Cheryl Schatz

Mark,

” To have a person remain as an unregenerate person and without faith and without being a child of God and call them “born again” is completely foreign to Christian terminology. Calvinism has taken classical Christian terms and re-written their meaning. I find that incredibly sad.”

WHen did i ever say that Cheryl? I have never said a person can be born again and stay without faith.

Read again what I said. I didn’t say that you said a person can be born again and stay without faith. What I am saying is that Calvinism teaches that at the very moment that a person is born again he is without faith because being born again has nothing to do with faith. It is after that the born again experience that he is given the ability to understand the gospel and God gives him a gift of faith. It is an absolute fact that the moment of being born again the person is without faith. If you deny that, you are not reading your own Calvinist material.

Being born again is part of the process of coming to faith is what i have said. Anybody who is born again WILL ALWAYS immediately follow it by faith.

Faith in what? The person has to hear the gospel. Calvinists have admitted that it is possible that a person can be born again for a period of time before they hear the gospel and are given the “gift” of faith. Are you are saying that it must immediately be followed by the gift of faith?

Your attack on clavinism here again clearly shows me once more that you are not engaging wiht the actual teaching but your ‘view’ of the teaching.

Not true. The definition of being born again has always been that one is born with the seed of God and become a child of God. One cannot be a child of God without being saved. But Calvinism teaches that salvation is not accomplished until after the gift of faith is given. It is not an attack on Calvinism to reveal the revision to the term.

You need to be more careful to show me that you actually understand the ‘calvinistic’ position. Thus far it is clear you do not.

The Calvinist position is that a person must be born again in order to believe. A person then does not believe to be born again in the Calvinist position. So at the very moment of being born again, the person is not yet a believer but will follow with belief.

The issue of which comes first is very important to Calvinism. It is not an issue of being born again and believing at the same moment or it could look like a person is born again by believing. Rather there is an order that has to come. So when is a person’s sins forgiven? Are they forgiven when a person is born again? Or are they forgiven when they believe?