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 (Ac 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 (Ro 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' (Ps 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 (Ro 8:2,15-16; Ga 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 1:26-27). 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; Jas 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 (Ga 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.
John L. Nuelsen