On the benefits and promises of God, and principally of election to grace, or calling to faith.

"1. But that man may not just perform the commandments of God thus far explained, but also willingly want to perform them from the mind, God willed for his part to do everything necessary for effecting both in man(a), that is, he determined to confer such grace to sinful man by which he might be suitable and apt to render everything which is required of him in the gospel, and even more, to promise such good things to him, whose excellence and beauty might far exceed the capacity of human understanding, and that the desire and certain hope of this might kindle and inflame the will of man to render obedience in acts to him.

"Indeed, God habitually both makes known and bestows all these benefits to us by his Holy Spirit(b) (about which we have declared more fully above).

The content of this post was authored by Ben Henshaw and is posted on his behalf.

As I stated in my last post (Does Regeneration Precede Faith?), there is no more important question with regards to the controversy between Arminianism and Calvinism than the question of priority with regards to faith and regeneration. R.C. Sproul writes,

A cardinal point or Reformed theology [Calvinism] is the maxim: “Regeneration precedes faith.” Our nature is so corrupt, the power of sin is so great, that unless God does a supernatural work in our souls we will never choose Christ. We do not believe in order to be born again; we are born again in order to believe. (Chosen By God, pg. 72)

Calling

Please click on the attachment to view Klein, William W. "PAUL'S USE OF KALEIN: A PROPOSAL" (published in JETS 27/1 [March 1984] 53-64).