I wrote this elsewhere as a footnote in another essay (http://trinity-
pres.net/essays/obergefellandamericaswarongod.pdf), but since it is
likely to get overlooked, I have pulled it out and turned it into its
own short paper for those who might be interested. The debate
between Doug Wilson and Jim Jordan over regeneration pits two men
whom I respect and from whom I have learned much. I hope this note can bring them closer together on this issue.
In salvation, “grace redeems nature.” God restores (and
eschatologically perfects) human nature in Christ. Scripture describes
salvation in terms of being renewed in God’s image, being made a
new creation, etc. This newness is deeply and fundamentally
relational; it has to do with our movement from the family of Adam
(with Satan as our father) to the family of Christ (with God as our
Father). Relationships determine identity; human nature is inherently
relational because we are made in the image of a relational,
Trinitarian God. But we need to be careful how we understand this.
In recent years, there has been a great deal of debate in certain
Reformed circles over whether or not regeneration, or the new birth,
should be understood as a change of nature or a relational change (or
perhaps some combination of both, using a relational ontology).
Doug Wilson has argued that regeneration is a change of nature; in
other words, God’s effectual call brings about a metaphysical or
ontological change in us. James Jordan has argued that humans do
not have a fixed nature, but are instead constituted by their
relationships (most essentially their relationship to God, upon whom
they are absolutely dependent), and so “regeneration” is not a change
of nature (a “transubstantiated heart”) but a change in Spiritual
orientation and direction.
As is often the case in such matters, I think there has been a lot of
talking past one another and a lot of terminological confusion. I think
what Wilson means when he affirms regeneration as a change of
“nature” is not the same thing Jordan means by “nature” when he
denies it and focuses on relationships rather than substance; in other
words, there is quite a bit of equivocation going on in these debates.
Jordan needs to reckon with the fact that “nature” is biblical
language, but Wilson needs to carefully spell out how he is using the
term since it is susceptible to a wide range of meanings.
It is highly questionable whether or not the change that takes place
when someone becomes a Christian can best be described as a change
of nature; in other words, one can affirm there is such a category as
nature (contra Jordan), but deny that regeneration is best defined as a
change in nature (contra Wilson). After all, both the non-Christian
and the Christian are human and therefore share a common human
nature, even though that nature has been reoriented in conversion
and so now the Christian relates to both God and Satan differently. I
would argue instead that regeneration does not cause a change of
nature, but is rather a restoration and perfection of the same nature a
person has had all along.
But “nature” is not the only difficult term to pin down in this
discussion. The term “regeneration” does not exactly have a fixed
meaning in the history of Reformed theology, and so discussions of
what regeneration entails can also become tricky business. The only
two places “regeneration” shows up in Scripture are Titus 3:5, where
it is sacramental, and Matthew 19:28, where it is cosmic. Calvin’s use
of the term “regeneration” was certainly different from the later
Reformed scholastics and Puritans. There is no way a particular
meaning of the term can serve as a test of orthodoxy. A large part of
this discussion is about how to best recover biblical language and
categories for pastoral purposes, but that’s hard to do when
stipulated definitions that are not grounded in Scripture and do not
account for diversity in church history are insisted upon. One way to
cut through the mess is to point out the fundamental agreement
between Wilson and Jordan.
Both sides are fully Calvinistic and predestinarian; thus, both sides
confess that faith is a Spirit-wrought gift and that salvation is
ultimately a monergistic work of God (because all our efforts are
undergirded by God, who works all our works in us). This does not
mean the whole discussion resolves into mere semantics, but it does
help pinpoint the precise areas of disagreement and out them in
proper perspective. I actually do not think the sides are as far apart as
public rhetoric would suggest. For example, Jordan affirms that those
who apostatize and those who persevere have a qualitatively
different kind of relationship with God; indeed, he asserts that each
of us has a personally unique relationship to God. In other words
(though Jordan may sometimes give this impression), it will not do to
say that the ONLY difference between those who persevere in the
faith and those who do not is the duration of their faith. And Wilson
has agreed with me in conversation over these matters that if a
“regenerate” person in his sense of the term (a person with an
ontologically changed heart) were to have the Holy Spirit taken away
from him (however counterfactual Wilson believes that to possibility
to be — but see Psalm 51 and the case of Saul), he would not
persevere. So even for Wilson perseverance is ultimately guaranteed
by the ongoing work of the Spirit, not a past ontological change,
which was Jordan’s main point all along. We persevere not because
we had an internal and irrevocable “heart change” in the past, but
because the Spirit continues his work of renovation in us and
preserves us in the new creation.
There are differences in other areas, such as how baptism and the
covenant are related to regeneration, how apostasy is explained, how
the promises of Scripture are applied to Christians individually and
corporately, how assurance is derived, and so forth. But those
differences can also be minimized in the same way I have closed the
gap on the issue of regeneration and nature. Yes, differences remain
but they ought to be kept in perspective. This is one of those cases
where the parties at odds have a lot more in common than might be
apparent at first glance, and it is certainly not an issue that should
cause a break in fellowship.
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