“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God…  that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

Jn. 3:3, 6

“But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

John 1:12-13

“Save yourselves from this untoward generation.”

Acts 2:40

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Subsections

Let Jesus into your Heart
You must Choose Christ to be Saved
On “Born Again” as Subsequent to Faith
Sanctification: Both Passive & Active

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Order of Contents

Intro
Bible Verses  22+
Articles  6
Quotes  20+
Latin  4

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Intro

Is man active or passive in regeneration, in being born again (Jn. 3:3-8)?  Arminians answer “active,” the Lord working synergistically with us.  Contemporary Calvinists typically answer “passive”, the Lord working on us alone, or monergistically.

Yet the term and concept of ‘regeneration’ and being ‘born again,’ according to Scripture and many historic, reformed divines, includes the whole of the new birth and receiving spiritual life, including the aspects in which man is active in conversion, such as in repentance, being drawn to the Lord and in personally exercising faith and receiving Christ spiritually into his or her soul, becoming a new creature and heir to eternal life.  Considered in this full Scriptural sense, man is and must be active in regeneration, though the Lord works alone in the first moment of making a dead sinner’s heart alive.  Man is not a block or stone, especially when made alive by God.

In considering the Bible verses below, be sure to regard the order of salvation.  For instance with respect to 2 Cor. 5:17, about being made a new creature in Christ:  One is only spiritually, mutually and formally in Christ upon exercising faith,¹ which is an active work of the believer (by the sovereign, irresistible grace of the Holy Spirit in the elect person).  Hence, according to God’s Word, becoming and being a new creature, or being born again, is inclusive of the cooperative work of man in conversion in appropriating Christ and his promises to ourselves.

¹ See ‘Faith is a Non-Meritorious Condition for Justification’ and ‘On being Born Again as Subsequent to Faith, in receiving Christ & the Fullness of Life by Faith’.

‘Regeneration’ and being ‘born again’ may also designate a person’s beginning in sanctification and his enjoyment of this new, spiritual life.  As ‘regeneration,’ by its fundamental import, signifies the renewing of real righteousness in man, so the term, Scripturally and historically, also broadly includes the whole of sanctification in this life¹ and the perfect renewal of his nature in glorification in the next life.²

¹ See ‘On Regeneration as Equated with Sanctification’.

² See ‘On Future Regeneration’.

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A Simplistic Framing of the Question

Contemporary debates between ‘Calvinists’ and ‘Arminians’ are often framed upon a simplistic defining of the question, whether regeneration is logically prior to faith or whether faith is logically prior to regeneration.  The problem with this stating of the question is that these two options are not mutually exclusive: each side has been rightly affirmed in different senses by historic, reformed theology:

Reformed theology affirms in the narrow sense that regeneration is logically prior to faith (in that the Holy Spirit changes one’s nature, gives a new spiritual ability and produces faith in the individual).

Yet it also affirms, in a very important, common, proper and Scriptural sense that it is only on account of an actively willed and exercised, trusting, faith that Christ spiritually enters the soul¹ with all his benefits, the person then, and only then, being able to be said to be fully born again in the enjoyment of new, spiritual and eternal life.

¹ See ‘Let Jesus Come into your Heart’.

The precise point of difference between the reformed and Arminians in the Post-Reformation was not whether regeneration (generally) is logically prior to faith (which is not wholly true), but rather, whether the initial aspect of regeneration (which will produce faith) is a work wholly of God, wherein man is passive, God working alone (not synergistically with man).

While there is some appropriate leeway in how one may define terms and argue such principles for certain purposes and contexts, yet, why this subject is so important, is not for how language may be used, but rather so that the Scriptures are not abused (and that by ‘Calvinsts’ as well as Arminians), but may be rightly and fully understood, rather than neglected, dismissed, explained away or twisted.

Hence, with our Savior’s words in Jn. 3:3-6, “Ye must be born again…”, if it sounds like there is some responsibility and part upon man to be born again, it is because there is:

Dt. 10:16  “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.”

Jer. 4:4  “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart.”

Eze. 18:31  “Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”

Zech. 1:13  “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, ‘Turn ye unto Me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto you…”

Acts 2:40  “Save yourselves from this untoward generation.”

What these verses say is exactly what the Lord enables us to do, and is done by us, by the Lord’s regenerating grace.  The Westminster Confession (1646) says rightly (10.2):

“This effectual call is of God’s free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man (Rom 9:11; Eph 2:4-5, 8-9; 2 Tim 1:9; Titus 3:4-5); who is altogether passive therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit (Rom 8:7; 1 Cor 2:14; Eph 2:5), he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it. (Eze 36:27; Jn 5:25; 6:37)”

For ‘Calvinists’ to make all of the blessings of new, spiritual life in Jn. 3:3-6 and other passages to only involve that which comes before faith, and before an organic and vital union with Christ, is a running over, depleting of and missing of the Scriptures.  The Scriptures, and the Lord’s work in us, ought to be understood and cherished, not used merely for our personal purposes.

For more help in understanding the order of salvation in these things, see:

‘In what way Union to Christ is Before & After Faith’

‘On Divine Concurrence, Secondary Causation & contra Occasionalism’

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Bible Verses

Old Testament

Dt. 10:16  “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.”

Dt. 30:6  “And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.”

Jer. 4:4  “Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem…”

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New Testament

Mt. 19:28  “…ye which have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones…”

John 1:12-13  “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

John 3:5-8

“Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit…

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”

Jn. 11:25  “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:”

Jn. 15:1-5  “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.  Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.  Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.  Abide in me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.  I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.”

Jn. 17:3  “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

Acts 15:9  “…purifying their hearts by faith.”

Rom. 3:22  “Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ…”

Rom. 5:1  “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:”

2 Cor. 5:17  “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

Col. 2:11-13  “In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead.  And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;”

Gal. 3:26  “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.”

Eph. 2:1-10

“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins…  But God…  even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved); and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus…  For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.  For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus…”

Eph. 3:17  “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith;”

Phil. 2:12-13  “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.  For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

Titus 3:5-7  “…but according to his mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

James 1:18  “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”

1 Pet. 1:3  “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…”

1 Pet. 1:21-23  “Who by Him do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead…  that your faith and hope might be in God.  Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently:  being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God…”

1 Jn. 4:9  “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.”

1 Jn. 5:1  “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of Him.”

1 Jn. 5:4  “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.”

1 Jn. 5:10-12  “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself…  And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.  He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”

1 Jn. 5:20  “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.”

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Articles

1500’s

Calvin, John – Institutes  (1559), bk. 3

ch. 6, ‘The Life of a Christian Man’, section 1, pp. 353-4

ch. 14, ‘The beginning of justification; in what sense progressive.’, pp. 351-73

“…in Chapter XIV, by a consideration of the commencement and progress of regeneration in the regenerate…” – ch. 11, p. 300

Beza, Theodore – pp. 29-31  in A Book of Christian Questions & Answers…  (London, 1574)

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1600’s

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1700’s

Witsius, Herman – pp. 255-58  in Conciliatory or Irenical Animadversions on the Controversies Agitated in Britain: under the unhappy names of Antinomians & Neonomians  (1807), Notes, No. 19 on p. 119

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1900’s

Muller, Richard – ‘conversio’  in Dictionary of Latin & Greek Theological Terms…  (Baker, 1985), pp. 82-83

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Quotes

* – Westminster divine

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Order of

Perkins
Gomarus
Keckermann
Walaeus
Pemble
C. Burges *
Ames
Collinges
Maccovius
T. Hooker
Rutherford *
Voet
Hutcheson
Lawson
Hoornbeek
Grebenitz
Riissen
Manton
Turretin
Flavel
Cole
Mastricht
Witsius
Holtzfus

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1600’s

William Perkins

A Treatise of God’s Free Grace & Man’s Free Will  (Cambridge, 1601)

pp. 116-21

“In the work of our regeneration three graces be required: the preventing grace, the working grace and the co-working grace.

The preventing grace is when God of his mercy sets and imprints in the mind a new light, in the will a new quality or inclination, in the heart new affections.

The working grace is when God gives to the will the act of well-willing, namely the will to believe, the will to repent, the will to obey God in his Word. (Velle credere, velle resipiscere, velle obedire.)

The co-working grace is when God gives the deed to the will, that is, the exercise and practice of faith and repentance.

The first gives the power of doing good, the second the will, the third the deed: and all three together make the work of regeneration. (Augustine, Of Grace & Free Will, ch. 17)

Now the will of man in respect of operation does not concur with God’s preventing grace, but is merely patient as a subject to receive grace.  For it is the proper work of God to set or imprint a new faculty or inclination in the will, and that without any action of the said will.

Nevertheless the will being once renewed and prevented, concurs by his operation with the working and co-working grace of God.  For the will being moved by grace, wills and does indeed that whereunto it is moved.  And the will to obey God, or to perform any like duty, proceeds jointly from two causes.  From grace: in that it moves and causes the will to will to believe.  From the will of man: in that being prevented and moved by God, it wills to believe, or to do any like duty.

And therefore the ancient saying has his truth, ‘He that made thee without thee, does not regenerate or save thee without thee’ (Augustine, Sermon 15, Of the Words of the Apostles), because our conversion is not without the motion and consent of will, as our creation was.  And that we do not mistake in this point, the order that is between man’s will and God’s grace must here again be remembered.  In respect of time they are both together, and concur in the very first moment of our regeneration: in respect of the order of nature, the will does not first begin that which is good, and then after borrow aid from grace: but grace prevents, renews, and moves the will, and then the will moved or changed wills to be converted and to be healed in the first instant of conversion.”

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pp. 129-30

“This former doctrine is of great use.  In that the new birth and regeneration of a sinner is not without the motion of his own will, we are taught that we must, if we desire our own salvation, use the good means and strive against our own corruptions and endeavour earnestly by asking, seeking, knocking.

It will be said that faith, repentance and the rest, are all gifts of God.  I answer, there is no virtue or gift of God in us, without our wills: and in every good act, God’s grace and man’s will concur: God’s grace as the principal cause: man’s will renewed as the instrument of God.  And therefore in all good things industry and labour, and invocation on our parts is required.

Secondly, this doctrine ministers true comfort to all true servants of God.  For, if when they use the good means of salvation, the Word, prayer, sacraments, the will lie not dead but begin to oppose itself against unbelief and other corruptions, and withal do but so much as will to believe, will to repent, will to be turned to God, they have begun to turn unto God, and God has begun to regenerate them, so be it this will in them to do the good they ought to do be in good earnest unfeigned and they withal be careful to cherish this little grain till it come to a bigger quantity.”

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Francis Gomarus

‘Theological Disputation on Free Will’  (Leiden: Patius, 1603), trans. AI  Latin

“XXIV. In this [third state] it is asked: Whether in man’s first conversion to God our will cooperates actively with divine grace by its natural and inherent faculty, or whether in first conversion it behaves passively such that at the first moment of conversion it does not contribute at all, but allows the power of willing well to be infused into itself.  The Papists assert the former; we, with Scripture, the latter.

XXV. Eze. 11:19: ‘I will take away the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh.’  1 Cor. 12:3: ‘No one can say Jesus is Lord except through the Holy Spirit.’  Ps. ‘Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me.’  Jn. 6:44: ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.’  Phil. 2:13: ‘God is the one who works both to will and to accomplish.’  And these things concern that third [state]; the fourth follows.

XXVI. In which those renewed and made children of God, moved by the Holy Spirit, act, namely freely cooperating with divine grace: for since the new man is gradually restored, that is, that image of God lost in Adam is gradually brought back, there is no doubt that they then freely will and meditate on actions conforming to divine Law.”

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Bartholomäus Keckermann

as translated in Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics  ed. Bizer, trans. Thomson  (d. 1609; 1950; Wipf & Stock, 2007), ch. 20, ‘Calling’, section 20, pp. 520-21

“In the conversion of a man there is no concurrence of the powers of free arbitrium.  But at the first moment of it man and his will act in a purely passive state.  Here we are speaking of the first impulse and moment of conversion, or the first beginning of this movement, in which acknowledging his sins man turns to God.

And this first beginning, we assert, does not depend on the natural strength of the will, but is the beginning of grace alone, according to the express testimonies of Scripture, Col. 2:13 (and you being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you, I say, he did quicken together with him, having forgiven us all our tresspasses), where it is said that men are dead in sins…

Yet at the very moment in which God effects in us the grace of conversion He also bends man’s will to desire and seek for that grace, and so in the progress of conversion the will co-operates with divine grace.”

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Anthony Walaeus

Theological Theses on the Efficacious Vocation of the Sinner to Salvation  trans. AI  (Leiden: Marcus, 1620), pp. 5-6

“XXIII. The mode by which God acts in efficacious vocation having now been explained, it remains for us to see how man conducts himself toward it.  Here, there can be a twofold notion of man, as he is considered either in the first act of conversion or in the second act.  Considered in the former, he behaves purely passively toward the efficacy of his vocation, contributing nothing as such, only receiving what is impressed upon him from elsewhere.

XXIV. In the second act, however, there is some operation of man, and here he also performs his parts, so that he himself acts, believes, and wills rightly; yet in such a way that he perfects all these things in the virtue of the Holy Spirit as the principal mover.  He indeed moves himself, but as one who has been moved, and thus he receives all good inclinations from Him, by which he is active (Phil. 2:12-13).
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XXX. The demand is ‘repent’ (Mt. 3:2), and “believe in my Son whom I have sent” (Mt. 17:5; Jn. 3:16).  Man indeed fulfills this condition, but in such a way that God has already worked that very thing in him before, and thus being converted, he converts himself; having been made faithful, he believes.”

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William Pemble

Vindiciæ gratiæ. = A Plea for Grace, More especially the Grace of Faith…  (London: 1627)

p. 144

“…our conversion itself.  Which is to be considered two ways:

1. In actu primo [in the first act], as it is the work of God’s Spirit on us, renewing our corrupt nature, healing all vitions, infusing all virtuous inclinations into each faculty; by which Habitual infused qualities they are disposed to all spiritual and holy actions.  This is the work of God by his preventing grace.

2. In actu secundo [in the second act], as it is our work converting ourselves to God in all holy operations of faith, love, and godly obedience, which acts we do by the help of God’s subsequent and assisting grace.

Of conversion in both senses we are to enquire, how far it may be resisted and hindered: touching the first, namely, our habitual conversion in the infusion of all gracious habits, this conclusion is to be defended:

That in our first conversion or sanctification we are merely passive and cannot by any act of ours either work it ourselves or bind God’s working of it.

This is apparent by the Scriptures, which testify unto us what our state is before conversion, what the work of God is in our conversion: namely that we are dead in sins, Eph. 2:1; Col. 2:13; Mt. 8:22; Eph. 5:14, that we are blind and very darkness in regard of spiritual knowledge, Rev. 3:18; Eph. 4:17, 5:8; Mt. 6:23; Lk. 4:18; Jn. 1:5; Acts 26:18; 1 Cor. 2:14, that our hearts are stony, destitute of all sense and motions of goodness, Eze. 36:26, 11:19.  Again, that God’s work in our conversion is a raising from the dead, Eph. 2:5; Col. 2:12; Rev. 20:6; Jn. 5:21, 25, a restoring of sight to the blind, Lk. 4:18, a new generation and birth of a man, Jn. 1:13; 3:3, another creation of him, Eph. 2:10; Ps. 51:12; 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15.  The giving of a new heart of flesh and taking away of the old stony heart, Eze. 11:19.  Out of which and many the like places we conclude that a man can do no more in the effecting or hindering of his first conversion than the matter can do in regard of the form, to receive or reject it, no more than Adam’s body could resist the entrance of the soul into it or Lazarus’s carcass and the dead bones in Ezekiel could refuse the spirit of life’s coming into them, no more than an infant can hinder its own conception and birth or the world the creation of itself, no more than the bodies of those sick persons whom Christ cured by his word could hinder the restitution of health when Christ commanded them to be whole, or the eyes of the blind could nill the restoring of their sight, or the air that is dark can refuse to be enlightened: in brief, a man’s heart can no more hinder the work of God’s grace in changing it out of stone into flesh than the body of Lot’s wife could resist the force of his power in turning it out of flesh into a pillar of salt.

Against this doctrine of man’s passiveness in his first conversion our adversaries object many things, qualifying the rigor of those censures the Scriptures give touching our utter disability, eluding their force by many subtle shifts, all devised only to this purpose, that our conversion may not be thought to be altogether of grace but shared between the grace of God and some power of our own.  To allege and answer every cavil were a business of more length than difficulty: unto them all in general I answer that he that takes a man’s judgment touching man’s abilities, he follows the sentence of a blind corrupt judge and that in his own cause.  It is the Lord that judges us and it becomes us to submit to his censure, not to extol ourselves when he abases us, lest we be found liers like those hypocritical Laodiceans, boasting that we are rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing when in the mean God knows though we know not, how that we are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, standing in need of all things.  Wherefore let this truth always stand firm, that as no man can prepare himself by any strength of his own effectually to work his sanctification, either alone by himself or as a coworker with the Spirit of grace, so no man can hinder the work of God’s Spirit when he intends to bestow this first grace of sanctification upon a sinner.

This of habitual conversion in the internal renovation of all the faculties, which cannot be resisted or hindered: in the next place we are to consider of conversion as it is our act, consisting in the operations and exercises of all gracious habits infused, as when we actually believe, repent and do other good works.  This active conversion is nothing but the practice of sanctification, when being made holy and good, we do good and holy works, as a man after he is raised from death or restored to health performs the actions of a living, of a healthy man.  For that similitude of St. Austin’s is certain, Non ideo currit rota, ut sit rotunda, etc. as a wheel runs not that it may be round, but because it is round; so the will believes not that it may be regenerate, but because it is regenerate.  And therefore that is an error of the coursest bran when our adversaries make the act of believing to go before our sanctification: whereas nothing is more certain than this, that all holy actions whether of faith or any other grace come from that common root of holiness infused into our souls…

…there is a double beginning or cause of every gracious action in a man regenerate:

1. The Spirit of God by his exciting and cooperating grace.

2. Man himself renewed and sanctified in all his faculties.  The former is termedprincipium a quo[the principle from which], the latter principium quod [the principle that]: man works, but he must be moved thereto and assisted by the Spirit of Grace: both together concur to the producing of every holy action.  I say both together: for although man in his first conversion was merely passive, God’s Spirit working all without man’s help: yet man in performance of any holy act is not merely active, able to do all of himself without God’s help.  No, he is partly passive, partly active: passive as he stands in need of God’s grace to stir up, guide, and strengthen the endeavor of each faculty in the doing of good: Active in as much as being thus helped by grace, himself willingly moves himself to every godly work.  Now by reason of this concurrence of man with God, these operations of grace are properly called man’s work, not God’s work in man.  So that when a regenerate man believes, this act though it be caused by Gods Spirit, yet it is done and exercised by Man voluntarily moving himself in that action, and therefore we say it is man that believes, not God’s Spirit that believes: as if the act of believing were wrought in man’s will by the Spirit of God in the same sort as jugglers work strange motions in their puppets, which seem to do wondrous feats, but tis an unseen hand that’s the cause of all.  Such gross conceits should not have been devised by ingenuous minds and put upon so plain and clear doctrine as that is touching the concurrence of God’s grace with our strength in all holy actions whatsoever.

The point is easy to him that will understand: Every good desire and good work is partly from man, because he wills it: he works it; but principally from God’s Spirit, because He makes man to will and to work it.  Without which cooperating grace man by habitual inherent grace could do no good work at all, according to that of Christ, Jn. 15:5, ‘Without Me ye can do nothing,’ and of the apostle, Phil. 1:6, ‘He that hath begun the good work will also perform it;’ and again, Phil. 2:13, ‘It is God that worketh in you both the will and the deed, even of his good pleasure:’ and again, 1 Cor. 15:10, ‘I have labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I but the grace of God which is in me.’”

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p. 155

“…Which comes to pass thus:

1. By habitual grace infused, the sanctified will is constantly determined to embrace all spiritual good.

2. By assisting grace the will is stirred up, provoked, allured and inclined to obedience, through the proposal of the promises and the heavenly suggestions of the Holy Spirit.

3. By the same assisting grace all contrary motions of concupiscence are subdued and kept under.  So that nothing can hinder obedience to follow; because by grace the will is made willing to obey and by grace all impediments in obeying are taken away: now when all lets are removed, what can let a willing mind to do that which it desires?”

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Cornelius Burges

Baptismal Regeneration of Elect Infants Professed by the Church of England...  (Oxford: Curteyn, 1629)

ch. 2, pp. 14-16

“That other [term] of ‘regeneration’, I take to be all one with spiritual life, taken in the largest sense; which life, according to the Scriptures, I distinguish into initial and actual.  For as in the natural, sometimes the soul, which is usually called ‘the form by which’, and sometimes the esse, the ‘being’ itself of such or such a creature animated by his soul, is put for life, as that learned [Jerome] Zanchi well observes (Of the Nature of God, bk. 2, ch. 5, question 1): so is it in the spiritual life whereof we are now to treat.  And upon this foundation it is that we rightly build our present distinction, which has clear footing also in the sacred volumes of eternal truth.

1. Initial (which we may also term seminal or potential life), I call that which consists in participation of the Spirit of Christ, as the form of this spiritual life: the Spirit being the first principle of regeneration, by whom the first seed and foundation thereof is laid in a Christian.  And this is life as it were in the root, like unto the first principles of reason laid up in the rational soul, before it has actually enabled the body to move and act rationally.  And of this, says acute [Francis] Junius (Of Paedobaptism, thesis 7), our Savior spake in Jn. 3; more clearly to our purpose is that of the apostle, Rom. 8:10, “The Spirit is life, because of righteousness,” where the Spirit, which is the cause of life, is put for life itself: and by ‘the Spirit’ is meant not the reasonable soul, but the Holy Ghost; if Calvin (and before him Chrysostom and Ambrose, and after him Peter Martyr) hit right in the exposition of it,¹ whereof for my part (after serious pensitation of all that any have said to carry it to another sense) I make no question.

¹ Galatians, in location: Vocabulo spiritus ne animam nostram intelligas, sed regenerationis spiritum quem vitam appellat Paulus. [By the term ‘spirit’, understand not our soul, but the Spirit of regeneration, which Paul calls life.]

2. Actual, I call that which consists properly in the very spiritual being itself actually produced in a Christian, by the Spirit bringing him forth a new man in Christ, in the ordinary course of regeneration of such as live to years, whereby he is enabled actually to believe, repent, etc. Rom. 6:11, “Likewise ye, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin: but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  So Gal. 2:20 and elsewhere.”

.

ch. 9, p. 239-50

“2nd Objection: But there is no such thing as initial regeneration, distinct from actual, as here is supposed.  Wherever the Spirit is infused to regenerate, He does, in the first instant, actually regenerate: therefore there being, by your own confession (say they) no actual regeneration in any infant ordinarily at his baptism, there is then no regeneration at all, this distinction of initial and actual regeneration being but a toy and a new device, without warrant from the Scripture.

Answer. If this objection contain a truth without equivocation, I confess the position to be a toy indeed.  But there may lie some ambiguity in the terms of ‘initial’ and ‘actual’, which being cleared, the objection may perhaps appear as weak as they declare themselves rash and uncharitable who took upon them to confute that distinction which they never understood, nor would ever vouchsafe so much as to hear explicated by myself, either in public or private.

Touching the distinction of initial and actual regeneration, I have sufficiently declared before, in my second chapter, in what sense I use it.  I will therefore forbear to repeat what there I have written.  The reader may view it at his pleasure.  If any man demand express Scriptures for the very terms, he will soon declare of what spirit he is.  But if by sufficient consequence the distinction be not clearly deduced thence, he shall then have cause to complain.  Let him view the foundation on which it is built, and afterwards tell me his mind if he remain unsatisfied.

In the meantime I shall only add thus much: that by initial and actual regeneration, I do not mean to insinuate two several kinds of spiritual life, for which, I acknowledge, there is no footing in Scripture: but I understand only two distinct considerations in respect of the degrees of spiritual life in the same subject, which the places of Scripture before alleged in chapter 2 do sufficiently warrant.  For, by ‘life’ in Scripture is sometimes meant the soul infused as the principle of life; sometimes the very actual being and enlivening of the subject by that soul, making it actually to produce the actions of life.  Hence I distinguish life into initial and actual: not as if the Spirit were not actually communicated, or did not actually work, or actually begin, from the very first instant, to dispose and prepare the soul to future actual newness of life, by infusing some potential and seminal grace; but my meaning is that the Spirit does not at that time ordinarily so plenarily change and renew the whole man as to work in him either actual faith, hope, or love, etc., or so much as the habits of these or other particular graces for the present, as afterward He does.  Something the Spirit does from his first entrance toward actual regeneration; therefore we call that first work initial, thereby understanding the first disposition to, or degree of, actual regeneration.

But forasmuch as that first work does not (for ought we know) extend to a present actual change of the whole man in the same manner and degree that afterward is wrought in him at his effectual calling, therefore we call that latter work actual regeneration.

This ought not to seem strange to any: for just so it is in the course of nature.  So soon as the reasonable soul is infused, there is in some sense (not every way, in respect of degrees) a rational life.  But how?  The soul is there, and in that soul are included all the principles of reason: but the soul does not send forth those principles into action (unless in some insensible manner by little and little preparing the infant unto human actions) till afterward, when the senses begin to act.¹  Before that time, the rational life cannot wholly be denied to be in an infant, because the rational soul is actually in his body: yet forasmuch as the infant has not at that time the actual use of reason, for this cause we call the further perfection of his natural principles, by tract of time attained, when reason puts itself into act, actual rational life; and we term the same life, in respect of the first degree and principles thereof, which together with the reasonable soul in the first infusion thereof it received, initial life.

¹ “He (namely God) has therefore given to the human soul a mind, in which reason and understanding in an infant are, as it were, asleep—so that they seem almost not to exist—yet are to be awakened and exercised with the advance of age, by which the mind becomes capable of knowledge and instruction, and fit for the perception of truth and the love of good.” Augustine, City of God, bk. 22, ch. 24.  To the same purpose also he writes, bk. 2, Of Sin, ch. 25 and elsewhere.

This is no more, in substance, than what we have learned from St. Augustine, Calvin, Peter Martyr, Junius, Daneus, Dr. Whitaker, Zanchius and sundry others, whose judgments have been at large set down in this treatise in sundry places upon sundry occasions.  And shall any man think it nothing in a magisterial humor to trample so many worthies under his feet at once, as if he were wiser than all others?  If it be only the terms that displease him, because perhaps the same are not found in any of these authors, he shall but show himself a caviller to quarrel them, unless he can show that the terms are used to signify that which, in substance, these authors do not allow and teach.  Briefly then, this objection is grounded upon a false information and supposition: for it supposes me to use the terms of initial and actual regeneration as intending thereby to teach that there be two distinct species or kinds of regeneration; whereas my meaning is only to speak of the same spiritual life in two distinct considerations, in respect of degrees.  And so the objection fights with a shadow, and not with me.

But it will be replied that in regeneration there be no degrees, but that it is performed and dispatched at an instant, as natural generation is.  It is true, say they, that there be degrees in renovation, which notes a growth in sanctification in a man regenerated.  But regeneration is never taken for any other than for the first act of the Spirit entering into a Christian and begetting him a new man in Christ, in the very first moment of his entrance.  Therefore the distinction of actual and initial regeneration cannot be admitted in any sense.

I answer that those two words, ‘regeneration’ and ‘renovation’, may perhaps by some be used, the one to signify the first infusion of grace making a man actually a new creature in all parts at once, and the other to note the continual growth of a Christian in grace infused; if men will beforehand give notice of their meaning, and for the more clear expression of themselves will say: when I speak of the first infusion of grace, I will use the word ‘regeneration’ to express it by; and when I speak of continual growth from one degree unto another, I will ever call that ‘renovation’.  Men may, if they please, make use of words as they do of counters in casting of accounts, wherein, of the same set and value, some counters are made to stand for pounds, some for shillings, and some for pence.  And yet, as those counters which stand for pence might as well have stood for pounds as those that do stand for pounds, if it had pleased him that set them to have so disposed them, so men may put words of the same value and native signification to signify diverse things, by a liberty justifiable enough in use of speech; and yet those words may without wrong be used by others to signify other things: always provided that when a man uses a word in a sense different either from the prime signification of it, or from the common acceptation of it, he give warning that wherever he uses such a word, he would be understood in such or such a sense, and not according to the etymology of it, nor according to the common use of it.  And thus I grant that, if it please any divine to say that he will ever restrain regeneration to note the first infusion of grace, and by renovation signify a daily increase of grace, in all his speeches or writings, for want of fitter terms to express himself in, he may do it.

But if any man shall say that the proper meaning of the word ‘regeneration’, and of that which the Scriptures call it, is the first infusion of the Spirit actually to make a man a new creature in all parts at once, so as in this there can be no degrees; and affirm that so the Scriptures do ever use that word; and also add that by ‘renovation’ the Scripture never means the same thing that it intends by ‘regeneration’, but that ‘renovation’ is ever put for another thing, to wit, for continual growth in grace once infused, I must crave leave to dissent from him and to deny his assertion.  For neither is there any such difference in the proper signification of these words but that they may both signify one and the same thing; nor is the Scripture so nice as to observe such a difference between them as the objectors would persuade us.

That in the proper signification there is nothing either why ‘regeneration’ should signify only the first infusion of grace, or rather this than the daily growth of it; nor why ‘renovation’ should not signify the first beginnings of the new creature as well as the growth of it, those that are skillful in the tongues will easily bear me witness; and I take them that make this nice distinction between these two words to be better skilled than to say that these words in their proper signification will justify this conceit.  Therefore they must of necessity fly to the Scriptures and prove that there ‘regeneration’ is always so restrained as that it always signifies the first infusion of grace, and not that further work of the Spirit which admits of degrees and is ever expressed by ‘renovation’; or else their conceit will prove but a fancy too weak to ruin the distinction of initial and actual regeneration.

But the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures does not observe this nicety of words: for sometimes we shall find ‘regeneration’ put for sanctification expressed by obedience unto Christ and his Gospel, or else for the beginning of glory, and not for the first infusion of grace only.  So in Mt. 19:28, our Saviour thus gives answer to Peter demanding of him what they should have who had forsaken all to follow Him:

‘Verily I say unto you that ye which have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, etc.’

where the word ‘regeneration’ cannot be taken for the first infusion of grace only, because it notes such a thing as Christ’s disciples did actually exercise and express in receiving of his Gospel, or else, as Beza rather thinks, it signifies the very state of glory wherewith they shall be invested at the latter day; and the words ought to be read thus: ye that have followed Me (here making the comma), in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye shall sit, etc.; that is, you that follow me now shall hereafter, when the elect, being perfectly sanctified, begin their kingdom of glory, namely at the latter day, when I shall come again in glory, then shall ye sit upon twelve thrones.  And so did Saint Augustine long before expound that text.  Therefore the word is not restrained only to signify the first infusion of the Spirit and of grace by the Spirit.

Again, sometimes we shall find ‘regeneration’ and ‘renovation’ put one for another, the one to explicate the other: for so Zanchi says expressly in his commentary upon Ephesians 5.  And he says the truth: for so the apostle uses them, Titus 3:5, ‘according to his mercy He saved us, by the laver of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost;’ where the apostle uses those two words of ‘regeneration’ and ‘renovation’ not to signify two things, but the latter declares the meaning of the former, as Beza well observes.  Wherefore I conclude that, forasmuch as the Holy Scripture does not restrain the word ‘regeneration’ to the first infusion of the Spirit, or of grace by the Spirit, wherein there be no degrees, but extends it further even to that further work of the Spirit wherein (as all grant) there be degrees, the distinction of regeneration into initial and actual still stands upright without battering by this second objection, that will admit of no degrees in that which the Scripture everywhere calls by the name of ‘regeneration’.”

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William Ames

The Marrow of Theology  3rd ed.  tr. John Eusden  (d. 1633; Labyrinth Press, 1983), bk. 1, ch. 26, ‘Calling’, pp. 158-59

“19. Because of this receiving, calling is termed conversion, Acts 26:20.  All who obey the call of God are completely turned from sin to grace and from the world to follow God in Christ.  It is also called regeneration or the very beginning of a new life, a new creation, a new creature–and it is often described in the Scriptures, Jn. 1:13; 3:6; 1 Jn. 3:9; 1 Pet. 1:23 and 2:2.  The offer itself is properly termed calling, since God effectually invites and draws men to Christ, Jn. 6:44.

20. As for man, receiving is either passive or active.  Phil. 3:12, ‘I apprehend, because I have been apprehended.’

21. The passive receiving of Christ is the process by which a spiritual principle of grace is generated in the will of man.  Eph. 2:5, ‘He has quickened.’

22. This grace is the basis of that relation in which man is united with Christ.  Jn. 3:3, ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’

23. The will is the proper and prime subject of this grace; the conversion of the will is the effectual principle in the conversion of the whole man.  Phil. 2:13, ‘It is God that works in you both to will and to do of his own good pleasure.’

24. The enlightening of the mind is not sufficient to produce this effect because it does not take away the corruption of the will.  Nor does it communicate any new supernatural principle by which it may convert itself.

25. Yet the will in this first receiving plays the role neither of a free agent nor a natural bearer, but only of an obedient subject.  2 Cor. 4:6, ‘For it is the God who has said that light should shine out of darkness who has shined in our hearts.’

26. Active receiving is an elicited act of faith in which he who is called now wholly leans upon Christ as his savior and through Christ upon God.  Jn. 3:15-16, ‘Whoever believes in Him;’ 1 Pet. 1:21, ‘Through Him believing in God.’

27. ‘This act of faith depends partly upon an inborn principle or attitude toward grace and partly upon the action of God moving before and stirring up.  Jn. 6:44, ‘None can come unto Me, unless the Father…  draws him.’

28. It is indeed called forth and exercised by man freely but also surely, unavoidably, and unchangeably.  Jn. 6:37, ‘Whomever my Father gives Me will come to Me.'”

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John Collinges

The Spouse’s Hidden Glory & Faithful Leaning upon her Well-Beloved, wherein is laid down the soul’s glory in Christ and the way by which the soul comes to Christ, delivered in two lecture sermons…  (London: 1646), pp. 62-63

“Fourthly, does she lean upon God before she can come? must He work the first motion to make her willing, before she can believe in Him?

Then how are those to be here reproved that would make man’s will to be the author of its first motions unto God.  Pelagius was a great defender of it…  Lastly, he would maintain (and the Arminians still from him) that grace did indeed help a good work, but it had its first motion from our wills, or at least might have; and the will had a negative voice, and might resist and cross grace which did not work irresistibly in the soul, to force the soul to Him.
…

Does God move the will attending Him in duties, first?  Secondly, when the will is thus moved, does it then come? when it is drawn, does it run?  Then this reproves the Enthusiasts of old, the Anabaptists, Antinomians, Seekers of our days, that hold, first, there is no need of duties.”

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Johannes Maccovius

Scholastic Discourse: The Distinctions & Rules of Theology & Philosophy  (1644), ch. 14, ‘On Regeneration’, pp. 239, 243

“1. In respect of its first moment regeneration comes about in another way than in respect of its progression.

Regarding the first moment of regeneration man is purely passive; regarding its progression man cooperates with God.
…

13. In this life regeneration is by degrees: these degrees do not only concern regeneration by itself but also the subjects.

Some people are more regenerate than others; hence older people are more regenerated than the young ones.”

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Thomas Hooker

The Application of Redemption by the Effectual Work of the Word & Spirit of Christ for the bringing home of lost sinners to God  (d. 1647; London: Cole, 1656), bk. 10,

pp. 387-88

“But the truth is this, the Lord must let in an influence of some special motion and operation and leave some impression of spiritual power upon the will to enable it to act, not only to concur with the act thereof.  God gives a man ability whereby he may will, does not 〈◊〉 with him by assistance and providence when He wills as one in whom we live and move.

Of the first of these it’s true which many of the ancients speak, God works without us, many things in us, i.e. unto which we being in no causal ability at all, God gives us ability to do that which is pleasing and spiritual, to the obtaining whereof, we had no causal ability of our own; when the Lord Christ raised Lazarus now dead and smelling in the grave, He did not concur with the action and motion of his soul in rising out of the grave, but without any causal concurrence or help of Lazarus, He put a soul into his body, whereby He was enabled to stir and move.

So it is with a soul dead in sins and tresspasses, when the mind and will have no ability for any spiritual act, not able to take off that deadness and indisposition that is there, the Lord without the will, without any causal concurrence of it, lets in ability into it for the work, and concurs with it in the work.  So Paul expresses this manner of God’s work, 2 Cor. 4:6, He causes light to shine out of darkness; He gives light and being out of darkness, without the help of light, and then concurs with the light in the shining of it; God lets in an influence to the will, not only lends a concurrence to the work.”

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pp. 411-12

“Whereas this must be observed carefully and forever maintained as the everlasting Truth of God, that the Lord gives a power-spiritual to the work which it had not before He concurs with the act of that power when it is put forth; He gives him a being in the 〈◊〉[state?] of grace, before He leads out the act of that being.

He first lets in an influence of a powerful impression upon the faculty of the will, before He concurs with the act 〈◊〉deed.  He gives a heart of flesh, and then causes them to walk in his ways: As if one could put a principle of life and motion into another, and then draw forth the act of that power to the performance of the work…”

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Samuel Rutherford

Christ Dying & Drawing Sinners to Himself…  (London, 1647), pp. 464-65 & 470-71

“Assertion 1: In the first moment of our conversion, called actus primus conversionis, we are mere patients.

1. Because the infusion of the new heart, Eze. 36:26, the pouring of the Spirit of Grace and supplication on the family of David, Zech. 12:10, and of the Spirit on the thirsty ground, Isa. 44:3, is a work of creation, Eph. 2:10; Ps. 51:10, a quickening of the dead, Eph. 2:1-4; Jn. 5:25; 2 Cor. 4:6, and the wilderness is not here a co-agent for the causing roses to blossom out of the earth.

2. The effect is not wholly denied of the collateral cause and ascribed wholly to another.  If Peter and John draw a ship between them, with joint strength, you cannot say the one drew the ship, not the other: But Christ said flesh and blood makes no revelations of Christ, but his Father only, Mt. 16:17; 11:25-27; Jm. 1:18; Jn. 1:18.  Then neither blood, nor the will of man contribute any active influence to the first framing of the new birth; nor can clay divide the glory of regeneration with the God of grace who makes all things new.

…
Assertion 3.  The Person of the Holy Ghost is not united to the soul of a believer, nor are there two persons here united or made one Spirit by union of person with person; but the Person is said to come to the saints and to dwell with them, and to be in them, Jn. 14:16-17; and God has sent the Spirit of his Son in our hearts, crying ‘Abba Father’; not that the Holy Ghost, in proper Person, does in us formally and immediately believe, pray, love, repent, etc.  we being mere patients in understanding, will, affections, memory, as Libertines teach.  But the Holy Ghost comes to the saints and dwells in them, in the spiritual gifts and saving graces, and supernatural qualities created in us by the Holy Spirit and acted, excited and moved as supernatural and heavenly habits to act with the vital influence of our understanding, will and affections.

I prove the former part: 1. Because such a union of the Person of the Holy Ghost in us, believing, loving, joying, praying and immediately in us, were that blasphemous deifying and Goding of the saints, so as believing, loving, praying were not our works, but the immediate acts of the Holy Ghost, and either the faint manner of believing, or the cold slacked loving, and praying of saints, or their not believing, and sinful omission of the acts of faith, love, praying, rejoicing, could not be more imputed to saints as their sinful defects and transgressions (but must be laid on the Holy Ghost’s score) than we can impute the splitting of a ship to the ship itself and not to the negligent and willful pilot who of purpose dashed the vessel on a rock; but we must not in reason blame the ship, but the pilot; for the loss of the ship is the only and proper fault of the man that stirred the ship, and the ship is innocent and harmless timber: Now what sin can be in the saints in these supernatural acts, if the Holy Ghost immediately in his own Person stir the helm, and only, without us, act these in us?  We might with as good reason say the shop that a man works in does make the portrait, which is a great untruth, since the artificer in the shop does it▪ as say that the saints do pray, believe, rejoice, if the Holy Ghost immediately do all these in them, as in a shop.

…

3. The third [erroneous] way is that free-will is said to believe, repent, love God, by a mere extrinsical denomination, because it carries that grace which formally and only does perform all these supernatural actions; so grace does all and free-will is a mere patient that confers no vital subordinate and active influence in these acts; as we say, the apothecaries’ glass heals the wound, because the oil in the glass works the cure, when the glass does actively contribute nothing to the cure; or the ass makes rich, when it carries the gold that enriches only; this sense Antinomians hold forth and make us mere patients and blocks in the way to heaven, and this sense Jesuits, especially Martinez de Ripald, falsely charges upon Luther and Calvin; and the Council of Trent, inspired with the same lying spirit, says the same.

4. The fourth [and correct] sense is that grace and free-will does work so as grace is the principal, first inspiring and fountain cause: 1. It being a new supernatural disposition and habit in the soul, Jn. 14:23; 1 Jn. 2:27; 3:9; Jn. 4:14; Isa. 44:3-4; Eze. 36:26-27; Dt. 30.6; a good treasure or stock of grace, Mt. 12:35; Lk. 6:45.  And also actually it determines, sweetly inclines and stirs the will to these acts; yet so as free-will moves actively, freely, and confers a radical, vital and subordinate influence and is not a mere patient in all these, as Antinomians dream, Ps. 119:32.  ‘I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shall enlarge my heart,’ Jn. 14:12, ‘he that believeth in Me, the works that I do, he shall do, and greater than these,’ Mt. 12:50, ‘He that does the will of my heavenly Father, the same is my brother,’ etc. 1 Cor. 9:24, ‘So run that ye may obtain,’ Rev. 2:2, ‘I know thy works and thy labour,’ 1 Thess. 1:3, ‘Remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love, and patience of hope:’

1. We are not dead in supernatural works, and mere blocks, Rom. 6:11, ‘We are alive unto God in Jesus Christ,’ Eph. 2:1, ‘He hath quickened us,’ Rev. 2:3, ‘For my name’s sake thou hast laboured, and had not fainted,’ 1 Cor. 15:58, ‘Be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abundant in the work of the Lord.’  There is activity in the Spirit to lust against the flesh, Gal. 5:17; Rom. 7:15.  Nor is the blessedness of the saints only passive in receiving: though to be justified and receive Christ’s righteousness be the fountain blessedness, Ps. 32:1; Rom. 4:6-7; Gal. 3:13.  But the Scripture speaks of a true and solid blessedness in action, Ps. 119:1, ‘Blessed are the undefiled in the way,’ Isa. 56:2, ‘Blessed is the man that doth this,’ Jm. 1:12, ‘Blessed is the man that endureth temptation,’ Ps. 119:2, ‘Blessed are they that keep his testimonies,’ Ps. 106:3, ‘Blessed are they that keep judgment, Rev. 22:14, ‘Blessed are they that do his commandments, Mt. 5, ‘Blessed are they that mourn, that hunger and thirst;‘ Then there must be a part of blessedness in sanctification, as in justification; though the one be the cause, the other the effect.”

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Gisbert Voet

Disputation 29, ‘On Regeneration’, pt. 1  (1639)  tr. AI by Roman Prestarri  in Select Theological Disputations  (1655), vol. 2, pp. 432-65  Latin  at Confessionally Reformed Theology

“Synonyms [of regeneration] more properly signifying are:

…
II. Conversion. This word sometimes denotes the act of God alone; sometimes the complete act of God and man; sometimes the formal act of man, so that it is of the same notion as the word penitence and repentance.

The first signification looks to the act of first or preventing grace, and properly pertains here and makes a synonym of regeneration.  In the Pelagian controversies concerning grace and free will, such conversion is wont to be called by theologians the first moment of conversion, where man conducts himself purely passively.

The second signification looks to the act of God’s second grace, by which man, instructed and informed through preventing or first grace with a new habitual principle of spiritual life impressed by the omnipotent facility of God, is premoved and excited by God to perform acts and to actually elicit acts of spiritual life, or of repentance and faith, Jer. 31:18; Song 1:4.

The third signification properly looks to the act of man.  For man is the proper and formal principle of actual penitence or repentance, of conversion from his sin—not God, who is the effective principle.  For He Himself does not do, so as to be that proper and particular cause (which, for example, is Peter repenting), that is, He does not grieve, does not repent, does not weep bitterly, does not die to sin, does not rise to new life; but He makes us to do, as Augustine speaks. We ourselves therefore do those things, but not of ourselves—as I remember reading that distinction in the homilies of Ardentius Pictaviensis [Ardent of Poitiers].

…
II. Sometimes it [‘regeneration’] denotes:

1. The first impression of the new creature, or the change from non-being to spiritual being.

2. Its conservation, continuation, and augmentation.

3. Its instauration and renovation.

4. Its consummation and final perfection.

…
As for regeneration or conversion in the second moment, it can be analogically conceived thus:

I. The one generating is the Holy Spirit through second grace as through a plastic power.

II. The matter of generation and seed is the new creature implanted in the first moment of regeneration, from which those acts are elicited.

III. The form is the second act of faith, which as it were actuates and πληροῖ [plēroi, fills/fulfills] that seed of regeneration.

IV. Preparatory dispositions are certain acts of repentance preceding faith.

V. Mixture is the actual union of faith with the promises of the Gospel, Heb. 4:2.

VI. Animation of the fetus, or introduction of the form, is when by actual faith Christ is applied for justification.

VII. The first thing emanating from the form now introduced, or the elicited act, is the reflexive act of faith.

VIII. To which follows the impetrated act: namely, the ἐνέργεια [energeia, energy/activity] of charity.

IX. The process and succession of acts which dispose to the production of the first actual faith nearly holds itself as that of the human fetus, which, although the rational soul infused is specific, by which the vegetative and sensitive are contained (in the same way as the binary is in the ternary and the triangle in the quadrangle), yet man first lives the life of a plant, then of an animal, then of a man.

So faith, although it is the first act of the new creature, indeed as it were the radical principle of the whole new creature, yet its second act, at least the complete and formed or sensible one, is exercised nearly among the last.”

“III. Problem: Whether man’s intellect and will concur to regeneration?

Response: Negatively, if you understand active concourse as of a cause, so that synergy is attributed to them; but if you understand concourse as of a subject, it is granted: for it conducts itself purely passively in the first moment.”

.

as quoted in Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics  ed. Bizer, trans. Thomson  (1950; Wipf & Stock, 2007), ch. 20, ‘Calling’, section 17, pp. 518-9, citing Voet, II, 436 & 449

“Regeneration is God’s action in elect sinners, redeemed, actively justified and called through Christ, by which He substantially (realiter) turns them from corruption to new life (or holiness), that they may henceforth live unto God.”

“Regeneration is instantaneous, or happens in an instant.  When it is termed successive by some, this is to be understood of the whole complex or collection of the term in the first few moments.  Here we are dealing with the term regeneration in its first moment.”

.

Disputation 30, ‘On Regeneration’, pt. 2  (1639)  tr. AI by Roman Prestarri  in Select Theological Disputations  (1655), vol. 2, pp. 447ff.  Latin  at Confessionally Reformed Theology

“Problem 1: Whether therefore regeneration in the second moment always actually grows and is intensified?

Response: As to the universal or perpetual and whole course, affirmatively.  As to the particular, incidental, and πρόσκαιρος [proskairos, temporary] impediment or regression, remission, diminution, and relapse of that course, negatively.

Not otherwise than a boy grows in stature, although through disease or other impediment that growth is sometimes stopped, indeed the stature seems to be diminished.  With this distinction the practical writers are to be understood, who make continual augmentation in grace and in all acts of the new man an infallible sign of true conversion. See Rev. 2:4–5; Gal. 3:1, 3; and 5:7.

…
7th Problem: Whether in the first moment of conversion God is considered as a procreating or producing cause, as author of grace; and in the second moment as author of nature and grace?

Response: Affirmative. Because in the first moment He only preserves the will as author of nature (so that, namely, there may be something to be healed), but works nothing new through it and with it; but in the second moment He newly works and cooperates the vital act underlying the good work, as author of nature; and at the same time the morality or spiritual goodness of that act, as author of grace.”

“IV. Whether Acts 15:9 [“hearts purified by faith”] should be understood of the habit of faith, or indeed of the second act?

Response: Of both; of the latter indeed proximately, of the former remotely as the principle by which or elicitive of actual faith.”

“V. The notion of regeneration broadly taken is distinguished from the event into ἀργόν [argon, inactive] and ἐνεργῆ [energē, active].  The former is of infants dying before the use of reason.  The latter is of adults.  Which again is distinguished into that of the first and second moment.  The former is that which has for its terminus and formal effect the new creature in the first act, or the spiritual man.  The latter is that which has for its terminus and formal effect the second acts of the new creature, or the regenerate man actually exercising and eliciting the motions of faith, repentance, etc.

The cause of the former is operating, preventing, or first grace; of the latter, cooperating, second, or subsequent grace. The former impresses new habits or faculties, namely, by informing the mind and will with them and rendering them fit; the latter impresses new motions or acts, namely, by applying the will to them and premoving and preceding it and influencing into it, and thus concurring with it to one and the same effect, and efficiently influencing into the same effect, that is, co-producing it. The former is simply instantaneous; the latter, as to its whole complex, successive.”

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George Hutcheson

An Exposition of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, according to John  (London: Smith, 1657), on 11:25-26, p. 219

“8. The only means to partake of this resurrection is by faith to lay hold on Christ, for “he that believes in Me shall live,” etc.  Christ being thus laid hold on, no bonds of spiritual death shall hinder his quickening virtue to raise them up, but He will make the very dead to live; for, “he that believes, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

This is not to be understood, as if any man that is dead by nature could in that estate lay hold on Christ by faith; for he must first be prevented by passive regeneration, and the infusion of grace.  But the meaning is that it is faith only that puts the sinner in a state of life, and is the saving exercise of infused grace, without which all antecedent exercises, as discovery and conviction of sin and misery, terror, etc., will not avail, as being common to saints and regenerate men with temporaries.”

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George Lawson

Theo-Politica, or a Body of Divinity…  (London: Streater, 1659), pt. 2, ch. 4, pp. 113-14

“The manner of conversion is to us unsearchable, both because we are ignorant of the nature of the immortal soul, and because much more are we ignorant of the manner of God’s working upon that immortal spirit.  As for the resistibility or irresistibility of grace, we know that the power of God is almighty, and cannot be resisted by any created strength, if He please to exercise it to the full, or in some high measure:

But if God give power to the creature, or work by that created power given, it may be resisted by a contrary created power: And so grace or the power of conversion, as a created thing in man, may be so given as to be resisted by the will of man.  And both the understanding of man, will and does, either deny or doubt of divine truths represented to the soul; and the will will wrangle, oppose and reject or not sincerely affect and submit unto the divine commands, and promises.  And hence, the many conflicts not only in conversion, but after we are converted.

As for necessitation of the will in this work of divine calling, it’s certain and granted of all that the illumination of the understanding may be necessary so far as the soul in respect of the same is only passive, though in the apprehension and judgement concerning the truths represented by the Word it be active.  Besides, God may give an active power to the will, and it may be passive in receiving of it, and also necessitated to an act of complacency in general, so that it necessarily may approve by a general approbation of the justice and equity of the command, and the excellency of the good promised…

Yet notwithstanding this necessary and natural act of complacency, that act of the will, which Buridan calls acceptatio ad prosecutionem may be, and is free.  I pass by the philosophical speculations concerning the nature of the will, which few know, concerning the natural and necessary acts thereof, and also concerning those that are free; and what the natural liberty of the will is, and in what acts, and in respect of what acts, it is free.  Concerning the positive acts velle and nolle, and the negative, non velle, non nolle, and concerning the liberty of contradiction and specification;

It’s far more profitable for all such as are so blessed as to live in the Church and enjoy the means of conversion diligently to use the means and exercise that power which God has given them, and also earnestly and constantly pray for the regenerating Spirit, which God has promised to them that seek Him in an orderly way.  For upon this done, regeneration will follow; and by the divine and spiritual power given them, together with God’s special assistance, and concurrence, after all necessary preparations, they shall freely determine and the will shall wholly and most willingly submit to God-Redeemer, which is the ultimate product of divine vocation, the parts whereof are the outward Word, and the inward power of the Spirit which go together, according to the promise of the Gospel, and make up the essence of it…

And we cannot find in Scripture that God denies his Spirit to such as hear his Word till they give God cause either by their neglect or perversness, or apostasy from that degree of grace they have received to withdraw the same.  By all this we understand that Christ finds his subjects, to whom God has given Him a right, to be enemies, and He enlarges as He begins his Kingdom by a kind of spiritual conquest, dashing in pieces all such as will not submit, and are bound to submit, with his iron rod and irresistible strength, reducing the rest unto subjection, after some time of standing out…

And this publication of his laws is accompanied with a wonderful power of his Spirit whereby together with the Word of the Kingdom, He pierces the minds of men and breaks their stony hearts in sunder, as an hammer does a rock: In this respect the Lord says, ‘Is not my Word like as a fire, and like an hammer that breaks the rock asunder, Jer. 23:29.”

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Johannes Hoornbeek

Theological Disputation on the State of Grace  (Leiden: Johann Elsevir, 1664), Corollaries  Latin

“1. Regeneration is the work of the one and only God.
2. Hence man in the first moment of his regeneration is merely passive.
3. Nor are there any internal preparations in a spiritually dead man for the same.”

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Elias Grebenitz

‘Theological Treatise on Regeneration in Three Disputations [& on Conversion & Preparation]’  trans. AI  (Becman, 1671), Disputation 1, ‘On Regeneration in General’, p. 7  Grebenitz (1627-1689) was a German reformed professor of logic, metaphysics and theology at Frankfurt.  Note that Grebenitz opts to take ‘regeneration’ only for the power of believing, as distinct from conversion, through his treatise.

“(3) [‘Regeneration’ as taken] Most Strictly: For the Grace proper only to those who attain salvation in the work itself, and therefore for the donation of habitual faith, by which we apprehend the blood of Christ, our hearts are purified from dead works to serve the Living God. Heb. 9:14, i.e., by which our intellect, so evil from our youth, Gen. 8, is illuminated to know Christ, John 17:3, ‘And this is eternal Life.’ etc.  Our will, so perverse, is so corrected that it rests in Christ alone. Ps. 73:25.  Phil. 3 from v. 7 to v. 12 inclusive: ‘What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.’  Also v. 12, ‘Apprehended by Christ, that I may apprehend.’  In one Word: By which a man who before was plainly dead, is perfectly brought from spiritual death into spiritual life, Eph. 2:1, ‘And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins.’  Also vv. 5 & 6.  To this regeneration we [Grebenitz et al.] attribute, with the excellent Mr. President [Samuel Strimesius], operating grace.  It is otherwise called conversion.”

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Leonard Riissen

A Complete Summary of Elenctic Theology & of as Much Didactic Theology as is Necessary, trans. J. Wesley White  MTh thesis  (Bern, 1676; GPTS, 2009), ch. 13, ‘Conversion & Faith’, pp. 148 & 151

ҤXII. Conversion is distinguished into first conversion, which is the action of God alone and the giving of new life; and second conversion, which is the act of man gladly accepting virtue and fleeing sin after he has been regenerated by the Spirit (Lam. 5:21; Song of Sol. 1:4).
…

Controversy 3 – Is man in the first act of regeneration merely passive?  We affirm against the Socinians and the Arminians.”

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Thomas Manton

A Second Volume of Sermons…  (London: Astwood, 1684), Sermons on 2 Cor. 5, Sermon 30, on 2 Cor. 5:15, p. 190

“(1) The natural life supposes generation; so does the spiritual, which is therefore expressed by ‘regeneration’, or by ‘being born again’, Jn. 3:3 and 1 Jn. 2:27.  Now look, as in natural generation we are first begotten, and then born, so here there is an act qua regeneramur, ‘by which we are begotten again’, and qua renascimur, ‘by which we are born again’.

There is an act of God, by which we are begotten again, viz. by the powerful influence of grace upon our hearts, accompanying in the Word, Jm. 1:18; and there is an act of God, by which we are born again, viz. when the new creature is formed in us, and begins to discover itself (“being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible”).  Effectual calling and sanctification are these two [respective] acts: by the one we are begotten, by the other born; the one may be called our passive, the other our active regeneration.

And as in generation, that which begets produces the same life that is in itself—a beast communicates the life of a beast, and a man of a man—so it is the life of God that we receive when we are formed for his use by the power of his grace.  It is called the life of God, and the divine nature, spiritual qualities being infused, whereby we resemble God.”

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Francis Turretin

Institutes 3.420

“No one is regenerated without his own act consequently.  Thus the newborn does not elicit the act of regeneration (I grant it); with his own act antecedently (I deny it), because we are passive in the beginning of regeneration.”

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John Flavel

“John Flavel’s (1630–1691) Reply to Baptist Hyper-Calvinism from Vindiciæ Legis et Fœderis and the Issue of Conditions”  from Vindiciæ Legis et Fœderis: Or, A Reply to Mr. Philip Cary’s Solemn Call  (1690)  in The Whole Works of the Rev. Mr. John Flavel, 6 vols. (London: Baynes & Son, 1820), vol. 6, pp. 348–56  at Theological Meditations

“I know no orthodox divine in the world, that presumes to thrust in any work of man’s into the covenant of grace, as a condition, which, in the Arminian sense, he may or may not perform, according to the power and pleasure of his own free will, without the preventing or determining grace of God; which preventing grace is contained in those promises, Eze. 36:25–27, etc.  Nor yet that there is any meritorious worth, either of condignity or congruity in the Popish sense, in the very justifying act of faith, for the which God justifies and saves us.

But we say, That though God, in the way of preventing grace, works faith in us, and when it is so wrought, we need his assisting grace to act it, yet neither his assisting nor preventing grace makes the act of faith no more to be our act; it is we that believe still though in God’s strength, and that upon our believing, or not believing, we have or have not the benefits of God’s promises; which is the very proper notion of a condition.”

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Thomas Cole

A Discourse of Regeneration, Faith & Repentance...  (London: Cockerill, 1692), Discourse of Regeneration, ch. 4, ‘Manner of Regeneration’, p. 73

“2dly, Regeneration does not only show the wide difference between the two states, the regenerate and unregenerate; but it comes in a different manner upon the regenerate themselves.  I say a different manner; for there is no difference in the nature of the thing itself, that is the same in substance, essence, and principle in all who are regenerate: yet there are some circumstances attending regeneration sometimes, wherein one regenerate person may greatly differ from another, even in the first moment of regeneration, e.g. some may be regenerated and converted into higher degrees of grace in the first moment of their conversion, than some others (though as truly regenerate as they) may attain to all their days; all in regeneration do receive one and the same spirit of grace, but not in the same measure.

Paul was converted into an eminency in grace; he was never a babe in Christ, but was born a strong man in Christ the very first moment of his conversion.  God had present use of Paul; he had designed him for eminent service, which he was immediately to enter upon, and therefore God furnishes him accordingly.”

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Peter van Mastricht

A Treatise on Regeneration…  (New Haven, 1770),

section 5, pp. 16-17

“That we may attain unto a more clear understanding of the nature of this regeneration, so necessary to salvation: we must carefully observe with regard to the word, that both the Scriptures and also divines use it sometimes in a larger sense, to denote the whole operation of the Holy Ghost upon the souls of those who are to be saved, whereby they are brought into a state of grace, so that, besides the external call, it comprehends conversion, and even initial santification: in which sense practical divines lay down the marks, motives and means of regeneration.

Sometimes the word regeneration is used in a more limited sense, as distinguished from the external call, from conversion and from sanctification: so that the external call signifies only the offer of redemption for our reception: Regeneration conveys that power into the soul, by which the person who is to be saved is enabled to receive the offer.  Conversion puts forth the power received into actual exercise, so that the soul does actually receive the offered benefits.  Sanctification brings forth the fruits of conversion, or of faith and repentance, in a carefulness to maintain good works, yet not so immediately but that a union with Christ and justification come between conversion and sanctification, at least in the order of nature, if not of time.

It is in this stricted sense of the word we shall consider the doctrine of regeneration at present…”

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section 24, pp. 34-35

“Those places of Scripture which are alleged [Dt. 10:16; Jer. 4:4; Eze. 18:31; Rom. 12:2; Joel 2:13; Mt. 4:17] speak not of regeneration strictly so called, by which God infuses the first principle of life, but of conversion, wherein He brings forth the life already bestowed into actual exercise.”

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section 25, pp. 36-37

“In these commands God speaks to his Church, to his people who had long been his delight; therefore they must have been already regenerate; since, without regeneration no one can see or enter into the kingdom of God.  Therefore by these commands God does not mean to bring about regeneration as it denotes the first infusion of the spiritual life, but the drawing forth of that life which is infused by regeneration into the second acts or consequent exercises (which is expressly mentioned in the passage, from whence the first of these commands is quoted) which is done in conversion, that follows upon regeneration, in which man, being drawn, runs after God; being turned, he actively converts and turns himself to God by the power of his grace.”

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Herman Witsius

Conciliatory or Irenical Animadversions on the Controversies Agitated in Britain: under the Unhappy Names of Antinomians & Neonomians  (1696; Glasgow, 1807), ch. 6, p. 68

“III. By a true and a real union (but which is only passive on their part) they are united to Christ when his Spirit first takes possession of them and infuses into them a principle of new life: the beginning of which life can be from nothing else but from union with the Spirit of Christ, who is to the soul, but in a far more excellent manner, in respect of spiritual life, what the soul is to the body in respect of animal and human life.

As therefore the union of soul and body is in order of nature prior to the life of man, so also the union of the Spirit of Christ and the soul is prior to the life of a Christian.  Further, since faith is an act flowing from the principle of spiritual life, it is plain, that in a sound sense, it may be said, an elect person is truly and really united to Christ before actual faith.

IV. But the mutual union (which, on the part of an elect person, is likewise active and operative), whereby the soul draws near to Christ, joins itself to Him, applies, and in a becoming and proper manner closes with Him without any distraction, is made by faith only.”

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1700’s

Barthold Holtzfus

‘Theological Dissertation on the Free Will of Man’  trans. AI by Nosferatu  (Frankfurt: Zeitler, 1707), pp. 25-26  Latin

§XIV…  in the first moment of conversion, while the intellect is being illuminated, the will is being prepared, disposed, and changed, it behaves merely passively, with Scripture as
witness.

Ps. 119:18: God “reveals the eyes to consider the wondrous things of the Divine Law.”
Lk. 24:45: he “opens the minds of men, that they may understand the Scriptures.”
Acts 16:14: he “opens the heart, that they may attend to those things which are said by the ministers.”
Eph. 1:17-18: he “gives the Spirit of Wisdom and of revelation, in the knowledge of Christ, the eyes of our heart being enlightened, that we may know what the hope is of our calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.”
Ps. 51:12 & Eph. 2:10: He “creates a clean heart” in them, and “renews a right spirit” in their bowels.
Eze. 36:26-27: he “gives a new heart and puts a new spirit in the midst of the converted: and takes away the stony heart out of their flesh, and gives them a heart of flesh, and puts his spirit in the midst of them, and causes them to walk in his commandments, and to keep his judgments, and do them.”
Jn. 3:5 & 1 Pet. 1:3: he regenerates from heaven.
Jn. 6:44: he draws.
Eph. 1:19-20: he “works on them according to the operation of the might of his power, which he wrought in Christ, raising him up from the dead.”
Phil. 2:13: he works “both to will and to accomplish.”
2 Thess. 1:11: He “fulfills all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith in power” in them.
Heb. 13:21: He “works in them that which is well pleasing in his sight through J.C.”
Jer. 31:33: He “gives his law in their bowels, and will write it in their heart.”
Whence Israel there sighs in vv. 18-19 “Convert thou me, and I shall be converted: for thou art the Lord my God. For after thou didst convert me, I did penance: and after thou didst show unto me, I struck my thigh.”

Man, however, being illuminated, aided, and renewed by this grace of God through the Word, and from being unwilling made willing, under grace, with a free but attendant will, without injury to his free will, freely and actively complies with operating grace, and with resistance having been taken away, willingly cooperates and concurs, according to the vow of the Church, Cant. 1:3: “Draw me, we will run after thee.”  To which can be referred that passage in Jer. 20:7: “Thou hast seduced me, O Lord, and I am seduced: thou art stronger than I, and thou hast prevailed.”  For grace does not kill free will, but remakes it; does not abolish it, but cherishes it; does not take it away, but transfers it, according to Prosper and Bernard.”

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Latin Articles

1600’s

Pareus, David – Theological Collections of Universal Orthodox Theology...  (1611/20), vol. 2,

Collection 2

17. ‘On Regeneration, or the Conversion of Man to God’, pp. 136-41

Pareus (1548-1622)

Collection 3

13. ‘On Conversion, or the Regeneration of Man’, pp. 157-59

Walaeus, Antonius – ‘The Orthodox judgment to the above question, even that in the first regeneration, man himself is held to be merely passive’  in 18. ‘Of Repentance [Resipiscentia]’  in All the Works, 2 vols. combined  (d. 1639; Leiden: Hackius, 1643), Common Places, p. 437

Voet, Gisbert

A Syllabus of Theological Problems…  (Utrecht, 1643), 2nd Section, Of Redemption, Tract 3, Of the Effect of Christ the Mediator, II. Of the Application of Salvation

Of Regeneration in the Second Moment, or of the Actual Conversion of a Sinner

Appendix: Of the Perfection of Regeneration Following & of the Perfection of Sanctification in Death or After Death

31. Appendix, ‘On the Second Moment of Conversion’  in Select Theological Disputations  (Utrecht: Waesberg, 1655), vol. 2, pp. 465-68

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1700’s

Vitringa, Sr., Campegius – section 36  in The Doctrine of the Christian Religion, Summarily Described through Aphorisms  (d. 1722), vol. 3, ch. 14, ‘Of Faith & Repentance’, pp. 115-19

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“Who by Him do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead…  that your faith and hope might be in God.  Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently:  being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God…”

1 Pet. 1:21-23

“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:”

Rom. 5:1

“For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.”

Gal. 3:26

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Related Pages

Total Depravity, or a Total Inability to Spiritual, Saving Good

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Hyper-Calvinism

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