A Theological Question

[OBW]

I came across this quote in a personal testimony of someone that I have known since my earliest days in the LC. I will not identify the person or where I read it, but here is the quote:

I had been a believer since I was an early teenager, but I can’t say with certainty that I was born-again at that time

I read that sentence (well, part of a sentence — the rest of it did not clarify anything) and had to stop and go back and read it again.

Yep. It still said what I thought it did the first time around.

So, the questions that come to mind are:

1. Is this a theologically sound consideration about salvation?

2. Is there belief that does not qualify as belief and therefore leaves you unsaved?

3. Is being "born again" something more than being saved?

4. Is this possibly something that unwittingly becomes part of the LC theology in which saved people can be considered unsaved, with the follow-on question: is this how they manage to denigrate so much of Christianity?

I realize that this one sentence does not define how it is that a believer can not be born again. Or if it can be so, how it is that there is belief that does not result in salvation (or being born again). Or is being born again a less Pentecostal equivalent of adding the need for the infilling of the Holy Ghost with evidence of speaking in tongues?

I sure don't think this particular brother meant anything sinister by the statement. But I wonder what kind of teaching leads someone to think in this manner. I think this brother is someone who has been sort of on the side but not fully connected for some period of time of late. Not in but not out. (But fully in Christ at all times)

And maybe this is all his own thinking and he might not even agree with himself if he had thought about it a little before committing it to writing.