Doctrine of the Day: Regeneration

Regeneration means the entrance into the Christian state of salvation as a new beginning of life, involving also the abandonment of the former mode of existence as well as the far-reaching consequences of the course entered upon. In connection with the Christian doctrine of Atonement and Redemption (qq.v.) the idea of regeneration contains the following factors: 


(1) The state of salvation is unconditionally the work of God; 


(2) this state signifies such a rupture with the past that the claims of sin, the law, and the world notions. longer have validity; 


(3) it is the creation of a new type of life, determined by God, which needs to be developed and matured, but does not require anything else by which it may receive its character as a state of salvation; 


(4) it opens to the new personality the path of a growth and an activity, the tendency and goal of which are determined by the beginning set by God. 


The effort to assign to regeneration a coordinate place among the more specific concepts in the scheme of salvation, such as conversion, justification, and sanctification, has always led to unstable results. Either the term threatened to absorb the others, or it was limited in a way not consistent with the comprehensive range of the Biblical view.



Pasted from <http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/encyc09/htm/iv.vii.cxii.htm>