Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
But those who had heard The Father and learned from Him will come to Him, verse 45. I explained all this in the post you ignored when you claimed that I never addressed John 6:44.
I had hoped that you would see that your OP (copied below for ease of reference) mis-stated the gramatical implications of 1 John 5:1a. And I am glad to see that you have done so.
The natural sense of the grammar is not that one who believes has already been born of God, the grammar does not suggest a logical ordering in which the new birth preceeds the act of believing, and the grammar does not place regeneration as the root and believing as the fruit. So, your OP was wrong on all three points. And now you have rightly asserted that it takes more than grammar to make these points.
This is an important tennet of reformed theology. It makes sense that they would defend it at all cost.
And this refutes which premise, exactly? I laid out a structured argument from John 6:44 with explicit premises and a necessary conclusion. If you believe the argument is unsound, you must identify the specific premise that is false or show how the conclusion does not follow. Simply citing verse 45 as though it overrides verse 44 is not a rebuttal. It's an assertion of contradiction without demonstration. Right now, the argument stands as presented, and your non-response is a concession that it is sound.
No, what you offered was not an "explanation"; it was an assertion. One that rests on a dispensational presupposition, not an exegetical demonstration of its truth. As I have said to you previously, it is not my burden to disprove your assertions. It is yours to substantiate them. An explanation accounts for the text; an assertion merely states an opinion.
No, that's a mischaracterization of my clarification. And I suspect you know that, given that you didn't respond to the parallels I provided. I didn't retract the grammatical argument; I refined it. You think you've "won" something by pointing out a lack of clarification, while ignoring the argument itself. The point still stands: the normal and natural force of the construction -- a present participle functioning substantively with a perfect indicative -- implies that the state expressed by the perfect grounds the action expressed by the present. That pattern is consistent across 1 John 2:29, 4:7, and 5:1. The fact that you chose to misrepresent the clarification rather than engage the refined argument is revealing.
Like I said before, you can deny it all you want, I really don’t care. You asked for an explanation for John 6:44 and I gave you one. I provided passages of scripture as evidence to support my explanation. The reason you don’t want to answer my questions is because you don’t want to follow them along to their logical conclusion. So you just say you don’t have to answer them to avoid getting stuck in a theological problem with your theology and avoid them. Just because you refuse to accept my explanation doesn’t disqualify it as an explanation. Dr Leighton Flowers recognizes it as an explanation and he actually taught Calvinism for 10 years. So you can ignore my future posts if you want but I’ll just keep on pointing out the passages that your interpretation are contracting. I have no problem answering any questions you ask because I don’t need to try to avoid anything.
No I stated an interpretation, not an opinion and I cited several passages of scripture to support that interpretation. And I’ve tried to demonstrate where your theology fails but you keep avoiding the questions saying that you don’t have to answer them. What are you hiding from if your theology is sound? You just don’t want to admit that according to your theology regeneration is not possible apart from salvation because that would mean that someone has to be saved in order to believe which directly contradicts several passages of scripture so you avoid answering the question in order to avoid having to address those contradictions, namely “what must I do to be saved”.
Even at the cost of misrepresenting the word of God? I mean what’s more important here, teaching sound theology or defending a theology that contradicts scripture? I had to make that choice a long time ago and I ended up reevaluating my entire theology.
Yes, you are right. They shouldn't but they do.
I had a simmilar experience with legalism. It was a tough slog to overcome it, and the process shook me to the core, but God was faithful and led me through it. Looking back, I wouldn't trade it for anything.
It's difficult not to note the irony of accusing me of misrepresenting Scripture while refusing to engage the exegetical argument drawn from Scripture. The grammatical and thematic parallels in 1 John 2:29, 4:7, and 5:1 clearly indicate a logical ordering of cause and effect. I've repeatedly posed this challenge, and you have both refused to touch it. Deflection and rhetoric do not constitute rebuttal. I appreciate your interactions, but your continued avoidance functions as a tacit concession of the argument.
One reason they aren't responding to your arguments might be because your understanding of the Greek language appears to have some issues.
“If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.”
No causality or sequence in the statement.
You've said elsewhere, "I'm not very knowledgeable in Greek grammer (sic)." Yet you're comfortable asserting that I misunderstand the language, without offering a single example or counter-argument?
No you didn’t explain John 12:36. You explained John 12:32. You never explained how Jesus saying that they had to believe in order to become sons of Light doesn’t contradict your claim that we must be born again before we can believe. Being born again and being a child of God is synonymous.
I noticed you didn’t answer my question about your background in Greek. Since your argument rests heavily on grammatical claims, it would help to know what level of training you’ve had in the language.
I didn't answer because it's not relevant. My credentials neither validate nor invalidate the argument. You can verify or refute any grammatical claim I've made by consulting any Greek grammar. Or pick a claim you question and I'll substantiate with references.
