10 – Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican

Teaching: Baptismal Regeneration

      We have already noted that for fifteen centuries the church understood baptism as the sacrament of regeneration.  It is now our task to ascertain the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church since the time that she reacted against the new Protestant teaching, at which we looked in the last chapter.  The obvious place to find the official Catholic position is in the doctrine promulgated by the Council of Trent (1545–1563).  The decrees and canons concerning original sin, justification, and the sacraments were all set forth in 1547; it is these in which we are primarily interested.  Having looked at the sixteenth-century doctrine, we shall then note further matters of interest from the documents produced by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).  In the second part of this chapter we shall comment on Lutheran and Anglican teaching.

Roman Catholic Teaching

The Council of Trent

      The Catholic teaching on original sin was clearly expressed by the Council of Trent.¹  When Adam transgressed God’s law, he lost the holiness and righteousness which he had possessed since his creation by God.  Further, through this offense he incurred the wrath of God and became the captive of death and the devil.  And because of his position as the first man he injured all his posterity: his original sin has been passed on through human procreation.  Thus every newborn infant needs the remission of sin – original sin.  It is through the regeneration of baptism that the guilt of original sin is taken away:

1. See Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. 2, pp. 83–88.

If any one denies, that, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted; or even asserts that the whole of that which has the true and proper nature of sin is not taken away; but that it is only erased, or not imputed; let him be anathema.  For, in those who are born again, there is nothing that God hates; because, There is no condemnation to those who are truly buried together with Christ by baptism into death; who walk not according to the flesh, but, putting off the old man, and putting on the new who is created according to God, are made innocent, immaculate, pure, harmless, and beloved of God, heirs indeed of God, but joint heirs with Christ; so that there is nothing whatever to retard their entrance into heaven.

The reference to those who claim that after baptism the guilt of original sin is merely “not imputed” to the sinner is, of course, a criticism of Luther’s doctrine.

      There is further criticism of the doctrine of Luther and Calvin as the council’s decree concerning original sin continues:

This holy synod confesses and is sensible, that in the baptized there remains concupiscence, or an incentive (to sin); which, whereas it is left for our exercise, cannot injure those who consent not, but resist manfully by the grace of Jesus Christ. ... This concupiscence, which the apostle sometimes calls sin [Rom. 6:12; 7:8], the holy Synod declares that the Catholic Church has never understood it to be called sin, as being truly and properly sin in those born again, but because it is of sin, and inclines to sin.  And if anyone is of a contrary sentiment, let him be anathema.

The council followed Thomas Aquinas in accepting the idea of a passive bias or tendency to sin residing in the human senses (not in the will), but declared that it is not offensive to God.  In contrast, the Reformers insisted (as did the later Jansenists) that it is offensive to God.

      The nature of regeneration becomes clearer as we turn to the decree on justification (i.e., the process of making the sinner righteous):²

2. Ibid., pp. 89–118.

[Justification is] a translation, from that state wherein man is born a child of the first Adam, to the state of grace, and of the adoption of the sons of God, through the second Adam, Jesus Christ, our Saviour.  And this translation, since the promulgation of the Gospel, cannot be effected, without the laver of regeneration, or the desire thereof, as it is written: unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.

Thus at baptism there is not only the remission of sins, but also the infusion of righteousness into the soul (through the presence and gifts of the Holy Spirit).  For this reason baptism is called “the laver of regeneration.”

      Baptism is the laver of regeneration whether infants or adults are involved.  The difference is that in adults there is a preparation for their justification; God helps them to be ready and able to receive the grace of regeneration at their baptism:

In adults, the beginning of the said Justification is to be derived from the prevenient grace of God, through Jesus Christ ... whereby, without any merits existing on their parts, they are called; that so they, who by sins were alienated from God, may be disposed through his quickening and assisting grace, to convert themselves to their own justification, by freely assenting to and co-operating with that said grace: in such sort that, while God touches the heart of man by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, neither is man himself utterly inactive while he receives that inspiration, forasmuch as he is also able to reject it; yet he is not able, by his own free will, without the grace of God, to move himself unto justice [righteousness] in his sight.

      Clearly, the prevenient or anticipatory grace of God must initially move the sinner, but there is no regeneration unless the individual freely consents to this movement of his or her heart and will towards God.  Therefore, the individual sinner must accept the teaching of the gospel, turn from sin, look to Christ, and begin to love God as well as be penitent, in order to come to the laver of regeneration for the remission of sins and the gift of the indwelling Spirit, the Spirit of righteousness.  As chapter 7 of the decree on justification expresses it:

This disposition, or preparation, is followed by Justification itself, which is not remission of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man, through the voluntary reception of the grace, and of the gifts, whereby an unjust becomes a just man, and an enemy a friend, so that he may be an heir according to hope of life everlasting.

Regeneration is, therefore, the beginning of sanctification and renewal; and the instrumental cause of this process of being made righteous (i.e., being made holy and totally renewed) is baptism (this is in contrast to the Protestant assertion that the instrumental cause is faith and trust).

      It is in canon 8 of the decree on the sacraments that we encounter the highly charged expression ex opere operato:³

3. Ibid., pp. 118–25.

If anyone says, that by the said sacraments of the New Law [baptism, holy communion] grace is not conferred through the act performed, but that faith alone in the divine promise suffices for the obtaining of grace: let him be anathema.

The phrase ex opere operato had been used since the thirteenth century to express the conviction that the sacraments operate objectively, that is, independently of the subjective feelings or attitudes of the minister and the recipient.  The assertion that a sacrament confers grace ex opere operato means that, as an instrument of the Holy Spirit, a sacrament will achieve its intended purpose simply by virtue of being performed.  It will be wholly effective regardless of the merits or qualities of the persons in whom it acts or by whom it is performed.  Faith on the part of the recipient is not a prerequisite.  It is this automatic efficaciousness, so to speak, that distinguishes the sacraments from other ways of receiving God’s grace (e.g., hearing a sermon or saying prayers).  It should be pointed out, however, that ex opere operato was not understood to mean that, in the case of an adult, baptism will achieve regeneration even if the recipient consciously and deliberately resists God’s grace.

The Second Vatican Council

      Like the Council of Trent, the Second Vatican Council has spoken clearly on the subject of baptism and regeneration.  Consider, for example, what it says in “The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church” (Lumen gentium):⁴

4. See Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, pp. 350–426.

      11.  Incorporated into the Church by baptism, the faithful are appointed by their baptismal character to Christian religious worship; reborn as sons of God, they must profess before men the faith they have received from God through the Church.  By the sacrament of confirmation they are more perfectly bound to the Church and are endowed with the special strength of the Holy Spirit.  Hence they are, as true witnesses of Christ, more strictly obliged to spread the faith by word and deed.

“Baptismal character” is understood as an indelible quality which is imprinted upon the soul and remains forever, even in backsliders.  On the basis of Scripture and tradition the council teaches that baptism is necessary:

      14.  The Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation.  The one Christ is the Mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his Body which is the Church.  He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mk. 16:16; Jn. 3:5) and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men must enter through baptism as through a door.

The council then goes on to acknowledge that in some incomplete yet real way those who are baptized in churches other than the Roman Catholic are thereby “sealed” and united to Christ and to the faithful in the true church, that is, the Roman Catholic.

      In “The Decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church” (Ad gentes), there is teaching on conversion, rebirth, and baptism.⁵  Those who respond seriously to the message of the gospel and wish to enter the catechumenate are called converts:

5. Ibid., pp. 813–56.

      13.  Under the movement of divine grace the new convert sets out on a spiritual journey by means of which, while already sharing through faith in the mystery of the death and resurrection, he passes from the old man to the new man who has been made perfect in Christ (cf. Col. 3:5–10; Eph. 4:20–24).  This transition, which involves a progressive change of outlook and morals, should be manifested in its social implications and effected gradually during the period of the catechumenate.  Since the Lord in whom he believes is a sign of contradiction (cf. Luke 2:34; Matt. 10:34–39), the convert often has to suffer misunderstanding and separation, but he also experiences those joys which are generously granted by God.

During the catechumenate the converts are not only to be taught the faith, but also to be introduced to the liturgy and sacred rites.  Then they are to be baptized and confirmed, preferably at Easter (according to ancient practice):

      14. Having been delivered from the powers of darkness through the sacraments of Christian initiation (cf Col. 1:13), and having died, been buried and risen with Christ (cf. Rom. 6:4–11; Col. 2:12–13; 1 Peter 3:21–22; Mark 16:16), they receive the Spirit of adoption of children (cf. 1 Thess. 3:5–7; Acts 8:14–17) and celebrate with the whole people of God the memorial of the Lord’s death and resurrection.

Thus conversion reaches its climax through the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and holy communion.  The grace of regeneration is given only at the end of the catechumenate in the rite of holy baptism.  This, it will be recalled, is much the same teaching as we found in the patristic period.

      The Roman Catholic Church, like most other churches, has encountered in the Western world both a growing reluctance of parents to bring their children for infant baptism and a demand from some quarters to abandon infant baptism and baptize only adult believers.  To face this situation the Vatican Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published in October 1980 a document entitled “Instruction on Infant Baptism” (Pastoralis actio).⁶  Its purpose was to recall the principal points of doctrine which have justified the church’s practice down the centuries and to demonstrate its value in the present climate:

6. See Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II: More Postconciliar Documents, pp. 103–17.

Baptism is a manifestation of the Father’s prevenient love, a sharing in the Son’s Paschal Mystery, and a communication of new life in the Spirit; it brings people into the inheritance of God and joins them to the Body of Christ, the Church.

      In view of this, Christ’s warning – “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” – must be taken as an invitation of universal and limitless love, the words of a Father calling all his children and wishing them to have the greatest of blessings.  This pressing and irrevocable call cannot leave us indifferent or neutral, since its acceptance is a condition for achieving our destiny.

But how can infants be baptized when they cannot personally exercise faith?  To this old question an ancient answer is given.  The church baptizes infants in its own faith, as Augustine taught centuries ago and theologians since his day have often repeated.  “When children are presented to be given spiritual grace,” wrote the bishop of Hippo, “it is not so much those holding them in their arms who present them ... as it is the whole company of saints and faithful Christians....  It is done by the whole of Mother Church ... it is as a whole that she gives birth to each and every one of them.”⁷

7. Augustine Epistola 98.5, in Patrologiae cursus completus, ed. J. P. Migne, Series latina, vol. 33, col. 362.

      Later on in the “Instruction on Infant Baptism” guidelines are given to govern pastoral practice:

Concretely, pastoral practice regarding infant baptism must be governed by two great principles, the second of which is subordinate to the first.

      1.  Baptism, which is necessary for salvation, is the sign and the means of God’s prevenient love, which frees us from original sin and communicates to us a share in the divine life.  Considered in itself, the gift of these blessings to infants must not be delayed.

      2.  Assurances must be given that the gift thus granted can grow by an authentic education in the faith and Christian life, in order to fulfill the true meaning of the sacrament.

Here both the ex opere operato aspect of the sacrament and the need to nurture the divine life implanted in the soul are recognized.

Lutheran and Anglican Teaching

      We noted earlier that both the Lutheran and Anglican services of baptism included the declaration that in connection with the rite God actually regenerates the infants (pp. 93, 95 [i.e. in chapter 9]).  This declaration was not based upon an ex opere operato view of the sacrament, but upon the sure promise of God concerning the infants born to Christian parents.  All infants have inherited the guilt and disease of original sin and need internal regeneration.  Because of the promise in the Word of God, they can be brought in confidence to the sacrament of baptism in order to be released from the bondage of their diseased will and enabled then (or later) to exercise true faith.

      The question arises as to whether Luther in Germany and Cranmer in England (with their colleagues) actually intended their liturgical prayers of thanksgiving (for regeneration having occurred) to be taken in a simple, literal sense in all cases or whether they were using the language in a hypothetical sense.  The answer must be the second alternative.  The only possible way to construct a service of holy baptism which seriously reflects the promises of God and the close biblical relationship between faith, baptism, and regeneration is to proceed on the hypothesis that those who are baptized do actually receive the promised blessings from heaven.  The assumption must be made that the promised gift is indeed bestowed; at the same time it must be emphasized that the infant is to be brought up in reverence for and in the admonition of the Lord and taught the full meaning of his or her baptism (i.e., death to sin and life in and for Christ).  There can be no absolute guarantee that at baptism every infant receives the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit.  However, there can be a total commitment by the parents and church to treat baptized infants as true Christians and thus to bring them up to be persons of faith, hope, and love.

      The resolution to the debates which took place in sixteenth-century Germany amongst the Lutherans concerning the relation of the Holy Spirit to the human will before the moment of regeneration and conversion lent support to the teaching that infants are regenerated at baptism (despite the apparent conversions of adults who had been baptized as infants).  This so-called synergist controversy (from 1535 to 1577) concerning in what sense, if at all, the human will cooperates with the Holy Spirit in conversion was settled by the Formula of Concord (1580), a document which in its treatment of original sin, free will, and justification makes use of the words regeneration and conversion on many occasions.⁸  The official Lutheran position presented in the Formula’s teaching on free will is that a human being is entirely passive in regeneration and conversion, but is active in the process of sanctification, cooperating with the grace of God.  In later Lutheran teaching this position buttressed the doctrine of a hypothetical spiritual regeneration which, ideally, is actuated as the baptized infant matures.  We shall see (in chapter 12) that the Pietists, noting that the seed sown was in many cases not producing the fruit that it ought to have produced, rejected the formalized doctrine of infant regeneration which had developed in the German churches.

8. For the controversies leading up to the Formula of Concord see Eric W. Gritsch and Robert W. Jenson, Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writing.  For the Formula itself see Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.  A very helpful essay is Arthur C. Piepkorn, “The Lutheran Understanding of Baptism,” in Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue I–III, ed. Paul C. Empie and T. Austin Murphy, pp. 27–70.  For Lutheran teaching on preparation for conversion see Bernhard Citron, New Birth: A Study of the Evangelical Doctrine of Conversion in the Protestant Fathers, pp. 115–18.

      In seventeenth-century Britain there were many attempts, especially within Puritan teaching, to trace the way in which a person who has been baptized as an infant comes later to conversion and assurance of salvation (see chapter 12).  These attempts, as well as the teaching of certain non-Puritan Anglican divines (e.g., Lancelot Andrewes and Richard Hooker), reveal that the one service of baptism which they all used was, in terms of the gift of regeneration, understood in a hypothetical rather than literal sense.

      When the regeneration referred to in the Lutheran or Anglican service of infant baptism is understood in this hypothetical sense, there are certain consequences.⁹  First, there is a distinction between the regeneration of an infant – or of children who die before they come to use reason – and of those who have reached the years of discretion.  In this view the first form may grow into the latter form, or the first may be lost and the latter received later.  Second, where there is a strong doctrine of divine election (be it on the basis of sovereign grace or of foreseen faith), baptism is held to be effectual only for the elect; and since we do not know which infants are the elect, we charitably assume that all infants of Christian parents are elect.

9. See further the illuminating study by William Goode, The Doctrine of the Church of England as to the Effects of Baptism in the Case of Infants.

      Not all Lutherans and Anglicans have accepted that the regeneration in infant baptism is to be understood hypothetically.  Accordingly, some have sought for an interpretation of regeneration which is different from that taught by Jesus in John 3.  Thus regeneration as received in baptism has been seen as “ecclesiastical regeneration,” that is, entry into the visible church with its worship, fellowship, preaching, sacraments, and traditions, and thus into the sphere where true spiritual regeneration and conversion can actually take place.

      On the other hand, both High-Church Lutherans and Anglicans have adopted what amounts to an ex opere operato view of the sacrament of baptism, even though they have not necessarily used scholastic categories.¹⁰  Where High-Church adherents have been strongly influenced by the charismatic movement, they have tended to speak of the release of the Spirit as the equivalent of what traditional Pentecostalists have called the baptism of the Spirit.  The release of the Spirit is, then, a gift beyond that of sacramental regeneration, the baptism with water.

10. See further Peter Toon, Evangelical Theology 1833-1856: A Response to Tractarianism, ch. 6.

      It is perhaps fair to say that, except where there is a clear view of the hypothetical nature of the language, evangelicals in the Lutheran and Anglican churches have been embarrassed by the words of their baptismal services concerning regeneration.¹¹  Yet they continue to use these services, the modern versions of which still include a “compulsory” prayer giving God thanks for the regeneration of the one baptized.  Here, for example, is the final prayer from the American Lutheran service of 1962:

11. An evidence of this embarrassment is the flood of defensive pamphlets which followed Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s sermon on “Baptismal Regeneration” (June 5, 1864), in which he attacked the Anglican Prayer Book for teaching this particular doctrine.  See Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Full Harvest, pp. 55–59.

Almighty and most merciful God and Father: We thank you that you graciously preserve and extend your Church, and that you have granted to this child the new birth in Holy Baptism, and received him as your child and heir to your kingdom; and we humbly beseech you to defend and keep him in this grace, that he may never depart from you, but always live according to your will, and finally receive the fulness of your promise in your eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.  Amen.¹²

12. In Occasional Service Book.

And here is the final prayer from the American Episcopal service of 1928:

We yield you hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it has pleased you to regenerate this child with your Holy Spirit, to receive him for your own child, and to incorporate him into your holy Church.  And humbly we beseech you to grant that he, being dead unto sin, may live unto righteousness, and being buried with Christ in his death, may also be partaker of his resurrection; so that finally, with the residue of your holy Church, he may be an inheritor of your everlasting kingdom, through Christ our Lord.  Amen.¹³

13. In Book of Common Prayer, with the Additions and Deviations Proposed in 1928.

      Even though both rites do clearly presume that the children are from Christian homes, the depiction of the relationship between baptism and regeneration undoubtedly makes many evangelically oriented Lutherans and Anglicans quite uncomfortable.

11 – Reformed Theology: Effectual Calling

      Wherever there are Presbyterian and Reformed churches, the name of John Calvin is honored, for from him came that stream of theology and church polity which characterizes them.  No one would seek to prove that Reformed theology of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, or twentieth century is identical with that found in Calvin’s writings; yet it bears his mark.  Here we shall notice the teaching of Arminius, of the Synod of Dort, of the Westminster Assembly and Savoy Declaration, of two types of nineteenth-century divinity, and finally of Emil Brunner.

Arminianism

      Reformed theology as it came from Calvin and was expounded by his successors (e.g., Theodore Beza also of Geneva) had to meet the challenge of a renewed Roman Catholicism, of a competitive Lutheranism, of various heretical systems (e.g., Socinianism), and of internal disputes and schisms.  One of the most important of these disputes is that associated with the name of Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609), who first questioned, and then rejected, the doctrine of predestination as developed by Beza and William Perkins.¹  As a professor at Leyden from 1603 Arminius became involved in controversy as he sought to formulate a type of Reformed theology limiting predestination to God’s advance knowledge concerning who would actually respond to the call of the gospel.  After his death his supporters and friends composed a Remonstrance (1610) of five articles summarizing what they believed, confessed, and taught as the Reformed faith.²

1. For Arminius see Carl Bangs, Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation.

2. See Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vo1. 3, pp. 545–49.

      The first article describes the divine decree to save those who, for Christ’s sake and with the help of the Holy Spirit, believe the Good News concerning Jesus Christ.  The second insists that Jesus Christ died for each and every person so that he has obtained for everyone the possibility of redemption; however, to enjoy this salvation the sinner must accept the gospel.

      In the third it is emphasized that to believe unto salvation a sinner needs the help of the Holy Spirit:

      3.  That man has not saving grace of himself, nor of the energy of his free will, inasmuch as he, in the state of apostasy and sin, can of and by himself neither think, will nor do anything that is truly good (such as saving faith eminently is); but that it is needful that he be born again of God in Christ, through his Holy Spirit, and renewed in understanding, inclination, or will, and all his powers, in order that he may rightly understand, think, will and effect what is truly good, according to the word of Christ, John 15:5: “Without me you can do nothing.”

      The fourth article also insists that sinners are dependent upon the direct help of the Holy Spirit if they are to do the will of God:

      4.  That this grace of God is the beginning, continuance, and accomplishment of all good, even to this extent, that the regenerate man himself, without prevenient or assisting, awakening, following and cooperative grace, can neither think, will, nor do good, nor withstand any temptations to evil; so that all good deeds or movements, that can be conceived, must be ascribed to the grace of God in Christ.  But as respects the mode of the operation of this grace, it is not irresistible, inasmuch as it is written concerning many, that they have resisted the Holy Spirit.  Acts 7, and elsewhere in many places.

The sting here is in the tail, the rejection of the concept of irresistible regenerating grace – a doctrine that had become part of orthodox Reformed theology.

      While teaching that Christ wishes to hold on to his regenerate people, the fifth article very cautiously suggests it is possible that they may choose to let go of him:

      5.  That those who are incorporated into Christ by a true faith, and have thereby become partakers of his life-giving Spirit, have thereby full power to strive against Satan, sin, the world, and their own flesh, and to win the victory; it being well understood that it is ever through the assisting grace of the Holy Spirit; and that Jesus Christ assists them through his Spirit in all temptations, extends to them his hand, and if only they are ready for the conflict, and desire his help, and are not inactive, keeps them from falling, so that they, by no craft or power of Satan, can be misled nor plucked out of Christ’s hands, according to the word of Christ, John 10:28, “Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.”  But whether they are capable, through negligence, of forsaking again the first beginnings of their life in Christ, of again returning to this present evil world, of turning away from the holy doctrine which was delivered them, of losing a good conscience, of becoming devoid of grace, that must be more particularly determined out of the Holy Scripture, before we ourselves can teach it with the full persuasion of our minds.

This hesitation to affirm that a justified and regenerate sinner bound for heaven might perhaps end up bound for hell was not generally maintained by the Remonstrants in the controversies that followed the publication of the five articles.

      Since the year 1610, the term Arminianism has been used to describe many types of theology which reject absolute predestination, assert that Christ’s atonement was universal, and insist that the human will is free to accept or reject the offer of God in the gospel.  In this study we shall primarily use the word to describe the theology of Arminius and his supporters and shall work under the assumption that it is a form – perhaps a deviant form – of Reformed, Calvinistic theology (Arminius believed he was more true to Calvin than were his opponents).

      The five Arminian articles had been written as a summary of the position adopted by Arminius and his followers in the controversies within Leyden and the Netherlands.  The publication of these articles as the Remonstrance (hence the term Remonstrants) in 1610 intensified controversy and led to the calling of the Synod of Dort (Dordrecht) by the States General in 1618.  This synod provided a detailed response to the Remonstrance.

The Synod of Dort

      The “First Head of Doctrine” in the Canons issued by the Synod of Dort explains in eighteen articles the doctrine of divine predestination, insisting that election unto salvation is of the good pleasure of God and is selective.³  Thus some people are not included in the decree of election.  The “Second Head of Doctrine” is concerned with the death of Christ and the redemption of the elect thereby.  Though the atonement of Christ has an infinite value and worth, its efficacy applies only to the elect.

3. Ibid., pp. 550–97.  I have used a modern translation by Anthony A. Hoekema, which appears in Calvin Theological Journal 3 (1968): 133–61.

      The synod could not find anything wrong with the third article of the Remonstrance taken by itself.  Thus the delegates decided to look at the third in the light of the fourth article.  Hence the “Third and Fourth Heads of Doctrine” in the Canons of Dort were combined under the title, “Of the Corruption of Man, His Conversion to God, and the Way It Occurs.”  In this section there are seventeen articles, the first two of which are occupied with the theme of the fall.  The third teaches our total inability to do anything to please God: “All men are conceived in sin and born as children of wrath, incapable of any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in sins, and slaves of sin.  Apart from the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, moreover, they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their depraved nature, or to prepare themselves for its reformation.”

      Sinners need to hear the gospel in order that they may come to God and receive eternal life.  The reason why some do come and others do not come is ultimately to be traced to divine election, for “as God has chosen His own in Christ from eternity, so He calls them effectually in time” (article 10).  In article 11 we are told how God brings about conversion, in article 12 we are told of the supernatural character of regeneration, in article 13 of the mystery of regeneration, and in article 14 of the manner in which God gives saving faith:

      11.  When God, moreover, carries out His good pleasure in the elect, or works in them true conversion, He not only sees to it that the gospel is outwardly preached to them, powerfully enlightening their minds by the Holy Spirit so that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God, but by the effectual working of that same regenerating Spirit He also penetrates into the innermost recesses of man, opens the closed and softens the hard heart, circumcises that which was uncircumcised, and pours new qualities into the will.  He makes the will which was dead alive, which was bad good, which was unwilling willing, which was stubborn obedient, and moves and strengthens it so that, like a good tree, it may be able to produce the fruits of good works.

      12.  And this is that regeneration, that new creation, that resurrection from the dead, that making alive, so highly spoken of in the Scriptures, which God works in us without our help.  But this regeneration is by no means brought about only by outward teaching or preaching, by moral persuasion, or by such a method of working that after God has done His work, it remains in the power of man to be regenerated or not regenerated, converted or not converted.  It is, however, clearly a supernatural, most powerful and at the same time most delightful, marvelous, secret, and inexpressible work which, according to the Scriptures inspired by the Author of regeneration, is not inferior in power to creation or the resurrection of the dead.  Hence all those in whose hearts God works in this amazing way are certainly, unfailingly, and effectually regenerated and do actually believe.  Therefore the will so renewed is not only acted upon and moved by God but, acted upon by God, the will itself also acts.  Hence also man himself, through the grace he has received, is rightly said to believe and repent.

      13. As long as they are in this life believers cannot fully understand the way in which God does this work.  Meanwhile, however, they rest content in this, that they know and experience that by this grace of God they believe with the heart and love their Savior.

      14. Faith is therefore a gift of God in this way: not that it is merely offered by God to the free will of man, but that it is actually conferred on man, implanted and infused into him.  It is not a gift in the sense that God confers only the power to believe, but then awaits from man’s free will the consent to believe or the act of believing.  It is, however, a gift in the sense that He who works both the willing and the working – in fact, all things in all – brings about in man both the will to believe and believing itself.

      Whereas the Arminians had declared that “the mode of the operation of [God’s] grace ... is not irresistible,” the Synod of Dort declared that “all those in whose hearts God works in this amazing way are certainly, unfailingly, and effectually regenerated.”  The decree of election guarantees that the secret and mysterious work of the Spirit is effective and effectual.  Both sides believed in the preaching of the gospel to all people; but whereas the Arminians held that, due to human resistance, the Spirit is not always successful in preparing hearts for the climax of regeneration, the synod held that the Spirit’s work is irresistible in that he makes a person willing and desirous.

      Once the synod had set forth the doctrine of sovereign and irresistible grace in regeneration, it is not surprising that the delegates turned in the “Fifth Head of Doctrine” to “The Perseverance of the Saints,” insisting that all those who are regenerated by the Spirit will attain unto final and everlasting salvation: “God is faithful who mercifully confirms them in the grace once conferred upon them, and powerfully keeps them in that grace to the end” (article 3).

      The differences between Arminian and Reformed theology are very important, for one’s particular stance on the doctrine of predestination has major implications for the other parts of one’s system of theology, including the subject of regeneration.  Several aspects of the Synod of Dort’s view of regeneration will be of interest here.  First, the Canons virtually equate regeneration and conversion.  We have seen that article 11 in “The Third and Fourth Heads of Doctrine” describes how God works true conversion (Latin conversio) in the elect and that article 12 then begins with the words, “And this is that regeneration [regeneratio] ... so highly spoken of in the Scriptures.”  Calvin had spoken specifically of the conversion of the will;⁴ the synod enlarged the concept of conversion to cover both the renewal of the heart and the pouring of new qualities into the will so that it is able to produce decisions and actions pleasing to God.⁵

4. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.3.6–7.

5. In Reformed theology, conversion may be understood as either (1) God’s work of turning the individual from sin to righteousness by placing a new principle of life within (in this sense conversion is an equivalent of regeneration), or (2) the renewed, regenerated individual’s response (a new faith, genuine repentance, and loving obedience) to this internal action of the Holy Spirit.  The passivity of the human subject in (1) is conveyed by the Latin expression conversio habitualis seu passiva, and the activity of the subject in (2) by conversio actualis seu activa.

      In the second place, the synod taught that regeneration precedes faith and is the cause of faith (article 14).  There can be no saving faith in the Lord Jesus without the infusion and implanting of faith in the heart, which is an action of the regenerating Spirit.

      Third, as article 17 makes clear, the Spirit works through and with the Word of God as that Word is made known by the preaching of the gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of discipline within the congregation.  This insistence upon the Word, and not baptism, as “the seed of regeneration and food of the soul” is fundamental to the whole presentation of conversion.  The modern reader of the “Third and Fourth Heads of Doctrine” would hardly guess that the synod spoke for a church which practiced infant baptism and embraced a confession of faith stating “that every man who is earnestly studious of obtaining eternal life ought to be once baptized.”  Further, this statement immediately follows the affirmation:

Our Lord gives that which is signified by the sacrament, namely, the gifts and invisible grace; washing, cleansing, and purging our souls of all filth and unrighteousness; renewing our hearts and filling them with all comfort; giving unto us a true assurance of his fatherly goodness; putting on us the new man, and putting off the old man with all his deeds.⁶

6. Belgic Confession 34, in Arthur C. Cochrane, ed., Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century, pp. 185–219.

      The delegates to the synod described conversion (regeneration) as if they were addressing a missionary situation; they had in view that which occurs when pagans respond to the gospel.  This can be explained in part by the fact that the theologians of Dort used the New Testament as their basic source of information, and of course the New Testament was clearly addressed to a missionary situation.  It can also be explained in part by the fact that the theologians had not wholly integrated their thinking on the relation of infant baptism to the work of the regenerating, converting Spirit.  What was stated at Dort appears to rule out for infant baptism anything other than the minimal beginnings of the operation of the regenerating Spirit.  In fact, baptism is not mentioned in the whole discussion – an omission that would have been impossible for Roman Catholic as well as many Anglican and Lutheran theologians at that time.

The Westminster Assembly

      The teaching of the Synod of Dort had an important influence on the development of the Reformed tradition and fixed the way in which the doctrine of regeneration would be taught in those churches for the next two or three centuries.  Thirty or so years after the Synod of Dort another synod of Reformed theologians met in London.  This gathering became known as the Westminster Assembly, and it produced a Confession of Faith, a Larger and Shorter Catechism, and a Directory for the Public Worship of God.⁷  The basic theological position in these documents, which have been very influential in Scottish Presbyterianism and those churches derived from Scottish origins, is much the same as that of the document produced by the Synod of Dort.  There is the same great emphasis upon divine predestination and election in Christ unto salvation; there is the same doctrine of regeneration and identification of it with conversion; and there is the same stress upon irresistible grace working within the elect to bring them to faith, repentance, and union with Christ.

7. These documents are all printed in The Confession of Faith.

      However, partly because the Westminster documents are longer and more comprehensive than the Canons of Dort, and partly because the issue was explicitly discussed in the assembly, there is specific treatment of the relation of baptism and regeneration.  Chapter 28 of the Westminster Confession defines baptism as “a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of [one’s] ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of [one’s] giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life.”  It is emphasized that infants of believing parents are to be baptized.  Then we read:

      Although it be a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated or saved without it, or that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated.

      The efficacy of baptism is not tied to the moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God’s own will, in his appointed time.

Thus it is admitted that it is possible to be regenerate without having been baptized; further, the time of regeneration is not necessarily tied to the time of baptism.

      In chapter 10 of the same Confession, the following statement is made: “Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth.  So also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.”  It is here taught that God can and does achieve regeneration (i.e., inner renewal and renovation of the sinner into the true image of God through the action and presence of the Holy Spirit) without the preliminary work of causing (1) conviction of and sorrow for sin and (2) a searching after the God of grace.  An obvious conclusion is that regeneration can take place in the heart of an infant at baptism, and the fruit of that divine work and presence will be seen later in life when he or she turns from sin and unto Christ.  (There is very clear teaching on infant baptism and regeneration in the Directory of 1644).

      The Westminster Confession presents regeneration under the headings of “Effectual Calling” (ch. 10), “Sanctification” (ch. 13), and “Baptism” (ch. 28).  Those whom God truly calls through the ministry of the Word in the power of the Spirit, he regenerates.  Such individuals may or may not already have been baptized.  Those whom he thus calls and regenerates are afforded the gift of saving faith and belief on the Lord Jesus and are justified; they also begin a life of faith, hope, and love, the starting point of which is their inward regeneration.  In a missionary situation baptism takes place when the individual confesses the Lord Jesus Christ (i.e., is regenerated, justified, and adopted into God’s family); but in the Britain of the 1640s it had already taken place when the individual was an infant, and so the grace exhibited and sealed by the sacrament actually became effectual later in life.  Regeneration may also be called conversion by God in that he turns sinners from being children of the devil to being his own children.  Regeneration (or conversion, or renewal) is wholly the act of God and occurs within the elect through irresistible grace.

The Savoy Declaration of 1658

      A number of Congregational ministers and theologians, who had been well treated under the Commonwealth and Protectorate in Britain, gathered at the Savoy Palace in London in 1658 to produce a confession of faith and a statement of their church polity.  While their Declaration of the Institution of Churches was a new creation, their Declaration of Faith was to a large extent a rewrite of the Westminster Confession of Faith.  However, some changes were made, and a new chapter entitled “Of the Gospel, and of the Extent of the Grace Thereof” (ch. 20) was added.⁸  After stating that the promise of salvation in Christ is revealed only in the Word of God and that the preaching of the gospel is therefore necessary, this new chapter concludes:

Although the gospel be the only outward means of revealing Christ and saving grace, and is as such abundantly sufficient thereunto; yet that men who are dead in trespasses may be born again, quickened, or regenerated, there is moreover necessary an effectual, irresistible work of the Holy Ghost upon the whole soul, for the producing in them [of] a new spiritual life, without which no other means are sufficient for their conversion unto God.

8. For the text see Arnold G. Matthews, The Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order, 1658.  And for the differences in theology between the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration see Peter Toon, Puritans and Calvinism, chs. 4 and 5.  It is important to note that the Particular (i.e., Reformed, Calvinistic) Baptists in their Confessions of 1677 and 1689 (England) and 1742 (Philadelphia) expressed the same theology as that of the Westminster Confession and Savoy Declaration.  For these Baptist documents see William L. Lumpkin, ed., Baptist Confessions of Faith.

      Later we shall look at the teaching of one of the major authors of this document, John Owen (pp. 141–43).  Here we may note that in line with this emphasis on regeneration and conversion the Declaration of the Institution of Churches specifically teaches that only the regenerate should be admitted into church membership.  Such a position was very different from that of the Church of England, as restored in 1662, where all baptized persons were regarded as members.  The churches of the Congregational Way looked for a personal testimony to the work of God in the soul.

Scottish Divinity

      Reformed doctrine of the type delineated by the Canons of Dort and the Westminster symbols, especially in its emphasis on sovereign grace, has had able defenders and exponents in the Netherlands, Switzerland, England, Scotland, and American.⁹  Classic Puritanism, with its stress on purity of church life and vital religion, is itself, as we shall see in chapter 12, a particular expression of Reformed doctrine.  Among the well-known exponents of Reformed theology since the period of Puritanism are such Scottish divines as Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), William Cunningham (1805–1861), and George Smeaton (1814–1889), a professor of exegetical theology at New College, Edinburgh.  To this list may be added such American divines as Charles Hodge (1797–1878) and his son Archibald Alexander Hodge (1823–1886).  We shall focus on Smeaton’s Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in order to discover how a leading nineteenth-century theologian understood regeneration and what he saw as the major threats to purity of this doctrine in both Europe and America.¹⁰

9. For citations from Reformed divines see Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics Set Out and Illustrated from the Sources, pp. 510–42.

10. This work was first published in 1882 by T. & T. Clark.  I have taken the quotations from the 1958 reprint (Banner of Truth), which has identical pagination.

      Smeaton’s exposition of regeneration follows his study of the personality and procession of the Spirit, the work of the Spirit in the anointing of Christ, and in connection with divine revelation and the inspiration of the Bible.  In approaching the topic of new birth he insists that human beings need regeneration because their souls are deprived of the Holy Spirit.  On the stately ruins of the soul is the doleful inscription, “Here God once dwelt.”  By his apostasy Adam drove the Holy Spirit from his soul and from the souls of his descendants.  “Thus detached from his primeval ties by the forfeiture of the Spirit, man follows the natural rather than the spiritual, the human rather than the divine” (p. 166).  Though physically alive, humankind is spiritually dead; this means that all the faculties of the soul – the understanding, affections, and will – are seriously affected.  In terms of the will we are free to choose but we uniformly choose that which is not pleasing to God; this is because the will itself is diseased and vitiated.

      Having insisted on the fact of human depravity and the need for the return of the Spirit to the house in which he once dwelt, Smeaton examines three scriptural texts – John 3:3–6; 6:63; and 16:8–11.  He understands “born of water” (3:5) not as a reference to water baptism, but as “the ceremonial expression for the cleansing of our person by [Christ’s] own obedience or atoning sacrifice” (p. 170).  In this work of cleansing and regeneration “the Spirit’s agency is sovereign ... the mode of his activity is inscrutable ... the efficacy is irresistible, and the effects indubitable” (p. 172).  Thus in the phrase “born of water and the Spirit” Smeaton takes “water” to point to the meritorious cause of salvation and “the Spirit” to point to the efficient cause.

      John 16:8–11 is for Smeaton “the most conclusive passage on the Spirit’s work in connection with conversion in the whole compass of Scripture.”  After a full discussion of the meaning of our Lord’s words in this passage, he concludes that in regeneration the Spirit’s operations take effect upon the whole soul and thus influence every faculty directly, and that the inhabitation of the Spirit in the soul means that he becomes the “indefectible source of light and life and fruitfulness, as well as of perseverance and progressive holiness” (p. 187).  He becomes the efficient cause of all spiritual activity in the understanding, will, and conscience:

With regard to the understanding, all spiritual light is derived from the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus enlightening the eyes of the understanding (Eph. 1:17). ... In the first act of illumination, the Spirit acts much in the same way as when he commanded light to shine out of darkness (2 Cor. 4:6).  But when the man has received the power of vision, he uses it for the further increase of his knowledge in the way of cooperating grace.  The truths which he believed to the saving of the soul had reference to God, to himself, and to the adaptation of the atonement.  By the illumination of the Spirit, he acquires wholly different views of all these points and of God, who is no longer regarded as an indulgent being, nor as a tyrant, but as a gracious Father, all whose perfections are glorified by the atonement.  As to ourselves, the Spirit shows us the ruin and the remedy.

      The Spirit’s operation is not less conspicuous on the will.  The principal effect of the Spirit’s activity is seen in a new principle of spiritual life diffused through all the mental powers, and inclining the soul to yield itself to Christ in the exercise of faith and subjection, as now enabled or made fit both to will and to do.

      And as to the conscience, the sanctification of the Spirit contributes to a good conscience.  In other words, the conscience purged with the sprinkling of the blood of Christ by the effectual application of the Spirit, is then committed to the Spirit, who corrects and teaches it, who purifies and comforts it, from day to day. [pp. 188–89]

Those in whom the Spirit works in this manner become the adopted children of God, for they have been effectually called by the gospel and the Spirit into the kingdom and family of God.

      Well aware of the various questions that had been raised over the centuries concerning the relationship between the human will and the work of the Spirit in regeneration (conversion), Smeaton made his own position very clear:

The leading principle which helps us to find our way through all the difficulties of these questions is, that the Spirit in returning to the human heart, anticipates the will – that is, works in us to will, at the first moment of conversion and at every subsequent step.  The first desire, wish, or resolution to return to God, as well as the first prayer offered with this end in view, is from the Holy Spirit.  That all spiritual good emanates from the Spirit of God is a simple formula which keeps every inquirer in this department right.  That the Spirit’s power and grace precede the will is a maxim to be carried with us, unless we are prepared to ascribe a merit to the first step, or to view the first step as originated on the man’s own side.

      And from the moment that the soul begins to act in spiritual things, it acts with its newly acquired spiritual powers, imparted by the Spirit of God. ... The expression spiritual powers does not imply a change in man’s essential nature, or the donation of faculties which were never found in the human mind before, but simply a new aptitude and power to comply with what is truly good, as derived from the Holy Spirit.  With a new will, that is, a will renovated and endowed with a spiritual capacity, the soul becomes active, and cooperates with God. [p. 198]

Thus regeneration is from first to last the work of the Holy Spirit.

      The Holy Spirit is given to each elect believer by the exalted Lord Jesus, for, having fulfilled the Father’s will, he has received as a reward an inexhaustible supply of the Spirit to impart to his people.  And the Spirit, sent from the Lord Jesus, “will not abandon the souls which he has regenerated, and which he will use effectual means to reclaim when they are prone, from inward feebleness or listless indifference, to vacillate or waver” (p. 201).

      As we would expect, Smeaton strongly opposed what he called Pelagianism, Arminianism, Socinianism, and rationalism.  He was also opposed to Pajonism (after Claude Pajon [1626–1685], a professor of theology at Saumur who denied any immediate influence of the Holy Spirit in conversion).  Nineteenth-century Reformed theologians used the term to denote the view that regeneration is caused by the moral power of the preached word of God alone, without any special direct involvement of the Holy Spirit.  They associated Pajonism not only with the University of Saumur, but also with the influential late-eighteenth-century Lutheran theologian J. L. Z. Junckheim, who, following Immanuel Kant, claimed for humans the power of amending their lives by their own will as persuaded and empowered by the preached word of God.  According to Smeaton, Junckheim “asserted that the operation of God in men’s regeneration and conversion was not to be designated supernatural. ... The moral power of the word effected all.” Smeaton lamented that this approach had infected most German theology up to his own time (the late nineteenth century).

      Smeaton also held the teaching from Saumur – in this case from its most famous theologian, Moise Amyraut (Amyraldus [1596–1664]) – responsible for another error, which had deeply infected American and British theology after having been reiterated by Jonathan Edwards himself.¹¹  This was the distinction between natural and moral ability to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Amyraut contended that the sinner has the former, but not the latter.  Smeaton comments:

Had Edwards fully known the place which that mischievous theory occupied in the Amyraldist system, it would probably never have been propounded in the manner in which it is set forth by him in his essay on the freedom of the will and elsewhere.  For the practical ends for which he appeals to it, it is safe enough; when it is used speculatively, it is dangerous. [p. 342]

Smeaton maintained that the revivalists used the distinction in the wrong way: on the grounds that everyone has at least a natural ability to believe, they claimed that there is no excuse for not receiving the gospel.  Responses of unbelief meant simply “that men would not, not that they could not, repent and believe the gospel.  The [revivalists] wished to exhibit that the entire turning-point was with the will, and they threw the responsibility on the man to make him feel that he would not come and be saved.”

11. See further Brian G. Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy.

      Thus Smeaton argued against both Pajonism, the view that moral suasion alone is needed in the process of regeneration and conversion, and the Amyraldian distinction between natural and moral ability.  While the first denied any direct involvement of the Holy Spirit in the new creation, the second diminished his role by minimizing his work in the process of conversion, emphasizing instead the ability of the human will.  For Smeaton, however, the whole of human nature was corrupted by sin and thus in every part-understanding, affections, will, and conscience-needed supernatural grace.  And what Smeaton asserted in Scotland the Princeton divines argued in America.  Yet they could not hold back the tide of erroneous teaching, as they discerned it, in the revivalism of the so-called New School theology associated with Nathaniel Taylor (1786–1858), Albert Barnes (1798–1870), and Charles G. Finney (1792–1875).  Perhaps the most distinguished of the New School theologians of the middle of the nineteenth century was Henry Boynton Smith (1815–1877), whose work at Union Theological Seminary helped to give that school its distinguished reputation.

New School Theology

      Henry Boynton Smith shared with Calvin an emphasis upon Christ and the union of believers with Christ.  And he sought to construct his systematic theology around this central point.¹²  We shall use his System of Christian Theology as our source for his views on regeneration.  But first we need to recall that he differed with the Old School Presbyterians (represented by the Princeton divines) on various points; for example, on the extent of the atonement (they taught limited atonement; he taught universal), on divine election (they taught a double decree of election and damnation; he taught a single decree of election), and on the nature of the will (they did not accept his distinction – taken from Jonathan Edwards – between natural and moral ability).

12. See further George M. Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience, ch. 8.

      Smith’s discussion of God’s call through the gospel to the sinner and of regeneration certainly belongs to Reformed, Calvinist thought rather than to any other theology, but we must also remember that it was written in the mid-nineteenth century.  Doctrinal treatises produced at that time were informed not only by theological reflection but also by new trends in philosophy and psychology.  For example, Smith notes the various views that the truth of Scripture (as the sword of the Spirit) has in itself the moral power not merely to convince but also to change the heart of the sinner; there is no need for extra help of a direct action of the Spirit in and upon the soul.  Smith vigorously rejects these views:

Besides all that can be put under the head of moral suasion and of supernatural influence through the truth, there is in the renewal of the soul, according to Scripture, a divine, secret, and direct influence ... of the Spirit. ... In speaking of the truth as a means of regeneration, we should be careful to use it in its specific Scriptural sense.  The Scriptures never disjoin it from Christ and God and the Holy Spirit.  Christ is the Truth. ... To talk of man’s being renewed by the truth without the Spirit is the same as to talk of a man’s being killed by a sword when the sword is in nobody’s hands. [pp. 519, 569]

      Smith also maintained that regeneration is subjective in nature:

Regeneration is not a physical change.  The term physical, as used in respect to regeneration, is differently defined.  It may mean what belongs to the external material world, or what belongs to the essence and faculties of man.  Regeneration is not physical as implying a change in the essence or faculties of man. ... Those who hold strictly to the exercise scheme reason thus: There are in man (1) the essence, (2) the faculties, (3) the acts or exercises of the faculties.  Regeneration is not in the 1st or 2nd, therefore it must be in the 3d. – A better analysis gives this statement: There are in man, 1st, the essence, 2dly, the faculties, 3dly, the generic tendencies, 4thly, the actions.  The regeneration then will take effect in the third and fourth, – not merely in the specific acts, but in the ground or source of those acts. [pp. 560–61]

In sinful humans there is a generic tendency towards sin – a bias towards evil.  In the regenerate, through the mighty action of the Spirit, there is a generic tendency towards God, righteousness, and holiness.  Thus the state or direction of the faculties has been renewed and redirected.  “In short, regeneration in its full measure and extent involves a new direction of all the human powers from the world and towards God – an illumination of the understanding, a current of the affections, and a choice of the will” (p. 562).  And this divine work must be instantaneous even though in human conscious experience it may not seem so.  There must be some point at which the soul is turned and turns from darkness to light.

      Smith taught what he called “the general evangelical doctrine of regeneration”:

      (a) Regeneration is a supernatural change of which God is the author, which is wrought by the Holy Spirit.

      (b) In its idea it is instantaneous, although not always so in conscious experience.

      (c) In adults it is wrought most frequently by the word of God as the instrument.  Believing that infants may be regenerated, we cannot assert that it is tied to the word of God absolutely.

      (d) It involves the renewal of the whole man – not merely of one of his faculties.  It gives a new direction to all his faculties.

      (e) There is no antecedent cooperation on man’s part in the change itself.  The efficiency in the change is not human, it is in the Holy Spirit.  The act of the will on man’s part does not produce, but indicates the change.

      (f) Regeneration, in the New Testament sense, is on the basis of Christ’s work, and consists essentially in the application of what Christ has done, to the human soul, through the Holy Spirit.

      (g) This new state shows itself in faith, repentance, and good works.

      Negatively –

      (h) Regeneration is not a physical change but a change in the moral state.  It does not impart new faculties, it gives direction to our faculties.

      (i) It does not consist in the executive acts of the will as distinguished from the immanent preference, but it is essentially found in the latter.  Nor is it in the conscious, as distinguished from the unconscious, moral states of man.  We know it in its results, not in its essence. [pp. 556–57]

This “evangelical” doctrine was shared by many in the Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist, and Episcopalian denominations who called themselves “evangelical” and in a general sense “Reformed” or “Calvinist.”  A virtually identical doctrine was taught by the influential Baptist theologian Augustus Hopkins Strong (1836–1921) in part 3 of his Systematic Theology, where he treats regeneration in between his discussions of union with Christ and conversion.¹³  In fact, this moderate Reformed theology had earlier been expressed in the New Hampshire Confession (1833), a statement of faith widely accepted by Baptists.¹⁴

13. See further Grant Wacker, Augustus H. Strong and the Dilemma of Historical Consciousness.

14. For the text see Lumpkin, ed., Baptist Confessions.  Note especially sections 7 (“Of Grace in Regeneration”) and 8 (“Of Repentance and Faith”).

Dialectical Theology

      As we turn to Heinrich Emil Brunner (1889–1966), professor of theology at the University of Zurich from 1924 until 1955, we encounter a modern form of Reformed theology, a form that many traditionalists refuse to recognize as genuinely Reformed.¹⁵  It has been said of Brunner:

He stands between the worlds of the waning liberalism and the advancing new liberalism, between the decline of the old orthodoxy and the forward march of neo-orthodoxy.  He broke with the traditional theology (liberal and orthodox both) in order to become a dialectical theologian.  He took issue with the advocates of impersonal dogmas in order to engage man in the existential encounter of personal truth.  He will perhaps be remembered most for the impact he gave to theology by his stress upon dialecticism and personal correspondence.¹⁶

15. There is a useful introductory article on Brunner by Robert D. Linder in Walter A. Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, pp. 175–77.  See also Paul G. Schrotenboer, “Emil Brunner,” in Philip E. Hughes, Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology, pp. 99–130.

16. Schrotenboer, “Emil Brunner,” pp. 99-100.

We shall make use of his Dogmatics, in which he assumes that revelation is not doctrine as such, nor is it the disclosure of facts and information.  Rather, it is God’s once-for-all unique disclosure of himself, an encounter with humans which has a dual character of address (Zuspruch) and claim (Anspruch).

      In section 2 of the third volume of the Dogmatics, Brunner has chapters on both regeneration and conversion.  These occur in between his discussions of justification and sanctification.  It is obvious that his main emphasis is upon the God who justifies, but he feels it necessary to look briefly at the concept of regeneration because (1) though a different figure, it is synonymous with justifying faith, and (2) it has been grossly misunderstood and misused in the church over the centuries, being interpreted as if it referred to a natural process.  Brunner emphasizes that what the figure of new birth points to “in a specially impressive way is the totality of the new creation of the person,” since Jesus Christ is not only the Word who justifies, but also the Life who begets and vivifies (p. 269).

      Rejecting traditional Roman Catholic and some Lutheran theology which gives the impression that a new substance or being is infused into the soul through holy baptism, Brunner attempts to follow Luther:

But how is rebirth related to the fact that even the believer, the justified man, is a sinner?  Faith is that event through which the sinful man, in spite of his sin, is declared righteous, that event in which he receives the new personal being.  Therefore this new being is at first limited to the fact of faith. ... This new being does not [immediately] come into evidence as such ... empirically we are still sinners, and ... it only becomes empirically visible in the strenuous battle for sanctification....

      [So regeneration means that in the] invisible core of personality the great, eternally decisive change takes place, that “Christ is formed in us” through the death of the old man and the creation of the new, and that from this origin something new, even if only relatively new, comes into visible existence also. [pp. 272–74]

Thus it is the very faith by which we believe and are justified, and not baptism, that is the sign and the expression of the beginnings of new creation in us.

      Brunner is reasonably happy to speak of regeneration as passive and conversion as active as long as we recognize that “we are not dealing with a temporal sequence, an order of salvation (ordo salutis) which begins with one thing, let us say regeneration, and continues with another, let us say conversion” (p. 281).  By faith in the Word we are justified and created as new persons, children of God.  In keeping with his emphasis that we are responsible beings, Brunner does not interpret human passivity in regeneration as the classic Reformed theologians had done; rather, he insists:

The creation of the new man, in faith in the new created Word of God in Christ, does not happen without our presence as responsible persons. ... It is once again the same paradox as everywhere appears where faith is the theme: the new life is effected on the one hand only through the repentance of man, and on the other hand only through the act and speech, or the speech and act, of God.  Both are true: we must repent, and it is God alone who creates the new life. [pp. 282–83]

Although he rejects all views of baptismal regeneration, as well as the view that baptism is a sacrament, Brunner does see a place for baptism of believers as well as the children of believers.  However, this baptism is not fundamental and therefore not absolutely obligatory.¹⁷  What matters to him is the correlation of Christ’s word and act with faith.  There must be personal response to the God who discloses himself, addresses sinners, and makes a claim upon them.  In that response, as the Spirit of God is present, faith arises and regeneration and conversion occur.  And these will lead on to holiness and righteousness.

17. See the appendix “On the Doctrine of Baptism,” in Brunner, Dogmatics, vol. 3, pp. 53–57.

12 – Puritans, Pietists, and Evangelists

      Puritanism, originating in England in the late sixteenth century, and Pietism, beginning in Germany in the late seventeenth century, are linked by both personalities and concerns.  The writings of various English Puritans (e.g., Lewis Bayly, William Ames, and Richard Baxter) helped some Lutherans to see the great need for an emphasis on godliness and practical Christianity.  In turn the teaching and examples of several German Pietists (e.g., Philipp Jakob Spener and August Hermann Francke) influenced both the theological and practical concerns not only of such prominent American Puritans as Cotton Mather (1663–1728), but also leaders of the Great Awakening such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield.  The influence of Pietism on the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, is well known.  Puritanism and Pietism, coming from two different traditions, did nevertheless agree that theology is not only true propositions, but also the art of living unto God, and that this begins with the divine act of regeneration.

      Puritanism was first and foremost a movement for the purification of the national Church of England; secondly, it was a movement of practical divinity for the sanctification of congregations, families, and individuals.¹  It flourished from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I to the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell; however, in 1662 it was virtually forced out of the national church and became the basic spirit of Protestant Nonconformity in England and Wales.  Earlier it had crossed the Atlantic Ocean to create a new form of church life in New England, where it had a mixed success for over a century.  Further, it entered the Scottish church to marry happily with the Reformed theology of the Westminster Confession.  We shall look at the teaching on regeneration of three of Puritanism’s most able exponents – William Perkins and John Owen of England and Jonathan Edwards of New England.

1. There is a useful article on Puritanism by Mark A. Noll in Walter A. Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, pp. 897–900.  See also Peter Toon, Puritans and Calvinism.

      Pietism was initially a movement within German Lutheranism; it insisted that the reformation of doctrine which had been initiated by Martin Luther be consummated by a reformation of life in individuals, homes, and congregations.²  Pietism was concerned with the regeneration of individuals, the renewal of parishes, and practical acts of charity.  Cotton Mather described it as “the fire of God which flames in the heart of Germany.”  We shall look at the teaching of Spener and Francke as well as that of Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians.

2. There is a useful article on Pietism by Mark A. Noll in Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary, pp. 855–58.  This may be supplemented by a steady stream of articles printed in the Covenant Quarterly.

      We will conclude this chapter with the evangelical revival in England and America in the mid-eighteenth century.  Itinerant preachers stressed that everyone in their audiences, including those who had been baptized as infants, stood in need of the new birth and conversion.  We shall look particularly at the teaching of George Whitefield and John Wesley.

Puritanism

William Perkins

      William Perkins (1558–1602) was the most widely known theologian of the Elizabethan Church of England.³  As lecturer at Great St. Andrews, Cambridge, he gave much time to writing, and his works were published not only in Britain but in several other European countries as well.  His theology was in the tradition which flowed from John Calvin and Theodore Beza in Geneva, and he made a specialty of practical divinity (preaching, cases of conscience, writings on the nature of conversion and the Christian life).  He would have been able to subscribe to those chapters of the Westminster Confession (1647) which set forth the sovereign grace of God in election, effectual calling, and the Christian life of mortification and vivification.

3. For the life and writings of Perkins see The Work of William Perkins, ed. Ian Breward.

      We are particularly interested in what Perkins has to say about regeneration and conversion.  His use of these terms is similar to Calvin’s and thus less precise than that of later Reformed theologians.  Happily he set out his views in a short piece entitled “A Grain of Mustard Seed.”⁴  Against the background of both the work of Christ and the depravity of humankind, he explains that “the conversion of a sinner ... is not the change of the substance of man or of the faculties [the understanding, will, and affections] of the soul, but a renewing and restoring of that purity and holiness which was lost by man’s fall, with the abolishment of that corruption that is in all the powers of the soul.”  And he insists that “this is the work of God, and of God alone.”  It is a work which has a definite beginning but which also must continue; in this sense conversion and regeneration are a process of making new:

The conversion of a sinner is not wrought all at one instant, but in continuance of time and that by certain measures and degrees.  And a man is in the first degree of his conversion when the Holy Ghost, by the means of the word, inspires him with some spiritual motions and begins to regenerate and renew the inward powers of his soul.

This is like the first dawning of morning light when the darkness is still dominant.

4. Ibid., pp. 387ff.

      As a practical theologian, Perkins distinguished between preparation for and the actual beginnings of regeneration by God, and also between restraining grace and renewing grace.  Preparation for regeneration and conversion consists of the ministry of the law of God acting upon the conscience and causing us to know not only our guilt before God, but also the wrath of God directed against our sin.  In contrast the beginnings of true conversion and regeneration are those Spirit-caused motions and inclinations by which we see in the gospel our life and hope.

      By restraining grace Perkins meant much the same as what later theologians have called common grace – the help given by God to all people so that they can act in a sober, just, and merciful way ensuring a peaceful society.  Renewing grace, however, is not for all: it is “not common to all men, but proper to the elect and is a gift of God’s Spirit whereby the corruption of sin is not only restrained, but also mortified, and the decayed image of God restored in righteousness and true holiness.”  This definition includes what later theologians (and what Perkins himself elsewhere) called regeneration, mortification of sin and vivification, or regeneration with sanctification.  The point to observe is that he saw the entry of the Spirit into the soul to quicken the understanding, will, and affections as the beginnings of a process whose originator is God himself.  The end of the process is conformity to the image of God as that is revealed in Christ Jesus.

      Perkins connected inner regeneration and conversion with union with Christ, adoption into the family of God, and justification by God.  “These four are wrought all at one instant, so as for order of time neither goes before or after the other; and yet in regard of order of nature, union with Christ, justification and adoption go before the inward conversion of a sinner, it being the fruit and effect of them all.”

      We must now look at what Perkins had to say about baptism and regeneration in the case of infants.  He deals with this subject in A Golden Chain, or the Description of Theology.⁵  First, we note his definition of baptism:

      33.  Baptism is a sacrament by which such as are within the covenant are washed with water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, that being thus engrafted into Christ they may have perpetual fellowship with him.  Within the covenant are all the seed of Abraham, or the seed of the faithful.  These are either of riper years or infants.  Those of riper years are all such as adjoining themselves to the visible church do both testify their repentance of their sins and hold the foundations of religion taught in the same church.  Infants within the covenant are such as have one at the least of their parents faithful.

Baptism therefore is effectual only for those who are the elect of God.  Though Perkins did not deny the possibility of the regeneration of an infant at baptism, he did expect that normally those baptized in infancy would in riper years come to a deep conviction of guilt of sin and then actually experience inner regeneration.  Like Luther, he held that all those who are converted ought to look back to their baptism as a seal of their incorporation into Christ.

5. Ibid., pp. 169ff.

      As to the spiritual state of babies who die at birth or soon after birth Perkins wrote:

      35.  The declaration of God’s love towards infants is on this manner.  Infants being elected, albeit they in the womb of their mother before they were born, or presently after (birth) depart this life, they, I say, being after a secret and unspeakable manner by God’s Spirit engrafted into Christ, obtain eternal salvation.  I call the manner of infants’ salvation secret and unspeakable, because they want actual faith to receive Christ: for actual faith necessarily presupposeth a knowledge of God’s free promise, the which he that believeth doth apply to himself: but this infants cannot anyways possibly perform.

So, unlike Luther, he did not believe that infants can actually have saving faith.  He elaborated further on this point: “Infants are said to be regenerated only in regard of their internal qualities and inclinations, not in regard of any motions or actions of the mind, will or affections.  And therefore they want those terrors of conscience which come before repentance, as occasions thereof, in such as are of riper years.”

      Before leaving Perkins we should observe his description of the normal route from being a child of darkness to being a child of the light, from nominal Christianity to vital Christianity.  In chapter 36 of the Golden Chain he sets out a broad outline of this route, the route of God’s effectual calling:

1.  The hearing of the word of God: first, the law to reveal sin and its punishment, and second, the gospel to offer salvation in Christ Jesus.

2.  The mollifying of the heart, which must be bruised that it may be fit to receive God’s saving grace.  This breaking of the stony heart is achieved by four hammers – knowledge of the law of God, knowledge of sin, the pricking of conscience, and a deep recognition that salvation cannot be gained by man’s powers or ingenuity.

3.  Apprehension and incorporation of the living Christ through faith, a supernatural faculty of the heart.  This is brought about through the special operation of the Holy Spirit.  Faith of this kind, saving faith, has five degrees: (a) spiritual knowledge of the gospel (serious meditation on, full understanding of, and belief in the promises within the gospel); (b) hope of pardon; (c) hunger and thirst after the grace of God; (d) an approach to the throne of grace to lay hold of Christ and find favor with God; and (e) a persuasion imprinted in the heart by the Holy Spirit that the promises of God actually apply to oneself.

      Inner conversion or regeneration occurs within the last of these stages: the origin and exercise of faith.  It is not surprising that in a period when the doctrine of divine election was seriously taught, believed, and confessed, there was great interest not only in the actual process of conversion, but also in evidence of genuine regeneration.  Nor is it surprising that many believed that there could be no genuine internal regeneration without lengthy spiritual preparation.⁶  This widely held view (preparationism) within English and American Puritanism was to be severely challenged by the preaching ministry of George Whitefield and others in the eighteenth century.

6. See further Norman Pettit, The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life.

John Owen

      After a period as vice-chancellor of Oxford University during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, John Owen (1616-1683) became the theological leader of the Puritans who adopted the Congregational Way; he also continued his career as a major exponent and defender of both Reformed theology and Puritan practical divinity.⁷  In’ his Pneumatologia: A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit (1674) he addressed himself to the topic of the regeneration and conversion of the elect.⁸  He begins this treatise by looking at the nature and personality of the Spirit and his work in the old creation; then he looks at the work of the Holy Spirit in the new creation, especially in and upon the human nature of Jesus Christ, and in the preparation of a mystical body for him.  The latter work involves the calling, regenerating, sanctifying, and glorifying of all the elect, who have been given to the Son by the Father.  And this, says Owen, is to be brought about together with the creation of a new universe: “The Holy Spirit undertaketh to create a new world, new heavens and a new earth, wherein righteousness shall dwell” (p. 207).  Thus his doctrine of regeneration is set in a cosmic and eschatological framework centered upon union with Christ and membership in his spiritual, mystical body.

7. For Owen see Peter Toon, God’s Statesman: The Life and Work of Dr. John Owen.

8. John Owen, Pneumatologia: A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit, in The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 3.

      In terms of the human race, Owen’s doctrine of regeneration, which he expounds in the third part of his treatise, is set in the context of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin and depravity.  In the seventeenth century a growing number of churchmen in Europe were rejecting this view and insisting that we are not guilty of Adam’s sin and we are not wholly infected by evil.  To Owen such views were Socinian, Pelagian, or Arminian (depending upon their context) and were to be strenuously opposed.  “The reason why some despise, some oppose, some deride the work of the Spirit of God in our regeneration or conversion,” he wrote, “or fancy it to be only an outward ceremony, or a moral change of life and conversation, is their ignorance of the corrupted and depraved estate of the souls of men, in their minds, wills and affections, by nature” (p. 328).

      Owen defines regeneration as “the infusion of a new, real, spiritual principle into the soul and its faculties, of spiritual life, light, holiness and righteousness, disposed unto and suited for the destruction or expulsion of a contrary, inbred, habitual principle of sin and enmity against God, enabling unto all acts of holy obedience, and so in the order of nature antecedent to them” (pp. 219, 329).  The Holy Spirit himself enters the soul, bringing the power, holiness, righteousness, and love of God to renew and redirect the mind, heart, and will.  Citing many biblical texts, Owen shows how the faculties of the soul – mind, heart, and will – are given new knowledge, love, and power by the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Thus a process of sanctification necessarily flows from one’s initial regeneration.

      Owen further insists that what he is teaching is the historic, received doctrine of the church and not the result of Puritan “enthusiasm”:

The ancient writers of the Church, who looked into these things with most diligence, and laboured in them with most success – as Augustine, Hilary, Prosper, and Fulgentius – do represent the whole work of the Spirit of God towards the souls of men under certain heads or distinctions of grace; and herein were they followed by many of the more sober schoolmen, and others of late without number.  Frequent mention we find in them of grace as “preparing, preventing, working, co-working and confirming.”  Under these heads do they handle the whole work of our regeneration or conversion unto God. [pp. 300-01]

Noting that in Augustine’s Confessions the divine act of regeneration and conversion is “nobly and elegantly exemplified,” Owen devotes a whole chapter to Augustine’s depiction of the nature of conversion.  Owen was right to insist that the Fathers and Schoolmen had a high doctrine of regeneration; however, as he explained in other places, they did also tend to conflate regeneration with justification.  Further, they posited a much closer tie between regeneration and baptism than did Owen.  While Owen accepted that some infants are born from above at their baptism, he believed with Perkins and most Puritans that it is as young adults that the majority are regenerated and come to the faith of their baptism.

      As an exponent of practical divinity, Owen paid particular attention to the normal preparation in adults for regeneration and conversion, the difference between genuine regeneration and false conversion, and the internal and external changes caused by God’s irresistible grace in this saving event.  While he insisted that “God in our conversion, by the exceeding greatness of his power (as he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead), actually works faith and repentance in us, gives them to us, bestows them on us – so that they are mere effects of his grace in us” (p. 323), he also insisted that we have duties in relation to God and his gospel.  For example, we are to pray that God will do what he has promised – to regenerate and convert; we are to attend the ministry of the word and the means of grace; and we are to pay heed to the commands of God within the gospel to repent and to believe.  Further, we are to examine ourselves to see whether or not we are of the faith.

      Owen also offered advice to pastors and preachers of the gospel.  They ought to master the whole doctrine of regeneration and its practical implications so that they know how to preach to and deal with those who, moved by the Spirit, are desirous of being born of God and converted to him.  We should observe that the kind of practical divinity taught by Owen might easily lead people to despair of ever being true Christians unless they have a wise pastor to help them discern the true motions of the Spirit within them.

      Together with this teaching concerning regeneration went a view which insisted that the church is an assembly and fellowship of the regenerate.  In 1658 Owen, with other Congregational pastors, had written, as a part of the Savoy Declaration, a Declaration of the Institution of Churches.⁹  Article 8 reads:

The members of these churches are saints by calling, visibly manifesting and evidencing (in and by their profession and walking) their obedience unto that call of Christ, who being further known to each other by their confession of the faith wrought in them by the power of God, declared by themselves or otherwise manifested, do willingly consent to walk together according to the appointment of Christ, giving up themselves to the Lord and to one another by the will of God, in professed subjection to the ordinances of the gospel.

This makes clear that evidence of regeneration was required before admittance to church membership.  In New England the Congregationalist authors of the Cambridge Platform (1648) insisted, “The doors of the churches of Christ upon earth do not by God’s appointment stand so wide open, that all sorts of people, good or bad, may freely enter therein at their pleasure; but such as are admitted thereto as members, ought to be examined and tried first.”¹⁰  Such a requirement naturally led to the need for a practical divinity concerning conversion, a practical divinity of the kind that Owen (with others before and after him in Old and New England) provided.

9. In Williston Walker, ed., The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism, pp. 403ff.

10. In Walker, ed., Creeds, pp. 194ff., ch. 12.

Jonathan Edwards

      Recognized as the greatest philosopher-theologian to be born in the American colonies, Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) spent most of his working life as a Congregational pastor.¹¹  When the Puritans of the Congregational Way had left England for America in the seventeenth century, they had intended to transplant the national Church of England in a transformed state, reformed and renewed by the Word of God.  Thus the “state church” in New England was congregational in polity.  While everyone was expected to attend worship, only those who could testify to the saving work of God in their souls were admitted into the church covenant and to the Lord’s Supper.  Edwards became a pastor at a time when the churches faced the problem of what they should do with regard to the infant children of baptized members who themselves had not been admitted to the church covenant and full membership.  Were the children of parents who had not given evidence of regeneration and conversion entitled (within the doctrine of the covenant of grace) to baptism?  Most churches believed that they were, and thus arose the theology of the Halfway Covenant.  Edwards’s predecessor at Northampton, Massachusetts, his grandfather Solomon Stoddard, also advocated that the Lord’s Supper should be open to all baptized members who lived decently, even if they did not profess to have gone through an experience of conversion.¹²

    11. There is a good introductory article on Edwards’s life and thought by Mark A. Noll in Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary, pp. 343–46.  For his theology see Conrad Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal, particularly ch. 4 (“Conversion”).  Also useful is John H. Gerstner, Steps to Salvation: The Evangelistic Message of Jonathan Edwards.   

    12. For the Halfway Covenant see Walker, ed., Creeds, pp. 238ff.  See further the illuminating article by David Laurence, “Jonathan Edwards, Solomon Stoddard, and the Preparationist Model of Conversion,” Harvard Theological Review 72 (1979): 267–83; and Richard Lovelace’s excellent chapter “The Experience of Rebirth” in The American Pietism of Cotton Mather, pp. 73–109.

      For the first part of his ministry in Northampton, Edwards followed the practice of Stoddard, but revivals within the congregation and town caused him to change his mind and argue against his grandfather’s teaching as well as against the Halfway Covenant.  Church membership and admittance to the Lord’s Table were for those who could testify to regeneration.  After the First Great Awakening (or Revival) Edwards wrote A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton.¹³  In contrast to the belief that there is often a long period of preparation before regeneration and conversion Edwards recorded what he had witnessed:

God has seemed to have gone out of his usual way in the quickness of his work, and the swift progress his Spirit has made in his operations in the hearts of many.  It is wonderful that persons should be so suddenly and yet so greatly changed.  Many have been taken from a loose and careless way of living, and seized with strong convictions of their guilt and misery, and in a very little time old things have passed away and all things have become new with them. [Works, vol. 1, p. 350]

13. In Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Edward Hickman, vol. 1, pp. 344ff.

      Edwards proceeds to describe the two initial effects of the work of the Spirit of the Lord in human hearts.  First, people immediately give up their sinful practices; second, they apply themselves to Scripture reading, prayer, meditation, attendance at ordinances of worship, and seeking counsel.  Their cry is, “What shall we do to be saved?”  Then, in the manner of Puritan practical divinity, Edwards provides a description of the way in which people come to true faith and repentance:

Conversion is a great and glorious work of God’s power, at once changing the heart and infusing life into the dead soul; though the grace then implanted more gradually displays itself in some than in others.  But as to fixing the precise time when they put forth the very first act of grace, there is a great deal of difference in different persons: in some it seems to be very discernible when the very time was; but others are more at a loss....

      In some, converting light is like a glorious brightness suddenly shining upon a person, and all around him: they are in a remarkable manner brought out of darkness into marvellous light.  In many others it has been like the dawning of the day, when at first but a little light appears, and it may be is presently hid with a cloud; and then it appears again, and shines a little brighter, and gradually increases, with intervening darkness, till at length it breaks forth more clearly from behind the clouds.  And many are, doubtless, ready to date their conversion wrong, setting aside those lesser degrees of light that appeared at first dawning, and calling some more remarkable experience, that they had afterwards, their conversion.  This often, in a great measure, arises from a wrong understanding of what they have always been taught, that conversion is a great change, wherein old things are done away and all things become new, or at least from a false inference from that doctrine. [p. 355]

What really matters, he holds, is the life that flows from regeneration.

      One of Edwards’s greatest books is his Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in which he reflects upon true and false conversion.¹⁴  However, his clearest and most delightful presentation of the nature of regeneration is found in his Treatise on Grace,¹⁵ which he left amongst his unpublished papers at his sudden death soon after he had become president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University).  Edwards begins the study by distinguishing clearly between common and saving grace:

Common grace is used to signify that kind of action or influence of the Spirit of God, to which are owing those religious or moral attainments that are common to both saints and sinners, and so signifies as much as common assistance; and sometimes these moral or religious attainments themselves that are the fruits of this assistance, are intended.

In contrast to this basic help offered by God to all persons there is special or saving grace:

Special or saving grace is used to signify that peculiar kind or degree of operation or influence of God’s Spirit, whence saving actions and attainments do arise in the godly, or which is the same thing, special and saving assistance; or else to signify that distinguishing saving virtue itself, which is the fruit of this assistance. [p. 25]

As a theologian in the Reformed tradition, Edwards held that only in the elect does God act with saving grace to produce saving virtue.

14. Ibid., pp. 234ff.

15. Jonathan Edwards, Treatise on Grace, ed. Paul Helm.

      Having made this distinction, Edwards proceeds to provide eight arguments to show that saving grace and virtue are not a part of the basic human nature we all possess.  God must act decisively in us in order for there to be saving grace and virtue within us.  The last of the eight points is that conversion is presented in the Scriptures as a work of creation.  And, he explains, “when God creates he does not merely establish and perfect the things which were made before, but makes wholly and immediately something entirely new, either out of nothing, or out of that which was perfectly void of any such nature, as when he made man of the dust of the earth” (p. 33).  Further, conversion is often compared to resurrection, to new birth, and to an opening of the eyes of the blind as well as to a replacing of a heart of stone with a heart of flesh.

      On the basis of his eight arguments Edwards insists that “conversion is wrought at once”:

That knowledge, that reformation and conviction that is preparatory to conversion may be gradual, and the work of grace after conversion may be gradually carried on, yet that work of grace upon the soul whereby a person is brought out of a state of total corruption and depravity into a state of grace, to an interest in Christ, and to be actually a child of God, is in a moment. [p. 34]

It will have become obvious that Edwards uses “conversion” as a synonym for “regeneration,” thinking of it as an internal change leading to external change in attitude, behavior, and speech.

      In the second part of the treatise Edwards seeks to answer the question, What is the nature of the divine principle in the regenerate soul?  His answer is that it is the principle of divine love, which is the summary of all grace, holiness, and virtue, and a complete change from everything that is inherent in the soul.  This divine love, as it has God for its object, may be described as “the soul’s relish of the supreme excellency of the divine nature, inclining the heart to God as the chief good.”  Edwards explains that

the first effect of the power of God in the heart in REGENERATION is to give the heart a divine taste or sense; to cause it to have a relish of the loveliness and sweetness of the supreme excellency of the divine nature; and indeed this is all the immediate effect of the divine power that there is, this is all the Spirit of God needs to do, in order to a production of all good effects in the soul. [p. 49]

      In the third and final part Edwards seeks to show that the divine principle in the soul, which consists in divine love, is the actual presence of the Spirit of God himself – nothing less, nothing more.  At this point Edwards calls into active use his profound understanding of the theology of the Holy Trinity in order to show that what enters the soul in regeneration is the Holy Spirit himself, the very essence of divine love:

Though we often read in Scripture of the Father loving the Son, and the Son loving the Father, yet we never once read either of the Father or the Son loving the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit loving either of them.  It is because the Holy Spirit is the Divine love itself, the love of the Father and the Son.  Hence also it is to be accounted for, that we very often read of the love both of the Father and the Son to men, and particularly their love to the saints; but we never read of the Holy Ghost loving them, for the Holy Ghost is that love of God and of Christ that is breathed forth primarily towards each other, and flows out secondarily towards the creature.  This also will well account for it, that the apostle Paul so often wishes grace, mercy and peace from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, in the beginning of his epistles, without even mentioning the Holy Ghost, because the Holy Ghost is Himself the love and grace of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  He is the deity wholly breathed forth in infinite, substantial, intelligent love; from the Father and Son first towards each other, and secondarily freely flowing out to the creature, and so standing forth a distinct personal subsistence. [p. 63]

Thus the Spirit who enters the soul in regeneration is the eternal divine love; and from him, and the love that he is, all grace, virtue, holiness, and power proceed to change the understanding, the will, and the affections. It will be observed that such a doctrine of regeneration of necessity includes a change in life, for “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us.”

      The Spirit of God, who is also called the Spirit of Christ, is given to the elect because of the saving work of Christ himself, who is their Head and Redeemer.  The Spirit, who fills Christ’s human nature as well as unites Christ’s divine nature with that of the Father, is the inheritance and possession of those who belong to Christ.  Thus, to conclude, “saving grace is no other than the very love of God – that is, God, in one of the persons of the Trinity, uniting himself to the soul of a creature, as a vital principle, dwelling there and exerting himself by the faculties of the soul of man, in his own proper nature, after the manner of a principle of nature” (p. 72).  Is it possible to have a higher doctrine of regeneration than this?

      Before we leave Jonathan Edwards, we need to note his teaching concerning the human will.  This he explained in his justly famous Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of That Freedom of Will, Which Is Supposed to Be Essential to Moral Agency, Virtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame (1754).¹⁶  His aim was to defend and illustrate the Augustinian and Reformed doctrine of the bondage of the will to sin.  In the process he made the distinction, which had previously been made by theologians of the Academy of Saumur in the seventeenth century (see p. 130), between natural ability to will and moral ability to will.  Unlike Amyraldus and his colleagues, however, Edwards’s commitment to the teaching of the Synod of Dort could not be doubted.  Edwards found the distinction very useful in dealing with Arminian objections (as they were called) to the doctrine of the bondage of the will.  This distinction between natural and moral ability was then taken up by many in both Britain and America, and it proved of especial importance to those whose preaching aimed at instantaneous conversions.  On the grounds that, though lacking moral ability to repent and believe, humans do nonetheless possess a natural ability to do so, it was concluded that they can and should be called upon to repent and believe immediately.  The Holy Spirit will then give them power to overcome their moral inability.

16. In Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Edward Hickman, vol. 1, pp. 1ff.

Pietism

Philipp Jakob Spener

      Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705) is often called the father of Lutheran Pietism.¹⁷  Serving as a pastor in Strasbourg, Frankfurt am Main, Dresden, and Berlin, he was very familiar with the cold and rigid orthodoxy that characterized Lutheranism in both university and parish.¹⁸  He spoke from both heart and mind in his Pia desideria (Pious Desires), written originally as a long preface to the sermons of Johann Arndt (1555–1621) but published in its own right in 1675.¹⁹  In the first part of this book Spener discusses the failings of the civil authorities, the clergy, and the ordinary people in matters of religion.  In the second he offers proposals to set right the defects and weaknesses of the churches.  In the last part the themes of Pietism are clearly set forth:

Our whole Christian religion consists in the inner man or the new man, whose soul is faith and whose expressions are the fruits of life, and all sermons should be aimed at this.  On the one hand, the precious benefactions of God, which are directed towards this inner man, should be presented in such a way that faith, and hence the inner man, may be strengthened more and more.  On the other hand, works should be set in motion that we may by no means be content merely to have the people refrain from outward vices and practice outward virtues and thus be concerned only with the outward man, which the ethics of the heathen can also accomplish; but that we lay the right foundation in the heart, show that what does not proceed from this foundation is mere hypocrisy, and hence accustom the people first to work on what is inward (awaken love of God and neighbor through suitable means) and only then to act accordingly. [p. 116]

17. There is a brief life of Spener by Theodore G. Tappert in his translation of the Pia desideria.

18. See Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3d ed. rev., pp. 407ff.

19. For further detail see Allan C. Deeter, “An Historical and Theological Introduction to P J. Spener’s Pia Desideria: A Study in German Pietism.”  Our quotations are from the Tappert translation.

      Here is emphasis on the new person, the new birth, the new faith, and its fruit.  True good works are to proceed from the faith of a born-again Christian.  Pietism assumes a congruity between the inner and outer person:

One should, therefore, emphasize that the divine means of Word and sacrament are concerned with the inner man.  Hence it is not enough that we hear the Word with our outward ear, but we must let it penetrate to our heart, so that we may hear the Holy Spirit speak there, that is, with vibrant emotion and comfort feel the sealing of the Spirit and the power of the Word.  Nor is it enough to be baptized, but the inner man, where we have put on Christ in Baptism, must also keep Christ on and bear witness to him in our outward life.  Nor is it enough to have received the Lord’s Supper externally, but the inner man must truly be fed with that blessed food.  Nor is it enough to pray outwardly with our mouth, but true prayer, and the best prayer, occurs in the inner man, and it either breaks forth in words or remains in the soul, yet God will find and hit upon it.  Nor, again, is it enough to worship God in an external temple, but the inner man worships God best in his own temple, whether or not he is in an external temple at the time.  So one could go on. [p. 117]

The key concept is Wiedergeburt, “new birth.”  And on this topic Spener preached many sermons, publishing a collection of sixty-six of them as Der höchwichtige Articul von der Wiedergeburt.  In the first of these he insists that new birth is an act of God in which man is passive.  The Holy Spirit enters the human soul and kindles faith leading to justification and adoption.  But from this new birth there also begins a new life of growth in holiness, a topic expounded in other sermons:

Although Spener knows of repentance and temptations as the birth pangs of Wiedergeburt, he insists that Wiedergeburt is the beginning of faith.  Faith does not bring forth Wiedergeburt; rather, Wiedergeburt brings forth faith.  Wiedergeburt is the beginning of a process of growth, a growth from within man’s restored soul.  Out of God’s initial act, the creation of a new inner man, comes a continuing process in which man himself now begins, through the Holy Spirit, to direct the growth of the new man within him until his entire existence reflects that of Jesus Christ.²⁰

20. M. W. Kohl, “Wiedergeburt as the Central Theme in Pietism,” Covenant Quarterly 32 (Nov. 1974): 16.

      Spener did not deny the doctrine of regeneration at baptism but held that the grace given at infant baptism was more often than not actually lost by its recipients because they failed to keep their side of the baptismal covenant (Pia desideria, p. 66).  Thus most church members stood in need of Bekehrung, “conversion,” and Wiedergeburt, “inward regeneration.”  This meant that they needed to be justified by living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  The concept of justification by faith, however, had been reduced in much popular teaching to mere assent to the doctrines of the Lutheran (Evangelical) church and to a nominal Christianity.  Consequently, Spener and his fellow Pietists decided to emphasize instead the making of true believers by the divine act of regeneration.  As is clear from the Pia desideria, Spener certainly shared Luther’s view of justification:

We gladly acknowledge that we must be saved only and alone through faith and that our works or godly life contribute neither much nor little to our salvation, for as a fruit of our faith our works are connected with the gratitude which we owe to God, who has already given us who believe the gift of righteousness and salvation.  Far be it from us to depart even a finger’s breadth from this teaching, for we would rather give up our life and the whole world than yield the smallest part of it. [p. 63]

Spener chose, however, to focus more particularly on the intimate connection between true saving faith and regeneration.

August Hermann Francke

      What Philipp Melanchthon was to Luther, so was August Hermann Francke (1663–1727) to Spener.²¹  Francke was appointed professor at the newly established university at Halle in 1692 through Spener’s influence, and he also became a pastor at nearby Glaucha.  In 1696 he founded his Paedagogium and orphanage; each one grew rapidly, bringing to him both fame and opposition.  The opposition subsided after the visit in 1713 of the Prussian king, Frederick William I, who was much impressed by Francke’s educational and charitable institutions.

21. The best introduction in English to Francke’s life and theology is Gary R. Sattler, God’s Glory, Neighbor’s Good: A Brief Introduction to the Life and Writings of August Hermann Francke.

      Francke’s theology was deeply affected by his own experience of conversion, which he described in some detail.  When twenty-four years of age he had been studying the Bible and theology at the university level for six years.  Desperately wanting to be a true believer and to seek after holiness of life, he had begun to make very serious use of the means of grace in the churches.  Yet all he experienced was anguish:

In this state of anguish I kneeled down again and again, and prayed earnestly to that God and Saviour in whom I had, as yet, no faith, that if indeed he existed he would deliver me from my misery.  At last he heard me!  He was pleased, in his wondrous love, to manifest himself, and that, not in taking away by degrees my doubts and fears, but at once, and as if to overpower all my objections to his power and faithfulness.  All my doubts disappeared at once and I was assured of his favor.  I could not only call him God, but my Father.²²

22. The description of the conversion is in Sattler, God’s Glory, pp. 29-33.

So deeply did he feel the need for conversion that he geared the instruction and discipline at Halle in such a way as to prepare young people for conversion and then to assist them in going on with the Lord in dedication and sanctification.  He never taught that his system itself could convert and bring the new birth, but he did fervently believe that the right context and preparation made new birth and conversion more likely.²³

23. See further Kohl, “Wiedergeburt,” pp. 22–23.

      Among Francke’s published sermons is “The Doctrine of Our Lord Jesus Christ Concerning Rebirth,” preached on Trinity Sunday, 1697.²⁴  It is a full statement of his understanding of inward regeneration.  In the introduction he insists that “no doctrine of Christianity is more necessary than the doctrine of rebirth,” for “this is the very ground upon which Christianity stands,” and “a person without this is not to be called a Christian.”  And though this teaching is truly understood only by those whose minds have been enlightened by the Holy Spirit, it must still be preached from the pulpits.

24. In Sattler, God’s Glory, pp. 133–53.

      In the body of the sermon Francke sets himself five tasks.  His first task is to answer the question, “From whom does rebirth come?”  Since it is a birth from above, “the whole Holy Trinity is the One to whom we must ascribe the new birth and the One from whom we receive a new character and nature.”  When this spiritual renewal takes place, we will know in our heart that we are children of God, having Christ as Brother, God as Father, and the Holy Spirit as Comforter.  We will experience glory in our heart and soul, and will know that we have received a greater gift than the world can ever offer.

      The second task is to consider the means by which the Lord gives or causes rebirth.  The first is the Word of God, which has power to strike us down and then make us alive again.  The law kills and the gospel makes alive.  Second, there is holy baptism: one has to be born of water and the Spirit to enter the kingdom of God.  However, Francke explains, water baptism is not absolutely necessary since God can baptize a person in the Spirit without baptizing also in water.  Further, baptism in water is ineffectual unless it is accompanied by living faith on the part of the person who is baptized.  Thus, unless one who is baptized as an infant actually comes to exercise living, saving faith, one loses the grace of baptism and needs to be born anew by the Holy Spirit.  Put another way, unless the individual who is baptized and has entered into the baptismal covenant with God actually keeps his or her side of the covenant in faith and love, God removes his grace from the soul.  Those people who, though baptized as infants, do not grow, through nurture and admonition, into living, saving faith, but rather turn to sinful ways, must be slain by the law and resurrected by the gospel if they are to be brought to regeneration, true faith, and conversion, and thus to a restoration of their baptismal covenant.

      The third task is to examine “the manner and way of rebirth,” which is “a true birth and not an empty word.”  Francke agrees with Luther that the creation of true, living faith in the heart is regeneration:

When a person recognizes his sinful nature, not only outwardly and according to appearance ... but also inwardly, feeling the bite of the snake in the heart and the wrath of God in conscience, becoming aware of what an abomination sin is, there the person truly sees according to the grace and mercy of God....

      If it is shown to this person from the Word of God that Jesus Christ is the Mediator who has reconciled us to God with his blood and then this individual seeks refuge in the wounds of the Lord Jesus and the grace of God the Lord that he may have mercy upon him, in such a crushed heart made ill with remorse and sorrow will be awakened a childlike trust in the overwhelming mercy of God in Christ Jesus.  And through that trust God is known and honored in the heart as the true Father – a bottomless fountain of mercy and love; and with sincere humiliation of self, the believer will feel great unworthiness of all such grace and mercy.  This believing trust is, then, no idle thought, but rather something true and living that formerly we had not experienced in our hearts.  We may well have prayed an “Our Father” and thus called God our Father, but that only went without power over the tongue and not “from the heart.”  But once faith is truly worked in the heart, the person can truly say through the Holy Spirit, “Abba, dear Father.”

This living faith created in regeneration grasps God in Christ for forgiveness and justification.  The regenerate person seeks God and “has completely different thoughts, hopes and aspirations,” but can never satisfactorily explain the nature of rebirth, which is a secret activity of God and is known in its fruit of holiness.

      The fourth task is to establish who needs to be told that they must be born from above by the Holy Spirit.  Here Francke mentions Nicodemus, a faithful Jew who taught his religion to others.  If such a person had to be told of the necessity of inward regeneration, so also must they who trust in their baptism, their church attendance, their knowledge of the Bible and theology, and their morality.

      The fifth task is to set forth the goal of rebirth, which is eternal life.  “Rebirth would not be necessary for us,” Francke explains, “had we remained in innocence, but after man fell in sin and thus lost the image of God, it is now necessary that we be born again and become true children of God renewed in the image of Jesus Christ and sharing in his glory.”  Rebirth is the narrow gate, spoken of by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, which leads to life – eternal life.

      The sermon closes with a call to the hearers to go home and there in private plead with God in earnest prayer to lead them through the narrow gate, for God who sees in secret will reward openly.  Finally, in the prayer after the sermon, Francke entreats God to work rebirth in the hearts of the unregenerate: “May you, O faithful God and Father, spread your grace and mercy over us, that those who until now stand in their old sinful birth, may now be born of you.  Let even this word be blessed that it may be even now a means of rebirth to many to become new men in heart, soul, mind and thoughts.”

      Both Spener and Francke believed that the world would be transformed through the regeneration, conversion, and sanctification of individuals.  According to their concept of Wiedergeburt, a new form of humanity would emerge through the creation of new life within the sinners of this world and lead to a new church and a period of latter-day glory before the second coming of Christ.

Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf

      Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760) was a brilliant pupil at the Halle school from 1710 to 1716, but it was judged that he was not truly converted when he left.²⁵  From 1727 he devoted himself wholeheartedly to the vision of Christian renewal and evangelization through both the religious colony of Herrnhut on his personal estate and the dispatch of Moravian missionaries to various parts of the world.  For the count the sovereignty and absolute love of Christ were increasingly important, and he eventually concluded that sinners may come to the Savior, who died for them, without fulfilling any preconditions or prerequisites.  They need only come in faith to the loving Savior.  To become a Christian, then, is an easy procedure, which results in true joy and happiness.  Thus the community at Herrnhut was characterized by celebration, cheerfulness, and variety (in contrast to the strictness and sobriety of the Halle of Francke).  The Moravians, as their hymns testify, sought to see and feel their crucified Savior, who by virtue of their faith lived in their regenerate hearts.

25. There is nothing in English to compare with the three-volume biography of Zinzendorf by Erich Beyreuther.  See also A. J. Freeman, “The Hermeneutics of Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf,” especially part B, ch. 3 (“The New Man”).  For Zinzendorf’s relationship with Methodism see Howard Snyder, “Pietism, Moravianism and Methodism as Renewal Movements: A Comparative and Thematic Study.”  Then there is the little book by A. J. Lewis, Zinzendorf The Ecumenical Pioneer.

      Various collections of Zinzendorf’s sermons were printed in English.  Here is an extract from a volume entitled Sixteen Discourses on the Redemption of Man, which was published in 1740:

Our Saviour must begin the work; we must first hear the voice of the Son of God, then we begin to live, and when we live, then we learn to believe.  If we have any of the virtue and energy of Baptism still left within us, and do not live according to the mind of our Redeemer, that will condemn us.  He that doth never feel the wrath of God is dead in sin.  Has he been baptized then is he twice dead.

      The moment a soul begins to live, and the Spirit of God overshadows her, she hears the voice of the Son of God, which speaks of nothing but the Blood of propitiation.  Whoever lives and has heard the voice of the Son of God, he soon is sensible of his being lost if he doth not acknowledge Jesus to be his Lord and Master.

      But whoever believes, shakes off all, doth not consult with flesh and blood, but immediately follows the conviction of his heart, can in a moment be rescued from his perdition and become a child of God, if he doth cast himself down at the feet of our Saviour as a poor, miserable sinner.  Then one can say, “He has loved and washed us from our sins in his own blood.”

      The divine effort in the heart which drives the sinner to the Cross of Christ doth effect all this.  Here one need not go about to ransack one’s passions and corruptions, nor anxiously endeavour to mend one’s self.  For Grace overflows all our sins; they are all covered with the Blood of the Lamb.

      He that hath once tasted the saving sweetness of the name of Jesus will give him his whole heart and can be pleased with nothing else but with our Saviour and with following him.

Here, despite the occasionally awkward translation, it is possible to recognize the emphasis on the direct route to the Savior, the feeling of being lost and then being renewed by Christ, and the ever flowing source of grace in the blood of the Lamb.

      The doctrine of the new birth as understood by the Moravians was well summarized at their American Synod of 1857:

It has been the earnest desire of our church, from the beginning, that each individual member of it should be led, in the school of the Holy Ghost, to a deep and thorough knowledge, not only of his sinfulness, but of his exposedness to condemnation before God, as the desert of sin; and so be brought to a genuine repentance, and to the conviction of his need of a Saviour; whence will result, through living faith in Jesus, a thorough renewal of the inward man, consisting not in the mere laying aside of some sinful habits, but in an entire change of views and dispositions, and in a full surrender of the heart to the Lord.²⁶

The same synod laid heavy emphasis upon the cross: “The word of the cross – that is, the testimony of [Christ’s] voluntary offering of himself to suffer and to die, and of the treasures of grace purchased thereby – is the beginning, middle and end of our ministry, and to proclaim the Lord’s death we regard as the main calling of the Brethren’s Church.”  Regeneration comes when there is faith in the cross and the blood of Christ.

26. In Edmund A. de Schweinitz, ed., The Moravian Manual, pp. 114–16.

The Evangelical Revival

      Traveling preachers were not unknown in Britain and her American colonies in the early eighteenth century.  However, with the itinerant evangelism of George Whitefield and John Wesley (and those associated with them) from around 1740 a new era began.²⁷  Not only did this produce specifically religious results in terms of revivals, converts, new societies and churches, and the cherishing of vital, experiential Christianity, but it also helped to create general political awareness and interest.²⁸  Never before had so many people eagerly gathered together to hear sermons concerning salvation.

27. For Whitefield see Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, for Wesley see Martin Schmidt, John Wesley: A Theological Biography, especially vol. 2, part 2, ch. 7.

28. See further the interesting suggestions of Harry S. Stout, “Religion, Communications and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” in Gary B. Nash and Thomas Frazier, eds., The Private Side of American History: Readings in Everyday Life, vol. 1, pp. 155ff.

      All new movements begin in a given context and are influenced by other contemporary movements.  As members of the “Holy Club,” a group of young men at Oxford who took their religion seriously, Whitefield and John and Charles Wesley were heavily influenced by the spiritual discipline associated with the daily offices and services of the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and by books on spirituality by such authors as Thomas à Kempis, William Law, Richard Baxter, and Henry Scougal.  The devotional systems of both the High Church and Puritanism molded the piety of the members of the Holy Club.  Later, the Calvinism of the Puritans was to influence Whitefield more than the Wesleys, and the Arminianism of the Anglican divines was to influence the Wesleys more than Whitefield.

      Though Whitefield learned much from the Wesley brothers, especially from Charles, he was, in fact, the first to experience what he believed to be the new birth.  Their experience came several years later, not in Oxford but in London.  In the spring of 1735 in the quiet of his own room in Oxford, Whitefield felt the joy of having entered into a new, dynamic relationship with God:

After having undergone innumerable buffetings of Satan, and many months of inexpressible trials by night and day under the spirit of bondage, God was pleased at length to remove the heavy load, to enable me to lay hold on his dear Son by a living faith, and, by giving me the spirit of adoption, to seal me, as I humbly hope, even to the day of everlasting redemption.  But oh! with what joy – joy unspeakable – even joy that was full of, and big with glory, was my soul filled, when the weight of sin went off, and an abiding sense of the pardoning love of God, and a full assurance of faith broke in on my disconsolate soul!  Surely it was the day of my espousals, – a day to be had in everlasting remembrance.  At first my joys were like a spring tide and, as it were, overflowed the banks; afterwards it became more settled – and blessed be God, saving a few casual intervals, has abode and increased in my soul ever since.²⁹

Henceforward the very site of this experience was sacred to him: “I know the place; it may perhaps be superstitious, but, whenever I go to Oxford, I cannot help running to the spot where Jesus Christ first revealed himself to me, and gave me new birth.”³⁰

29. George Whitefield, George Whitefield’s Journals, p. 58.

30. From the sermon “All Men’s Place,” cited by Dallimore, George Whitefield, vol. 1, p. 77.

      Soon afterwards Whitefield was ordained and preached his first sermon.  He would later recall that first sermon, which, not surprisingly, was on the new birth:

I remember when I first began to speak against baptismal regeneration – in my first sermon, printed when I was about twenty-two years old ... the first quarrel many had with me was because I did not say that all people who were baptized were born again.  I would as soon believe the doctrine of transubstantiation!  Can I believe that a person who, from the time of his baptism to the time, perhaps, of his death, never fights against the world, the flesh and the devil, and never minds one word of what his godfathers and godmothers promised for him, is a real Christian?  No, I can as soon believe that a little wafer in the hands of a priest is the very blood and bones of Jesus Christ.³¹

As we shall see, Whitefield’s criticism of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration led to much opposition from both clergy and laity.

31. From the sermon “The Necessity and Benefit of Religious Society,” cited by Arthur Skevington Wood, The Inextinguishable Blaze: Spiritual Renewal and Advance in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 88–89.

      John Wesley’s search for peace with God and assurance of personal salvation took him to Georgia and back to London.  His fellowship with Moravians both during the Atlantic crossing and back in London gave direction to his search.  His brother Charles came to assurance of salvation on Whitsunday, May 21, 1738; then on Wednesday, May 24, it was John’s turn to receive a heavenly experience.  He has himself described it:

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans.  About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.  I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.... I then testified to all there what I now first felt in my heart.³²

32. John Wesley, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, ed. Nehemiah Curnock, vol. 1, pp. 475–76.

What were the words from Luther?  They were probably the following, the reading of which reminds us of the dynamic nature of Luther’s teaching on new creation:

Wherefore let us conclude that faith alone justifies, and that faith alone fulfilleth the Law.  For faith through the merit of Christ obtaineth the Holy Spirit, which Spirit doth make us new hearts, doth exhilarate us, doth excite and inflame our hearts, that it may do those things willingly of love, which the Law commandeth; and so, at the last, good works indeed do proceed freely from faith which worketh so mightily, and which is so lively in our hearts.³³

33. Luther’s preface to Romans appears in a variety of English translations, including The Reformation Writings of Martin Luther, ed. Bertram Lee Wolff, vol. 1.

      The fire that had been lit in his heart Wesley took to his compatriots over a period of fifty years.  Further, from his experience of the assurance of personal salvation he came to the belief that personal regeneration and justification by faith are the two most important doctrines.  “If any doctrines within the whole compass of Christianity may properly be called ‘fundamental,’” he once wrote, “they are doubtless those two – the doctrine of justification and that of the new birth: the former relating to the great work which God does for us in forgiving our sins; the latter, to the great work which God does in us, in renewing our fallen nature.”³⁴

34. John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions, sermon 39, pp. 514–26.

      It hardly needs stating that the vivid experience of the grace of God forgiving and renewing, justifying and assuring, was of paramount importance to the careers and message of the Wesleys and Whitefield.  Though their own route to assurance of personal salvation had been tortuous, when that assurance came, it was dynamic and unforgettable.  They quickly learned that not everyone – perhaps only a few – needs to go through a long period of preparation, and so they confidently preached the possibility of an instant change, immediate new birth and conversion.  Further, since there appeared to be little obvious relation between their baptism as infants and their assurance of salvation as adults, they preached that most, if not all, of those baptized as infants need to be born from above, to be converted, and (certainly) to experience the assurance of sins forgiven and peace with heaven.  More radically than in Pietism and more definitely than in Puritanism, the need for new birth was emphasized.  It was also maintained that by its very nature the new birth can be felt and known – even pinpointed in time.  Though Whitefield and the Wesleys retained infant baptism and justified it on traditional grounds, they in effect separated it from God’s act of regeneration.

George Whitefield

      We will now deal specifically with the ministry of Whitefield (1714–1770).  Arnold Dallimore has written that “the one great truth which had been the foundation of Whitefield’s ministry from the first was that of the new birth.  His most widely circulated sermon, The Nature and Necessity of Our New Birth in Christ Jesus, could almost be regarded as the manifesto of the [evangelical] movement.”³⁵  So we are not surprised to read in that sermon Whitefield’s contention that “it is plain beyond all contradiction, that comparatively but few of those that are ‘born of water’ are ‘born of the Spirit,”’ or, put in another way, “many are baptized with water which were never baptized with the Holy Ghost.”  For to be in Christ is more than water baptism.  It is

to be in him not only by an outward profession, but by an inward change and purity of heart, and cohabitation of his Holy Spirit.  To be in him, so as to be mystically united to him by a true and lively faith, and thereby to receive spiritual virtue from him. ... [In the new birth] our souls, though still the same as to essence, yet are so purged, purified and cleansed from their natural dross, filth and leprosy, by the blessed influences of the Holy Spirit that they may properly be said to be made anew.³⁶

35. Dallimore, George Whitefield, vol. 1, p. 345.

36. In George Whitefield, Sermons on Important Subjects, new ed., ed. Joseph Smith, pp. 496–97.

      Whitefield’s message that those who had been baptized but were not living as new creatures in Christ Jesus needed to be born from above by the Spirit of Christ was not popular with his brother clergy.  Both in England and the colonies appeared booklets criticizing his views.  Alexander Garden of South Carolina published Six Letters to the Rev. George Whitefield complaining that “the populace have been strangely amused of late with the doctrine of regeneration as a sudden instantaneous work of the Holy Spirit in which the subjects are entirely passive.”  Contradicting this Calvinist approach, Garden took the line of many Anglican clergymen of his day: “Regeneration is not a sole, critical or instantaneous, but a gradual, cooperating work of the Holy Spirit; commencing at Baptism and gradually advancing throughout the whole course of the Christian life.”  To most respectable clergy and laity what Whitefield was preaching was “religious delusion” leading to dangerous “enthusiasm”!³⁷

37. See further R. H. Pierce, “George Whitefield and His Critics,” ch. 3.

      Whitefield’s preaching of instantaneous conversion occurred in the context of that Reformed theology he had inherited from the English Reformers and Puritans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  It is doubtful, however, whether any of those divines would have pressed for immediate repentance and faith as did Whitefield.  That Whitefield was aware of this difference is evident in a sermon on the conversion of Zaccheus:

It would seem that Zaccheus was under soul distress but a little while; “perhaps,” says Guthrie ... “not above a quarter of an hour.”  I add, perhaps not so long; for as one observes, sometimes the Lord Jesus delights to deliver speedily.  God is a sovereign agent, and works upon his children in their effectual calling, according to the counsel of his eternal will.  It is with the spiritual, as the natural birth.  All women have not the like pangs; all Christians have not the like degree of conviction.  But all agree in this, that all have Jesus Christ formed in their hearts: and those who have not so many trials at first, may be visited with the greater conflicts hereafter; though they never come into bondage again, after they have once received the spirit of adoption.³⁸

Practical experience had taught him that new birth and conversion can occur with a minimum of preparation and searching.

38. In John Gillies, Memoirs of George Whitefteld ... and an Extensive Collection of His Sermons and Other Writings, pp. 407–08.  “Guthrie” is William Guthrie, the author of The Christian’s Great Interest, which was originally published in 1658.

      In the light of his great desire to see souls converted and of his sure belief that they could be converted instantaneously, if God so please, Whitefield ended his sermons with dramatic appeals to the people to turn from their guilt and sin to the Lord Jesus in repentance and faith.  For example:

O that God would wound you with the sword of his Spirit, and cause his arrows of conviction to stick deep in your hearts!  O that he would dart a ray of divine light into your souls.... O that we felt the power of Christ’s resurrection. ... The power of his resurrection is as great now as formerly, and the Holy Spirit, which was assured to us by his resurrection, as ready and able to quicken us who are dead in trespasses and sins, as any saint that ever lived.  Let us but cry, and that instantly, to him that is mighty and able to save.³⁹

And Whitefield expected God to begin the great process of salvation in human souls there and then by regenerating them in order that they could enter the highway of holiness and walk in the Spirit towards the Lord.

39. In Gillies, Memoirs, pp. 412–13.

      If asked why everyone who wishes to see God must be born again and thereby gain a pure soul and heart, Whitefield would answer in terms of original sin and the depravity of the human soul: “If it be true, then, that we are all by nature, since the fall, a mixture of brute and devil, it is evident, that we all must receive the Holy Ghost, ere we can dwell with and enjoy God.”  The salvation Whitefield preached was that “Jesus Christ came to save us not only from the guilt but also from the power of sin”; thus he emphasized that regeneration leads to sanctification and holiness.

      According to Reformed theology, as we noted earlier, regeneration, a work of the Spirit in which the soul is passive, leads to saving faith and repentance.  Virtually all the evidence that we used was taken from formal theological documents.  By contrast, because Whitefield’s published material consists entirely of sermons (apart from small pamphlets, journals, and letters), we find that in line with the apostolic preaching he calls upon people to repent and believe in order to receive the gift of the indwelling Spirit: “Whosoever believeth on Jesus Christ with his whole heart, though his soul be as black as hell itself, shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”  He had in mind such texts as Acts 2:38; 3:19; 5:32; and 10:43–44, which appear to teach that the gift of the indwelling Spirit follows initial saving belief in Jesus.⁴⁰

40. Ibid., p. 427.

      However, Whitefield also told his hearers on some occasions that the author of the new birth and conversion is the Holy Spirit.  For example, in a sermon on Acts 3:19 he declared that “the author of this conversion is the Holy Ghost; it is not their own free will; it is not moral suasion; nothing short of the influence of the Spirit of the living God can effect this change in their hearts.”⁴¹  Certainly there can be no regeneration, no conversion, no saving faith, and no genuine repentance unless the Holy Spirit takes the initiative and provides the will and the power.  But just how all these fit together in either a logical or chronological order does not seem to have been of too great interest to Whitefield.  He was primarily the preacher, not the systematic theologian.

41. In George Whitefield, Sermons on Important Subjects ..., p. 664.

John Wesley

      Like Whitefield, John Wesley (1703–1791) preached often on the new birth.  In fact one of his published sermons is entitled “The New Birth” and based on John 3:7, “You must be born again.”⁴²  He begins by asking the question, “Why must we be born again?” In answer, in order to show what the fall, the origin of sin, has caused, he provides a careful statement of what it meant for Adam to have been made in the image of God:

God created man in his own image-not barely his natural image, a picture of his own immortality; a spiritual being, endued with understanding, freedom of will, and various affections; nor merely in his political image, the governor of this lower world ... but chiefly in his moral image, which, according to the apostle, is “righteousness and true holiness” (Eph. 4:24).

No wonder God pronounced his creation to be “very good”!  However, man was not made immutable.

42. Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions, sermon 39, pp. 514–26.

      In the day that Adam ate of the forbidden fruit he also died spiritually.  The love of God was extinguished in his soul, and he was alienated from the life of God.  Under the power of servile fear he, both unholy and unhappy, having sunk into pride and self-will, fled from the presence of God.

In Adam all died, all human kind, all the children of men who were then in Adam’s loins.  The natural consequence of this is, that every one descended from him comes into the world spiritually dead, dead to God, wholly dead in sin; entirely void of the life of God; void of the image of God, of all that righteousness and holiness wherein Adam was created.  Instead of this, every man born into the world now bears the image of the devil, in pride and self-will; the image of the beast, in sensual appetites and desires.  This, then, is the foundation of the new birth – the entire corruption of our nature.  Hence it is that, being born in sin, we must be “born again.”  Hence every one that is born of a woman must be born of the Spirit of God.

So the need for inward regeneration from heaven is based on the fact of the entire corruption of our nature.  Here we may add that Wesley did not draw from this doctrine the corollary that the human will is unable, when attracted by the power of the gospel, to choose the gospel.  His “bondage of the will” was not as severe a bondage as that which Luther and the Puritans taught.

      Wesley now answers a second question, “What is the nature of the new birth?”

It is that great change which God works in the soul when he brings it into life; when he raises it from the death of sin to the life of righteousness.  It is the change wrought in the whole soul by the almighty Spirit of God when it is “created anew in Christ Jesus”; when it is “renewed after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness”; when the love of the world is changed into the love of God; pride into humility; passion into meekness; hatred, envy, malice, into a sincere, tender, disinterested love for all mankind.  In a word, it is that change whereby the earthly, sensual, devilish mind is turned into the “mind which was in Christ Jesus.”  This is the nature of the new birth: “So is every one that is born of the Spirit.”

      Wesley held the classical Arminian theology that it is possible to lose this new state of the soul through willful sin against God.  Further, Wesley held that regeneration and justification are simultaneous acts of God: “In order of time, neither of these is before the other; in the moment we are justified by the grace of God, through the redemption that is in Jesus, we are also ‘born of the Spirit’; but in order of thinking, as it is termed, justification precedes the new birth.  We first conceive his wrath to be turned away and then his Spirit to work in our hearts.”

      Wesley turns his attention to a third question, “To what end is it necessary that we should be born again?”  Once more his answer is very clear.  First, it is necessary for holiness.  “Gospel holiness is no less than the image of God stamped upon the heart; it is no other than the whole mind that was in Christ Jesus; it consists of all heavenly affections and tempers mingled together in one.”  Second, it is necessary for eternal salvation.  Being harmless, virtuous, honest, and moral is not enough; unless we are born again we will go to hell.  Finally, it is necessary for true happiness in this world as well as in the world to come.  A sinful heart gives more pain than pleasure, but a regenerate heart gives true joy and peace.

      To close the sermon, Wesley adds a few inferences.  Against much popular theology in the Church of England, he asserts that “baptism is not the new birth: they are not one and the same thing.”  He also emphasizes that the new birth does not always accompany the baptism of adults; “the tree is known by its fruits.”  He admits that the service of baptism for infants presupposes that they are regenerated in connection with baptism, but he makes no further comment on whether or not he holds this to be always the case.  Finally, he expresses disagreement with William Law, whose writings had been so influential upon the young Wesleys at Oxford, over his definition of regeneration.  In Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration (1739) Law had defined regeneration as a process of sanctification and renovation of the soul.  Wesley insists that the new birth is one thing and the life of holiness another; the latter flows from the former but must not be confused with it.

      What Wesley took to be “The Marks of the New Birth” are found in his sermon of that title, which is based on John 3:8.⁴³  The first mark, which is the foundation of the rest, is faith: “The true living faith, which whosoever hath is born of God, is not only assent, an act of the understanding; but a disposition, which God hath wrought in his heart; ‘a sure trust and confidence in God, that, through the merits of Christ, his sins are forgiven, and he reconciled to the favour of God.’”  The fruits of such faith include power over sin and peace with God.  The second mark is hope.  It arises from both the word of Scripture and the internal testimony of the Spirit of God that “we are the children of God ... heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.”  The indwelling Holy Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance.  The third mark of those who are born of God is love, “the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto them” (Rom. 5:5).  Those who love God and have his love in their hearts actually keep God’s commandments and do not sin.

43. Ibid., sermon 14, pp. 162–74.

      Wesley was deeply conscious that “without holiness no man can see the Lord.”  He saw Christian perfection and full sanctification as “the grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called Methodist; and for the sake of propagating this chiefly he appeared to have raised us up.”  How he understood scriptural holiness may be gathered from his sermons on the topic and from his Plain Account of Christian Perfection.  Unlike the Puritans Wesley did not speak of a postregeneration growth towards holiness, but of a growth in holiness.  Holiness is not something for which the regenerated individual must strive; rather, it is given in the act of internal regeneration and renewal of the soul.  True believers are to grow in the holiness and righteousness given to them at their new birth.  Their goal, which is perfect love, is truly attainable.  Indeed without true holiness it is not possible to enter into the presence of the Lord after the death of the body.  Thus believers are to aim at purity of motive and a life controlled by the love of God.  Of course, they will be fallible in judgment, and they will not be exempt from ignorance, bodily sickness, and temptation.  However, the state of perfection in motive and love is possible, though some will attain it only just before their death.  Entry into this higher state, which itself is capable of growth into deeper love of God and humankind, is usually by some definite experience distinct from, but similar to new birth.

      It is important to recall that Wesley’s doctrine of justification (unlike that of Whitefield) does not include the reckoning of the righteousness of Christ to the believer (i.e., the concept of imputation).  Thus the righteousness and holiness which believers need to enter the presence of the Lord cannot be the righteousness of Christ reckoned to them; it has to be that holiness which was implanted in the soul at regeneration and fully permeates the mind, will, and affections.  That justification was for Wesley only the forgiveness of sins and acceptance with God also explains why he believed it possible to lose not only the state of Christian perfection but also the enjoyment of initial salvation.

      Following Wesley, there have been many denominations, groups, and individuals who have taught the necessity of a second work of grace distinct from, but related to initial inward regeneration.  Few of these, however, have presented it in the precise context which informed Wesley’s thinking – the necessity of genuine personal holiness to enter God’s holy presence.  Most of the others who speak of a second work of grace have in view a special strength to witness for the Lord, to enjoy the gifts of the Spirit, or to have a deeper communion with God.

13 – Modern Evangelism: A Decision for Christ

      In the preceding chapter we referred to the Great Awakening in New England in the eighteenth century and to the teaching of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield on regeneration as they were involved in that revival.  In this chapter we will be concerned with the phenomenon of revivals, evangelistic campaigns, and crusades from the early nineteenth century to the present day.  We will confine ourselves to the teaching of American evangelists and discover that for the majority of them (and probably for their supporters as well) the following observations are accurate: (1) The expressions “to be born again,” “to be converted,” and “to make a decision for Christ” tend to run into each other and mean much the same.  Particularly, to be born again is seen not as a passive but an active experience.  (2) It is held that regeneration can occur immediately in the context of the evangelistic service: there are no requisite preparations to delay one’s decision for Christ.  (3) It is maintained that regeneration has no meaningful connection with infant baptism and little vital relation to adult (believers’) baptism.  To these three points the only notable exceptions were the founding fathers of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

The Second Awakening

      Revival occurred in the period of the rapid western expansion of the new nation.¹  By 1829 more than a third of the population lived west of the Allegheny Mountains.  There were revivals in the East and West, from Maine to Tennessee.  Naturally, there were less sophistication and more excitement on the frontier, where in the religious exercises known as camp meetings thousands professed to be born again and converted.  Peter Cartwright (1785–1872), a Methodist itinerant preacher, published his autobiography in 1856, in which he provides vivid accounts of dynamic preaching, spiritual awakenings, instant conversions, and great emotional excitement with striking physical accompaniments: “I have known these camp-meetings to last three or four weeks, and great good resulted from them.  I have seen more than a hundred sinners fall like dead men under one powerful sermon ... and I will venture to assert that many happy thousands were awakened and converted to God at these camp meetings.”²

1. For an introduction to the period of the Second Great Awakening see George C. Bedell, Leo Sandon, Jr., and Charles T. Wellborn, Religion in America, ch. 3.

2. Peter Cartwright, The Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, p. 75.  For the phenomenon of the camp meeting see Charles A. Johnson, The Frontier Camp Meeting.

      The phenomenon of the camp meeting, which was well suited to the basic conditions of the frontier, was the brainchild of James McGready (1758–1817), a Presbyterian minister in Kentucky.  One of McGready’s converts, Barton W. Stone (1772–1844), recorded what happened at a typical camp meeting in 1801:

Many, very many, fell down as men slain in battle, and continued for hours together in an apparently breathless and motionless state, sometimes for a few moments reviving and exhibiting symptoms of life by a deep groan or piercing shriek, or by a prayer for mercy fervently uttered.  After lying there for hours they obtained deliverance.  The gloomy cloud that had covered their faces seemed gradually and visibly to disappear, and hope, in smiles, brightened into joy.  They would rise, shouting deliverances and then would address the surrounding multitude in language truly eloquent and impressive.  With astonishment did I hear men, women and children declaring the wonderful works of God and the glorious mysteries of the gospel.³

Later, Stone himself preached at such meetings and saw thousands professing new birth.

3. Cited by Leonard Woolsey Bacon, A History of American Christianity, p. 234.

      It has been observed that in this period three important characteristics were incorporated into evangelical Christianity and the ethos of the churches affected by revival: pietism, individualism, and reductionism.⁴  The incorporation of pietism does not refer to a transportation of classical Lutheran Pietism to America.  Rather it refers to a personal appropriation of God’s grace in Christ and thus to a subjective experience of religion, beginning with a profession of conversion or a decision to follow Christ.  This immediate and very personal experience of God’s grace tended to become an authority in its own right.

4. These points are made concerning Methodism in Edwin S. Gaustad, A Religious History of America, pp. 144–45, and utilized in Bedell, Sandon, and Wellborn, Religion in America, pp. 165–66.

      To survive on the frontier, self-reliance was necessary.  Frontier life tended to be individualistic, and so the revivalists’ stress on the individual’s being personally loved and saved by God fit right in.  Having experienced new birth – a very individual matter – the recipient was then responsible for the cultivation of a personal walk with God.  Every convert was deemed to have the right to interpret the Bible for himself or herself.

      By reductionism is meant that creeds, rituals, and ceremonies were pared down to a minimum set of (apparently) simple, basic convictions, beliefs, and styles of worship.  Thus regeneration was seen as merely another way of talking about conversion or about making a decision for Christ; further, “Ye must be born again” (KJV) was taken to be an imperative and thus a virtual equivalent of “Repent and believe” or “Receive the Lord Jesus into your heart.”

The Disciples of Christ

      The characteristics of pietism, individualism, and reductionism are, to a greater or lesser extent (depending on denomination, ethnic background, and political circumstances), still obvious in American evangelical Christianity.  This said, it would be wrong to assume that all those involved in the revivals and evangelistic campaigns of nineteenth-century America were without any theological sophistication.  While the preaching avoided complicated doctrine and provided practical illustrations and exhortations, some of the preachers gave themselves to serious biblical study and theological reflection.  One such was Alexander Campbell (1788–1866), who with Barton Stone and others (e.g., Walter Scott) founded the new denomination called the Disciples of Christ, which enjoyed phenomenal growth on the frontier in the mid-nineteenth century.⁵

5. See W. E. Garrison and A. T. DeGroot, The Disciples of Christ, for a basic account of the movement; and Byrdine Akers Abbott, The Disciples: An Interpretation, for its principles and practices.  It is important to bear in mind that the early Disciples were influenced by the distinctive teachings (on ecclesiology and conversion) of John Glas, Robert Sandeman, and the Haldane brothers, James Alexander and Robert.  For this influence see W. A. Gerrard, “Walter Scott, Frontier Disciples’ Evangelist.”

      The founding fathers of the Disciples of Christ came to see that, if they were truly to restore authentic primitive Christianity, baptism had to be intimately related to faith and repentance, regeneration and conversion.  This was obvious to them from their close study of the text of the New Testament.  They came up with the schema of faith, repentance, baptism for the remission of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the promise of eternal life.  Faith was understood as trust and confidence in Jesus as the Christ and Lord, repentance was understood as serious and sincere amendment of life on the basis of the gospel, and baptism by immersion was understood as a God-appointed ordinance for salvation (“he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” – Mark 16:16 [KJV]).

      Campbell explained this schema in his Christian System.  On the subject of baptism he wrote:

Baptism is designed to introduce the subjects of it into the participation of the blessings of the death and resurrection of Christ. ... But it has no abstract efficacy.  Without previous faith in the blood of Christ, and deep and unfeigned repentance before God, neither immersion in water, nor any other action, can secure to us the blessings of peace and pardon.  It can merit nothing.  Still to the believing penitent it is the means of receiving a formal, distinct and specific absolution, or release from guilt.  Therefore, none but those who have first believed the testimony of God and have repented of their sins, and that have been intelligently immersed into his death, have the full and explicit testimony of God, assuring them of pardon. [p. 58]

Such a position had an immediate appeal: had not Peter in his very first sermon called upon his hearers in these terms, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.  And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38)?

      In chapter 18 (“Conversion & Regeneration”) Campbell makes clear the different aspects of the change which is consummated by baptismal immersion.  He explains that the New Testament refers to this change by a variety of terms – “being quickened,” “being made alive,” “passing from death to life,” “being born again,” “having risen with Christ,” “turning to the Lord,” “being enlightened,” “conversion,” and “repentance unto life.”  Then he provides this careful statement:

The entire change effected in man by the Christian system consists in four things: a change of views; a change of affections; a change of state; and a change of life. ... As a change of views it is called “being enlightened” ... as a change of affections it is called “being reconciled” ... as a change of state it is called “being quickened” or “being born again” ... and as a change of life it is called “repentance unto life” or “conversion.” [p. 60]

He proceeds to insist that regeneration and conversion must not be made into synonyms (as they had been, he believed, in both classical Reformed theology and popular frontier preaching, for different reasons in each case):

We ought, then, to use this word [regeneration] in its strict and scriptural acceptation, if we would escape the great confusion now resting upon this subject.  The sophistry or delusion of this confusion is that making regeneration equivalent to the entire change, instead of to the one-fourth part of it, the community will be always imposed on and misled by seeking to find the attributes of conversion in the new birth, or of the new birth in conversion; and so of all the others.  Being born again is not conversion, nor a change of views, nor a change of affections, but a change of state. [p. 61]

Whether such a precise distinction can be maintained in popular teaching and preaching is another matter!

      Campbell insisted that the gift of the Spirit is bestowed on the believer only after baptism by immersion.  Certainly the Spirit has been active in bringing the believer to faith and repentance, but this specific activity is not his actual indwelling.

God gives his Holy Spirit to them who ask him according to his revealed will; and without this gift no one could be saved or ultimately triumph over all opposition. ... To those, then, who believe, repent, and obey the gospel, he actually communicates of his Good Spirit.  The fruits of that Spirit in them are “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, meekness and temperance.”  The attributes of character which distinguish the new man are each of them communications of the Holy Spirit, and thus are we the sons of God in fact, as well as in title, under the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. [p. 66]

Receiving the Holy Spirit the believer also is endowed with the gift of eternal life and can henceforth live in genuine Christian hope.

      Campbell and his associates insisted that the schema of faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Spirit, and the promise of eternal life correctly describes the actual progression of the work of God in saving the individual.  From the perspective of the history of doctrine, it is of great interest that this restorationist movement tied very closely together, as the patristic and medieval church had done, baptism, regeneration, and the gift of the Spirit.  For the Disciples, baptism is the consummation of faith and repentance, leading to forgiveness, regeneration, conversion, and the indwelling of the Spirit.

Charles Grandison Finney

      Leaving the frontier where Campbell had his successes, we return to the growing urban centers of the East Coast in order to notice the teaching of Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875), who may be described as the first great professional evangelist of North America.⁶

6. See Charles Grandison Finney, An Autobiography of Charles G. Finney, and the recent helpful study by David L. Weddle, The Law as Gospel: Revival and Reform in the Theology of Charles G. Fiпney.

      Having served a brief apprenticeship as a lawyer, Finney applied both the principles and the techniques of the courts to his calling as a preacher.  He adopted methods employed by attorneys in pleading their cases before the bar.  These included a powerful appeal to his hearers for immediate decision.  Further, his principles of theology were arrived at by applying legal reasoning to the text of Scripture.  He abandoned the traditional Calvinism of New England and the Presbyterian denomination of which he was initially a member to put forward his own system of theology, based on the idea that conversion is a decision to submit to God’s moral government, an act of will of which all are naturally capable.  One of his earliest published sermons, “Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts (1834),” conveyed his particular emphasis upon human duty and ability under God.  Here as elsewhere he insisted that people are responsible agents whose relationship to God is wholly ordered according to rational principles of divine moral government.  Changing one’s heart means a radical change in ultimate choice and intention – that is, choosing God, Christ, and heaven.

      Finney’s most sophisticated theological treatise is his Lectures on Systematic Theology.  This volume along with his Lectures on Revival presents a severely moderated New School Calvinism which is (by no means accurately) often termed “Arminianism.”⁷  There are four lectures on regeneration (27–30), although the substance of the doctrine is fully explained in the first two.⁸  In these he rejects the old-style New England Reformed theology with its teaching that regeneration is wholly a work of God with the subject passive, while conversion is a work of God in which the subject is active, exercising faith, repentance, hope, and love.  Finney rejects the old-style doctrine of regeneration because he rejects the old Reformed doctrine of human depravity and the bondage of the will to sin.  He denies the Calvinist position that the total depravity of the human soul necessitates a wholly supernatural act of regeneration.  He explains:

7. See George M. Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience, pp. 76–80.

8. Charles Grandison Finney, Lectures on Systematic Theology.  The Eerdmans reprint of 1964 is the edition used here.

To be born again is the same thing, in the Bible use of the term, as to have a new heart, to be a new creature, to pass from death unto life.  In other words, to be born again is to have a new moral character, to become holy.  To regenerate is to make holy. ...

      Both conversion and regeneration are sometimes in the Bible ascribed to God, sometimes to man, and sometimes to the subject; which shows clearly that the distinction under examination is arbitrary and theological rather than biblical.

      The fact is that both terms imply the simultaneous exercise of both human and divine agency.  The fact that a new heart is the thing done, demonstrates the activity of the subject; and the word regeneration or the expression “born of the Holy Spirit” asserts the divine agency.  The same is true of conversion, or the turning of the sinner to God.  God is said to turn him and he is said to turn himself. God draws him and he follows.  In both alike God and man are both active, and their activity is simultaneous.  God works or draws, and the sinner yields or turns, or which is the same thing, changes his heart, or, in other words, is born again. [pp. 283–84]

The identification of conversion with regeneration was to become a common presupposition within popular evangelism throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century.

      With respect to the reception of truth presented by the Holy Spirit via the preached word of the Bible, Finney held that the subject is passive.  However, when responding to this word the subject is active:

He is passive in the perception of the truth presented by the Holy Spirit.  I know that this perception is no part of regeneration.  But it is simultaneous with regeneration.  It induces regeneration.  It is the condition and the occasion of regeneration.  Therefore the subject of regeneration must be a passive recipient or percipient of the truth presented by the Holy Spirit, at the moment and during the act of regeneration.  The Spirit acts upon him through or by the truth: thus far he is passive.  He closes with truth: thus far he is active.  What a mistake those theologians have fallen into who represent the subject as altogether passive in regeneration!  This rids the sinner at once of the conviction of any duty or responsibility about it.  It is amazing that such an absurdity should have been so long maintained in the church.  But while it is maintained, it is no wonder that sinners are not converted to God.  While the sinner believes this, it is impossible, if he has it in mind, that he should be regenerated.  He stands and waits for God to do what God requires him to do and which no one can do for him.  Neither God, nor any other being, can regenerate him, if he will not turn. [p. 290]

      Finney was able to lecture in this manner because he believed that the human will is free to choose God.  He held that “God cannot do the sinner’s duty, and regenerate him without the right exercise of the sinner’s own agency.”  Concerning the duty of ministers he observed, “Ministers should lay themselves out and press every consideration upon sinners, just as heartily and as freely as if they expected to convert them themselves.  They should aim at, and expect the regeneration of sinners, upon the spot, and before they leave the house of God” (p. 299).  Since he put such stress on the moral government of God, it is not surprising that Finney also laid the duty of sanctification and holiness upon converts and insisted that they be concerned with social righteousness as well as personal holiness.

Post-Civil War Urban Evangelism

      By far the most important and influential evangelist in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was Dwight Lyman Moody (1837–1899), a Congregational layman.⁹  He appealed to a wide spectrum of people, especially the business classes, and he employed business techniques in publicizing and organizing his meetings.  He was not a sophisticated theologian; his message revolved around the “three R’s” – “ruin by sin, redemption by Christ, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit.”

9. For Moody see Stanley N. Gundry, Love Them In: The Life and Theology of D. L. Moody.

      According to records kept by Moody he preached his sermon on “The New Birth” some 184 times between October 23, 1881, and November 2, 1899.¹⁰  He never conducted a mission without preaching on the new birth or at least incorporating the substance of this celebrated message into another sermon.  The sermon on regeneration appears in nearly every book of sermons by Moody,¹¹ and it appears frequently in paraphrase in newspaper reports of his campaigns.

10. Ibid., p. 122.

11. In, e.g., The Best of D. L. Moody: Sixteen Sermons by the Great Evangelist, ed. Wilbur M. Smith, pp. 90–95.

      Moody often began the sermon by stating what inward regeneration is not.  It is not to be identified with going to church, being baptized, being confirmed, saying one’s prayers, regularly reading the Bible, or being the best one can be.  These things are good in themselves, but they do not constitute regeneration.  God alone, insisted Moody, can bring about the new birth, just as he alone created the universe.

In the first chapter of Genesis we find God working alone; he went on creating the world all alone.  Then we find Christ coming to Calvary alone.  And when we get to the third chapter of John we find that the work of regeneration is the work of God alone.  The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots; we are born in sin, and the change of heart must come from God.  We believe in the good old Gospel.

Here Moody sounds like an old New England Calvinist (he was born in Massachusetts).  However, he did not believe in the necessity of a long preparation of the heart for regeneration.  As an evangelist preaching to the thousands, he called for immediate acceptance of Christ as Savior and Lord.

      Moody was not a systematic thinker but a practical man and an evangelist whose aim was to convert people at the moment they heard him, not the next day or week.  Thus, while teaching that regeneration is the work of God alone, he also insisted that those who responded to the gospel he preached would by God’s help and intervention be regenerated and converted.  Accordingly, he would typically say to the crowds:

If you would be saved, call upon God first, and then God will give you help, and by His power you can turn away from sin, and from your evil thoughts, and will get pardon.  But you haven’t power to give up your evil courses until you call upon God, and until He gives you strength.  After you have called upon the Lord, you must receive Him when he comes; you must make room for Him.¹²

Moody’s sense of human responsibility before God caused him to use aggressive evangelistic methods; however, his keen awareness that regeneration is the giving of a new heart and nature by the Holy Spirit restrained him from employing excessive tactics.

12. Cited by Gundry, Love Them In, p. 126.

      Moody certainly believed in instantaneous conversion and regeneration (words he never carefully distinguished and often used as synonyms).  He was criticized for holding such a view by a variety of people from Unitarians through Disciples of Christ to high Calvinists.  In response he insisted that the act of conversion and regeneration is like Noah’s walking through the doorway of the ark and into safety, or a slave’s crossing a national border into safety.  He admitted, however, that some people – especially children – will not know the precise time of their regeneration.  But they will certainly be able to affirm with joy, “Once I was blind, but now I see.”

      Following in the steps of Moody were such evangelists as Rodney (Gipsy) Smith (1860–1947), Sam (Samuel Porter) Jones (1847–1906), John Wilbur Chapman (1859–1918), and Billy (William Ashley) Sunday (1862–1935).¹³  Sunday was known for his flamboyant style and sensational tactics, but what he said about regeneration was much the same as Moody had said.  For example:

Multitudes are in the church visibly but they have never been born again.  They are members of the physical church but not members of the body of Christ, although the members of the visible church and of the body of Christ ought to be synonymous.  But everybody that is a member of the visible church is not a member of the body of Christ.  One of the first evidences, if not the very first evidence, of the divine Spirit in a man or woman is the fact that that man or woman is reaching out after those that are not Christians and trying to help them become Christians.  Now, that being true, you can see that mighty few in the church have ever been born again.

      You have got to have a spiritual birth, and a spiritual birth is to come through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.  You were born of the flesh – there you are – but you’ve not been born of the Spirit.  So there are two births, the flesh and the Spirit.  But being born again isn’t by money or culture but by faith in Jesus Christ.¹⁴

Sunday’s sermons are typical of the popular – sometimes vulgar – presentations of the gospel that have often embarrassed the faithful in the traditional denominations.  However, since his day there have been many evangelists with a similar message.

13. For Sunday see William G. McLoughlin, Billy Sunday Was His Real Name, and William T. Ellis, “Billy” Sunday: The Man and His Message.

14. From a sermon preached on April 28, 1917, in New York and found among the papers of William and Helen Sunday in the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton, Illinois.

      We turn now to consider the message of Reuben Archer Torrey (1856–1928), who, in many ways, is considered the natural successor of Moody.¹⁵  He came from a well-to-do New York family and attended Yale, where he professed evangelical conversion just before his graduation in 1875.  He then entered Yale Divinity School, where, towards the end of his course, he heard Moody, who challenged him to work for the Lord by winning converts.  Before being ordained to the Congregational ministry Torrey studied the writings of Charles Finney.  While not agreeing with all he read therein, he did come to the conclusion that the church of God ought to be perpetually revived by the Holy Spirit.  A period of study in Germany led him to value his Bible the more, and during a pastoral and evangelistic ministry in Minneapolis he came to believe that the baptism with the Holy Spirit is not identical with initial regeneration and conversion.  Thus he helped prepare the way for the distinction which the charismatic movement draws between regeneration and baptism in the Spirit.  From Minneapolis he moved to Chicago to work with Moody, and from that point began his career as a much-traveled and successful evangelist, Bible teacher, and educator.

15. There is useful material in Roger Martin, R. A. Torrey, Apostle of Certainty.

      Torrey stated his theological views clearly in many books.  In his frequently reprinted What the Bible Teaches we find that his doctrine of regeneration is in essence much the same as that of Moody.  (However, as we have noted, Torrey did distinguish the initial act of God in regeneration from a further act of God which he called the baptism of the Spirit.  This latter event could occur immediately after conversion, or it could occur later in response to a heartfelt desire for it.)

      At the end of the chapter on new birth Torrey writes:

In the new birth the Word of God is the seed; the human heart is the soil; the preacher of the Word is the sower, and drops the seed into the soil; God by his Spirit opens the heart to receive the seed (Acts 16:14); the hearer believes; the Spirit quickens the seed into life in the receptive heart; the new divine nature springs up out of the divine Word; the believer is born again, created anew, made alive, passed out of death into life. [p. 335]

Earlier he had insisted that baptism is not the new birth and that the “water” of John 3:5 does not refer to the physical water of baptism, but to the cleansing effects of the Word of God.  Also he emphasized that regeneration means both the arrival of the Spirit to indwell the soul and the beginnings of a changed life of holiness and righteousness.

      We should also note Torrey’s involvement in the editing of The Fundamentals, a twelve-volume series of articles (1910–1915) defending Protestant orthodoxy.  Essay 39, entitled “Regeneration–Conversion–Reformation,” was written by George W Lasher, a friend of Torrey.  The teaching is similar to that of Torrey himself.  There is a definite rejection of the concept of baptismal regeneration, and conversion is presented as the visible expression of inward spiritual regeneration.  Likewise a genuine reformation of life is seen as proceeding from true inward regeneration.

      Torrey asserted that regeneration ought to be followed as soon as possible by the baptism with the Spirit: this is “a. definite experience of which one may and ought to know whether he has received it or not” (p. 270). It is given by God for the purpose of strengthening the believer to serve the kingdom of Christ. With the baptism of the Spirit come gifts of the Spirit, power for service, boldness in testimony, and deeper love of the truth, God, and needy sinners. Torrey taught that baptism with the Spirit is bestowed upon those who fulfill certain fundamental conditions: these are repentance, faith in Jesus Christ as an all-sufficient Savior, and baptism in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. Often the gift is bestowed only after earnest prayer has been offered. (It is interesting that Torrey, citing texts like Acts 19:2-6, made baptism in water a condition for baptism with the Spirit, whereas, as we have noted, he saw no necessary connection between baptism in water and inward regeneration.) Torrey obviously held that there is no effective Christian living and witnessing unless one is filled with the Spirit, that is, has been baptized with the Spirit. In regeneration, life is imparted, while in the baptism with the Spirit, power for service is given.

Billy Graham and Modern Evangelism

      Billy (William Franklin) Graham was born in 1918 in North Carolina.  He was ordained as a Southern Baptist pastor and then became the first evangelist of the Youth for Christ movement.¹⁶  Since 1954 he has enjoyed a world reputation as an evangelist and ambassador of peace.  At the time of writing he is still engaged in holding crusades in various countries.

16. In Campus Life: Operations Manual (1984) the Youth for Christ movement still characterizes itself as a “soul-winning” organization, asserting in its statement of faith, “We believe that, for the salvation of lost and sinful man, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.”  The contents of the manual suggest that regeneration is equivalent to making a decision for Christ.

      Graham often speaks of “being born again,” using the expression as if it is virtually synonymous with “receiving Christ,” “making a decision for Christ,” and “being converted.”  In fact he has a book entitled How to Be Born Again.  This is an odd title when judged by either classical Reformed or Arminian theology because both view the how of regeneration as known only to God himself.  Graham’s theme might more correctly be stated as “how to become a Christian who can humbly claim to have been born again by the Holy Spirit.”  The book has three sections: the first deals with “man’s problem” (sin and self-centeredness), the second with “God’s answer” in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and the third with “man’s response” in terms of the new birth.  The third part has but three chapters entitled “The New Birth Is for Now,” “The New Birth Is Not Just a ‘Feeling,’” and “Alive and Growing.”  In the first of these Graham insists, “Jesus said that God can change men and women from the inside out.  It was a challenge – a command.  He didn’t say, ‘It might be nice if you were born again,’ or, ‘If it looks good to you, you might be born again.’  Jesus said, ‘You must be born again’ (John 3:7)” (p. 131).  Here we encounter the common mistake made by so many evangelists who take the words of Jesus in John 3 concerning the necessity of new birth as though they were a command to us to do something about it.¹⁷

17. This mistake is made, for example, by another Southern Baptist evangelist, Clifton Woodrow Brannon (b. 1912), whose papers in the Billy Graham Center Archives equate conversion (turning from sin to Christ) with regeneration.

      But How to Be Born Again is a popular book and to look for theological precision in it is perhaps unfair.  So let us turn instead to “The New Birth,” an essay Graham contributed to a serious volume entitled Fundamentals of the Faith.¹⁸  In contrast to the rest of the essays (which are basically academic statements), “The New Birth” moves from what seems to be fairly serious theology to sermonic style.  Toward the beginning, for example, there is a theological description of the person who has been born again: “The Bible teaches that his will is changed, his objectives for living are changed, his disposition is changed, his affections are changed, and he now has purpose and meaning in his life.  In the new birth, a new life has been born in his soul” (p. 192).  Then a little later the evangelist comes out of the skin of the theologian: “Any person who is willing to trust Jesus as his personal Saviour can receive the new birth now.  The early Methodist preachers were called the ‘now preachers’ because they offered salvation on the spot” (p. 193).  The evangelist is further revealed in a section entitled “How to Become a New Man,” which includes a couple of stories; an explanation of conversion, repentance, and faith; some comments on emotion, the will, and assurance; and a step-by-step account of how to receive Christ.  In this section Graham appears to assume that the new birth encompasses conversion, for he recognizes that there are some fine Christians (including his own wife) who know they have received Christ but who cannot remember a specific time of conversion.

18. Billy Graham, “The New Birth,” in Fundamentals of the Faith, ed. Carl F. H. Henry, pp. 189–208.  The material in the essay originally appeared in Graham’s World Aflame (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965).

      Graham explains that those who have made a decision for Christ and received him have become children of God.  He moves on to deal with “the dynamics of the new man.”  When we are converted, he explains, our sin is forgiven and we are justified by faith.  Further, we are adopted by God and receive the gift of the indwelling Spirit and through his power the possibility of victory over sin and temptation.  All this happens in direct connection with being born again and converted.  To make his position clearer, Graham adds:

Let it be said at once that the new man is not the old man improved or made over.  He is not even the old man reformed or remodeled, for God does not make the new out of the old nor put new wine in old bottles.  The new man is Christ formed in us.  As in the creation, we were created in the image of God.  In the new creation, we are recreated in the image of Christ....

      The new man is actually Christ in the heart, and Christ in the heart means that He is in the center of our being.  The Biblical use of the word “heart” symbolizes the whole realm of the affections.  Into this area Christ comes to transform our affections, with the result that the things for which we formerly had affection pass away, and the things for which we now have affection are new and of God.  If Christ dwells in the heart, it means that He dwells also in the mind with its varied function of thinking and self-determination.  In the process of change into a new creature when Christ indwells the heart, the human personality is neither absorbed nor destroyed.  Instead it is enriched and empowered by this union with Christ. [p. 203]

In this careful statement we encounter Graham the theologian again.

      In the rest of his essay, Graham works on the assumption that a Christian believer has two natures, the new and the old.  The new cannot sin but the old wants to sin.  Thus there is spiritual conflict, and the new nature, in order to be victorious, has to be regularly fed while the old nature is starved.  The feeding consists of Bible reading, prayer, and Christian fellowship.

      It would appear, then, that Graham holds that the act of regeneration and conversion signifies the entry of Christ (in and through the Holy Spirit) into the heart of a believer to provide a new center, motivation, and power so that a life of faith, hope, love, and obedience is possible.  This new birth, conversion, or coming of Christ into the heart normally occurs when a person in faith and repentance makes a conscious decision for Christ; however, it may occur without one’s being aware of a specific moment of decision and of inner change.  In such a case, the person will know afterwards that he or she is a child of God.  Like other evangelists Graham insists that the onus is upon everyone who hears the gospel message to accept it there and then.  Though he holds to a doctrine of original sin, he believes that the will is sufficiently free to choose Christ and in choosing him to be transformed by him.

      Further information concerning Graham’s view of new birth is available in the literature used in training the people who counsel those who come forward at the end of his services.  At the London crusade of 1954 a leaflet entitled “Lead Them to Christ!  A Talk to Inquiry Room Workers” was distributed to the counselors.  After discussing the skill needed to lead a person to Christ, this well-written British publication describes the moment of new birth:

The actual moment of the new birth is the point at which the soul sees Christ crucified as his own Saviour; when the Saviour becomes real to him; it is a moment of vision.  It is variously described in the Bible.  It is believing, in the sense of a conviction which inevitably will mould conduct.  It is trusting, as a child relaxes into the arms of a rescuing parent.  It is receiving, as a wife opens the door to her husband when he comes home.  It is calling, as a patient calls for his nurse.  It is coming, as a guest to a feast.  It is repenting, as a would-be murderer drops his weapon ere he is reconciled to his victim.  It is obeying, as a casting obeys a mould before it sets.  But the one who is alongside to help as the soul is born of God is responsible to bring the Scriptures to bear, so that Christ is kept to the forefront of the mind.  When anyone is born again, it is by believing, trusting, receiving, obeying Christ; calling upon him, repenting towards him, coming to him.  It is always to Christ that we must lead them.

Here inward regeneration and conversion are seen as basically the same, and the final decision is wholly that of the individual being counseled.

      Apart from conducting crusades, Graham also has been responsible for convening important conferences.  One of these was the World Congress on Evangelism, held in Berlin in 1966.  Here different views of regeneration emerged as papers were delivered and discussion was pursued.  Basically there were those who are commonly called Arminian and those commonly called Calvinist, along with a few Lutherans who did not fit into either bracket.  Harold J. Ockenga, then minister of Park Street Church in Boston, presented the Arminian view: on hearing the gospel a person is free to choose Christ, to repent and believe; on actually doing so, one is born again by the Spirit.  Ockenga was supported by Bishop Maurice A. P Wood of England.  In contrast, various American Presbyterians distinguished between regeneration as a secret act of God and conversion as a human activity arising from the new presence and power within the soul.  They insisted that new birth implies total inability and passivity.

      Interesting differences arose in the discussion of baptism.  Out on a wing was the Lutheran doctrine of baptismal regeneration, a view commonly condemned by popular evangelists from Finney to Graham, but defended by Richard Moller Petersen of Copenhagen.  George R. Beasley-Murray pointed out that in the apostolic age the first and most important way to confess that one belonged to Christ was in the rite of baptism.  His definition of regeneration is also of interest: “Regeneration signifies entry into the ‘regeneration’ which is the new age or the new world (Matt. 19:28).  It takes place when the Holy Spirit unites a man with the Lord, who by his resurrection initiated the new creation.  Paul expressed the thought without the word when he spoke about a man becoming a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17).”  Similar references to the new age and order, the regeneration of the cosmos, are rare in evangelistic sermons and literature.

      The Berlin congress revealed that while evangelism is a priority for all evangelicals, there is no basic agreement among them on whether original sin affects a person’s ability to choose the gospel, whether regeneration is the cause of conversion or a synonym of conversion, and whether regeneration once having occurred can be taken away or lost.  The majority of those involved in evangelistic enterprises do, however, like Graham, appear to equate regeneration and conversion and to believe that, in essence, every person, in his or her own power as God’s creature, is free to choose or reject Christ.

      Six months before the congress in Berlin, there had been a congress in Wheaton, Illinois, on a similar theme – “The Church’s Worldwide Mission.”  It was attended by delegates of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association and the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, societies very sympathetic to the work and message of Graham.  In the resultant document, entitled the Wheaton Declaration, the delegates stated a theology much like that of Graham, including the view that regeneration is something we have to set in motion by our believing:

In Christ has been made possible a new type of life, a Christ-centered, Christ-controlled life.  Through the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, we call every man, wherever he may be, to a change of heart toward God (repentance), personal faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, and surrender to that Lordship.  The proclamation of this “good news” has at its heart the explicit imperative, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).  God says he will judge the world by his crucified, risen Son.  We believe that if men are not born again, they will be subject to eternal separation from a righteous, holy God.  “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3).

The emphasis upon the explicit imperative¹⁹ is to be interpreted as a reaction against the doctrines of universalism and liberalism favored by leaders within the missionary societies of certain mainline denominations.  The evangelicals wanted to make it known that they held to the absolute necessity of new birth.  In emphasizing this point they often made the mistake of treating regeneration as if it were something human beings are commanded to bring about in their lives.  They made it (functionally at least) the equivalent of a decision for Christ.

19. Compare the title of an Inter-Varsity booklet of the same period – “Regeneration: The Inescapable Imperative.”  See also Charles H. Troutman, Seven Pillars: Distinctives of Evangelical Student Witness.  This book and Troutman’s papers as general director of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, which are housed at the Billy Graham Center Archives, show that he clearly saw “Ye must be born again” as a command to make a decision for Christ.

      Graham gave the opening address at the International Congress on World Evangelization at Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1974.  This congress produced what has become known as the Lausanne Covenant, which must rank as one of the best (if not the best) modern statements of the nature and task of evangelism.  Regrettably for our purposes, it does not have a specific section on regeneration and conversion.  It does, however, state:

To evangelize is to spread the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures and that as the reigning Lord he now offers the forgiveness of sins and the liberating gift of the Spirit to all who repent and believe. ... Evangelism is the proclamation of the historical, biblical Christ as Savior and Lord with a view to persuading people to come to him personally and so be reconciled to God.

Despite Christ’s command in Matthew 28:19, no mention is made of baptism as the outward and visible sign of the inward spiritual change and gift of the indwelling Spirit.  In fact, though much is said about the church and its task of evangelism, nothing at all is said about the sacraments of the church.  The only use of the verb “to be born again” occurs in the section on Christian social responsibility where we read that “when people receive Christ they are born again into his kingdom and must seek not only to exhibit but also to spread its righteousness in the midst of an unrighteous world.”  The truth is that Lausanne had the same mix of theological views concerning regeneration as had the earlier Berlin congress.

Epilogue

14 – Born from Above

      It is now the moment to look back over the sacred text of Scripture and the teaching within the church in order to come up with some guidelines for a contemporary doctrine of regeneration.  How these guidelines are used will in part be determined by the context in which the doctrine is being expressed, whether in baptismal liturgy, in preaching, or in teaching.

      1.  Regeneration occurs and will occur because Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, is exalted at the right hand of the Father in heaven as the Lord and as the Head of the church.

      Here regeneration is understood both as inward spiritual renewal today and as cosmic renewal in the future.¹  There are the washing of regeneration (Titus 3:5) and universal regeneration (Matt. 19:28).  By his death and resurrection, Jesus became the Head of a new creation and order.  Spiritual birth from above (where Christ is exalted) within a human soul causes an addition to the new creation which will replace the present creation after the last judgment.  By inward regeneration a person is united to Jesus Christ in and around whom the new creation exists and is growing.

1. On the subject of cosmic regeneration see Peter Toon, Heaven and Hell: A Biblical and Theological Overview.

      Thus we agree with George R. Beasley-Murray, who told the Berlin World Congress on Evangelism (1966) that “regeneration signifies entry into the regeneration which is the new age or the new world (Matt. 19:28). It takes place when the Holy Spirit unites a man with the Lord, who by his resurrection initiated the new creation.” We also agree with the following explanation of the Anglo-Catholic theologian E. L. Mascall:

Becoming a Christian means being incorporated into the human nature of Christ, the very human nature which he united to his divine Person in the womb of the Blessed Virgin and which he offered on the Cross as “a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world,” the human nature which in his Resurrection and Ascension has been glorified and set free from the spatial limitations of ordinary human existence.  This adoptive union with the triumphant Christ is altogether unique in its kind: it involves a real participation Christ’s human nature on the part of the believer and a real communication of it to him.  By it the believer’s own human nature is not destroyed but is strengthened and perfected by its grafting into the archetypal human nature of the Ascended Lord.  There is no destruction of the created person, nor in being supernaturalized is he removed from the natural order.  His life as a citizen of Earth continues, but he has a new and greater citizenship in Heaven.  He is a new man, because he has been recreated in the New Adam.  And because the Christ is both God and man, the Christian, by his incorporation into Christ, has received a share in the life of God himself.  He has been made a partaker of the divine nature, the nature of God who is Trinity.  His life is hid with Christ in God.²

2. E. L. Mascall, Christ, the Christian and the Church, p. 109.

      2.  Regeneration of an individual person occurs when the Holy Spirit enters the soul.

      Being omnipresent, the Holy Spirit is present in and throughout the whole of the created order.  Sent by God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit secretly and invisibly works upon and in the hearts of those who hear and know the gospel of God, convincing them of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:7–11).  And as the Spirit of the exalted Lord Jesus, he actually enters the soul of those who believe the Good News.

      The arrival of the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of Christ, to dwell in the soul constitutes the essence of regeneration.  He comes both as the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, and as the Spirit of sanctification, that is, the Paraclete of Christ.  As a member of the Holy Trinity, the eternal bond of love uniting the Father and Son, the Spirit brings into the soul nothing less than true love, agapē, God’s own love.  And as the Paraclete of Christ he brings the mind, virtue, character, and gifts of the exalted Head of the church.

      Understood in this way, it is difficult to see how regeneration could be improved upon by a decisive second experience of the Spirit (as many Christians insist is necessary).  On the other hand, the testimony of those who claim to have been baptized in or filled with the Spirit cannot be set aside or discounted.  Many sincere Christians have had a decisive second experience of the presence and power of the Spirit of God, an experience which has transformed their lives.  Perhaps the best expression for this additional experience is “release of the Spirit,” for such an expression safeguards a full doctrine of inner regeneration as well as accepts the reality of a second decisive experience.³

3. Theologians who espouse the charismatic movement and also belong to churches which practice both infant baptism and confirmation (Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican) are often much exercised to define the relationship between the release of (baptism in, filling with) the Spirit and these rites, especially confirmation, which traditional Roman Catholic theology sees as the sacramental giving of the Holy Spirit to strengthen the Christian.

      Of course, we must not think of the indwelling Holy Spirit as if he were like a new organ implanted in the soul.  His dwelling in believers is not to be thought of in materialist categories but rather as a spiritual presence who can make himself felt and known as he pleases.  We talk of his entering in and his coming in power for this is how his visitation seems to us; but we must remember that all these expressions are merely attempts to describe something which, being supernatural, is beyond words.  The Spirit’s presence is known primarily through the fruit that he causes to appear (Gal. 5:22–23).

      3.  Inward regeneration may be said to be paradoxical in that it can be regarded as both (a) the internal cause of true faith and genuine repentance and (b) God’s gift to those who repent and believe the gospel.

      If we begin from an Augustinian doctrine of original sin, human depravity, and the bondage of the will, we must conclude that there can be no authentic response to the gospel unless the Holy Spirit, working within the soul, enables or causes its faculties of understanding, will, and affections to move towards God and holiness.  Also, if we believe that an infant who dies can enter into God’s holy presence in heaven but must be regenerate in order to do so, then we must similarly conclude that regeneration is (at least in this case) an act of God in which the human subject is passive.

      On the other hand, the New Testament often represents the gift of the indwelling Spirit of regeneration as following the exercise of faith and repentance.  In John’s Gospel, coming to Christ, believing on him, and drinking his life-giving water precede the arrival of the Spirit (John 4:10–14; 6:35; 7:37–39).  In the Acts of the Apostles those who repent and believe receive the Spirit (2:38; 3:19; 5:32; 10:43–44; 11:14–17).  Likewise Paul speaks of receiving the Spirit in faith (Gal. 3:2, 14; Eph. 1:13).  It would seem that in the case of adults the Spirit first empowers the soul to engage in faith and repentance, and then enters that soul with regenerating grace, his own presence.

      4.  Conversion may be understood either as α synonym for internal regeneration or as the immediate result of regeneration.

      A converted person is one who freely trusts, serves, and loves God in the name of Jesus Christ.  While there are those who from their childhood have genuinely loved God and desired to serve him, the majority who are now Christians have had an explicit experience of conversion (the duration of the experience varies from one individual to the next).  They are conscious that their attitude, aims, and actions have changed from what they were; and further, they realize they ought to change more in the direction of God and his will in Jesus Christ.

      The understanding of conversion as equivalent to regeneration is characteristic primarily of those who firmly believe that God himself must actually redirect the human will to choose the gospel.  However, it is probably best to use the word conversion to point to a change in attitude and behavior, thinking and lifestyle, created by the gospel of Christ.

      5.  Regeneration is certainly a personal experience, but it is not meant to be an individualistic experience.

      The Spirit who comes to dwell in the soul and who unites the soul to the exalted Lord Jesus also unites the soul to others who likewise are temples of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration certainly establishes a relationship with God the Father so that the regenerated become the adopted children of God; it also necessarily gives to the regenerated individual a membership in God’s family.  To use a different image: the regenerate person becomes a member of the body of Christ and functions along with its other members – what is a toe without a foot without a leg...?  Thus regeneration is the beginning of both a personal pilgrimage of holiness and a membership amongst a people who are involved with God in his mission in the world as well as with one another, encouraging and building each other up in the faith.

      6.  The rite of baptism is not only God’s appointed way of his either bestowing or confirming the gift of the Holy Spirit (i.e., the grace of regeneration) and of our entering into the church of Christ, but it is also the means by which the new Christian testifies to having been born from above and converted to the Lord Jesus Christ.

      To speak of baptism as the new Christian’s testimony to rebirth is of course to refer to adult baptism, which is the form of baptism described in the New Testament.  In the growing secularism of Western society this form of baptism will become more common, and thus the church will be given the chance to recover that approach to baptism which was known in the early centuries.  If baptism were once again to be scheduled for Easter Day or some other festival, and if converts were schooled in Christian faith and morals, and then if the actual baptism were set in an appropriate rich ritual and liturgy, the dynamic relationship between regeneration and baptism, so obvious in the New Testament and patristic literature, would perhaps be recovered.  Ritual is very important in human society (witness the extent of ritual at American political rallies and football games);⁴ thus the early church showed profound insight in developing the rite of baptism in such a way as to reflect (a) the turning of the soul from the devil and sin to God and (b) the baptized individual’s entry into the church and the service of Jesus Christ.  A further incentive for reestablishing certain elements of the ancient ritual is that an appropriate policy for the baptism of the infant children of committed church members cannot truly be worked out until a deep understanding of the relationship of baptism and regeneration is recovered by the Western churches.

4. No longer do anthropologists look upon ritual as belonging exclusively to primitive societies and cultures, but they see it as a fundamental expression of human rationality.  The Christian church has lost much by failing to develop an appropriate ritual for Christian initiation, a ritual to symbolize inner regeneration and outward conversion to God.  This failure is particularly obvious in evangelical circles.

      When all our studies are over, the questions that each of us must face are: Am I begotten of God the Father?  Am I born from above where Christ is exalted?  Am I born again by the Holy Spirit?  Am I a new creation in Christ Jesus?

      To know (in the full sense of the word) the doctrine of new birth means to have experienced the new birth and to be living as a new creature.  Regrettably, it is possible (in fact too easy) to know much about the doctrine and not have had the experience of birth from above.

Heavenly Father,

by the power of your Holy Spirit

you give to your faithful people

new life in the water of baptism.

Guide and strengthen us by that same Spirit,

that we who are born again

may serve you in faith and love,

and grow into the full stature of your Son Jesus Christ,

who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God now and forever.  Amen.

Bibliography

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Adamson, James B.  The Epistle of James.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976.

Althaus, Paul.  The Theology of Martin Luther.  Translated by Robert C. Schultz. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966.

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Bacon, Leonard Woolsey.  A History of American Christianity.  New York: Scribner, 1900.

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Barrett, C. K.  A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.  Harper’s New Testament Commentary.  New York: Harper, 1958.

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Bright, John.  Jeremiah.  The Anchor Bible.  Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,1965.

Bromiley, Geoffrey W.  Baptism and the Anglican Reformers.  London: Lutterworth, 1953.

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Cartwright, Peter.  The Autobiography of Peter Cartwright.  Nashville: Abingdon, 1956.

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Cherry, Conrad.  The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal.  Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1966.

Chrysostom, John.  Baptismal Instructions.  Edited and translated by P W Harkins.  Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1963.

Citron, Bernhard.  New Birth: A Study of the Evangelical Doctrine of Conversion in the Protestant Fathers.  Edinburgh: University Press, 1951.

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Cranfield, C. E. B.  The Gospel According to St. Mark. Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary.  Cambridge: University Press, 1959.

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Dallimore, Arnold.  George Whitefield.  2 vols.  Westchester, Ill.: Cornerstone; Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1984.

Daniélou, Jean.  Bible et liturgie.  Paris: Cerf, 1958.

Davids, Peter H.  The Epistle of James.  New International Greek Testament Commentary.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982.

Davidson, A. B.  The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel.  Cambridge: University Press, 1916.

Deeter, Allan C.  “An Historical and Theological Introduction to P J. Spener’s Pia Desideria: A Study in German Pietism.”  Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1963.

de Rys, John, and Lubbert Gerrits.  “A Brief Confession of the Principal Articles of the Christian Faith.”  In Baptist Confessions of Faith, edited by William Joseph McGlothlin. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1911.

de Schweinitz, Edmund A., ed.  The Moravian Manual.  Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1859.

Dunn, J. D. G.  Jesus and the Spirit.  London: SCM, 1975.

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Furnish, Raymond.  The Meaning of Baptism: A Comparison of the Teaching and Practice of the Fourth Century with the Present Day.  London: SPCK, 1985.

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Goode, William.  The Doctrine of the Church of England as to the Effects of Baptism in the Case of Infants.  London: J. Hatchard, 1850.

Goppelt, Leonhard.  New Testament Theology.  2 vols.  Edited by Jürgen Rolofi: Translated by John E. Alsup.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981–1982.

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Gundry, Stanley N.  Love Them In: The Life and Theology of D. L. Moody.  Chicago: Moody, 1976.

Guthrie, Donald.  New Testament Theology.  Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity; Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1981.

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Guthrie, William.  The Christians Great Interest.  London: Banner of Truth, 1969.

Harrisville, Roy A.  The Concept of Newness in the New Testament.  Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1960.

Hendriksen, William.  The Gospel of John.  Grand Rapids: Baker, 1953.

Heppe, Heinrich.  Reformed Dogmatics Set Out and Illustrated from the Sources.  Edited by Ernst Bizer.  Translated by G. T. Thomas.  London: Allen & Unwin, 1950.

Heron, Alasdair I. C.  The Holy Spirit.  Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983.

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Hoekema, Anthony A.  “A New English Translation of the Canons of Dort.”  Calvin Theological Journal 3 (1968): 133–61.

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Hunter, A. M.  Christ and the Kingdom.  Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant, 1980.

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Jeremias, Joachim.  New Testament Theology.  Translated by John Bowden.  New York: Scribner; London: SCM, 1971.

Johnson, Charles A.  The Frontier Camp Meeting.  Dallas: Southern Methodist University, 1955.

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Leith, John H., ed.  Creeds of the Churches.  Rev. ed.  Richmond, Va.: John Knox, 1973.

Leonard, Emile G.  A History of Protestantism.  Edited by H. H. Rowley.  Translated by Joyce M. H. Reid.  London: Thomas Nelson, 1965.

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Marshall, I. Howard.  The Acts of the Apostles.  Туnda1e New Testament Commentary.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1980.

Martin, Roger.  R. A. Torrey, Apostle of Certainty.  Murfreesboro, Tenn.: Sword of the Lord, 1970.

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Schmidt, Martin.  John Wesley: A Theological Biography.  2 vols.  Translated by Norman P Goldhawk.  New York: Abingdon, 1962–1963.

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Smith, Henry Boynton.  System of Christian Theology.  4th ed.  Edited by William S. Karr.  New York: A. C. Armstrong, 1890.

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Spener, Philipp Jakob.  Pia desideria.  Translated by Theodore G. Tappert.  Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964.

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon.  The Full Harvest.  Rev. ed.  Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1973.

Stott, John R. W.  The Epistles of John.  Туndale New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1983.

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Whitaker, E. C., ed.  Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy.  London: SPCK, 1960.

Whitefield, George.  George Whitefield’s Journals.  Rev. ed.  London: Banner of Truth, 1960.

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Wood, Arthur Skevington.  The Inextinguishable Blaze: Spiritual Renewal and Advance in the Eighteenth Century.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; London: Paternoster, 1960.

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