THE NEW BIRTH.
MODERN systems of theology employ, as equivalent, the following phrases: A change of heart, the purification of the heart or soul, regeneration, and the new birth. As nothing is more essential to the true interpretation of the Holy Scriptures than a correct use of the terms and phrases which therein occur, so nothing has a greater tendency to confuse and bewilder than the loose and latitudinarian manner in which they are frequently employed. The first of the above phrases does not, indeed, occur in the Scriptures; but the idea commonly attached to it is presented in many passages, and if it is uniformly employed to convey this idea no incongruity will result. But what is ordinarily called a change of heart is very often confounded with what in the Scriptures is called a purification of the heart. This is sometimes done even by those who understand and proclaim “the ancient gospel.” When such a proclaimer asserts that a man’s heart must be purified before he is immersed, he is involved in this confusion, and forgets for the time being that Peter has located this purification in obedience. (See 1 Peter i., 22.) A change of heart is understood to be a change from the love of the world to the love of God, or, as commonly expressed, from the love of sin to the love of holiness. Such a change must, of course, precede immersion. He who loves the world or the things of the world must experience this essential change before he is qualified to be immersed into Christ; but this change of the affections is one thing, and the scriptural purification of the heart quite another. This last is equivalent to “the answer of a good conscience toward God,” which can be enjoyed by those only who have obtained the forgiveness of sins. If any one desires proof of the equivalency here asserted, let him study the 10th chapter of Hebrews, and compare with this the 13th and 14th verses of the 9th chapter.
As “a change of heart” is often confounded with “the purification of the heart” or soul, so these are frequently confounded with “the new birth,” and this in its turn with “regeneration.” Regeneration is not an act, but a process, of which the change of heart and the new birth are constituent parts, while the purification of the heart is a result. Let the sequel demonstrate this.
We now raise the question, When is a man “born again?” to this question the Savior himself has happily furnished an answer. Yet, if all the sectarian theologians of the day, both learned and unlearned, should each “show his opinion,” not one, we believe, would coincide with that divine answer: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he can not enter into the kingdom of God.” This was intended by the Savior as an explanation of the earlier expression which affirmed the necessity of the new birth in the following language: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again he can not see the kingdom of God.” A man, then, according to the Savior, is “born again” when he is “born of water and of the Spirit.” Has water anything to do with a change of heart from the love of sin to the love of holiness? No one will affirm it. A “change of heart,” then, is one thing, and “the new birth” is another, unless we reject the Savior’s own definition of the latter.
But what is it to be “born of water and of the Spirit?” first, that the birth is one, not two, will not, we presume, be denied. A man is not “born of water” at one time and “of the Spirit” at another; but is “born of the Spirit” when “born of water.” Further, that the phrase “born of water” refers to Christian baptism no candid man of any learning has ever pretended to dispute. The vast majority of commentators of any note, we believe, are here agreed. From these premises it logically follows that no one is “born of the Spirit” until he is immersed. But now the question emerges: With what propriety can a person thus born be said to be “born of the Spirit?” in other words, what must be the agency of the Spirit in relation to this great change that it may, under the figure of a birth, be appropriately ascribed to this agent? If the change is brought about by a direct rather than by a remote agency of the Holy Spirit, to say nothing of a birth of water, the very idea of a birth itself is at once annihilated. Again we ask, what peculiar agency of the Spirit must of necessity be supposed that we may have at one and the same time a “birth of water and of the Spirit!” here are two things, water and the Spirit, the coexistence of which in the new birth the Savior himself has proclaimed. What relation to the new birth does each of these sustain?
In order to furnish a correct answer to this question, it is important to take into consideration a fact which has been entirely overlooked by expositors and critics. In the original, man is said to be born ex hudatos (out of water), whereas the term Pneumatos (of the Spirit) is employed as a simple genitive, not having before it the preposition ex. The genitive case, unaccompanied by a preposition, expresses simply the cause or source of an action more or less remote; but when this action is connected with the genitive of the source by the preposition ex, the connection, according to Winer, is of “the most intimate” character. He observes, that of all the prepositions which govern the genitive, “beyond doubt ek (or ex), indicates the closest connection.” This learned grammarian defines the preposition before us as follows: “The original signification of ek is, issuing from within (the compass, sphere of) something.” “Figuratively,” he says, “this preposition denotes every source and cause out of which something flows or issues.” Thus, even in figurative usage, the idea expressed by the phrase “out of does not depart from this preposition, and able critics affirm that the two are inseparable. The genitive, without this preposition, expresses merely the source of a thing or cause by which it is produced. When accompanied by the preposition, it signifies that out of which something emanates. The following, then, is a literal rendering of the Savior’s language: “Except a man be born out of water and of the Spirit he can not enter into the kingdom of God.” It is a birth which “issues” from water, and is remotely brought about by the agency of the Holy Spirit.
We have now defined the relation which water sustains to the new birth, as that out of which must issue the person “born again.” We have also seen that the agency of the Spirit stands remotely, not immediately, connected with the new birth, and determined to this extent the relation which the Holy Spirit sustains to the new birth. It is not that out of which the birth itself immediately flows, but a remote cause without which the birth could never be. We have not yet, however, determined the specific character of the spiritual agency, in consequence of which a person born of water is properly said to be born also of the Spirit. A person is born of two parents at once; directly of one, and indirectly of the other. Now the Holy Spirit is the figurative father of the spiritual child; otherwise the figure before us is devoid of sense. We are at a loss to know what meaning the expression “born of water and of “the Spirit” can possibly have upon any other supposition. The employment of the figure is based upon the resemblance of relations, and nothing less than this can justify its use, as the resemblance of relations is of the very essence of analogy, A figurative birth implies a figurative parentage; for to say that one thing is born of another, is to say that the second is a parent of the first. Accordingly, the simple expression “born of the Spirit” represents the Spirit as a figurative parent in general terms, while the phrase “born of water and of the Spirit” represents the Spirit as the figurative father, in consideration of what was seen to be the relation which water sustains to the new birth. It is now evident that the term begotten describes the indirect or remote agency of the Spirit, in consequence of which a person born of water is born also of the Spirit. The terms begotten and born are used in the English Scriptures to represent one word in the Greek, and this fact has led many to suppose that these words are employed to denote the same thing, but the original term is not indifferently represented by the one or the other of these words as taste may suggest; on the contrary, the selection is necessarily determined by the circumstances under which the original term is employed. Sometimes it is impossible to translate by the term born, as in Matt. ii., 2. At other times it is equally impossible to translate by the term begotten, as in Matt. ii., 21. The fact, then, that these two words represent but one Greek term, does not prove that they are equivalent in sense, but only that the original word is ambiguous and equivalent in meaning to both of the English terms. To be begotten by the Spirit, and to be born of the Spirit, are two distinct things, though often confounded. The new birth being one, we are “born of the Spirit” when we are “born of water,” and this in consequence of having been previously begotten by the Spirit. In using the phrase “begotten by the Spirit,” we employ an expression not found in the Scriptures, but one equivalent to the scriptural phrase “begotten of God.”
We now discover the source of a radical error exposed in the beginning of this essay. By supposing that to be “begotten of God” or of the Spirit is to be “born of the Spirit” of God, men have been led to ascribe to each state the attributes of the other, and thus have confounded, as we have seen, this new birth with a change of heart. A man certainly experiences a change of heart when he is begotten of God; and he who supposes that to be begotten of God is to be born again, will of necessity confound the new birth with a change of heart. Confusion thus begets confusion, and leads the bewildered mind far away from the truth into the labyrinths of error. An instance of this is likewise found in the false and antiscriptural account frequently given of the manner in which a person is begotten of God. The Scriptures are as clear as light itself on this point. “Of his own will,” says James, “begat he us with the word of truth.” And Paul, too, discourses as follows: “Though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have you not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.” A person thus begotten and afterward “born of water and of the Spirit” is declared by Peter to be “born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God which lives and abides forever.” Thus we have Peter, Paul, and James unequivocally explaining the manner in which we are begotten of God or of the Spirit of God; and yet their explanation is completely ignored and their affirmations flatly denied by a popular theory which we will now proceed to state and consider.
The theory may be stated as follows: In order to be begotten of God there is requisite a direct agency of the Holy Spirit, or influence other than that exerted through the truth. We shall soon see that those who advocate this theory are compelled in consistency to deny that the word of God, or any influence exerted through that word, has anything to do whatever with the new birth or its antecedents, and thus place themselves in direct antagonism with the apostles mentioned above. What, then, is the ground on which the theory rests? It consists in the supposition that man, on account of hereditary depravity, is morally and spiritually dead to such an extent that he is utterly incapable of all spiritual activity; that being “dead in trespasses and sins,” he is literally and absolutely unable to perform any spiritual act until he is regenerated or born again. If this doctrine be true, a special—yes, miraculous—influence of the Spirit is certainly essential to the new birth. Let us first, then, examine the pretended scriptural basis of the doctrine on which is predicated the theory of spiritual influence under consideration.
That men before conversion are “dead in trespasses and sins,” the Scriptures unequivocally assert. Many similar expressions occur in the New Testament. But that man in that state is so utterly dead to all that is good that he can not do aught that is right, the Scriptures nowhere affirm. The nearest approximation to it is found, perhaps, in the following expressions of Paul: “To be carnally minded is death. * * * Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” That man, as long as he is carnally minded, can not be subject to God’s law or do that which is pleasing to him is here clearly asserted; but that he can not cease to be carnally minded and become spiritually minded without a miracle, and a miracle as great as that by which Lazarus was raised from the dead, is by no means affirmed. The capital error committed by those who press these and similar passages into the service of the above theory is one of very frequent occurrence. It consists in the unwarranted extension of a figure. They reason in this way: When a man is dead he is incapable of motion or action of any kind. But the Scriptures pronounce the unrenewed morally and spiritually dead. Therefore they “can neither think a good thought nor do a good deed.” Does experience sanction or facts sustain the conclusion? We know that all history belies it. But what shall we say of the logic? Do the Scriptures ascribe to a figurative death all the consequences of a literal death? If they do, then, when the children of light are said to be “dead to the world,” can they think a sinful thought or do a sinful deed? If not, why does Paul exhort them to cleanse themselves “from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God?” though dead to sin and alive to God, they were yet capable of sinful thoughts and deeds while incapable, it is true, of “continuing in sin,” or “living any longer therein” as the ungodly do. If, then, the Scriptures do not consider a figurative death in all respects equal to a literal death, the syllogism before us is convicted of a vice known among logicians as the ambiguous middle. In nothing is a nice discrimination or precision of judgment in a higher degree requisite than in handling the figures of the Bible. It is here that we find the greatest, as well as the most numerous, specimens of perverse interpretation. At one time more and at another less than the actual import of a figure is seized upon to answer the purpose of a theorist. Of the former we have just seen an instance, while the latter was amply illustrated in our reflection on the figure of a birth.
But these errors in interpretation give rise, as we have seen, to doctrinal errors, which in their turn produce others, and thus illustrates, what we have already had occasion to observe, that confusion begets confusion, until we have “confusion worse confounded.” A false view of spiritual death generates a theory of human depravity, which holds man, in regeneration, to be as passive as a machine, while this theory necessitates another equally pernicious, according to which such an influence is requisite to his recovery from sin as renders the word of God wholly powerless to that end, notwithstanding it is represented in the word itself as the instrument by which this grand work is effected. The advocates of these theories pretend to have a place in their scheme for the word of God, but their inconsistency will immediately be seen. With them faith is, and must of necessity be, the result of regeneration. The exercise of faith is a spiritual act, and all such acts, according to their theory, proceed from a regenerated soul. Now the word of God can have no influence over the man of no faith. Whatever it accomplishes in behalf of humanity must be accomplished through faith. It is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes,” and has no efficacy whatever to save him that believes not. This is not only scriptural, but self-evidently true. If, then, regeneration is prior to faith, and the word of God is powerless in the absence of faith, it follows that the word of God has nothing whatever to do with regeneration. If we substitute for the term regeneration the new birth as a phrase expressive of the consummating act, the reasoning is the same. Indeed, with the advocates of the theory under consideration the two expressions are synonymous. Here, then, the theory is in direct antagonism with the scriptural doctrines quoted above, to the effect that we are “born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God which lives and abides forever.” We pronounce this teaching utterly irreconcilable with the theory before us. Yet the attempt has been made to harmonize the two. To this end a faith differing in kind from “saving faith” has been invented, and man is said to exercise the former before regeneration, but the latter only as the effect of this great change. Agrippa, it is said, “had faith, but not the faith that secures salvation.” Of what value, then, we ask, was it to him, or to anybody else? Hear Rice in debate with Campbell: “The kind of faith exercised by Agrippa, though it could not secure justification and eternal life, is not useless. It induces men to hear the word, to read it, to think of it; and God may, through the truth, renew and sanctify them. This faith precedes regeneration; but the faith that works by love and overcomes the world is consequent upon regeneration. He who is induced to embrace fundamental error is not likely ever to be converted; for God does not sanctify through error. But he who theoretically believes the truth may be converted and sanctified by the Spirit through the truth.” (Debate, pp. 104-5.)
Did the author of this evasion suppose that it would pass for a solution of the difficulty in hand? But the attempt to evade is itself exceedingly awkward, as it indirectly grants the incorrectness of the theory which he labors to uphold. Is the exercise of that faith which “induces men to hear the word, to read it, to think of it,” a spiritual act or not? If it is not, what, we crave to know, is the nature of this nondescript which, though destitute of all spirituality, is yet sufficient to render the word of God efficacious in the work of regeneration? But if it is a spiritual act, then this faith which “precedes regeneration” is actually the result of regeneration, by virtue of the theory under consideration, according to which “spiritual acts flow from spiritual life” in those who “are first quickened;” just as “a dead man does not perform the acts which flow from life,” but “is first alive and then acts.” Behold, then, the dilemma in which the advocates of this theory are involved. Man is either born again by the word of God, as the incorruptible seed, upon the exercise of a faith that is not spiritual and not saving, or he is capable of exercising some spiritual acts while “dead in trespasses and sins,” unless regeneration is prior to itself. The first supposition is contradictory and absurd, while the second is an abandonment of the theory in question. But the most wonderful feature of the case is the fact that, upon either supposition, the faith which is pronounced merely “theoretical,” as “not the faith that secures salvation,” turns out to be the only saving faith in the premises, while that faith which is said to be the result of regeneration is merely the effect of the salvation from sin obtained through the exercise of the first. Thus the sapient doctor to whom reference has been made, in attempting to rid his theory of one difficulty accumulates many others as a fitting reward for his sophistical labors. Apparently aware of his weakness in this endeavor, he makes another effort, in which he actually concedes the insuperable strength of the difficulty over which he laboriously toils. Hear him again: “God is pleased to work by means when they can be employed. And not only does he employ means where they are wholly inefficient without the exertion of his power, but he has employed such means as had not the least tendency to produce the desired effect. Our Savior used clay and spittle in opening the eyes of a blind man.”
Let it be remembered that this champion of modern orthodoxy is aiming to reconcile his new theory of the new birth with the necessity for the ministry of the word, which necessity grows out of the fact that the word of God is described in the Bible as the “incorruptible seed” of which men are “born again”—the grand instrumentality through which we are regenerated, or begotten and born of God. And how is this reconciliation supposed to be effected? Why, that “God has employed such means as had not the least tendency to produce the desired effect,” as when the “Savior used clay and spittle in opening the eyes of a blind man.” This is a clear intimation that the word of God has no more efficiency or inherent efficacy to regenerate a man than clay and spittle have to impart vision to the blind. It is therefore a virtual admission that those Scriptures which ascribe the new birth to the word as the “seed” from which springs the new life, can not be reconciled with modern orthodoxy. Has seed in the animal and vegetable kingdoms “not the least tendency” to develop the life inherent in itself? The word of God is divinely represented as “living and powerful,” as “spirit and life,” and, like the seed in both kingdoms to which it is compared, will, under proper and favorable circumstances, produce its living and beautiful fruit in the lives of those who are thus “born again.” How different is all this from the senseless comparison in the extract before us! The clay and spittle alluded to, were not, as here affirmed, employed as the “means” of giving sight to the blind; they “had not,” as truly asserted, “the least tendency” to produce that effect, and for that very reason they could not have been used as the means of accomplishing that end. They were employed in connection with another fact, simply as a condition upon which a miracle was performed for the accomplishment of the desired effect. If the Scriptures had stated that men receive their sight through spittle and clay, or by means of their use, just as it is said that they are “begotten through the gospel,” there would have been some parallelism between the two cases. But when the author of the comparison himself pronounces the supposed “means” in the one case to be “wholly inefficient” and without “the least tendency to produce the desired effect” until a miracle is wrought to that end, it follows, if the comparison is to hold good, that the word of God is to be regarded as “wholly inefficient” in the work of regeneration, and that the performance of a miracle is essential. Indeed, this is the true import of the theory. For if man in a state of spiritual death is as incapable of putting forth a spiritual act as the physically dead are to move, the power requisite to give life in the one case is essential also in the other. The resurrection of the dead is undeniably miraculous, and the new birth no less so, if the doctrine we are combating is true. Man thus becomes as passive as a machine, to act only as acted upon. Of course, it would be absurd to even hint at his accountability. Let us now sum up the results of this precious bait of orthodoxy par excellence. 1. It makes conversion a miracle. 2. Reduces man to a machine. 3. Destroys human responsibility. 4. Makes the word of God null and void. 5. Contradicts some of its plainest declarations.
The last item, though clearly evinced already, is susceptible of additional exemplification. Faith and obedience, as spiritual acts, are supposed to flow from regeneration, while regeneration is supposed to be equivalent to the purification of the heart or soul. The Holy Spirit, it is said, through a direct operation, purifies the heart, and the heart thus purified exercises true faith and prompts to a hearty, acceptable obedience. Now Peter, whose teaching in general seems to stand very much in the way of these truly orthodox theorists, ruthlessly demolishes this beautiful statement of the case, and gives in his own homely way the following account: “You know that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe.” Here note before we hear Peter out, that the faith of the Gentiles came not by an abstract operation of the Spirit, but through “hearing the word of the gospel;” peter agreeing exactly with Paul, that “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” Peter proceeds: “And God, who knows the heart, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Spirit, as unto us; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.” Thus, according to Peter’s statement, the Gentiles, like the Jews, first obtained faith through the word, and then obtained the purification of their hearts through the faith thus obtained, while the Holy Spirit was given to confer neither faith nor purification; but to be a witness to the Gentiles that God had put no difference between the Jews and themselves, and that he would accept them upon the same faith in his Son, and purify their hearts by that faith as he had done those of the Jews. How extremely unorthodox was this man Peter! Why, he makes faith a cause and the purification of the heart the effect, instead of the reverse! But, then, he did pretty well for the day in which he lived. Who does not see that, though an effect may become a cause, it can never be a cause of that of which it is an effect. Faith can not be both the cause and the effect of the purification of the heart. Still, it would, perhaps, be better to abide with Peter and part company with his orthodox opponents. That this, indeed, has become a necessity is now obvious to all. Yet the wily debater and theological trickster referred to above asserts that “the expression, ‘purifying their hearts by faith,’ it would not be difficult to prove, militates not against the doctrine of special divine influence;” to wit, such “special divine influence” as it is contended must operate independently of faith to the purification of the heart. Instead, however, of attempting to execute the task which he thus professes to regard as “not difficult,” he takes good care not to add another word on the subject, just as he had passed over in utter silence the other passage of Peter in which the word of God is represented as the seed incorruptible of which man is born again. This was done simply and solely because he knew that his anti-scriptural dogma palpably and flagrantly contradicted these clear declarations of the apostle.
But we are not yet through with these contradictions. Obedience, true and acceptable, as a spiritual act, and also as the legitimate fruit of true faith, must, upon the theory under consideration, be the result of purification; the purification of the soul. Now hear that same troublesome Peter again: “Seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another with a pure heart fervently.” Here the exhortation addressed to these brethren, to “love one another with a pure heart fervently,” is based upon the fact that they had obtained a pure heart “in obeying the truth.” But the word “soul” is used in one case, and the term “heart” in the other, showing that the two are used synonymously. The apostle does not say, according to the modern conception, that they had symbolized by obedience a purification already obtained, but that they had actually obtained the purification of their souls “in obeying the truth.” Nor does he ascribe this purification to any efficacy of obedience, but simply locates it in that fact. They had not obtained the purification of their souls prior to, but in, obedience. Now we affirm that this passage, like those previously adduced, can never be harmonized with the theory we have been considering. Neither can it be reconciled with the statement sometimes made by those who should be better informed, that a man’s heart must be purified before he is immersed. The heart is never purified in the scriptural sense, until the remission of sins has been obtained. “Having a High-priest over the house of God,” says Paul, “let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.” As long as a man remains in his sins, his heart is not sprinkled from an evil conscience, is not purified. Now “the answer of a good conscience,” according to Peter, is obtained in baptism, and hence it is erroneous to say that the heart is purified prior to this.
We conclude this essay by enumerating and specifying the errors of those who advocate the popular theory of the new birth.
1. They confound the new birth with a change of heart, the consequent with the antecedent.
2. They confound the new birth with the purification of the heart, the cause with the effect.
3. They confound the new birth with regeneration, or part the whole.
4. They do away with the word of God to which, as the “incorruptible seed,” the Scriptures ascribe the new birth.
5. They do away with water, whose coexistence with the Spirit in the new birth the Savior himself has decreed.
6. They annihilate the very idea of a birth, and destroy this impressive figure by their theory.
7. They base their theory upon a perversion of those Scriptures which represent the unconverted as spiritually dead.
8. They transform the new birth into a miracle, degenerate man to a machine, destroy human responsibility, make the word of God null and void, and palpably contradict many of its clearest declarations.
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