Oh, boy. I sincerely like Dave, yet he and I don't always get on well (in fact we rarely get on well), and it's because of blanket statements like this. I consider it to be taking the use of the word faith from passages like Galatians 5:22-23 and applying the same exact usage over into something like Romans 10:17. This creates MASSIVE problems in interpretation that I can't even begin to cover.
For example (and this would just be one of dozens), Galatians 5:22-23 reads, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." Now, if faith only exists as a fruit of the Spirit, it would naturally follow that there is no such thing as faith
apart from the Spirit. Hence it would follow that there is no such thing as love, or gentleness, or joy, or temperance apart from the Spirit either. Thus, by this reasoning, no unsaved person has ever felt or expressed love, gentleness, joy, temperance, or anything else on the list, not having yet received the Spirit of God.
Take Romans 10:17: If faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God and yet faith is a gift of God, it makes hearing the word of God redundant and unnecessary. He gives faith as He pleases, making hearing the word of God just a strange formalism that precedes the giving of faith, unless of course God is duty bound to make sure someone hears the word first before giving them something they can in no way receive through any actions of their own anyway.
Again, I can't tell you how many illogical conclusions arise from taking the use of a word in one text and applying it over into other texts with the exact same meaning.
But to each His own. If Dave is going to respond I think I will let him have the floor on this one. I just don't have the patience for it, though I mean that sincerely and not as an insult.
@Dave L: Whenever you read this, brother, hope you are well. I have a friend at this forum who seems to like you, and asked me to try and be nice to you if possible. So I'll try not to let mitigating circumstances conspire against us, LoL.
Blessings in Christ, as always.