1 Peter 1:23-25

I would like to consider Stepehn Garrett's view of 1 Peter 1:23-25 in this entry, and, ultimately, to exegete this text in view of Peter's epistles.

As has been previously noted in a progressive fashion on this blog (here1, here2, and here3), Brother Garrett's view of the effectual call does not deny that the Spirit of God is the sole efficient cause of regeneration, and that the gospel is not instrumental to the effectual call except in the same sense that Primitive Baptists even acknowledge that the gospel is instrumental in manifesting and revealing the work of the Spirit.

The key distinction between Garrett's view and the Primitive Baptist view is that he wants to insist on a definition of the effectual call that includes immediate outward evidences of the work of the spirit of gospel faith and repentance.  Now, the Primitive Baptist view in relation to the work of the spirit is that faith and repentance are necessary consequences of this operation, but the faith and repentance are inward consequences of the effectual call according to the spiritual perception of the person of Christ and antedate gospel confession however small a time elapses in a context in which the effectual call is made under the sound of the gospel.

Life eternal is to know God and Jesus Christ, and this knowledge is necessarily first spiritual knowledge before it is informed by gospel propositions.  Brother Garrett must concede this or accede to the Campbellites.  Further, unless he tears John 3:3-8 out of his Bible, he must concede that his insistence that the effectual call necessarily includes the outward evidence of public confession is unbiblical.

So, to argue as he does for his definition of the effectual call is nothing less than an affirmation that the Bible contradicts itself on the definition of being born again, or that he is not an Old Baptist because he disagrees with the framers of the LCF and John Gill who plainly taught that John 3:5-8 refers to an effectual call absent the outward call of the gospel.

It is perfectly clear, then, if we are to believe that there are no contradictions in Holy Scripture, that the sense in which the gospel may contain the living word and spirit of God is not to be confused with the gospel being the essential word and spirit of God.

This distinction is consistently made by Peter, as in 1 Peter 1:25, the proclamation of the spoken words of God in Scripture is not to be fully equated with God's speaking, as the words of God are declared by the gospel, not that the gospel is indivisible from God literally speaking.  I point the reader to 2 Peter 3:5, "For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water...".  Obviously this text refers to God's literal word to the express intention of the creation of the earth.

I suggest that Peter's usage of logos seems to refer to the express intention and creative force of God's literal, direct word to life.  2 Peter 3:5's 'word' is logos.  So it is in 1 Peter 1:23.  Now, the Greek term used for 1 Peter 1:25's 'word' is rhema, not logos.  The gospel declaration is the rhema of God, as rhema indicates words generally expressed rather than words expressly spoken to some intention or reason.  W.E. Vine notes that the essential distinction between rhema and logos is that logos refers to "reasoned words" whereas rhema indicates only what is expressed (A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Original Greek Words with their Precise Meanings for English Readers (McLean, Va.: MacDonald Publishing Co., n.d.), 1253). 


This thematic distinction between Peter's use of logos and rhema is also observed in 1 Peter 2:2.  The text in the King James is somewhat deceiving.  The "sincere milk of the word" is a somewhat suspect translation because 'of the word' is not a phrase present in the Greek.  The term logikon, is an adjective that modifies milk.  In fact, this same word, as an adjective, is translated in the King James in Romans 12:1 as 'reasonable'.  Also, the textus receptus does not have the 'eis soterian' at the end of the text, which is present in many other extant manuscripts such as the Alexandrian, the Latin Vulgate, the Syriac, and the Ethiopic, according to Gill.

The essential point is that the term logos, again, as a description of an aspect of the milk - in that it is "divinely reasonable", is linked to the function of life and growth in the Christian's suckling at the truth of the Scripture unto salvation.  The life-giving function of God's direct word in regeneration is then mediated in the rhema - the milk - to perfect the saints to the fulness of the stature of Christ.  There is certainly an association of God 's direct creation with the gospel as the instrument of revelation of God's creation, but the epistles of Peter also separate the creative word of God, as in 2 Peter 3:5 from the scripture.  Though there are earthly mothers capable of unnatural affection, it is contrary to 1 Peter 2:2 to envision God in the N.T. era fully withholding milk from His newborns - to those born under the sound of gospel.  It is also perceived from this text how utterly irrational it is to conceive of a newborn refusing milk.  What earthly infants behave as such, if indeed, they have been born at all, as Peter himself states in the next verse, "If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious."

The distinction of the spirit of God as the efficient cause of the effectual call already establishes that there is a distinction between life and the evidences of life in faith and repentance.  The semantics of whether it is scriptural to refer to the efficient cause alone as the "effectual call" is a subordinate concern to the scriptural truth that it is God alone that is the author of spiritual life.  Given that Brother Garrett must agree with this, his intention of appeal to 1 Peter 1:23-25 is illegitimate because he really does not believe that this passage, or any other passage in the New Testament, proves that the gospel is the efficient cause of spiritual life.

In fact, as we have seen, his appeal to this passage can only prove that the Holy Scripture contradicts itself with what it means to be "born again", or establishes that Brother Garrett is not an Old Baptist in disagreeing with what the framers of the LCF or John Gill argued from John 3:3-8.