Wesley & Imputed Sin

[Heavenly Pilgrim]

Bound: Free-Will is an act of Grace impossible through our own Fallen Nature alone. It is no longer an attribute of our Fallen Nature except through Preventing Grace, which is a gift of God not via our own agency.

HP: To the Scriptures Bound.:smilewinkgrin:

Where is your Scriptural evidence? Even "the heathen who have not the law do the things contained in the law, therefore they have became a law unto themselves.” Is it grace that ‘empowers’ or grants to them ‘special abilities’ enabling them to obey? Do the heathen have a free will or have they simply been granted prevenient grace as well?

 

[webdog]

This 'gift' of which the verse speaks is 'Salvation' which can only be received by the 'regenerate' whose eyes have been opened to receive it. Please don't conflate the two.

We are spiritually dead until that time in which preventing grace quickens us and in that quickening we choice to grasp eternal life with Faith in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

What you are promoting is not Arminianism nor the teachings of Free-Will Baptists but Pelagianism or at best semi-Pelagianism.

My guess is your time in battle with Calvinists have forced you into extremes... Free-Will is an act of Grace impossible through our own Fallen Nature alone. It is no longer an attribute of our Fallen Nature except through Preventing Grace, which is a gift of God not via our own agency.

I have no problem with salvation being received by the regenerate. I believe the Scripture I provided (not semi or full fledged pelagianism) shows that this gift is received BY believing. Regeneration is being born again, having been passed from death to life. If one is regenerated prior to faith in Christ, one has passed from death to life OUTSIDE of faith in Christ, and that my friend, makes faith of no consequence in salvation. There is no way around that.

 

[skypair]

"Since mankind is hopelessly dead in trespasses and sins and can do nothing to obtain salvation, God graciously restores to all men sufficient ability to make a choice in the matter of submission to him. This is the salvation-bringing grace of God that has appeared to all men." ~Henry C. Thiessen, Introductory Lectures in Systematic Theology [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949], pp. 344-345

Then I'll agree with you! :laugh: I like this quote, especially the ALL! Thought I was saying something like it but if this is what "floats your boat," I'm with ya.

skypair

 

[skypair]

Regeneration is being born again, having been passed from death to life. If one is regenerated prior to faith in Christ, one has passed from death to life OUTSIDE of faith in Christ, and that my friend, makes faith of no consequence in salvation. There is no way around that.

I like this, web! They really do have their own definition of "regeneration" and that is the genesis of one of their many errors.

skypair

 

[Heavenly Pilgrim]

Bound: God graciously restores to all men sufficient ability to make a choice in the matter of submission to him

SP: Then I'll agree with you! I like this quote, especially the ALL! Thought I was saying something like it but if this is what "floats your boat," I'm with ya.

HP: What earthly good does granting only the abilities to make a choice in the matter of submission, if in fact one has never heard the gospel message to know what or how to submit?

The picture Bounds paints is one of a poor victim of his circumstances unable to make a choice until God comes along with grace and only then he can only choose to submit or not apparently. The picture God paints of the sinner is one of a willing rebel, active in the formation of intents of selfishness in direct opposition to those of benevolence, long before even understanding of any offer of salvation, and that by choice not by fate.

Scripture is clear, “Your sins have separated you from God” not your inability to do that which is right.

 

[bound]

I have no problem with salvation being received by the regenerate.

Then you have already begun to recognize that in the quickening of man to eternal life, it should be understood as a sequence of the work of Saving Grace...

We have fallen from our original condition of uprightness, yet within this falleness grace is at work ceaselessly to free us from guilt and sin. The diverse outworking of grace is phased in four dimensions, working contextually in each according to individuated need.

1.) Prevenient Grace. The saving work of God begins not by our being attentive to prevening grace, but by grace that attends us and awakens our attentiveness. The focus is not first of all upon our cooperation initiative by which we imagine ourselves coming early to God, pleading to cooperate. Rather, the initiative comes from grace prevening prior to our first awakening to the mercy and holiness of God.

Prevenient grace elicits "the first wish to please God, the first dawn of light concerning his will, and the first slight transient conviction of having sinned against Him." Grace works ahead of us to draw us toward faith, to begin its work in us. Even the first fragile intuition of conviction of sin, the first intimation of our need for God, is the work of preparing, prevening grace, which draws us gradually toward wishing to please God. Grace is working quietly at the point of our desiring, bringing us in time to despair over own righteousness, challenging our perverse dispositions, so that our distorted wills cease gradually to resist the gifts of God.

Grace works antecedently to conversion to convict freedom of its falleness, and its need for a radical reversal, repentance, a reversal that is only possible in view of God's justifying grace, which meets us on the cross, of which we in time may become aware. At each stage we are called to receive and respond to the grace being incrementally given. Prevenient grace does not justify, but readies for justification, giving us the desire for faith, which is the one condition of justification.

The chief function of prevenient grace is to bring the person to a state of grace. Prevenient grace is that grace that goes before us to prepare us for more grace, the grace that makes it possible for persons to take the frist steps toward saving grace.

2.) Convicting Grace. Prevening grace leads toward convicting grace, which begins not with our self-initiated determination to repent but by the grace that elicits a determination to repent. Prevenient grace brings one to the point of attentiveness to one's own sinfulness, asking for works meet for repentance. that does not mean that works evidencing repentance are justifying works, since no work justifies, but that the threshold of grace is being entered by penitence.

Convicting grace enables one to grow toward repentance, toward greater knowledge of oneself as sinner, aware of how far away from God one is. convicting grace brings one to despair over one's own righteousness under the law, and leads to repentance, which turns around one's intentionality.

3.) Justifying Grace. Arminian/Wesleyan distinction between justification and sanctification is: "By justification we are saved from the guilt of sin and restored to the favor of God; by sanctification we are saved from the power and root of sin, and restored to the image of God." Whoever grasps that one sentence, which is worth memorizing, has laid hold of the heart of Arminian/Wesleyan soteriology.

The statement means: By justification God has worked for us to pardon us. Justifying grace calls us to trust the One who takes my sin upon himself on the cross. God works through justifying grace for us to make us aware that his favor is addressed personally to us. We respond in simple trust, which proceeds in a process of growth in responsiveness, which is sanctification.

We cannot take grace seriously without taking seriously the depth, subtlety, and recalcitrance of the history of sin. In the Arminian tradition, however, we do not just talk about how bad things are, how deeply enmeshed in evil, but how God that Spirit is at work in human history to elicit responses by which that predicament can be transformed.

4.) Sanctifying Grace. By sanctifying grace our salvation is being brought to full moral and behavioral fruitfulness. If in justification we are saved from the guilt of sin, and restored to the favor of God, in sanctification we are saved from the root of sin, and restored to the renewed image of God. The best way of thinking of imago is as mirror, imaging or mirroring the goodness of God.

Sanctifying grace is not merely an awareness of God's pardon (the central concern of justifying grace). Rather it is further bent upon actively digging into and dislodging the roots of sin, cutting those roots (gradually or quickly, whether by sawing or snipping) so as to enable the believer actually to live out the glorious liberty of the children of God. If offers a new life in the family of God. The eviction of sin requires the rooting out of actual personally chosen habits of sin, as well as the complex history of sin, which is formally or juridically overcome in the grace of baptism with the gift of the Spirit.

In this way sanctifying grace seeks to go to the very root of sin behaviorally and practically to uproot the sin and bring one to the way of holiness. This is a defining Holiness doctrine. God does not leave us alone with justifying grace as if to tempt us to licentiousness, but wishes functionally to reclaim the whole of our broken lives. That has implications both for personal and social life. Amen.

 

[Heavenly Pilgrim]

I for one like much of what you just posted Bound, but you avoid like the plague the real issues at stake. God is certainly at work in every mans heart according to Scripture, even the heathen. The question is not whether or not man would , apart from any influence or grace from God, do anything meritorious or move in the slightest direction towards God as a sinner apart from God first working within and upon man. Before man was, God IS. He is before and involved in some sense of anything in the entire universe that elicits action. Just the same, did God or did He not create man as a first cause of his intents, and as a first cause, did and does not man receive the requisite abilities to be the first cause that he was created to be as a natural part of his makeup?

If the only thing men can do is subsequent to hearing and being granted the opportunity of responding to salvation, how can God in justice hold such victims of their circumstances responsible that are only acting and reacting to coercive stimuli you denote as a sin nature or original sin, much like a puppet is coerced to act as one pulls on its strings? You paint a picture of only being able to do something different that what one does subsequent to hearing the gospel. That is absolutely at antipodes with Scripture. Not all even have the opportunity to hear the gospel, but all will be held accountable to god for failing to do as they could have done if they would have so chose. To place choice or free will as only the abilities granted to men by God in the offer of salvation is simply wrong. Nothing is further from the truth. Need we quote Romans again concerning the heathen which not only have not heard the law and certainly not the gospel message but DO the things contained in the law? From whence does their moral agency hail from? Where is their lack of abilities clearly ANTECEDENT to hearing any gospel message? Where does their abilities to obey hail from, again, ANTECEDENT to hearing the gospel?

Sinful man is no victim, and God in justice will not hold man accountable for failure to do that which is a natural impossibility for him to do. Jesus made it clear that keeping the commandments was indeed possible for a man to do and was in fact a way to eternal life although none had done that. When asked by the young man what must I do to inherit eternal life, Jesus did not respond with” Wait patiently for prevenient grace to enable you with the abilities to repent, have faith, or respond to the gospel message..” No. Jesus looked at him and said, “Keep the commandments.”

You paint the picture of man being impotent to obey until God grants to him the abilities to obey, but Scripture tells us otherwise. God has indeed granted to men the requisite abilities to obey part and parcel with being created as a moral agent. Man is called upon by God to exercise their will, to act as a first cause in repentance and faith in order to be saved.

 

[bound]

Then I'll agree with you! :laugh: I like this quote, especially the ALL! Thought I was saying something like it but if this is what "floats your boat," I'm with ya.

skypair

The Arminian/Wesleyan and double predestinarians agreed that grace produces good fruit, and that works as such do not justify. The burning issue remained whether saving grace is offered to all or some. Wesley argued that the free sovereign grace of God to share his mercy with all humanity. While we were yet sinners Christ died for the ungodly. While dead in our sins, God did not spare "his own Son, but delivered him up for us all" (Rom. 8:32). This is not a grace that is decreed to operate only in some, but in all (as in Calvin common grace operates in all). Grace, offered sufficiently and freely to all. The atoning grace in Chirst is freely given to all precisely while we were yet sinners. All humanity comes under the condemnation of sin, yet while we were dead in sins, God freely was giving us all things.

Justifying grace does not depend upon any human merit, good works, tempers, good desires, good purposes, or intentions. Yet grace elicits a good willing that animates good works. God works are the fruit of grace, not its root, the effects of grace, not its cause.

 

[Heavenly Pilgrim]

Bound: Justifying grace does not depend upon any human merit, good works, tempers, good desires, good purposes, or intentions. Yet grace elicits a good willing that animates good works. God works are the fruit of grace, not its root, the effects of grace, not its cause.

HP: Again you are avoiding the real issue. The real issue is whether or not man is a first cause of his intents. Does man possess, as an intrinsic part of human moral agency, the abilities of contrary choice. If you say only subsequent to receiving grace, and grace comes subsequent to moral agency, you have destroyed moral agency and any moral accountability. Man, in such a scenario as you paint, only becomes a responsible moral agent subsequent to receiving grace to either accept or reject the gospel. Again, Scripture states otherwise and clearly shows that all, whether or not they have heard the good news or not, are rightfully held accountable for their voluntary choices of selfishness denoted as sin.

Even Wesley stated that nothing is sin strictly speaking but a willful transgression of a known commandment of God. The very fact that it is denoted as sin shows clear ability of the possibility of contrary choice regardless of being antecedent to or subsequent of any offer of salvation.

You seem to separate human effort from justifying grace. That again is contrary to Scripture. “Unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” Man is not saved because of, or for the sake of their formed intents of repentance and faith, but neither will they be saved apart from their formed intents that they are a first cause of. When you separate man from the abilities of contrary choice, and make man impotent (due to lack of abilities) to act as a first cause without being granted further abilities to form his intents, you set the stage for necessitated fatalism, just as does the Calvinist. When you start from a platform of Augustinian original sin, any and all will find themselves, if they are honest, leaning far to close to Calvinism, just as even Wesley admitted he clearly did, although he apparently was clueless as to why.

Remain clueless no longer. The Augustinian dogma of original sin lies at the very heart of any and all such Calvinistic leanings.

 

[webdog]

Then you have already begun to recognize that in the quickening of man to eternal life, it should be understood as a sequence of the work of Saving Grace...

We have fallen from our original condition of uprightness, yet within this falleness grace is at work ceaselessly to free us from guilt and sin. The diverse outworking of grace is phased in four dimensions, working contextually in each according to individuated need.

1.) Prevenient Grace. The saving work of God begins not by our being attentive to prevening grace, but by grace that attends us and awakens our attentiveness. The focus is not first of all upon our cooperation initiative by which we imagine ourselves coming early to God, pleading to cooperate. Rather, the initiative comes from grace prevening prior to our first awakening to the mercy and holiness of God.

Prevenient grace elicits "the first wish to please God, the first dawn of light concerning his will, and the first slight transient conviction of having sinned against Him." Grace works ahead of us to draw us toward faith, to begin its work in us. Even the first fragile intuition of conviction of sin, the first intimation of our need for God, is the work of preparing, prevening grace, which draws us gradually toward wishing to please God. Grace is working quietly at the point of our desiring, bringing us in time to despair over own righteousness, challenging our perverse dispositions, so that our distorted wills cease gradually to resist the gifts of God.

Grace works antecedently to conversion to convict freedom of its falleness, and its need for a radical reversal, repentance, a reversal that is only possible in view of God's justifying grace, which meets us on the cross, of which we in time may become aware. At each stage we are called to receive and respond to the grace being incrementally given. Prevenient grace does not justify, but readies for justification, giving us the desire for faith, which is the one condition of justification.

The chief function of prevenient grace is to bring the person to a state of grace. Prevenient grace is that grace that goes before us to prepare us for more grace, the grace that makes it possible for persons to take the frist steps toward saving grace.

2.) Convicting Grace. Prevening grace leads toward convicting grace, which begins not with our self-initiated determination to repent but by the grace that elicits a determination to repent. Prevenient grace brings one to the point of attentiveness to one's own sinfulness, asking for works meet for repentance. that does not mean that works evidencing repentance are justifying works, since no work justifies, but that the threshold of grace is being entered by penitence.

Convicting grace enables one to grow toward repentance, toward greater knowledge of oneself as sinner, aware of how far away from God one is. convicting grace brings one to despair over one's own righteousness under the law, and leads to repentance, which turns around one's intentionality.

3.) Justifying Grace. Arminian/Wesleyan distinction between justification and sanctification is: "By justification we are saved from the guilt of sin and restored to the favor of God; by sanctification we are saved from the power and root of sin, and restored to the image of God." Whoever grasps that one sentence, which is worth memorizing, has laid hold of the heart of Arminian/Wesleyan soteriology.

The statement means: By justification God has worked for us to pardon us. Justifying grace calls us to trust the One who takes my sin upon himself on the cross. God works through justifying grace for us to make us aware that his favor is addressed personally to us. We respond in simple trust, which proceeds in a process of growth in responsiveness, which is sanctification.

We cannot take grace seriously without taking seriously the depth, subtlety, and recalcitrance of the history of sin. In the Arminian tradition, however, we do not just talk about how bad things are, how deeply enmeshed in evil, but how God that Spirit is at work in human history to elicit responses by which that predicament can be transformed.

4.) Sanctifying Grace. By sanctifying grace our salvation is being brought to full moral and behavioral fruitfulness. If in justification we are saved from the guilt of sin, and restored to the favor of God, in sanctification we are saved from the root of sin, and restored to the renewed image of God. The best way of thinking of imago is as mirror, imaging or mirroring the goodness of God.

Sanctifying grace is not merely an awareness of God's pardon (the central concern of justifying grace). Rather it is further bent upon actively digging into and dislodging the roots of sin, cutting those roots (gradually or quickly, whether by sawing or snipping) so as to enable the believer actually to live out the glorious liberty of the children of God. If offers a new life in the family of God. The eviction of sin requires the rooting out of actual personally chosen habits of sin, as well as the complex history of sin, which is formally or juridically overcome in the grace of baptism with the gift of the Spirit.

In this way sanctifying grace seeks to go to the very root of sin behaviorally and practically to uproot the sin and bring one to the way of holiness. This is a defining Holiness doctrine. God does not leave us alone with justifying grace as if to tempt us to licentiousness, but wishes functionally to reclaim the whole of our broken lives. That has implications both for personal and social life. Amen.

Where is the Scripture stating convicting grace is not given to all mankind?

 

[Heavenly Pilgrim]

Webdog: Where is the Scripture stating convicting grace is not given to all mankind?

HP: Excellent question Webdog. If in fact convicting grace is granted to all universally, that is proof that it is indeed part and parcel to requisite natural abilities of moral agency granted to men as being created as moral agent by God.

When you deny man has the requisite natural abilities of contrary choice, or deny that man has all the natural abilities necessary to respond to the offer of grace IF the occasion arises to hear the message, you deny that man is a responsible first cause of his intents and a sinner, at least, is simply the product of necessity.

 

[bound]

I for one like much of what you just posted Bound, but you avoid like the plague the real issues at stake. God is certainly at work in every mans heart according to Scripture, even the heathen. The question is not whether or not man would , apart from any influence or grace from God, do anything meritorious or move in the slightest direction towards God as a sinner apart from God first working within and upon man.

This is probably the first thing I've been able to say we appear to be in agreement. I say Amen! Praise God!

Before man was, God IS. He is before and involved in some sense of anything in the entire universe that elicits action.

This appears to be almost Panentheistic in tone. Although I might grant you that God is both transcendent and immanent I don't believe that He is 'apart' of His Creation nor 'apart' of His Creatures.

Just the same, did God or did He not create man as a first cause of his intents, and as a first cause, did and does not man receive the requisite abilities to be the first cause that he was created to be as a natural part of his makeup?

Perhaps in the beginning before Adam's separation from God but once caught in this intergenerational syndrome of sin, the sinner as social creature does not escape its determinants and consequences. By our own natural strength, without grace, there is no way to happiness, in the absence of grace-enabled faith, hope and love. The human spirit is entangled in a maze of self-deceptions.

The resultant impairment: we are unable to resurrect ourselves, to reverse our fallen trajectory; hence when considered apart from grace, "There is no one who does good, not even one" (Rom. 3:12, from Ps. 53.1).

Fallen men and women cannot turn to repent without grace preceding them. there is no way to get back to the original condition of righteousness by dint of their own earnest moral calisthenics or social enterprise or political fortitude. Whatever natural strength we might seem to have had to do good works has become radically blemished, unable to call upon God, execute or even envision a perfectly good work. There no way for the sinner, in his or her wounded nature, to achieve a good will or sustain it without grace preceding.

Only on these terms (grace-enabled faith active in love) may sinners will that which is good and pleasing to God. Insofar as the sinner has a good will, it emerges only through cooperation with divine grace moving ahead of us, with and through our wounded state.

"Supposing a man to be now void of faith and hope and love, he cannot effect any degree of them in himself by any possible exertion of his understanding and of any or all his other natural faculties, though he should enjoy them in their utmost perfection. A distinct power from God, not implied in any of these, is indispensably necessary before it is possible he should arrive at the very lowest degree of Christian faith or hope or love... he must be created anew.

"One thing is needful..." ~ Luke 10:42

Though humanity was created in the image of God, sin has profoundly effaced that image, as evidenced by the loss of freedom, now so bound by "heavy chains" of "vile affections" that it is not possible even to "lift up an eye, a thought to heaven." "The whole head is faint, and the whole heart sick."

The one thing needful: "To recover our first estate... to be born again, to be formed anew after the likeness of our Creator... to re-exchange the image of Satan for the image of God, bondage for freedom, sickness for health... to regain our native freedom". This is "our one great business," "the one work we have to do."

"The one end of our creation," is that we might love God supremely and all things in God, for love is perfect freedom, the very image of God,. "Love is the health of the soul, the full exertion of all its powers, the perfection of all its faculties."

The one end of our redemption is that we be restored to health and freedom, that every spiritual sickness of our nature might be healed. This is the purpose of the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Christ: to proclaim liberty to captives, to enjoin what is necessary for our recovery and forbid what is obstructive of it. The one end of all God's providential dispensations is "solely our sanctification; our our recovery from that vile bondage, the love of his creatures, to the free love of our Creator." The one end of the operations of the Spirit in us is to do this one thing needful, "to restore us to health, liberty, to holiness."

If the only thing men can do is subsequent to hearing and being granted the opportunity of responding to salvation, how can God in justice hold such victims of their circumstances responsible that are only acting and reacting to coercive stimuli you denote as a sin nature or original sin, much like a puppet is coerced to act as one pulls on its strings? You paint a picture of only being able to do something different that what one does subsequent to hearing the gospel. That is absolutely at antipodes with Scripture. Not all even have the opportunity to hear the gospel, but all will be held accountable to god for failing to do as they could have done if they would have so chose. To place choice or free will as only the abilities granted to men by God in the offer of salvation is simply wrong. Nothing is further from the truth. Need we quote Romans again concerning the heathen which not only have not heard the law and certainly not the gospel message but DO the things contained in the law? From whence does their moral agency hail from? Where is their lack of abilities clearly ANTECEDENT to hearing any gospel message? Where does their abilities to obey hail from, again, ANTECEDENT to hearing the gospel?

Sinful man is no victim, and God in justice will not hold man accountable for failure to do that which is a natural impossibility for him to do. Jesus made it clear that keeping the commandments was indeed possible for a man to do and was in fact a way to eternal life although none had done that. When asked by the young man what must I do to inherit eternal life, Jesus did not respond with” Wait patiently for prevenient grace to enable you with the abilities to repent, have faith, or respond to the gospel message..” No. Jesus looked at him and said, “Keep the commandments.”

You paint the picture of man being impotent to obey until God grants to him the abilities to obey, but Scripture tells us otherwise. God has indeed granted to men the requisite abilities to obey part and parcel with being created as a moral agent. Man is called upon by God to exercise their will, to act as a first cause in repentance and faith in order to be saved.

"Some great truths, as the being and attributes of God, and the difference between moral good and evil, were known, in some measure, to the whole world. The traces of them are to be found in all nations. So that in some sense, it may be said to every child of man, 'He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, even to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with they God.' With this truth he has, in some measure, 'enlightened every one that cometh into the world.'"

Here is a decisive point of contact with the history of religions and a theology of world religions. Wesley had read a translation of the Qur'an, some of the Vedas, and had a cursory knowledge of Buddhism. But his views on comparative religion were largely shaped by Hebrew-Christian Scripture as received through a patristic exegesis. The common and prevening grace working in other religions accordingly is understood not as something other than the grace of the One who meets us in the Incarnation, the same triune One working preveniently to guide all to perfect revelation.

Common grace is present throughout the whole human condition. Grace is not stingy. It is present wherever human beings are present, to call freedom to repentance wherever human beings are, addressed to the will, working precisely amid the constant intergenerational and social transmissions of sin. Grace works every moment, both before and after the subjective dynamics of faith, both without and within the circle of faith. In this way common grace is found in all nations, in every child of man and woman, in all who love mercy.

Due to the diversity of gifts, all persons are not all being given the same specific graces at any moment, for the Spirit is distributing different gifts to different persons according to emergent needs and historical requirements. Let me be clear...

God does not make us accountable for a grace not given to us. God makes us accountable only for that grace that in fact is given to us.

 

[bound]

Where is the Scripture stating convicting grace is not given to all mankind?

I hate to leave you hanging but it's quite late. What you have asked is a wonderfully challenging question and I'd love to share with you my thoughts... tomorrow.

:sleeping_2:

 

[Heavenly Pilgrim]

Bound: Here is a decisive point of contact with the history of religions and a theology of world religions. Wesley had read a translation of the Qur'an, some of the Vedas, and had a cursory knowledge of Buddhism. But his views on comparative religion were largely shaped by Hebrew-Christian Scripture as received through a patristic exegesis. The common and prevening grace working in other religions accordingly is understood not as something other than the grace of the One who meets us in the Incarnation, the same triune One working preveniently to guide all to perfect revelation.

HP: What you are describing then as ‘grace’ has nothing necessarily to do with salvation or the offer of salvation, and is clearly nothing more than universal light and understanding of some truth given to all men by God as an intrinsic part of their constitution as a moral agent. Therefore, all men are granted by God the necessary abilities to understand and even comply with such light and understanding which you are calling ‘prevenient grace’, and thereby accountable to God for this universal truth or ‘prevenient grace.’ Am I not correct?

 

[bound]

HP: What you are describing then as ‘grace’ has nothing necessarily to do with salvation or the offer of salvation, and is clearly nothing more than universal light and understanding of some truth given to all men by God as an intrinsic part of their constitution as a moral agent.

All graces (prevenient, convicting, justifying and sanctifying) play their part in bringing man into an awareness of God's presence and eventually into a salvific cooperation in the divine nature. I tend not to say 'intrinsic' because we must not understand it as an 'inherent' quality of our own 'fallen' nature.

Remember, when the disciples asked our Lord "Who then can be saved?"...

But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible. ~ Matt. 9:26

Note, also the Apostles Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians...

But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

Arminian/Wesleyan Soteriology is "by Grace" (God's initiatory act toward man)... and then "through Faith" (i.e. man's response to that act). We believe God desires 'all' men to be saved.

[God] desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. - 1 Tim. 2:4

It is our response to that universal call to repentance which brings us to Salvation or Damnation.

Therefore, all men are granted by God the necessary abilities to understand and even comply with such light and understanding which you are calling ‘prevenient grace’, and thereby accountable to God for this universal truth or ‘prevenient grace.’ Am I not correct?

Yes, perhaps once again this is something we can agree on but I'm not sure I would equate "prevenient grace" with any universal truth 'claim' if that is what you mean but it is the 'seed' from which our cooperation, participation and eventual full regeneration into salvation stems.

 

[bound]

Where is the Scripture stating convicting grace is not given to all mankind?

Sorry I had to dodge your inquiry last night but it was extremely late for me and I had already written several very long replies I just couldn't get another out.

The Scriptures are riff with sobering testamony concerning the fate of man who fails to repent and enter into a Salvific life of Faith. I'm am not one to pass judgment on anyone, and I mean anyone so let us not allow this inquiry to led us into such foreshadowing of the Lord's Judgment but we do have many sobering passages, especially, in the Gospels that would led us to believe that...

But the gate is narrow and the way is difficult that leads to life, and there are few who find it. ~ Matt. 7:14

Does this mean that only a remnant will be saved? I believe it is not for us to judge or even conjecture but to follow our Lord's advice when he answered this very question:

Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? And he said unto them, Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are: Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets. But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out. And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last. ~ Luke 13:23-30

Very sobering... as the Publican prayed we should all say, "O God, Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner."

So I might assume your next question might be "is there salvation outside the Church, that Body of Christ?". I firmly believe regardless of the answer we should claim ignorance and seek "to make disciples of the nations".

 

[webdog]

Thanks for the response, but I'm not sure how that deals with not all mankind receiving what you labeled prior as "convicting grace".

 

[Heavenly Pilgrim]

Bound: I'm not sure I would equate "prevenient grace" with any universal truth 'claim' if that is what you mean but it is the 'seed' from which our cooperation, participation and eventual full regeneration into salvation stems.

HP: You most certainly have equated grace with a universal claim when you say that the abilities to understand and comply with the light given to them is grace. Even the heathen have ability to understand and requisite for complying to the demands their own God-instilled conscience places upon them.

You obviously have that which justice demands and God's grace confused. If God is going to hold man personally accountable for obedience, and will not only blame them for failure to act in love, but punish them eternally for that failure, it is justice, NOT grace, that demands God grant to them the necessary requisite abilities to understand and comply with His demands. To even consider that God holds man responsible yet man is denied the abilities to act in any contrary fashion other than to disobey and that continually, makes a mockery out of any semblance of justice and places a blight on the character of God.

We can fool ourselves as theologians if we so desire, but there is not a reasonable man alive that cannot see that to blame one for something they had no part in and punish one for eternity for a fate they were not responsible for, is as unjust and wicked as it is absurd. .

 

[bound]

Thanks for the response, but I'm not sure how that deals with not all mankind receiving what you labeled prior as "convicting grace".

Well, I thought you were equating 'convicting grace' with 'being saved' in the conflated evangelical sense so I responded by sharing with you some passages which offer a sobering view of such wide spread application of man's cooperation in the divine nature.

If you don't mind me asking what is it about 'convicting grace' that you believe every human being has it?

 

[bound]

HP: You most certainly have equated grace with a universal claim when you say that the abilities to understand and comply with the light given to them is grace. Even the heathen have ability to understand and requisite for complying to the demands their own God-instilled conscience places upon them.

Any normative reading of Romans 1:18-20 would reveal the same thing I am not unique in pointing it out, HP.

You obviously have that which justice demands and God's grace confused. If God is going to hold man personally accountable for obedience, and will not only blame them for failure to act in love, but punish them eternally for that failure, it is justice, NOT grace, that demands God grant to them the necessary requisite abilities to understand and comply with His demands. To even consider that God holds man responsible yet man is denied the abilities to act in any contrary fashion other than to disobey and that continually, makes a mockery out of any semblance of justice and places a blight on the character of God.

We can fool ourselves as theologians if we so desire, but there is not a reasonable man alive that cannot see that to blame one for something they had no part in and punish one for eternity for a fate they were not responsible for, is as unjust and wicked as it is absurd. .

As I've stated before... God does not make us accountable for a grace not given to us. God makes us accountable only for that grace that in fact is given to us.

Classic Arminian/Wesleyan Soteriology 'has' to harmonize our understanding of Free-Will, God's Grace, God's Justice and Predestination with what is affirmed in the Scriptures. We simply don't have the luxury to 'turn the tables on God' as it were.

Grace is the font of any eternal life which springs forth from man. What we do with that gift of grace is how God is justified in His sentence of us all.

I firmly believe that God is Just and will judge each of us fairly. I have absolutely no fear that my sentence, will be unreasonable. God is not unreasonable and thus any sentence from God is not going to be unreasonable. I cannot tell you that everyone, throughout history, will be judged by the same measure, in fact I highly doubt it but regardless by what measure is used, it will certainly be fair and just. I see no reason to think otherwise.