Total Depravity
Total Depravity
By
Daron Alleman
The Arminian followers presented their five articles of faith to the state of Holland. The year was 1610, just one year after the death of James Arminius (A Dutch seminary professor). The “Remonstrance” (i.e. a protest) objected to the Church of Holland’s position related to divine sovereignty, human inability, predestination, particular redemption, and the perseverance of the saints. A national Synod was called to meet in Dort in 1618 to examine the views of Arminius in the light of Scripture. What resulted has commonly been called The Five Points of Calvinism. They are Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. The acronym T.U.L.I.P. is often used to help remember these points. Over the next five months we are going to examine each of them. Our topic for today is Total Depravity (a.k.a. Total Inability). Here is a comparison of each view.
Arminianism
1. Free will or Human Ability
Although human nature was seriously affected by the Fall, man has not been left in a state of total spiritual helplessness. God graciously enables every sinner to repent and believe, but He does so in such a manner as not to interfere with man’s freedom. Each sinner possesses a free will, and his eternal destiny depends on how he uses it. Man’s freedom consists of his ability to choose good over evil in spiritual matters. His will is not enslaved to his sinful nature. The sinner has the power either to cooperate with God’s Spirit and be regenerated or to resist God’s grace and perish. The lost sinner needs the Spirit’s assistance, but he does not have to be regenerated by the Spirit before he can believe, for faith is man’s act and precedes the new birth. Faith is the sinner’s gift to God; it is man’s contribution to salvation.
Calvinism
1. Total Inability or Total Depravity
Because of the Fall, man is unable of himself to savingly believe the gospel. The sinner is dead, blind, and deaf to the things of God; his heart is deceitful and desperately corrupt. His will is not free; It is in bondage to his evil nature. Therefore, he will not – indeed, he cannot – choose good over evil in the spiritual realm. Consequently, it takes much more than the Spirit’s assistance to bring a sinner to Christ. It takes regeneration, by which the Spirit makes the sinner alive and gives him a new nature. Faith is not something man contributes to salvation, but is itself a part of God’s gift of salvation. It is God’s gift to the sinner, not the sinner’s gift to God.
When the Reformers speak of Total Depravity what do they mean? Man was created in the image of God. Though sin has spoiled that image, even non – Christians are capable of rising to great heights of human goodness, honesty, decency, and excellence. However, as a result of Adam’s fall all men are born in corruption. Gods Word says, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5). Because of this inborn corruption man is totally unable to do anything spiritually good. In Isaiah 64:6 we read, “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all of our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment.” Thus Calvinists speak of mans “Total Inability”. The inability intended by this terminology is spiritual inability (i.e. spiritual death). In other words, spiritual death is a total inability to love God with our whole heart, a total inability to fully obey God and His laws, and a total inability to please God. The word total also refers to the extent of mans sinfulness, not the degree to which we manifest it. It means evil has contaminated every aspect of our being – our wills, our intellect, our emotions, our conscience, our personality, and our desires. In biblical terminology, sin has totally corrupted the human heart. Genesis 6:5 says, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” In Jeremiah 17:9 God says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
As we have seen in the two previous articles, the Synod of Dort was not the first time theologians wrestled with these anthropological issues. Pelagius and Augustine were born in 354 A.D., the same year. That is all they had in common, and their debate is a matter of historical record. Pelagius said, “If I ought, I can”. If I were to sum up Augustine’s theology it would be, “I must, but can’t, God help me! And to God be all Glory”. John Cassian (360 A.D. – 435 A.D.) attempted to find a middle ground taking his theology from both Pelagius and Augustine. His views became known as Semi – Pelagianism, and it essentially taught that man can cooperate with God to affect his own salvation. I would summarize his theology as, “I ought, and can, If I am willing with God’s assistance”. The battle flares up again in the sixteenth century between Erasmus and Luther. In his book “The Diatribe” Erasmus brings forth his Semi – Pelagian views by saying, “ ‘if thou art willing to keep’ indicates that there is a will in man to keep or not to keep”. Luther thundered back in his book The Bondage of the Will saying, “Why should not this conclusion follow rather: therefore, God is trying us, that by His law He may bring us to a knowledge of our impotence.” The Apostle Paul echo’s a similar theme as he battled with the Judaizers in Galatians 3:24 when he states the law is a tutor designed to lead us to Christ. Centuries later a young upstart by the name of Charles Spurgeon would add his two cents to the dialogue. In a sermon entitled Free Will a Slave he says, “We will, however, refer to the great doctrine of the fall. Anyone who believes that man’s will is entirely free, and that he can be saved by it, does not believe the fall. As I sometimes tell you, few preachers of religion do believe thoroughly the doctrine of the fall, or else they think that when Adam fell down he broke his little finger, and did not break his neck and ruin his race”. Spurgeon goes on to say, “Your fallen nature was put out of order; your will, amongst other things, has clean gone astray from God. But I tell you what will be the best proof of that; it is the great fact that you never did meet a Christian in your life who ever said he came to Christ without Christ coming to him. You have heard a great many Arminian sermons, I dare say; but you never heard an Arminian prayer – for the saints in prayer appear as one in word, and deed and mind. An Arminian on his knees would pray desperately like a Calvinist. He cannot pray about free – will; there is no room for it. Fancy him praying, ‘Lord, I thank thee I am not like those poor presumptuous Calvinists. Lord, I was born with a glorious free – will; I was born with power by which I can turn to thee of myself; I have improved my grace. If everybody had done the same with their grace that I have, they might all have been saved. Lord, I know thou dost not make us willing if we are not willing ourselves. Thou givest grace to everybody; some do not improve it, but I do. There are many that will go to hell as much bought with the blood of Christ as I was; they were as much blessed as I am. It was not thy grace that made us to differ; I know it did a great deal, still I turned the point; I made use of what was given me, and others did not – that is the difference between me and them”. Spurgeon then says, “That is a prayer for the devil, for nobody else would offer such a prayer as that”.
And so we can see where, and from whom, Arminian followers were drawing their doctrine when they drafted point one of the Remonstrance. It reads as follows;
1. Man is never so completely corrupted by sin that he cannot savingly believe the gospel when it is put before him.
Is that what the Scriptures teach? For in the final analysis Gods Word will stand. The Arminian teaching pictures man as wounded, or really sick, but he still has the ability to decide for Christ. The reformers took a more serious view of the fall, and taught that man is dead as a result of Adam’s sin (Romans 5:12). As a result, man is born with an inability to do anything in a saving sense for himself. Jeremiah 13:23 says, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.” To be saved, man must be born again (John 3:3). And as our physical birth was the result of a decision outside of ourselves, so is our spiritual birth. It is the result of a decision made by God alone before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4). How was that decision made? You’re just going to have to come back next month and see.