Does Spiritual Regeneration Actually Happen? [Questions That Haunt]

This week’s Question That Haunts Christianity comes from Gary, a Lutheran pastor:

The official teaching of my church is that we believe, teach and confess baptismal regeneration. I read a number of blogs (and more than my fair share of FB threads), and this is obviously a point of contention between Christians. Baptists, for instance, insist on the necessity of baptism, but then deny that regeneration occurs through it. My question involves the nature of regeneration itself, however.

To me it seems that before one can discuss whether or not baptism effects regeneration, one should be able to say what regeneration (spiritual) means. I mean, if were going to break fellowship over it, shouldn’t we be able to say what regeneration is and specifically what part of a human being is regenerated? Or should we talk about regeneration, rebirth, and being made alive in Christ as purely metaphorical language?

I’d love to hear anybody explain this concept in a way that holds water for more than 5 minutes. We can hold off discussing baptism until we can agree whether anything real (even if it’s metaphysical) is actually made alive by becoming a Christian.

You respond in the comments. I’ll respond on Friday. See all of the past questions and answers here, or buy the ebook by clicking below: