Is believing/faith a work ?

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
Denial. Faith and believing are the same, believing is a verb

Nouns aren’t verbs.

Pistis is faith. Pistis is a noun.

Pisteuo is believe. Pisteuo is a verb.

BelievING is a verb, yes.

But faith is a noun.

This is not hard. It’s only difficult because the default for most English speakers is to conceptually transform Greek anarthrous nouns into English verbs.

This is linguistic fact. It’s inarguable, validly. You’re simply wrong.

Say believING is a work, but you can’t say faith is a work because it’s a noun. This is very simple.
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
I thought I had you on ignore. I know for an absolute fact there is nothing that you have to babble about that I want or need to read. Like wise there is no truuth that I post that you could possibly comprehend.

PROBLEM RECTIFIED:This message is hidden because PneumaPsucheSoma is on your ignore list.

Problem indeed rectified, for me and the whole forum. Thank you. Have a great week. :)
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
B57,

So are you ignoring him, or are you going to keep replying to him? You need to make up your mind one way or the other because at this point it's going to look like you're dishonestly trolling your own thread.

@Sherman

This will be unnecessarily difficult for him and others. Cognitive dissonance is a cruel master.

Faith cannot be a work because it’s a noun.
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
Denial. Faith and believing are the same, believing is a verb

Pistis (faith) is NOT pisteuo (believe/believing). Faith is a noun. Believe/believing is a verb. Nouns aren’t verbs.

Faith is a thing. A glorious thing as the gift from God out of the message that is directly by means of the Word. Thus sayeth the inspired text. Thus sayeth basic grammar.
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
BTW... Repentance is also a noun before it can be a verb. God grants this thing called repentance, and that repentance does the repentING. Repenting is NOT a work that man does. Man has the thing that is the changed condition of his mind for moral reflection according to spiritual life given by God when He resurrects us from spiritual death.

Faith, hope, love, grace, mercy, repentance... all nouns. That doesn’t mean there aren’t corresponding verbs, but the actING comes forth from the thing given by God with the internal functional activity within it.

Faith will not abstain from believING, so there will be no noun without the verb ultimately coming forth. But make no mistake that it is the noun that is the foundation. Nouns verb. Things do. There is NO actING if there is no noun. So without the thing of faith given by God out of the message by means of the Word, there is no actING and resuling actION/S.

This is why faith without works is dead, but also why by the works of the Law shall no man be justified. The works of the Law are not the works of faith. There were two ancient Covenants. One was Abrahamic and the other was Mosaic. The Abrahamic was Faith and the Mosaic was Law. Both are fullfilled in Christ, so that form of the Law as the handwriting of ordinaances was abolished in Christ as the final form of Law.

No need to conflate faith and believING. Faith is the noun. Believe/believING is the verb.

There isn’t much more break-down necessary. Nouns simply aren’t verbs. And verbs cannot be actING with resulting actIONs if there is no noun.
 

George Affleck

TOL Subscriber
Pistis (faith) is NOT pisteuo (believe/believing). Faith is a noun. Believe/believing is a verb. Nouns aren’t verbs.

Faith is a thing. A glorious thing as the gift from God out of the message that is directly by means of the Word. Thus sayeth the inspired text. Thus sayeth basic grammar.

Your posts never cease to amaze and inspire me PPS. Whether they are didactic or pastoral.

Yes, love, faith and hope are, indeed, actual, real, spiritual commodities and belief is the personal result of using these real things. I am amazed at how the world teaches us that things like time, character, integrity, etc. are real things when they are not. And it teaches us that the things that really are actual things like love, sin, faith, etc. are not real.
When my wife died I went in search of what love is and found much I did not expect to find. The world tells us that love is just an emotion; but it is definitely not. Emotions are subjective responses and have no intrinsic life of their own. They come and go in response to circumstances and are directed through our current worldview.

Love (and faith and hope), on the other hand, does not behave like emotions; it abides - per 1Cor13. God objectively pours love out of the overflowing bounty of His essence to His finite likenesses whom He loves. And when He does, that love takes up residence and does not come and go. It is the currency by which, when invested according to His redemptive purposes, helps us find our way back to Him, by His grace, and receive the other 2 gifts: faith and hope. As we apply this concept, we begin to see, in our rear view mirror, God has been guiding us without us realizing it fully.

Interestingly Paul tells us that love abides, behaves a certain way and not other ways, and it never ends. It is spoken of as having lifelike qualities for good reason. The only way to get love out of your life is to deliberately chase it away by starving it, choking it or disrespecting it. And many do just that; and God takes it back. Sad. But God is long-suffering.

The easiest way to understand love is when a baby is born. Love shows up with the baby in the heart of the parents and, unless it is deliberately misused, it continues (abides) until death. With marriage, God gives abundantly of this commodity for their lifetime use. Some use it wisely and some do not. After many months of struggling with grief (emotional response) I came to the realization that grief consists of not understanding what has happened in God's economy. My emotions were bouncing off the walls with nothing to light upon; erratically, spontaneously, chaotically. Anger, despondency, shame, regret...

I came to realize that the object my emotions were seeking was not my wife, but the abiding love God gave us at the beginning that we had both nurtured for so long and was more valuable to both of us than even each other. We knew that He had brought us together and when she left, she took it with her and presented it to Him. When this realization came to me and I admitted that love had gone, the emotions quickly subsided. Far too many suffer many years of immobility and uselessness because they cannot bring themselves to take this leap.

Blessings for your continued teaching and input here on TOL.
 
Last edited:

Sherman

I identify as a Christian
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B57,

So are you ignoring him, or are you going to keep replying to him? You need to make up your mind one way or the other because at this point it's going to look like you're dishonestly trolling your own thread.

@Sherman

It's his thread. The member can choose to leave the thread. If he start following him around the forum and trolling him, then that becomes an issue.
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
Your posts never cease to amaze and inspire me PPS. Whether they are didactic or pastoral.

Yes, love, faith and hope are, indeed, actual, real, spiritual commodities and belief is the personal result of using these real things. I am amazed at how the world teaches us that things like time, character, integrity, etc. are real things when they are not. And it teaches us that the things that really are actual things like love, sin, faith, etc. are not real.
When my wife died I went in search of what love is and found much I did not expect to find. The world tells us that love is just an emotion; but it is definitely not. Emotions are subjective responses and have no intrinsic life of their own. They come and go in response to circumstances and are directed through our current worldview.

Love (and faith and hope), on the other hand, does not behave like emotions; it abides - per 1Cor13. God objectively pours love out of the overflowing bounty of His essence to His finite likenesses whom He loves. And when He does, that love takes up residence and does not come and go. It is the currency by which, when invested according to His redemptive purposes, helps us find our way back to Him, by His grace, and receive the other 2 gifts: faith and hope. As we apply this concept, we begin to see, in our rear view mirror, God has been guiding us without us realizing it fully.

Interestingly Paul tells us that love abides, behaves a certain way and not other ways, and it never ends. It is spoken of as having lifelike qualities for good reason. The only way to get love out of your life is to deliberately chase it away by starving it, choking it or disrespecting it. And many do just that; and God takes it back. Sad. But god is long-suffering.

The easiest way to understand love is when a baby is born. Love shows up with the baby in the heart of the parents and, unless it is deliberately misused, it continues (abides) until death. With marriage, God gives abundantly of this commodity for their lifetime use. Some use it wisely and some do not. After many months of struggling with grief (emotional response) I came to the realization that grief consists of not understanding what has happened in God's economy. My emotions were bouncing off the walls with nothing to light upon; erratically, spontaneously, chaotically. Anger, despondency, shame, regret...

I came to realize that the object my emotions were seeking was not my wife, but the abiding love God gave us at the beginning that we had both nurtured for so long and was more valuable to both of us than even each other. We knew that He had brought us together and when she left, she took it with her and presented it to Him. When this realization came to me and I admitted that love had gone, the emotions quickly subsided. Far too many suffer many years of immobility and uselessness because they cannot bring themselves to take this leap.

Blessings for your continued teaching and input here on TOL.

Yes, love is a noun. And that means it’s ontological. God IS love, and it is one of His communicable attributes to us so that we can BE love. It’s all Christological. We are being and becoming the love of God in Christ. And that is the foundation for our communion, both intangible and tangible.

Your response was amazingly insightful and edifying, giving glory to God. Interesting how that works, huh. :)
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
Let’s review, since there’s nothing but crickets from the OP after being refuted by basic grammar.


Nouns aren’t verbs.

Pistis is faith. Pistis is a noun.

Pisteuo is believe. Pisteuo is a verb.

BelievING is a verb, yes.

But faith is a noun.

This is not hard. It’s only difficult because the default for most English speakers is to conceptually transform Greek anarthrous nouns into English verbs.

This is linguistic fact. It’s inarguable, validly. You’re simply wrong.

Say believING is a work, but you can’t say faith is a work because it’s a noun. This is very simple.
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
I already showed it from my OP and points thereafter. But its been ignored

But the problem is one of the most basic grammatical problems possible, and it’s your lack of understanding rather than others being wrong (even if they don’t understand what makes you wrong and have other issues of doctrine themselves).

Faith is a noun. Nouns aren’t verbs.

Believe/believING is a verb. Verbs aren’t nouns.

Without nouns, there are no corresponding verbs.

So there MUST be faith as a “thing” before that “thing” can then take action as actING.

Nouns verb. Things do.

THE faith is THE thing that comes out of THE message/report, which comes by means of THE Word of God.

When you see the verb form indicating believe/believING, it’s because God has given the noun that does that actING. Man cannot believe unto salvation without the noun of faith coming out of the noun that is the message/report/news, which comes by means of the Word (Rhema) of God.

Are you going to recant your error or ignore scriptural correction and continue to contend for untruth?
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
Let’s review, since there’s nothing but crickets from the OP after being refuted by basic grammar.


Nouns aren’t verbs.

Pistis is faith. Pistis is a noun.

Pisteuo is believe. Pisteuo is a verb.

BelievING is a verb, yes.

But faith is a noun.

This is not hard. It’s only difficult because the default for most English speakers is to conceptually transform Greek anarthrous nouns into English verbs.

This is linguistic fact. It’s inarguable, validly. You’re simply wrong.

Say believING is a work, but you can’t say faith is a work because it’s a noun. This is very simple.

how about "having faith"?

stephen certainly found it difficult - would it have been a "work" if stephen had determined to hold his faith strong before Christ appeared to him?

is it a work to resist satan when he tests our faith?
 

beloved57

Well-known member
But the problem is one of the most basic grammatical problems possible, and it’s your lack of understanding rather than others being wrong (even if they don’t understand what makes you wrong and have other issues of doctrine themselves).

Faith is a noun. Nouns aren’t verbs.

Believe/believING is a verb. Verbs aren’t nouns.

Without nouns, there are no corresponding verbs.

So there MUST be faith as a “thing” before that “thing” can then take action as actING.

Nouns verb. Things do.

THE faith is THE thing that comes out of THE message/report, which comes by means of THE Word of God.

When you see the verb form indicating believe/believING, it’s because God has given the noun that does that actING. Man cannot believe unto salvation without the noun of faith coming out of the noun that is the message/report/news, which comes by means of the Word (Rhema) of God.

Are you going to recant your error or ignore scriptural correction and continue to contend for untruth?

You are making a big do about nothing. Faith/Believing is a work In 2 Thess 2:13 the word belief, is it a verb or a noun ?

13 [FONT=&quot]But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:[/FONT]
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
You are making a big do about nothing.
I’m not the one making a big do about anything. You started a thread, to which I responded. And you insisted a noun is a verb, intimating that faith is a verb and is the exact same as believING. Nouns aren’t verbs, though the verb corresponds to the noun.

Pistis (faith/belief) is NOT pisteuo (believe/believING). Nouns are things. Verbs are actING producing resulting actIONS.

This is among the most common foundational errors that English speakers make, and then they’re often nearly impossible to correct. This is the case with you, for you have built an entire false doctrinal stance on this faulty platform of erroneous basic grammar.

Faith/Believing is a work In 2 Thess 2:13 the word belief, is it a verb or a noun ?

13 [FONT="]But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:[/FONT]

IT’S A NOUN. It’s pistis, the Greek anarthrous noun. It’s NOT pisteuo, the Greek verb. It’s not an English verb, even though many English speakers attempt to turn this and many other such nouns into verbs.

Belief comes from Greek as pistis through German as gelauben. Faith comes from Greek as pistis through Latin as fide. That’s why the noun belief resembles the verb believe/believING and faith does not.

Fide and gelauben are BOTH the noun pistis, which if faith. You’re calling a noun a verb and insisting it’s actING/actION as a work by being a verb. IT’S NOT. IT’S A NOUN.

Your very proof-texting proves your false claim. Now you have to rethink your entire doctrine built upon this fallacy, but there’s likely no chance of you being corrected by the simplicity of scripture and grammar and doing that. You’re going to fight to the end that a noun is a verb, and thus a work. It’s not. Nouns are nouns and verbs are verbs. Nouns are not verbs. Nouns verb. Things do.

Faith. Is. A. Noun. The fact that you didn’t and couldn’t even check the grammar before posting yet again is concerning and alarming. You don’t even seem to want to know the truth if you’re wrong, and you are absolutely and completely DEAD WRONG. And so is all the false doctrinal position you’ve built upon this.

The question is if you’ll be corrected or not. The likely answer is, unfortunately, no. And I find that sad.


Adding... And the REAL tragedy is that in contending so strongly for your error of Hyper-Calvinism, you miss the fact that faith being a noun is the single absolute scriptural indication of biblical Monergism. That’s right. Faith is a thing that MUST be given by God via some means or man cannot believe of his own mind and will.

You’re battling, in complete futility, against the strongest biblical position on Monergism; so you’re surrendering all credibilty while not being able to correct the Synergists on this very forum, including the proliferation of Open Theists.

So now you’ve started a thread based upon error in ignorance, and you’ve attempted to discredit biblical grammar to try to disannul authentic inarguable Monergism. THIS is what arrogance and ignorace does when lethally combined. You should be glad you were corrected. And you didn’t even see how you were undermining the truth of God’s sovereignty in all your bluster and fluster about nothing except false understanding of grammar.

If I were you, I’d be spending much time considering the errors of my thoughts and ways.
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
You are making a big do about nothing. Faith/Believing is a work In 2 Thess 2:13 the word belief, is it a verb or a noun ?

13 [FONT="]But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:[/FONT]

This is one of the most pivotal and absolute scriptures for the sovereignty of God and biblical Monergism. Why would you even think that attacking this verse was in support of your Hyper-Calvinism? It makes no sense. All you’ve done is surrender all credibility and forfeit any means of correcting Synergists. Arrggghhh.
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
how about "having faith"?

stephen certainly found it difficult - would it have been a "work" if stephen had determined to hold his faith strong before Christ appeared to him?

is it a work to resist satan when he tests our faith?

I’m not sure why you’re asking here. Are you wanting an answer based on the truth of grammar and lexicography? Or are you attempting to argue a position against what I posted?

If it’s the latter, then it’s a sad attempt and I’ll address it as such in a subsequent post.

If it’s the former, then I will gladly explicate the answers to you as a willing heart in search of truth.

Please let me know which so I can answer appropriately, please. Thanks. :)
 

beloved57

Well-known member
pps

I’m not the one making a big do about anything.

Yes you are, you are just wasting time and showing that you dont understand Faith in the bible.

you insisted a noun is a verb

Thats a lie, I now Faith is a noun and believing is a verb, I been knowing that for over 30yrs

IT’S A NOUN. It’s pistis,

I know that, its a noun being used as a verb belief. The noun primarily means persuasion it comes from the VERB peithó, which results in trust. Again you are wasting my time. Once one trusts or believes as a result of Faith, its [belief,trust] is an act of the mind, a work.

Again, apples for oranges. Stick with the theme of the thread !
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
pps

Yes you are, you are just wasting time and showing that you dont understand Faith in the bible.

No. I’ve clearly and exhaustively demonstrated that I am the one who indeed DOES understand faith in the Bible (and in general overall). This is a silly statement of denial based upon cognitive dissonance. How can you even seriously say this?

Thats a lie, I now Faith is a noun and believing is a verb, I been knowing that for over 30yrs

You said belief was a verb in the 2Thessalonians passage. So you “may” know (doubtful) that faith is a noun and believing is a verb (which doesn’t match the thread title OR your adamant erroneous posts), but you for sure did NOT know that belief is the same noun as faith. You said belief in your poorly proof-texted 2Thess passage was the verb. Go back and look (and look at your own thread title while you’re scrolling, please).

You’re just trying to back-peddle, and you’re still trying to throw ME under the bus for correcting you. I understand that human tendency, but why not just admit you were wrong instead of all this continued bluster as though you knew what you didn’t know?

Your own thread title says faith/believing in asking if it (which is a they/them, because faith is NOT believing, and you did NOT know that) is a work. This is just CYA deflection and diversion to save face, which cannot happen at this point.

I know that, its a noun being used as a verb belief.

No. You don’t get to change words and their grammatical form to fit your whims. It’s not a verbal noun. It’s not a participle. It’s not ANYTHING except an anarthrous noun. Belief is faith. Same noun from Germanic and Latin respective paths into English from Greek as pistis.

You couldn’t be more wrong. You’re arguing with grammar and the inspired text itself. This makes you a higher critic of scripture and it disannuls any position you could take that scripture is innerant and infallible. I doubt you want to take this there, but I could be wrong.

There is not one linguistic hint of belief EVER being a verb, and particularly it being allegedly “a noun being used as a verb”. There’s literally no such thing unless it’s a verbal noun, and those are clearly noted in any good grammatical tool (even for the theologically and linguistically illiterate).

You’re blustering in ignorance and arrogance. The text and grammar will not change not matter how hard to fight against scripture.

And you’re coming against God’s sovereignty and biblical Monergism!!!! A Hyper-Calvinist coming against those is just insanity based upon sheer oblivious pride to contradict one’s own alleged doctrine.

The noun primarily means persuasion

Right. Which is a noun definition as state of being. It’s not “to persuade” or any other verb sense. You really are doubling down on complete ignorance to the point of stubborn stupidity. Why do that?

it comes from the VERB peithó, which results in trust. Again you are wasting my time. Once one trusts or believes as a result of Faith, its [belief,trust] is an act of the mind, a work.

No. The believING is done by the faith. Belief is the noun that does the believING. Man cannot believe without the thing of faith that does the believING. The only reason man can believe is because God gives the thing whereby man can believe.

This is the core of biblical Monergism. You’re an alleged Hyper-Monergist coming against... MONERGISM.

You’re throwing God’s sovereignty under the bus, along with God’s foreknowledge and biblical election, etc.

It’s YOU who is wasting EVERYONE’s time with this thread and with your silly ignorant adamant assertions that are utterly and completely wrong accoding to grammar and the inspired text.

Again, apples for oranges. Stick with the theme of the thread !

I’m actually sticking with the theme of the thread, even though the title is self-contradicting. It’s you who isn’t sticking with the theme of the thread, because the alleged theme is in error. Faith/believing, as appears in the thread title, are NOT the same thing. Faith is a noun. BelievING is a verb. BELIEF IS THE SAME NOUN AS FAITH.

I’m not surprised you didn’t back down, but I’d hoped that you might have a love for the truth when corrected by the Word. But you’re going to double down and say you knew all along exactly what this thread and its title and your posts CLEARLY demonstrate that you don’t know at all.

Belief is not used as a verb. And there’s no such thing as a noun used as a verb. That’s a made-up concept of your own mind because you read your false doctrine INTO the text eisegetically rather than reading and understanding the text for what it is and means.

Belief in 2Thess won’t change into a verb from a noun, nor will it ever be considered “a noun acting as a verb” since there is NO SUCH THING. Any and all verbal nouns will be designated by grammatical notations and are unmistakable. This isn’t one of them, and neither is any other rendering of belief in the inspired text.

You’re making all of this up from your own conceptual understandings, which are wrong. And you’re a Calvinist coming against a Calvinist proof verse for Monergism. So now you’re REALLY jacking it all up.

You started with no credibility. Now you have less and less credibility with each attempt to cover your ignorance while you double down on your bad bet. This ain’t Vegas, baby. You’ve come against the inspired text and you lose. :(

Your fellow Calvinists should be taking you to the woodshed over this. You’re coming against Monergism.
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
just curious - seems to me that resisting satan's attempts to weaken our faith could be viewed as a work

It’s the faith as a noun doing the work. Nouns verb. We can only do it because we have the faith that does it.

This is the same thing as making a call on a cellular network or chopping down a tree. If someone doesn’t have the thing that calls (the phone), they’re not going to be able to make a call. If someone doesn’t have the thing that chops the tree (the axe or other implement), they’re not going to be able to chop the tree.

Having is a present indicative middle verb. English has no middle voice for verbs, so few understand this. The present indicative asserts something which is occuring while the speaker is making the statement. The middle voice refers to action upon oneself or on one’s own behalf.

So “having” is an indication that God is giving the faith for the action as the speaker is speaking. This demonstrates that faith comes from God and not man, and that without God giving man this thing, man would not be able to do any action related to what the thing does.

You won’t be chopping a tree without an axe, and you won’t be making any calls without a cellphone. Having those items is an issue of possession relative to a middle voice verb, and it’s clear that God is the one from whom the faith comes for “faithing”. There is NO believING without the belief that is faith, and its only source is God, not man.
 
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