That would be of interest to me. Please identify what you see as assertions. As for any positions taken by this student in regard to textual evidence, do you have or propose other evidence which would indicate those positions to be incorrect?
You are refuting Calvinism. You have not disproved total depravity yet have asserted that fallen man has the innate libertarian free will ability to change his nature within himself to be able to repent and have faith before being born from above.
For the Reformed refutation of your other posts on regeneration:
from Reymond
Why do some people repent and respond by faith in Christ to the divine
summons to faith while others do not? Concerning those who believe in
Christ’s name John immediately says in John 1:13: “[These are they] who
have been begotten [egennēthēsan], not by blood, nor by the will of the
flesh, nor by the will of a husband, but by God.” By this particular
reference to God’s “begetting” activity John refers to regeneration, and
clearly suggests by his statement that, while faith is the instrumental
precondition to justification and adoption, regeneration is the
necessary precondition and efficient cause of faith in Jesus Christ. In
short, regeneration causally precedes faith.
This sequential order of “regeneration as the cause, faith in Jesus
Christ as the effect” is supported by Jesus’ statements in John 3:3, 5.
When Jesus teaches that only those who have been “begotten from above”
(anōthen) can “see” and “enter” the kingdom of God (figurative
expressions for “faith activities”
, he surely intends that regeneration
is essential to faith as the latter’s causal prius.
John’s statement in 1 John 5:1, “Everyone who believes [pisteuōn] that
Jesus is the Christ has been begotten [gegennētai] by God,” also bears
out the sequential cause and effect relationship between regeneration as
cause and faith as effect. It is true, if one were to restrict his
assessment of John’s intended meaning to only this one verse, that one
could conceivably argue that John, by his reference to regeneration, was
simply saying something more, in a descriptive way, about everyone who
believes that Jesus is the Christ—that he “has been begotten by God,”
but that he need not be understood as suggesting that a cause and effect
relationship exists between God’s regenerating activity and saving
faith. But when one takes into account that John says in 1 John 3:9a
that “everyone who has been begotten [gegennēmenos] by God does not do
sin, because [hoti] his seed abides in him” and then in 1 John 3:9b that
“he is not able to sin, because [hoti] he has been begotten
[gegennētai—the word in 5:1] by God,” we definitely find a cause and
effect relationship between God’s regenerating activity as the cause and
the Christian’s not sinning as one effect of that regenerating activity.
Then when he later makes the simple statement in 1 John 5:18 that
“everyone who has7 In every other place where it occurs in the Gospel of
John—3:31; 19:11, 23— anōthen, means “from above.” been begotten
[perfect tense] by God sins [present tense] not,” though he does not say
so in so many words, it is surely appropriate, because of his earlier
pattern of speech in 1 John 3:9, to understand him to mean that the
cause behind one’s not sinning is God’s regenerating activity. What is
significant in 5:18 for 5:1 is his pattern of speech. When John declares
in 5:1 that everyone who believes (pisteuōn) that Jesus is the Christ
has been begotten (gegennētai) by God, it is highly unlikely that he
intended simply to say about the Christian, in addition to the fact that
he believes that Jesus is the Christ, that he has also been begotten of
God and nothing more. His established pattern of speech would suggest
that he intended to say that God’s regenerating activity is the cause of
one’s believing that Jesus is the Christ, and conversely that such faith
is the effect of that regenerating work.
When one adds to this Paul’s insistence in Ephesians 2:1–4 that he and
Christians generally had been spiritually dead in their trespasses and
sins until God, “who is rich in mercy, because of his great love by
which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive
[synezōopoiēsen—Paul’s term for regeneration] with Christ,” the
conclusion cannot be avoided that God’s regenerating work must causally
precede a man’s faith response to God’s summons to faith. Consequently,
regeneration must be positioned before repentance unto life and faith in
Jesus Christ in the ordo salutis as the cause of both. But since Romans
8:29– 30 clearly teaches that glorification is the last act in the ordo,
implying thereby, when Paul speaks earlier of calling, that he intended
to teach that effectual calling is the first act in the “series of acts
and processes” in the ordo, we may safely conclude that regeneration
either follows upon calling or is the effecting force within calling
which makes God’s summons effectual (I shall argue the case for the
latter possibility later).
Accordingly, we have now established the following order of application:
effectual calling, regeneration, repentance unto life and faith in Jesus
Christ, justification, adoption, glorification.
REGENERATION (NEW BIRTH)
* The Biblical Data *
The framers of the Westminster standards offer no separate and distinct
chapter or questions on regeneration, preferring to treat this doctrine,
as we have already noted, within the context of effectual calling. But
the Scriptures have much to say about this gracious work of the Spirit.
Paul employs the word (palingenesia, “regeneration”
itself only once
with reference to the spiritual renewal of an individual: “Not by works
which we have done in righteousness but according to his mercy he saved
us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit”
(Titus 3:5). But he elaborates the doctrinal notion elsewhere under the
terminology of (1) lifegiving resurrection with Christ (Eph. 2:5—“when
we were dead in trespasses, he made us alive with Christ”; Col.
2:13—“when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your
sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ”; see also Rom. 4:17) and
(2) the divine work of new creation (2 Cor. 5:17— “if any man is in
Christ, he is a new creation”; Gal. 6:15—“what counts is a new
creation”; Eph. 2:10—“we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus”
. Peter and James, as we noted in another context, speak
respectively of God “begetting anew” (1 Pet. 1:23) and “bringing forth”
(James 1:18).
It is particularly John, following the teaching of Jesus himself,
however, who is in a unique sense the “theologian of the birth from
above.” John records Jesus’ “birth from above [John 3:3, 7—, gennēthēnai
anōthen] discourse” in John 3:1–15, and refers eleven times to God’s
“begetting,” in John 1:13 (“who were begotten by God”
, 1 John 2:29 (“by
him he has been begotten”
, 3:9 (“the one who has been begotten by God,”
“by God he has been begotten”
, 4:7 (“by God he has been begotten”
, 5:1
(“by God he has been begotten,” “the One who begot,” “the one who has
been begotten by him”
, 5:4 (“whatever has been begotten by God”
, and
5:18 (“the one who has been begotten by God,” “the one begotten by God”
.
Its Effects
By this divine work the sinner is re-created in and to newness of life,
has the defilement of his heart cleansed or “washed” away (Ezek.
36:25–26; John 3:5; Titus 3:5), and is enabled to “see” and to “enter”
the kingdom of God by faith (John 3:3, 5). He is also enabled to believe
in Jesus (John 1:12–13), to believe that Jesus is the Christ (1 John
5:1), to love others, particularly other Christians (1 John 4:7; 5:1);
and to do righteousness and to shun the life of sin (1 John 3:9; 5:18).
* Its Divine Monergism *
Jesus expressly taught the divine monergism in regeneration when he
declared: “No one can come to me, unless the Father who sent me draws
[helkysē] him” (John 6:44), “Everyone who has heard and learned from the
Father comes to me” (John 6:45), and “No one can come to me, unless it
has been granted [ē dedomenon] him from the Father” (John 6:65). From
the analogy which he drew between the wind’s natural operation and the
Spirit’s regenerating work (John 3:8), Jesus taught, in addition to the
facticity (“The wind blows”
and the efficacy (“and you hear the sound
of it”
of the latter, both the sovereignty (“The wind blows wherever it
pleases”
and the inscrutable mysteriousness (“you cannot tell where it
comes from and where it goes”
of the Spirit’s regenerating work. And
while Jesus declares that the birth “from above” is absolutely necessary
(dei) for faith (John 3:7), he never preaches the “birth from above” in
the imperative mood as if his auditor could in his own power produce it.
By his metaphor of a “begetting from above” to describe the Spirit’s
quickening work, Jesus underscored its divine monergism. J. I. Packer
observes:
Infants do not induce, or cooperate in, their own procreation and birth;
no more can those who are “dead in trespasses and sins” prompt the
quickening operation of God’s Spirit within them (see Eph. 2:1–10).
Spiritual vivification is a free, and to man mysterious, exercise of
divine power (John 3:8), not explicable in terms of the combination or
cultivation of existing human resources (John 3:6), not caused or i
nduced by any human efforts (John 1:12–13) or merits (Titus 3:3–7), and
not, therefore, to be equated with, or attributed to, any of the
experiences, decisions, and acts to which it gives rise and by which it
may be known to have taken place.
Jesus’ metaphor points up how erroneous is Arminianism’s synergistic
construction of regeneration, which makes man’s spiritual renewal
dependent on his cooperation with grace, and liberalism’s vision of
redemption, which denies the need for prevenient grace altogether.
Regeneration is the precondition of repentance unto life and faith in
Jesus Christ; it is not dependent upon these for its appearance in the
Christian life.
Summary of the Doctrine
Regeneration is not the replacing of the substance of fallen human
nature with another substance, nor simply the change in one or more of
the faculties of the fallen spiritual nature, nor the perfecting of the
fallen spiritual nature. Rather, it is the subconscious implanting of
the principle of the new spiritual life in the soul, effecting an
instantaneous change in the whole man, intellectually, emotionally, and
morally, and enabling the elect sinner to respond in repentance and
faith to the outward or public gospel proclamation directed to his
conscious understanding and will. No extra-biblical words have captured
better both the divine monergism and the inevitable effects of the
Spirit’s regenerating work than the following verse from Charles
Wesley’s great hymn, “And can it be that I should gain”:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
All this is illustrated in the case of Lydia, about whom Luke writes:
“Lydia was listening, whose heart the Lord opened to respond to the
things spoken by Paul” (Acts 16:14).
Excerpts from *A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith 2nd
Edition
http://www.monergismbooks.com/A-New-Systematic-Theology-of-the-Christian-Faith-2nd-ed.-p-16358.html
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Revised and Updated by Dr. Robert L. Reymond pg. 709
