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How can salvation depend on the choices of a depraved human who by his or her sinful nature is at war with God and cannot make good choices anyway? Such a disordered being will always choose to be lost. His "free will" will not help him. It is a slave to sin.

Herein lies (one of) the central differences between Reformed/Calvinist theology and the rest of Christianity. The "T" of the T.U.L.I.P. Many things have been written about it pro and con for me though it's untenable simply because it disallows for any cooperation between God and man.

It's "funny" how every person who is "saved" under this system also knows for certain they are saved and not that they are fooling themselves.

No one can know they are "saved" by reasoning on their own. Have to be told they are saved. But all who are saved, and know it, believe in the complete lack of man to know God (the T of the T.U.L.I.P). Somehow they just "know", but it's not because of any idea or realization they have had, even a thought "helped" by God isn't allowed (because that would be "synergism").

After all, again, men cannot know God by any idea of their own or any idea or thought that is even inspired or aided by God, but still has human effort behind it too (again the T of the T.U.L.I.P or really at this point we're talking about "monergism") They just "know". Sure is lucky for them.

But maybe all I've written is the product of a "totally depraved" mind. Who knows. Maybe it is, or maybe not. Who can ever know for certain? Know for certain that "A" is Truth and "B" is not after all, the mind is "totally depraved" without God. Seems to me a totally depraved mind could believe a whole host of errors and not even know it. May even claim what are actually errors are "what the Bible says". Never would be able to tell though "what the Bible says" (and doesn't say) with a totally depraved mind. Except for of course self serving arguments like "total depravity is abrogated when one is saved, so from then on, one can understand Scripture". Deus ex machina anyone?

Just seems all too "neat" to me. And maybe a bit circular too. But I haven't been "saved" yet (according to some) so I guess there's hope.

Didn't mean to ignore you. Other things going on. Epistemology is tough for everybody. I think RC epistemology is a much shakier state of affairs than evangelical epistemology. Pretty much every question your post raises can be raised to the Roman system. But the best response of Rome is to appeal to uninspired history, and frankly not even very good history. It solves nothing.

Coming right down to it then, how we know truth and whether we know the truth is ultimately in God's hands. That does not prevent us from knowing. It may prevent us from persuading someone else by ordinary means of conveying truth.

Paul says God's spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are His.

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
(Romans 8:16)

That's subjective, but Paul says it happens. It is an objectively true fact about the Christian experience, that we will experience subjective confirmation of our relationship with God.

Can I convince you that it's true? That's another question. People come to Christ when the word is preached and the Lord opens their heart to the Gospel. Again, that's subjective, but that's who we are. God didn't create us as a mentally unified Borg system. We are all individuals. We come to truth as individuals. There is no escaping that.

And that is where faith comes in. We see the works of God, we hear the word of God. Jesus promises that all who come to Him will do so because they were drawn by the Father, and will not be cast out. Period. Paul, Jesus' apostle, says we will have the inner witness of God's own spirit that we belong to Him. Do we dare believe these things? If we have faith, yes, we dare.

Peace,

SR