The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Is man required to "choose" in order to be saved?

Your posts are fraught with many of these kinds of inconsistencies. Men need God to become spiritual men, on the one hand, then on the other, they can understand the spiritual things because they are soulish creatures(see below). With all the hysterics and accusasations you sling towards your detractors, you have yet to really give us a scriptural defense of faith begetting regeneration. All of what the Bible teaches about regeneration, new life, etc, always preceeds faith. You seem to suggest this idea of prevenient grace, but have yet to give a defense of it. All that you keep repeating is "the plain reading of scripture says thus and so."


(Fred) Actually, psychie is a translation of the Hebrew nephes, meaning natural man, man in his natural state. You are taking the word beyond its intended meaning by claiming that soulish men can receive spiritual truth by reading the notion of prevenient grace into the text. Moreover, Paul qualifies the ability of this soulish man when he says that he cannot discern the things of the spirit. Cannot is translated from ou dunamous (I am doing this from memory, so please forgive the mangled Greek transliterations). The phrase essentially means no ability, or powerless. All natural men are powerless to understand spiritual things apart from God's work first. That is Paul's main point. You seem to argue that you believe this, but your theology breaks down with your notion that Christ has illumined all men everywhere with some sort of prevenient grace, or pre-regenerating grace as some Free-will Baptists call it.

Fred