Roses are Red, violets are blue. Another bad argument Dr. Flowers has brought to you. Enjoy!
Dr. Flowers from “Soteriology101” and our own Bryan Forbes engaged in a conversation over twitter.

Nate Davis said:
The question that needs to be asked is what are the attributes of those who do cleanse themselves? Is it all their doing or God working in them? Later on in 2 Timothy it says it is God who grants repentance. Not someone waking up out of the blue (v 25)

Dr. Flowers said:
Never said it was “out of the blue” but in response to hearing His word. Faith comes by hearing. He grants or enables faith/repentance by sending revelation. “To grant” doesn’t mean “to effectually cause” it means “to enable.”

Bryan Forbes said:
μήποτε δώῃ αὐτοῖς ὁ θεὸς μετάνοιαν εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν ἀληθείας
Perhaps God will give to them a change of mind into knowledge of truth

I’m not seeing “enable” there… unless we’re redefining words, of course…

Dr. Flowers said:
Nathan, the guy to whom I responded used the word grant for didomi which is also used by some translations. The verse is about being kind so as to win your opponent over so they may believe and then God would possibly forgive their rebellion

Bryan Forbes said:
Yep. That’s what I quoted with a very wooden translation. δίδωμι means “to give”, “to grant”, “to cause to happen”. God is giving/granting repentance or, a change of mind. Giving someone a change of mind is not effectually causing it?

Dr. Flowers said:
I’m glad we agree that a gift doesn’t have to be effectually given for the giver to get full credit for giving it.

As seen here this is the same Greek word translated as “enabled” in John 6:65

Bryan Forbes said:
So the way to properly exegete scripture is to pick the only translation that translates a word as “enables” in Johannine usage and read that back into Pauline usage?

Dr. Flowers said:
This is Twitter. I used the word Nathan used and some commonly used words as possible meanings. It never has meant “effectually determined” as an option for translation yet that is the meaning Calvinists read into that word. Whose redefining terms?

Bryan Forbes said:
No one, in this thread, has said “effectually determined”. I’ve seen “to effectually cause” and “to enable” from you, and I used (from BDAG) “to give”, “to grant”, and “to cause to happen”. Who is reading meaning into words now?

Bryan Forbes said:
Never? So when God gave (didomi) Paul his thorn in the flesh, it wasn’t effectual? Paul had to accept that gift before it kept him from being conceited? That’s absurd. Using your hermeneutic, I can now read Paul’s usage of “effectually caused” back into John’s usage?