Are Catholics Born Again?
Catholics and Protestants agree that to be saved,
you have to be born again. Jesus said so: "Truly, truly, I say to you,
unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3).
When a Catholic says that he has been "born again,"
he refers to the transformation that God’s grace accomplished in him during
baptism. Evangelical Protestants typically mean something quite different
when they talk about being "born again."
For an Evangelical, becoming "born again" often
happens like this: He goes to a crusade or a revival where a minister delivers
a sermon telling him of his need to be "born again."
"If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and believe
he died for your sins, you’ll be born again!" says the preacher. So the
gentleman makes "a decision for Christ" and at the altar call goes forward
to be led in "the sinner’s prayer" by the minister. Then the minister tells
all who prayed the sinner’s prayer that they have been saved—"born again."
But is the minister right? Not according to the Bible.
The Names of the New Birth
Regeneration (being "born again") is the transformation
from death to life that occurs in our souls when we first come to God and
are justified. He washes us clean of our sins and gives us a new nature,
breaking the power of sin over us so that we will no longer be its slaves,
but its enemies, who must fight it as part of the Christian life (cf. Rom.
6:1–22; Eph. 6:11–17). To understand the biblical teaching of being born
again, we must understand the terms it uses to refer to this event.
The term "born again" may not appear in the Bible.
The Greek phrase often translated "born again" (gennatha anothen)
occurs twice in the Bible—John 3:3 and 3:7—and there is a question of how
it should be translated. The Greek word anothen sometimes can be
translated "again," but in the New Testament, it most often means "from
above." In the King James Version, the only two times it is translated
"again" are in John 3:3 and 3:7; every other time it is given a different
rendering.
Another term is "regeneration." When referring
to something that occurs in the life of an individual believer, it only
appears in Titus 3:5. In other passages, the new birth phenomenon is also
described as receiving new life (Rom. 6:4), receiving the circumcision
of the heart (Rom. 2:29; Col. 2:11–12), and becoming a "new creation" (2
Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15).
Regeneration in John 3
These different ways of talking about being "born
again" describe effects of baptism, which Christ speaks of in John 3:5
as being "born of water and the Spirit." In Greek, this phrase is, literally,
"born of water and Spirit," indicating one birth of water-and-Spirit, rather
than "born of water and of the Spirit," as though it meant two different
births—one birth of water and one birth of the Spirit.
In the water-and-Spirit rebirth that takes place
at baptism, the repentant sinner is transformed from a state of sin to
the state of grace. Peter mentioned this transformation from sin to grace
when he exhorted people to "be baptized every one of you in the name of
Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the
gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38).
The context of Jesus’ statements in John 3 makes
it clear that he was referring to water baptism. Shortly before Jesus teaches
Nicodemus about the necessity and regenerating effect of baptism, he himself
was baptized by John the Baptist, and the circumstances are striking: Jesus
goes down into the water, and as he is baptized, the heavens open, the
Holy Spirit descends upon him in the form of a dove, and the voice of God
the Father speaks from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son" (cf. Matt.
3:13–17; Mark 1:9–11; Luke 3:21–22; John 1:30–34). This scene gives us
a graphic depiction of what happens at baptism: We are baptized with water,
symbolizing our dying with Christ (Rom. 6:3) and our rising with Christ
to the newness of life (Rom. 6:4–5); we receive the gift of sanctifying
grace and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13; Gal. 3:27);
and we are adopted as God’s sons (Rom. 8:15–17).
After our Lord’s teaching that it is necessary
for salvation to be born from above by water and the Spirit (John 3:1–21),
"Jesus and his disciples went into the land of Judea; there he remained
with them and baptized" (John 3:22).
Then we have the witness of the early Church that
John 3:5 refers to baptismal regeneration. This was universally recognized
by the early Christians. The Church Fathers were unanimous in teaching
this:
In A.D. 151, Justin Martyr wrote, "As many as are
persuaded and believe that what we [Christians] teach and say is true .
. . are brought by us where there is water and are regenerated in the same
manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For, in the name of God
the Father . . . and of our Savior Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit
[Matt. 28:19], they then receive the washing with water. For Christ also
said, ‘Unless you are born again, you shall not enter into the kingdom
of heaven’ [John 3:3]" (First Apology 61).
Around 190, Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, wrote,
"And [Naaman] dipped himself . . . seven times in the Jordan’ [2 Kgs. 5:14].
It was not for nothing that Naaman of old, when suffering from leprosy,
was purified upon his being baptized, but [this served] as an indication
to us. For as we are lepers in sin, we are made clean, by means of the
sacred water and the invocation of the Lord, from our old transgressions,
being spiritually regenerated as newborn babes, even as the Lord has declared:
‘Except a man be born again through water and the Spirit, he shall not
enter into the kingdom of heaven’ [John 3:5]" (Fragment 34).
In the year 252, Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage,
said that when those becoming Christians "receive also the baptism of the
Church . . . then finally can they be fully sanctified and be the sons
of God . . . since it is written, ‘Except a man be born again of water
and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God’ [John 3:5]"
(Letters 71[72]:1).
Augustine wrote, "From the time he [Jesus] said,
‘Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of heaven’ [John 3:5], and again, ‘He that loses his life for my
sake shall find it’ [Matt. 10:39], no one becomes a member of Christ except
it be either by baptism in Christ or death for Christ" (On the Soul
and Its Origin 1:10 [A.D. 419]).
Augustine also taught, "It is this one Spirit who
makes it possible for an infant to be regenerated . . . when that infant
is brought to baptism; and it is through this one Spirit that the infant
so presented is reborn. For it is not written, ‘Unless a man be born again
by the will of his parents’ or ‘by the faith of those presenting him or
ministering to him,’ but, ‘Unless a man be born again of water and the
Holy Spirit’ [John 3:5]. The water, therefore, manifesting exteriorly the
sacrament of grace, and the Spirit effecting interiorly the benefit of
grace, both regenerate in one Christ that man who was generated in Adam"
(Letters 98:2 [A.D. 408]).
Regeneration in the New Testament
The truth that regeneration comes through baptism
is confirmed elsewhere in the Bible. Paul reminds us in Titus 3:5 that
God "saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in
virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in
the Holy Spirit."
Paul also said, "Do you not know that all of us
who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk
in newness of life" (Rom. 6:3–4).
This teaching—that baptism unites us with Christ’s
death and resurrection so that we might die to sin and receive new life—is
a key part of Paul’s theology. In Colossians 2:11–13, he tells us, "In
[Christ] you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature,
not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision
[of] Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him
through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. When
you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature,
God made you alive with Christ" (NIV).
The Effects of Baptism
Often people miss the fact that baptism gives us
new life/new birth because they have an impoverished view of the grace
God gives us through baptism, which they think is a mere symbol. But Scripture
is clear that baptism is much more than a mere symbol.
In Acts 2:38, Peter tells us, "Repent, and be baptized
every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your
sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." When Paul was
converted, he was told, "And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized,
and wash away your sins, calling on his name" (Acts 22:16).
Peter also said, "God’s patience waited in the
days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is,
eight persons, were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds
to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as
an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ" (1 Pet. 3:20–21). Peter says that, as in the time of the flood,
when eight people were "saved through water," so for Christians,
"[b]aptism . . . now saves you." It does not do so by the water’s
physical action, but through the power of Jesus Christ’s resurrection,
through baptism’s spiritual effects and the appeal we make to God to have
our consciences cleansed.
These verses showing the supernatural grace God
bestows through baptism set the context for understanding the New Testament’s
statements about receiving new life in the sacrament.
Protestants on Regeneration
Martin Luther wrote in his Short Catechism
that baptism "works the forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the
devil, and grants eternal life to all who believe." His recognition that
the Bible teaches baptismal regeneration has been preserved by Lutherans
and a few other Protestant denominations. Even some Baptists recognize
that the biblical evidence demands the historic Christian teaching of baptismal
regeneration. Notable individuals who recognized that Scripture teaches
baptismal regeneration include Baptist theologians George R. Beasley-Murray
and Dale Moody.
Nevertheless, many Protestants have abandoned this
biblical teaching, substituting man-made theories on regeneration. There
are two main views held by those who deny the scriptural teaching that
one is born again through baptism: the "Evangelical" view, common among
Baptists, and the "Calvinist" view, common among Presbyterians.
Evangelicals claim that one is born again at the
first moment of faith in Christ. According to this theory, faith in Christ
produces regeneration. The Calvinist position is the reverse: Regeneration
precedes and produces faith in Christ. Calvinists (some of whom also call
themselves Evangelicals) suppose that God "secretly" regenerates people,
without their being aware of it, and this causes them to place their
faith in Christ.
To defend these theories, Evangelicals and Calvinists
attempt to explain away the many unambiguous verses in the Bible that plainly
teach baptismal regeneration. One strategy is to say that the water in
John 3:5 refers not to baptism but to the amniotic fluid present at childbirth.
The absurd
implication of this view is that Jesus would have
been saying, "You must be born of amniotic fluid and the Spirit." A check
of the respected Protestant Greek lexicon, Kittel’s Theological Dictionary
of the New Testament, fails to turn up any instances in ancient, Septuagint
or New Testament Greek where "water" (Greek: hudor) referred to
"amniotic fluid" (VIII:314–333).
Evangelicals and Calvinists try to deal with the
other verses where new life is attributed to baptism either by ignoring
them or by arguing that it is not actually water baptism that is being
spoken of. The problem for them is that water is explicitly mentioned or
implied in each of these verses.
In Acts 2:38, people are exhorted to take an action:
"Be baptized . . . in the name of Jesus Christ," which does not refer to
an internal baptism that is administered to people by themselves, but the
external baptism administered to them by others.
We are told that at Paul’s conversion, "he rose
and was baptized, and took food and was strengthened. For several days
he was with the disciples at Damascus" (Acts 9:18–19). This was a water
baptism. In Romans 6 and Colossians 2, Paul reminds his readers of their
water baptisms, and he neither says nor implies anything about some sort
of "invisible spiritual baptism."
In 1 Peter 3, water is mentioned twice, paralleling
baptism with the flood, where eight were "saved through water," and noting
that "baptism now saves you" by the power of Christ rather than
by the physical action of water "removing . . . dirt from the body."
The anti-baptismal regeneration position is indefensible.
It has no biblical basis whatsoever. So the answer to the question, "Are
Catholics born again?" is yes! Since all Catholics have been baptized,
all Catholics have been born again. Catholics should ask Protestants, "Are
you born again—the way the Bible understands that concept?"
If the Evangelical has not been properly water baptized, he has not
been born again "the Bible way," regardless of what he may think.
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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