Many Christians on TOL believe that salvation is a matter of belief in the gospel of grace--purely mental assent--they even stop short at the mention of faith (though that is perhaps a different discussion). So, to them I ask:
If I believe that the world is flat then subsequently receive, what I value as compelling, evidence to the contrary and change my belief, do I:
A. Still secretly believe, so secretly that I myself don't even recognize it.
or...
B. No longer believe in the a flat earth.
This is, of course, generally countered with the "you never REALLY believed in the first place." If this is true, once I do believe in a flat earth it follows that it is impossible to change my mind. If it is indeed impossible, can it be said that I have freedom of thought/belief?
The earth isn't flat, it's somewhat spherical. You can't see this with your own eyes or touch it with your hands, but that's the reality nonetheless.
The point would be that we utterly lack the faith to accept that the earth if spherical. We can't see past the obvious flatness of it. It's clearly flat. We look around and see that it is flat. We walk and our center of gravity never changes.
We have mountains of evidence that the earth is spherical but we can't accept any of it. We can pretend to, of course. Or we can embrace insanity and the delusion that it is so. But clearly, whatever evidence to the contrary, the earth is simply flat. There's no getting around that.
Then you surrender to Christ and God grants you the faith to accept all the evidence that you can't see with your eyes or touch with your hands. And you are, finally, able to accept the reality that the earth is spherical. It's quite obvious. The evidence is overwhelming. Of course the earth is not flat.
Then someone tells you that you can believe the earth is spherical, even though it clearly is flat, then reject that belief later. Someone could fool themselves into believing the earth is spherical, for example. Or a crazy person could develop the delusion that the earth is spherical. In either case, later abandoning that belief. And this is proof that belief in a spherical earth can be lost. And so belief in this spherical earth is no basis for salvation.
So then you smack the person in the head for being stupid. Because of course that's no basis for salvation. You know that the earth is spherical because you're redeemed and that faith has been granted to you. You're not redeemed because you recognize the earth is round.
:maxi:
We aren't redeemed because we have faith in Christ. We have faith in Christ because we are redeemed.
If we had to have faith to be saved, no one would ever be saved.
