Reflections on Regeneration (1)
I've made the proposal that Jesus isn't talking about
Nicodemus' moral or spiritual condition when he spoke of his need of a
"new birth". I don't deny that Nicodemus, like every other sinful
human, needed God acting in pure grace to save him from the penalty and
power of sin from which he could never save himself. I'm simply proposing that that is not what Jesus was talking about in John 3:3-8.
But moving on from there I'd like to respond a bit to
the standard Evangelical presentation of "regeneration" (the new birth)
because I can't help thinking there's more confusion than there needs to
be.
The standard Evangelical presentation, particularly in
the Reformed circles, begins with the understanding that due to Adam's
sin everyone thereafter is born under God's condemnation because they
are guilty because they are Adam's descendants. (Romans 5:12-19
is one text that would figure prominently in the discussion.) They are
born not only guilty before God, they are also born morally corrupt and
as they grow they prove, by personal sin, not only their guilt but their
inherited moral corruption. All humans, from Adam to this day—without
exception (well, One exception)—are born morally polluted, godless in
their self-seeking and incapable of wanting to please God. It is more
than the truth that they cannot save themselves; they cannot want
God to save them; cannot even care that they are lost and it is even a
question if they can discern that they are lost. In this state every
human remains until God in grace and power, utterly and absolutely
independent of the sinner transforms the inner world of the sinner and
makes him into a new man. It's because they are in this state that they must
have God to work a moral miracle in and for them for they cannot save
themselves. This is where "the new birth" teaching enters.
[All this being true, there was no way that Nicodemus could understand the truth Jesus was speaking. Jesus might as well have been speaking to the wall for Nicodemus was born incapable
of understanding it and would remain that way until the Holy Spirit
transformed him within. As Packer will express it, Nicodemus was blind
and couldn't discern spiritual realities. It doesn't matter that God
uses the gospel to bring about the new birth, without God's prevenient grace Nicodemus could not savingly receive special grace by which to savingly understand and obey the gospel.]
If the matter were only left the way P. E Hughes expressed it in an article on Grace in Elwell's Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, not
only would it make sense it would accord with the plain sense of the
NT. "God does not treat men as though they were puppets with no mind or
will of their own…By Christ's command the gospel of divine grace is
freely proclaimed throughout the whole world…Those who turn away from it
do so of their own choice and stand self-condemned as lovers of
darkness…Those who thankfully receive it do so in full personal
responsibility…but then they give all the praise to God because their
whole redemption is, in some wonderful way, due entirely to the grace of
God and not at all to themselves."
But that isn't enough for many in the Reformed
tradition. The only will a sinner has is the one he was born
with—utterly incapable of doing other than rejecting God and loving
darkness. The corrupt will is his own in the sense that he was born with it; but he didn't ask for it and he can't even want to do anything about it! Even if God
asked him, "Do you want me to do something about it?" he couldn't say
yes! Until God works a moral miracle on him (the new birth) he cannot
even truly discern what state he is in and wouldn't truly know what God
meant!
[This all seems so contrary to the
plain meaning of vast tracts of scripture and what we see in daily life
that qualifications are made at every turn. The doctrine is adjusted to
meet the facts but such is the fear of Pelagianism and some faces of
Roman Catholic teaching that the problematic aspects of it remain
entrenched and sinners are puppets. God must get the glory even if
existence becomes a stage play.]
By the time this doctrinal development is done you can't
even take the sinner's "thanksgiving" for salvation at face value. He
doesn't choose—he merely responds. Of course we're told that
isn't true because his will has been set free from corruption so that it
can freely choose righteousness and thanksgiving; but that won't work.
The "new birth" might only be the beginning of God's regenerating work
but we're told (Calvin and others stressed this) that it is a lifelong
work of God so it isn't as though the sinner is given a free will and
independently exercises it. The new birth, they tell us, is the result of efficacious and irresistible grace
and the continuing work of regeneration is on the same basis. There's
simply nothing you can do about it because, we're told, God is
omnipotent. According to this doctrine, once you've been given a gift
you can't possibly refuse you can't possibly refuse to do other with it than what God irresistibly
wants you to do. You can't tell him you don't want his "new birth"; he
works a moral miracle and you want it without having wanted to want it.
Now that you have what you had no choice in getting, your "free" will
irresistibly follows where you are irresistibly led. [Make
no mistake—the stress on "monergism" says precisely that—you don't
choose or in any shape or form cooperate with the new birth and how it
develops, the Holy Spirit alone restructures your entire inner world,
including your choosing/willing faculty.]
We're left with a world of good puppets and bad puppets.