Featured Calvinists vs Armenians: A Challenging--But Senseless--Debate

It's a verb. Stop fighting it. Just admit it is a verb and verbs indicate action, IE something you do.

 

An action on the part of God.

 

Yes. That is what the bible says.

 

You are really starting to sound desperate. Just admit an action verb indicates doing something. Don't change the bible to fit your presuppositions. Change your presuppositions to fit the bible.

 

No, he is not. He is saying a true faith is a living, working faith.

John 6:28 Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?
29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

 

I also do not equate God’s act of revealing Truth to regeneration, nor that one has to be regenerated so that God can reveal Truth to him.

But I also believe that man cannot but believe when God reveals Truth to them. In other words, when something is revealed to me as being true my response is always to believe (it is an action, a response, born out of what has been revealed to be true).

I believe this is the reason in John 12 that those who saw did not believe. Jesus revealed the truth of who He is by signs and wonders, but the people did not believe. The reason is not that truth was not being revealed but because God had hardened their hearts and blinded their eyes lest they believe and turn to Him and be saved.

So one of our disagreements seems to be exactly what “truth” is revealed by God through the work of the Spirit towards conversion.

I do not believe that it is that we are sinners. The unbeliever may be very aware that he has sinned, and may be sorrowful, but if that is not a sorrow leading to repentance then it leads to death. Men in various religions all over the world seek a savior without seeking Christ. So the awareness that we have sinned is present in all men. What is lacking is not a knowledge of ourselves but the Truth of God. I believe that in conversion the Spirit reveals not man, but God, and that once this Truth is revealed man believes.

For example, if my understanding here is revealed to you as being true, then you cannot but believe it (otherwise, it would not be revealed, but concealed truth).

 

Active verb. Something you do.

 

Yes. It is God who reveals (an action) Truth. And that Truth revealed, we believe (an action). The difference being between faith/belief (which is not a verb) and believe (which is). Ours is to repent and believe, the product of God’s recreative work in the lives of those who will believe.

God told Israel that He would cause them to walk in His statutes, and they would obey. Their obedience is an action, but not the action that effected their situation. We believe as an action, but an action that is descriptive of the salvation that God has wrought (our act of believing is not separate from our salvation itself).

God is the Author of our Salvation.

 

Faith and belief are nouns. To believe (to put your faith in someone) is a verb. I have faith because God has revealed truth to me in such a way as this belief unquestionably exists. God changed my heart and spirit, inclined it towards Him, put His Spirit in me, so that this faith is present within me. This work of God results in my act of believing.

I was always told to make sure I discharged a capacitor by shorting the terminals before working with them. The reason is that they can hold a charge. This is what I was taught and this is what I believed (and taught to my guys). But I’ve also touched hundreds of those suckers without making sure they were discharged and never got shocked. A couple of months ago I removed a capacitor and when I picked it back up I got zapped. This instilled in me a belief, beyond mere instruction, that they will indeed hold a charge. That belief exists, which results in me believing as evidenced by never, never, never touching those things without making sure they are indeed discharged.

Yes, I agree. Faith is not a work of men. It is what God does in the life of men, the means through which God’s grace of salvation is obtained. When I believe I am, in fact, beholding God as the Object of my faith - that is salvation itself, not something I do to be saved.

 

God is not a liar.
John 6:28 Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?
29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.