Table of Contents

Appendix A Detailed Contents

Chapter 4.15

From Darkness to Light I

Spirit-liberated Reason & Revelation

Overall Objective

To understand the function of the human mind with spiritual regeneration.

Table of Topics

A) The Spiritual Liberation of Reason

A.1) The biblical & historical view

A.2) Regenerated Christians & sin

A.3) Christians have the correct bias

B) The Freedom to See the Irresistible Message of Creation

C) The Freedom to Understand & Respond Correctly to Scripture

Extras & Endnotes

Primary Points

Christ did not come to only save our souls, but our minds as well.
Human reasoning is like good works. Before regeneration it is practically useless in spiritual matters, but afterwards it is absolutely essential.
Regenerated humans have been recreated by God into a very different species of human beings with a “new heart” and a “new spirit” from God.
While unregenerated humanity continues to sink to the semblance of mere beasts, regenerated humanity continues to rise to the resemblance of their Creator, and to reflect what humans were intended to be.
There is a sense in which Christians can have devil-darkened reason as well when they allow their sinful desires to corrupt their moral and logical reasoning.
Even though Christians still have the capacity to sin, it is not their real nature, and therefore our reason operates with love for God and His truth instead of hatred for them.
Not only is regeneration a rescue from the domination of sin, but it is a miraculous healing of our mind.
All Christians have experienced the greatest miracle of healing, a healing of the heart.
There is nothing automatically wrong with bias. What matters is having the right bias, and by virtue of spiritual conversion, the Christian does.
The liberation of our reasoning enables us to observe Creation and rightly, and rather automatically, conclude that the existence of God is the most reasonable thing in the world. Accordingly, there is no such thing as a regenerated atheist.
Even though we may have understood the meaning of the words in Scripture before possessing the Spirit, we only now understand their significance.

A) The Spiritual Liberation of Reason

A.1) The biblical & historical view

Jesus Christ the King did not come to only save our souls, but our minds as well. Without the supernatural regeneration He provides we live in the dark insanity described in the previous chapters. Thankfully, the King said, “I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in Me should stay in darkness” (John 12:46). Indeed, those who believe in Him have their spiritual sanity restored.

Several points regarding the difference between devil-darkened and Spirit-liberated reason were made in chapters 4.12-14. That difference between the conscience and mind of the regenerated person as opposed to the unregenerate can hardly be exaggerated, especially in regards to processing spiritual truth. Therefore, in regards to spiritual truth, human reasoning is like good works. Before regeneration it is practically useless in spiritual matters, but afterwards it is absolutely essential.

Martin Luther (1483–1546) recognized this when he wrote:

Before faith and the knowledge of God, reason is mere darkness; but in the hands of those who believe, it is an excellent instrument. All faculties and gifts are pernicious, exercised by the impious; but most salutary when possessed by godly persons. ^[1]

Along the same lines, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) wrote:

As the prejudices of the heart, against the truth of divine things, are hereby removed; the mind becomes susceptive to the due force of rational arguments for their truth. The mind of a man is naturally full of prejudices against divine truth. It is full of enmity against the doctrines of the gospel; which is a disadvantage to those arguments that prove their truth, and causes them to lose their force upon the mind. But when a person has discovered to him the divine excellency of Christian doctrines, this destroys the enmity, removes those prejudices, sanctifies the reason, and causes it to lie open to the force of arguments for their truth. ^[2]

Likewise, Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) wrote:

When God has reasoned with us and changed our minds till our every thought is brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, we must use our minds, our intellect, our reason, our consciousness, in order to receive and reinterpret the revelation God has given of himself in Scripture. That is the proper place of reason in theology. There is no conflict between this reason and faith, since faith is the impelling power which urges reason to interpret aright. ^[3]

The need for humans to be liberated in order to reason properly has been understood by the Church since early times. This is what is behind St. Augustine’s famous fifth century dictum: “Believe to understand.” Augustine (354–430) coined this phrase from the Septuagint’s translation of Isaiah 7:9 which reads: “unless you believe, you will not understand.” ^[4]

Likewise, the eleventh century theologian Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) was to promote such phrases as “faith seeking understanding” and “I believe in order that I may understand.” Accordingly, the English theologian Alan Richardson notes that:

The classical Christian view of the relation between revelation and reason, faith and philosophy, may be represented in three words, “Believe to understand”, and these three words sum up the whole matter. ^[5]

As we stated in a previous chapter, the Apostle would seem to summarize the significance of our epistemological/psychological regeneration when he says, “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord” (Eph 5:8). When someone can simply be described as “darkness” (not just in darkness) and being transformed into being “light,” we have a graphic description of the “new creation” of those who are “in Christ” (2 Cor 5:17).

In fact, the Apostle uses a re-creation metaphor to describe regeneration when he writes: “For God, Who said [at the creation of the Universe], “Let light shine out of darkness,” made His light shine in our hearts [when we were regenerated] to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). The physical creation of the Universe is being remarkably compared to our own recreation.

Our spiritual regeneration is simply a fulfillment of a promise God has made in His New Covenant:

[I] will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. Your filth will be washed away, and you will no longer worship idols. ²⁶And I will give you a new heart with new and right desires, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony heart of sin and give you a new, obedient heart. ²⁷And I will put My Spirit in you so you will obey My laws and do whatever I command. (Ezek 36:25-27 NLT; cf. Jer 31:31-34; Heb 8:10-12)

That is our New Nature. Read it again and understand who you are. When someone gets a “new heart” and a “new spirit” from God, they are being recreated into a very different species of human being. While unregenerated humanity continues to sink to the semblance of mere beasts, regenerated humanity continues to rise to the resemblance of their Creator, and to reflect what humans were intended to be. Accordingly, the Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) wrote:

The gospel does not abolish [human] nature, but affirms and restores it. . . . For Christ came, not to destroy the works of the Father, but only those of the devil. Grace is the reparation [renewal] of a fallen nature. For the materia [substance] of all things is and remains the same, but the form given in creation was deformed by sin, to be once again completely reformed by grace.

The result is a tremendous sense of relief, liberation, and responsibility; for if you are a Christian, a Christian in the full sense of the word, then you are not a peculiar, eccentric human being, but you are fully human. To be Christian means to be human. It is man’s humanity which is redeemed. ^[6]

Likewise, Dr. Van Til described our Spirit-liberated reasoning as, “the Adamic consciousness restored and supplemented.” ^[7]

Baptist theologian Millard Erickson writes:

Although regeneration involves something totally new to us, it does not result in anything foreign to human nature. Rather, the new birth is the restoration of human nature to what it originally was intended to be and what it in fact was before sin entered the human race at the time of the fall. ^[8]

Along the same lines, J. I. Packer describes what happens psychologically and spiritually in regeneration:

Having disclosed Himself objectively in history in His incarnate Son, and in His written, scriptural Word, God now enlightens men subjectively in experience so that they apprehend His self disclosure for what it is. Thus He causes them to know Him, and His end in revelation is achieved. . . . Historic Protestantism, interpreting the text [1 John 5:6-7] in this sense, has regularly described this part of the Spirit’s ministry as His witness to divine truth. It is a healing of spiritual faculties, a restoring to man of a permanent receptiveness towards divine things. ^[9]

A.2) Regenerated Christians & sin

Our discussion should take into account the fact that born again Christians still have the capacity to sin, which can affect our reason. The Apostle says even the Christian must make a continual decision to “put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires” (Eph 4:22), all of which can certainly affect our reasoning. Accordingly, there is a sense in which Christians can have devil-darkened reason as well when they allow their sinful desires to corrupt their moral and logical reasoning.

The Apostle Paul painfully illustrates this when he writes:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do [in my New Nature] I do not do, but what I hate [with my New Nature] I do. . . . ¹⁷ As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸ I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature [old sinful programming of mind]. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I [sometimes] cannot carry it out. ¹⁹ For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²² For in my inner being [New Nature of the Spirit] I delight in God’s law; ²³ but I see another law [old sinful programming of mind] at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind [New Nature] and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. (Rom 7:15-16, 18-19, 21-23) ^[10]

And some claim there is no psychology in the Bible! We see here that even for the Christian, sinful desires stemming from the remaining deception in their mind, can overwhelm our moral reason and affect what we do. But it is vital to note the Apostle’s amazing statement that “it is no longer I” who sin. Even though Paul was sinning in his body and making sinful choices with his mind, he refuses to admit that it is actually him that is sinning! This is because of how accurately he understood how radically our nature and identity have been changed. The real us hates sin and if our minds had not been programmed with any lies that trick us into sinning, we would not. The real us is not a sinner, but a saint trapped in a body with a mind influenced by the world and needing renewal itself.

Nonetheless, the born again Christian can improperly reason to sin. ^[11] The difference is that sin is not the true nature of the born again Christian, as it is for the unregenerate. Those without the Spirit of God only have devil-darkened reason, while the ability and nature of the regenerated Christian is to operate with Spirit-liberated reason. ^[12] As the Apostle says above, we have the ability to “put off [our] old self . . . to be made new in the attitude [pneuma: spirit] of [our] minds [nous]; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:22-24).

While the mind of sinful man “is hostile to God. . . . [and] does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so” (Rom 8:7), the born again Christian has been indwelled with the Holy Spirit, dethroning the sinful nature, and making His fruits the normal operating principles in their life (cf. Gal 5:22-25). Unlike the unregenerated who have only a sinful nature, we are not forced to think rebelliously against God. Instead, we can say with the Psalmist: “I run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free” (Ps 119:32).

In fact, because the sinful nature has been mortally wounded by the Spirit, we are, “dead to sin but alive to God” (Rom 6:11) and it can no longer be said that sin is our nature, but rather, an occasional deviation from our real nature. While the unregenerate “have their minds set on what [the sinful] nature desires,” the Apostle describes the nature of the regenerated Christian as having, “minds set on what the Spirit desires” (Rom 8:5). Such a liberation of our mind obviously does a great deal to return reason to its intended function of thinking after God. Even though Christians still have the ability to sin, it is not their real nature, and therefore our reason operates with love for God and His truth, instead of hatred for them both.

In regeneration, God has put the sinful nature in the backseat, and put us in the driver’s seat and we now have a real choice as to where we are going to go. The regenerate are no longer “hostile to God” in their thinking. While the sinful nature is the tyrannical and indomitable repressor of right spiritual thinking in the unregenerate, such psychological bondage has been broken by the Spirit’s regeneration and we have been, “brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom 8:21; cf. 2 Cor 3:14, 17-18; Gal 5:1, 13).

Jesus spoke of this spiritual/mental freedom when He said, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. . . . So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:34, 36). Sin binds our “heart” to its ways, but Jesus sets it free to understand and obey Him.

The Apostle speaks of this same psychological liberation when he says that the Father, “has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of . . . light” (Col 1:12, 13; cf. John 8:12; 12:46; Acts 26:18; 1 Pet 2:9). This transfer “from the dominion of darkness” to “the kingdom of . . . light” often manifests itself in a very physical and real way with many converts to Christ testifying that the world actually seems brighter to their visual senses.

Accordingly, Jonathan Edwards described his own conversion when he wrote:

The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. God’s excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love seemed to appear in everything, in the sun, moon, and stars, in the clouds and blue sky, in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. ^[13]

Not only is regeneration a rescue from the domination of sin, but it is a miraculous healing of our mind. It is not only some Christians who have experienced a supernatural healing of some part of their body, but all Christians have experienced the greatest miracle of healing, a healing of the “heart.” ^[14]

A.3) Christians have the correct bias

Additionally, it can be pointed out that our Spirit-liberated reason corrects our “vision” in order to interpret a variety of data correctly. This is particularly important to note in regards to the debate with postmodern philosophy. For example, one of the more common attacks leveled on the value of scientific, historical, or biblical research is the fear of a person’s predispositions and prejudices skewing the interpretation of the data such that the truth itself is obscured.

Along these lines, James Kelly Clark remarks:

Our believings are inextricably entwined with our passions, emotions, and will. Our fundamental commitments shape our assessment of the evidence. Sometimes our commitments and values help us to see the truth; sometimes they obscure the truth. We are, in every case, epistemically situated-historically, culturally, socially-and we lack a God’s eye view of the world. What counts as evidence, the weight that should attach to it, and the inferences that follow from it are conditioned by our commitments. No method exists for rising above our conditions and seeing the world (or the evidence) without the filters of our beliefs and values. ^[15]

While there is truth here, it should be asked, why would we need a “method . . . for . . . seeing the world (or the evidence) without the filters of our beliefs and values,” if our beliefs and values are biblical? What postmoderns and many Christians forget is that there is such a thing as having the right and necessary predispositions in order to interpret data correctly. Spiritual regeneration and the subsequent increasing understanding of Scripture corrects the “filters of our beliefs and values” that postmoderns think automatically distort the truth. In other words, Christians have a superior bias on truth because of their God-centered worldview.

Accordingly, John Frame writes:

[W]e should not, I think, be biased against bias in some general way. Some biases are good. Doubtless . . . we should be biased in favor of evidence and logic, intellectual honesty, reliable testimony, and so on. . . . So our goal . . . should not be to eliminate bias altogether (which . . . we can never do completely), nor simply to “recognize and thwart” it, or “counteract” it, . . . but to substitute good biases for bad ones. ^[16]

This is precisely what God has done in the regeneration process, giving us a new “heart” and predisposition that, far from distorting the truth, actually brings it into clearer focus, much like getting new eye glasses. Therefore, contrary to popular opinion in and out of the Church, there is nothing automatically wrong with bias. What matters is having the right bias, and by virtue of spiritual conversion, the Christian is in a significantly superior position when it comes to properly assessing data, whether it comes by revelation (i.e. Scripture) or research (i.e. science).

Therefore, only the Christian will properly interpret the spiritual significance of Christ and His deeds. The unregenerated historian may properly interpret the historical evidence of the Gospels and early Church and conclude correctly that the King rose from the dead, and even admit that it was a miracle. Still, without Spirit-liberated reason and the dethroning of the sinful nature, the King’s resurrection will not be allowed to be interpreted as anything more, while the true children of God will know it means much, much more.

Regeneration gives us a set of “eyes,” or a mental capacity that the unregenerate do not have, that enables us to “see,” “hear,” understand, and believe spiritual truths. The King describes the spiritually dead well when He remarks: “In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving” (Matt 13:14). And it is because our reasoning faculties are fully functioning as intended that we do understand and perceive. As Alan Richardson rightly comments: “To the believer himself, who knows the experience from within, conversion does not mean the abandoning of the effort to understand, but a veritable liberation of the reason.” ^[17]

B) The Freedom to See the Irresistible Message of Creation

The liberation of our reasoning enables us to observe Creation and rightly, and rather automatically, conclude that the existence and grandeur of God is the most reasonable thing in the world. Accordingly, there is no such thing as a regenerated atheist. As the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga puts it:

If it weren’t for sin and its effects, we human beings would believe in God with the same sort of natural spontaneity and to the same degree that we believe in the existence of ourselves, other persons, and the past. ^[18]

Likewise, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), the seventeenth century Christian genius said: “It is certain that those who have the living faith in their heart see at once that all existence is none other than the work of the God whom they adore.” ^[19]

While regenerated Christians may differ on the method that God used to create the Universe, it would be impossible to persuade them that God did not create it and thus deserves our worship. This is because the “plain” evidence provided by Creation has been “clearly seen” and “understood,” just like it has by unregenerated minds (Rom 1:19-20). It is a fact that God did create the Universe and there will never be any reasonable, acceptable evidence available to persuade a properly functioning mind that God is not our Creator and rightful Lord. devil-darkened reason is forced to accept foolish, empty reasons, such as those espoused by evolutionary theories. But Spirit-liberated reason is equally forced to reject foolish reasons against what the clear evidence of Creation says.

For example, no mentally healthy human is going to be able to sincerely deny that 1+1=2 after it has been demonstrated to be so. It becomes automatic, irresistible, and irreversible for such a person to see the above equation and make the correct conclusion, and it would seem impossible for anyone to sincerely and confidently deny it. There will never be any acceptable, reasonable evidence available to discount such a mathematical equation, and therefore, unless we suffer from insanity, such convictions will endure. Such is the same with the data and conclusions regarding the irresistible message of Creation to liberated, restored human reason.

It can be pointed out here that in the Spirit’s liberation of reason, there is no need for some supernatural revelation that tells us there is a Creator Who deserves our worship. Rather, because our minds have been restored from a debilitating bias against spiritual truth, our reason is enabled to accurately interpret the “natural” revelation of Creation. While the initial regeneration is certainly supernatural, neither the data from Creation, nor the processing of such data is. In fact, after regeneration, such reasoning is no more supernatural than concluding that 1+1=2. Accordingly, NT scholar Kevin J. Vanhoozer writes:

The Spirit’s work is to illumine not the truth but the mind. One who has been illumined [i.e. regenerated] is both passive and active: being [supernaturally] made to understand, one [naturally] understands. ^[20]

C) The Freedom to Understand & Respond Correctly to Scripture

Some of us may remember trying to understand the Scriptures before we were born again. Even though the words were in English, the meaning seemed like Mandarin Chinese. Still, even though we may have understood the meaning of the words in Scripture, we did not understand their significance. Then, after being born again, the Scriptures came alive! The difference was simply that our devil-darkened reason was liberated to discern and recognize truth as God intended. ^[21]

Along these lines, Martin Luther wrote, in a somewhat exaggerated way, “[T]he truth is that nobody who has not the Spirit of God sees a jot of what is in the Scriptures.” ^[22] More descriptive is Jonathan Edwards who wrote:

It is possible that a man might know how to interpret all the types, parables, enigmas, and allegories in the Bible, and not have one beam of spiritual light in his mind; because he may not have the least degree of that spiritual sense of the holy beauty of divine things which has been spoken of, and may see nothing of this kind of glory in anything contained in any of these mysteries, or any other part of the Scripture. ^[23]

Likewise, Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) preached:

The Spirit of God must come, and make the letter alive to you, transfer it to your heart, set it on fire and make it burn within you, or else its divine force and majesty will be hid from your eyes. ^[24]

This is what the Apostle is describing regarding the Jews and their need to be regenerated in order to “see” Christ in Scripture. He writes:

But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant [Scripture] is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses [Scripture] is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is [epistemological] freedom. (2 Cor 3:14-17)

We suggest that the Apostle is pointing out that the Jews were psychologically blind to the Christ revealed in the OT Scriptures. Because of this dullness of mind and their veiled hearts they could not properly interpret Scripture, but with the regenerating work of the “Spirit of the Lord” their minds and hearts are freed to do so. ^[25]

Unregenerated reason in regards to Scripture is well illustrated in the Pharisees. They, of course, had much of God’s word memorized and studied it diligently, yet the King called them “blind guides” (Matt 15:14).

The process of being enlightened by the Spirit at the time of conversion such that the meaning of Scripture becomes clear, is vividly illustrated in Martin Luther’s testimony of salvation:

I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but one expression, “the justice of God,” because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.

Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that “the just shall live by his faith.” Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning and whereas before the “justice of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven. ^[26]

Extras & Endnotes

A Devotion to Dad

Our Father, thank You again for setting our minds free to know and serve You. We thank You for enabling us to escape the “insanity of humanity” concerning the message of Creation and Scripture. Help us to have compassion on those who do not accept these messages, understanding that it is not because of a mental problem, but a spiritual problem which only God can fix. Amen.

Gauging Your Grasp

How would you describe the differences between regenerated and devil-darkened reason? What are some Scriptures that describe these differences?
Why is Spirit-liberated reason so different, even though a Christian still has the capacity to sin?
Why are postmodern philosophers wrong to claim that there is something automatically wrong with human bias in interpreting data?

Biblical Psychology: 15 From Darkness to Light I