Does regeneration precede faith? part 4

Bud's post...............

You are still suffering from the root fallacy in dealing with "nekros." Words do not have "primary meanings." They have "fields of meaning;" and even if I were to grant the point - that they have a "primary meaning" I would not concede your point that it means "without life" but argue that it means "separation" or "alienation."

I am mystified by your remark about God's "taking the initiative unilaterally..." The parenthetical statement "for by grace you have been saved) at the end of v. 5 is clearly connected with the exact same statement in v. 8 where God's action is clearly conditioned upon the unbeliever's faith.

I don't quite know what to say about your assertion that "faith clearly follows God taking action in this passage." Faith is not mentioned until you get to v. 8, and I am sure you know that the syntax of the nouns, specifically their gender, and the demonstrative pronoun are not "clear." I'll write up another post about this, suffice it to say that there is nothing in the syntax of Ephesians 2:1-8 that will allow you to say that "faith clearly follows God taking action in this passage."

I'm going to resist the temptation to jump to the passages in John you cite because that will only get us sidetracked. We've still got a lot of work to do in Ephesians 2:1-8.