I have been writing a lot recently about regeneration as requiring a “change of nature,” and this has been part of a larger discussion (spanning some years) with my friend Jim Jordan. Another friend Peter Leithart has posted something this morning that I think helps move the ball. As I told him, we don’t have any touchdowns yet, but it helps move the ball. His contribution is here.
Peter helpfully emphasizes something that I have said over the years. “Doug has often said that humans are not relations but in relation.” I would want to ramp this up just a bit, and insist that human beings must be in relation in order to be human at all. To be utterly out of relation is more akin to the outer darkness than it would be to some sort of rugged individualism.
So I agree with Peter that my position looks a lot like Jim’s in this respect (the “b option” that he describes). But I would qualify it in this way. I don’t believe that natures have all their subsequent actions sproinging out of them like they were one of those transformer thingies. Relation with others is a big deal in my book, so long as we retain the hard atoms of persons (with natures) so that there is something there that is capable of having a relationship. It is difficult to get a chemical reation unless you have some chemicals.
So I affirm the importance of relation, and would go on to affirm the centrality of a particular relation, the one that Peter notes — our relationship to God. All the questions of regeneration are foundationally questions of relationship — who’s your daddy? But I would also argue that a relational ontology understood in this way requires the traditional view of regeneration.
Regeneration debates in the New Testament — debates that occur within the visible covenant — should be thought of as a spiritual paternity suit.
“They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. . . . Ye do the deeds of your father. . . . Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do” (John 8:39,41,43-44a).
They were blue star covenant members, these men, and all their sacramental papers were in order. The only problem was that despite everything they still had the wrong father. They were therefore, by definition, unregenerate. There are numerous examples of this in the Bible, but here is just one more that should make the point.
“He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another” (1 John 3:8-11).
John is not teaching his people to distinguish baptized from unbaptized people. That’s too easy. He is assuming a mutual profession of faith here, and he says that time will make the respective paternity issues clear. Yes, we know they are baptized. But who is their father really?
So I agree completely with a (qualified) relational ontology, if by this we mean that who we are is in great part defined by who we’re with. But on this question, the central relation is who we are from. Because we are a race, not created individually, one by one, this means that every professing Christian has to know that it is possible to be catechized, baptized, communed, preached at, made a deacon, and still be a son of the devil.
We were all of us generated. That means that to be saved we must be regenerated. We must have a new father, and having a new father is not synonymous with a correct, formal attachment to the Christian church. Everything else follows from that.