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Well, your view entails the position that the Bible -- while it may confirm what you call the "testimony" of the Spirit -- is unnecessary to establish the permanence of a born-again Christian's salvation. The Spirit does that on His own. No Scripture needed. And my view is that Scripture is...

I'm with @amigodechristo on this one. The real source of our disagreement is in Scripture itself. Different authors wrote for different purposes and different constituencies, and they did not always portray a consistent picture of how salvation works itself out in the believer.

Once again -- I never claimed to have solved that mystery. We share that disability. We just look at the mystery differently. Much as we do on the subject of worshiping Mary.

The Parable of the Sower says otherwise. I guess you think Faith in Christ, at least insofar as salvation is concerned, is a one-shot deal, not a lifelong process of working out one’s salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). I guess you think the following is the protocol: You make a...

Matt. 13:18-23 tells us that one can receive the Word with joy initially, and later lose that initial faith. Would you say that those folks were never in fact born again? I would disagree. The Salvific Moment of Faith in the Word gets one "born" again. But faith can be lost, for all of the...

And vice versa. "If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall NOT remain in you, ye shall NOT continue in the Son, and in the Father. Think ye that I, John, write just to hear myself pontificate? I would not have bothered to mention the conditional "if .. then" if it were impossible...

"Stop" being born again? What does that even mean? You beg the question of whether being born again is a one-time event (as I believe) or a lengthy process that can be "stopped" in the middle. If the former, being "stopped" is just nonsensical. It doesn't fit, any more than you can stop...

The science of medicine saves many lives, and improves many more. That's why we study and practice it.

Au contraire, mon ami. I think :inspired" aptly describes works that are chock full of human input. even to the point of containing factual errors..

I think the equation is invalid as a description of reality. Divine and human essences aren't quantifiable in that way.

The second half is about others not seeing yet believing IN HIM. Nothing more. Certainly nothing here about belief in Spirit-driven compilation of the Bible.

Emptied" could mean partial relinquishment of E1.

We might look at Jesus's comment this way: "I'm not here to abolish what is written in Scripture, but to fulfill it -- because it all points to me. Mosaic Law included. You needed Mosaic Law as an infant needs mother's milk, but now you need me."

Fine. So why did Luke need to investigate anything? Surely the Word of God can be communicated without such investigation!

Well, FJ, I just don't see it the way you do. Faith that the compilation itself was Spirit-driven is not proof that the compilation itself was Spirit-driven, any more than faith that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe (which I happen to believe) is proof of that thesis. And...

The last sentence is a bit off point, but yes, it's another way to portray the issue. However, it doesn't account for Phil. 2:7's "emptied himself" comment -- suggesting that "from T1 to T2, P2 had form F2 as well as Essence (E1+E2)" might not be as accurate as "from T1 to T2, P2 had form F2 as...

Not saying that. Just pointing out that any view of "inspired" or "God-breathed" as being the functional equivalent of God telling the author what to write simply doesn't fly for Luke.

I wish there were a way to verify this assumption. There isn't. It's pure conjecture that, for example, the Epistle of Jude made the cut and the Epistle of Barnabas didn't by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We just don;t know that. I want to believe it just as much as you do, but that's not...

Some day, over a beer perhaps, you can tell me what you think He "emptied himself" of (Phil 2:7) during the 30-odd years he walked the planet. Then once we've isolated that, we can have a discussion of what "inseparable" really means in the kenosis context -- and maybe put this...

I certainly don't think I have God "all figured out." But nor am I content to just throw my hands up when somebody claims "it's just a mystery." I want to understand as much as I can. Sir Isaac Newton once commented, “It is the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of...