Regeneration is both Mediate and Immediate, just like the whole of salvation is both conditional and unconditional. To argue that regeneration cannot be both mediate and immediate is invalid, for regeneration is in fact both.
In this series I will be writing on "Regeneration, Immediate or Immediate?" and on "Salvation, Conditional or Unconditional?" In discussing this topic, we must first define "mediate" and "immediate."
The term "mediate," as respects the debate over the nature and causes of "regeneration," denotes what is done by an agency or instrument, by some means, what is done indirectly, and through second causes.
The term "immediate," on the other hand, denotes what is done without an instrument or means, what is done directly, by the First Cause alone. "Immediately" is not used here in the sense of "instantly."
Next, the term "regeneration" needs to be defined. This is a little more difficult to define due to 1) its limited use in scripture, and 2) the use of the term by theologians and among Christians generally.
Do we equate the experience of being "quickened" with being "regenerated"? Do we equate being "born of God" with being "regenerated"? Do we equate being "converted" with being "regenerated"?
What other terms do we equate with being "regenerated"? Such as created, resurrected, saved, taught, washed, forgiven, drawn, called, liberated, sanctified, etc.? The answers to these questions are important because the term "regeneration," though only used twice in scripture, is referred to by other terms. Simply put, the scriptures use many terms to speak about being "regenerated."
Some Christians, like the old Regular Baptists, and the founders of the "Primitive Baptists," believed that regeneration was not the same as being born again. Alexander Campbell, who at one time was identified with the Regular Baptists, believed that they were distinct. Both Campbell and the old Regulars and Hardshells saw regeneration as first occurring and then conversion (birth) coming next. The difference, however, was that Campbell would later identify "conversion" and rebirth with being baptized. The old Regulars and Hardshells, however, saw conversion and rebirth as being accomplished before baptism, at the time when the person turned to the Lord in repentance and faith.
Further, many old Baptists, like Andrew Fuller, believed that the first moment in the work of regeneration was immediate, but that complete regeneration was mediate. They taught that biblical regeneration was both mediate and immediate.
When God begins his work of regeneration, he completes it. (Phil. 1: 6) So, though God's first act is to operate immediately, it does not logically necessitate that the following acts, in completing regeneration, are likewise immediate. The question is this - "is one ever said to be regenerated, or born of God, in scripture, who was not changed in his belief about God and salvation?" And - "does biblical regeneration exclude faith, repentance, or enlightenment?"
Those who promote a very narrow view of what it means to be regenerated will say that regeneration only gives an "ability" to believe, an "ability" to repent, an "ability" to "know" and be "converted." But, if faith is necessary for pleasing God (Heb. 11: 6), then is not this "ability" to be equated with "faith"?
Those who object to mediate regeneration do so based upon their logic and reason, upon philosophy, and not because they have any scripture to support their rejection of means. Hardshells think that mediate regeneration would bring absurd "logical" consequences, such as a denial that the Spirit of God comes in "direct contact" with the human spirit. But, this is false. A surgeon, when he operates, will often directly touch his patient and also use instruments. The surgery would be both mediate and immediate. God "operates" upon the heart in regeneration. Why do Hardshells think that this work cannot be done by instruments of God's own making? Why do they think that the use of such instruments would detract from the glory of his surgical work and eliminate God's Spirit coming into direct contact with the human spirit?
In an article titled "A Contrast Between Calvinism and Hopkinsianism," by Ezra Stiles Ely, in Chapter Ten, in that section "Of Effectual Calling," the writer contrasts the views of the Hopkinsians with that of "Others," or of Hopkin's Hyper Calvinism versus historical creedal Calvinism.
According to Ely, the views of the Hopkinsians are described thusly:
"The divine operation in regeneration, of which the new heart is the effect, is immediate, or it is not wrought by the energy of any means as a cause of it but by the immediate power and energy of the Holy Spirit, It is called a creation, and the divine agency in it, is as much without a medium, as in creating something from nothing. Men are not regenerated, in the sense in which we are now considering regeneration, by light or the word of God." (yr. 1811) See here
The views of Samuel Hopkins (1721 –1803) were truly Hyper Calvinistic. His regeneration before faith view was not readily accepted by all, however. Sadly, it was accepted and promoted by some able Baptists, such as Andrew Fuller. But, it was successfully refuted by other able Baptists, such as Abraham Booth.
Booth attacked Hopkins and his born again before faith error and his denial of means in regeneration. He also attacked Fuller for embracing the regeneration before faith error of Hopkins. Later, Alexander Campbell, with others, would attack this hybrid notion of the Hopkinsian Hyper Calvinists.
It has been the contention of Bob Ross and myself that the idea that regeneration occurs prior to and without faith, and that conversion and regeneration are separate and distinct experiences, is not the original view of the first Calvinists and Reformers, but was a later invention by 18th and 19th century neo Calvinists. This later hybrid or novel invention is part of what historians of Calvinism properly call the "New Divinity."
The following work by an able historian demonstrates that the view of the "hybrids" is a novel doctrine among Calvinists, a "New Divinity." The following citations are from "Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War" by E. Brooks Holifield. This "New Divinity" is also sometimes called "Hopkinsianism."
Holified wrote (emphasis mine - SG):
"Conversion required regenerating grace, and this truth too the New Divinity had misunderstood. First, the Edwardeans had insufficiently appreciated the "common work of the Spirit of God preparatory to a saving faith." Hart believed that Hopkins allowed for "no preparatory work of the Spirit," but Hemmenway saw that the problem lay in differing understandings of preparation. The difference was visible in the readiness of the Old Calvinists to talk of degrees of preparation, to claim that some of the unregenerate might be "more prepared than others." The New Divinity could tolerate no such idea of progress in the unregenerate state, no such gradualism in the religious life. The Old Calvinists also said that the same means of grace that prepared the heart also produced its regeneration; the New Divinity denied that means ever regenerated anybody."
Notice that it was not the "old Calvinists" who said that regeneration preceded faith and conversion, but the newer Calvinists who promoted a "new divinity," a new paradigm of "regeneration." The view of Hopkins and the "New Divinity" in rejecting the use of means in regeneration was an aberrant view and not in keeping with prior tradition.
Holifield continues:
"To the Old Calvinists, one of the worst errors of the Hopkinsians was their failure to recognize that regeneration occurred through illumination of the mind by the means of grace. A recurring theme in Old Calvinist polemics was the assertion that "all judicious Calvinist divines" believed that "conversion or regeneration is wrought by light, by the moral power of divine truth." In the Old Calvinist order of salvation, the Spirit first illumined the mind with a "common doctrinal understanding and belief of truth." This truth brought a sense of guilt, a fear of puhnishment, and an affecting view of the holiness and mercy of God; and the assent to truth moved the will toward a heartfelt consent and faith. How, the Old Calvinists asked, could the will ever consent to anything without first understanding it? Only the conviction that faith came "through the truth" made such means of grace as sermons and meditations worth defending." (pg. 154-55)
The "Old Calvinists" rejected the idea that regeneration was wholy "immediate," that it was effected apart from understanding of truth. They rejected the idea that "regeneration" could be divided up into two kinds, the first being mediate and the second being immediate. They did not divorce regeneration from conversion, but saw them as being the same in scripture.
Holifield continues:
"The New Divinity allowed no middle ground between sinners and saints. One either loved God above self or one loved self above God. This is why Hopkins found it so distressing to read Jonathan Mayhew's 1761 sermon on Striving to Enter in at the Strait Gate, in which Mayhew encouraged the unregenerate to use the means of grace to strive toward holiness and suggested that their striving made them more acceptable to God. Bellamy also taught that the means of grace helped people overcome sin, but Hopkins saw in Mayhew's doctrine a gradualism that made no immediate demand for repentance. He replied to Mayhew four years later in his Enquiry Concerning the Promises of the Gospel, in which he argued that the Bible made no promises of salvation to "the exercies and doings of the unregenerate." In telling his followers to strive, Hopkins thought, Jesus was addressing true disciples. Hopkins acknowledged that the New Testament held out salvation to everyone who desired it. But in the New Testament, he said, to desire salvation was to desire "holiness for its own sake," and the unregenerate never wanted to be saved in this sense. In the background stood Edward's conception of true virtue."
One can see some elements of Hardshell Hyper Calvinism in these comments from the leaders of the "new divinity." They rejected the idea that God did any preparatory work in the heart of the sinner prior to his regeneration, and in this they departed from the teachings of the primitive Calvinists as well as from the teachings of scripture. They also affirmed, like today's Hardshells, that a mere "desire" to be saved, or to be good and holy, was an evidence or effect of "regeneration." But, such was not the original teaching of the Reformation Calvinists nor of scripture.
Holifield continues:
"The debate over the promises of salvation furnished the context in which Hopkins employed the New Divinity distinction between regeneration and conversion. Expanding on a point that Edwards had once made in reference to infants, Bellamy concluded in 1750 that regeneration preceded conversion, which he defined as an exercise of the heart that flowed from a new direction. Hopkins used the same distinction to counter Mayhew. He argued that God regenerated the sinful by laying a foundation in their mind by which they could discern the excellence of Christian truth and embrace the gospel with their hearts. This regeneration was an "unpromised favor," a divine work, immediate, instantaneous, and imperceptible. The conditional promises of the New Testament-do this and you will be saved-were directed to men and women who were regenerate but not yet converted. They still had to turn to repentance, faith, and holiness. This turn constituted their conversion, and in it they were active. Mayhew was right (was "wrong" - SG)
"New Divinity distinction between regeneration and conversion." The idea that there was a clear distinction, and separation, between "regeneration" and "conversion," in scripture, was part of the "New Divinity" among Calvinists, and was not the tteaching of the old divinity.It is a misrepresentation of the view of Edwards to say that he taught that regeneration preceded faith and conversion and that it was accomplished strictly in an immediate fashion, apart from the instrumentality of the gospel truth.
"The conditional promises of the New Testament-do this and you will be saved-were directed to men and women who were regenerate but not yet converted." This is the teaching of neo-Hardshells. However, the difference between the 19th century promoters of the "New Divinity" and today's Hardshells lies chiefly in the fact that the Hyper Calvinistic "New Divinity" advocates nevertheless taught that all the regenerated would be converted by the gospel. Further, the "savation" that follows "regeneration," and that results from "conversion," was final salvation, or eternal salvation, and not the modern "time salvation" taught by today's Hardshells.
Holifield continues:
"In describing regeneration as immediate, Hopkins threw into question the old Puritan assumption that God normally produced regeneration through such "means of grace" as sermons and prayers. The initial change, he said, came from the Spirit-not from "any medium or means whatsoever." Means of grace were necessary. They accomplished a "preparatory work"-producing the knowledge, conviction, and humilitation that normally preceded regeneration. They ensured that the saint would be "prepared to act properly when regenerated." But as Edwards had also argued, the means could not bring about regeneration, which was an immediate act of the Spirit."
Notice that our historian says that it was "the old Puritan assumption that God normally produced regeneration through such means of grace." The view that regeneration is not produced by means is the novel Calvinistic doctrine, a "New Divinity."
Edwards says that "regeneration" is an experience "effected by" both "repentance" and "conversion." That is a Calvinist "ordo salutis," for not all Calvinists insist that regeneration is distinct from conversion, and on the former preceding the latter.
Holifield writes:
"Hopkins further disturbed the Old Calvinists when he added that the unregenerate became "more vicious and guilty in God's sight" the more knowledge they derived from the means of grace. This was the point that first caused opponents to accuse him of espousing a "New Divinity." Almost a century earlier, Samuel Willard had warned about the special danger of remaining unfruitful under a gospel ministry. Edwards made a similar observation. Bellamy taught that even the best religious performances of the unregenerate remained "sinful," because the sinner was interested in "only what he can get." But Hopkins emphasized the point in a way that drew spirited reactions. He insisted that resistance from the awakened brought greater blame than resistance from someone who knew nothing of the gospel." See here
Thus, it appears that it is an historical fact that the idea that men are regenerated apart from the gospel and faith, and that conversion and regeneration are separate experiences, is not the "Old Calvinist" position. I have yet to find those "hybrid" or "hyper" Calvinists who teach Hopkinsianism and a "New Divinity" to come forward and disprove the historical fact that such was not the original view of the great Calvinist Reformers, but was a later novel invention by their supposed heirs.
Though some affirm that Jonathan Edwards taught the hybrid "born again before faith" view, the following citations show otherwise. Edwards did not think that regeneration was different from conversion.
Edwards wrote (all emphasis mine - SG):
"If we compare one scripture with another, it will be sufficiently manifest that by regeneration, or being begotten or born again, the same change in the state of the mind is signified with that which the Scripture speaks of as effected by true repentance and conversion. I put repentance and conversion together, because the Scripture puts them together (Acts iii. 19), and because they plainly signify much the same thing.'"
Edwards represents the older Calvinistic and Puritan view that regeneration was the same as conversion and that such was accomplished by means of the light of gospel truth.
Edwards also wrote:
"Regeneration is that whereby men come to have the character of true Christians; as is evident, and as is confessed; and so is circumcision of heart; for by this men become Jews inwardly, or Jews in the spiritual and Christian sense (and that is the same as being true Christians), as of old proselytes were made Jews by circumcision of the flesh. Rom. ii. 28,29, "For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God...That circumcision of the heart is the same with conversion, or turning from sin to God, is evident by Jer. iv. 1—4, "If thou wilt return, 0 Israel, return (or, convert unto me)—circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and put away the foreskins of your heart." And Deut. x. 16, " Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked...Circumcision of the heart is the same change of the heart that men pass under in their repentance; as is evident by Levit xxvi. 41, " If their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they accept the punishment of their iniquity."
This is very plain. "Circumcision of the heart," or regeneration, "is the same with conversion" and "the same change of the heart that men pass under in their repentance."
Edwards wrote:
"This inward change, called regeneration and circumcision of the heart, which is wrought in repentance and conversion, is the same with that spiritual resurrection so often spoken of, and represented as a dying unto sin, and living unto righteousness...That a spiritual resurrection to a new divine life, should be called a being born again, is agreeable to the language of Scripture, in which we find a resurrection is called a being born, or begotten...This change, which men are the subjects of when they are born again, and circumcised in heart, when they repent, and are converted, and spiritually raised from the dead, is the same change which is meant when the Scripture speaks of making the heart and spirit new, or giving a new heart and spirit."
Edwards believed that regeneration, Circumcision of heart, repentance, and conversion, and being born again, were all words denoting the same experience.
Edwards wrote:
"It is needless here to stand to observe, how evidently this is spoken of as necessary to salvation, and as the change in which are attained the habits of true virtue and holiness, and the character of a true saint; as has been observed of regeneration, conversion, &c, and how apparent it is from thence, that the change is the same. For it is as it were self-evident: it is apparent by the phrases themselves, that they are different expressions of the same thing. Thus repentance (metanoia) or the change of the mind, is the same as being changed to a new mind, or a new heart and spirit. Conversion is the turning of the heart; which is the same thing as changing it so, that there shall be another heart, or a new heart, or a new spirit."
"The apostle does in effect tell us, that when he speaks of that spiritual death and resurrection which is in conversion, he means the same thing as crucifying and burying the old man, and rising a new man." (pgs. 466-470)
Again, Edwards does not divorce regeneration from conversion and evangelical repentance.
Edwards wrote:
"It appears from this, together with what has been proved above, that it is most certain respect to every one of the human race, that he can never have any interest in Christ, or see the kingdom of God, unless he be the subject of that change in the temper and disposition of his heart, which is made in repentance and conversion, circumcision of heart, spiritual baptism, dying to sin and rising to a new and holy life; and unless he has the old heart taken away and a new heart and spirit given, and puts off the old man, and puts on the new man, and old things are passed away, and all things made new." (pg. 471, from "THE W0RKS of PRESIDENT EDWARDS, IN FOUR VOLUMES." A REPRINT OF TBE WORCESTER EDITION, WITH VALUABLE ADDITIONS AND A COPIOUS GENERAL INDEX. VOL. II.) See Here
Again, this is further evidence that Edwards would have rejected the view of Hopkins and of the "New Divinity" had he lived to see its rise.
Edwards also wrote:
"Much has been said concerning regeneration by light, and by moral suasion. If they who use this language mean no more, than that men are not regenerated in paganism, and so without the light and motives of the gospel; and that under the gospel they are commonly regenerated in consequence of attention to the gospel and of awakening and conviction in view of the truths and motives of it; and that the regenerate turn from sin to God in view of those truths and motives, though not by them as the efficient cause; I shall not oppose them, though I think their phraseology in many instances leads to a different understanding. In the sense now explained, we may understand the following texts, "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth;" "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever;" "I have begotten you through the gospel," etc." (pgs. 109-113 From the "WORKS of JONATHAN EDWARDS" by TRYON EDWARDS. VOL. II) See Here
Edwards believed in mediate regeneration, but he in other places affirmed that regeneration was also "immediate." It is wrong to insist that regeneration cannot be both.
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