Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
This act of divine grace is wrought by faith in the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1). Regeneration is the impartation of divine life which is manifested in that radical change in the moral character of man, from the love and life of sin to the love of God and the life of righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:17; 1 Peter 1:23).
In Reformed theology, "regeneration precedes faith." [ 79 ] Samuel Storms writes that, "Calvinists insist that the sole cause of regeneration or being born again is the will of God. God first sovereignly and efficaciously regenerates, and only in consequence of that do we act.
Fully developed Christian theology goes a step further; on the basis of such texts as Luke 23:43 and Philippians 1:23, it has traditionally been taught that the souls of the dead are received immediately either into heaven or hell, where they will experience a foretaste of their eternal destiny prior to the resurrection.
[25] [26] [27] Aristotle Papanikolaou [28] and Elizabeth H. Prodromou [29] write in their book Thinking Through Faith: New Perspectives from Orthodox Christian Scholars that for the Eastern Orthodox: "Those theological symbols, heaven and hell, are not crudely understood as spatial destinations but rather refer to the experience of God's ...
"The faith of the former church is, that repentance, remission of sins, renewal, regeneration, sanctification, and salvation, follow of themselves the faith that is given and imputed, without any thing of man being mingled or joined with them: but the faith of the New Church teaches repentance, reformation, regeneration, and thus remission of ...
Predestination of the elect and non-elect was taught by the Jewish Essene sect, [5] Gnosticism, [6] and Manichaeism. [7] In Christianity, the doctrine that God unilaterally predestines some persons to heaven and some to hell originated with Augustine of Hippo during the Pelagian controversy in 412 AD. [8]
Conversion or regeneration in the strict sense of the term is the work of divine grace [106] and power [107] by which man, born of the flesh, [108] and void of all power to think, [109] to will, [110] or to do [111] any good thing, and dead in sin [112] is, through the gospel and holy baptism, [113] taken [114] from a state of sin and spiritual ...
Because God does what He will in the hearts of men, either by assistance or by judgment; so that, even through their means, may be fulfilled what His hand and counsel have predestinated to be done. (41) [9] The Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck distinguishes between two aspects of regeneration: 'active' and 'passive'. There is an aspect ...