Many theological problems are created by turning certain issues into theological problems. As Yogi Berra might have said.
One of the central sticking issues in the Federal Vision stuff is the question of personal regeneration. But this is only a problem because we are dealing with it on the blackboard, as a theological problem involving categories. But personal regeneration is personal, and the most important thing about it is not its placement in the right category. You must be born again.
Here is how we stumble. Take a basic truism of Reformed theology — the doctrine of the antithesis. While doing this, never forget that truisms are true, but also guard against using the abstracted truth as a shield to guard against the actual truth. And in this case, here is how it is frequently done.
“I am guarding the antithesis,” a man might solemnly say, as he haggles over one of his pet doctrines. But what makes this work? It is the assumption that “the antithesis” is between righteousness and unrighteousness, abstractly considered. And since his pet doctrine is on the side of righteousness, in the same column on the blackboard, in fact, it must be a faithful representation of the “antithesis.”
But the antithesis is not a theological form of A and not A. It is not the contrast between right and wrong. It is not between righteousness and unrighteousness. The antithesis divides people — the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. We are talking about billions of personal names, mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, sons and daughters.
The antithesis is not about abstracted categories at all. Upholding and defending the antithesis means doing whatever we can to keep a clear distinction between those people who walk in the light and those people who, hating their brother, continue to walk in darkness.
This is where the doctrine of personal regeneration comes in. I don’t care what you call it — transformation, conversion to God, effectual call, being born again to God — but this reality is the only thing that will enable us to make faithful sense of the secular and ecclesiastical worlds around us.
Now there are two basic ways to mess this up. One is to deny the antithesis, which is the route of saccharine do-gooders, weepy universalists, chagrined hand-wringers, and other exegetical bed-wetters. The indivisibility of the human race (their godhead) is assumed, declared, preached, and exalted. This dogma is then ferociously applied to any who might call it into question. So this “we are the world” position is forced to acknowledge that the only divisible segment of the human race consists of those Christians who blasphemously posit the divisibility of the human race. Since this sets up a clear absurdity that their secular apologists cannot solve, these angular and uncooperative Christians have to be quickly shouted down, and then frogmarched off for their (tax-supported) Inclusivity Training. This accounts for why the tolerant and inclusive can become so savage so quickly.
The other error is to affirm but misplace the antithesis. Some make the antithesis personal, which is good, but they also make it tribal or racial. This was the error of the Judaizers in the first century, and is the error of various racialists today. But others, in defense of orthodoxy, misplace the antithesis by making it a division of abstract categories. But it is nothing of the kind. It is the division between those people who are the seed of the woman and those people who are the seed of the serpent. These two groups of people have antipathy settled between them (by the decree of God), and nothing whatever can be done to dissolve that antipathy in various humanistic or ecumenical solvents.
Now here is the problem, and this is why the doctrine of the absolute necessity of the new birth is so important. The fundamental antithesis is between those who are their way to heaven and those who are on their way to hell. We are invited (in numerous places in the Scriptures) to consider our earthly lives in the light of our ultimate destinations. The rich fool is not encouraged to say or think, “Well, I know I am in hell for all eternity, but for a while there I sure had enough money to build some bigger barns!” This vantage of eternity (and only this) gives us genuine perspective on our lives. We may affirm other doctrinal truths alongside this one, but we may never mute or diminish the absolute necessity of the new birth for every son or daughter of Adam. If we lose that battle, we lose the war.
None of this is being said to take away from the importance of the Church, which is the body of Christ. The eschatological Church is identical to the company of the elect, and on that great day, there will be no confusion or blurring of our categories at all. But until then, in the mess of history, the historical Church contains wheat and tares, sheep and pigs, brothers and false brothers. This means that if we allow historical categories to trump eschatological ones, we will wind up offended by the historical antipathy that God settled between the seed of the woman (in history) and the seed of the serpent (in history). And if we are offended at what God has done in this, we will soon be stumbled and offended by what He has done elsewhere. If we don’t repent of this, we will not succeed in removing the antithesis which so offends us — but we might manage to turn coat.
At the same time, those who want to affirm the central importance of regeneration, but who also want to assert that they have the power to peer into hearts and determine who around here is really born again and who not, are preserving an important truth (the need for personal regeneration), but they are paying far too high a price. That price is that they have also introduced the very dangerous sectarian (and — sorry everybody! — baptistic) impulse into the life of the Church. We, the Pure and Lovely, consist of “thee and me, and I have my doubts about thee.”
But those who want to affirm the central importance of the Church in history, but who also want to act as though if you are “baptized, it’s all good,” are just begging for marginal Christianity to take root everywhere. And marginal Christianity is always tare-Christianity, not wheat-Christianity. These folks are also paying too high a price for the raggedy piece of the truth that they manage to preserve.
This is why we preach Christ. This is why we preach Christ crucified. This is why we call all men to be converted to God, so that they might live faithful and gracious lives — a gift from the hand of God. This is why we are rightly called evangelicals. Christ died, was buried, and rose again on the third day so that we could walk in newness of life.