Regeneration
REGENERATION
The new birth; that work of the Holy Spirit by which the soul, previously dead in sins, is created anew in Christ unto righteousness. It is expressed in Scripture by being born again and born from above, Joh 3:3-7 ; becoming a new creature, 2Co 5:17 ; being quickened to a new life of holiness, Zep 2:1 ; having Christ formed in the heart, Gal 4:19 ; and being made partaker of the divine nature, 2Pe 1:4 .The sole author of this change is the Holy Spirit, Joh 1:12,13 3:4 Zep 2:8-10 ; and he effects it ordinarily by the instrumentality of gospel truth, 1Co 4:15 Jam 1:18 1Pe 1:23 . In this change the moral image of God is brought back into the soul, and the principle of supreme love to our neighbor is implanted. Regeneration, producing faith, is accompanied by justification, and by actual holiness of life, or sanctification begun, and completed when the “babe in Christ” reaches in heaven “the fulness of the stature of the perfect man” in Him. In Mat 19:28, regeneration means Christ’s making all things new. In Tit 3:5, “the washing of regeneration” denotes the purifying work of the Spirit in the new birth.
Fuente: American Tract Society Bible Dictionary
Regeneration
Introductory.-A study of the NT idea of regeneration does not mean, of course, simply an examination of the passages in which that particular metaphor occurs, but a consideration of the theory which the NT writers held as to the nature of the experiences which they found in themselves and in their converts. These experiences did not take place in a vacuum, but in a world in which supernatural religion was an intensely significant interest. No movement can ever be so original that it is entirely independent of the ideas and conditions of its day. However new it may be in its spirit, it will inevitably clothe itself in the familiar forms of human speech and conduct, even though it give to them a wholly new significance. In the time of Jesus, people believed already in a Divine power which would make them fit for an immortality of bliss. They thought of the necessary transformation as a death and resurrection, as a new birth, as a purification. If the totality of the utterances of later Judaism and of the non-Christian religions be considered, it is probable that we should regard the conditions of the new life which they present as, for the most part, unethical, external, magical. But when the finest of these utterances are read with due appreciation, it must be recognized that they have a large ethical meaning. [Note: Reitzensteins comparison of the NT with these is, however, significant: the tremendous seriousness with which guilt and atonement are preached is, so far as I can discover, lacking in Hellenism (Poimandres, p. 180, n. 1).] The gospel of regeneration was not a striking novelty either to the Jewish or to the pagan world, and if the condition of regeneration were simply stated as a belief that Jesus was the Messiah the Son of God, it might seem quite consonant with the common faith of the time. And this was probably so much the case that one of the great problems before the creative personalities of Christianity, who were passionately inculcating a spiritual faith, was to put ethical content into those supernatural conceptions of the new religion with which the people were all too easily satisfied. It is probable, therefore, that we shall have to look for the highest meaning of regeneration as conceived by the apostles, not so much in those miraculous aspects which have generally attracted attention, important as these are in NT thought, but rather in what was added of real ethical quality to the conceptions that otherwise might have been largely external and magical.
So far as Judaism is concerned, it has always been recognized that early Christianity formed itself against the background of the great faith that had come from the OT, and it has latterly been quite generally recognized that the background of NT theology is also that apocalyptic Messianism that had come to such elaborate development at the time. The continuity of revelation which has been thought of between the OT and the NT has made it easy for us to think of Christianity as accepting the language, the metaphors, and many of the externals of Judaism, giving to them a larger significance. But it is necessary also to realize that Christianity was able to take over the whole schema of apocalypticism by simply putting Jesus as the expected Messiah. The conditions for a doctrine of regeneration were then complete. Current Judaism made sharp distinction between the present age under the dominion of Satan and the coming age when the Messiah would be in power. Among the most glorious expectancies regarding the Messiah were the supernatural endowments that He would bestow upon His people. And there was not wanting the ethical expectation that sin would be pardoned, and a great era of righteousness would ensue. If, then, Jesus were the Messiah already manifested, crucified for sin, raised from the dead, coming again in glory, empowered to bestow an earnest of the gifts of the coming age, a supernatural new life would, of course, be possible. The believer in those redemptive facts would be translated from the Kingdom of Satan to that of Messiah. He would receive salvation, he would become a child of God, he would be miraculously re-born (a phrase already probably used of proselytes), and he would obtain the gift of the Spirit with its miraculous effects. It is evident that there is here a possibility either of the highest ethical motive or of confidence in a mere magical salvation. The whole spiritual quality of the new faith depended upon the degree in which the acceptance of Jesus became a moral power in human lives. If regeneration gave men a sure status, guaranteeing that they would be pardoned in the coming Judgment, so that they might live secure in having made comfortable provision for the future, then the whole supernaturalism would be in vain. If, on the other hand, it inspired them to be worthy to reign with Christ, it would have the highest moral quality. The great NT passages are concerned not with a definition of regeneration, but with entreaties and exhortations to live the new life which had been so Divinely bestowed.
But not only in Judaism was there a background for the doctrine of regeneration. The researches of recent years compel us to recognize that there were widespread hopes and expectancies of new life among the people who had felt the influence of the great mystery-religions. [Note: See art. Mystery, Mysteries.] And these were not national and racial, as were those of the Jews, but personal. The individual could be saved through a purification, this sometimes seeming to be ethical, perhaps more often ceremonial. There was intense interest in personal immortality, and a belief that the way to this salvation and immortality was that of initiation into the mysteries, involving mystic communion with the god. The very metaphor of the new birth was in all probability employed, indicating the attainment of a new status and the possibility of miraculous charismata. Indeed, it is not without significance that the word regeneration is not used in the great NT passages. Its only occurrence as applied to the individual is Tit 3:5, a passage of very doubtful Pauline authenticity, where the most obvious interpretation is that salvation is effected by baptism. Is it possible that the word had so sacramental a significance that it was better avoided by those who were insisting upon an actual ethical renewal? With the triumph of sacramentalism in the Church the word attained its technical value. [Note: For a careful study of the word see art. Regeneration in HDB, by J. Vernon Bartlet, and for its use in the mystery-religions see Reitzenstein, Poimandres, and Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen, s.v. in Index.] Of course the documents that present these ideas so fully belong for the most part to a period not earlier than the end of the 2nd cent. a.d., and it is possible to maintain that they have been coloured by Christianity. But the essential doctrines of the mystery-religions could not have been so soon completely metamorphosed. Clemen (Primitive Christianity and its Non-Jewish Sources, p. 231), in a very careful examination of the material, recognizes the priority in the mystery-religions of many of the redemptive doctrines, and these not without ethical character. So far as regeneration is concerned, he believes that even the (Joh 3:7) might be so derived. He thinks also that the mention in the Naassenic sermon of a , , , in which the reference is to the Eleusinian mysteries, may well indicate a general influence, at least upon the Christian phraseology. This is not to say that Christianity borrowed its ideas from paganism at the same time that it felt the most intense revulsion against the idolatries, but only that certain common religious thought-forms concerning miraculous purifications and transformations were current, and Christianity inevitably expressed its own new-born faith in the language of the day. If, then, in the non-Jewish world Jesus was proclaimed as the Son of God, who had become incarnate, had died the sacrificial death, had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, was coming again to give immortality to His followers, it would be quite in accord with the religious ideas of the time to believe that an acceptance of these redemptive facts would constitute one a child of God, and would avail to secure the gifts of the Spirit, which would be the attestation of having passed from death unto life. And, again, as among the Jews, it would be possible to accept such a doctrine in a wholly external way, making the salvation process merely miraculous. There was, of course, the other glorious possibility that those who believed themselves saved from sin and translated into eternal life by the loving acceptance of the grace of God in Jesus Christ would be actually impelled by new ethical motive, and would manifest the moral, as well as the miraculous, fruits of the Spirit. This was the experience of the NT writers themselves, and it is to this new life of love and moral endeavour that they exhort their readers.
The basis for a doctrine of regeneration is therefore to be found in the sacramentalism of both Judaism and the mystery-cults. And the NT writers believe in a miraculous change of status brought about at the moment of faith. But they always insist that this has no meaning unless a new moral life, governed by new motives, has actually resulted. And this is a practical nullification of the sacramental conception. It is further a nullification of the artificial distinction which later theology elaborated between regeneration and sanctification. In the effort to make a self-consistent theology all the passages which referred to the miraculous change or status were used for a doctrine of regeneration, and those which referred to the ethical agency of the Spirit for one of sanctification. There was thus developed the idea that regeneration produced a complete change of nature, an idea which neither common human experience nor scientific psychology supports. The NT writers, far more concerned with the facts of experience than with the formulation of a self-consistent theology, developed no such theory. To them regeneration was always a moral fact. Hence the idea of the regeneration of infants, very easily held by those who believe in the possibility of a supernatural change of nature, does not appear in the NT. The reason for this will be noted in the discussion of 1 John.
The examination of the NT documents may well begin with Jesus teaching in the Synoptics, then proceed to the Book of Acts as presenting the external manifestations of the early Christian experience with the interpretations that were current in the Church, and then to the writings that more clearly express the personal contributions of the great spiritual leaders.
1. The Synoptics.-The idea of regeneration, strictly so called, does not appear in the words of Jesus in the Synoptic tradition. This is significant at once of the faithfulness of the tradition and of Jesus own extraordinary originality. The of Mat 19:28 is, of course, the Messianic consummation. But neither here, nor in any other passage that refers to the Kingdom of God in apocalyptic fashion, is there any statement of a miraculous change of status, of the individual. The saying of John the Baptist that the Coming One shall baptize with the Holy Spirit (Mat 3:11, Luk 3:16) implies the supernaturalism of the charismata, but Jesus own words have to do with the simplicity of a religious experience within the reach of all who fulfil the ethical conditions of thorough-going repentance (Mat 18:3) and heroic, sacrificial choice of the higher values (Mat 10:39, Mat 11:25 ff., Mat 16:24 ff., Mat 18:8 f.). Of course God Himself reveals truth to the obedient soul (Mat 16:17), but there is no natural incapacity for righteousness. Men can become sons of their Father if they will (Mat 5:45). The striking figure used of the Prodigal, who was alive after being morally dead, is only a strong expression of the happy result when the foolish sinner came to himself.
2. The Book of Acts.-That the specific metaphor of regeneration had not been theologized in the primitive Church is evident from the entire absence of the figure from this book. The only reference to men as the children of God is the quotation from the Greek pcet (Act 17:28). However, there is here the essentially similar idea, as throughout the NT, that the saved man is one who has received the gift of the Holy Spirit. He is Divinely possessed. He may be so carried out of himself by the supernatural enthusiasm that he appears to onlookers as drunk (Act 2:13); more generally he has the miraculous power of uttering ecstatic sounds (speaking with tongues, Act 2:4, Act 10:46, Act 19:6), and declaring his faith in exuberant public speech (prophesying, Act 11:28, Act 19:6, Act 21:9-10); while those especially endowed may work miracles (Act 2:43, Act 4:30, Act 5:12, Act 8:13, Act 14:3). This gift of the Holy Spirit, with its wonderful manifestations, is the distinguishing mark of the Christian (Act 2:33; Act 2:38, Act 5:32, Act 8:17, Act 10:44, Act 15:8, Act 19:6). The schema of the new religion is clearly set forth; Jesus is the Messiah (Act 2:36, Act 5:42), predicted in the Scriptures (Act 7:52, Act 8:35, Act 13:47), attested by the Resurrection (Act 2:32, Act 10:41, Act 13:33, Act 26:23); acceptance of Him as such is the basis of salvation (Act 4:12, Act 10:43, Act 13:39); but there must be also a very definite repentance, not merely for having crucified the Messiah (Act 2:38), but a turning from iniquities (Act 3:26), and from darkness to light (Act 26:18), and this is to be followed by works worthy of repentance (Act 26:20); baptism follows on repentance and seems to have a sacramental efficacy ( , Act 2:38; , Act 22:16). As regards baptism, it is noteworthy that Cornelius and his company are accepted of God and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit before they are baptized (Act 10:44; Act 10:47), though in every other case the gift of the Spirit is subsequent to baptism. Finally, those who are thus saved and endowed are ordained unto eternal life (Act 13:46; Act 13:48), the blessed inheritance of the future (Act 26:18). While it is evident that much of this programme would be entirely familiar to the world of the mystery-religions, the peculiar power of primitive Christianity was manifest in its fine moral glow and its gracious charities, as well as in its religious enthusiasm. And this story of the early Church reveals, on the one hand, an utter absence of those coarser elements, from which the mystery-cults, whatever may have been their philosophical refinements, never freed themselves, and, on the other hand, a positive moral power resulting from glad allegiance to the Historical Founder of Christianity, such as was never accorded to the mythical founders of the other religions of the time.
3. The Pauline writings.-The central passage for St. Pauls thought on the experience of regeneration is Romans 6-8. It is evidently autobiographical in fact as well as in rhetorical form, and is a wonderful piece of self-revelation. It is a classic of religious experience, and yields in a most interesting way to clear psychological interpretation. The passage exhibits what the experience of regeneration really is in the case of such persons as are conscious of what has been called the divided self. It is the case, familiar enough in some form to most of us, where all ones ethical ideals reinforced by education lead in one direction, while the strength of many habits and even of primitive instinct (if in Rom 7:7 is to be understood as lust) impel one in another direction. When attention is concentrated upon duty, a man acts according to his sense of higher values; when impulse determines his conduct, he is false to his better knowledge. And so, in spite of longings and endeavours after moral victory, defeat is the constant result. To the earnest Pharisee the terrible impasse is reached, that he wants to be righteous but he cannot (Rom 7:21-24): he must actually do what he hates (Rom 7:15). Some new idea with very high emotional quality is essential to secure the concentration of attention on the nobler course of conduct. This comes to St. Paul in his conversion experience. He feels himself thereupon released from the thrall of the lower self and empowered to live in the higher self. The new idea has the emotive power necessary to make his ethical ideals actually attainable, and so he comes into the experience of the peace of the unified self (Rom 7:24-25; cf. Rom 5:1). An element of this new idea that has strong emotional value is the belief that there awaits the victor in the conflict an eternity of splendid peace in the full enjoyment of all those experiences for which now he must contend so hardly (Rom 8:15-17). This creates a condition distinctly favourable for pursuing lines of conduct conducive to the desired end. The transformation has thus taken place, that ethical ideals are no longer merely intellectually conceived, but have gained an emotional quality that renders the inhibition of contrary tendencies easy and natural (Rom 8:2). Of course under strong provocation the old impulses to wrong conduct would revive, and sometimes so strongly as to overcome the new inhibitions and pass over into action. But the experience of victory and unity would be so vivid that this re-emergence of the divided self would be painful, the new desirable lines of conduct would renew their hold upon the attention, the inhibitions would regain their sway, and peace would again ensue. (This involves an interpretation of Rom 7:7-25 as a continuous experience, and not merely a post-conversion memory.)
St. Pauls own interpretation of this regeneration experience is based on the antagonism between the and the . Whether his psychology involves an actual anthropological dualism it is perhaps not necessary to decide. He was probably not conscious of attempting a philosophical explanation, but was using the currently conceived antagonism between flesh and spirit to express the fact of his own experience and observation. The resolution of the antagonism is to St. Paul a Divine miracle of grace (Rom 7:25). The flesh is gaining the victory, but the Divine Spirit comes to the reinforcement of the human spirit and overcomes the flesh. St. Paul conceives the as an actual external power coming to the aid of the believer, as a donation to be received (Rom 8:15; cf. 2Co 1:22, Eph 1:13; Eph 4:30). It is difficult here to follow him exactly because we are not sure of his psychology, but it is not at all difficult to arrive at his practical purpose. He is not so much concerned to explain the religious experience of the Christian, except to ascribe it to the power of God, as he is to insist that it must be a moral experience, involving necessarily the active moral endeavour of the believer. The passage is primarily hortatory, only incidentally doctrinal. St. Paul knows that eternal vigilance has been the condition of his own moral victory, God-given though he believes it to be, and he is anxious for his readers not to fail of victory by any easy acceptance of an external salvation.
The four rich metaphors of this passage, of which regeneration is not one, are all employed with this hortatory aim. (1) Death and resurrection.-Under the symbol of baptism, the believer is pictured as dead and risen again, in order to enforce the obligation of living in newness of life (Rom 6:3-11). (2) Change of masters.-The figure of the bondservant is used to press the alternative that we belong either to sin or to righteousness. Our conduct determines which is master (Rom 6:16-23). (3) Remarriage of a widow.-Just as a widow assumes a new loyalty when she marries a new husband, so are we free from the old sense of moral obligations and under the highest necessity of being true to the new (Rom 7:1-6). (4) Legal adoption of children.-The most significant figure of adoption is employed to indicate a new relationship to God attested by the presence of the Divine Spirit, enabling the believer to call God his Father. But this is all dependent upon actual life in the Spirit (or in the spirit, conceived as the higher human nature) (Rom 8:12-17). The Apostle is peculiarly careful that these metaphors shall not be pushed to an unethical conclusion. He sees the danger in his own day, which was fully realized in the history of the doctrine of regeneration. If any reader assumes that, having been baptized, he is therefore dead to the old life, St. Paul is not afraid to present to him the paradox, that the man who has died to the flesh and is thus released from its bondage (Rom 6:6-7, Rom 8:10) is still to go on putting to death the doings of the body (Rom 8:13). In close juxtaposition he speaks of a definite bestowal of the Spirit (aorist , Rom 8:15), with a constitution of the status of adoption, and of a relationship to God contingent on an ever-present obedience ( , Rom 8:14). So the new life of the Christian is at the same time an ethical achievement and a supernatural gift. St. Paul does not carefully distinguish between these. They are merged in any vital religious experience, so that the regenerate man is the one who is in the actual experience of living the new life of moral victory (Rom 8:9).
Entirely in keeping with Romans 6-8 are all St. Pauls references to the new spiritual life. He assumes that it has had a miraculous beginning (note his use of the past tense: , , , ), but he lays the emphasis upon the ethical endeavour, which alone can make the potential actual. Thus in Rom 12:2, using the word , very near akin to the idea of regeneration, he calls upon his readers to make a complete change for the better. Sanday-Headlam (International Critical Commentary , Romans5, 1902) paraphrase, do not adopt the external and fleeting fashion of this world, but be ye transformed in your inmost nature. Denney (Expositors Greek Testament , Romans, 1900) says that the process would in modern language be rather sanctification than regeneration but that the latter is assumed. Would it not be nearer to the Apostles thought, as to his experience, to say that he regards the process of spiritual renewal as one bestowed by God through faith, but rendered significant and vital only by continued faithfulness? To the Colossians he affirms in repeated metaphors a definite change that has been effected by Divine agency: a translation from the kingdom of evil to the Kingdom of Christ (Col 1:13), a reconciliation from alien enmity (Col 1:21-22), a death and resurrection with Christ (Col 2:20, Col 3:1; Col 3:3), an unclothing and reclothing (Col 3:9-10). But the reconciliation is dependent on continuance in the faith (Col 1:23); the members of the dead man are to be put to death (Col 3:5); and the new man is to be renewed (Col 3:10). In the last passage the equivalent word for regeneration () is clearly used in the sense of process as in 2Co 4:18, where the contrast is between the loosening hold upon physical life and the growing sense of spiritual reality. To the Ephesians St. Paul writes in the most absolute terms of a fore-ordained adoption as sons (Eph 1:5) and of salvation as a free gift (Eph 2:8), and the metaphor of the new life is a resurrection (Eph 2:1; Eph 2:5-6), not as in Romans a dying and rising with Christ, which is merely a bold use of the symbol of baptism, but a resurrection to new life of a nature so corrupt as to be regarded as morally dead. And yet the splendid description of Divinely given salvation is only an argument for a realization of an actual moral renewal, progressively to take place: putting away the old man, putting on the new, being renewed () in the spirit of their minds (Eph 4:22-25). The same paradox, though with a change of metaphor, appears in Eph 5:8.
4. The Epistle to the Hebrews.-The figure of regeneration is not used in this document. Christians are called sons of God and brethren of Christ, but are not said to have been made so. When they are called the sons whom Jesus brings unto glory (Heb 2:10) the antithesis is not between sons of God and the unregenerate, but between the mortal humanity of the sons whose likeness Jesus took and the immortal glory of His own proper estate which they shall share. And in the consciousness of son-ship that is gained through suffering (Heb 12:8) the antithesis is between uncared-for children who receive no correction and those beloved who are the objects of paternal discipline. However, the initial Christian experience as a definite change of attitude and relationship is very clearly expressed. It is an enlightenment (Heb 10:32), a tasting of the heavenly gift (of forgiveness), a reception of the Holy Spirit, a tasting of the good word of God, and of the powers of the age to come (i.e. a foretaste of the blessed experiences that the expected Messianic Age would bring) (Heb 6:4-5). This experience is elaborated in many passages of the Epistle and is represented as produced by Divine power. The blood of Christ cleanses the conscience from sin, and makes it possible for the man of faith to serve the living God (Heb 9:14, Heb 10:22). The blood of the covenant is that which sanctifies (sanctification being here equivalent to regeneration) (Heb 10:29). Baptism symbolizes (or perhaps effects) the cleansing (Heb 10:23), The Holy Spirit is bestowed as a gift (Heb 2:4). Indeed, salvation would seem to be altogether miraculous when it is said that by one offering God hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified (Heb 10:14). And yet the purpose of the Epistle is to warn against apostasy, and to insist that all the blessedness of the new life is only a potentiality to be realized by faithfulness. The great passage (Heb 6:4-6) which enumerates all that has been done for the believer is written for the sake of the conclusion that if apostasy follows such blessedness there is no further hope. If we hold fast, we belong to Christ (Heb 3:6), and are partakers of Christ (Heb 3:14). We shall not escape if we turn away (Heb 12:25), and if we sin wilfully after being enlightened there is no further means of salvation (Heb 10:26). Thus, although the new religious experience is Divinely bestowed and sustained (Heb 12:2) and perfected (Heb 13:20-21), it is not magical and sacramental, but dependent upon ethical striving and continued faithfulness.
5. The Catholic Epistles.-In the Epistle of James the idea of regeneration is connected with the coming Messianic Age: believers are Divinely brought forth () as firstfruits of the new order (Jam 1:18). In another figure the dualism between this world and the Divine order is indicated, when Gods people are represented as joined to Him by a marriage vow so that the friendship of the world is an adultery (Jam 4:4). Yet, while this Epistle recognizes miraculous salvation, it distinctly affirms that religion can be defined only in ethical terms (Jam 1:26-27), and lays careful emphasis on justification by works (Jam 2:14-26).
1 Peter is full of the exultant expression of a rich religious experience. The metaphor of regeneration appears several times. It is used to express the utterly new life which belongs to the person who has attained a hope of resurrection and heavenly glory (, 1Pe 1:3). Again, Christians are said to be begotten again () to a new life of brotherly love, the moral quality of the regeneration being very marked (1Pe 1:22-23). And, with expansion of the figure, the new-born babe is urged to desire the fitting nourishment for producing the maturity of salvation (1Pe 2:2). St. Pauls great figure of death and resurrection is employed to indicate that union with Christ means a death to sins and a life unto righteousness (1Pe 2:24).
In 2 Peter the new life is separated from the old by a (2Pe 1:9). It is described as an escape from the corruptions of the world (2Pe 1:4, 2Pe 2:20). Christians thus become partakers of the divine nature (2Pe 1:4). This is effected through knowledge () of God (2Pe 1:2; 2Pe 1:8) and of Christ (2Pe 1:2; 2Pe 1:8, 2Pe 2:20, 2Pe 3:18). But if, in spite of this redemptive knowledge, there should be a return to the defilements of the world, salvation is lost and the last state is become worse with them than the first (2Pe 2:20). The Epistle is throughout strongly ethical.
6. The Johannine literature.-The purpose of the Gospel of John is definitely stated in the conclusion (Joh 20:31) to be a demonstration that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, in order that men might believe and have life in His name. Life is the key-word of the Gospel. This is more than a hope of immortality, which of course it includes (Joh 6:40, Joh 14:19), It seems to imply a certain rich and exuberant experience as a result of the indwelling of the Spirit. One becomes, as it were, a perennial spring of spiritual vitality (Joh 4:14, Joh 7:38 f.). It is an experience of spiritual apprehension (Joh 8:47), of walking in light and not in darkness (Joh 8:12). The object of salvation is that one shall live to the full, abundantly (Joh 10:10). It may be doubted whether our modern social interpretations of the abundant life were in the mind of the writer, but he evidently referred to an exultant sense of the glorious worthfulness of being a child of God, superior to worldly circumstance, possessed of the Spirit, with miraculous powers, and certain of a glorious future. This new life is so different from ordinary mundane life that very naturally the metaphor of regeneration is used to explain it. As our human begetting by the will of man bestows upon us common life, so the Divine begetting gives us life eternal (Joh 1:13). The antithesis is clear: one is either regenerate or not (Joh 3:6). The conversation with Nicodemus affords the opportunity for presenting the doctrine. The Kingdom of God comes not by natural heritage even to a Jewish Rabbi, but by supernatural bestowment. It is mysterious as the incalculable winds, but is inevitable and essential (Joh 3:8). The condition of this regeneration is a belief that Jesus is the Messiah, Son of God; for what is definitely stated in the prologue (Joh 1:12-13) is implied in the believing unto eternal life (Joh 3:15). Regeneration as thus presented might seem to be the mere change of status with miraculous charismata in consequence of an external act of homage, which the pagan heart would so well understand. But faith is not an external act in this Gospel. He that dceth the truth cometh to the light (Joh 3:21); he that is willing to do the will of God gains experiential evidence of the truth of the gospel (Joh 7:17). And the great central teaching of the last discourse of Jesus is fundamentally ethical. The figure changes from regeneration to that of the branch in the vine. The question is not whether the branch is in the vine, but whether it bears fruit, failing which it is cast forth and burned (Joh 15:5). And the fruit is love (Joh 15:12). So the test of regeneration is the actual experience of love of the brethren, the actual fulfilment of the commandment of Christ. Belief, then, through which comes regeneration, is not an intellectual assent, but a passionate loyalty, rich in ethical impulse, and a continuous experience.
1 John has the same theme as the Gospel, but the treatment is more homiletic. The conditions are peculiarly favourable to the definition of a doctrine of regeneration, for the letter is evidently written to a Christian community or communities, in which many must, belong to the second or third generation of believers, and therefore would not have experienced the decided change involved in a conversion from heathenism. The silence of the NT upon the matter of the regeneration of children is interesting in view of the large place which it has held in subsequent theological discussion. In the NT, however, regeneration is always dependent upon faith. The children would, of course, receive such instruction as would enable them to believe. Both the Jewish and the Greek world were thoroughly familiar with the idea of a coming of age at puberty, and the children probably received the baptism which was the seal of their faith at that time. The figure of regeneration had not been so thoroughly theologized that the question whether or not children were regenerate would arise. The silence of the NT is an assumption that the children of believers were candidates for salvation. But a religion dependent on instruction might easily become merely formal. And it is such a situation that this Epistle presupposes. It is addressed to the Christian community (1Jn 5:13), to fathers who have long known the truth, to young men who are conquering evil (1Jn 2:13-14), all of whom have received the gift of the Spirit, which is an abiding enlightenment (1Jn 2:27). The writer identifies them with himself in the absoluteness of salvation-we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the evil one (1Jn 5:19). And yet the distinctive emphasis of the Epistle is upon regeneration as a moral experience rather than as a religious status. When the author says, whosoever believeth is begotten of God (1Jn 5:1), he is stating the fact which any primitive Christian would have understood. But with equal emphasis he insists that everyone that dceth righteousness is begotten of him (1Jn 2:29), and against that everyone that loveth is begotten of God (1Jn 4:7). He does not say that we know that we have passed from death unto life because we have been baptized, but because we have the Spirit (1Jn 4:13), and the evidence of this is love of the brethren (1Jn 4:12, 1Jn 3:14). The ethical quality of regeneration is still more emphatically stated-whatsoever is begotten of God dceth no sin (1Jn 3:9, 1Jn 5:18). Thus mankind is divided into children of God and children of the devil, each living according to the paternal nature that is in them (1Jn 3:9-10). Of course this is stated in absolute terms, and the correction is at hand: if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, etc. (1Jn 1:8; 1Jn 1:10). It is St. Pauls fine paradox again: we are children of God by supernatural creation; the Divine seed is in us; what is Divine cannot sin; therefore the believer does not sin in his own proper nature, and if he does sin he seeks and finds forgiveness. And the paradox is true to the real religious experience. But sacramentalism is avoided, and the whole conception of regeneration is ethicized by the warning against confidence in a formal regeneration which does not manifest itself in new life. The regenerate life is an exultant and abiding love to God and the brethren (1Jn 4:12-13; 1Jn 4:18), and if this is absent there is no regeneration at all (1Jn 1:6, 1Jn 2:9).
Literature.-Article Regeneration in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) by J. V. Bartlet, in Dict. of Christ and the Gospels by J. Denney, and literature there cited; works on NT Theology, especially B. Weiss (Eng. translation , 1882-83), W. Beyschlag (Eng. translation , 1895), H. J. Holtzmann (1896-97). G. B. Stevens (1899); also special works: T. D. Bernard, The Progress of Doctrine in the NT, 1864, 51900; G. B. Stevens, Johannine Theology, 1894, The Pauline Theology, 1892; O. Pfleiderer, Paulinismus2, 1890 (Eng. translation , 1891); A. B. Bruce, St. Pauls Conception of Christianity, 1894; P. Gennrich, Die Lehre von der Wiedergeburt, 1907. For the historical background: R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenist, Mysterienreligionen. 1910, Poimandres, 1904; J. G. Frazer, GB [Note: B Golden Bough (J. G. Frazer).] 3, pt. iv., Adonis Attis Osiris, 1914; F. Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, Eng. translation , 1911; M. Brckner, Der sterbende und auferstehende Gottheiland, 1908; A. Loisy, The Christian Mystery, In J. Hibbert Journal x. [1911] 45 ff.; C. Clemen, Primitive Christianity and its Non-Jewish Sources, Eng. translation , 1912; T. G. Soares, Some Psychological Aspects of Regeneration in BW [Note: W Biblical World.] xxxvii. [1911] 78 ff.; E. D. Burton, Spirit, Soul and Flesh, in AJTh [Note: JTh American Journal of Theology.] xvii, [1913] 563 ff., xviii. [1914] 59 ff., 395 ff., 571 ff.
Theodore Gerald Soares.
Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church
REGENERATION
A new birth; that work of the Holy Spirit by which we experience a change of heart. It is to be distinguished from baptism which is an external rite, though some have confounded them together. Nor does it signify a mere reformation of the outward conduct. Nor is it a conversion from one sect or creed to another; or even from atheism. Nor are new faculties given in this change. Nor does it consist in new revelations, succession of terrors or consolations; or any whisper as it were from God to the heart, concerning his secret love, choice, or purpose to save us. It is expressed in Scripture by being born again, Joh 3:7. born from above, so it may be rendered, Joh 3:2; Joh 3:7; Joh 3:27. being quickened, Eph 2:1. Christ formed in the heart, Gal 4:12. a partaking of the Divine nature, 2Pe 1:4. The efficient cause of regeneration is the Divine Spirit. That man is not the author of it is evident, if we consider,
1. The case in which men are before it takes place; a state of ignorance and inability, Joh 3:4.
2. The nature of the work shows plainly that it is not in the power of men to do it: it is called a creation, a production of a new principle which was not before, and which man could not himself produce, Eph 2:8; Eph 2:10.
3. It is expressly denied to be of men, but declared to be of God, Joh 1:12-13; 1Jn 3:9. The instrumental cause of it may be so called, is the word of God, Jam 1:18. 1Co 4:15. The evidence of it are, conviction of sin, holy sorrow, deep humility, knowledge, faith, repentance, love, and devotedness to God’s glory. The properties of it are these:
1. It is a passive work, and herein it differs from conversion. In regeneration we are passive, and receive from God; in conversion we are active, and turn to him.
2. It is an irresistible, or rather an invincible work of God’s grace, Eph 3:8.
3. It is an instantaneous act, for there can be no medium between life and death; and here it differs from sanctification, which is progressive.
4. It is a complete act, and perfect in its kind; a change of the whole man, 2Co 5:17.
5. It is a great and important act, both as to its author and effects, Eph 2:4-5.
6. It is an internal act, not consisting in bare outward forms, Eze 36:26; Eze 27:1-36 :
7. Visible as to its effects, 1Jn 3:14.
8. Delightful, 1Pe 1:8.
9. Necessary, Joh 3:3.
10. It is an act, the blessings of which we can never finally lose, Joh 13:1.
See CALLING, CONVERSION; and Charnock’s Works, vol. 2: p. 1. to 230; Cole and Wright, but especially Witherspoon on Regeneration; Doddridge’s Ten Sermons on the Subject; Dr. Gill’s Body of Divinity, article Regeneration; Dr. Owen on the Spirit; Lime Street Lectures, ser. 8.
Fuente: Theological Dictionary
regeneration
Dogmatically, the rebirth by which we become sons of God (John 3), identified with initial justification and sanctifying grace. It is effected by the reception or desire of baptism, the sacrament of regeneration (Titus 3), and is sealed by the baptismal character which remains even after a death-bringing, or mortal sin. Contrast this with the biological notion, i.e., repair of living tissue; with the metaphorical notion of efforescence; with the non-Christian idea of aspiration to new life, or release through metempsychosis; with the Pietistic idea of experience of conversion and of moral righteousness; with the old Protestant notion of Divine dissulation upon our sinfulness; with the Ritschlian notion of reconciliation following forgiveness. Regeneration may also signify, in a cosmic sense, renewal of the Stoic world-cycle; and, in Christian eschatology, the resurrection of the dead (Matthew 19).
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Regeneration
(Lat. regeneratio; Gr. anagennesis and paliggenesia).
Regeneration is a Biblico-dogmatic term closely connected with the ideas of justification, Divine sonship, and the deification of the soul through grace. Confining ourselves first to the Biblical use of this term, we find regeneration from God used in indissoluble connection with baptism, which St. Paul expressly calls “the laver of regeneration” (Titus, iii, 5). In His discourse with Nicodemus (John 3:5), the Saviour declares: “Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” In this passage Christianity from its earliest days has found the proof that baptism may not be repeated, since a repeated regeneration from God is no less a contradiction than repeated physical birth from a mother. The idea of “birth from God” enjoys a special favour in the Joannine theology. Outside the Fourth Gospel (i, 12 sq.; iii, 5), the Apostle uses the term in a variety of ways, treating “birth of God” as synonymous now with the “doing of justice” (1 John 5:1, 4 sq.), and elsewhere deducing from it a certain “sinlessness” of the just (1 John 3:9; 5:18), which, however, does not necessarily exclude from the state of justification the possibility of sinning (cf. Bellarmine, “De justificatione”, III, xv). It is true that in all these passages there is no reference to baptism nor is there any reference to a real “regeneration”; nevertheless, “generation from God”, like baptismal “regeneration”, must be referred to justification as its cause. Both terms effectually refute the Protestant notion that there is in justification not a true annihilation, but merely a covering up of the sins which still continue (covering-up theory), or that the holiness won is simply the imputation of the external holiness of God or Christ (imputation theory).
The very idea of spiritual palingenesis requires that the justified man receive through the Divine generation a quasi-Divine nature as his “second nature”, which cannot be conceived as a state of sin, but only as a state of interior holiness and justice. Thus alone can we explain the statements that the just man is assured “participation in the divine nature” (cf. 2 Peter 1:4: divinæ consortes naturæ), becomes “a new creature” (Galatians 5:6; 6:15), effects which depend on justifying faith working by charity, not on “faith alone” (sola fides). When the Bible elsewhere refers regeneration to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:3) or to “the word of God who liveth and remaineth forever” (1 Peter 1:23), it indicates two important external factors for justification, which have nothing to do with its formal cause. The latter text shows that the preaching of the Word of God is for the sinner the introductory step towards justification, which is impossible without faith, whereas the former text mentions the meritorious cause of justification, inasmuch as, from the Biblical standpoint, the Resurrection was the final act in the work of redemption (cf. Luke 24:46 sq.; Romans 4:25; 6:4; 2 Corinthians 5:16). To the above-mentioned ideas of regeneration, generation out of God, participation in the Divine nature, and re-creation, a fifth, that of Divine sonship, must be added; this represents the formal effect of justification and is crowned by the personal indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the justified soul (cf. Romans 5:5; 8:11; 1 Corinthians 3:16 sq.; 6:19, etc.). Since, however, this Divine sonship is expressly described as a mere adoptive sonship (filiatio adoptiva, ouiothesis; cf. Romans 8:15 sqq.; Galatians 4:5), it is evident that “regeneration from God” implies no substantial emerging of the soul from the nature of God as in the case of the eternal generation of the Son of God (Christ), but must be regarded as an analogical and accidental generation from God.
As regards the use of the term in Catholic theology, no connected history of regeneration can be written, as neither Christian antiquity nor medieval Scholasticism worked consistently and regularly to develop this pregnant and fruitful idea. At every period, however, the Sacrament of Baptism was regarded as the specific sacrament of regeneration, a concept that was not extended to the Sacrament of Penance. Irenæus repeatedly interprets the Pauline term “re-creation” as the universal regeneration of mankind through the incarnation of the Son of God in the womb of the Blessed Virgin. The idea of regeneration in the sense of individual justification is most conspicuous in the writings of St. Augustine. With an unrivalled keenness, he evolved the essential distinction between the birth of the Son of God from the substance of the Father and the generation of the soul from God through grace, and brought together into an organic association regeneration, with its kindred ideas, and justification (cf. e.g. “Enarr. in Ps. xlix”, n. 2 in “P.L.”, XXXVI, 565). Like the Church, St. Augustine associates justification with faith working through charity, and refers its essence to the interior renewal and sanctification of the soul. Thus, St. Augustine is not only the precursor, but also the model of the Scholastics, who worked mainly on the ideas inherited from the great doctor, and contributed essentially to the speculative understanding of the mysterious process of justification. Adhering strictly to the Bible and tradition, the Council of Trent (Sess. VI, capp. iii-iv, in Denzinger-Bannwart, “Enchiridion”, 10th ed., 1908, nn. 795-6) regarded regeneration as fundamentally nothing else than another name for the justification acquired through the Sacrament of Baptism. A characteristic view was that of the German Mystics (Eckhart, Tauler, Suso), who prefer to speak of a “birth of God in the soul”, meaning thereby the self-annihilation of the soul submerging itself in the Divinity, and the resulting mystical union with God through love.
In Protestant theology, since the time of the Reformation, we meet great differences of opinion, which are of course to be referred to the various conceptions of the nature of justification. In entire accordance with his doctrine of justification by faith alone, Luther identified regeneration with the Divine “bestowal of faith” (donatio fidei), and placed the baptized infant on the same footing as the adult, although he could give no precise explanation as to the way in which the child at its regeneration in baptism could exercise justifying faith (cf. H. Cremer, “Taufe, Wiedergeburt und Kindertaufe”, 2nd ed., 1901). Against the shallow and destructive efforts of Rationalism, which made its appearance among the Socinians about the end of the sixteenth century and later received a mighty impulse from English Deism, the German “Enlightenment”, and French Encyclopedism, a salutary reaction was produced by the Pietists during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Leaving far behind the old Protestant view, the Pietists (Spener, A. H. Francke, Zinzendorf) referred regeneration to the personal experience of justification in union with a sincere conversion to a new life, consisting especially in charitable activity. German Pietism, systematically cultivated by the so-called Hernhuter, exercised a beneficial effect on English Methodism, which went about securing and strengthening regeneration in “methodical fashion”, and which undoubtedly performed good service in the revival of Christian piety. Especially those sudden conversions–such as are even to-day striven for and highly prized in Methodist circles, the American revivals and camp meetings, the Salvation Army, and the German Gemeinschaftsbewegung, with all its excrescences and eccentricities–are preferentially given the title of regeneration (cf. E. Wacker, “Wiedergeburt und Bekehrung”, 1893). Since Schleiermacher the variety and confusion of the views concerning the character of regeneration in learned literature have increased rather than diminished; it is indeed almost a case of everyone to his own liking. The greatest favour in Liberal and modern Positive theology is enjoyed by the theory of Albert Ritschl, according to which the two distinct moments of justification and reconciliation hold the same relation to each other as forgiveness and regeneration. As soon as resistance to God is done away with in justification, and lack of trust in God–or, in other words, sin–is overcome in the forgiveness of sin, reconciliation with God and regeneration enter into their rights, thus inaugurating a new life of Christian activity which reveals itself in the fulfilment of all the obligations of one’s station.
Turning finally to the non-Christian use of the term, we find “regeneration” in common use in many pagan religions. In Persian Mithraism, which spread widely in the West as a religion of the soldiers and officials under the Roman Empire, persons initiated into the mysteries were designated “regenerated” (renatus). While here the word retains its ethico-religious sense, there was a complete change of meaning in religions which taught metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls (Pythagoreans, Druids, Indians), in these the reincarnation of departed souls was termed “regeneration”. This usage has not yet entirely disappeared, as it is current among the Theosophists (cf. E.R. Hull, “Theosophy and Christianity”, Bombay, 1909; and in connection therewith “Stimmen aus Maria-Laach”, 1910, 387 sqq., 479 sqq.). This view should not be confounded with the use dating from Christ Himself, who (Matthew 19:18) speaks of the resurrection of the dead on the last day as a regeneration (regeneratio).
———————————–
J. POHLE Transcribed by Karli Nabours
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Regeneration
(, Tit 3:5, a being born again), that work of the Holy Spirit by. which we experience a change of heart. It is expressed in Scripture by being born anew (Joh 3:7, from above); being quickened (Eph 2:1); by Christ being found in the heart (Gal 4:19); a new creation (2Co 5:17); a renewing of the mind (Rom 12:2); the washing, i.e. the purifing of regeneration (Tit 3:5); a resurrection from the dead (Eph 2:6); a putting off the old man, and a putting on the new man (Eph 4:22-24). And the subjects of this change are represented as begotten of God (Joh 1:13; 1Pe 1:3); begotten of the Spirit (Joh 3:8); begotten of water, even of the Spirit (Joh 3:5); new creatures (Gal 6:15); and partakers of the divine nature (2Pe 1:4). The efficient cause of regeneration is the divine spirit. Man is not the author of the regeneration (Joh 1:12-13; Joh 3:4; Eph 2:8; Eph 2:10); the instrumental cause is the word of God (Jam 1:18; 1Pe 1:23; 1Co 4:15).
The change in regeneration consists in the recovery of the moral image of God upon the heart; that is, so as to love him supremely and serve him ultimately as our highest end. Regeneration consists in the implantation of the .principle of love to God, which obtains the ascendency and habitually prevails over its opposite. Although the inspired writers use various terms and modes of speech to describe this change of mind, styling it conversion, regeneration, a new creation, etc., yet it is all effected by the word of truth or the Gospel of salvation gaining an entrance into the mind through divine teaching, so as to possess the understanding, subdue the will, and reign in the affections. In a word, it is faith working by love that constitutes the new creature or regenerate man (Gal 5:6; 1Jn 5:1-5). Regeneration, then, is the recovery of the moral image of God, and consequently of spiritual life, to a soul previously dead in trespasses and sins. It is the work of the Holy Spirit, opening the eyes of the mind, and enabling the sincere penitent to believe the Gospel and receive Christ as his only Saviour. This gracious work is in accordance both with the character of the Holy Spirit and with the constitution of man; hence, by it no violence is done to any physical, intellectual, or moral law or mode of action in human nature. The change is produced in the will, or heart, that is, in the moral, and not the natural, faculties of the soul. As depravity is wholly in the will and heart, the source and seat of all moral action, the divine operation consists in renewing the heart, and communicating a change of views, with a relish for the things of the Spirit. As justification places us in a new relation to God, so regeneration produces in us a new state of mind. In the case of children dying in infancy, they, of course, need regeneration to fit them for the eternal world. And there can be no difficulty in conceiving that they are regenerated by the Holy Spirit, in virtue of Christ’s death, in the same sense in which they are depraved, in consequence of Adam’s transgression; the disposition to sin is removed, the disposition to holiness is implanted, and thus their salvation is secured. The evidences of regeneration are conviction of sin, holy sorrow, deep humility, knowledge, faith, repentance, love, and devotedness to God’s glory. The properties of it are these:
1. It is a receptive work, and herein it differs from conversion. In regeneration we receive from God; in conversion we are active and turn to him.
2. It is a powerful work of God’s grace (Eph 3:8).
3. It is an instantaneous act, for there can be no medium between life and death; and here it differs from sanctification, which is progressive.
4. It is a complete act, and perfect in its kind; a change of the whole man (2Co 5:17).
5. It is a great and important act, both as to its author and effects (Eph 2:4-5).
6. It is an internal act, not consisting in bare, outward forms (Eze 36:26-27).
7. Visible as to its effects (1Jn 3:14).
8. Delightful (1Pe 1:8).
9. Necessary (Joh 3:3). SEE CONVERSION; SEE NEW BIRTH. Our Lord in one instance (Mat 19:28) uses the term regeneration for the resurrection state. Accordingly, Dr. Campbell translates it the renovation, and remarks that the relation is here to the general state of things in the future world, where all things will become new. SEE NEW CREATION; SEE RESTITUTION.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Regeneration
only found in Matt. 19:28 and Titus 3:5. This word literally means a “new birth.” The Greek word so rendered (palingenesia) is used by classical writers with reference to the changes produced by the return of spring. In Matt. 19:28 the word is equivalent to the “restitution of all things” (Acts 3:21). In Titus 3:5 it denotes that change of heart elsewhere spoken of as a passing from death to life (1 John 3:14); becoming a new creature in Christ Jesus (2 Cor. 5:17); being born again (John 3:5); a renewal of the mind (Rom. 12:2); a resurrection from the dead (Eph. 2:6); a being quickened (2:1, 5).
This change is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. It originates not with man but with God (John 1:12, 13; 1 John 2:29; 5:1, 4).
As to the nature of the change, it consists in the implanting of a new principle or disposition in the soul; the impartation of spiritual life to those who are by nature “dead in trespasses and sins.”
The necessity of such a change is emphatically affirmed in Scripture (John 3:3; Rom. 7:18; 8:7-9; 1 Cor. 2:14; Eph. 2:1; 4:21-24).
Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary
Regeneration
palingenesia. Only twice in the New Testament: Tit 3:5 of the regeneration of the soul by the Holy Spirit, and Mat 19:28 the regeneration of the body and of the material world. (See BAPTISM.) Besides his natural birthday the believer has a spiritual birthday in this life, and a birthday to glory in the life to come. The marks of regeneration are given 1Jo 3:9; 1Jo 3:14; 1Jo 5:1; 1Jo 5:4. Only if God’s Spirit regenerate the soul now will the same Spirit quicken to immortality and glory the body hereafter (Rom 8:11; Phi 3:21).
The third and crowning step will be the regeneration of our home, this earth, and of “the whole creation,” “the restitution of all things” (Act 3:21; Mat 19:28; Rom 8:19-23). Nations and society shall be first regenerated in the millennial world, with Israel as their priest-kingly head (Isa 2:2-4; Isa 2:11); wars shall cease, and even the wild beasts cease to rage. (See THOUSAND YEARS.) (Revelation 20; Isa 65:16-25). The final regeneration of the earth and nature shall be after the millennium (Revelation 21; 2Pe 3:7-13).
Fuente: Fausset’s Bible Dictionary
REGENERATION
All people are sinners; therefore all are spiritually dead and unable to give themselves spiritual life. They are cut off from God, with no hope of salvation through anything they might plan or do. God, however, can save them from this hopeless condition by forgiving their sins, giving them new life and restoring them to a right relationship with himself. This experience is called the new birth, or regeneration, and is the work of the Spirit of God within the individual. It takes place when people humbly submit to Jesus Christ and trust him for forgiveness, salvation and life (Joh 1:12-13; Joh 3:3-6; Eph 2:1; Eph 2:5; Tit 3:5).
To be regenerated means, in other words, to be born anew, to be spiritually re-created. This is not something people themselves can do. It is entirely the work of the merciful and sovereign God (Joh 1:13; Joh 3:5; Tit 3:3-7; Jam 1:18; 1Pe 1:23; cf. Psa 51:10; Eze 11:19). Without it sinners remain in their hopeless state and are incapable of experiencing spiritual life (Joh 3:5-6). Through it they become children of God and enter his kingdom (Joh 1:12-13; Joh 3:3; Joh 3:5; see also ADOPTION).
Regenerated people are new people (2Co 5:17; 1Pe 2:2; cf. Gal 6:15). They have new life inwardly, characterized by renewed minds that govern all his thinking and attitudes (Rom 12:2; Eph 4:23-24; cf. Eze 36:26-27; Jer 31:33). They also have new life outwardly, characterized by loving behaviour towards others, hatred of sin and victory over the worlds temptations (Col 3:10; Col 3:12-13; 1Jn 2:29; 1Jn 4:7; 1Jn 5:4; 1Jn 5:18; cf. 1Co 5:7-8).
Fuente: Bridgeway Bible Dictionary
Regeneration
REGENERATION.Of all theological ideas, regeneration is probably that which has had the most unfortunate history. The figure is an apt and obvious one to express the completeness of the change which takes place when the non-Christian becomes a Christian; but it is tempting to press it, and it has been pressed in the most inconsiderate fashion. As the beginning of Christian life (it is argued), it must be antecedent to every Christian experience; faith, justification, conversion are, strictly speaking, its fruits. As a new birth, man can no more contribute to it than to his first birth, and hence must be regarded in it as purely passive, not acting or co-operating with God. As there is no middle state between being dead and being alive, it must be conceived as instantaneous; and so on. We can see the motives in such a mode of thought, but it is full of delusions. Perhaps they have influenced Reformed theology more than Lutheran; yet, while the Lutherans were more conscious of the figure in regeneration, the Reformed were guided by the justifiable desire to give faith a real basis in the believer,to lay an act of God, as the only sure foundation, at the basis of the whole experience of salvation.
The word regeneration occurs in Authorized Version only in Mat 19:28, Tit 3:5 (), and the figure of a new or second birth is most distinctly expressed in our Lords conversation with Nicodemus, John 3 ( ). But as the first of these passages is eschatological, and refers to the new world which is introduced with the of the Son of Man, while the two others belong to the latest in the NT, it is not convenient to start with them. To see the real basis for the figure of the new birth, it is necessary to go back to the teaching of Jesus in the Synoptics, and to look at it in its substance and not merely in its formal expression. What the figure conveys, vividly and truly, is the idea that somehow a man has become another man: he has entered into a new order of being; things once real to him have lost reality; things once unknown are now alone real. If we find this idea in the teaching of Jesus, we find what is meant by regeneration, even though that figure should not expressly appear.
1. Our Lords teaching.It cannot be questioned that the idea of the newness or originality of His work, and of all that depended upon it, was familiar to Jesus. Without accepting the doctrine that the Kingdom of God, as He conceived it, was purely transcendent,a new world not spiritually evolved from the present, but supernaturally descending upon it,we must believe that however it came, and however it was related to the present, the Kingdom introduced an order of things which was entirely new. It was itself, in a comprehensive sense, a (Mat 19:28). (On this word see the excellent article on Regeneration in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible , by Dr. Vernon Bartlet). But everything connected with it, involved in it, or leading up to it, awoke in the mind the same sense of newness. In spite, for example, of our Lords feeling of the continuity of His work with the OT (I came not to destroy, but to fulfil, Mat 5:17), He has the equally strong feeling that with the time of fulfilment a new era has dawned (The law and the prophets were until John: from that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every one presses into it, Luk 16:16). The newness is so complete, the distinction is so great, that the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than the greatest in the old dispensation (Mat 11:11). The same truth underlies all the passages in which Jesus claims for Himself absolute significance in determining the relations of God and man. Of these the most explicit is Mat 11:27. Jesus alone reveals the Father, and the man who knows the Father is no longer the same man. No words could be too strong to tell how completely he is another. This absolute significance of Jesus is the sum and substance of His self-revelation (cf. Mat 16:13 ff.); and the truth of regeneration is an immediate inference from it. Further, though it is not put expressly in this form in the Synoptics, the newness, which is the point to be emphasized, does break through in various ways. We see it in the parables of the New Patch on the Old Garment and the New Wine in the Old Bottles (Mar 2:21 f. ||). We see it in the new spiritual liberty which Jesus in Mat 17:24-27 claims for Himself and those who through Him become children of the Kingdom. We see it especially in the words at the Supper; for there is no doubt that Mt. and Lk. give at least the thought that was in His mind when they speak of the new covenant based on His blood (Mat 26:28 D, Luk 22:20). It deserves special mention, too, that in all the Synoptics (Mar 14:25, Mat 26:29, Luk 22:16-18) the thought of the new covenant carries the mind forward to the new world in which it is to be consummated; the new religious relation to God, determined by Christ and His death, cannot be fully realized apart from immortality. The inward regeneration of the soul (so to speak) is part of the , or of the in the sense of Mat 19:28. But to use the term regeneration here is to anticipate. We have not found any suggestion of it in the words of Jesus, and, in point of fact, the only such suggestion to be found in the Synoptics is Mat 18:3 Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn ( ), and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven (cf. Mar 10:15). To become as a little child is really to be born again; it is what this figure of a new birth properly means, and it is the only key to it which the words of Jesus yield. In the words of Jesus, evidently, it describes a moral requirement; it is something He demands from those who would be His disciples and enter the Kingdom, and it is achieved through turning. The context defines what turning means. It means giving up ambition, pride, self-seeking, by ends in religion, and other unchildlike tempers; it is, in short, identical with what is elsewhere in the Synoptics called , or repentance. It is through this moral change, the responsibility for which is laid upon man, that he becomes as a little child, that is, is born again.
It should be remarked, in passing, that John never uses or in the moral sense (except in the quotation from LXX Septuagint at Joh 12:40), and that the Synoptists never use regeneration of the individual, or speak of a new birth (except by the allusion in Mat 18:3); but it is one and the same experience which they respectively describe by these terms. When thar experience is regarded from the side of God, as something due to His grace or Spirit, it is called regeneration, a being born again, from above, of God; when it is regarded from the side of man, as an experience the responsibility for which lies with him, it is called repentance. But we have no meaning or substance to put into either of these terms which does not equally belong to the other.
Perhaps another approach to the figure of regeneration (though that of resurrection is equally obvious) may be recognized in the passages in which Jesus speaks of the sinful life as death, and of recovery from it as a return to or entrance into life. There are two of these in the Synoptics (Mat 8:22 || Luk 15:24; Luk 15:32): obviously the emphasis in both is moral, not metaphysical. A change of character is in view, which, however deep and far-reaching, raises none but moral problems. More important, however, than these are the passages in which our Lord teaches that the new or higher lifethe regenerate life, to call it socan be won only through the sacrifice of a lower life. In other words, to have the life which is life indeed, we must surrender the other; we must die to nature in order to live to God. We must renounce self ( : a new and radical idea, without formal analogy in the OT) if we are to share in the life of the Kingdom. The man who refuses to do so, who cannot find it in him to do violence to nature, is incapable of discipleship and of the life which is life indeed. This is the burden of our Lords teaching in such passages as Mat 16:24 ff. || Mat 10:39, Mat 18:8 f. ||, Luk 14:25 ff. It contains all that is meant by regeneration, but it does not use that figure to express it. And again it is all within ethical limits.
2. Pauline Epistles.The Book of Acts is a picture of the regenerate life in its workings in the Church, but it is not specially so conceived. At Pentecost what we see is rather a new birth than the new birth of the Apostles. The Spirit is not so much the author of regeneration as the source of the peculiar gifts and powers of believers. But the newness of Christianity is nowhere more strongly felt and expressed than in this book. It brings us directly to St. Paul. The Apostle of the Gentiles became a Christian in a way which must have impressed him profoundly with the difference between the Christian life and that of the pre-Christian state. No one could say with greater truth than he, I am now another man. But in him the change took place in a way which was in the highest degree startling and abnormal; it could not possibly suggest to him anything so natural as being born; and it agrees with this that, though no one has a more adequate sense than St. Paul of the absolute newness of the Christian life, he never uses the figure of regeneration to convey this. He speaks of the new covenant of which he is a minister (2Co 3:6), of the new creature ( , 2Co 5:17, Gal 6:15) which he has become, of the new world in which he lives (2Co 5:17), of the new man who has been created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth (Eph 4:24), and who is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created him (Col 3:10); he speaks also of being transformed by renewal of the mind (Rom 12:2), and (if Tit 3:5 be his) of a renewal wrought by the Holy Spirit at baptism; of walking in newness of life (Rom 6:4), and serving God in newness of spirit (Rom 7:6); but he never speaks formally of being born again. Even when he contrasts the past and the present as death and life, the life is not conceived as coming by birth, but either by a creative act of God analogous to that by which at first He commanded light into being out of darkness (2Co 4:6), or by an exercise of the same almighty power with which God wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places (Eph 1:20 ff; Eph 2:1; Eph 2:5): when we were dead in trespasses He quickened us together with Him. It is essentially the same change which Paul represents elsewhere as translation from the tyranny of darkness to the Kingdom of Gods dear Son (Col 1:13), or from the state of condemnation to that of justification, or from life after the flesh to life after the Spirit (Ro. Gal. passim), or, in more mystical or metaphysical fashion, from being in Adam to being in Christ: see esp. Rom 5:12-21, 1Co 15:45 ff. It is not necessary here to discuss what is called Pauls psychology, as though he had such a thing in the sense of modern mental philosophy; he has really no psychology; he knows what he was, and he knows what he is, in the way of moral experiences, and he generalizes his past and his present into the conceptions of the natural and the spiritual man, the and the . Every man in himself is , a descendant and representative of Adam; every man has through the gospel the opportunity of becoming , a child of God and representative of Christ. But, as has been already pointed out, Paul never uses the figure of a birth to elucidate or make intelligible the process of this change. He approaches the figure indeed in two different ways. On the one hand, he speaks of himself as the father of those who receive the new life of the gospel through his ministry: in Christ Jesus have I begotten you through the gospel (1Co 4:15; cf. Gal 4:19, 1Ti 1:2 my true child in the faith). On the other, he speaks of the spirit in virtue of which men are , and walk in newness of life, as specifically the spirit of sonship (), by which men are made to be, and are identified as, children of God. It is usually the dignity and privileges of this relation to God on which Paul lays stress, and these are suggested by ; but he has also the sense of the kinship to God which it involves, and this is expressed by . The latter, though relatively infrequent, occurs in passages so characteristic that we can say that Paul was no stranger to that intimate sense of kinship to God which is so notable in the Johannine type of Christianity (Rom 8:16-21, Eph 5:1).
There are two points of contact between the Pauline presentation of truth on this subject, and that which we have found in our Lords teaching, which require to be emphasized. (1) There is in both the same outlook to immortality; the Spirit in Paul which makes men children of God is also the earnest of a life which vanquishes death (Rom 8:11, 2Co 5:4 f., Eph 1:13 f.). Indeed, the new life is often identified with the resurrection life of Jesus in such a way that the present spiritual experience of it seems rather a deduction from that transcendent possession than something having an independent existence of its own. This applies, e.g., to Rom 6:1-11, Eph 2:1-5. In the gospel, and in the experience of the Christian, there is the revelation at once of and (2Ti 1:10). (2) There is in both our Lord and St. Paul the same idea that the new life is entered on through a death. Our old man was crucified with Christ (Rom 6:6), and it is through that crucifixion that the new man comes into being (compare what is said above, 1 ad fin.). It is one process, one experience, in man, in which the Adam dies and the Christ comes to be. In Paul the process is normally connected with baptism, and in view of Rom 6:2 ff., Col 2:11-13 it is not easy to maintain that Paul could not have written the laver of regeneration, and of renewing wrought by the Holy Spirit (Tit 3:5). No doubt it is against the Pauline origin of the last phrase that it introduces the figure of regeneration which is so conspicuously wanting in the undoubted Epistles. When St. Paul spoke of baptism, however, as involving men in the death and resurrection of Jesus,making them mysteriously participant in all that was meant by both, a death to sin and a life to God, with the assurance of immortality at the heart of it,he was not thinking of baptism as a sacrament which produced these effects as an opus operatum. He could think of it only as he knew it, that is, as an ordinance administered to people confessing their sins and accepting the love of God in Christ,an ordinance that gathered into it the whole meaning of Christianity, and in a high and solemn hour raised to its height the Christians sense of what it is to be a Christian. He says expressly in Col 2:12 that in this ordinance we are raised with Christ through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. The same holds of Rom 6:2 ff. Baptism there is a picture of what is meant by the faith which looks to a dead, buried, and risen Saviour as its one object; in faith we identify ourselves with Christ in all these aspects, and so are taken out of the region to which sin belongs: this is what baptism shows even to the malignant or unintelligent persons who carped at Pauls gospel of salvation by faith alone. The sacrament, as St. Paul was accustomed to it, shut the mouth of anybody who denied that the Christian life rested on a death to sin; and in guarding this fundamental truth it guarded (as we have seen) one of the primary teachings of Jesus. It is an immediate inference from all this that when we ask whether any particular passage in Paulsay Rom 7:14-25applies to the regenerate or the unregenerate man, we are asking a question which the Apostle himself does not formally enable us to answer. He does not think of his experience in terms of regenerate and unregenerate. He can speak of the old man and the new, of the natural and the spiritual, of being under law and under grace, in Adam and in Christ, dead to sin and alive to God, and so on; but the distinction between the states is moral rather than metaphysical, and it is in doctrine rather than experience that it is absolute. One personality subsists through all experiences, all changes of state; nature, or the old man, is not extinct even in those who are in Christ and have the earnest of the Spirit; and though St. Paul, like all religious teachers, often speaks absolutely, not telling his converts to be what they should be, but to be what as Christians they are, he does not allow the religious interest to engulf the moral. It is to men dead in Christ, whose old man has been crucified with Him, that he says, Put to death your members that are on the earth (Col 3:5), Reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin (Rom 6:11). Experience is not a quantum but a process, and in the life of a spiritual being it cannot be dated; the things that in a sense happened twenty years ago are also present experiences, and it may be only now that we are discovering their real meaning. This holds especially of such generalized experiences as are embodied in the passage referred to. Only the new man, who by becoming such has learned what the life of the old man meant, could have written it, but it is unreal to say that it is the experience of either, to the exclusion of the other. The new man understands it better than anybody, but the fact that everybody understands it in some degree is the evidence that all men are capable of the experience it describes.
3. Catholic Epistles.We find the idea of regeneration both in James and 1 Peter. In Ja. (Jam 1:18) God is the author of it, Christians its subjects, and the word of truth the instrument. We are reminded here of the parables in which the word of Godthat is, the gospelis spoken of as a seed, and of 1Co 4:19, though in James it is the will of God and not the ministry of an Apostle to which the new birth is referred. When James contemplates Christians thus begotten as a kind of first-fruits of Gods creatures, he has apparently in view the universal of Mat 19:28. The regeneration of individual men has the promise in it of new heavens and a new earth. There is a similar connexion of ideas in Rom 8:21 ff. Peter, who uses twice (1Pe 1:3; 1Pe 1:23) the word which is exactly rendered by regenerate (), connects the experience which he so describes first with the resurrection of Christ, and then with the incorruptible seed which he identifies with the word of Godthe gospel message which has been delivered to his hearers. The first brings him closely into line with Paul: the new life is distinctively life in the power of Christs resurrection, a living hope which has an incorruptible inheritance in view (cf. 1Pe 1:3 and Rom 6:4 f.). This resurrection life is, of course, ethical, because it is Divine, but its ethical character is more explicitly secured by reference to the incorruptible seed from which it springs. Love one another from the heart fervently, having been born again, etc. (1Pe 1:22 f.). The figure is continued in 1Pe 2:1 f., where the readers are exhorted (precisely as in Eph 4:22) to put off all that was characteristic of their former life, and as newborn babes to desire the spiritual milk which is without guile. Another parallel to Paul (and to our Lord) in making the new life rest on death to the old is found in 1Pe 4:1 f.; but though the reality is the same, the figure differs.
4. Johannine writings.It is in the Fourth Gospel and 1 Jn. that the figure of a new birth is most frequent and explicit. John does not indeed use , but he says (Joh 3:3; Joh 3:7); he speaks nine times in the 1st Ep. of being born of God ( ), and twice in the Gospel and four times in the 1st Ep. of children of God ( ). The fundamental passage here is that in John 3, in which Jesus explains the new birth to Nicodemus. No experience is described or demanded in it which has not already come before us independently; the new birth is only a new figure which gives vivid and suggestive expression to a truth which Jesus Himself in the Synoptic record, and the Apostles in their writings, have already expressed in other forms. It may fairly be argued, when we look to the general relation of the discourses in the Fourth Gospel to the indisputable words of Jesus, that the real text of this discourse is Mat 18:3. The Evangelist is guided by the Spirit of truth into all the truth of this apparently simple saying (Joh 16:13); he universalizes it, and sets it in the various relations which bring out its meaning; he shows the necessity of the new birth, the method of it (so far as experience enabled him to do so), and the seat of the power which produced it. But he gives no description of its contentsno analysis of it as an experiencewhich enables us to put more into it than we put into turning and becoming as little children, or into dying to sin and living to God, or into putting off the old man and putting on the new. He does indeed put in the most general form the necessity for the new birth when he says, that which is born of the flesh is flesh. This does not mean that human nature is essentially or totally depraved; it means that that which is natural is not ipso facto spiritual; it is not what we get from our fathers and mothers which enables us to appreciate Christ, or to enter Gods Kingdom; it is something which we can get only from God. This is the same truth as St. Paul teaches in 1Co 15:45 ff. That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual. The birth by which man enters into relations with the natural world has an analogue in the experience by which he enters into relations with the spiritual world. It, too, is a birthwhich is variously described as a second birth, or a birth from above, a being born of God, or of the Spirit, or of water and spirit. It cannot be denied that in generalizing the necessity for the second birth, the Evangelist passes from the safe and intelligible moral ground of Mat 18:3 into a more metaphysical region (as St. Paul also does in 1Co 15:45 ff.); but in the circumstances this is not of much consequence. What St. Paul means by and St. John by is not any metaphysical abstraction, but human beings as they are encountered in the world; and it needs no argument that they must become other than they are, through and through, if they are to dwell with God. It needs no argument, either, that they cannot make themselves other than they are. To be born again they must be born of a power which comes from above, and that poweras the whole experience of his life taught St. John, and had taught St. Paul before himwas the power of the Spirit. To be born again is to be born of God. When the truth is put in this wayin what we may call without offence the onesidedly religious wayits mysteriousness is apparent. The action of God through which the new life emerges in men cannot be prescribed or calculated; it is as unquestionable in its effects as His action in nature, but there is something in it which eludes control. The sense of this underlies all the predestinarian passages in both St. John and St. Paul, but, of course, these are not to be read alone. We should completely misrepresent both Apostles if we supposed that their sense of dependence upon God for being the new men they were impaired their sense of responsibility in this relation. The mind is apt, and perhaps the feeble or insincere mind is glad, to escape from the moral to the metaphysical, from Mat 18:3 to Joh_Joh 3:6; there is more to talk about and less to do; but there is no ground for bringing this charge against the Apostles. St. Johns interest in this passage is not in the earthly truth (Joh 3:12) of the necessity of regenerationit needs no revelation from above to make that plain; bitter experience teaches it to all men; his interest is in the possibility and the method of regeneration, the heavenly truths which only Jesus can reveal. The new birth is a birth of water and spirit (Joh 3:6): in other words, it is a birth which is realized through Christian baptism. That the Spirit is the important matter appears from the fact that the water is mentioned only once, and then the Spirit alone (Joh 3:6; Joh 3:8). Here, as in the case of St. Paul (see above), baptism must be taken in the whole circumstances and conditions in which it was familiar to the Evangelist. It was not the baptism of unconscious infants, but that of penitent and confessing believers. The importance of it in this passage is seen when we look on to Joh 3:14 f. The heavenly truth (Joh 3:12) of the passage is that the power through which men are born again is lodged in the Son of Man lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. The baptism through which the new birth comes is baptism in His namebaptism, as in Romans 6, into His death and resurrectionbaptism which means the believing abandonment of the soul to the love of God revealed in that strange uplifting which includes both the cross and the throne, a believing abandonment for which mans responsibility is complete, and the refusal of which is the only fatal sin (Joh 3:36). When we realize that this is the connexion of ideas in the conversation with Nicodemus, we see that it falls into line with the teaching of St. Paul, entirely so far as its substance is concerned, and even in form more nearly than is at first apparent; while the teaching of both Apostles is securely based at once on their experience as Christians and on thoroughly attested words of Jesus.
It is as easy with regard to St. John as with regard to St. Paul to ask questions connected with his doctrine of regeneration to which he himself does not afford any answer. Thus the new birth is made dependent somehow on baptism; but it has been argued that in Joh 1:12 f. children of God are spoken of, who were born of God, before the Incarnation, and that in Joh 11:52 children of God are spoken of as scattered throughout the world who are to be gathered into one by the death of Jesus. As to the first of these passages, the interpretation which refers it to the ages before the Incarnation seems to the writer more than doubtful, but in any case the Logos doctrine is a way of expressing the truth that the meaning and power of the Incarnation and Passion are independent of time. In the second passage children of God is probably prophetic; there are men everywhere who will yet gather round the cross of Jesus, and by the power which descends from it into their souls be born again as . Another kind of question with regard to those who are born of God is raised by some passages in the 1st Epistle. In 1Jn 1:8 it is said of Christians, If we say that we have not sin, we deceive ourselves, and in 1Jn 1:10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar. But in 1Jn 3:9 we read, Every one that is born of God doth not sin, for his seed remaineth in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God. This is in another form the same difficulty as we encounter in St. Paul when he says in one breath, Ye are dead, and in the next, Put to death, therefore; or when we try to tell whether any given spiritual experience is that of the regenerate or the unregenerate man. The regenerate and the unregenerate man, for better or worse, cannot be separated in this summary way. The practical interest of the Apostles compels us to interpret them everywhere through experiences that we can understand; hence it is vain to seek in them any suggestion of what regeneration can mean in the case of baptized infants. There is no indication in the NT that they ever contemplated any such case. Regeneration is a moral experience regarded as the work of God, and repentance is the same moral experience regarded from the side of man; but in neither the one aspect nor the other can we speak of it in the case of beings who have as yet no moral experience at all.
Regeneration is not an exclusively NT idea, and those who regard NT Christianity as a kind of religious syncretism have sought the key to some of its ideas, its terminology, and its rites, especially where this doctrine and its sacramental connexions are concerned, in the Greek and Oriental mysteries which were so popular in the Roman Empire during the first two or three centuries of our era. That powerful influences from these sourcesespecially, perhaps, from the religion of Mithrasdid at a certain period tell upon popular Christianity, cannot be questioned; but the period was not the creative one for Christianity, and the channel of these influences was not Jewish Apostles who held every kind of pagan religion in horror. The writer is convinced that there is nothing in the NT, either about the new birth or about baptism, which cannot be explained from experiences specifically and exclusively Christian; and that to drag in the Taurobolium, and the renatus in ternum of Mithraic monumental inscriptions, to explain NT ideas, while ignoring the historical connexions which these ideas assert for themselves, is mere wantonness.
Literature.The works on NT Theology (Holtzmann, Weiss, Stevens); books mentioned under the article Holy Spirit; Gennrich, Die Lehre von der Wiedergeburt; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 54, 55; Khler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, 493 ff.; Orr, Gods Image in Man, 278 f.; Ritschl, Rechtfertigung u. Vershnung, iii. 61; W. N. Clarke, Outline of Chr. Theol. 395; Laidlaw, Bible Doct. of Man, chs. xiii. xiv.; Denney in Expositor, Oct. and Dec. 1901. For kindred ideas in other religions, see Anrich, Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum; Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie; Reitzenstein, Poimandres (s.v. in Index).
James Denney.
Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels
Regeneration
REGENERATION.In the language of theology, regeneration denotes that decisive spiritual change, effected by Gods Holy Spirit, in which a soul, naturally estranged from God, and ruled by sinful principles, is renewed in disposition, becomes the subject of holy affections and desires, and enters on a life of progressive sanctification, the issue of which is complete likeness to Christ. The term, however, to which this word corresponds (Gr. palingenesia), occurs only twice in the NT (Mat 19:28, Tit 3:5), and in the first instance denotes, not the renewal of the individual, but the perfected condition of things at the Parousia (cf. Act 3:21, 2Pe 3:13; see Restoration). In the other passage (Tit 3:5), the expression the washing [laver] of regeneration connects the renewing of the Holy Ghost with the rite of baptism, which is its outward symbol and seal (see below). The doctrine, nevertheless, is a thoroughly Scriptural one, and the change in question is expressed by a great variety of terms and phrases: born, born anew, a new creation, renewed, quickened, etc., to which attention will immediately be directed. The fundamental need of regeneration is recognized in the OT as well as in the NT (e.g. Psa 51:10-11), though, necessarily, the prophecies speak more frequently of national renewal (Jer 31:31 ff; Jer 32:38-40, Eze 36:25-28, Hos 6:1-3 etc.) than of individual.
The classical passage on the need of regeneration is Joh 3:3 ff. Spiritual life, it is taught, can come only from a spiritual source, and man, naturally, has not that life (Joh 3:6). Hence the declarations: Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God; Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born anew (Joh 3:3; Joh 3:5). The miracle is wrought by the Spirit of God, whose action is sovereign (Joh 3:8). Many do marvel, like Nicodemus, at the strangeness and universality of this demand of Christ; yet the strangeness will disappear, and the need of a supernatural agent to effect the change will be felt, if due consideration is given (1) to the vastness of the change, and (2) to the condition of the human nature in which the change is to be made.
(1) It is sufficient, to show the vastness of this change, to reflect that here, and elsewhere, regeneration means nothing less than a revolution of such a kind as results in the whole man being brought round from his ordinary worldly way of feeling, and thinking, and willing, into harmony with Gods mind and will; truly brought round to Gods point of view, so that he now sees things as God sees them, feels about things as God feels about them, judges of things as God judges of them, loves what God loves, hates what God hates, sets Gods ends before him as his own. Who can doubt, if this is the nature of the change, that it does not lie in mans own powers to produce it; that it can be effected only through a higher power entering his being, and working the change?
(2) The need of a supernatural agency in the change is further evident from the condition of the human nature in which the change is wrought. The testimony of Scripture is uniform that man has turned aside from God (Psa 14:1-3, Rom 3:9 ff.), and that his nature has undergone a terrible depravation (Gen 6:5; Gen 8:21, Psa 51:5, Isa 1:2-4, Rom 7:14 ff., Eph 2:1-3; Eph 4:17-18 etc.); that the bent of the will is away from God (Rom 8:7-8); that the love of God has been replaced by love of the world, and the self-seeking principles connected therewith (1Jn 2:15-16, cf. Joh 5:42; Joh 5:44); that the better nature is in bondage to a law of sin, which works lawlessness in thought, feeling, and desire (Rom 7:22-23, 1Jn 3:4 RV [Note: Revised Version.] ). Is it not obvious, leaving out of account altogether the darker forms in which evil manifests itself, that this is a condition of soul which only a Divine power can rectify?
Nothing, therefore, is more plainly taught in Scripture than that this spiritual change we call regeneration is one which nothing short of Divine power can effect. It is spoken of as a being born of God (Joh 1:12-13; Joh 3:5, 1Jn 3:9 etc.); as a new creation (2Co 5:21); as a being raised from the dead (Eph 2:5-6). It is compared to that great work of the omnipotence of God in raising Christ Himself from the dead (Eph 1:19; Eph 1:22; Eph 2:1; Eph 2:6). It is a complete renewal, transformation, of the inner man (Rom 12:2, Eph 4:23, Col 3:10, Tit 3:15, 1Pe 1:22-23). Yet, while so distinctively a supernatural work, it is made equally clear that it is not a magical work; not a work bound up with rites and words, so that, when these rites and ceremonies are performed, regeneration is ipso facto effected. This is the error of sacerdotalism, which binds up this spiritual change with the rite of baptism. It would be wrong to say that baptism has no connexion with the change, for it is often brought into most intimate relation with it (Rom 6:4, Tit 3:5, 1Pe 3:21; perhaps even in Christs words, Joh 3:5; with the historical examples of the connexion of the receiving of the Spirit with baptism, Act 2:38; Act 19:2-8 etc.). Baptism is connected with regeneration as outwardly representing it, and being a symbol of it; as connected with profession (1Pe 3:21), and pledging the spiritual blessing to faith; but it neither operates the blessing, nor is indispensable to it, nor has any virtue at all apart from the inward susceptibility in the subjects of it. In some cases we read of those on whom the Spirit of God fell, that they were baptized afterwards (Act 10:44; Act 10:48), and in all cases faith is presumed to be already present before baptism is administered; that is, the inward decisive step has already been taken.
On the other hand, when we look to the meansthe instrumentalityby which the Holy Spirit effects this change, we find it always in Scripture declared to be one thing, namely, the word. This is what is meant by saying that regeneration is effected, not magically, but by the use of. rational means. It is connected with the outward call of the gospel (hence the older divines were wont to treat of this subject under the head of vocation, or effectual calling). We speak, of course, only of adults, of those who are capable of hearing and understanding the call, and are far from limiting the grace of God in infants, or others whom this call does not or cannot reach. What is affirmed is, as regards those who have come to years of intelligence, that Gods dealing with them is through the word, and this is the constant representation. The OT equally with the NT extols the saving, converting, quickening, cleansing, sanctifying power of the word of God (e.g. Psa 19:7 ff., Psa 119:1-176). Jesus declares the word to be the seed of the Kingdom (Luk 8:11). He prays: Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth (Joh 17:17). Conversion, regeneration, sanctification, are connected with the word (Act 11:19-21, Eph 1:13, Col 1:5, 1Th 2:13, 2Th 2:13, Jam 1:18, 1Pe 1:23-25 [Begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, etc.])
If this is the nature, generally, of regeneration, then it has what may be termed a psychology; that is, there is a process which the mind goes through in the experience of this spiritual change. The Spirit of God, doubtless, has innumerable ways of dealing with human souls; still, if we look closely, it will be found that there are certain elements which do in some degree enter into all experience in regeneration, and furnish, so far, a test of the reality of the change. There is first, of necessity, the awakening of the soul out of its customary spiritual dormancyout of that deep insensibility to spiritual things in which ordinarily the natural mind is held (Eph 5:14, cf. Rom 14:11-12). Especially there comes into view here the peculiar awakening of the soul through the conscience, which takes the form of what we call conviction of sin towards God (cf. Act 16:29-30). Probably no one can undergo this spiritual change without in some degree being brought inwardly to the realization of his sinful condition before God, and to the sincere confession of it (Psa 51:4). The law of God has its place in producing this conviction of sin; but law alone will not produce spiritual contrition. See Repentance. For this there is needed the exhibition of mercy. Hence the next stage in this spiritual process is that described as enlightenmentgrowing enlightenment in the knowledge of Christ, This also, like the preceding stages, is a Divine work (Joh 16:14-15, 2Co 4:4). Even with this, however, the work of regeneration is not complete. The will of God for mans salvation has not only to be understood, it has also to be obeyed. There is the will to be laid hold ofthe will, the centre and citadel of the being. So the work of the Holy Spirit is directed, finally, to the renewing of the will. It is directed to the renewing of the will, first of all, in the form of persuasion, for the Holy Spirit does none of His work by violence. Everything that God accomplishes is accomplished in accordance with the nature He has given us; but God most graciously, most lovingly, brings His persuasions to bear upon our wills, and by the power of appropriate motives draws us to the acceptance of Christ (Joh 6:44). With this there goes what, in the next place, may be called the potentiation of the willthe enabling of it, or imparting to it the power needful in order to lay hold on Christ with full and fast faith (Eph 4:16). Last of all, this work of regeneration is completed when the soul is brought to the point of absolute surrender of itself to Christwhen, drawn and persuaded, and at length enabled by the Spirit, it yields itself up entirely to Christ as its Saviour, and lays hold on Christ for a complete salvation. There is now union with Christ by faith, and, with that, entrance into the lifethe experienceof the newborn child of God. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new (2Co 5:17).
James Orr.
Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible
Regeneration
This is the word, and the doc trine connected with it, which hath been, and ever will be, a stumbling-block to the whole world of mere natural men, who receive not the things of the “Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto them, neither can they know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1Co 2:14)
The carnal mind, in every age of the church, hath been disposed to receive the doctrine of re generation as a mere figure of speech. They are unable to explain it upon any principles of their own, and therefore wish of all things to class it under the character of metaphor or parable. But it will be found to all the unawakened and unregenerated in eternity an awful reality to them. I well remember to have heard it said concerning a prelate of the highest rank in the establishment, who in the close of life expressed himself on this subject in these very solemn words: “I have read (said he) much on the doctrine of regeneration, and I have heard much upon it; should hope, it is after all, but a mere figure of speech; but if it be a real truth, I can only say, that I known nothing of it in my own experience.” What a dreadful confession this for a man in his dying hours!
Our blessed Lord, who brought life and immortality to light by his Gospel, brought this doctrine of regeneration also, as a fundamental part of that Gospel, to the full and complete testimony of it in his conversation with Nicodemus the Jew. (Joh 3:1-21) I beg the reader to pay a close attention to this blessed Scripture, looking up to God the Holy Ghost to render it plain and intelligible; and, under his divine teaching, the doctrine itself cannot fail to appear in its true light.
The holy Scriptures, with one voice, declare, that man by the fall of Adam lost all apprehension of the divine nature; he became virtually dead in trespasses and sins: so that the recovery from hence could only be effected by the quickening influences of the Holy Ghost. Hence every son and daughter of Adam is born, as to spiritual faculties, in a state of spiritual death, and is as incapable, until an act of regeneration hath passed in quickening to a new and spiritual life, of any act of spiritual apprehension, as a dead body is to any act of animal life.
Scripture describes the different degrees of death in a clear and distinct manner. The death of the body is the separation of soul and body, so that the soul, which is the life of the body, if fled, leaves the body lifeless, and without any longer principle of consciousness. “The body (saith an apostle) without the spirit is dead.” (Jam 2:26)
Spiritual death is the death of sin, by reason of the want of the quickening Spirit of God in the soul; so that as Christ is the life of the soul, every Christ-less soul is a dead soul. Eternal death is the separation both of soul and body from God for ever: and this is the state of the unreclaimed and unregenerate wicked.
Now then, as in the first instance, while the soul actuates the body that body is alive, but without; the soul so actuating, the body would be dead; so in the second, unless Christ, who is the life of the soul, actuates the soul by regeneration, that soul continues dead as by original transgression was induced. And in the third, if living and dying without the blessed influence of regeneration, that soul and body must remain in a state of eternal death, and separation from God for ever.
Now, from this Scriptural statement of spiritual death, it will be easy to gather what is meant and implied by the doctrine of regeneration. It is, to all intents and purposes, in the spiritual faculties creating a new life, a new birth, a new nature: hence the Scriptures describe the recovery from sin under the strongest expressions. “You, (saith the apostle, speaking to the regenerated Ephesians), (Eph 2:1) hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.” So again, Eph 2:5 “Even when we were dead in sins, hath he quickened us together with Christ.” So again-“If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.” (2Co 5:17) And hence the apostle elsewhere saith, that our recovery to a state of grace, and the new life, is “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost, shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Tit 3:5-6) I only add an humble prayer to God to grant to all his renewed members the sweetest testimony in their own experience to this most blessed truth, that they may know that they are born again, “not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of our God, which liveth and abideth for ever.” (1Pe 1:23)
Fuente: The Poor Mans Concordance and Dictionary to the Sacred Scriptures
Regeneration
re-jen-er-ashun, re4-:
I.THE TERM EXPLAINED
1.First Biblical Sense (Eschatological)
2.Second Biblical Sense (Spiritual)
II.THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF REGENERATION
1.In the Old Testament
2.In the Teaching of Jesus
3.In Apostolic Teaching
III.LATER DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE
IV.PRESENT SIGNIFICANCE
LITERATURE
I. The Term Explained.
The theological term regeneration is the Latin translation of the Greek expression , palingenesa, occurring twice in the New Testament (Mat 19:28; Tit 3:5). The word is usually written , paliggenesa, in classical Greek. Its meaning is different in the two passages, though an easy transition of thought is evident.
1. First Biblical Sense (Eschatological):
In Mat 19:28 the word refers to the restoration of the world, in which sense it is synonymical to the expressions , apokatastasis panton, restoration of all things (Act 3:21; the verb is found in Mat 17:11, , apokatastesei panta, shall restore all things), and , anapsuxis, refreshing (Act 3:19), which signifies a gradual transition of meaning to the second sense of the word under consideration. It is supposed that regeneration in this sense denotes the final stage of development of all creation, by which God’s purposes regarding the same are fully realized, when all things (are put) in subjection under his feet (1Co 15:27). This is a regeneration in the proper meaning of the word, for it signifies a renovation of all visible things when the old is passed away, and heaven and earth are become new (compare Rev 21:1). To the Jew the regeneration thus prophesied was inseparably connected with the reign of the Messiah.
We find this word in the same or very similar senses in profane literature. It is used of the renewal of the world in Stoical philosophy. Josephus (Ant., XI, iii, 9) speaks of the anaktesis ka paliggenesa tes patrdos, a new foundation and regeneration of the fatherland, after the return from the Babylonian captivity. Philo (ed. Mangey, ii. 144) uses the word, speaking of the post-diluvial epoch of the earth, as of a new world, and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (xi. 1), of a periodical restoration of all things, laying stress upon the constant recurrence and uniformity of all happenings, which thought the Preacher expressed by There is no new thing under the sun (Ecc 1:9). In most places, however, where the word occurs in philosophical writings, it is used of the reincarnation or subsequent birth of the individual, as in the Buddhistic and Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls (Plut., edition Xylander, ii. 998c; Clement of Alexandria, edition Potter, 539) or else of a revival of life (Philo i. 159). Cicero uses the word in his letters to Atticus (vi. 6) metaphorically of his return from exile, as a new lease of life granted to him. See ESCHATOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, IX.
2. Second Biblical Sense (Spiritual):
This sense is undoubtedly included in the full Biblical conception of the former meaning, for it is unthinkable that a regeneration in the eschatological sense can exist without a spiritual regeneration of humanity or the individual. It is, however, quite evident that this latter conception has arisen rather late, from an analysis of the former meaning. It is found in Tit 3:5 which, without absolute certainty as to its meaning, is generally interpreted in agreement with the numerous nouns and verbs which have given the dogmatical setting to the doctrine of regeneration in Christian theology. Clement of Alexandria is the first to differentiate this meaning from the former by the addition of the adjective , pneumatike, spiritual (compare anapsuxis, Act 3:20; see REFRESHING). In this latter sense the word is typically Christian, though the Old Testament contains many adumbrations of the spiritual process expressed thereby.
II. The Biblical Doctrine of Regeneration.
1. In the Old Testament:
It is well known that in the earlier portions of the Old Testament, and to a certain degree all through the Old Testament, religion is looked at and spoken of more as a national possession, the benefits of which are largely visible and tangible blessings. The idea of regeneration here occurs therefore – though no technical expression has as yet been coined for the process – in the first meaning of the word elucidated above. Whether the divine promises refer to the Messianic end of times, or are to be realized at an earlier date, they all refer to the nation of Israel as such, and to individuals only as far as they are partakers in the benefits bestowed upon the commonwealth. This is even true where the blessings prophesied are only spiritual, as in Isa 60:21, Isa 60:22. The mass of the people of Israel are therefore as yet scarcely aware of the fact that the conditions on which these divine promises are to be attained are more than ceremonial and ritual ones. Soon, however, great disasters, threatening to overthrow the national entity, and finally the captivity and dispersion which caused national functions to be almost, if not altogether, discontinued, assisted in the growth of a sense of individual or personal responsibility before God. The sin of Israel is recognized as the sin of the individual, which can be removed only by individual repentance and cleansing. This is best seen from the stirring appeals of the prophets of the exile, where frequently the necessity of a change of attitude toward Yahweh is preached as a means to such regeneration. This cannot be understood otherwise than as a turning of the individual to the Lord. Here, too, no ceremony or sacrifice is sufficient, but an interposition of divine grace, which is represented under the figure of a washing and sprinkling from all iniquity and sin (Isa 1:18; Jer 13:23). It is not possible now to follow in full the development of this idea of cleansing, but already in Isa 52:15 the sprinkling of many nations is mentioned and is soon understood in the sense of the baptism which proselytes had to undergo before their reception into the covenant of Israel. It was the symbol of a radical cleansing like that of a new-born babe, which was one of the designations of the proselyte (compare Psa 87:5; see also the tractate Yebhamoth 62a). Would it be surprising that Israel, which had been guilty of many sins of the Gentiles, needed a similar baptism and sprinkling? This is what Eze 36:25 suggests: I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. In other passages the cleansing and refining power of fire is alluded to (e.g. Mal 3:2), and there is no doubt that John the Baptist found in such passages the ground for his practice of baptizing the Jews who came to him (Joh 1:25-28 and parallel’s).
The turning of Israel to God was necessarily meant to be an inward change of attitude toward Him, in other words, the sprinkling with clean water, as an outward sign, was the emblem of a pure heart. It was Isaiah and Jeremiah who drew attention to this (Isa 57:15; Jer 24:7; Jer 31:33-35; Jer 32:38-40, et passim). Here again reference is made to individuals, not only to the people in general (Jer 31:34). This promised regeneration, so lovingly offered by Yahweh, is to be the token of a new covenant between God and His people (Jer 31:31; Eze 11:19-21; Eze 18:31, Eze 18:32; Eze 37:23, Eze 37:24).
The renewing and cleansing here spoken of is in reality nothing else than what Deu 30:6 had promised, a circumcision of the heart in contradistinction to the flesh, the token of the former (Abrahamic) covenant (of circumcision, Jer 4:4). As God takes the initiative in making the covenant, the conviction takes root that human sin and depravity can be effectually eliminated only by the act of God Himself renewing and transforming the heart of man (Hos 14:4). This we see from the testimony of some of Israel’s best sons and daughters, who also knew that this grace was found in the way of repentance and humiliation before God. The classical expression of this conviction is found in the prayer of David: Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right (margin stedfast) spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with a willing spirit (Psa 51:10-12). Jeremiah puts the following words into the mouth of Ephraim: Turn thou me, and I shall be turned (Jer 31:18). Clearer than any passages of the Old Testament, John the Baptist, forerunner of Christ and last flaming torch of the time of the earlier covenant, spoke of the baptism, not of water, but of the Holy Spirit and of fire (Mat 3:11; Luk 3:16; Joh 1:33), leading thus to the realization of Old Testament foreshadowings which became possible by faith in Christ.
2. In the Teaching of Jesus:
In the teaching of Jesus the need of regeneration has a prominent place, though nowhere are the reasons given. The Old Testament had succeeded – and even the Gentile conscience agreed with it – in convincing the people of this need. The clearest assertion of it and the explanation of the doctrine of regeneration is found in the conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus (Jn 3). It is based upon (1) the observation that man, even the most punctilious in the observance of the Law, is dead and therefore unable to live up to the demands of God. Only He who gave life at the beginning can give the (spiritual) life necessary to do God’s will. (2) Man has fallen from his virginal and divinely-appointed sphere, the realm of the spirit, the Kingdom of God, living now the perishing earthly life. Only by having a new spiritual nature imparted to him, by being born anew (Joh 3:3, the Revised Version margin from above, Greek , anothen), by being born of the Spirit (Joh 3:6, Joh 3:8), can he live the spiritual life which God requires of man.
These words are a New Testament exegesis of Ezekiel’s vision of the dead bones (Eze 37:1-10). It is the breath from Yahweh, the Spirit of God, who alone can give life to the spiritually dead.
But regeneration, according to Jesus, is more than life, it is also purify. As God is pure and sinless, none but the pure in heart can see God (Mat 5:8). This was always recognized as impossible to mere human endeavor. Bildad the Shuhite declared, and his friends, each in his turn, expressed very similar thoughts (Job 4:17; Job 14:4): How then can man be just with God? Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? Behold, even the moon hath no brightness, and the stars are not pure in his sight: how much less man, that is a worm! and the son of man, that is a worm! (Job 25:4-6).
To change this lost condition, to impart this new life, Jesus claims as His God-appointed task: The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost (Luk 19:10); I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly (Joh 10:10). This life is eternal, imperishable: I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand (Joh 10:28). This life is imparted by Jesus Himself: It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life (Joh 6:63). This life can be received on the condition of faith in Christ or by coming to Him (Joh 14:6). By faith power is received which enables the sinner to overcome sin, to sin no more (Joh 8:11).
The parables of Jesus further illustrate this doctrine. The prodigal is declared to have been dead and to be alive again (Luk 15:24). The new life from God is compared to a wedding garment in the parable of the Marriage of the King’s Son (Mat 22:11). The garment, the gift of the inviting king, had been refused by the unhappy guest, who, in consequence, was ‘cast out into the outer darkness’ (Mat 22:13).
Finally, this regeneration, this new life, is explained as the knowledge of God and His Christ: And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ (Joh 17:3). This seems to be an allusion to the passage in Hosea (Hos 4:6): My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me.
3. In Apostolic Teaching:
It may be said in general that the teaching of the apostles on the subject of regeneration is a development of the teaching of Jesus on the lines of the adumbrations of the Old Testament. Considering the differences in the personal character of these writers, it is remarkable that such concord of views should exist among them. Paul, indeed, lays more stress on the specific facts of justification and sanctification by faith than on the more comprehensive head of regeneration. Still the need of it is plainly stated by Paul. It is necessary to salvation for all men. The body is dead because of sin (Rom 8:3-11; Eph 2:1). The flesh is at enmity with God (Eph 2:15); all mankind is darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18). Similar passages might be multiplied. Paul then distinctly teaches that thus is a new life in store for those who have been spiritually dead. To the Ephesians he writes: And you did he make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1), and later on: God, being rich in mercy,… made us alive together with Christ (Eph 2:4, Eph 2:5). A spiritual resurrection has taken place. This regeneration causes a complete revolution in man. He has thereby passed from under the law of sin and death and has come under the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:2). The change is so radical that it is possible now to speak of a new creature (2Co 5:17; Gal 6:15, margin new creation), of a new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth (Eph 4:24), and of the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him (Col 3:10). All old things are passed away; behold, they are become new (2Co 5:17).
Paul is equally explicit regarding the author of this change. The Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ has been given from above to be the source of all new life (Rom 8); by Him we are proved to be the sons of God (Gal 4:6); we have been adopted into the family of God (, huiothesa, Rom 8:15; Gal 4:5). Thus Paul speaks of the second Adam, by whom the life of righteousness is initiated in us; just as the first Adam became the leader in transgression, He is a life-giving spirit (1Co 15:45). Paul himself experienced this change, and henceforth exhibited the powers of the unseen world in his life of service. It is no longer I that live, he exclaims, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me (Gal 2:20).
Regeneration is to Paul, no less than to Jesus, connected with the conception of purity and knowledge. We have already noted the second New Testament passage in which the word regeneration occurs (Tit 3:5): According to his mercy he saved us, through the washing (margin laver) of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, which he poured out upon us richly, through Jesus Christ our Saviour. In 1Co 12:13 such cleansing is called the baptism of the Spirit in agreement with the oft-repeated promise (Joe 2:28 (in the Hebrew text Joe 3:1); Mat 3:11; Mar 1:8; Luk 3:16; Act 1:5; Act 11:16). There is, of course, in these passages no reference to mere water baptism, any more than in Eze 36:25. Water is but the tertium comparationis. As water cleanseth the outer body, so the spirit purifies the inner man (compare 1Co 6:11; 1Pe 3:21).
The doctrine that regeneration redounds in true knowledge of Christ is seen from Eph 3:15-19 and Eph 4:17-24, where the darkened understanding and ignorance of natural man are placed in contradistinction to the enlightenment of the new life (see also Col 3:10). The church redeemed and regenerated is to be a special possession, an heritage of the Lord (Eph 1:11, Eph 1:14), and the whole creation is to participate in the final redemption and adoption (Rom 8:21-23).
James finds less occasion to touch this subject than the other writers of the New Testament. His Epistle is rather ethical than dogmatical in tone, still his ethics are based on the dogmatical presuppositions which fully agree with the teaching of other apostles. Faith to him is the human response to God’s desire to impart His nature to mankind, and therefore the indispensable means to be employed in securing the full benefits of the new life, i.e. the sin-conquering power (Jam 1:2-4), the spiritual enlightenment (Jam 1:5) and purity (Jam 1:27). There seems, however, to be little doubt that James directly refers to regeneration in the words: Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures (Jam 1:18). It is supposed by some that these words, being addressed to the twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion (Jam 1:1), do not refer to individual regeneration, but to an election of Israel as a nation and so to a Christian Israel. In this case the aftermath would be the redemption of the Gentiles. I understand the expression first-fruits in the sense in which we have noticed Paul’s final hope in Rom 8:21-32, where the regeneration of the believing people of God (regardless of nationality) is the first stage in the regeneration or restoration of all creation. The implanted (the Revised Version margin inborn) word (Jam 1:21; compare 1Pe 1:23) stands parallel to the Pauline expression, law of the Spirit (Rom 8:2).
Peter uses, in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, the words refreshing (Act 3:19) and restoration of all things (Act 3:21) of the final completion of God’s plans concerning the whole creation, and accordingly looks here at God’s people as a whole. In a similar sense he says in his Second Epistle, after mentioning the day of God: We look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness (2Pe 3:13). Still he alludes very plainly to the regeneration of individuals (1Pe 1:3, 1Pe 1:13). The idea of a second birth of the believers is clearly suggested in the expression, newborn babes (1Pe 2:2), and in the explicit statement of 1Pe 1:23 : having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth. It is in this sense that the apostle calls God Father (1Pe 1:17) and the believers children of obedience (1Pe 1:14), i.e. obedient children, or children who ought to obey. We have seen above that the agent by which regeneration is wrought, the incorruptible seed of the word of God, finds a parallel in Paul’s and James’s theology. All these expressions go back probably to a word of the Master in Joh 15:3. We are made partakers of the word by having received the spirit. This spirit (compare the Pauline lifegiving spirit, 1Co 15:45), the mind of Christ (1Pe 4:1), is the power of the resurrected Christ active in the life of the believer. Peter refers to the same thought in 1Pe 3:15, 1Pe 3:21. By regeneration we become an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession in whom divine virtues, the excellencies of him who called you (1Pe 2:9), are manifested. Here the apostle uses well-known Old Testament expressions foreshadowing New Testament graces (Isa 61:6; Isa 66:21; Exo 19:6; Deu 7:6), but he individualizes the process of regeneration in full agreement with the increased light which the teaching of Jesus has brought. The theology of Peter also points out the contact of regeneration with purity and holiness (1Pe 1:15, 1Pe 1:16) and true knowledge (1Pe 1:14) or obedience (1Pe 1:14; 1Pe 3:16). It is not surprising that the idea of purity should invite the Old Testament parallel of cleansing by water. The flood washed away the iniquity of the world in the days of Noah, when eight souls were saved through water: which also after a true likeness (the Revised Version margin in the antitype) doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation (the Revised Version margin inquiry, appeal) of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection (-life) of Jesus Christ (1Pe 3:20, 1Pe 3:21).
The teaching of John is very closely allied with that of Jesus, as we have already seen from the multitude of quotations we had to select from John’s Gospel to illustrate the teaching of the Master. It is especially interesting to note the cases where the apostle didactically elucidates certain of these pronouncements of Jesus. The most remarkable apostolic gloss or commentary on the subject is found in Joh 7:39. Jesus had spoken of the change which faith in Him (coming to him) would cause in the lives of His disciples; how divine energies like rivers of water should issue forth from them; and the evangelist continues in explanation: But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified. This recognition of a special manifestation of divine power, transcending the experience of Old Testament believers, was based on the declaration of Christ, that He would send another Comforter (the Revised Version (British and American) advocate, helper, Greek Paraclete), that he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth (Joh 14:16, Joh 14:17).
In his Epistles, John shows that this Spirit bestows the elements of a Godlike character which makes us to be sons of God, who before were children of the devil (1Jo 3:10, 1Jo 3:24; 1Jo 4:13, etc.). This regeneration is eternal life (1Jo 5:13) and moral similarity with God, the very character of God in man. As God is love, the children of God will love (1Jo 5:2). At the same time it is the life of God in man, also called fellowship with Christ, victorious life which overcomes the world (1Jo 5:4); it is purity (1Jo 3:3-6) and knowledge (1Jo 2:20).
The subject of regeneration lies outside of the scope of the Epistle to the Hebrews, so that we look in vain for a clear dogmatical statement of it. Still the epistle does in no place contradict the dogma, which, on the other hand, underlies many of the statements made. Christ, the mediator of a better covenant, which hath been enacted upon better promises (Joh 8:6), has made purification of sins (Joh 1:3). In contradistinction to the first covenant, in which the people approached God by means of outward forms and ordinances, the new covenant (Joh 8:13) brought an eternal redemption (Joh 9:12) by means of a divine cleansing (Joh 9:14). Christ brings many sons unto glory and is author of their salvation (Joh 2:10). Immature Christians are spoken of (as were the proselytes of the Old Testament) as babies, who were to grow to the stature, character and knowledge of full-grown men (Joh 5:13, Joh 5:14).
III. Later Development of the Doctrine.
Very soon the high spiritual meaning of regeneration was obscured by the development of priestcraft within the Christian church. When the initiation into the church was thought of as accomplished by the mediation of ministers thereto appointed, the ceremonies hereby employed became means to which magic powers were of necessity ascribed. This we see plainly in the view of baptismal regeneration, which, based upon half-understood passages of Scripture quoted above, was taught at an early date. While in the post-apostolic days we frequently find traces of a proper appreciation of an underlying spiritual value in baptism (compare Didache vii) many of the expressions used are highly misleading. Thus Gregory Nazianzen (Orations, xi. 2) calls baptism the second of the three births a child of God must experience (the first is the natural birth, the third the resurrection). This birth is of the day, free, delivering from passions, taking away every veil of our nature or birth, i.e. everything hiding the divine image in which we are created, and leading up to the life above (Ullmann, Gregor v. Nazienz, 323). Cyril of Jerusalem (Cat., xvii, c. 37) ascribes to baptism the power of absolution from sin and the power of endowment with heavenly virtues. According to Augustine baptism is essential to salvation, though the baptism of blood (martyrdom) may take the place of water baptism, as in the case of the thief at the cross (Augustine, De Anima et Eius Origine, i. 11, c. 9; ii. 14, c. 10; ii. 16, c. 12). Leo the Great compares the spirit-filled water of baptism with the spirit-filled womb of the virgin Mary, in which the Holy Spirit engenders a sinless child of God (Serm. xxiv. 3; xxv. 5; see Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, section 137).
In general this is still the opinion of pronounced sacrmentarians, while evangelical Christianity has gone back to the teaching of the New Testament.
IV. Present Significance.
Although a clear distinction is not always maintained between regeneration and other experiences of the spiritual life, we may summarize our belief in the following theses:
(1) Regeneration implies not merely an addition of certain gifts or graces, a strengthening of certain innate good qualities, but a radical change, which revolutionizes our whole being, contradicts and overcomes our old fallen nature, and places our spiritual center of gravity wholly outside of our own powers in the realm of God’s causation.
(2) It is the will of God that all men be made partakers of this new life (1Ti 2:4) and, as it is clearly stated that some fall short of it (Joh 5:40), it is plain that the fault thereof lies with man. God requires all men to repent and turn unto Him (Act 17:30) before He will or can effect regeneration. Conversion, consisting in repentance and faith in Christ, is therefore the human response to the offer of salvation which God makes. This response gives occasion to and is synchronous with the divine act of renewal (regeneration). The Spirit of God enters into union with the believing, accepting spirit of man. This is fellowship with Christ (Rom 8:10; 1Co 6:17; 2Co 5:17; Col 3:3).
(3) The process of regeneration is outside of our observation and beyond the scope of psychological analysis. It takes place in the sphere of subconsciousness. Recent psychological investigations have thrown a flood of light on the psychic states which precede, accompany and follow the work of the Holy Spirit. He handles psychical powers; He works upon psychical energies and states; and this work of regeneration lies somewhere within the psychical field. The study of religious psychology is of highest value and greatest importance. The facts of Christian experience cannot be changed, nor do they lose in value by the most searching psychological scrutiny.
Psychological analysis does not eliminate the direct workings of the Holy Spirit. Nor can it disclose its process; the underlying laboratory where are wrought radical remedial processes and structural changes in the psychical being as portrayed in explicit scriptural utterances: ‘Create in me a clean heart’ (Psa 51:10); ‘Ye must be born again’ (Joh 3:7 the King James Version); ‘If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new’ (2Co 5:17 the King James Version), is in the region of subconsciousness. To look in the region of consciousness for this Person or for His work is fruitless and an effort fraught with endless confusion. Christian psychology thus traces to its deep-lying retreat the divine elaboration of the regenerated life. Here God works in the depths of the soul as silently and securely as if on the remotest world of the stellar universe (H. E. Warner, Psychology of the Christian Life, 117).
(4) Regeneration manifests itself in the conscious soul by its effects on the will, the intelligence and the affections. At the same time regeneration supplies a new life-power of divine origin, which enables the component parts of human nature to fulfill the law of God, to strive for the coming of God’s kingdom, and to accept the teachings of God’s spirit. Thus regenerate man is made conscious of the facts of justification and adoption. The former is a judicial act of God, which frees man from the law of sin and absolves him from the state of enmity against God; the latter an enduement with the Spirit, which is an earnest of his inheritance (Eph 1:14). The Spirit of God, dwelling in man, witnesses to the state of sonship (Rom 8:2, Rom 8:15, Rom 8:16; Gal 4:6).
(5) Regeneration, being a new birth, is the starting-point of spiritual growth. The regenerated man needs nurture and training. He receives it not merely from outside experiences, but from an immanent power in himself, which is recognized as the power of the life of the indwelling Christ (Col 1:26, Col 1:27). Apart from the mediate dealings of God with man through word and sacraments, there is therefore an immediate communication of life from God to the regenerate.
(6) The truth which is mentioned as the agent by whom regeneration is made possible (Joh 8:32; Jam 1:18; 1Pe 1:23), is nothing else than the Divine Spirit, not only the spoken or written word of God, which may convince people of right or wrong, but which cannot enable the will of man to forsake the wrong and to do the right, but He who calls Himself the Truth (Joh 14:6) and who has become the motive power of regenerated life (Gal 2:20).
(7) Recent philosophy expressive of the reaction from the mechanical view of bare materialism, and also from the depreciation of personality as seen in socialism, has again brought into prominence the reality and need of personal life. Johannes Muller and Rudolf Eucken among others emphasize that a new life of the spirit, independent of outward conditions, is not only possible, but necessary for the attainment of the highest development. This new life is not a fruit of the free play of the tendencies and powers of natural life, but is in sharp conflict with them. Man as he is by nature stands in direct contrast to the demands of the spiritual life. Spiritual life, as Professor Eucken says, can be implanted in man by some superior power only and must constantly be sustained by superior life. It breaks through the order of causes and effects; it severs the continuity of the outer world; it makes impossible a rational joining together of realities; it prohibits a monastic view of the immediate condition of the world. This new life derives its power not from mere Nature; it is a manifestation of divine life within us (Hauptprobleme der Religionsphilosophie, Leipzig, 1912, 17 ff; Der Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt, Leipzig, 1907; Grundlinien einer neuen Lebensanschauung, Leipzig, 1907; Johannes Muller, Bausteine fur personliche Kultur, 3 volumes, Munchen, 1908). Thus the latest development of idealistic philosophy corroborates in a remarkable way the Christian truth of regeneration. See also CONVERSION.
Literature
New Testament Theologies by Weiss, Beyschlag, Holtzmann, Schlatter, Feine, Stevens, Sheldon, Weinel. Textbooks on Systematic Theology: articles Bekehrung by R. Seeberg; Wiedergeburt by O. Kirn in Hauck-Herzog RE3; Regeneration by J. V. Bartlett in HDB; Conversion by J. Strachan in ERE; George Jackson, The Fact of Conversion, London, 1908; Newton H. Marshall, Conversion; or, the New Birth, London, 1909; J. Herzog, Der Begriff der Bekehrung, Giessen, 1903; P. Feine, Bekehrung im New Testament und in der Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1908; P. Gennrich, Die Lehre yon der Wiedergeburt, Leipzig, 1907. Psychological: W. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 189-258; G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, II, 281-362; G. A. Coe, The Spiritual Life, New York, 1900; E. D. Starbuck, Psychology of Religion, New York, 1911; G. B. Cutten, Psychological Phenomena of Christianity, London, 1909; H. E. Warner, The Psychology of the Christian Life, New York, 1910; H. W. Clark, The Philosophy of Christian Experience, London, 1906; Harold Begbie, Broken Earthenware, or Twice-Born Men, London, 1909; M. Scott Fletcher, The Psychology of the New Testament, London, 1912.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Regeneration
The word is , lit . ‘new birth,’ a renovation as in the return of spring. The word occurs but twice in the New Testament. In Mat 19:28 it speaks of the time when Christ will sit on the throne of His glory; and in Tit 3:5 it refers to the new order of things, in connection with the presence of the Spirit, into which believers were brought. The word does not occur in the LXX. Josephus (Ant. xi. 3, 9) uses it for the ‘restoration’ of the Jewish nation after the exile. It will be seen that the word regeneration has not in scripture the sense of ‘new birth,’ to which the term has been commonly applied. Intimately connected with regeneration is the idea of ‘washing,’ referring probably to a cleansing, or separation from old associations, which is essential to the idea of regeneration.
Fuente: Concise Bible Dictionary
Regeneration
General references
Deu 30:6; Deu 29:4; 1Ki 8:58; Psa 36:9; Psa 51:2; Psa 51:7; Psa 51:10; Psa 65:3; Psa 68:18; Psa 87:4; Psa 87:6; Psa 110:3; Pro 4:23; Pro 12:28; Pro 14:27; Pro 16:1; Isa 1:16-17; Isa 1:25; Isa 4:4; Isa 12:3; Isa 26:12; Isa 29:23; Isa 32:3-4; Isa 32:15; Isa 32:17; Isa 35:5-6; Isa 42:16; Isa 43:7; Isa 44:3-5; Isa 49:9; Isa 55:1-3; Jer 13:23; Jer 17:13-14; Jer 24:7; Jer 31:3; Jer 31:33-34; Heb 8:10-11; Jer 32:38-40; Jer 33:6; Eze 11:19-20; Eze 16:9; Eze 18:31; Eze 36:26-27; Eze 36:29; Eze 37:1-14; Eze 44:7; Eze 44:9; Zec 12:10; Mat 12:33-35; Mat 12:43-44; Mat 13:23; Mat 13:33; Mar 4:20; Luk 13:21; Mat 18:3; Mar 10:15; Luk 18:17; Mar 4:26-29; Luk 1:16-17; Luk 8:35; Luk 8:38-39; Mar 5:19-20; Joh 1:4; Joh 1:13; Joh 1:16; Joh 3:3-8; Joh 4:10; Joh 4:14; Joh 5:24; Joh 6:44-45; Joh 6:47; Joh 6:50-51; Joh 6:57; Joh 8:12; Joh 8:32; Joh 8:36; Joh 10:9-10; Joh 13:8; Joh 15:1; Joh 15:3; Joh 17:2; Act 2:38; Act 2:47; Act 3:26; Act 11:17; Act 11:21; Act 15:9; Act 16:14; Act 21:19; Act 26:18; Rom 2:28-29; Rom 6:3-23; Rom 7:6; Rom 7:24-25; Rom 8:2-6; Rom 8:9; Rom 8:13-16; Rom 12:2; Rom 15:16; 1Co 1:9; 1Co 1:24; 1Co 1:30; 1Co 2:12; 1Co 2:14-16; 1Co 3:6-7; 1Co 3:9; 1Co 6:11; 1Co 12:6; 1Co 12:13; 1Co 15:10; 2Co 1:21-22; 2Co 3:3; 2Co 3:18; 2Co 4:6; 2Co 5:5; 2Co 5:17; Gal 2:20; Gal 4:29; Gal 6:15; Eph 2:1; Eph 2:5-6; Eph 2:8; Eph 2:10; Eph 4:7-8; Eph 4:16; Eph 4:21-24; Eph 5:14; Phi 1:6; Col 2:11-13; Col 3:9-10; 2Th 2:13; Tit 3:5-6; Heb 4:1-12; Heb 10:16-17; Heb 10:22-23; Jas 1:18; Jas 5:19-20; 1Pe 1:2-3; 1Pe 1:22-23; 1Pe 2:3; 1Pe 2:9; 2Pe 1:3-4; 1Jn 2:27; 1Jn 2:29; 1Jn 3:9; 1Jn 3:14; 1Jn 4:7; 1Jn 5:1; 1Jn 5:4-5; 1Jn 5:11-12; 1Jn 5:18 Atonement; Reconciliation; Redemption; Sanctification; Sin, Forgiveness of
Instances of:
– Jacob
Gen 32:29
– Saul
1Sa 10:9
– Saul of Tarsus
Act 9:3-18
– All righteous persons
Righteous
Fuente: Nave’s Topical Bible
Regeneration
palingenesia (G3824) Regeneration
anakainosis (G342) Renewing
Palingenesia is one of the many words that the gospel found and then glorified by expanding its meaning and lifting it to new heights to express deeper truths. Although palingenesia was used before the birth of Christ, it could be used to refer to the Christian new birth only after Christ’s death. Men could not experience new birth until Christ was born (Joh 1:12), and their regeneration could only follow his generation.
Although palingenesia could not be used in its highest and most mysterious sense until the birth of the Son of God, it is quite interesting to trace its subordinate and preparatory uses. In some instances it means nothing more than revivification. In the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, their reappearance in new bodies was called their palingenesia. For the Stoics, palingenesia referred to the periodic renovation of the earth, to that time when the earth awakened in the blossoming of springtime from its winter sleep and revivedfrom its winter death. Philo often used palingenesia to refer to the phoenixlike resurrection of the material world out of fire, a doctrine that also was taught by the Stoics, and Philo described Noah and his companions in the ark with these words: “They became leaders of a restoration [palingenesias] and chiefs of a second cycle.” Basil the Great spoke thusly of some heretics who brought old heathen speculations into the Christian church: “They introduce infinite destructions and rebirths [palingenesias] of the world.” Cicero called his restoration to dignity and honor after his return from exile “this rebirth [palingenesian] of ours.” Josephus characterized the restoration of the Jewish nation after the Babylonian captivity as “the recovery and restoration [palingenesia] of the fatherland.” Olympiodorus, a later Platonist, styled recollection or reminiscence (which must carefully be distinguished from memory) as the palingenesia of knowledge: “Recollection is a restoration [palingenesia] of knowledge.”
Thus the pre-Christian usage of palingenesia refers to a recovery, a restoration, or a revival, but not to the type of new birth referred to in the New Testament. Palingenesia is not used in the Old Testament and appears only twice in the New Testament (Mat 19:28; Tit 3:5). In each case it has a different meaning. Our Lord’s own words evidently refer to the new birth of the whole creation, the apokatastasis panton (the restoration of all things, Act 3:21), that will occur when the Son of Man comes in his glory. Paul, however, used “the washing of regeneration” to refer to the new birth of human souls, not to the birth of the new creation. Is there a common denominator to the two New Testament uses of palingenesia?Certainly, otherwise all the laws of language would be violated. Palingenesia is used in a wider sense by Christ and in a narrower sense by Paul. There are two concentric circles of meaning with a common center. The palingenesia of Scripture begins with the microcosm of single souls but does not end until it has embraced the whole macrocosm of the universe. As seen in the Pauline reference, the primary seat of the palingenesia is man’s soul. Having established its center there, the palingenesia extends in ever-widening circles, first embracing man’s body, for which the day of resurrection is its palingenesia. Jesus’ words in Mat 19:28 certainly imply (or presuppose) the resurrection, but they involve much more. Beyond the day of resurrection, or contemporaneous with it, will come a day when all nature will put off its soiled, worn garments and clothe itself in holy attire. This will be “the times of restoration of all things” that is referred to in Act 3:21. In an interesting intimation of this glorious truth, Plutarch refers to the “new arrangement,” and frequently the Bible mentions “the new heaven and the new earth.” According to Paul, the day of the palingenesia of the whole creation is one day in the labor-pangs of which all creation is groaning and travailing until now (Rom 8:21-23). Man is presently the subject of the palingenesia and the wondrous changes it implies, but in that day the palingenesia will include the whole world.
The uses of palingenesia in Mat 19:28 and Tit 3:5 may be reconciled as follows. In Tit 3:5 palingenesia refers to the single soul; in Mat 19:28 it refers to the whole redeemed creation. Each use refers to a different stage of the same event. As Delitzsch so concisely said: “Palingenesia is a brief term expressing rebirth or transfiguration of human bodily existence and of the entire non-human nature.”
Anagennesis, a word commonly found in the Greek fathers, does not occur in the New Testament. If it were in the New Testament, it would constitute a closer synonym to palingenesia than does anakainosis. Were it used in the New Testament, anagennesis would refer to the active operation of Christ, the author of the new birth, and palingenesia to the new birth itself. Without further discussion, we will examine anakainosis and its relation to palingenesia.
Although palingenesia is drawn from the realm of nature, anakainosis is derived from the world of art. Anakainosis is found only in the Greek New Testament, where it occurs twiceonce in connection with palingenesia (Tit 3:5) and in Rom 12:2. The verb anakainoo (G341) also occurs only in the Greek New Testamentin 2Co 4:16 and in Col 3:10. The more classical anakainizo (G340) appears in Heb 6:6, and the nouns derived from it are anakainismos (L-S 107, renewal) and anakainisis (L-S 107, renewal). Ananeoo (G365) is used in a similar way in Eph 4:23. The “collect” for Christmas day well expresses the relationship between the palingenesia and the anakainosis. That prayer reads: “That we being regenerate” (in other words, having already been made the subjects of the palingenesia)”may daily be renewed by the Holy Spirit”may continually know the renewal (anakainosis) of the Holy Spirit. In this “collect,” which contains profound theological truths in simple and accurate form, the new birth is contemplated as already past, and the “renewal,” or “renovation,” takes place daily. The gradual restoration of the divine image progresses in the one who through the new birth has come under the transforming powers of the world to come. It is called “the renewal of the Holy Spirit”because he alone is the means for putting off the old man and putting on the new.
Palingenesia and anakainosis are closely bound together; the second is the consequence, or consummation, of the first. The palingenesia is that free act of God’s mercy and power by which he removes the sinner from the kingdom of darkness and places him in the kingdom of light; it is that act by which God brings him from death to life. In the act itself (rather than the preparations for it), the recipient is passive, just as a child has nothing to do with his own birth. Such passivity does not characterize the anakainosis, the gradual conforming of the person to the new spiritual world in which he now lives, the restoration of the divine image. In this process the person is not passive but is a fellow worker with God. How many conflicts and obscurations of God’s truth have arisen from confusing and separating palingenesia and anakainosis!
Fuente: Synonyms of the New Testament
Regeneration
“new birth” (palin, “again,” genesis, “birth”), is used of “spiritual regeneration,” Tit 3:5, involving the communication of a new life, the two operating powers to produce which are “the word of truth,” Jam 1:18; 1Pe 1:23, and the Holy Spirit, Joh 3:5-6; the loutron, “the laver, the washing,” is explained in Eph 5:26, “having cleansed it by the washing (loutron) of water with the word.”
The new birth and “regeneration” do not represent successive stages in spiritual experience, they refer to the same event but view it in different aspects. The new birth stresses the communication of spiritual life in contrast to antecedent spiritual death; “regeneration” stresses the inception of a new state of things in contrast with the old; hence the connection of the use of the word with its application to Israel, in Mat 19:28. Some regard the kai in Tit 3:5 as epexegetic, “even;” but, as Scripture marks two distinct yet associated operating powers, there is not sufficient ground for this interpretation. See under EVEN.
In Mat 19:28 the word is used, in the Lord’s discourse, in the wider sense, of the “restoration of all things” (Act 3:21, RV), when, as a result of the second advent of Christ, Jehovah “sets His King upon His holy hill of Zion” (Psa 2:6), and Israel, now in apostasy, is restored to its destined status, in the recognition and under the benign sovereignty of its Messiah. Thereby will be accomplished the deliverance of the world from the power and deception of Satan and from the despotic and anti-christian rulers of the nations. This restitution will not in the coming millennial age be universally a return to the pristine condition of Edenic innocence previous to the Fall, but it will fulfill the establishment of God’s covenant with Abraham concerning his descendants, a veritable rebirth of the nation, involving the peace and prosperity of the Gentiles. That the worldwide subjection to the authority of Christ will not mean the entire banishment of evil, is clear from Rev 20:7-8. Only in the new heavens and earth, “wherein dwelleth righteousness,” will sin and evil be entirely absent.
Fuente: Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament Words
Regeneration
a new birth; that work of the Holy Spirit by which we experience a change of heart. It is expressed in Scripture by being born again, Joh 3:7; born from above; being quickened, Eph 2:1; by Christ being formed in the heart, Gal 4:19; by our partaking of the divine nature, 2Pe 1:4. The efficient cause of regeneration is the divine Spirit. That man is not the author of it, is evident from Joh 1:12-13; Joh 3:4; Eph 2:8; Eph 2:10. The instrumental cause is the word of God, Jam 1:18; 1Pe 1:23; 1Co 4:15. The change in regeneration consists in the recovery of the moral image of God upon the heart; that is to say, so as to love him supremely and serve him ultimately as our highest end, and to delight in him superlatively as our chief good. The sum of the moral law is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and soul, and strength, and mind. This is the duty of every rational creature; and in order to obey it perfectly, no part of our inward affection or actual service ought to be, at any time, or in the least degree misapplied. Regeneration consists in the principle being implanted, obtaining the ascendancy, and habitually prevailing over its opposite. It may be remarked, that though the inspired writers use various terms and modes of speech in order to describe this change of mind, sometimes terming it conversion, regeneration, a new creation, or the new creature, putting off the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new man, walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit, &c; yet it is all effected by the word of truth, or the Gospel of salvation, gaining an entrance into the mind, through divine teaching, so as to possess the understanding, subdue the will, and reign in the affections. In a word, it is faith working by love that constitutes the new creature, the regenerate man, Gal 5:6; 1Jn 5:1-5. Regeneration is to be distinguished from our justification, although it is connected with it. Every one who is justified, is also regenerated; but the one places us in a new relation, and the other in a new moral state. Our Lord, in one instance, uses the term regeneration for the resurrection state: Ye which have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging, Mat 19:28. And, accordingly, Dr. Campbell translates the passage thus: At the renovation, when the Son of man shall be seated on the glorious throne, ye, my followers, sitting also upon twelve thrones, shall judge. We are accustomed, says he to apply the term solely to the conversion of individuals; whereas its relation here is to the general state of things. The principal completion will be at the general resurrection, when there will be, in the most important sense, a renovation or regeneration of heaven and earth, when all things shall become new.