Sorry, I am not trying to be cross-threaded with you...
Here is your quote:
You. can not, at least while maintaining any kind of intellectual integrity, claim your "second birth" is in any sense literal, while also denying my assertion consuming the bread and wine is literally consuming the Body and Blood, without cutting off the interpretational limb you're standing on. src
My first reaction to this quote is that it is comparative: One cannot claim a literal second birth without accepting literal body and blood, lest one cannot maintain the integrity of the fact. I am taking it literally (I am a fundamentalist after all). The obvious reply follows: I do not take the born again experience to be literal, ergo your statement is invalid... As I basically transmitted previously.
The only other thing I can see in this statement is a tangential comparative of the two experiences (*not* the literal sense), perhaps... But I suppose you would have fleshed that out in your definition, had that been what you were driving at...
Outside of that, I can assure you I am not feigning obtuseness - It must be the real thing. So maybe you'd be better served to haul out your crayons and draw me a picture. ; )
Why is your first reaction to make one contingent on the other? I said no such thing. Is it any wonder I question your integrity?
I maintain you have no scriptural basis to claim "being born again" is a valid work of God, while maintaining receiving the Eucharist is merely a kind of memorial.
In a very real sense, it is a fallacy, at least in the same genus, as the unforgivable sin... if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast [them] out?
The whole discussion started with the *literal* second birth and somehow morphed into *literal physical*.
There is a literal second birth, but *literal* does not by default mean *physical*.
It is a literal event which happens to our spirit; in the spiritual realm. It does not demand a corresponding physical counterpart.
When we are saved, born again, if you will, we are transferred to the kingdom of the Son He loves and are seated with Him in the heavenly realms NOW. I am not there NOW in the physical as I am still here on earth, but spiritually I am seated there with Him as a matter of fact.
Ephesians 2:1-10 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Colossians 1:9-14 9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.
13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.