You DO have a way with handing out the compliments! My knees are knocking!
WRT my experience at Bible college... it had more to do with grasping the truths God revealed in Holy Scripture and less with all the various and sundries ways philosophers, theologians and intellectuals - pagan or otherwise - concocted the means to fathom what the human mind is incapable of doing. When mere words were not adequate, many simply redefined words and used them in whatever form they chose. If anyone thinks for one moment that the highest level of thinking a man could achieve could in anyway come close to really knowing God, he deceives himself. This does NOT mean, as you imply, that we have to "dumb-down" ourselves to please Him. No, it just means we shouldn't pridefully assert we can be superior to others just because we can turn a phrase and sound smart. God HATES pride, BTW.
As for the concept of retaining Grace, would you have preferred that I use the Catholic terms of Sanctifying and Actual Grace. I did not do so because in these discussions the use of Catholic terms receives an a priori dismissal.
No matter what terms you use, it doesn't change the truth that you seem to be ignoring. Ludwig Ott talked about this doctrine in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma:
The elevation to the state of grace is indicated by the intimacy between God and the progenitors of the human race in Paradise. A scriptural proof is provided by St. Paul's teaching on the Redemption. The Apostle teaches that Christ, the second Adam, restored what the first Adam had lost, the state of holiness and justice. But if he had lost it, he must previously have received it.
As regards the time of man's elevation to the state of grace, most theologians, including St. Thomas and his school, are of the opinion that the first men were created in the state of sanctifying grace. Petrus Lombardus and the Franciscan school, on the other hand, teach that the first human beings on their creation received only the preternatural gifts of integrity, and were required to prepare themselves with the help of actual grace for the reception of sanctifying grace. The Council of Trent has deliberately left the question undecided.
So, please spare me the lesson on the differences between "actual" and "sanctifying" grace. No matter how it gets phrased, it is unmistakable that Rome teaches that, although Christ’s death remains necessary to salvation, it is not sufficient and human merit is indispensable. THAT, my FRiend, will always set us apart in the understanding of the doctrine of justification and salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. I know God's word too well to accept Rome's false and accursed gospel.
And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” — the things God has prepared for those who love him—
these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.