I don't think you can be reading my posts. I believe absolutely that regeneration must precede faith. What I have denied is that salvation precedes faith. For the third time, having a ticket to the opera is not the same thing as being at the opera.
If that is what Boettner wrote then he was dead wrong. I have his book The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination but I haven't read it for some years. If you have a page or chapter reference, I will look it up.
Yes, I fully agree with that. As I said in my last post, regeneration and renewing are the means by which God saves sinners. The regeneration and renewing come first, and the salvation follows when one believes.
This is the sealing of the Spirit, not His work of regeneration. A seal is put on something as a mark of authenticity.
The Gospel, being God's truth, enlightens everyone who hears it so that they are without excuse, but it is the simple fact that not all men are drawn to Christ. The 'all' here can only mean people of all races, languages, conditions abilities, as shown from the following verses.
Mark 1:5. 'Then all the land of Judea, and those from Jerusalem went out to Him and were all baptized by Him.....' Was every single person from Judea and Jerusalem baptized by John? Hardly! Even if such a thing were possible, Luke 7:30 tells us that the Pharisees and lawyers were not baptized.
John 8:2. 'Now early in the morning He came again to the temple and all the people came to Him, and He sat down and taught them.' Did every single resident of Jerusalem come to the temple? No! The temple could not contain more than about 3,000 people. Again, these verses mean people of all classes and conditions.
Absolutely not, thank God! I praise Him every day for irresistible grace. God loved me enough, not merely to offer me salvation, but to save me, and He made me willing. 'Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.' 'So then, it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.'
Here, I am pleased to say, we are in perfect agreement.
Martin that is the problem it is not just Boettner that says this it is also in the Calvinist web sites that I gave you and they say that regeneration = born again. Now are you going to say that born again does not mean saved? And are you going to disagree with these calvinists also? If that is what you want to believe so be it but your running against the tide on this one.
These calvinist lights all say that you have to be born again before you can believe. And they equate regeneration with being born again in other words saved. So their saying that you have to be saved before you can believe. Which is not biblical.
You say regeneration precedes faith but don’t want to admit that for your calvinist lights regeneration = born again/saved
Let us hear how Calvinists explain it:
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? ...A monergistic work is a work produced singly, by one person. ...At issue was this: Is regeneration a monergistic work of God or a synergistic work that requires cooperation between man and God? ...After a person is regenerated, that person cooperates by exercising faith and trust. R C Sproul
Regeneration Precedes Faith
When Christ called to Lazarus to come out of the grave, Lazarus had no life in him so that he could hear, sit up, and emerge. There was not a flicker of life in him. If he was to be able to hear Jesus calling him and to go to Him, then Jesus would have to make him alive. Jesus resurrected him and then Lazarus could respond. [Similarly,] the unsaved, the unregenerate, is spiritually dead (Eph. 2). He is unable to ask for help unless God changes his heart of stone into a heart of flesh, and makes him alive spiritually (Eph. 2:5). Then, once he is born again, he can for the first time turn to Jesus, expressing sorrow for his sins and asking Jesus to save him (Palmer,
Five Points, 18-19).
Abraham Kuyper observed that, prior to regeneration, a sinner ‘has all the passive properties belonging to a corpse … [Therefore] every effort to claim for the sinner the minutest co-operation in this first grace destroys the gospel, severs the artery of the Christian confession and is anti-scriptural in the highest degree.’ Like a spiritual corpse, he is unable to make a single move toward God, think a right thought about God, or even respond to God – unless God first brings this spiritually dead corpse to life (Boice and Ryken,
Doctrines of Grace, 74).
Man is dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1). He cannot make himself new, or create new life in himself. He must be born of God. Then, with the new nature of God, he sees Christ for who he really is, and freely receives Christ for all that he is. The two acts (new birth and faith) are so closely connected that in experience we cannot distinguish them. God begets us anew and the first glimmer of life in the newborn child is faith (Piper,
Five Points, 35).
The Reformed view … teaches that before a person can choose Christ … he must be born again … one does not first believe and then become reborn. … A cardinal doctrine of Reformed theology is the maxim, “Regeneration precedes faith” (Sproul,
Chosen by God, 10, 72).
A man is not regenerated because he has first believed in Christ, but he believes in Christ because has been regenerated (Pink,
The Sovereignty of God). The Calvinist says that life must precede faith, and is logically the cause of faith. Faith did not cause the new birth, the new birth caused faith (Cole, “
Which Comes First In Conversion–Life or Faith?”).
… Regeneration logically must initiate faith (MacArthur,
Faith Works, 62).
Reformed theologians … place regeneration before faith, pointing out that the Holy Spirit must bring new life before the sinner can by God’s enabling exercise faith and accept Jesus Christ (Killen, “
Regeneration,” 1449).
The reformed view of predestination teaches that before a person can choose Christ his heart must be changed. He must be born again … one does not first believe, then become reborn. … In regeneration, God changes our hearts. He gives us a new disposition, a new inclination. He plants a desire for Christ in our hearts. We can never trust Christ for our salvation unless we first desire Him. This is why we said earlier that regeneration precedes faith (Sproul,
Chosen by God, 72, 118).
The Reformers taught not only that regeneration does precede faith but also that it must precede faith. Because of the moral bondage of the unregenerate sinner, he cannot have faith until he is changed internally by the operative, monergistic work of the Holy Spirit. Faith is regeneration’s fruit, not its cause (Sproul,
Willing to Believe, 23).
from R. C. Sproul:
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.
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 (R. C. Sproul, “
Regeneration Precedes Faith”).
Martin you must believe/trust in the risen Lord before you will be regenerated/saved. Your idea that you have to be regenerated first puts the cart before the horse. I really have nothing more to say on this matter. If you will not listen to Calvinists you will not hear anything from me. You may follow your calvinist view but I will just follow what the bible says.
