Unexpected change of plans, so I'm posting this a little earlier than I planned.
Jeremy Weaver has written a series of posts about what Calvinism is not.
Introduction
Can Man Do Good?
What is Fatalism?
The Atonement Is For Everyone!
Everyone Limits The Atonement (Followup to the previous post)
One More Atonement Post... (Second atonement followup post)
Has Anyone Believed Against Their Will?
Eternal Security is a Half Truth, Part one & Part two
3 comments:
How is it that I missed giving you a link?
Well that is remedied now.
Blog on!
Wow...that's quite a treatise!
I made the mistake of reading the Doxoblogy from the top down. Hence, I immediately encountered the Perseverance post before reading the others and therefore will comment only on his final posts on the 5 points.
Mr. Weaver makes the mistake of Weaving repentance in with belief as a condition of conversion.
I think the Main condition of conversion is belief.
In John 6:47, Lord Jesus is recorded as having said that "He who believes in Me has everlasting life."
The Gospel of John is especially rich with the wonderful truth that "these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:31)
This Evangelistic Gospel emphasizes heavily Belief. Noticeably absent, is anything else as a condition of conversion. No Repentance. No Baptism. No pilgrimage to Geneva.
As a sinner saved by grace, I am eternally grateful (okay….imperfectly grateful so far) that while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me -- apart from my works or any promise to straighten up and try to do better. God prepared good works for me to do even before my conversion – while I was still a sinner.
Because the justification of Bryan D. Main is solely and wholly the work of God, I am eternally safe as his son. I didn’t do anything to obtain His Grace…and I’m convinced that nothing can separate me from it.
Still trying to practice that Abiding part, though…
:)
-B Diddy
I guess all those demons are Christians too - since they believe and tremble ;-)
Seriously, I am sure your bible includes Mark 1:14-15, Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Christ Himself described "the gospel of the Kingdom" as having a twofold description, repenting and believing.
This was the same gospel that the old testament prophets preached, as we see John the Baptist (the last of the old testament prophets) preaching a baptism of repentance that precedes or accompanies believing on Christ (c.f. Mark 1:4, Acts 19:4)
Likewise, this was the same gospel preached by the apostles as we see in 2 Peter 3:9 - the Lord is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to (belief? no...) repentance.
Paul says it best, in 2 Corinthians 7:10, "Godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation..." or perhaps he says it best in Acts 20:20-21 where we read how I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you, and taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying to Jews, and also to Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
It isn't that one makes a choice to repent and have faith - rather, without repentance, all one is capable of doing is intellectually assenting to the truth of the gospel.
Scripture doesn't teach that we are saved by sincerely agreeing that the gospel is true. We must not ignore the verses that speak of believing - but we must not remove them from the remainder of scripture so that they are no longer qualified by the rest of the bible. The faith that saves is not only sincere, it precedes from a repentant heart. Faith that comes without repentance is dead faith, and gives no life.
I haven't read Jeremy's post, but the bible certainly teaches that saving faith is preceded by repentance, and that dead/useless/unsaving faith is not.
;-)
Dan
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