Heresy?: Calvinism or Arminianism

well we have love before salvation..we just do not have the love of God in us. Gods love is there for us to take..but mans nature does not think he needs it.

We have faith before salvation..just not faith in God. We have faith in works or money or other things. not faith in God.

We can use the form of love..called grace before salvation....we just can’t show the grace of God to others till we know of it. I can show grace to someone that i do not know..handing out food or money. This is not salvation.

But love changes after salvation.
When we know of Gods love..we can share it. We can then show Gods grace to others. We can then have faith in God.

How? because God now lives in us.


In Christ...james

 

So you believe everyone has faith before salvation, just not faith in God? Please explain how all humans have faith before salvation, but God grants only some faith for salvation. Pleas show scripturally where faith is categorized differently.

 

So you believe everyone has faith before salvation, just not faith in God? Please explain how all humans have faith before salvation, but God grants only some faith for salvation. Pleas show scripturally where faith is categorized differently. </font>[/QUOTE]hi ya webdog,

Nice to meet ya.

i knew when i posted this last post...this would follow. I do not blame you..i would jump on this too.

but let us review where this tread has been.

i read this from wes ..what is faith..
i post this....
*********************
I have not read all of this tread..but only the last few pages. But if i may..i would like to anwser this post.


Faith is an emotion. We get this from two other emotions..love and hope. Hope (elpis) is favorable and confident expectation. Where do we get this favorable expectation? We get it from Love. When we study this from mans side, It will always come back to love. The Bible says..faith, hope and love...but the greatest of these is love.

So what is love?

Love (agape) to express giving of all yourself to the love object without expectations of anything in return.

ok but that is textbook ..what does this mean?

Well emotions are memories we draw on from experiences we have known. Let me explain. A kid has no fear of playing in the street because he has no thoughts of a car running him over. Once a kid knows of the danger..the emotion of fear sets in. A kid does not fear that a stove will burn till he know what a burning is. This may have come from a stove or a candle, or any hot thing. A parent needs only to remind the child...remember what the hot light felt like?..well the stove is much hotter. This memory brings fear of the stove.

Why do i love peanut better? I love it because i have tasted it. Be fore i tasted it...i had no love for it. I love basketball for i played the game..watched the game....and know how fun it is. Loving it..means i have had time to experience it. I love my wife for i think of what we have been though...good and bad...but its the memories that bring the love emotion. At 1st my love for her was only of good things. But as my love grow i see love in the good and bad. In the good things..that is easy to see. In the bad..its making it though together. that is what builds our love.

Ok..what does this have to do with anything?

well lets go forward with this thought now.

Where is your love? James says...where you have your love..that is where your actions are. I played basketball..because i love the game. Its not always easy. I brake bones..get very sore...but all this is worth it...for i do love the game. I love my wife...not that every day is full of roses...but any bad is worth going though...to get to stay with the one i love. Love is what drives us. Loves makes us go forward..no matter what. Your love for God will produce favorable and confident expectation to see that love again.

What i know of my wife...what i have lived...what i have loved in my wife....i hope to see again. A favorable and confident expectation is hope. How much more can i say i love my God. What I know God has done for me....the love i know he has given me....the new life He gave for me...the pain he went though for me...the sin he saved me from...the blessings he gives...the comfort that comes from him....this is all LOVE i want to see more in my life. We know of no true love till God shares His love to us. I have favorable and confident expectations of Gods love. This is when I have place my hope in God.

If we take both love our base word...and add hope or our expectation..this produces faith where our drive is. Our love...Our hope..all that we drives us...lives in our faith. Where is your faith? I HOPE it is in God.

So...faith is an emotion but it comes from God. We can know better the Faith we have if we look at where our love is. God gives us our love. yes we can touch it...when we use His love to care for others. We can feel it just as we feel love. it is real...for it is seen in the love we have for Him.

Love comes from God..as does hope..so faith comes from God


In Christ..james

**********************

and then this..
What i wrote on faith, hope and love may seem like a bunch of physic babble when you read it. I am not the best at expressing myself. But let me ask you wes to read it again.

I sat under the teaching of Dr Dan Burger for 15 years. Burger now teaches at BJU in greenville NC. Burger more then any one else shaped my faith into what it is today. There are better speakers in the world..but no better teacher of the Word.

Burger use to say over and over...you live your life in love...or you live your life in fear. All the things you do either fear or love will drive you.

If you think about it..it is true. why do you do what you do? A leader rules a nation in fear..or love. People love him and want to do it...or people hate him..and do it in fear. In the OT they kept the law..under fear. in the NT we keep Gods laws because we love Him. what drives you?

On the love side we also see...faith...faith comes from love. we also see hope...hope comes from love. We also see grace...which is a type of Love...in love we see security

in love we see a vision. in fear we see a problem. in love we find faith in God. in fear we see uncertainty. In love we see Gods grace. In Fear we see Gods judgement. In Gods love we find Hope. In fear we see no hope.

faith, hope and love are linked. Love is the root that gives the other reason.

In Christ...James
********

*****************************
wes says..no no..i mean HOW do we get faith.

i post 4 long post..you can read later..i will not post again.
telling how we get faith

********


wes says...no...i do not agree

wes says...i think faith is used by us..and not given as others say

ok..now we come to this post.

if wes is saying this..lets play out this logic.
so...then Wes must be breaking faith into Gods faith..and mans faith. One can do that i guess.

i was trying to show..even if one does brake it that way...faith is there...in us....but not the same as Gods faith

My full view is as stated before...we may pratice a form of love before salvation...but only real Faith in God comes at salvation


so....looking at it like wes...yes one can pratice a form of faith..faith is stated in my 1st post...emotion driven by love.


In Christ...James

 

What makes you think that God has faith? What would be the object of God's faith? In whom would God have faith? The biblical definition of faith is this: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen." What does God hope for? What is it that God cannot or does not see? James you made a bad assumption of what you think I am saying and compounded it! God has no faith! Therefore God cannot give faith as the Calvinist declares that he does. That is the reason for my questions about HOW God gives man faith!
God gives man every reason to have faith, but does not give man the faith!

Faith does not come at salvation, Faith must be possessed by one in order for the one to receive salvation! God simply does not save those without faith!

Faith IS NOT an emotion! IT is instead the substance of our hopes, the evidence of what we cannot see! Love is an emotion, faith is not! Faith is 100% human, God has no faith! So Wes cannot be breaking faith into man's vs God's faith.

Now then, Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God! That says that we humans must hear the word of God to have faith in God! How do we hear the word of God? We have it taught to us in Sunday School, in our homes, in church services, by reading the bible for ourselves, and by hearing tape or cd recordings of the Word of God being read by another. We hear about God and we come to faith in God through that process. The word taken into our consciousness, into our mind, is then used by our spirit to form faith in God!

So the bottom line is that God does not give, as in transference of a commodity or substance, Faith that God does not have, to man who is the only of God's creation to have faith! The Holy Spirit illuminates the Word of God that we have taken in, to our human spirit which then establishes faith in what the word of God says. We are born again when our spirit becomes convinced to submit itself to the Spirit of Christ, and actually does submit! It is then that we become an elect of God as in, a part of the church, a part of the bride of Christ. In marriage, it is the bride that submits to the groom. The groom honors and cherishes the bride and cares for her and protects her.

 

I'm not going to try and untangle this mess, just give a few adjectives: disoriented, confusing , twisted, deranged, pathetic.

 

Let me make it easy for you to respond.

GOD does not have faith!

God has no need for faith!

Now the question:
For what possible reason would God need to have faith?

 

what is hope wes?

when i say i hope it rains...what does hope mean?

 

The biblical definition of faith is this: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen." What does God hope for?


</font>[/QUOTE]sorry..but i have to ask this wes...

this is silly to go though this....but


what does "sustance" mean?
what does "things" mean wes?

 

Something that Matters? What could matter more than the pillars of your doctrine? Faith is one of those pillars is it not?

Do you not believe that God gives to man his faith?

Is that Gift not a transference of a possession of the one to the possession of the other? After all, when you give a gift to another, you definitely release it to the one to whom you gave it.

You claim that God gives to man faith. I have repeatedly ask you how that happens and you have continually failed to answer the question. So you must not yourself believe what you claim to be the truth, because you do not know the answer to a simple question. So I told you the answer and without thinking it through, you scoff at it.

When I point out to you that ALL KNOWING, ALL SEEING God has no use of faith which is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen, you deliberately reject the thought without thinking it through. God has no faith. Therefore God cannot give faith to man.

That clearly means that man gets faith from somewhere else doesn't it? Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Amazing how scripture rings true.

Hope is what YOU (man) possess and the OBJECT of your cited specific hope is that it rains. Some would call that wishing, I wish it would rain.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Faith in your cited hope is that you will indeed get rain.

However, we are to HOPE FOR salvation! We are to hope that the Promise made that we believe is for us, indeed is fulfilled for us. In this case it is not wishful thinking, because it is founded upon a believed promise.

Hope is a human possession, and no human can hope in the stead of another human, though all humans can hope for the same things.

 

let me put this another way...as it applies to you wes

Wes..why do you keep posting notes to me?
why do you HOPE i see the real meaning?
What do you WISH i would just understand the point?

 

So you believe everyone has faith before salvation, just not faith in God? Please explain how all humans have faith before salvation, but God grants only some faith for salvation. Pleas show scripturally where faith is categorized differently. </font>[/QUOTE]hi ya webdog,

Nice to meet ya.

i knew when i posted this last post...this would follow. I do not blame you..i would jump on this too.

but let us review where this tread has been.

i read this from wes ..what is faith..
i post this....
*********************
I have not read all of this tread..but only the last few pages. But if i may..i would like to anwser this post.


Faith is an emotion. We get this from two other emotions..love and hope. Hope (elpis) is favorable and confident expectation. Where do we get this favorable expectation? We get it from Love. When we study this from mans side, It will always come back to love. The Bible says..faith, hope and love...but the greatest of these is love.

So what is love?

Love (agape) to express giving of all yourself to the love object without expectations of anything in return.

ok but that is textbook ..what does this mean?

Well emotions are memories we draw on from experiences we have known. Let me explain. A kid has no fear of playing in the street because he has no thoughts of a car running him over. Once a kid knows of the danger..the emotion of fear sets in. A kid does not fear that a stove will burn till he know what a burning is. This may have come from a stove or a candle, or any hot thing. A parent needs only to remind the child...remember what the hot light felt like?..well the stove is much hotter. This memory brings fear of the stove.

Why do i love peanut better? I love it because i have tasted it. Be fore i tasted it...i had no love for it. I love basketball for i played the game..watched the game....and know how fun it is. Loving it..means i have had time to experience it. I love my wife for i think of what we have been though...good and bad...but its the memories that bring the love emotion. At 1st my love for her was only of good things. But as my love grow i see love in the good and bad. In the good things..that is easy to see. In the bad..its making it though together. that is what builds our love.

Ok..what does this have to do with anything?

well lets go forward with this thought now.

Where is your love? James says...where you have your love..that is where your actions are. I played basketball..because i love the game. Its not always easy. I brake bones..get very sore...but all this is worth it...for i do love the game. I love my wife...not that every day is full of roses...but any bad is worth going though...to get to stay with the one i love. Love is what drives us. Loves makes us go forward..no matter what. Your love for God will produce favorable and confident expectation to see that love again.

What i know of my wife...what i have lived...what i have loved in my wife....i hope to see again. A favorable and confident expectation is hope. How much more can i say i love my God. What I know God has done for me....the love i know he has given me....the new life He gave for me...the pain he went though for me...the sin he saved me from...the blessings he gives...the comfort that comes from him....this is all LOVE i want to see more in my life. We know of no true love till God shares His love to us. I have favorable and confident expectations of Gods love. This is when I have place my hope in God.

If we take both love our base word...and add hope or our expectation..this produces faith where our drive is. Our love...Our hope..all that we drives us...lives in our faith. Where is your faith? I HOPE it is in God.

So...faith is an emotion but it comes from God. We can know better the Faith we have if we look at where our love is. God gives us our love. yes we can touch it...when we use His love to care for others. We can feel it just as we feel love. it is real...for it is seen in the love we have for Him.

Love comes from God..as does hope..so faith comes from God


In Christ..james

**********************

and then this..
What i wrote on faith, hope and love may seem like a bunch of physic babble when you read it. I am not the best at expressing myself. But let me ask you wes to read it again.

I sat under the teaching of Dr Dan Burger for 15 years. Burger now teaches at BJU in greenville NC. Burger more then any one else shaped my faith into what it is today. There are better speakers in the world..but no better teacher of the Word.

Burger use to say over and over...you live your life in love...or you live your life in fear. All the things you do either fear or love will drive you.

If you think about it..it is true. why do you do what you do? A leader rules a nation in fear..or love. People love him and want to do it...or people hate him..and do it in fear. In the OT they kept the law..under fear. in the NT we keep Gods laws because we love Him. what drives you?

On the love side we also see...faith...faith comes from love. we also see hope...hope comes from love. We also see grace...which is a type of Love...in love we see security

in love we see a vision. in fear we see a problem. in love we find faith in God. in fear we see uncertainty. In love we see Gods grace. In Fear we see Gods judgement. In Gods love we find Hope. In fear we see no hope.

faith, hope and love are linked. Love is the root that gives the other reason.

In Christ...James
********

*****************************
wes says..no no..i mean HOW do we get faith.

i post 4 long post..you can read later..i will not post again.
telling how we get faith

********


wes says...no...i do not agree

wes says...i think faith is used by us..and not given as others say

ok..now we come to this post.

if wes is saying this..lets play out this logic.
so...then Wes must be breaking faith into Gods faith..and mans faith. One can do that i guess.

i was trying to show..even if one does brake it that way...faith is there...in us....but not the same as Gods faith

My full view is as stated before...we may pratice a form of love before salvation...but only real Faith in God comes at salvation


so....looking at it like wes...yes one can pratice a form of faith..faith is stated in my 1st post...emotion driven by love.


In Christ...James </font>[/QUOTE]Thanks for your theory. Now do you have scripture that shows faith is given?

 

How will you ever understand spiritual things when you do not understand the natural things?

 

Hi webdog

stick with me on this please
if you have never seen this...it should bless you.

I went over this before, going forward, but wes did not see it. Using his own words lets back up and look again.

If we do backup..we will always get back to Gods love. Love is a emotion based on knowing. ALWAYS.

Love is the root of hope. Hope is used in the Bible as wes has stated to describe Faith.

We must see where our hope comes from in order to understand faith..for i agree as the Bible says..faith comes from our hope. where is our hope? what makes use hope for the things we hope for? wes used wish..i do not like that word wish...but i understand what he is saying. so...using wes word...when I say i wish this would happen...where is the driving force of the word wish?

Can i ask you to consided this. We wish..or hope in something because we see something good in it. I wish for rain..or hope for rain...because we need rain. and rain would be good for us to have. Or...i hope i play basketball tonight...it is good to play basketball..for it is fun. That is the next level of understanding faith.

now...why is it good? it is good because we KNOW what rain is...for we have seen rain..and know what it can do for us. We look to rain..in hopes that it will bring good to us. In this case..the good is this

rain will water the plants and we need water
rain will break the heat and it has been so hot...and so on.

We KNOW this fact...for we have seen it before. In this case..rain is or hope.

basketball is my hope tonight. for I have PLAYed basketball and I know it is fun. The fun is the GOOD part...or the fun i hope for. so in saying i wish to play basketball tonight...i am saying..i know of the fun of basketball...and i hope it brings me fun again tonight.


We know..for we HAVE had. in this case..we know rain..for we HAVE seen it. I know...for i have played basketball.

my hope is in God..for i KNOW if His goodness

This is all memories..the knowing part.
Well emotions are memories we draw on from experiences we have known.

just as i posted in my 1st post.
**************
Let me explain. A kid has no fear of playing in the street because he has no thoughts of a car running him over. Once a kid knows of the danger..the emotion of fear sets in. A kid does not fear that a stove will burn till he know what a burning is. This may have come from a stove or a candle, or any hot thing. A parent needs only to remind the child...remember what the hot light felt like?..well the stove is much hotter. This memory brings fear of the stove.

**************


so how does this tie with faith? When calvinist say God gives us faith we are saying

“God shard his love with us and that produced faith in Him”.

If you were to pick on one word to use to understand faith..it would be trust. So lets use that word in the statement above.


“God shared his love with me and now I put my trust in Him”

now in view of all this lets look back at the statement of faith in the Bible

Faith is the substance of our hopes, the evidence of what we cannot see!

lets look at the 1st part..where hope is placed.

It is then fair to read it like this...
Faith is the sustance of hope....
or...Faith is the very things you see in hope.

what is hope?
hope is expectations of something good that we have KNOWN. or...hope is based on something that we KNOW is good
or...hope is based on experiences we have known and we KNOW to be good.

so the 1st part of faith is..
faith is experiences we have known and we know to be good,...

now the next part
the evidence of what we cannot see!

what is evidence?
can i ask you to consider this.

evidence is facts. Things that we know for sure.

if this is the case..then we can read it like this

the evidence of what we cannot see!
or the facts of what we know..but can not see
or the facts of what God has shown us and trust in....but we have yet to see with our own eyes

if this is ture..lets read both lines together

faith is. experiences we have known and know are good, and facts God has shared with us but we have not yet seen.

so...how is it that we know?

Gods shared His love to us.

Faith is emotions based on hope driven by our memories we HAVE of Gods love He shared with us.

It will always go back to Gods love.

I only need to post a verse on Gods love to prove this. There are many...take your pick.

You can say as wes says...faith belongs to no one...but is used by us.

It is ok to say it like this. But what kicks in our faith..so that we can believe ...or trust God? Gods love. Gods love was shared with us...not until that moment can we trust in Him.

Faith comes by..HEARING. hearing in this case is knowing.
Faith comes.....
Gods love comes..we hear it...understand it with the Holy Spirit...then we KNOW...we HAVE experience...we now have memories of Gods love.

This is the reason our faith grows. The more we see God at work in our lives...the more he shares His love to us...the more we grow in faith to him

But..it starts with God giving us His love


In Christ Love...James

 

humm... now why did you post this?
this is a quote from the Bible...but why bring this in at this point?

i asked..what is hope/wish and this is your answer.

i can see only 2 reasons for this..


If you mean the lost have no understanding of God...i see your point..and agree. this is a fact in calvin's teaching. welcome to the truth wes. but this does not have anything to do with hope/wish

if on the other hand you are saying i do not understand for i am unsaved. you are wrong sir and you need to say so.

God saved me from my sins...and now i belong to Him. If i speak as a fool..that means i do not understand. This in no way is saying God did not save me. so NEVER say you can read my heart. God can only do this. You need only to post your views...and stop with the attacks


In the LOVE of Christ...James

 

again i ask you sir...

why do i hope?

 

&lt;&lt;Faith comes by..HEARING. hearing in this case is knowing.
Faith comes.....
Gods love comes..we hear it...understand it with the Holy Spirit...then we KNOW...we HAVE experience...we now have memories of Gods love.&gt;&gt;

Faith comes by hearing. How do we hear/know...people talking, reading, tv, radio, computer...and who knows...even angels. So is 1. faith something given only to s certain group, or is it ..
2. something all humans are born with and use based on evidence, what we cannot see but know based on hearing? It has to be the second, and there is no biblical basis for the first. There is also no biblical basis for faith being an emotion. I appreciate you trying to give your hypothesis on how faith is an emotion and a gift, but you give no scripture backing what you claim.