No atheist can be unborn. You take a term that means BEFORE birth and use it to mean something totally different. “Born again” is a metaphor. You cannot honestly apply all the facts of the birthing of humans to a metaphor. The word as you use it doesn’t exist.
I agree with you: No atheist can be unborn - physically or spiritually.
No, I don't use a term meaning "not yet born" to mean something "totally different"; I simply apply it to spiritual birth and life, as Christ did when he spoke to Nicodemus of the "second birth." (
John 3:3-6) When I do, it is as ridiculous a notion as to believe one can revert to a state prior to one's physical birth. Both becoming unborn physically and spiritually are impossibilities, which is the point of using "unborn" to describe the idea of a person losing their second (spiritual) birth, as you assert they can. And you're quite right: the word "unborn" applied this way does refer to a non-existent and, as I said, impossible, state of affairs. One cannot be born a second time into spiritual life and then reverse what has happened and be unborn spiritually.
The state of being that is irreversible cannot be applied to human choice.
But this assumes that a person's salvation was entirely their doing, that their choice was the crucial and sustaining power of their saved state, which it isn't.
God had to draw every person who has been saved to Christ (
John 6:44);
God had to convict every lost person of their sin (
John 16:8);
God had to impart repentance to the unconverted in order for them to understand and accept the Gospel (
2 Timothy 2:25); God had to cleanse and forgive the sin of the lost person through Christ at Calvary (
John 3:16; Colossians 1:13; Colossians 1:19-20). All the born-again person does is receive by faith what God has done. Who, then, has brought to new spiritual life the lost person?
God. But for God's work bringing the lost person to the place where they are able to receive Christ, they would never have been saved. And what God has done in this regard, no man, I believe, can undo. (
John 10:26-29)
The body dies. The man inside doesn’t. The man inside can change his mind....about being married, being a christian, being honest, a great many matters.
But
you were the one making a direct parallel between a man dying and his spiritual life dying, indicating that if the former was true, the latter must be also.
I agree with you: the soul/spirit of a man does not expire when his physical body does. Is he able to change his mind about this? Has God given the man the freedom to choose to be an eternal soul/spirit? No. Nor does God give us the freedom to choose to undo His work of salvation.
If you want the terms Jesus used it’s falling away from the faith. He said it happens so take care.
A truly born-again person only "falls away" from
fellowship with God and all the good things that come with that fellowship (peace, grace, joy, holiness, etc.), not their
relationship to Him as their child. The falsely saved, "tares" (
Matthew 13:24-43) or "false brethren" (
2 Corinthians 11:26), are the ones at risk of "falling away" from their false "conversion," becoming hardened to the Gospel and things of God so that it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance (and true salvation).
Fear of lost salvation has no place in my walk with God:
1 John 4:16-19 (NASB)
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
19 We love, because He first loved us.
What a sad thing it is to think you're always "taking care" as a child of God, fearful you'll do something to unadopt yourself, to reverse your spiritual birth, and end up in hell. God's First and Great Commandment is to love Him with all you are (
Matthew 22:36-38) which, as the apostle John points out above, necessarily casts out fear. How, exactly, do you "take care" and obey the First and Great Commandment? The apostle Paul wrote that no matter what we say, or know, or do, if love for God (and others) isn't the motivation, it is all useless spiritually.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (NASB)
1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
So, no, I don't "take care," fearing for my salvation. I obey God's First and Great Commandment instead.
I understand it better than you. You can only repeat the same arguments ts you learned. Nothing original.
??? 2+2=4. Nothing original in this mathematical statement (equation). I guess I don't understand it, then. Can you explain to me where I've misunderstood the equation?
Anyway, so far, you haven't given any indication that you understand OSAS, whatever you assert about your knowledge of the perspective. Instead, you've just offered prejudicial mischaracterizations of those who hold an OSAS view, which is called a "To the Man" argument, or Ad Hominem argument, generally considered a fallacious form of reasoning.