Regeneration Precedes Faith
By R. C. Sproul
One of the most dramatic moments in my life for the shaping of my theology took
place in a seminary classroom. One of my professors went to the blackboard and
wrote these words in bold letters: "Regeneration Precedes Faith."
These words were a shock to my system. I had entered seminary believing that
the key work of man to effect
rebirth was faith. I thought that we first had to believe in Christ in order to
be born again. I use the words in order here for a reason. I was thinking in
terms of steps that must be taken in a certain sequence. I had put faith at the
beginning. The order looked something like this:
"Faith - rebirth -justification."
I hadn’t thought that matter through very carefully. Nor had I listened
carefully to Jesus’ words to Nicodemus. I assumed that even though I was a
sinner, a person born of the flesh and living in the flesh, I still had a
little island of righteousness, a tiny deposit of spiritual power left within
my soul to enable me to respond to the Gospel on my own. Perhaps I had been
confused by the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.
No man has the power to raise himself from spiritual death. Divine
assistance is necessary. This grace, according to
This concept of cooperation is at best a half-truth. Yes, the faith we
exercise is our faith. God does not do the believing for us. When I respond to
Christ, it is my response, my faith, my trust that is being exercised. The
issue, however, goes deeper. The question still remains: "Do I cooperate
with God's grace before I am born again, or does the cooperation occur
after?" Another way of asking this question is to ask if regeneration is monergistic or synergistic. Is it
operative or cooperative? Is it effectual or dependent? Some of these words are
theological terms that require further explanation.
A monergistic work is a
work produced singly, by one person. The prefix mono means one. The word erg
refers to a unit of work. Words like energy are built upon this root. A
synergistic work is one that involves cooperation between two or more persons
or things. The prefix syn -
means "together
with." I labor this distinction for a reason. The debate between
The reason we do not cooperate with regenerating grace before it acts upon
us and in us is because we can- not. We cannot because we are spiritually dead.
We can no more assist the Holy Spirit in the quickening of our souls to
spiritual life than Lazarus could help Jesus raise him for the dead.
When I began to wrestle with the Professor's argument, I was surprised to
learn that his strange-sounding teaching was not novel. Augustine, Martin
Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, George
Whitefield - even the great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas taught this
doctrine. Thomas Aquinas is the Doctor Angelicus
of the Roman Catholic Church. For centuries his theological teaching was
accepted as official dogma by most Catholics. So he was the last person I
expected to hold such a view of regeneration. Yet Aquinas insisted that
regenerating grace is operative grace, not cooperative grace. Aquinas spoke of prevenient grace, but he spoke of
a grace that comes before faith, which is regeneration.
These giants of Christian history derived their view from Holy Scripture.
The key phrase in Paul's Letter to the Ephesians is this: "...even when we
were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have you
been saved)" (Eph. 2:5). Here Paul locates the time when regeneration
occurs. It takes place 'when we were dead.' With one thunderbolt of apostolic
revelation all attempts to give the initiative in regeneration to man are
smashed. Again, dead men do not cooperate with grace. Unless regeneration takes
place first, there is no possibility of faith.
This says nothing different from what Jesus said to Nicodemus. Unless a man
is born again first, he cannot possibly see or enter the
(from the book, The Mystery
of the Holy Spirit, Tyndale House, 1990
For more on this topic see:
The
New Genesis by R.C. Sproul
Monergism vs. Synergism by
John Hendryx
A
Defense of Monergistic
Regeneration by Gannon Murphy
Regeneration by Asahel
Nettleton
---------------------------------
My Comment:
Another passages in the Bible clearly teaches that regeneration preceeds faith see:
1 John 5:1 - "everyone who believes that Jesus is
the Christ has been born of God", John
1:13, Rom
9:16
John 6:63,65 "It is the spirit that quickeneth;
the flesh profiteth
nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life...
Therefore have I told you that no man can come to me, unless it be given to him by my Father."
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/sproul01.html