And if He is in the process of leading one into faith, but that one has not yet intellectually grasped the Gospel, is he not saved?
God is fully capable of leading one into faith AND giving that person the knowledge and understanding. IF a person does not demonstrate both they are not saved.
I have been told many times by my Catholic brethren that faith without works is dead. Now I'm being told that works without faith is life. This is beyond goofiness if you ask me.
Apparently there is, as you continue to ignore the words written and focus narrowly on one sentence out of an entire article. Perhaps the words being used don't mean what you think they do?
"Second, there are many more people who, even stating that they are not believers, will obtain eternal salvation."
Yep, that's the one sentence. What troubles you about this? Do you think intellectual knowedge about the faith is instantaneous and automatic? Or does it requre learning and teaching?
It seems, to me, to be completely within reason that someone who is "saved" could be in the larval stages of their development as a believer. God could be dwelling within and the person could not have come to the realization of this fact.
Perhaps you think that is impossible. But I don't. So someone in the initial stages of being moved by God, toward God may deny intellecutally that they have a "faith." But deep inside, they do because that is what God wants.
If God gives a person His grace to instill faith, then that person will know our Lord Jesus as Savior. I would simply point you to John the Baptist who leaped inside the womb when he was in the presence of Lord Jesus before He was born. He knew the truth.
See this makes me think we aren't using the same words to mean the same thing. If you asked fetal John the Baptist if he was a believer in Christ, what would he have said? If you asked him what the name of the Savior was, what would he have said?
Nothing. Fetuses can't talk. Neither can infants. I agree that he had faith inside him, a gift from God. But I deny that he would claim he was a believer in the substitutional atonement of Jesus because he lacked the capacity and knowledge to say those things.
Get it yet?
Have you ever heard people's conversion stories where they may have spent years avoiding confronting God, pretending that He wasn't calling, denying that they needed Him? Well, was God working in them, leading them to a faith that they had not yet intellectually accepted?
God is fully capable of leading one into faith AND giving that person the knowledge and understanding. IF a person does not demonstrate both they are not saved.
When did you cease being a Calvinist? Aren't those who are saved, saved from the moment of Creation? If someone is going to be saved in the end, they must have been elected before the universe began. There is never a time when they were not saved. Isn't that what you believe?
So, it is entirely possible for God's inner tugging to precede the brain accepting faith.
I think the problem here is that you mean something different by "faith" then we do. And that you are reading looking for faults instead of reading what is being said.
SD