Do We Receive Faith?

[Van]

Van,

Your response has officially degenerated into total logical panic. You are contradicting yourself in back-to-back sentences, evading plain Greek vocabulary, and running away from the text because your timeline has completely shattered.
Let the forum look closely at how your own words just dismantled your own theology:


1. Your Blatant, Back-to-Back Self-Contradiction

Look at what you just wrote, Van. It is a masterpiece of internal confusion:

• In point 1, you write: "...falsely claiming the word's usage includes granting or allowing something."
• In point 2, you write: "LOL, granted is a vague term... it can refer to giving someone something they did not possess beforehand."

Van, you are arguing with your own shadow. You accuse me of a "false claim" for saying the text means a gift was granted, and then in the very next breath, you admit the word can mean "giving someone something they did not possess beforehand."

You have just conceded the entire argument. If God is giving the sinner faith that they did not possess beforehand, then faith is an active, sovereign gift bestowed by God, not an autonomous human work manufactured by man's free will. You have effectively refuted your own Arminian system.

2. The Absurdity of Your "Passive Permission" Fallacy

You attempt to rescue your position by claiming that "granted to believe" merely means God allowed someone to believe by simply refraining from hardening their heart.

This is a total logical failure. The Greek word is ἐχαρίσθη (echaristhē), which means to actively, graciously bestow a gift. If a governor grants a pardon to a prisoner, does that mean the governor merely "abstained from executing him," or did he issue an active, positive legal decree?
Furthermore, you are still completely choking on the parallel of the verse. Paul hooks believing and suffering to the exact same verb. If "granted" only means "allowed by not hardening," then you must argue that God merely permits us to suffer by not stopping it, and that we must independently manufacture our own trials. It is a complete absurdity. As 1 Thessalonians 3:3 explicitly states, our sufferings are actively appointed and decreed (keimetha) by God. Because the suffering is an active sovereign appointment, the primary gift of believing on His name is a correspondingly active, sovereignly bestowed gift.

3. You Are Running From the Timeline of Ephesians 1:4

You claim you have explained Ephesians 1:4 dozens of times, yet you completely refused to address the unbending timeline I laid before you. You call historic theology the "dark ages" because you cannot answer a simple question of scriptural chronology.

Your core doctrine states: "we are chosen for salvation through faith, which requires we had some sort of faith BEFORE we were chosen."
Van, Ephesians 1:4 states that God chose His elect in Christ before the foundation of the world.

• Man did not exist.
• The earth did not exist.
• Human free will did not exist.

Explain to the forum right now how a non-existent human being can manufacture "some sort of faith" in eternity past before they even existed to be chosen. You can't answer it. Your system requires the fruit to create the root.

Scripture remains completely unshakeable against your synergy. We are elect unto (eis) obedience (1 Peter 1:2). In the Eternal Phase, God sovereignly chooses His remnant; in the Legal Phase, Christ pays their debt at the cross; in the Vital Phase, the Spirit immediately quickens them; and consequently, in the Practical Phase, they are given the gift of faith to believe on His name and suffer for His sake. Your own points have surrendered the debate, Van. Full stop.

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This post folks is a totally "against the person" screed, one ad homenim after another. All misdirection, changing the subject to me and running from the topic.

The howling hounds of Calvinism like to disparage others, and make unsupported wild claims.

1) Is the Greek verb "tasso" used in the New Testament to refer to an agreement by mutual consent? Yes, I provided at least 6 examples.

2) Note God's word says individuals are chosen for salvation through "faith in the truth." Therefore they had "faith" before they were chosen for salvation. Full Stop.

3) Being chosen in Him refers to a corporate election of believers as the target group of God's redemption plan. God chose His Redeemer before the foundation of the world, thus He corporately chose us in Him at the same time.

 

[David Lamb]

This post folks is a totally "against the person" screed, one ad homenim after another. All misdirection, changing the subject to me and running from the topic.

The howling hounds of Calvinism like to disparage others, and make unsupported wild claims.

Isn't that rather a sweeping generalisation? I believe Calvinist doctrines, and although I sometimes disagree with other posters, I hope I never disparage them, or resemble a "howling hound" in my posts. If ever I do, please let me know, ands I will apologise.

 

[Brightfame52]

Van,

Your attempt to escape into "corporate election" has landed you in a complete chronological nightmare. Let’s look at the absolute impossibility of your position and the wreckage of your arguments.

You write: "Being chosen in Him refers to a corporate election of believers as the target group of God's redemption plan. God chose His Redeemer before the foundation of the world, thus He corporately chose us in Him at the same time."
Van, look closely at the timeline you just constructed. You claim God chose a corporate group consisting exclusively of "believers" before the foundation of the world.

Explain to the forum right now: How were they "believers" in eternity past before the creation of the world?
According to your Arminian theology, a person is only a believer when they hear the gospel in time, use their autonomous human free will, and actively choose to believe. But in eternity past:

• Man did not exist.
• Time did not exist.
• No one had ever heard a sermon.
• No one had exercised their free will.

If God chose them as a group of "believers" before the world began, then their status as believers was already a settled, guaranteed, unchanging reality in the mind of God before they were even born!

If their faith was already a certain fact in eternity past, then their faith was not an independent, conditional choice manufactured by their own free will in time. It was an entry in God's ledger before the foundation of the world. You are forcing non-existent people to execute free-will choices in eternity past to get themselves onto your corporate bus.
Let's address the rest of your points:

1. The Tassō Deception: Fleeing Your Own Source
   You claim you provided "at least 6 examples" of tassō meaning mutual consent. Van, you copy-pasted a lexical outline from the Blue Letter Bible that explicitly isolated that definition strictly for the Middle Voice (such as Acts 28:23). You were caught trying to force that highly specific middle-voice definition onto Acts 13:48 and Romans 13:1, both of which are explicitly Passive Voice. You haven't provided 6 examples; you have provided a masterclass in how to ignore basic grammatical voices. You still have not shown how a passive verb—where the subject is the helpless recipient of an outside action—can mean a "mutual handshake." Your private dictionary remains completely rejected by the actual text.
2. The Chronological Failure of 2 Thessalonians 2:13
   You point to 2 Thessalonians 2:13 and declare: "Individuals are chosen for salvation through 'faith in the truth.' Therefore they had 'faith' before they were chosen for salvation." Van, this is a total crash in basic reading comprehension and scriptural timeline. The text says: "God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth."
   
   
   The word "through" denotes the means and sphere by which God executes His decree in time—it does not denote a historical condition that God looked forward to see. By your upside-down logic, if a man is chosen "through sanctification of the Spirit," he had to be sanctified by the Spirit before God chose him in eternity past! How can a person be sanctified by the Spirit and exercise faith before the foundation of the world when they did not even exist?
3. The Myth of "Corporate-Only" Election
   Your corporate theory is a complete grammatical and logical myth designed to rob God of His personal, particular love for His sheep. Ephesians 1:4 does not say God chose a vague "target group" or an empty abstract "corporation." It uses personal, plural pronouns: "He hath chosen US in him." The object of election is individual people collectively comprising the Bride of Christ. Furthermore, Acts 13:48 completely shatters your corporate illusion. Luke does not say "the corporate group believed." He uses the individualized quantifier: "as many as [ὅσοι] were ordained to eternal life believed." That is a mathematical, individual count. Particular numbers of specific men were stationed, and that identical, specific number of individuals believed.

The Five-Phase Framework of salvation completely resolves these texts without any of your logical loops:

• The Eternal Phase (Ephesians 1:4): God sovereignly chooses His remnant before time began. He did not choose them because they were believers; He chose them that they should be holy and without blame. Election is the cause of holiness, not the result of it.
• The Legal Phase: Christ successfully pays their debt at the cross, satisfying divine justice.
• The Vital Phase: The Holy Spirit immediately quickens them from spiritual death to life apart from human cooperation.
• The Practical Phase (Acts 13:48): Because they are vitally quickened, they are given the gift of faith and consequently believe.

They weren't chosen because they were believers, Van. They became believers because they were chosen. Stop running from the plain grammar of Scripture, drop the philosophical gymnastics, and submit to the sovereign, finished work of Jesus Christ.

 

[Van]

Isn't that rather a sweeping generalisation? I believe Calvinist doctrines, and although I sometimes disagree with other posters, I hope I never disparage them, or resemble a "howling hound" in my posts. If ever I do, please let me know, ands I will apologise.

Sorry for the perceived broad brush of disparagement, but since the shoe does not fit, no need for you to wear it.