I have been following this thread for a while and thought that it might be the time to add some comments. They are taken almost verbatim from the Baptist apologetic book "Circumcised By Water" (Christian Faith Publishing, 2018) While not directly addressing some of the finer points to the issue regarding salvation, it might serve to shed some light on the overall discussion. More importantly, it will affirm that "God is the true author of our faith, and man must play a completely passive role as the covenant works to save us." We may possess the inherent responsibility to exercise the faith that is given, but it remains a gift nonetheless - and not a choice.
".... Historically, there has been a great deal of spiritual angst concerning the relationship between God's sovereign rule and our freedom to choose the path we take in life. Some theologians (A.W. Pink, et al) think that they can be joined together, and are at pains to describe the place where they touch and meet. However, like a seesaw whose one end carries concrete implications for the other, it soon becomes obvious that it is virtually impossible to affirm both God's sovereignty and the innate responsibility of man without assigning diminished capacities to each. Especially as they are said to operate within the same realm.
Therefore, it must be recognized that this view renders the full expression of each aspect fundamentally lacking in definition, for the moment the power of God is affirmed to any degree, the decision of man is diminished by the same extent. Only an approach that overlays one upon the other has the power to preserve the true essence of each, where the sovereignty of God and the free will of man are shielded from the inevitable degradation that occurs when they are brought into the same space.
However, in order to define the interplay between them, we first need to set the position our natural-born freedom has in relation to the absolute rule of God.
Objectively, we must humbly admit that pure human freewill is a fallacy, for if man ultimately has the power to act independent of God, we could conceivably counter any plan God may have, including His plan for our individual salvation. Paradoxically, man is not a puppet either, for we all possess a degree of autonomy in in acting upon any circumstance that confronts us. However, all God has to do in order to preserve both His sovereign rule and our ability to make a (subjective) free choice is to withhold aspects of the master plan from our minds. Here He acts in limiting our perception of time to the sequential, where events that are decreed remain hidden within the secret purposes of His will. This divine act of ommission allows the will of God to be seamlessly overlaid upon the responsible acts of each man as a created being. Hence our collective wills are ordered to take part and carry through with the eternal decrees (incl salvation) that God has set to occur in history, all without affecting our natural "freedom" to choose the paths we take in life.
Accordingly, we all act in accordance with our own prerogatives in contribution to the unseen purposes of God's will, where His objective power in carrying through with the events of human history will always remain unhindered by the will of man to counter any aspect of the master plan. Forged together under the press of the present moment like a zipper that follows its course along the boundary of two patches of cloth, history is thus divinely made by the joining of His sovereign will to the actions of independent creatures whose minds operate unaware of the events that are predestined to come to pass."
