In the first excerpted portion from my posting I distinguished between an offered gift, an accepted gift, a refused gift. Only an accepted gift is fully a gift. The modifier "fully" has been part of my argument from the beginning of this sub-topic on this thread and I repeated it in the posting to which you are now replying.
In the second excerpt, where you claim I am inconsistent when I make gifting "conditional" on acceptance, you fail to carry over the "fullness" qualification. So between excerpt one and excerpt two you have changed the terms and thus are doing apples and oranges.
In your assertion that follows you use "gift" unqualifiedly. I would agree with you that an incomplete gift exists independent of acceptance. But a complete gift does not. You are talking about "gift" in an unnuanced and imprecise way. Your point carries but only in an incomplete and imprecise way. You have not laid a finger on my point because you refuse to engage my qualification.
And your socks example actually proves my point. Of course your child is free to refuse them. If he does, you may punish him, of course. But have you never had an ungrateful child? If the child is uninterested in the socks, he does not see them as your gift. Your intention to gift him with them cannot make him see them as a gift, as you clearly admit. They are not a gift in the full sense unless he is grateful for them and recieves them knowing them to be a gift. If he is not interested in them he is refusing them as a gift, refusing to let them be a gift in the full sense. At that point, they are a half-gift, an incomplete gift, a refused gift, which is exactly what I said in the earlier postings.
And nothing you can do can make him grateful. Your threats or blandishments cannot make another person be grateful for what you intend as a gift. Your intent alone cannot make him grateful. And until he is grateful, the gift process is stymied, incomplete.
You still have not grasped the point, even though you and all of us have experienced this again and again. Okay, I intend to make a gift. From the giver's end, from my end it is a gift (your point) but not completely so (my point). The giver's intent can at most make it an offered gift. If the recipient refuses it it remains a refused gift--gift, yes, in a restricted way, but not a true and real and complete gift. Indeed, a refused gift is scarcely a gift at all. Have you not truly experienced a situation of thwarted gifting when the recipient is ungrateful and considers your intended gift to be bad or dangerous (in other words, refuses to see it as a gift)?
If you want to live with this limited kind of gifting as the sufficient to explain "gift," you are free to do so. I can't make you accept my gift of a fuller understanding of gifting and giftedness.
But in practice, you know very well the difference between an offered but refused gift and a gift gratefully accepted. That's the only point I was making. You actually know my point to be true in practice but you have let a stubborn mindset (denial of freedom) overcome what you know very well from practice.
The conclusion to all this is that we all know from plain experience that human beings are free, that we cannot be forced to be grateful, that if someone is ungrateful, the connection that was intended to be established by the loving intent of the giver is thwarted. That's just another way to say that God cannot make us love him, be grateful to him, against our will. The free-will-denying theology shatters against the reality of human experience, as your own "socks" example demonstrates.
You have refuted your own anti-free-will position in the very example you gave but you refuse to see it. And I, unlike you, believe you are free, so I won't insist that you see what you refuse to see, that you understand what you refuse to understand.
And I do not intend to insult with this. I'm bluntly trying to show you the fallacy in your non-free-will position, that it is refuted by your own experience and even by the example you cite. But I also believe that you are free, so I can only state it as plainly as I can. That you choose not to understand it is your own free choice.
Yes, it has been and you did. You have argued that the modifier is necessary to the essence of the word and I have disagreed. You say that a gift must be accepted to be a real gift, and I say that some real gifts may be refused and some real gifts may not. I do understand your qualification.
And your socks example actually proves my point. Of course your child is free to refuse them. If he does, you may punish him, of course. But have you never had an ungrateful child? If the child is uninterested in the socks, he does not see them as your gift. Your intention to gift him with them cannot make him see them as a gift, as you clearly admit. They are not a gift in the full sense unless he is grateful for them and recieves them knowing them to be a gift.
I would say that my child is free to initially refuse them, but not ultimately. I can "make" my child "want" the socks by pointing out to him how his life will be worse if he refuses. For example, if he does not wear the socks, he will not be allowed into school because of school rules, not mine. That means he will be unable to attain a certain GPA which I have already required him to have to get his driver's license (a current situation :). After explaining that, he'll want the socks.
I agree that my initial intention does not make him see them as a gift. I say that subsequent action can. (This is true of me as a human.)
BTW, I freely admit that my analogy isn't perfect to salvation because the authority God has over me as my Father is infinitely superior to the authority I have over my son as his father. But it's something to work with.
Your intent alone cannot make him grateful. And until he is grateful, the gift process is stymied, incomplete.
Other than my own type of qualification above, I'd say you're right. The difference is, and what my analogy doesn't cover, is that it is different with God and salvation. God can make us want it. One of the reasons I'm not letting go of this subtopic (I'm sure other readers are starting to wonder about me :) is that God does have the authority and I do not.
This is why I am pressing so hard on the nature of the word "gift". I would say that the nature of the gift of salvation includes our wanting it, an authority I believe God has. I cannot say a true sinner's prayer without wanting it. I cannot want it without God's gift of the ability to do so. I wasn't born with the ability and I cannot achieve it on my own. But God can for me. This is why I see both grace and faith coming directly from God. God completes the gifting process Himself by making me grateful through giving me the ability to want what is obviously a desirable thing.