REGENERATION. A term used in theology, to indicate either the entire spiritual change which passes upon men when they become Chris tians o• the divine agency in eliciting the act of faith in distinction from conversion, which is the part of man, and comprises repentance and faith. The words of Christ to Nicodemus, "Verily, verily• I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the king dom of God," are accepted as the expression of the universal necessity of regeneration by the Christian Church. In the view of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Churches, and of the High Church school among Anglicans, the change is inseparably connected with baptism, always in the case of infants and of those adults who interpose no obstacle to divine grace. In this view baptism constitutes always a real point of transition from the natural to the spiritual life, so that every baptized person—or at least every rightly baptized person—has al ready become a although he may fall away from the grace that he has received. Ac
co•ding to most Protestants regeneration (includ ing conversion) is a special, conscious process, which takes place independently of baptism, o• of any other out ward fact o• ceremony. It im plies a sensible experience—an awakening where by men come to see the evil of sin, and the divine displeasure against sin, and, through the Holy Spirit, are born again, put away their former evil life, and begin to live a new divine life. The controversy as to the meaning and method of regeneration was especially acute in the Angli can communion in the nineteenth century. The Gorham Judgment (see GORITAm CONTROVERSY ) agitated the entire Church of England in the forties, and a protest against what were called sacramentarian views on this question led more than any other cause to the secession of the Re formed Episcopal Church in the United States.