| Total Depravity |
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| Written by David Lawrence |
| Saturday, August 14 2010 12:35 |
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The doctrine of total depravity conveys the idea that sin has so totally and completely permeated the human soul, body, will, heart, and mind that a person is rendered unable to achieve a right relationship with God. He is unable to perform the works incumbent on him by the covenant of works made in the garden of Eden with mankind’s federal head, Adam, nor is he able to come to Christ and find pardon the finished atoning work of the Son of God. He has lost all spiritual ability and is bankrupt before God, without resources for setting his life aright. The doctrine of total depravity is not the doctrine of utter depravity. That would imply that man is utterly and completely unable to do anything at all good. This idea could not be true, for we find many unbelievers who do good works that benefit mankind. Yet they are not saved by these good works, for they do not believe in Christ. They could not obey the covenant of works, for that covenant includes honoring God by obedience to Him, and faith in Christ is a command. The difference between total depravity and utter depravity is well illustrated by a comment made once by the late Dr. John Gerstner in a theology conference: “Man is not so utterly depraved that there is never some room for deprovement!” How do unbelievers do good works? Theologians point out that God is the author of all good. He must equip man to do good or he will not do it. If God gives up on man entirely, then he will be left to his own devices and commit egregious sins, as Paul discusses in Romans 1. Thus we speak of common grace, a doctrine resulting not only from natural observation but from Jesus’ affirmation that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. Perhaps a better term than total depravity is radical fallenness, but however we construct the terminology, it is true that man or woman prior to the action of regeneration is unable to come to Christ. Paul said that without the Holy Spirit a person would not accept the things of God and that he cannot understand them (1 Cor. 2:14). He described the condition of man as so bad that “there is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God…there is no one who does good, not even one!” (Rom. 3:11-12). Jeremiah said that the human heart is “deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jer. 17:9). Moses wrote that “every inclination of man’s heart is only evil from childhood” (Gen. 8:21). Paul told the Corinthians that “the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:4). He wrote to the Romans that “the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so” (Rom. 8:7-8). Jesus said that “no man can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…enables him” (John 6:44, 65). Isaiah wrote, “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear” (Isa. 59:2). Jesus said that no one is good except God (Mark 10:18). Paul says we were God’s enemies before our reconciliation (Rom. 5:10), and his description of unregenerate man is quite clear in Eph. 2:1-4, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of the world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.” Truly, we were dead men walking! Except for Pelagians, who were declared heretical by the early church, no Christians believed otherwise for centuries. It was only when the Enlightenment occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth century that liberal scholars in France, England, and Germany began to see the doctrine of man’s radical fallenness as false. They constructed a veritable religion around the idea that man could change the world himself through following their enlightened agenda, through human reason, without divine grace, without God. Their influence spread into major Protestant denominations who re-wrote their creeds. One historian said that no single event in all the history of the church made such a significant difference as the change in theology from the belief in the fall of man (original sin) to the belief in the innate goodness of man. Many theologians have observed that most modern heresies and errors spring from this faulty understanding of the natural condition of man; some have even said that ALL of them do. Nothing could be of greater and more critical importance to the Christian faith. The question of the essential state of man MUST be answered and answered correctly if one could possibly pursue theology and the path to God accurately!!! (For further study on this subject we recommend Danny Hale’s audio series The Doctrines of Grace. You may listen to this series under "Audio" and then "Study Series".) |