[blue-duncan]

"I think he teeters on the edge of a hole sometimes dug by Baptists which tends to describe regeneration as an "event."

Why do these threads always have to degenerate into a Baptist bashing thread. Why can't it be a Presbyterian bashing thread or a Methodist bashing thread or an Anglican bashing thread or a Reformed bashing thread or even a thin skinned Calvinist bashing thread? Always a Baptist. It's just a good thing we are so good natured and secure in our salvation, sanctification and perfection. By the way, regeneration is an event, a point in time occurrence. "You must be born again". Now I admit some of us might seem to be in perpetual childhood, but that is just slow maturing not prolonged spiritual pregnancy.

[xzins]

I vote for a MethoPresbiscopalican BASH!

I, too, feel for the baptists. It is clear to me that they were the church that bore the heat of the day when liberalism was let loose in the mainlines.

The assemblies, cogs, etc. are just old-time shoutin' baptists.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Were you "regenerated" in an instant? One minute you're a goofy reprobate and the next minute you're happily among the elect?

It might feel that way. But the fact Christ paid for every specific sin you ever have or will commit predates your birth, let alone your awareness of your salvation.

Our understanding that Christ ransomed us comes at varying times and in varying degrees. I think some Reformed can get hung-up in Romanist hocus-pocus. Instead, regeneration is a "washing" (Titus 3:5) away of the old man, the patterns of sin left over from our first father, and a gradual, inevitable recognition of Christ within us.

Regeneration is God giving us the ability to shed the old man. Sanctification is our actual accomplishing of this through faith, repentance, and worship.

Calvin, Institutes, Vol.3, Part 4 -- 3. Regeneration by faith.

So the Apostle teaches when he says, "We all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord." Again, "Be renewed in the spirit of your minds" and "put ye on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." Again, "Put ye on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." Accordingly through the blessing of Christ we are renewed by that regeneration into the righteousness of God from which we had fallen through Adam, the Lord being pleased in this manner to restore the integrity of all whom he appoints to the inheritance of life. This renewal, indeed, is not accomplished in a moment, a day, or a year, but by uninterrupted, sometimes even by slow progress God abolishes the remains of carnal corruption in his elect, cleanses them from pollution, and consecrates them as his temples, restoring all their inclinations to real purity, so that during their whole lives they may practice repentance, and know that death is the only termination to this warfare..."

[ladyinred]

I agree, Baptists really get a working over from other denominations, always have, always will.

[HarleyD]

It's just a good thing we are so good natured and secure in our salvation, sanctification and perfection.

LOL!!! Well, at least most of us Baptists. ;O)