T. F. Torrance was an evangelical Reformed theologian and was an influential leader in the Church of Scotland. In The Mediation of Christ, Tom Torrance retells an insightful answer to the question asked by a highlander, "When were you born again?" Torrance did answer with his own personal conversion experience, but instead answered that birth of Jesus was when he was born again, and explained that his own rebirth is derivative of the revelation of Jesus Christ. Torrance said, "I was born again when Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary and rose again from the virgin tomb, the first-born of the dead." The highlander was shocked because evangelicalism's overemphasis on personal decision and conversion. Torrance's answer has great utility because it provides a prototype answer that Christian's may repeat whenever someone asks the question, "When were you born again?"

Tom Torrance writes:

During my first week of office as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland when I presided at the Assembly's Gaelic Service, a Highlander asked me when I had been born again. I still recall his face when I told him I had been born again when Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary and rose again from the virgin tomb, the first-born of the dead. When he asked me to explain I said: 'This Tom Torrance is hid with Christ in God and will be revealed only when Jesus Christ comes again. He took my corrupt humanity in his Incarnation, sanctified, cleansed and redeemed it, giving it new birth, in his death and resurrection.' In other words, our new birth, our regeneration, our conversion or regeneration of our humanity brought about by Jesus in and through himself for our sake. In a profound and proper sense, therefore, we must speak of Jesus Christ as constituting himself the very substance of our conversion, so that we must think of him as taking place even in our acts of so-called repentance and conversion are empty. Since a conversion in that truly evangelical sense is a turning away from ourselves to Christ, it calls for a conversion from our in-turned notions of conversion to one which is grounded and sustained in Christ Jesus himself.” [1]

Born Again usage in the Bible

"You must be born again!" Evangelical preachers have yelled this ad nauseam and have overemphasized the necessity of personal decision and conversion far beyond the Biblical witness. The statement "You must be born again!" was not part of the Apostolic preaching (kerygma) of Paul or the Apostles. (c.f. C. H. Dodd's Apostolic Preaching and It's Developments to see an outline of apostolic preaching in the Bible.) The Bible contains only a few direct references to paliggenesia (typically translated as rebirth, regeneration, or born again), namely in Titus 3:5, Matthew 19:28, and possibly Job 14:14, and there are a few more indirect references such as Eph 5:26 and John 3:5 that appear to be a gloss on paliggenesia. In the same chapter as the above quotation, Torrance explains that the Biblical concept of regeneration primarily applies to Jesus and reconciliation of all things (Acts 3:21), and individual regeneration is described as an extension of the revelation of Jesus. So to emphasize an individual conversion or human heart change is a misappropriation of what Jesus said to Nicodemus after all.

Tom Torrance explains:

It is significant that the New Testament does not use the term regeneration (paliggenesia), as so often modern evangelical theology does, for what goes on in the human heart. It is used only of the great regeneration that took place in and through the Incarnation and of the final transformation of the world when Jesus Christ will come again to judge the quick and the dead and make all things new. That is to say, the Gospel speaks of regeneration as wholly bound up with Jesus Christ himself. [2]

Torrance concludes that modern evangelicalism's understanding of regeneration as a change in an individual's human heart is foreign to the biblical teachings on regeneration, and evangelicalism's elevating the statement "You must be born again!" is great exaggeration of the biblical witness at best and a complete divergence for the Apostolic preaching at worst. Torrance affirms that regeneration has implications for individual's that include a human heart change, but primarily in a futurist or realized sense of the coming of Jesus to make the whole world new, like the renew of the world after Noah's flood, and therefore it only has a consequential individual impact. In Torrance's highlander anecdote (see above), he says his life is "hid with Christ in God" and this is a reference to Colossians 3:3 that explains how being born again has started with the birth of Jesus, but ultimately has not yet been fully revealed until the last day when Jesus is fully known. George Hunsinger has an excellent video that explains "hid with Christ in God" (Col 3:3) means and he explains Karl Barth's interpretation of this verse that I'm confident Torrance is also utilizing Barth's interpretation.

Torrance's answer to the question "When were you born again?" is excellent and a template for us all to repeat. However, I believe it is also possible to answer that we were born again in the pretemporal election of Jesus Christ, as Karl Barth described in his Doctrine of Election in the Church Dogmatics II/2. Torrance may respond that the birth of Christ may also be identified with this election of Jesus.

Sources:

1. Thomas Forsyth Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, (Helmers & Howard Publishers; Revised edition: 1992), pp. 85-86

2. Ibid.

3. Header image background image of T. F. Torrance (source: wikipedia)