"All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord remains forever."
And this word is the good news that was preached to you."
- St. Peter, 1 Peter 1:23,ff
Further proof:
Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
-James 1:16-18
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Scriptural proof that baptism and being born again by hearing the Gospel and believing are not the same thing.
Paul, in 1 Cor. 4 claims to have begotten the Corinthians through the Gospel:
"For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel."
... but a few chapters earlier, Paul specifically said the he baptized only a few people...
"I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius; Lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name. And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whether I baptized any other.
For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect."
Paul clearly sees a distinction here between baptism (which he was not call to do) and preaching the Gospel (by which the Corinthian believers were begotten).
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Scriptural proof that people are when people hear and believe the Gospel, the Holy Spirit enters their life:
"O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?"
St. Paul - Ga. 3:1, 2
"In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory."
St. Paul - Ephesians 1:13,14
(I apologize for taking a while to get back with you. I hope you have a chance to respond. I look forward to your thoughts.)
My objection is not to the idea that the Gospel allows for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and makes man a new creature. My objection is to the particular concept of being born again that is common in many Protestant communities, which makes the "born-again" a single event after which one is securely saved, and of which baptism is an outward sign. The Catholic, as well as patristic and Orthodox theology is that initial decision of faith must be followed by sacramental baptism, at which point the Holy Spirit begins His work of continuing conversion and continuing rebirth (if you will), which work, however, needs be cooperated with by the free will of man himself, and which is not complete till the last breath and the particular Judgement at death. Only at that time is one securely saved.
Since there is indeed one baptism, that is one act most closely resembling a new birth of water and spirit (John 3).
However, just as out baptismal promise to reject satan can be renewed as often as we will, so our rebirth is a continuing process of conversion in fuller obedience to the Gospel. This is the kind of process St. Peter speaks of in 1 Peter 1:23f. He concludes his analogy in the next chapter:
Wherefore laying away all malice, and all guile, and dissimulations, and envies, and all detractions, as newborn babes, desire the rational milk without guile, that thereby you may grow unto salvation
This indeed enables us to say that the Gospel is our rebirth, but this does not allow us to proclaim the born-again as a single state that endures once acheived. Babies grow. Some of them, sadly, die.
St. James is even more forthright in pointing out the danger of this Protestant presumption of salvation:
be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if a man be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he shall be compared to a man beholding his own countenance in a glass. For he beheld himself, and went his way, and presently forgot what manner of man he was. But he that hath looked into the perfect law of liberty, and hath continued therein, not becoming a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work; this man shall be blessed in his deed.
This, of course, directly follows your born-again prooftext from St. James.
Does St. Paul contradict any of this in 1 Cor 4? Indeed, perseverance in the faith is not the same as initial conversion and baptism. The former follows the later; preaching follows baptism. However, does Paul say that the Corinthians' baptism was on no consequence? Not at all, both to them and to Romans (Rm 6:3) he points out that it was the baptism that opened the channels of grace to them.