Acts 2:38 Comparison: Evangelical vs. Oneness / Baptismal-Regeneration View
- Thread starter LightBearer316
- Start date
-
Christian Chat is a moderated online Christian community allowing Christians around the world to fellowship with each other in real time chat via webcam, voice, and text, with the Christian Chat app. You can also start or participate in a Bible-based discussion here in the Christian Chat Forums, where members can also share with each other their own videos, pictures, or favorite Christian music.
If you are a Christian and need encouragement and fellowship, we're here for you! If you are not a Christian but interested in knowing more about Jesus our Lord, you're also welcome! Want to know what the Bible says, and how you can apply it to your life? Join us!
To make new Christian friends now around the world, click here to join Christian Chat.
If you’re going to claim something I wrote was misrepresented, then quote it and let’s examine it directly.
Vague accusations aren’t arguments — show it in context, and we’ll see who’s actually handling the text honestly.
Grace and peace.
@studier
Nothing you’ve presented overturns this — not one passage you’ve cited changes the order Scripture gives:
Faith in Christ’s blood → forgiveness and life.
Baptism follows as the outward testimony of that inner faith, not the cause of union with Christ.
Romans 6:3–4 KJV and Ephesians 1:7 KJV remain perfectly consistent with this truth.
Grace and peace.
Nothing you’ve presented overturns this — not one passage you’ve cited changes the order Scripture gives:
Faith in Christ’s blood → forgiveness and life.
Baptism follows as the outward testimony of that inner faith, not the cause of union with Christ.
Romans 6:3–4 KJV and Ephesians 1:7 KJV remain perfectly consistent with this truth.
Grace and peace.
@studier
You’re reading hupēkousan beyond Paul’s usage. The verb doesn’t redefine faith as obedience; it describes Israel’s refusal to hear and believe the message.
Paul’s contrast in Romans 10:16–17 KJV isn’t between two forms of obedience — it’s between belief and unbelief.
Faith, by nature, includes trust and response, but Paul keeps it distinct from action. Otherwise Romans 4 collapses, where Abraham was “justified by faith, not by works.”
Grace and peace.
@studier
That’s the difference between the two of us — I let Scripture define the framework; you let the framework define Scripture.
If “systematic theology” means forcing the text to fit a preset model, then no thanks. Paul didn’t build systems — he preached revelation.
The text is the system when it’s rightly divided.
Grace and peace.
@studier
That’s not misleading at all — it’s simply clarifying what Paul is actually doing in the text.
He’s describing the result of unbelief, not redefining faith as obedience. The parallel between hupēkousan (“obeyed”) and episteusen (“believed”) doesn’t merge the two concepts; it shows how unbelief produces disobedience. Paul isn’t equating the terms — he’s contrasting the consequences.
Hebrews 3 makes the same point: unbelief leads to disobedience, not that faith is obedience. You’re forcing a definition the text doesn’t support. Correlation isn’t equivalence, and reading it that way reverses Paul’s entire argument.
Grace and Peace
LightBearer316 said:
By saying I “misrepresent” obedience, you are redefining it away from any action that could be considered a work.
In your framework, “obedience” isn’t external effort but a conceptual “element” of faith itself — so that faith and obedience become linguistically welded together.
That’s why you keep repeating the phrase “functionally equivalent.”
You are trying to merge categories — to say faith is obedience, obedience is faith, and therefore justification includes obedience.
@studier remember when you tried this.
.
B
Blue155
Guest
@LightBearer316, did you answer the questions without using AI that @ChristRoseFromTheDead asked you? Did you answer them honestly?
If the WORD (John 1:1) was manifested into flesh it means He is Spirit first and foremost. So how do you not know when it says the Spirit in Genesis 1 was not talking about the WORD who would have been Spirit during that time?
Done and repeatedly requested that you deal with it. All ignored repeatedly.
You can go back 300+ posts to #624 if you'd like and put another canned statement in your Typinator to deal with it. I may or may not pay much attention to it now. I gave you many opportunities to deal with it and show some integrity. Now you're treating it like something new and my being unreasonable.
Honestly, these tactics are repetitive with the most aggressive with their systems.
Earlier it was telling mom on others. Now it's the tu quoque fallacy - essentially the adult, formal version of the childhood: “I know you are, but what am I?” deflecting blame back to the critic.
I agree with your last sentence.
Paul and Hebrews parallel believe and obey to show that faith is intrinsically obedient, not simply correlated. The words differ, but the reality is semantically equivalent in context. One is not the result of the other; they are not sequential but interrelated, and neither redefines the other, though obedience helps define and explain genuine faith.
I appreciate the effort to use “correlation” and agree it isn’t equivalence — it’s a term that fits a faith-alone system, not Paul’s or Hebrews’ grammar.
Genesis 1 doesn’t describe the Word acting as the Spirit, but rather the Spirit and the Word acting together in creation.
In Genesis 1:2, “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” and in Psalm 33:6, we’re told, “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath [Spirit] of his mouth.”
The Word and the Spirit are distinct yet unified in divine action — both fully God, both eternal, but not interchangeable.
John 1:1-3 reveals that “the Word was with God, and the Word was God… all things were made by Him.”
That doesn’t mean the Spirit in Genesis 1 was the Word; it means the Son and the Spirit worked in perfect unity. The Spirit energizes creation; the Word articulates it.
Conflating the two removes the personal distinctions within the Godhead that Scripture itself maintains. The Word became flesh (John 1:14); the Spirit did not. That’s why Jesus could later promise to send the Spirit (John 14:26; 15:26) — He was not sending Himself.
Grace and Peace
Stop using ai!
I’ve never ignored anything that was presented in context — only circular arguments or misrepresentations that don’t deal with the actual wording of Scripture.
If something I wrote was genuinely mishandled, the right way to show integrity is simple: quote it and demonstrate the error from the text itself. Anything less turns the discussion into personalities instead of exegesis.
Paul warned against “strife of words” that leads to envy and railing rather than truth (1 Timothy 6:3–5). I’m not interested in that cycle — just in examining the passage honestly, line by line.
Grace and peace, still.
The difference is simple — you’ve been relying on AI all along. I haven’t. I’ve done my own study, my own writing, and my own research. That’s why my posts have substance — they come from Scripture, not a script.
Labeling it a tu quoque doesn’t change the fact that the point stands — Paul’s approach wasn’t to build a man-made system and then pour the text into it. He preached revelation as it was given, letting the Word define its own categories.
Systematic theology has value only when it remains submissive to Scripture, not when it reshapes Scripture to preserve a system. That’s why Paul told Timothy to “rightly divide the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15 KJV), not to systematize it.
It’s not deflection to remind someone that the text itself must rule over every framework — that’s just fidelity to the Word.
Grace and peace.
