Featured Understanding John Owen's argument.

Judas was the one who fir the OT prophecy to betray Christ, so that one was doomed....

 

Oddly enough, when I was coming out of Pseudo-Arminianism / Semi-Pelagianism, I spent some time as an Amyraldist (but for different reasons that weren’t really exegetical).

The difference is that I don’t adhere to ANY implementation of Ordo Salutis. I consider it to be fallacious overstatement and a superimposition of positive doctrinal statements upon God. There is no Ordo Salutis. God is not bound by time or sequence in this or any other manner except His own Incommunicable Attributes.

I’m a Philologist. I insist that words as langauge and literature are the prime “evidence” in this created realm for all things. This means words must be utilized carefully and with a proper understanding of semantic range for meaning. That’s why I posted what you refer to as “word salad”. Words have meaning.

As an example, I was only a member here for a part of a day and I encountered someone who insisted trust (elpis) is faith (pistis). It’s always a free-for-all on forums.

 

Nope. They’re without excuse because all sin was atoned while their sinS were not atoned.

 

Jesus died in our place, so he died in the place and stead of a particular set of people, not all lost sinners

 

If you’d like to stop talking past each other and make a post lengthy enough to address the topic, I can engage further with you whether we agree or not. If you won’t do those things, then I don’t guess we’ll be able to converse much. Drive-by conceptual declarations don’t accomplish anything, and I’m beyond sick of the Calvinist-Arminian false-dichotomy as the alleged battlefield.

 

This is new to me and interesting. So what in your opinion should a person do in order to be right with God?

Also, I wasn't in on that discussion you had about the definition of faith but I'm guessing they were referring to the WCF question 72 where there is a receiving and resting on Christ as well as assenting to the propositions. As a Philologist, would you agree that a theological term might be used often enough in scripture that a full explanation would require more than one word?

 

First I’d like to say you’re both direct and cordial, which is pleasantly surprising and not what I originally thought might be the case. Hostile venom and vitriol are usually behind most everyone’s posts. You’re an engaging and inquisitive conversationalist. That’s nice to find in the digital realm.

I’m an authentic Biblical Monergist, so I understand salvation is about all the nouns God gives to man that do what they do when employed by those to whom they’re given. Faith believes. Repentance repents. Man simply employs what God has given him and it is salvation. God saves man. Man does nothing to be saved.

My contribution to the faith/believing thread was to insist English speakers almost always perceive Greek nouns as verbs and convert being into doing by default. Faith is NOT believING. Faith is a noun. It’s a thing. No one has ever been saved by believING. We’re saved by grace through faith. No one has ever repented to have salvation. Repentance is a noun before it can be a verb.

Metanoia is the changed condition and state of being of the mind being brought amidst God’s for moral reflection according to God’s standards for inward character and outward conduct. God grants the noun. That thing is not repentING. That thing is what DOES the repenting because God granted it to man.

This is the prevailing linguistic problem in modernity for English speakers, and I’ve found it to be the primary culprit for virtually all divergences of doctrine in the modern church at large. It’s a fundamental Philological issue, and few can or will address it relative to their own corrupted epistemics. That’s why we have incessant arguments over the same few dozen doctrinal premises (besides all the nutjob inventers and innovators of self-papal silliness.).

Absolutely I’d agree that MOST full explanations of terms requires far more than one word. English is a low-context language with structural differences from Greek; the core of which requires much unlearning and relearning if someone wants to understand the absolute objective truth over memorizing systems and concepts.

Lexicography is the key to all understanding. Most prefer their own self-ground key or a magic skeleton key from their chosen tradition and its condensed handy dogma in an echo chamber.

 

Thanks for your reply, but I think you're making things far too complicated. I am not the greatest Greek expert but I don't see that the fact that hamartia is anarthrous means that it must apply to all sin. I know of no grammatical rule to that effect. Nor do I see that one can have one's sin atoned for but not one's sinS. 'He Himself bore our sinS in His own body on the tree.' Our sinS; He was made sin for us.

 

6 Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old?
7 will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God? Mic 6

 

Acts 16:31. 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.'
Romans 4:3. 'Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.'
Pisteuo is the verb; pistis is the noun.

 

This is the grammatical (and lexical) issue that plagues the modern church at large. ALL Greek nouns are anarthrous, even if the article is present. The article serves to particularize the vast range of qualitative characteristics and functional activity of the noun in its non-segmented form.

Hamartia is primarily referring to (the quality of) the source OF the action, not the action itself. Those “us” expressions are primarily the plural; and the ones that are singular aren’t exclusive, they just have the promise of salvation attached for those whose sinS are atoned.

This is Objective Justification and Subjective Justification. By lexical definition, hamartia cannot have been atoned without atoning for every qualitative characteristic and functional activity. Sin is a privation/negation, not a “something” like a tumor. It’s a void. A “somethinglessness”. It’s what’s missing, not what’s there. And what’s missing is from spiritual death for which we need resurrection.

All the sin (condition and state of being) of mankind has been atoned. Only those who are elect have their sinS (individual acts) atoned. Unbelievers will never have their sinS atoned.

 

Acts 16:31 is one of many commands to repent. It has the repentance (noun) in the command and is granted to man according to the hearing and faith given by God. Pure Monergism and linguistic truth.

Of course it’s the verb. The noun verbs. No man can accomplish the verb without the noun. Faith believes. We, being given faith, can then believe. Abraham didn’t have righteousness accounted to him for what he did. He was given faith by God when God spoke and the faith believed because he had the thing that accomplished the verb.

This subtlty is why the modern church at large is in a monumental quagmire of nothingness. Nobody ever repents or believes to be saved. God saves man by giving man the nouns that do all the verbing. Just like in Acts and with Abraham.

 

We 'Old Baptists' believe that 'thing' is the heavenly birth:

7 `Thou mayest not wonder that I said to thee, It behoveth you to be born from above; [Galatians 4:26]
8 the Spirit where he willeth doth blow, and his voice thou dost hear, but thou hast not known whence he cometh, and whither he goeth; thus is every one who hath been born of the Spirit.` Jn 3 YLT

13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Jn 1

 

CONSPICILLUM - Bing

 

First. Thanks for the kind words. I have to say that your way of saying things is honestly difficult for me to follow. I mean for example in the above paragraph you say you understand salvation is all about all the nouns God gives to man that do what they do when employed by those to whom they're given. I freely admit that it may be nothing more than my lack of education and I will not be offended if you agree with me but I find that sentence to be unintelligible. I also think that in the vast tragedy of human existence and our history of utter failure to live lives pleasing to God as chronicled in the Bible and secular history it may be the most over simplified and reductionist statement I have ever heard anyone make. Or maybe I didn't understand what you were saying.

 

I’ll agree with your statement, but that it includes far more than a lack of education (even if beginning there in a basic manner). The most crucial understanding in NT translation is the comprehension of Greek anarthrous nouns, which have no equivalent in English. I spend weeks and weeks teaching this before anyone begins to have a grasp of it. This is at odds with all the influences that pattern modern western epistemics (the hows and whys for the whats that one thinks).

For English speakers, nearly every noun is subconsciously converted to verb form for conceptualization that abandons lexical specificity of meaning. Faith becomes believING without understanding what the noun faith is and means. Repentance becomes repentING without understanding what the noun repentance is and means. The same is true for sin and most other nouns. English speakers perpetually think in vague economies of action rather than ontology of things.

I’ve mentioned faith and repentance and sin because they’re vital terms with crucial meanings, and they’re among the very few words almost universally abused. Nouns are persons, places, or things; and persons and places are things. So nouns, in simplest parlance, are things. Things do. All other components of grammar depend upon nouns for everything. Everyone thinks they believe or think or understand or repent. Without the nouns that do those things, they can’t accomplish any of those actions.

“I’m going to call you” is a statement that requires a phone to accomplish. “I’m going to dig a hole” is a statement that requires a shovel to accomplish. Phones call. Shovels dig. We can only do those actions if we “have” the things that do them. Nobody is going to chop down a tree. Axes are required to chop down trees. One must have the thing that does the action to accomplish the action.

If this seems over-simplified I can relate to that. I can’t comprehend how anyone could think faith is believING, but every last person who is an English speaker conflates the two as being the same. In Romans 10:17, scripture indicates that faith (articular as THE faith) cometh by (ek - out of/from) hearing (akoe - the NOUN), and hearing (again akoe - the NOUN) by the Rhema of God. Hearing is a noun, not a verb. It is almost universally understood as the verb. It’s not. It’s the report or message. The thing heard. In no way is it the verb that is “hearing”.

This passage indicates that THE faith (not any faith as “a” faith) cometh out of THE message/report (not any message as “a” message”, and NOT the verb that includes action by man), and THE message comes by means of the Rhema (anarthrous, meaning every qualitative characteristic and functional activity of the noun) of God.

It’s certainly not reductionism, and I despise Reductionism, BTW. It’s a distillation to core meanings that is lexically sound rather than conceptualized into verb-based economies of action for everything.

If God didn’t grant THE repentance or give THE faith by His Word, no one could repent or believe. The verbs have to come forth from the noun. There is no verb without the precipitating noun. This is ignored by default and then everyone claims they understand basic grammar and haven’t omitted it at all.

Greek speakers know that when a command is given to repent that the command itself includes the granting of the noun for the verb. Instead, it’s the bare verb that is isolated as the repentance, but that’s impossible since repentance isn’t a verb. Nouns are about the state of being. Verbs don’t convey that.

Ideally, we could all understand that the noun and the verb are ultimately the same thing. But for low-context English-corrupted epistemics it’s necessary to make sure they’re completely separated and unconflated before dealing with noun and verb as inseparable.

 

I will totally concede anything you say about new testament translation. I simply do not know much about it. But your intense preoccupation with having to have a noun in order to do a verb is a prime example of how we all tend to way over emphasize our own professional discipline. Surgeons view everything as requiring surgery, pharmacists say "there's medicine for that", leftists view everything as oppression and I guess Philologists view everything in terms of the misuse of nouns and verbs. I don't buy your premise that all the problems of the church would go away if we simply had a proper understanding of grammar.

You used an example of faith and believing. You actually make it too simple. How is faith a gift? Can a noun which when exercised is a verb be given? Is it given? Or is the human will changed so that now a person will believe. Is faith in a simple fact like the apple is red the same in my mind as faith that will save me from eternal damnation? Is faith involved in believing something the same as "the faith". Is obedience or the intention of future obedience part of saving faith? Is faith the same as saving faith. Is faith in James the same as faith in Ephesians? Why does Jonathan Edwards in his chapter on faith have about 80 paragraphs of explanation? These are examples of why important things like this cannot be reduced to nouns and verbs. That doesn't even scratch the surface.

This thread, which I didn't start, is about Owen's work "The Death of Death in the Death of Christ". I've been through it once and will not try it again. But once again, it cannot be reduced to issues of grammar. Who was Owen writing this to. What were his opponents views and what were they trying to do in the church? Was politics involved? To what extent was he under pressure - in other words what would happen to him if he lost? And then there is the theology itself.

The other reason I don't buy the theory that all the problems of the church can be resolved by better linguistic understanding is that most of the problems of the church involve deliberate apostacy and going against very obvious imperatives in scripture - not subtle theological differences.

Now at first I just blew you off as a crank. But not only are you interesting to talk to but apparently you are teaching somewhere and I have come to respect what goes on at that level, especially if a seminary is involved. It will make a difference, someday. And eventually we will start seeing some form of this influence at the local church level. I'm just trying to figure out what to think of it.

 

I just go to the law, our teacher, to learn about the Atonement. In the law are many sacrifices, each presenting a facet of Christ's one offering. And in those offerings, I see sacrifices for specific acts of sin of an individual, and I also see sacrifices for Israel, the elect, as a whole, but I see none offered for Egypt or Tyre or Sidon.

Show me Egypt's stone on the breastplate of the High Priest, and I will agree that all were atoned for, and not just the elect.

Owen's argument is easily understood. Limited atonement is the eminent truth as revealed not only by the straightforward testimony of the Scriptures, but also by the untenable implications of the only alternative: that Christ's blood is shed in vain, or that His blood damns.