  16. skypeace

    skypeace New Member

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    I believe salvation is totally of Christ by Grace, through Faith, thanking Father for the gift of Faith, and His election which brings me to Him. Regeneration makes it possible for us to believe with a saving faith, to hear His Word in a saving manner, to accede to His Lordship and thus testify to Him.
     
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  17. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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    Nice post...welcome to Baptistboard...
     
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  18. Benjamin

    Benjamin Well-Known Member
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    And I disagree with your interpretation [or as you like to put it: “Your complete denial of scripture.”]:rolleyes:

    ;)

    Odd you would try to rely on consistency pertaining to Paul's meaning of "natural man" and what/who it is in relation to.

    Like elsewhere, Paul prayed that believers needing spiritual growth would come to knowledge of the full revelation of God.

    (Eph 1:17) That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:

    In 1Cor 2:14 Paul is not speaking of understanding and accepting the Gospel but the deeper revelations of the spirit of more mature Christians. You should take note that these infants are not yielding to the spirit but are letting their carnal passions, things like trying to force fit systematic determinism AND Predestination, into their understanding because as Paul says they [believers] are spiritually discerned meaning they are ineffective and unproductive in their knowledge of Jesus Christ. Kind of like when you spout off at those who scoff or mock your gospel and you tell them that not all have been preselected to respond to His calling.

    It seems that just like in the scolding Paul was giving to the Jews you just can't stand the thought that the Gospel is a genuine and obtainable offer to all.

    (1Co 3:2) I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.

    In comparison Paul is saying believers that have difficulty discerning between good and evil, as Calvinist typical do, when they try to impose their interpretations which assign the predestined evil upon God, that they shouldn’t be trying to be teachers.

    (Heb 5:12) For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.

    (Heb 5:13) For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe.

    (Heb 5:14) But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

    The “natural man” spoken of is in reference to struggling to digest strong meat while Calvinists try to take from the meaning and try to insist it means man is too depraved to accept God and thus force fit their systematic doctrines of Irresistible Grace. Kind of an oxymoron that Calvinist would try to single out and use this scripture this way when in fact it is calling them out for missing the full revelation that Jesus has died for whosoever shall believe.
     
  19. percho

    percho Well-Known Member
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    Amen...

    but has been made manifest now by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who has annulled death, and brought to light life and incorruptibility by the glad tidings; (Gospel) 2 Tim 1:10

    It was good news told to the believing ones, so they would then know that their salvation had been wrought.

    who is marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of sanctification, by the rising again from the dead,) Jesus Christ our Lord; Rom 1:4
    because whom He did foreknow, He also did fore-appoint, conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be first-born among many brethren; Rom 8:29

    Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. 2 Cor 5:5
     
  20. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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    Benjamin,

    You have every right to disagree and I am glad to see you offered scripture to support your ideas this time...let's see what you have got my friend.
    ;)

    Benjamin...virtually every source was completely agreed on this...it is not a disputed passage at all....Did you notice i even quoted Chuck Smith and adrian Rogers who despise Calvinism?

    yes...i agree with you here,and as a matter of fact. i would rather discuss those sections of scripture more than we do on BB.
    (Eph 1:17) That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:
    This is a great portion of scripture...paul praising God for electing grace and mercy, bursts out in prayer and praise, and he wanted everyone to come to that knowledge.

    Why would you suggest it is an either or, rather than a both and statement? I am going to suggest if you men were not trying to oppose the Cal teaching you would see it right off...first read...

    It was a new church with new professed converts that paul began to rebuke for the sin of sectarianism.....at this point in the letter.
    He is rebuking them by saying they are acting like unsaved, natural men of flesh...rather than Spirit filled persons who should be growing.



    No...this is only in your mind...Paul had no problem with Calvinistic teaching as he wrote most of it.
    look in chapter1;
    2 Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both their's and our's:
    26 For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:

    27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

    28 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

    29 That no flesh should glory in his presence.


    He rebukes them because they have the Spirit and should have known what he was speaking of already...

    they were distracted by sin.
    Well Benjamin...not all are called effectually.....in order to tell the truth this is part of a balanced presentation, both with those who profess and those who do not profess faith...

    Why would you say that...when i have explained to you several times that i offer the gospel to every person i get an opportunity to? I spend many hours in public like right now...have only had 3 opportunities that were substantial today....but i will be here for several hours more...
    The gospel belongs to God....I am just to be faithful and occupy until he comes and obey mt 28....I pray for these very occasions that God provides....


    yes...sin had them all twisted
    Now of course that is not found in the text...but you are trying to take your shots ...you know, like you and ITL were trying to accuse me of a day or two back..lol Hypocrisy much?:Roflmao

    This fine portion of Hebrews is specifically about the writers desire to discuss the priesthood of Melchisedec...you were not going to try andlift this out of the book for nefarious purposes???:Cautious

    No..the word was used in greek literature for man..even at genius levels...who were devoid of the Spirit...I gave support for this in refuted RM.

    .
    Calvinists just see and believe it for what it is...that it fits perfectly is what probably led to a formulation to the remonstrants error.

    No the Calvinist correct understanding shows how paul rebukes them....for ACTING AS MERE MEN...CARNAL , NATURAL UNSAVED MEN.... that is why it is a rebuke:Thumbsup:Thumbsup:Thumbsup...not sure how you with your "logic "cannot see it.:Redface:Redface:Redface
     
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