One of the most
dramatic moments in my life for the shaping of my theology took place in a
seminary classroom. One of my professors went to the blackboard and wrote these
words in bold letters: "Regeneration Precedes Faith."
These words were a
shock to my system. I had entered seminary believing that the key work of man
to effect rebirth was faith. I thought that we first had to believe in Christ
in order to be born again. I use the words in order here for a reason. I was
thinking in terms of steps that must be taken in a certain sequence. I had put
faith at the beginning. The order looked something like this:
"Faith - rebirth
-justification."
I hadn’t thought that
matter through very carefully. Nor had I listened carefully to Jesus’ words to
Nicodemus. I assumed that even though I was a sinner, a person born of the
flesh and living in the flesh, I still had a little island of righteousness, a
tiny deposit of spiritual power left within my soul to enable me to respond to
the Gospel on my own. Perhaps I had been confused by the teaching of the Roman
Catholic Church. Rome, and many other branches of Christendom, had taught that
regeneration is gracious; it cannot happen apart from the help of God.
No man has the power
to raise himself from spiritual death. Divine assistance is necessary. This
grace, according to Rome, comes in the form of what is called prevenient grace.
"Prevenient" means that which comes from something else. Rome adds to
this prevenient grace the requirement that we must "cooperate with it and
assent to it" before it can take hold in our hearts.
This concept of
cooperation is at best a half-truth. Yes, the faith we exercise is our faith.
God does not do the believing for us. When I respond to Christ, it is my
response, my faith, my trust that is being exercised. The issue, however, goes
deeper. The question still remains: "Do I cooperate with God's grace
before I am born again, or does the cooperation occur after?" Another way
of asking this question is to ask if regeneration is monergistic or
synergistic. Is it operative or cooperative? Is it effectual or dependent? Some
of these words are theological terms that require further explanation.
A monergistic work is
a work produced singly, by one person. The prefix mono means one. The word erg
refers to a unit of work. Words like energy are built upon this root. A
synergistic work is one that involves cooperation between two or more persons
or things. The prefix syn -means "together with."
I labor this distinction for a reason. The debate between Rome and Luther hung
on this single point. At issue was this: Is regeneration a monergistic work of
God or a synergistic work that requires cooperation between man and God? When
my professor wrote "Regeneration precedes faith" on the blackboard,
he was clearly siding with the monergistic answer. After a person is
regenerated, that person cooperates by exercising faith and trust. But the
first step is the work of God and of God alone.
The reason we do not
cooperate with regenerating grace before it acts upon us and in us is because
we can- not. We cannot because we are spiritually dead. We can no more assist
the Holy Spirit in the quickening of our souls to spiritual life than Lazarus
could help Jesus raise him for the dead.
When I began to
wrestle with the Professor's argument, I was surprised to learn that his
strange-sounding teaching was not novel. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin,
Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield - even the great medieval theologian Thomas
Aquinas taught this doctrine. Thomas Aquinas is the Doctor Angelicus of the
Roman Catholic Church. For centuries his theological teaching was accepted as
official dogma by most Catholics. So he was the last person I expected to hold
such a view of regeneration. Yet Aquinas insisted that regenerating grace is
operative grace, not cooperative grace. Aquinas spoke of prevenient grace, but
he spoke of a grace that comes before faith, which is regeneration.
These giants of
Christian history derived their view from Holy Scripture. The key phrase in
Paul's Letter to the Ephesians is this: "...even when we were dead in
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have you been
saved)" (Eph. 2:5). Here Paul locates the time when regeneration occurs.
It takes place 'when we were dead.' With one thunderbolt of apostolic
revelation all attempts to give the initiative in regeneration to man are
smashed. Again, dead men do not cooperate with grace. Unless regeneration takes
place first, there is no possibility of faith.
This says nothing
different from what Jesus said to Nicodemus. Unless a man is born again first,
he cannot possibly see or enter the kingdom of God. If we believe that faith
precedes regeneration, then we set our thinking and therefore ourselves in
direct opposition not only to giants of Christian history but also to the
teaching of Paul and of our Lord Himself.
(Excerpt from the book, The
Mystery of the Holy Spirit, by R.C. Sproul, Christian Focus).
