toddpedlar
Iron Dramatist
Sproul is correct in his conclusion but he's wrong in his defense. He argues that regeneration must precede faith because regeneration is a necessary condition for faith. What it means that regeneration is a necessary condition for faith is that whenever faith exists, it is necessary that regeneration exist. Yet that doesn’t imply that regeneration precedes faith in logical order. After all, it is also true that faith is a necessary condition for regeneration since whenever regeneration exists it is necessary that faith exist too. Necessary conditions do not inform us about logical order.
I cannot agree here. If thing A is a "Condition" of thing B, then thing A is a state of being which must be present if thing B is to come about. The word "condition" means "prerequisite". B cannot come about if the condition A is not present. You seem to be putting Sproul's argument away by defining the word "condition" differently and then using that different definition to dispute with his use of the same word (and different definition than you). You're using the word "condition" as "correlative", which is not at all the same thing.
In this way I am not sure I can entirely agree with Lane - an unregenerate person cannot come to faith; I have little problem agreeing that the gift of regeneration being essentially simultaneous with the exercise of faith - but being finite persons, I think that it would be normal for there to be an actual physical delay between the two. When Jesus healed the blind man, were his eyes working before he actually saw 'men walking like trees'?