What can unregenerate man do?

John 12:32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw ALL men unto me.

The Spirit draws ALL men who hear the gospel. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the hearer to accept or reject Christ. If it were just a matter of God choosing some over others, there would be no need for Spiritual conviction; He would just declare the "elect" to be saved. The logical conclusion to Calvinistic thought is the exclusion of the need for belief on the part of man, which contradicts many passages of Scripture.

The elect describes all who believe. Predestination is based in foreknowledge of who will believe. FYI, the Greek word for "will draw" means to drag. The Spirit drags on the hearts of ALL who hear.

 

This raises another question for me. What exactly is foreknowledge? Is it God looking down through history seeing who will accept or what?

 

How is this related to what an unregenerate person can do? Are you saying that unregenerate cannot come until God draws them. At that point, God gives the unregenerate the ability to come. In other words give him a little bit of good to make a choice?

 

Sorry for slow reply, Been busy with school and work..

Your confusion with my view here is that when I say understand, I mean understand it truly. I don't mean they dont have a clue as to what the message of the Gospel is saying, but they don't really see the spiritual dimensions of the call that leads to action and repentance. So yes they might understand the call, but they don't understand their need, their condition, see reality, see Christ... If they did see spiritually and understand truly then they would repent and turn to Christ.

I disagree with your logic as I have pondered on this all day. I do think the call is genuine and I think there is a larger issue that arises when we say that Christ died for everyone. God's call is genuine to the un-elect. If they would repent they would have a propitiation for their sins, but they dont repent, do not have a Savior, and their sin remains upon them. We call out for the elect in Christ and labor for them. Not to say the unelect are unequal or less important, but they do not repent. Yet we do not know who the elect are so we call everyone. On a side note, if Christ died for the unelect and the unelect are still punished for their own sins then there is an unjust issue. If we believe Christ died for all and that God poured out the wrath of the unelect onto Christ then God has become unbalanced. The only argument that can be made is that people go to hell for rejecting Christ only, which is not biblical.

Im not exactly sure what part of 1 Corinthians 1 you are speaking of, do you mean Romans 1? I don't want to try to respond by guessing where you are speaking of, but I will say this: There is a huge difference between knowing the Gospel and it making sense in my mind, or of creation. Whether a special revelation of Christ or a general revelation I can know and understand in my mind. Yet, in my mind I might understand these things, I still dont really see them unto true wisdom which only comes as gift from God. True wisdom and understanding leads to an action every time. That is why when you or I was saved we responded because God gave us an understanding of Himself and our sin that we could not have grasped on our own. God doesn't try to make Himself known, He does. He doesn't try to reveal Himself when He wants, He does it. The problem doesn't rest on God trying to help us. The problem rests on us not getting it. Furthermore, we will never understand or get it unless God intervenes. God intervenes according to His will. The call is genuine, but the Spirit works according to to the will of God as through the preaching of the Gospel He gives life to the chosen ones who don't deserve it any more than the unelect.

I'm not fully seeing how you view this. How does God make sure that exactly those people he chose would respond to His calling with faith? I agree that God designed it all sovereignly, but I am not seeing how He can bring about His purposed elect within His design? It seems to be either based on their choice or by luck. Please dont take that wrongly.

What do you do with Acts 2:38-39?

I don't see any clear Biblical evidence that shows logic order that states that regeneration is the full event of being made new. If there was a clear passage or two I would change my position. I'll discuss below in your next point.

I agree that there is no logical order, thats my point. We can say that if a person is regenerate that He or she is justified and adopted. It seems to me that if you use that passage to show that regeneration must include justification and adoption then the passage itself must be showing logical order. I don't think that was Paul's point.

I didn't intend for this to represent what you said, it was a side note :). If you use the entirety of Scripture to see things then it is very logical to say that regeneration would be like a resurrection and therefore would be like somebody waking up from sleep. logic doesn't go far though, our goal is to see things from Scripture. Either way, the very work of God's Spirit through the preaching of the Word to people is to open the eyes of the chosen and cause them to understand. It isn't hard for God to cause somebody to understand in a way that leads them to His desired goal- Salvation. If He can then why not do it to all some say? God hasn't called all with an effectual calling. This is illustrated nicely in Acts 2:38-39 and Romans 8:30. I dont care how many times those verses have been quoted they are still meat.

On a side note: If Regeneration does indeed stand for the entire renewal of the person as you say, then Scripturally the Spirit does something very similar to the reformed view of regeneration to bring people to Christ. He literally opens their hard hearts so they can understand the Gospel in their souls not their heads. If you think people understand like they need to (again, not simply understand intellectually) apart from the Spirit then we leave Him out of a job and must rely on a spiritually dead person to respond rather than the power of God.

 

Winman I think the very point of Spiritual death is to be compared to Physical death. Yes their are some guidelines:

A spiritually dead person is alive physically.
A spiritually dead person has a working soul that isnt dead.
A spiritually dead person can indeed make spiritual choices.

The word dead in the spiritual is to point to the utter impossibility for the human being who has a sin nature to act against his own nature to righteousness. The very point in it being used in the Bible is to show what a spiritually lost person is like- a dead man. They need to be rescued, not given a choice or anything left in their own hands.

Im not going to say they have no ability to respond because they have all instruments necessary to do so. I think lack of ability is the wrong term. It is better said that they definitely wont just as God can't sin.

 

We should chat about this. Last year (the last time I studied this) I came to the conclusion you seem to be speaking of. The three options are

1. A person believes before regenerate
2. A person is regenerate before he believes
3. A person is regenerate and believes at the same time as God lavishes all spiritual blessings in salvation at once.

2 or 3 are the only logical options of Scripture. As I said earlier the reformed definition of regeneration is still a good description of what it is like when the Spirit calls with His spiritual calling that leads to salvation everytime. This would be an easy mistake to make Scripturally if it is a mistake at all.

If a person believes in Christ before regeneration or any kind of work that the Holy Spirit must do within Him to cause Him to see and understand spiritually then you have a spiritually dead person responding with a faith that has no true knowledge or understanding. When I say true knowledge I mean the kind of knowledge that leads to wisdom and isn't knowledge in and of itself. It comes from God rather than man. Ill stop here.

 

Because I was dead and now I live.

 

It is the only verse you have to support his Arminian and illogical notion that dead things can believe. You have repeatedly quoted it and it does not say what you try to force it to say.

Life is necessary for faith and faith is necessary for continued life.

Fortunately that continued faith is promised.

God makes one alive so he can believe, then he believes which is why God made him alive. His life would not continue if he did not believe.

That is all that verse says and to make it a doctrinal statement of chronology of salvation is nothing more than prooftexting.

If I am wrong, prove it by doing two things:

1. Make sense of this idea that dead things can believe. You'll have to redefine the word "dead".

2. Provide another verse that ACTUALLY states that faith PRECEDES salvation.

Your verse does no more than this: A baby breathes- and breathing he has life.

Did breathing PRECEDE life? No. He had life before he took his first breath. But breathing indicates he still has life.

You want to force "that believing ye might have life" to teach that believing had to precede life. That phrase does not at all teach this- no more than "that breathing ye might have life" teaches that breath preceded life.

You must now find a verse that teaches that believing precedes life. You will NEVER find that because it is illogical and unbiblical.

Do things of necessity breathe before they have life? Of course not- the notion is utterly ridiculous. Is breathing necessary for the maintenance of life? Absolutely- irrevocably. Does the phrase "that breathing ye might have life" demand that breathing comes before life? Of course not. In fact everyone knows that the opposite is true.

But you are bound and determined to make this phrase say what you want it to say. "that believing (breathing) ye might have life" means that believing is proof of life and is necessary for the continued maintenance of life.

Please have the sincerity to admit that you are proof texting by demanding that this verse you keep using teach that faith precedes life. Please yield here so we can have fruitful exchanges on a further topic.

 

How does a dead man respond to a call?

 

You and I get crossways on occasion because we have some language barrier between us, don't we?

He has some weird, new definition of darkness, and until he enlightens me on what he thinks darkness is we are at an impasse.

 

You must be kidding. No reputable Arminian scholar would make such a ridiculous remark. Luther, Beza, Augustine, Jonathan Edwards and simply the greatest Bible scholars of all time don't understand the Scripture?

Aren't you KJVO? You do know that the KJV is a predominantly Calvinist work don't you?

In fact the TR which they used is a text passed down from Erasmus (who was no Calvinist) to Theodore Beza (who was, of course THOROUGHLY Calvinist). It was primarily Beza's version of what would later become known as the TR which the KJV translators used. And the vast majority of the translators themselves were thoroughly Calvinist.

Your favorite Bible comes from a text which an edition of a teacher of false doctrine and your favorite version of the Bible was translated by a bunch of false doctrine peddlers according to you.

How exactly do you deal with that?

I wish you would not make silly remarks like this. I know the rolly eyes frustrated you, and perhaps they were a bit snotty, but your above comments do not help your case at all.

Let's get back on topic. An recant of that statement would be helpful in my opinion.

 

Was hoping you could offer me a bit more on this. How do you know you now live?