[George]

Re: Biblestudeent Post #263

Hello, Bro. George!
I respectfully disagree that the "grammatical" method should be done away with. Paul uses this method at times. Here's an example where he makes a doctrine out of the singular and plural forms of a word:

Galatians 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

Concerning faith and belief, or faith and believe, they are not always synonymous, but they are synonyms. Furthermore, we know that there is more than one "kind" faith. There is a personal "faith" which is different from the "faith of Christ" (the ONLY saving faith today). I believe the faith in Ephesians 2:8 refers to the faith of Christ, while John 20:29 refers to the faith of Thomas.

Aloha brother Sammy,

I want to be careful here - but I never said: "the "grammatical" method should be done away with". I was giving a warning about the use of grammatical "terms" (I wasn't clear when I used the term: "Grammatical method".)

Here is my quote:

A word of caution: I would be very careful in a debate or discussion over Scripture in advancing your point using a "grammatical" argument. No. 1 - because there are no examples of such a "method" in the Holy Scriptures themselves;

Concerning your example: Galatians 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

My point is that Paul never used "grammatical terms" (verb, noun, synonyms, etc.) in order "convince" someone of a Scriptural truth. And since most ordinary people do not understand "grammar" (who does?) , the use of the grammatical "terms" only introduces a "foreign element" into a scriptural point.

Your previous quote:

Is "believe" (verb) the same as "faith" (noun)? I have encountered people here (actually my classmates in Bible school) who seems to over divide the word to the extent of saying that "believe" is not "faith". My answer was of course they are different parts of speech. One can not say:
"Thomas faith in Christ", but
"Thomas believes in Christ";
nor can a person say, "
Thomas has no believe", but:
"Thomas has no faith".

So, if believe and faith mean the same, except that one is a verb and the other is a noun, then according to Jesus Christ:
Thomas believed (verb) because he has seen (verb); or Thomas had faith (noun) after he had sight, or
Thomas had belief (synonym of faith) after he had vision (synonym of sight).

You may find this hard to believe, but I have never studied the Bible in this manner. Just like I have never used "Strong's Concordance to look up the "meaning" of a word in Hebrew or Greek, since I don't trust "scholars" to give me the "meaning" of a word in English.

I try to "rightly divide" the word of truth comparing Scripture with Scripture and leave out all other extemporaneous distractions.