Do Some Believe God First Regenerates You and Then You Can Reject or Accept Christ, or Does Regeneration Mean You Will Automatically Accept Christ?

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On his website, Arminian Perspectives, Ben Henshaw has a questions page at which he answers questions about Arminianism and Calvinism that visitors to his site pose in the comment section of the page. Here is a question from a woman named Paulette followed by Ben’s answer:

Question: Do some Christians believe God first regenerates you and then you are still able to reject or accept Christ? Or does regeneration mean you will automatically accept Christ? I am confused.

Answer: While Calvinists believe that regeneration precedes faith, I don’t know of any that would say that one so regenerated could then reject the gospel. They believe that regeneration causes faith in Christ. Not only is this unbiblical in my opinion, but it leads one to wonder why regeneration should guarantee a faith response. Why doesn’t regeneration also guarantee a lifetime of sinless living? Why doesn’t the regenerated nature always cause us to choose to do right just as it caused us to believe? That is a question that I have never seen a Calvinist grapple with. Maybe I should pose the question in a post and see what responses we get.

Some Calvinists are speculative in saying that one may be regenerated for quite some time before coming to faith. Some have said that there may be people who are born regenerated. Recently, I read a Calvinist (on the internet) speculate that some might die in a regenerated state without having come to saving faith. This seemed to be an attempt to give hope to people who had lost unbelieving loved ones in that they may be saved without them knowing it (not sure if this view means that such people will come to faith after death or are just saved apart from faith simply because they were regenerated). I think this causes numerous theological absurdities, is contrary to “sola fide,” and means that some die in unbelief and still escape condemnation, contrary to numerous plain Scriptures to the contrary.

Hope that helps, but you are probably more confused than ever 🙂