I may take up my home in a hen-coop, but that wouldn’t make me a hen.

 Peter,

How one becomes a chicken isn’t the farmyard’s only concern. I’m asking whether there are two distinct species of chicken in the coop: the ordinary natural chicken and the Christian "new creation" chicken. Does joining the new flock transform the individual ordinary chicken, or does the individual "hatched again" transformation enable the ordinary chicken to participate in the new flock? This sort of chicken-and-egg distinction is not my focus. I want to understand what difference there is between ordinary and new chickens, both individually and collectively. That you insist on focusing exclusively on whether the chicken or the egg comes first suggests to me that you are having difficulty seeing the forest for the trees.