Total Depravity

[Frank]

Total Depravity as the Inability to Repent and Believe

The Canons of Dort is a document that resulted from the series of meetings held by the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands in 1618–19 to address theological differences between the followers of Jacob Arminius and the followers of John Calvin. Three articles are quoted to support the definition above of total depravity.

Article 3 stated, “Therefore, all people are conceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin; without the grace of the regenerating Holy Spirit they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their distorted nature, or even to dispose themselves to such reform.” The distinction in their view is that people do not become children of wrath due to their sinful acts, but they enter the world as children of wrath. Also, sinners are unable to return to God apart from the regenerating work of the Spirit. In other words, sinners must be saved to return to God.

Article 9 stated, “The fact that many who are called through the ministry of the gospel do not come and are not brought to conversion must not be blamed on the gospel, nor on Christ, who is offered through the gospel, nor on God, who calls them through the gospel and even bestows various gifts on them, but on the people themselves who are called.” Although the confession claimed sinners cannot return to God unless they are first regenerated, article 9 blames sinners when they are not converted.

Article 14 stated, “Faith is a gift of God, not in the sense that it is offered by God for man to choose, but that it is in actual fact bestowed on man, breathed and infused into him. Nor is it a gift in the sense that God bestows only the potential to believe, but then awaits assent—the act of believing—from man’s choice; rather, it is a gift in the sense that he who works both willing and acting and, indeed, works all things in all people produces in man both the will to believe and the belief itself.” Other Christians view salvation as the gift of God and faith as the means for that salvation. The confession, however, views faith as the gift of God, which he gives to only some people. Thus, only those people who have been given a gift of faith will be saved.

The doctrine of total depravity is explained as total inability in the writings of some theologians. James Boice and Philip Ryken explained, “In this sad and pervasively sinful state we have no inclination to seek God, and therefore cannot seek him or even respond to the gospel when it is presented to us. In our unregenerate state, we do not have free will so far as ‘believing on’ or ‘receiving’ Jesus Christ as Savior is concerned.” They clarified that unbelievers “cannot” respond to the gospel by repenting and believing in Jesus when it is presented. Consistent with article 3 in the Canons of Dort, they taught that a person believes in Jesus after they are born again.

Mark DeVine wrote, “Humanity’s fall into sin results in a condition that must be described in terms of spiritual blindness and deadness and in which the will is enslaved, not free.” DeVine continued, “We need to ask whether the Arminian insistence that the work of the Holy Spirit frees the will to either repent and believe or refuse to do so does not evidence a deeper misunderstanding of the nature of depravity itself.” John Piper wrote, “Faith is the evidence of new birth, not the cause of it.”105 “Regeneration precedes faith,” R. C. Sproul explained. He added, “We do not believe in order to be born again; we are born again in order to believe.” R. Albert Mohler Jr. also affirmed that regeneration precedes faith:

In the mystery of the sovereign purposes of God and by his sheer grace and mercy alone, the Word was brought near to us. As a result, we were called, made alive, and regenerated. We then believed what we otherwise would never have been able to believe, and we grasped hold of it, knowing that it is the sole provision of our need. We came to know of our need and of God’s response and provision for us in Christ, and then we came to know of our necessary response of faith, repentance, confession, and belief.

According to these views of total depravity, spiritual blindness and deadness results in the enslavement of the human will so that people do not have the ability to repent and believe the message of the gospel unless they are first regenerated, or born again.


Adam Harwood, “A Critique of Total Depravity,” in Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique

 

[Frank]

But wait there's more, We're talking implications here.



The Implications of Total Depravity as the Inability to Repent and Believe

If total depravity as the inability to repent and believe is true, then two implications follow. First, people are able to exercise faith in Christ only if and after God gives them the gift of faith through the grace of regeneration. Second, all commands and invitations in the Bible to repent and believe can be obeyed only by people to whom God first gives faith and who are first born again by the Holy Spirit.

These implications are supported by those who affirm the doctrine. Loraine Boettner wrote, “The regeneration of the soul is something which is wrought in us, and not an act performed by us. It is an instantaneous change from spiritual death to spiritual life. It is not even a thing of which we are conscious at the moment it occurs, but rather something which lies lower than consciousness. At the moment of its occurrence the soul is as passive as was Lazarus when he was called back to life by Jesus.”

Boettner described salvation as something that occurs to a spiritually dead person. He compared the passive nature of the salvation of a spiritually dead person as analogous to the physical resuscitation of a physically dead person. Thomas J. Nettles wrote, “Regeneration of sinners is like the birth of a baby, who is actually passive in the process and comes into life as a result of the work of outside forces. The child has nothing to do with being born. Being born again, according to Jesus, is like that.” Nettles compared being born again spiritually to being born physically; in both instances, he claimed, the person is passive in the process.

Matthew Barrett clarified the reason why only some people are saved: “God promises that eternal life will be granted on the condition of faith. However, God never promises that He will bestow faith on everyone.”110 For Barrett, as well as others in this perspective, God saves only those people to whom he grants faith.


Adam Harwood, “A Critique of Total Depravity,” in Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique

 

[atpollard]

Adam Harwood, “A Critique of Total Depravity,” in Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique

SIGH ... nothing profitable EVER comes from an enemy defining your beliefs. If I wanted to know what Wesleyans believe, I would go to a Wesleyan, not a book refuting Wesleyan Teaching. Tell me, was that "critique" favorable or unfavorable? [I did not waste time reading any of it.]

 

[praise_yeshua]

I said a relatively short time…nice try, but no cigar.

That changes nothing about "short period". There is no meaningful distinction between "relatively short period" and "short period". The differences between genealogies between the extant Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek editions of Genesis/Bereshit is significant. Expand your knowledge.

Does Romans say “all, except Able, Seth and Enoch, have sinned”?

Did Paul include Abel, Seth and Enoch in "all"? There is context to these words. Timing. Details. You're not better than any Calvinist at all. Again. Like Satan, you're accusing faithful men of sin when you zero evidence they did.

Rom 3:11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
Rom 3:12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

The fact they "went out of the way" most certainly details that they were once IN THE WAY.

So this is what disagreeing with you means? I guess everyone but you is doomed. I’m going to the garden to eat worms.

Doug

I'm old enough to know the rhyme......

It is simply the Truth. You should accept the Truth.

 

[praise_yeshua]

SIGH ... nothing profitable EVER comes from an enemy defining your beliefs. If I wanted to know what Wesleyans believe, I would go to a Wesleyan, not a book refuting Wesleyan Teaching. Tell me, was that "critique" favorable or unfavorable? [I did not waste time reading any of it.]

You're too trusting. What it means to be "Wesleyan" changes.......

You should listen to Wesleyans. Just like you shouldn't listen to an Calvinist that later changes his mind. Which is every one of them.

 

[Frank]

SIGH ... nothing profitable EVER comes from an enemy defining your beliefs. If I wanted to know what Wesleyans believe, I would go to a Wesleyan, not a book refuting Wesleyan Teaching. Tell me, was that "critique" favorable or unfavorable? [I did not waste time reading any of it.]

No problem, I'm just getting started.

When Calvinists speak of total depravity, they are confessing our hell-deserving demerit and corruption before God because of our original and actual sins. We can neither erase our demerit nor do anything to merit the saving favor of God. To grasp the full implications of this truth, we must understand five things that lie at the heart of what Scripture presents total depravity to mean.


DEVIANT INIQUITY

First, total depravity is inseparable from iniquity. Total depravity is the inevitable result of our sin, and sin is the inevitable result of our total depravity. You can’t understand what total depravity is if you don’t understand what sin is. The Bible tells us, “Sin is the transgression of the law” of God (1 John 3:4). Thus, sin is any failure to conform to the moral law of God in our actions, attitudes, or nature—either by doing or being what we should not do or be (sins of commission) or by not doing or not being what we should do or be (sins of omission). Sin is unrighteousness, and all unrighteousness is anti-God. In essence, sin is all that is in opposition to God. Sin defies God; it violates His character, His law, and His covenant. It fails, as Martin Luther put it, to “let God be God.” Sin aims to dethrone God and strives to place someone or something else upon His rightful throne.

The Bible uses a variety of words for sin. Taken individually, they mean (1) to miss the mark God has established as our aim—that is, not to live to His glory; (2) to be irreligious and irreverent, which is to show the absence of righteousness; (3) to transgress the boundaries of God’s law—that is, to violate His established limits; (4) to engage in iniquity—that is, to deviate from a right course, to show a lack of integrity, or to fail to do what He has commanded; (5) to disobey and rebel against God through a breach of trust or a conscious act of treachery; (6) to commit perversion by twisting one’s mind against God; and (7) to commit abomination against God by performing acts particularly reprehensible to God.

Every life—including yours and mine—has missed its target and is irreverent by nature. Every life has transgressed the lines of God’s prohibitions and engages in iniquity. Every life has disobeyed the voice of God, has rebelled against Him, and is prone to commit perversion and abomination. Isaiah 53:6a says “all we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way,” and Romans 3:23 says that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”

Thus, total depravity means that we are lawbreakers at every turn. By nature, we never love God above all or our neighbors as ourselves. We are at “enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7), living in active, frenetic hostility toward Him, and we are “hateful, and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). We are always sinning, for our motives are never altogether pure.


Joel R. Beeke, Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism

 

[Rockson]

Did God provide an escape for Eve? Only a fool would suggest HE didn't.

2 Cor. 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Good point. If MAN today is in absolute and total corruption the way a Calvinists advocates then what is this message for us today have fear that by any means your minds should be (or become) corrupted, And if some say well that was written to only Christians then why would he warn that he can be corrupted?

 

[Rockson]

Fallen man still bears the image of God, 1 Corinthians 11:7 tells us that. Since we still bear God's image total depravity is a fallacy.

People are using the term total depravity in different ways. We can say a mechanical device not quite working right is totally useless to perform it's intended task. It doesn't mean there isn't anything about it that doesn't carry out something good.

 

[Frank]

Where the rubber meets the road. This one is by my one and only favorite Calvinist, R. C. Sproul

Total Depravity: Too Depraved to Respond to the Gospel?

The Bible teaches the total depravity of the human race. Total depravity means radical corruption. We must be careful to note the difference between total depravity and utter depravity. To be utterly depraved is to be as wicked as one could possibly be. Hitler was extremely depraved, but he could have been worse than he was. I am a sinner. Yet I could sin more often and more severely than I actually do. I am not utterly depraved, but I am totally depraved. For total depravity means that I and everyone else are depraved or corrupt in the totality of our being. There is no part of us that is left untouched by sin. Our minds, our wills, and our bodies are affected by evil. We speak sinful words, do sinful deeds, have impure thoughts. Our very bodies suffer from the ravages of sin.

Perhaps radical corruption is a better term to describe our fallen condition than “total depravity.” I am using the word radical not so much to mean “extreme,” but to lean more heavily on its original meaning. Radical comes from the Latin word for “root” or “core.” Our problem with sin is that it is rooted in the core of our being. It permeates our hearts. It is because sin is at our core and not merely at the exterior of our lives that the Bible says:

There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one. (Romans 3:10-12)

It is because of this condition that the verdict of Scripture is heard: we are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1); we are “sold under sin” (Romans 7:14); we are in “captivity to the law of sin” (Romans 7:23) and are “by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). Only by the quickening power of the Holy Spirit may we be brought out of this state of spiritual death. It is God who makes us alive as we become His craftsmanship (Ephesians 2:1-10).


R. C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith

 

[atpollard]

No problem, I'm just getting started.

I am going to let you in on a secret: I came to the conclusion that "People are no darn good" from reading the BIBLE and trying with all my might to reconcile the Wesleyan Holiness teaching that I was under as a new Christian with my personal REAL LIFE and SALVATION experience [having never heard of Dort or Calvin or any of it]. So you can stack commentaries until they reach the MOON, and I will still not be convinced that Romans 3:10-12 is not true and people are ACTUALLY "good" and people all "want to seek God" and people want to "do right" ... after all, that's why "BROAD is the ROAD that leads to Heaven and the overwhelming majority follow their GOODNESS and rush to God, while razor thin is that crack that a few bad apples fall through into eternal damnation". [Hesitations 3:16] Right?

 

[Studyman]

Adam and his descendants lived for hundreds of years before the flood.

How are you enjoying the last years of your meager life here on this earth? I'm suffering from my sins and the sins of others long before me. My brother is an epileptic. My mother died far too young from a heart deflect caused by the "fever" of her generation. That generation has caused the need for countless heart operations, artificial hearts, and etc throughout our history.

You have a rather shallow understanding of cause and effect. How about processed foods being sold the solution as to lasting hunger in this life creating endless causes of diabetics?

Feel free to elaborate.....

I bust your silly notions of Total Depravity and I become your enemy. There really isn't much of a difference between Calvinism and Arminianism. Just people trying to hold on to their idols.

Indeed, what is man without thought? A lump of blood and bones which can neither do good nor evil. It was said of the Christ that He rejected the evil and choose the good. This would be "Thoughts", Yes? Both would have to exist before a choice could be made. When God said "Thou shall not", this is undisputable proof that men have the capacity to Choose. If we were robots, or created with no free will, there would be no need for "thou shall nots". And the very creation of this Law, would gender 2 opposing thoughts to a creature with free will.

Thought #1. Do I cling to the thought from the Creator?

Thought #2. Do I consider another thought in my mind.

And here you and I are, living with the consequences of men choosing the "other voice" for centuries. Combine this with our own lust for our own thoughts, and not those "wrought in God", it makes for a pretty evil world. I love how you pointed out how men "hold on to their idols". Jesus addresses this very thing in John 3. Men love their darkness, but some men who love darkness, want it exposed so they can rule over them. These men come to the Light, for the very purpose of exposing their darkness. While the masses avoid many scriptures, some even avoid many of the "thou shall nots" of the entire Law and Prophets, to preserve and protect their darkness (idols).

Great Post.

 

[Bob Carabbio]

Genesis 6:5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Has mankind changed since then? How would that be possible?

Human beings haven't changed a bit since Adam was created. We've all had the same human nature that Adam, and Jesus had. The only DIFFERENCE was that Jesus NEVER let His lust conceive.

 

[Rockson]

So you can stack commentaries until they reach the MOON, and I will still not be convinced that Romans 3:10-12 is not true and people are ACTUALLY "good" and people all "want to seek God"

And who said that ALL want to seek God? I'm not sure anyone claims that. Do some people actually want God? Now that's a different question and Rom 3 in context was being quoted by Paul from Ps 14 where he's talking about a generation or nation of fools who say there IS NOT GOD.

Even nations in North America come across as rejecting God in educational circles.....colloquial expressions say nobody in the nation wants God anymore. Still doesn't mean nobody wants God. One must get context.

 

[Studyman]

Human beings haven't changed a bit since Adam was created. We've all had the same human nature that Adam, and Jesus had. The only DIFFERENCE was that Jesus NEVER let His lust conceive.

This is a wonderful way to make this truthful point. And another fact of this matter, is that Jesus accomplished this, clothed with the power, Armor and Wisdom of God available to every human under heaven. And this is a guarantee from God. We need only to "let this mind that was in Christ Jesus, be in us, and "Put on" the Armor God has prepared for us, and as Paul teaches, "Yield ourselves" servants to obey God, just as the Jesus of the Bible did. What was done in the past is forgotten, for those who turn from their unrighteousness. "Today" if you hear his Voice, harden not your hearts.

This is Great News, in my view.

 

[The Rogue Tomato]

Fallen man still bears the image of God, 1 Corinthians 11:7 tells us that. Since we still bear God's image total depravity is a fallacy. In the Garden, man became sinful; our DNA was effectively infected with sin, but we did not become depraved.

Mankind was made in the image of God when God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Did mankind magically change since then? If so, how does that work?

 

[Frank]

I am going to let you in on a secret: I came to the conclusion that "People are no darn good" from reading the BIBLE and trying with all my might to reconcile the Wesleyan Holiness teaching that I was under as a new Christian with my personal REAL LIFE and SALVATION experience [having never heard of Dort or Calvin or any of it]. So you can stack commentaries until they reach the MOON, and I will still not be convinced that Romans 3:10-12 is not true and people are ACTUALLY "good" and people all "want to seek God" and people want to "do right" ... after all, that's why "BROAD is the ROAD that leads to Heaven and the overwhelming majority follow their GOODNESS and rush to God, while razor thin is that crack that a few bad apples fall through into eternal damnation". [Hesitations 3:16] Right?

Fine with me, You're definitely entitled to your opinion. But you did ask me to do this/

Do me a favor and look up the definition of Total Depravity on Calvinist source

And I gave it my best shot. Looked at Total Depravity from both sides.

 

[atpollard]

Total Depravity: Too Depraved to Respond to the Gospel?

FYI ... I believe that this is TRUE, however this is NOT the "definition" of Total Depravity; this is a consequence under Calvinist Theology.

"God grants Prevenient Grace" is a consequence of Total Depravity under Wesleyan Theology.
"The Gospel contains within it the power to overcome our fallen nature" is a consequence of Total Depravity under Classic Arminianism.
"Man has within himself the innate ability to obey the law of God" is a consequence of the denial of Total Depravity under Pelagian Theology.

What part of YOU is unaffected by sin?
(if you deny Total Depravity.)

 

[praise_yeshua]

Mankind was made in the image of God when God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Did mankind magically change since then? If so, how does that work?

Was this true of Noah and the eight righteous souls?

2Pe 2:5 And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;

1Pe 3:20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

 

[praise_yeshua]

FYI ... I believe that this is TRUE, however this is NOT the "definition" of Total Depravity; this is a consequence under Calvinist Theology.

"God grants Prevenient Grace" is a consequence of Total Depravity under Wesleyan Theology.
"The Gospel contains within it the power to overcome our fallen nature" is a consequence of Total Depravity under Classic Arminianism.
"Man has within himself the innate ability to obey the law of God" is a consequence of the denial of Total Depravity under Pelagian Theology.

What part of YOU is unaffected by sin?
(if you deny Total Depravity.)

What a horribly poor method of determining a proper theology. You judge the Truth by your own preferences.

2Co 10:12 For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.

There is no requirement in a proper Christian Theology to accept the bloviating nonsense of a man as the basis of any Truth whatsoever.

 

[atpollard]

Fine with me, You're definitely entitled to your opinion. But you did ask me to do this/



And I gave it my best shot. Looked at Total Depravity from both sides.

I merely requested an accurate definition since your initial refutation suggested you had a flawed definition of the term and were rejecting "Utter Depravity" (which I reject as well and I have yet to meet the person that believes that all people are utterly demonic and incapable of any action not completely reprobate).

I am indifferent to your acceptance or rejection of Calvinism. As a Particular Baptist - I believe God is your "mother", not me, and you have "individual soul liberty" to believe whatever the heck you want.