Well, I'm curious--if it's not an offensive question--what does regneration consist of? I mean, for example, how did you determine that you were Regenerated? At what point did it happen? Was it all at once or did it happen over time?
This is the crux of it all. You can only know what regeneration is by experiencing it. This experience (which isn't anything you can accomplish but is accomplished by the Word and the Spirit) will be mocked by the proud unregenerate (the humble unregenerate tend to not even be aware of regeneration to begin with, i.e. it's not something on their radar screen, but the proud unregenerate tend to be unregenerate individuals in a visible church who play the devil's hand by denying regeneration is effected by the Word and the Spirit and claim it is effected by clerics, ritual, and church buildings. They are proud because they refuse to humble themselves to God's Word and demand that their own works effect regeneration, God be damned.)
Some people speak of a dramatic moment or discernable point in time where they experienced regeneration, but I gather most who experience regeneration experience it over time and only see it as having happened by seeing the difference pre and post with some perspective in time in hindsight.
There are marks of regeneration, one being that you value the Word of God as the very Word of God. That you have made the time and effort to engage it and absorb it complete, and that you then have a driving, inwardly motivated desire to understand it more and more.
Conversion is different from regeneration in that conversion involves faith and repentance. This occurs as you begin to learn what you are to have faith in and what you are to repent of. You learn these things in the Word of God and by learning on-the-mark apostolic biblical doctrine. But this requires regeneration to begin with (which is why regeneration is the most important thing. It is foundational to everything. With regeneration you have the Spirit of Truth in you which enables you to discern the Truth and gives you the ability and the desire to know the Truth to begin with.)
I've read about Calvinists like Cowley being convinced they were damned and couldn't do anything about it because they weren't part of the Elect.
What this describes is not Calvinism in any substantive way, and is merely just a species of human silliness. Woe is me, he is saying. If he truly had such concerns he would be in the act of humbling himself before God and moving towards God by engaging God's Word. Declaring yourself damned is the act of a person willfully indulging vain, self-absorbed notions. You're either serious or you're not. If you know as much as this person apparently knew and you indulge such nonsense then you are not being serious.
Anyway, I'd love to know. I'm curious about the story of your gradual awakening to Christianity too.
I was very antagonistic to Christianity in a very typical, juvenile way in youth. I didn't grow up in a church-going family and had no real reason to be antagonistic (such as being subjected to weird church experiences or whatever), I was just antagonistic in the usual immature, vain way many youth are.
Then I began to 'climb the mountain' of influences. Art, music, imaginative literature, history, philosophy, science, sacred writings (not necessarily Christian). In all that I approached the summit where the highest influences reside. By the time you get there you are fairly sophisticated with literature and influences of all kinds and degrees of inspiration. Most people seem to get stuck at the comic book level of influences unfortunately (but they read me and get shocked out of that after awhile). So after I'd become familiar with the sacred writings of the world, and with summit works like the Homeric epics and the classical historians and philosophers, there was that ONE book remaining called the Bible. At first I could only approach it 'as literature'. I bought an anthology of excerpts of the the King James Version. That was 'OK', because it was 'literature' I was reading, not 'church stuff'. So, you can see my vanity and worldly pride, and self-will was still in control. But once I began to read it, then I started listening to a television Bible teacher who actually read the complete Bible over the airwaves and he hooked me some more, then I actually got to where I could walk into a Christian bookstore (a weird feeling at first, but I did it) and I was then out of the gates into learning doctrine. All the while I read the Bible. I got a complete Bible and did what all Christians should do: I actually read it complete, every word.
Along about this time my politics (always a good gauge of regeneration) shifted DRAMATICALLY from typical liberal (though I was more of an 'above it all' type regarding politics, but for instance I thought Republicans were 'evil'. I voted a straight Democrat ticket. I though turned right in the midst of the Clinton administration. He become abomination to me. I also at the, or just before, had finished my education in history and my reading of the Gulag Archipelago (and other similar 20th century works describing from inside leftwing paradises) kind of made me what I am today. It doesn't really matter what the specific influences are, because you are coming into universal truth. The illusions of the kingdom of Satan are falling from your eyes and you are awakening.
You start to be able to discern up from down, to put it simply.
There is ALOT more to it, and the chronology is always more chaotic than it seems when you look back on it all, but the basic lines of development are there.
I should say I had a classical education in the most basic sense in that along with the written word I learned music very early in life (piano) and also had an athletic and peforming arts education. It sounds unremarkable but it defines a balanced development of each part of a human being: physical, emotional/creative, and intellectual. Spritual when I was regenerated...
I then actually learned very unorthodox theology and also a rare language of practical Christianity before I then learned mainstream, orthodox theology (Reformed, Calvinist, theology). So I came to Calvinism, when I eventually did, with a perspective most Calvinists never get. (My unorthodox theology I mention was not any of the 'usual suspects', and they were very much 'on the mark' for their realm. Since I had no fear of man at that point nothing turned me away. I could navigate any unknown and even dangerous seaways... No 'totem' could scare me off. "A swastika! Ah, run!" No, that wasn't me. I'd say: let's see what's behind this particular swastika. Maybe nothing, maybe something, maybe something by degree... See, this is called not fearing man. I'd say who cares about man, I only fear God. Higher teachings often reside behind such totems like what a swastika represents in our time. But, also, on the other hand, I also went against my own grain and would check out what you would think someone with my political views would avoid: things like Soviet literary criticism. They hit on rare ideas (their commissars unaware)... You don't have to become a nazi or a communist to mine something of worth from those two realms (occult and esoteric and similar things either), if there IS anything there to mine. Often what is to mine doesn't even have anything to do with the nazism or the communisim itself (or occultism or whatever), but is just residing behind those things to test your independence of mind in coming after it...
And "Choose your Books, Conquer them, Possess them in Essence": I love that. Is that yours or did you find it somewhere?
I wrote those specific words. Luther made a similar statement regarding finding your basic books and then really learning them and not wasting time on a thousand others. It's, though, advice that has been made a million times by a million people. I think I started being conscious of 'counting my days' after I awoke (regeneration). Once you know the summit works it's then a matter of applying yourself. (Actually I came into that understanding prior to regeneration.)
I think also with hindsight you can see that if you had just applied yourself to certain classic works in the beginning you would have saved yourself alot of time. There's a work by Adam Smith called Theory of Moral Sentiments that I'd wished I'd read early on because it's the kind of work that covers alot of material you can spend alot of time tracking down individually. Things like that.
So, any or all of the above, if you feel like answering:
I'll hang up and take the answer on the air.
Thanks for asking. Probably the one thing that you find unique in all of my interests and approach is the fact that I connected not only with the full range of influences available to a person but to the hierarchy of them. Being able to see that influences reside in a hierarchy is not a given for human beings, even - and sometimes especially - very educated human beings. Most people get stuck at one or another level on the mountain and never make it to the summit level. Or, not recognizing hierarchy at all they take a higher influence as the same as a lower and have no valuation or discernment for what is of value in the higher. Also, people tend to filter all influences through their vanity, worldly pride, and self-will, or just through worldly motivation to engage them. If they approach and engage innocently, as in pursuing Wisdom herself, it is all relatively a different activity.
But what is different with me, that some may 'sense', I mean some may 'sense' there's something different with me, is I was involved in a very on-the-mark practical teaching of Christianity prior to learning on-the-mark orthodox doctrine. I know the practical teaching. The practical teaching has as it's foundation pure biblical doctrine which is what Calvinism is. Pure biblical doctrine unnegotiated, uncompromised, with no concessions given to the demands of vanity, worldly pride, and self-will. No demands to the fear of man either. God-centered, not man-centered doctrine.
Calvinists don't realize the depth and wealth of what Calvinism represents. When you connect with the practical level teaching and you have the classical background then you throw in the 'Renaissance humanist' elements and you can separate the wheat from the chaff and you have no fear of any influence because you only fear God and you don't fear man or care what man says or thinks about you (fear God, it is the beginning of wisdom) then you have (assuming regeneration, the most important thing) the full teaching to the practical level.
