Romanbear, you are admitting that man has some goodness in him that is enough to save him. How can you not see this man-made, man-centered-, man-glorifying, idolatrous religion for what it is?
Don't start that again, instead go back to each of the topics and read all the posts. You have jumped on one topic and one post and you make that out to be the whole of non-Calvinist beliefs. That seems to be a primary tactic of many Calvinists and extremely unfair to God!
None of the non Calvinists posting here has made any declaration that man is good enough to save himself from hell.
They have posted that man is not Totally Depraved, providing ample evidence that man was not changed from the way God created him into someone you'd avoid like leprocy. There is no indication whatever that a single change occured in created man or his decendents, except that their relationship with the creator that was destroyed upon gaining the knowledge of good and evil through sin. That knowledge did not kill them, or make them Totally Depraved but it did make their spirit dead from the Creator's perspective. "Dead" is a figure of speach used to indicate the Creator/created relationship, and not the condition of man. Man cannot live without spirit which is the life of the flesh. So, the flesh lives because the spirit lives and the spirit which is the image of God, has all of the attributes of God, save for the omni-attributes. Prove that wrong if you care to!
Now how is it possible for man to once again get in good stead with God? Not by works of the law, for no man is able to obey all of the law. Everyone in the Old Testament that God found favor with was accounted as righteous because of their faith in God. We are told throughout scripture that faith is what saves, that it is not of works lest anyman should boast. If man is not capable of having faith, man is not capable of being saved. Even though that is truth, man failed to believe until God sent his son to live among man and to complete the Work of God which is Belief, not God's belief but man's belief in God.
The only difference between saved man and lost man is the saved man believes in Jesus. Otherwise you cannot tell any difference in them whatever. If any of you preachers speaks before an unfamiliar congregation there is no way for you to tell who in your audience is saved and who is not! It is not given unto you to know that. You cannot even tell who is Calvinist and who is not simply by looking at them.
What is missing from man after the Garden is holiness, and that is why believers are told to, "be holy as I am holy". After coming to belief and having the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, man is able to obey God and infact can behave in a holy manner.
Unbelieving man has the attributes that God gave to all mankind, and does know how behave in accordance with love, grace, mercy, justice etc. But without belief in God, man is lost, spiritually "dead" separated from God.
