Grace involves the extension of pardon for sin and freedom from His judgment and wrath by God to man. Without this grace, there can be no salvation whatsoever, no matter how many good works or faithfulness to a church one may have.
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Paul is quite explicit that salvation comes through faith, faith is an unmerited gift from god, faith engenders hope and ultimately care, from which only do good works come
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That the virtues of the pagans were expressions of pride (and thus there own reward) is familiar in the Gospel and a patristic cliché; I take for granted you accept that nothing before faith is meritorious, in the eyes of God
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To say that some attitude before faith can determine whether God grants faith may seem benign But b/c it is unproblematic to elicit specific attitudes with pagan techniques of self-discipline, granting that commits you to the position for which Pelagius was condemned
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See, nobody is saying this, not me nor other Baptists, which rather makes it a straw man argument. The scripture is clear that God works to draw all men unto Himself (John 12:32). Yet, It also says that all men have not faith (II Thess. 3:2).
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The obvious synthesis of this is that while God works to extend His grace and draw men unto Himself, man has the choice to accept or reject that grace, which then becomes the basis of judgement. Without this, no calvinistic argument for God's judgement can even credibly be made.
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It’s “obvious” only in the Phil 100 sense where you combine higher-level concepts according to the rules of ordinary language If I choose for you to do X, then you did not choose to do X (I chose it for you); that rule does not apply to God as creator and king
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There are two issues I'd like to address in response. The first problem is with trying to use philosophy to address something which philosophy is incompetent to address.
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Interpretation of Scripture according to the ordinary rules of language is why we even have Scripture in human languages. Scripture is perspicuous. We don't need philosophy to be able to understand what God wants us to understand about Him.
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