06-21-2008, 04:43 PM
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 | Puritanboard Doctor | | Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Mandeville, LA
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| Does regeneration precede faith?
Lane Keister says no: Quote: |
Regeneration happens simultaneously with justification, not before it. I have excellent antecedents in the Reformed faith for thinking so: John Calvin, Richard Gaffin, Sinclair Ferguson, and the entire WTS faculty. Calvin believes that union with Christ is the basic soteric category in which all other things are comprehended. Within that broad category, there are justification type benefits and sanctification type benefits that occur simultaneously with God’s gift of faith to the believer. On this basis, I reject utterly the view that justification depends on a prior infusion of grace in regeneration. The infusion and the imputation occur simultaneously, neither one dependent on the other, neither one separated from the other in any way, including time. The mechanism of justification differs radically from the mechanism of sanctification. This simultaneity is at the very least hinted at in WLC 77. I realize that some Reformed authors place regeneration before faith in time. I do not see any biblical passages that teach this. On the contrary, when regeneration happens, faith is present. Similarly, when faith is present, justification has also happened. Hence, faith lays hold passively (because the righteousness is extra nos, although ours by right of union) of Christ’s righteousness in justification, and actively (because it includes a real, actual righteousness in the believer) lays hold of Christ in sanctification by the power of the Spirit.
| While I haven't done a lot of study in this area lately, I have been thinking a little about this issue and tend to agree with Lane here at this point.
Thoughts?
__________________
Chris
Member at Grace Community Baptist Church, Mandeville, LA
Beware of a religion without holdfasts. But if I get a grip upon a doctrine they call me a bigot. Let them do so. Bigotry is a hateful thing, and yet that which is now abused as bigotry is a great virtue, and greatly needed in these frivolous times. I have been inclined lately to start a new denomination, and call it "the Church of the Bigoted." Spurgeon
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