Re-formation, Not Re-creation
Thus speaking of the new life, Scripture remains faithful to itself and to its teaching concerning the originally created and fallen humanity. Humans, who originally were the image of God, lived and experienced blessedness in communion with God, lost that life, and were subject in soul and body to corruption. Sin began with an act but penetrated the very nature of humans and corrupted them totally. It may not be a substance, but it is not merely an act either. It is an inner moral corruption of the whole person, not only of one's thoughts, words, and deeds but also of one's intellect and will; and again not only of these faculties but also of the human heart, from which all iniquities flow, of the central inner core, the root of one's existence, the human self.
And for that reason, according to Scripture, regeneration consists and can exist in nothing less than the total renewal and re-creation of human beings. If humans are radically evil, then, for their redemption, a rebirth of their entire being is indispensable. A tree must first be made good if it is ever to bear good fruit, for "functioning follows being."
Re-formation, Not Re-creation At the same time, according to Scripture, regeneration does not exist either in a totally new second creation. In not a single respect does it introduce any new substance into the existing creation. The re-creation does not do this, if we take it in an objective sense and think in that connection of the person of Christ and the work of salvation accomplished by him. For Christ, though conceived by the Holy Spirit, assumed his entire, complete human nature from the flesh and blood of Mary and did not bring it with him from heaven. But neither does recreation do this in a subjective sense in regeneration, for the people in question are and remain the same persons who were once darkness (Eph. 5:8); dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1); robbers, misers, and so forth (1 Cor. 6:11); and are now washed, sanctified, and justified. The continuity of the self, their entire
human nature with all its capacities and powers, is maintained.
Finally also the re-creation that will take place in the renewal of heaven and earth (Matt. 19:28) is not the destruction of this world and the subsequent creation out of nothing of another world but the liberation of the creature that is now subject to futility. Nor can it be otherwise, for God's honor as Savior hinges precisely on his reconquest from the power of Satan of this human race and this world. Christ, accordingly, is not a second
Creator, but the Redeemer and Savior of this fallen creation, the Reformer of all things that have been ruined and corrupted by sin. Neither, for that matter, is sin a substance, but consists in lawlessness (ἀνομια); it is an actualized privation (privatio actuosa) that has indeed violated the form (forma) of the entire created world but did not and could not destroy its substance or essence. Hence, when the re-creation removes sin from creation, it does not deprive it of anything essential, nothing that was essentially and originally characteristic of it (though it was "by nature") and belonged to its essence. For sin is not part of the essence of creation; it pushed its way in later, as something unnatural and contrary to nature. Sin is deformity. When recreation removes sin, it does not violate and suppress nature, but restores it.
Similarly, it does not introduce a new "substance" into a human nature. Regeneration does not consist in an infusion of a new heavenly substance, nor in a communication of the divine human life of Jesus or of the divine life itself such that our spiritual life would be made substantially or essentially homogeneous with it and in a real sense divinized or eternalized.
Neither does it consist in a physiological change of our body effected by the implantation of the germ of our spiritual resurrection body. All this is excluded in Scripture by the fact that communion with God and with Christ is always effected and remains in effect by the Spirit: not in a magical or "natural" fashion but in a spiritual and personal way. Those who view the Holy Spirit purely as a supernatural force that descends upon
humans, controlling and impelling them as it were from without, run the danger of regarding regeneration as a pantheistic or theosophical change. But the confession of the Trinity protects us from such a view. It knows of no other union than a union of persons, even if such a union is as close as that between a vine and a branch, between the head and the parts of a body, between a husband and a wife. Regeneration, in a word, does not remove anything from us other than what, if all were well, we should do without, and it restores to us what we, in keeping with the design of our being, should have but lost as a result of sin. In principle it restores us to the likeness and image of God.
But if, on the one hand, regeneration is not merely a reformation of life and conduct and, on the other, not an infusion of some new substance, then what is it concretely? Here, too, as with any other dogma, it is easier to reject an error than constructively to unfold the truth, for in all that God reveals, we finally encounter an impenetrable mystery at the point where the eternal touches the temporal, the infinite the finite, the Creator the creature.
That is how it is in the realm of nature but even more so in the realm of grace.
No personal experience, no mystical contemplation, no study of the life of godliness, no psychology of religion, pushes aside the curtain of phenomena and situates humans face to face with the Eternal One. On earth that which lies behind the phenomena remains, for others and for ourselves, an object of faith; the spiritual life is hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). But if we let ourselves be guided by the testimonies of Scripture, we can nevertheless say, with an appropriate degree of modesty, that the whole person is the subject of regeneration. Not only are their deeds and conduct, their life's purpose and direction, their ideas and activities changed, but also humans themselves are transformed and renewed in the core of their being. To describe this process
Scripture refers to the heart "from which flow the springs of life"
(Prov. 4:23), in one's consciousness as well as in the emotions and will. If, as Jesus says (Matt. 15:19), it is from the heart that
all evil and incomprehension flows, then that is the center where the change called regeneration must occur. Involved in it are all the constituents, capacities, and powers of human beings, each in accordance with its own nature, not only the lower and not only the higher functions, not only the intellect and will, not only the soul or the spirit, but also the whole person, soul and spirit, intellect, will and emotions, consciousness and feeling share in the blessing of regeneration. Not even the body is excluded from it. Granted, theosophy was on a wrong track when it associated regeneration with an infusion of heavenly powers and an implantation of the germ of the future pneumatic resurrection body, but this should not keep us from extending regeneration also to the body. Paul expressly states that the Holy Spirit also dwells in the body as his temple (1 Cor. 6:19), that the resurrection of the body has to follow because of the Spirit who dwells in it (Rom. 8:11), that spiritual persons make the different body parts into instruments of righteousness (6:13), that the life of Jesus also becomes visible in our mortal flesh (2 Cor. 4:11), and that glorification is closely tied in with calling and Justification (Rom. 8:29–30; 2 Cor. 3:18). But just as the body is not the seat of sin, but its instrument, so it shares—indirectly— in regeneration and serves as organ of the soul. "The body is regenerated through the medium of the rational soul, for regeneration does not occur in something inanimate."121
Now if regeneration is neither an actual creation (an infusion of substance) nor a merely external moral amendment of life, it can only consist in a spiritual renewal of those inner dispositions of humans that from ancient times were called "habits" or "qualities."122 These new "habits" are distinguished, on the one hand, from the Holy Spirit, who effects them but does not coincide with them; they serve, on the other hand, as intermediaries between the essence (or substance) of the human soul and body and the activities that, as people mature and receive the enlightenment of Scripture and the guidance of the Spirit, spring from those "habits" in the intellect, the emotions,
and the will. Hence, though these are new qualities that regeneration implants in a person, they are nevertheless no other than those that belong to human nature, just as health is the normal state of the body. They are "habits," dispositions, or inclinations that were originally included in the image of God and agreed with the law of God and whose restoration liberates the fallen, sinful human nature from its darkness and slavery, its misery and death. They cannot be described in more beautiful language than what is used in the confession of Dort: "When
God carries out his good pleasure in his chosen ones, he, by the effective operation of the same regenerating Spirit, also penetrates into the inmost being of man, opens the closed heart, softens the hard heart, and circumcises the heart that is uncircumcised. He infuses new qualities into the will, making the dead will alive, the evil one good, the unwilling one willing, and the stubborn one compliant; he activates and strengthens the will so that, like a good tree, it may be enabled to produce the fruits of good deeds."123
Regeneration, accordingly, works so little with coercion that it is truer to say that it liberates people from the compulsion and power of sin: it "is at the same time most powerful and most pleasing." In addition, the Holy Spirit confers on these infused qualities a lasting character: though they are not inherently inamissible and do not owe their permanence to the will of humans, they derive their stability from the communion of the Holy Spirit, who created them, continually preserves and confirms them, and elevates the life that was infused in regeneration to a level above sin, corruption, and death. From its earliest beginnings the spiritual life is eternal life, and the seed that remains in the regenerate is imperishable.
This has been denied by all who make the regeneration that is granted to the children of believers in their youth dependent for its continuity on a decision of the will that they must make later and leads to the distinction between a first and a second