Objection 49

From Sovereign Grace and the Scope of Election: A Comparative Examination of Attainment Theology and Grace Theology, with Particular Attention to the Question of Whether God's Elect Are Found Among All Nations and Religions

1 Peter 1:23 and James 1:18 make the word the instrument of the new birth. "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God"; "of his own will begat he us with the word of truth." These are the best texts against immediate regeneration, and this document has not faced them.

Answer. They are indeed the best texts on the other side, and they deserve the most careful treatment in this study. Three things may be said.

First, the grammar of 1 Peter 1:23 makes a distinction the English flattens. Peter says believers are born again of (ek) incorruptible seed, through (dia) the word of the living God. The preposition of origin attaches to the seed; the preposition of instrumentality attaches to the word. On the reading defended here, the incorruptible seed is the Spirit's implanted principle of life, the same "seed" that "remaineth in him" in 1 John 3:9, and the word is the instrument through which that life is brought to light, exercised, and matured, which is exactly the role Part IV assigns to preaching. This reading takes both prepositions seriously rather than collapsing them.

Second, "the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever" is language the New Testament elsewhere applies to the living and enduring Word Himself and to God's creative utterance (John 1:1-4; Hebrews 4:12; Psalm 33:9, "he spake, and it was done"). The quickening voice of John 5:25 is the Son's own, and a reader who hears that voice behind Peter's phrase is not doing violence to the vocabulary. It must be conceded that verse 25, "this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you," ties the passage to the preached message, and the mainstream instrumental reading is therefore a serious one, held by serious people.

Third, and decisively for the shape of the argument: even if the instrumental reading of these two verses is granted in full, it describes God's ordinary way, and the question of this study concerns the extraordinary case. The confessional mainstream that reads 1 Peter 1:23 instrumentally also confesses, in the same breath, that elect persons incapable of outward calling are regenerated by the Spirit "who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth" (Westminster and 1689, 10.3). The instrumental texts state the rule of the means; they nowhere assert the impossibility of the exception. This document's position requires only that the exception be real and be governed by election, which the confessions themselves affirm.