Does baptismal regeneration violate the core teaching of justification by faith alone (sola fide)?
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I did not choose to save myself. I chose to believe the Gospel, and when I did, God saved me. Whether you realize it or not, the same thing happened to you.
Choosing salvation is self-salvation which cannot save. If we say Lord I cannot believe unless I force myself to believe, please forgive me. I need you to save me so I can trust in Christ alone and not in myself. We then show evidence of salvation.
Not true. God does the saving when a person makes the decision to believe the Gospel.
One day you will no longer be a Calvinist. Nobody will. Count on it.
Think of it this way. How many hate God and trust in idols bearing his name, if Calvin is right about God in sin and grace?
Think of it this way: How many Calvinists hate the true God and trust the idol of Calvinism if Calvin was wrong?
(Calvin was wrong. God gave people free will and asks them to choose.)
You need to prove him wrong from scripture. Do you know the early Church pronounced free will to be heresy? And those who believe in it are not part of the historic Church? Calvin, Luther, and the rest of the Reformers proved the Catholics are heretics because of their beliefs in free will.
The real issue is that you apparently deny that faith is a gift of God.
You believe that an unsaved man, with a stony cold, dead heart, can somehow generate faith and repentance from it, in order to receive a heart of flesh.
Reformed people do not believe this. They believe God gives the elected person a heart of flesh, which responds in faith and repentance.
It's an entirely different way of thinking..a way of thinking that does not applaud the person for their alleged, autonomous free-will choice, but acknowledges that God provided a new heart, one of flesh rather than stone, to his elect child.
This view is honest to all the wording of Ephesians 2:1-10, and the free-willer view is not.
How much is God dishonored by the weak, pathetic creature they claim him to be?
In their worldview, he is a weak, pathetic, old man who cannot accomplish his will in mankind. He tries as hard as he can, but he still cannot accomplish his decreed will in their lives.
The free-willer god is really a pathetic thing indeed.
God is sovereign over all things, including man's salvation.
I know what Reformed people (Calvinists) believe. They believe people are incapable of believing the Gospel unless God intervenes in their life. IOW, God has to give a person the ability to believe in God before that person can believe. I do not agree.
The gift of God in Eph 2:8 is not the faith to believe, it is salvation BY faith.
I have read several of your strongly worded opinions. Your bellowing does not make you right.
If only you knew the God of the bible. God is not a capricious being Who creates man so He can love some and hate others. That is a description of the Muslim god allah.
God is sovereign and His sovereignty is not threatened by the free will He created in man. God has sent forth His word and declared from the heavens that the faith to receive Christ comes by hearing and hearing the word of God. You insist that God is weak and cannot accomplish the redemption of His creation by His word.
Adam had a will sufficiently free to sin and we have a will sufficiently free to receive Christ as our Savior.
God loves every soul He has created equally. God demands perfect righteousness and God demands perfect justice.
For the cause of Christ
Roger
It doesn't make me wrong either.
If you only like to listen to milquetoast, effeminate, freewiller, Sunday school teacher traditionalists, you might put me on ignore.
I've spent about 35 years thinking through these issues as a believer and studying the Scriptures to see whose view aligns. I don't think that the weak, free-willer view aligns with Scripture.
The Father elects, the Son redeems, the Holy Spirit applies. All who are given to the Son respond effectually. If you read John 6, 10, and the book of Romans honestly, the conclusion is very clear if you are willing to realize that God does not match the idols that free-willers have created, and to discard them.
The gift of God in Ephesians 2:1-10 is the entire package, including the faith, and there is no reason to boast.
You are correct that Reformed individuals believe that God gives the person a heart of flesh, to replace the heart of stone, and it is this heart of flesh which produces the faith and repentance. God does not expect a dead heart of stone to produce faith and repentance. He needs to spiritually resurrect the person before they can produce this faith and repentance. This is called regeneration, or being made alive again.
I suggest that those who are willing to hear would read Ephesians 2:1-10 carefully.
In Reformed theology, there is no reason for anyone to boast whatsoever in their salvation, because God gave them the heart of flesh that enabled the response.
In free-willer theology, the person can boast over his faith and repentance, because he dredged faith and repentance up from his stony heart. Their view is that their effort in this regards leads to their regeneration, or being born again.
They really do not take seriously what Scripture teaches about the unredeemed state of mankind. They claim man is not spiritually dead, but he retains the ability to pull himself up and grasp salvation. So, at the very least, they can boast that they were smart enough or whatever to take advantage of the opportunity for salvation.
Like I said, it's a totally different way of thinking. Even Arminius didn't believe what current day free-willers believe. He was smart enough to know that mankind could not choose God without an act of grace on his behalf.
Arminius also did not believe what the Remonstrants taught, who later came to be called Arminians. Like I said, he was not so berift of biblical understanding that he would believe what free willers believe today.
By the way, if you want to follow some sissy-boy free willer type, I suggest Leighton Flowers. He has made it his full-time ministry to criticize Reformed theology. His view is nothing short of Pelagian by now.
I imagine most free-willers here listen to his videos.
I imagine most free-willers here listen to his videos.
By the way, the reason I quit using the word "Arminians" to describe free-willers is because the term is insulting to Jacob Arminius.
Arminius knew that a specific act of grace needed to be performed in order to enable man to respond to God. However, many free-willers today won't even acknowledge that, so they are not far from Pelagians, in my opinion.
Arminius did not believe in regeneration preceding faith, but he believed in a form of prevenient grace. His view isn't biblically supportable, but at least he was not as crass as current day free-willers.
So, that is why I don't use the term "Arminian" to describe free-willers today. I do this because Jacob Arminius does not deserved to be called a free-willer. Even his followers, the Remonstrants, deviated from his teachings into a much more crass system.
I have met individuals who believe what Arminius taught, and they are much closer to Reformed theology than modern day free-willers.
In fact, I find it amusing that Roger Olson, who is an actual Arminian, wants nothing to do with allying with Leighton Flowers, who represents the Southern Baptist synergism view. It's pretty amusing to listen to their dialogue.
Arminius knew that a specific act of grace needed to be performed in order to enable man to respond to God. However, many free-willers today won't even acknowledge that, so they are not far from Pelagians, in my opinion.
Arminius did not believe in regeneration preceding faith, but he believed in a form of prevenient grace. His view isn't biblically supportable, but at least he was not as crass as current day free-willers.
So, that is why I don't use the term "Arminian" to describe free-willers today. I do this because Jacob Arminius does not deserved to be called a free-willer. Even his followers, the Remonstrants, deviated from his teachings into a much more crass system.
I have met individuals who believe what Arminius taught, and they are much closer to Reformed theology than modern day free-willers.
In fact, I find it amusing that Roger Olson, who is an actual Arminian, wants nothing to do with allying with Leighton Flowers, who represents the Southern Baptist synergism view. It's pretty amusing to listen to their dialogue.
I find this post to be so amusing that I have modified my signature in order to address it.
Sorry you sensitive free-willers are so offended by someone who is strongly convicted that God is not the passive, weak, effeminate creature that you think he is.
Sorry that you are offended that I am strongly convicted that man's desire for God is non-existent until God gives him a heart of flesh which causes him to desire God.
Sorry that you expect me to be like the weak, effeminate free-willer Sunday school teachers you look up to.
But, I am most sorry that you cannot realize that your view of God is dishonoring. God reveals in Scripture that he DOES accomplish his will all the time. He accomplishes his decrees every single time.
And he has decreed that the elect, whom he has given to his Son, will come to faith, and that they will persevere unto the end.
You see, while free-willers are horrified with the idea that Reformed believers teach that God has not decreed the salvation of everyone, the Reformed believer is horrified with the idea that God cannot accomplish his decrees, which include their salvation. And, if their teachings were true, they would be robbed of the assurance that God's decree in regards to them will not be achieved.
So, free-willer theology attempts to rob the elect of their assurance. God teaches in Scripture about predestination and election because He wants the elect to have confidence that he will fulfill his decree in regards to them.
The same way the thief on the cross did, By Faith.
1. Baptism of our spirit-salvation from God- (our spirit is joined to the Holy Spirit permanently, giving us access to the Father 1 Cor 6:17; Eph 2:18, you become a new creation, a child of God because you are now at this point "in Christ", "sealed in Him by the Holy Spirit"
Eph 1:13)
-When you put your trust in Jesus (born again), you are at that moment baptized into His death. This is an act of the Holy Spirit.
2. Water baptism-a call to obedience and and act of faith
-After salvation, you ought to get water baptized (a symbol of what the Holy Spirit just did in you already). Jesus commanded us to do this as a witness to those around us and put our faith into action as a first step towards obeying/loving Christ (Jn 14:15, 1 Jn 5:2, Dan 9:4).
Overemphasis on water baptism often obscures or even obliterates one's understanding of the baptism of our spirit (also called "spirit baptism". If the two truths are not distinguished, usually the understanding of spirit baptism is lost, for it is regarded simply as another way of talking about water baptism.
3. Baptism of the Holy Spirit-Another baptism available to a believer after salvation is what Jesus called "The baptism of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 1:8...for receiving power to witness and manifest the gifts of the Spirit (Rom 12, Eph 4, 1 Cor 12, 14).