October 24, 2006Once more: Spurgeon on regeneration

A couple of days ago (10/19/06), Lou Martuneac posted the following comment in an older thread on my blog:

Mike:

You wrote, "This particular article is not intended as a defense of the priority of regeneration; thus, I want to be perfectly clear that I will not entertain discussion about the theological issue itself in the comments. My sole concern in this article is the correct understanding of Spurgeon's position."

I find this reluctance to discuss or be indentified [sic] with the regeneration before faith position very common among Reformed Baptists. You took grreat [sic] exception to my citing to [sic] very clear quotes from Spurgeon's Warrant of Faith sermon where he calls the regeneration before faith position "false" and "absurd."

How about being transparent? Do you believe regeneration precedes conversion (faith/repentance)?

LM

I find this comment perplexing on a number of levels. First, anyone who has fully read my discussion here would have encountered a number of statements from me, stating, without qualification or equivocation, that I hold the priority of regeneration to faith. I have not been dodgy or opaque on this issue, and for Mr. Martuneac to suggest that I have been is to reveal that he has not read my posts very carefully.

For instance, in my exchanges with Mr. Ross, I told him that he was "right in [his] claim that I personally favored the regeneration-before-faith position before I began this study of Spurgeon." And later in the same discussion, I claim that the position that I ascribe to Spurgeon is also my own:

By asserting that regeneration is the effective cause of saving faith, neither Spurgeon nor I deny the chronological simultaneity of regeneration and faith; what we affirm is that regeneration is the logical precedent to saving faith, whereas the opposite assertion (that saving faith is the logical precedent to regeneration) is not the case. In other words, regeneration plays a causal role in the granting of faith that faith does not play in the granting of regeneration.

I will state this unequivocally: I do believe that regeneration logically precedes and is the cause of faith. But as I've stated before, I do not believe this to be an essential Christian doctrine; I minister with a number of people who do not hold this position, and we have no strife about our disagreement. Any reluctance that I evidence when discussing this topic does not find its source in a lack of confidence that my position is right, or from any fear of being identified with this position; rather, because I aim to avoid needless controversies and discord among true brethren, I try to refrain from harsh rhetoric on points of doctrine that are less critical to the gospel.

Second, Mr. Martuneac's citation of Spurgeon's sermon "Warrant of Faith" does not come close to proving what he thinks it does. Allow me to cite the section of the sermon to which Mr. Martuneac refers:

These excellent men [Spurgeon here refers to Alleyne, Baxter, Rogers, Shepherd, and "especially" Thomas Hooker] had a fear of preaching the gospel to any except those whom they styled "sensible sinners," and consequently kept hundreds of their hearers sitting in darkness when they might have rejoiced in the light. They preached repentance and hatred of sin as the warrant of a sinner's trusting to Christ. According to them, a sinner might reason thus—"I possess such-and-such a degree of sensibility on account of sin, therefore I have a right to trust in Christ." Now, I venture to affirm that such reasoning is seasoned with fatal error. Whoever preaches in this fashion may preach much of the gospel, but the whole gospel of the free grace of God in its fulness he has yet to learn. In our own day certain preachers assure us that a man must be regenerated before we may bid him believe in Jesus Christ; some degree of a work of grace in the heart being, in their judgment, the only warrant to believe. This also is false. It takes away a gospel for sinners and offers us a gospel for saints. It is anything hut a ministry of free grace.

I lay down this morning with great boldness—because I know and am well persuaded that what I speak is the mind of the Spirit—this doctrine that the sole and only warrant for a sinner to believe in Jesus is found in the gospel itself and in the command which accompanies that gospel, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." I shall deal with that matter first of all, negatively, and then, positively.

1. First, NEGATIVELY; and here my first observation is that any other way of preaching the gospel-warrant is absurd. If I am to preach faith in Christ to a man who is regenerated, then the man, being regenerated, is saved already, and it is an unnecessary and ridiculous thing for me to preach Christ to him, and bid him to believe in order to be saved when he is saved already, being regenerate.

Without doubt, isolated statements from this sermon do seem to buttress Mr. Martuneac's contentions. However, whether one is reading Scripture or Spurgeon, he must have a firm grasp of the context in order to rightly understand specific statements, and, in this case, Mr. Martuneac does not.

Notice the title of the sermon: "Warrant of Faith." Spurgeon's topic in this sermon is not the ordo; rather, he is establishing the proper grounds upon which a minister can urge a sinner to believe the gospel. It is an error to read the expression "warrant of faith" in this sermon as a synonym of the expression "cause for faith." Spurgeon's point is this: the gospel is, in itself, the only warrant necessary for its belief. The sinner needs no other evidence or foundation as a justification for his embracing of the gospel message. The sinner who hears the gospel and wishes to believe it must not be compelled to look first for evidences of regeneration or conviction; the gospel itself is the only warrant for believing that the sinner needs. Spurgeon is not denying that regeneration plays a causal role in the granting of faith; rather, he is denying that the sinner should look for evidences of such regeneration before he would be allowed to believe the gospel.

Thus rightly understood, Spurgeon's comments here in no way undermine his consistent advocacy of regeneration as the cause of faith. As I've said before, Baptists who, like Spurgeon, hold to the logical primacy of regeneration, can still deny the chronological primacy of regeneration; this is my position. It is quite possible to multiply quotations from Spurgeon which deny the chronological priority of regeneration to faith; with every such quotation, I will be in full agreement, and my position will not be troubled. The interpretation of Spurgeon that I am advocating here is able to handle any number of quotations from Spurgeon arguing for the chronological simultaneity of regeneration and faith. What I have not yet seen from either Mr. Ross or Mr. Martuneac, however, is any explanation of the passages from Spurgeon which I have cited that clearly maintain the logical priority of regeneration. My position is consistent with their citations of Spurgeon, and I am always happy to articulate what I believe Spurgeon means in the quotations they offer (as I have just done); the best response to the quotations that I have offered is a weak suggestion that Spurgeon was inconsistent with himself.

Again, I would challenge Mr. Martuneac, Mr. Ross, or any others who believe that Spurgeon denied that regeneration precedes faith to interact with this list of quotations from Spurgeon, or the selections from that document found in my other articles on this subject here on this blog. If you think that I've misread the Prince of Preachers, that I've ignored some important literary or historical context, I am always truly willing to be corrected. Until such a correction is offered, however, I see no reason whatsoever to change my position.

Michael Riley | three comments | Link