REGENSBURG
715
REGESTA
ever, the Sacrament of Baptism was regarded as the
specific sacrament of regeneration, a concept that was
not extended to the Sacrament of Penance. Irenseus
repeatedly interprets the Pauline term "re-creation"
as the universal regeneration of mankind through the
incarnation of the Son of God in the womb of the
Blessed Virgin. The idea of regeneration in the sense
of individual justification is most conspicuous in the
writings of St. Augustine. With an unrivalled keen-
ness, he evolved the essential distinction between the
birth of the Son of God from the substance of the
Father and the generation of the soul from God
through grace, and brought together into an organic
as.sociation regeneration, with its kindred ideas, and
justification (cf. e. g. "Enarr. in Ps. xlix", n. 2 in
" P. L.", X.KXVI, 565). Like the Church, St. Augus-
tine associates justification with faith working through
charity, and refers its essence to the interior renewal
and sanctification of the soul. Thus, St. Augustine
is not only the precursor, but also the model of the
Scholastics, who worked mainly on the ideas inherited
from the great doctor, and contributed essentially to
the speculative understanding of the mysterious pro-
cess of justification. Adhering strictly to the Bible
and tradition, the Council of Trent (Sess. VI, capp.
iii-iv, in Denzinger-Bannwart, "Enchiridion ", 10th
ed., 1908, nn. 795-6) regarded regeneration as funda-
mentally nothing else than another name for the jus-
tification acquired through the Sacrament of Baptism.
A characteristic view was that of the German Mystics
(Eckhart, Tauler, Suso), who prefer to speak of a
"birth of God in the soul", meaning thereby the self-
annihilation of the soul submerging itself in the
Divinity, and the resulting mystical union with God
through love.
In Protestant theology, since the time of the Ref- ormation, we meet great differences of opinion, which are of course to be referred to the various conceptions of the nature of justification. In entire accordance with his doctrine of justification by faith alone, Luther identified regeneration with the Divine "be- stowal of faith" {donatio fidei), and placed the bap- tized infant on the same footing as the adult, although he could give no precise explanation as to the way in which the child at its regeneration in baptism could exercise justifying faith (cf. H. Cremer, "Taufe, Wiedergeburt und Kindertaufe", 2nd ed., 1901). Against the shallow and destructive efforts of R.ation- alism, which made its appearance among the Socinians about the end of the sixteenth century and later re- ceived a mighty impulse from English Deism, the German "Enlightenment", and French Encyclope- dism, a salutary reaction was introduced by the Pietists during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Leaving far behind the old Protestant view, the Piet- ists (Spener, A. H. Francke, Zinzendorf) referred re- generation to the personal experience of justification in union with a sincere conversion to a new life, consist- ing especially in charitable activity. German Pietism, systematically cultivated by the so-called Hernhuter, exercised a beneficial effect on English Method- ism, which went about securing and strengthening regeneration in "methodical fashion", and which un- doubtedly performed good service in the revival of Christian piety. Especially those sudden conversions — -such as are even to-day striven for and highly prized in Methodist circles, the American revivals and camp meetings, the Salvation Army, and the German Gemeinschaftsbeivegung, with all its excrescences and eccentricities — are preferentially given the title of regeneration (cf. E. Wacker, "Wiedergeburt und Bekehrung", 1S93). Since Schleiermacher the variety and confusion of the views concerning the character of regeneration in learned literature have increased rather than diminished; it is indeed almost a case of everyone to his own liking. The greatest favour in Liberal and modern Positive theology is enjoyed by the
theory of Albert Ritschl, according to which the two
distinct moments of justification and reconciliation
hold the same relation to each other as forgiveness and
regeneration. As soon as resistance to God is done
away with in justification, and lack of trust in God —
or, in other words, sin — is overcome in the forgiveness
of sin, reconciliation with God and regeneration enter
into their rights, thus inaugurating a new life of
Christian activity which reveals itself in the fulfilment
of all the obligations of one's station.
Turning finally to the non-Christian use of the term, we find "regeneration" in common use in many pagan religions. In Persian Mithraism, which spread widely in the West as a religion of the soldiers and officials under the Roman Empire, persons initiated into the mysteries were designated "regenerated" (renalus). While here the word retains its ethico-religious sense, there was a complete change of meaning in religions which taught metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls (Pythagoreans, Druids, Indians), in these the reincarnation of departed souls was termed "regenera- tion". This usage has not yet entirely disappeared, as it is current among the Theosophists (cf. E. R. Hull, "Theosophy and Christianity", Bombay, 1909; and in connexion therewith "Stimmen aus Maria- Laach", 1910, 387 sqq., 479 sqq.). This view should not be confounded with the use dating from Christ Himself, who (Matt., xix, 18) speaks of the resurrec- tion of the dead on the last day as a regeneration {regeneralio) .
WiEsER, Pauli ApostoU doctrina de justificatione (Trent, 1874); StMAR, Die Theologie des hi. Paulus C2nd ed., Freiburg, 1883), §§ 33 aqq.; KiRSCHKAMP, Gnade u, Glorie in ihren inneren Zusammenhang (Wiirzburg, 1878) ; Terrien, La grdce et la gloire ou la filiation adoptive des enfants de Dieu etudiee dans sa realite, ses principes, son perfeciionnement et son couTOnnement {2 vols., Paris, 1887); Scheeben, Dogmatik, 11 (Freiburg, 1878); Heinrich-Gutberlet, Dogmatische TheoL, VIII (Mainz, 1897); Prat, La theologie de St. Paul (Beaucheane, 1907) ; Idem, Dogmatik, II (Paderborn, 1909). The beat Protestant work ia Gennrich, Die Lehre von der Wiedergeburt in dogmengeschichtL Beleuchtung (1907).
J. POHLE.
Regensburg. See Ratisbon, Diocese op.
Regesta, Papal, are the copies, generally entered in special registry volumes, of the papal letters and official documents that are kept in the papal archives; the name, further, is also used to indicate the modern publications containing such documents in chrono- logical order with careful summaries of their essen- tial contents. The beginnings of the papal Regesta probably antedate Constantine. There is, it is true, no direct proof of the making and preservation of copies of the official documents of the Roman Church in this period. The growth of the correspondence of the papal see, however, is evident even by the end of the second century, from the controversy over the celebration of Easter, and is also shown about the middle of the third century by the disorders of the Decian persecution, by the dispute concerning heret- ical baptism, and by other occasions. Moreover, it was of importance for the officials of the Roman Church to have the opportunity to inspect its earlier correspondence and to be able to use it for similar cases. For these reasons there is hardly any doubt that from a very early date a copy was made of papal documents before their dispatch, and that the collec- tion of these documents was preserved at the seat of the central administration of the Roman Church. This theory can all the more readily be accepted, as the highest officials of the Roman state administra- tion, the imperial chancery, the Senate, the consuls, the provincial governments, had all official documents entered in such volumes and preserved in the archives. The books in which these documents were entered were called commenlarii, regesia, the latter word from regerere, to inscribe. The existence of such papal Regesta can be positively proved for the fourth cen- tury and the succeeding era. In his polemic with
