Everything about Total Depravity totally explained
Total depravity (also called
total inability and
total corruption) is a
theological doctrine that derives from the
Augustinian doctrine of
original sin and is advocated in many Protestant confessions of faith and catechisms, including those of
Lutheranism,
Anglicanism and
Methodism,
Arminianism, and
Calvinism. It is the teaching that, as a consequence of the
Fall of Man, every person born into the world is enslaved to the service of
sin and, apart from the
efficacious or
prevenient grace of God, is utterly unable to choose to follow
God or choose to accept
salvation as it's freely offered.
Summary of the doctrine
Total depravity is the fallen state of man as a result of
Original Sin. The doctrine of total depravity asserts that people are by nature not inclined to love
God wholly with heart, mind, and strength, as God requires, but rather all are inclined to
serve their own interests over those of their neighbor and to reject the rule of God. Even religion and philanthropy are destructive to the extent that these originate from a human imagination, passions, and will. Therefore, in
Reformed Theology, God must
predestine individuals into salvation since man is incapable of choosing God.
Total depravity doesn't mean, however, that people are as evil as possible. Rather, it means that even the good which a person may intend is faulty in its premise, false in its motive, and weak in its implementation; and there's no mere refinement of natural capacities that can correct this condition. Thus, even acts of generosity and altruism are in fact
egoist acts in disguise.
Nonetheless, the doctrine teaches optimism concerning God's love for what he's made and God's ability to accomplish the ultimate good that he intends for his creation. In particular, in the process of
salvation, God overcomes man's inability with his
divine grace and enables men and women to choose to follow him, though the precise means of this overcoming varies between the theological systems. The differences between the solutions to the problem of total depravity revolve around the relation between divine grace and human
free will – namely, whether it's
efficacious grace that human free will can't resist, as in Augustinism, or sufficient or
prevenient grace enabling the human will to choose to follow God, as in
Molinism and
Arminianism.
Biblical support for the doctrine
A number of passages are put forth to support the doctrine, including (quotations are from the
ESV except where noted):
- Genesis 6:5: "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."
- Psalms 51:5: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me."
- Ecclesiastes 7:20: "Surely there isn't a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins."
- Ecclesiastes 9:3: "This is an evil in all that's done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead."
- Jeremiah 17:9: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"
- Jeremiah 13:23: (NIV): "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil."
- Mark 7:21-23: "For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."
- John 3:19: "And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil."
- John 6:44: "[Jesussaid,] 'No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I'll raise him up on the last day.'"
- John 6:64-65: "[Jesussaid,] 'But there are some of you who don't believe.' (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who didn't believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, 'This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it's granted him by the Father.'"
- John 8:34: "Jesus answered them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.'"
- Romans 3:10-11: "None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God."
- Romans 8:7-8: "For the mind that's set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it doesn't submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh can't please God."
- 1 Corinthians 2:14: "The natural person doesn't accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they're folly to him, and he isn't able to understand them because they're spiritually discerned."
- Ephesians 2:1-3: "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that's now at work in the sons of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."
- Titus 3:3: "For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another."
Objections to the doctrine
There are many
Christian groups that disagree with this interpretation of the
Bible and of Augustine.
Writing against the
monk Pelagius, who argued that man's nature was unaffected by the Fall and that he was free to follow after God apart from divine intervention, Augustine developed the doctrine of
original sin and, Protestants contend, the doctrine of total inability. Augustine's views prevailed in the controversy, and Pelagius' teaching was condemned as heretical at the
Council of Ephesus (431) and again condemned in the moderated form known as
semi-Pelagianism at the second
Council of Orange (529). Augustine's idea of "original" (or inherited) guilt wasn't shared by all of his contemporaries in the
Greek-speaking part of the church and is still not shared in
Eastern Orthodoxy. Also, some modern day Protestants who generally accept the teaching of the early
ecumenical councils (for instance, followers of
Charles Finney) nevertheless align themselves more with Pelagius than with Augustine regarding man's fallen nature.
Catholicism registers a complaint against the
Protestant interpretation of Augustine and judgements of the Council of Orange, and they claim that they alone have been faithful to the principles taught by Augustine against the Pelagians and Semipelagians, though they freely admit to some "gradual mitigation" of the force of his teaching. Their doctrine, according to the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, is that "By our first parents' sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though
man remains free." At the
Council of Trent they condemn "any one [who] saith, that, since Adam's sin, the
free will of man is lost and extinguished; or, that it's a thing with only a name." Thus, in the Catholic view, man isn't
totally unable to follow God apart from divine influence. The
Jansenist movement within Catholicism held a very similar interpretation of Augustine compared to the Protestants, and the Jansenist view of man's inability, the necessity and efficacy of divine grace ("efficacious grace"), and election was quite close to that of Augustinism but was condemned as heretical by the Church.
The doctrine of total depravity was affirmed by the
Five articles of Remonstrance and by
Jacobus Arminius himself, and John Wesley, who strongly identified with Arminius through publication of his periodical
The Arminian, also advocated a strong doctrine of inability. The term
Arminianism has also come to include some who hold the
Semipelagian doctrine of
limited depravity, which allows for an "island of righteousness" in human hearts that's uncorrupted by sin and able to accept God's offer of salvation without a special dispensation of grace. Although Arminius and Wesley both vehemently rejected this view, it has sometimes inaccurately been lumped together with theirs (particularly by Calvinists) because of other similarities in their respective systems such as
conditional election,
unlimited atonement, and
prevenient grace.
Some oppose the doctrine because they believe it implicitly rejects either God's love or omnipotence. That is, it's posited that if God is loving and omnipotent, then either he wouldn't have allowed mankind to become totally corrupt or he'd have immediately restored humanity to its original state. Thus, the argument goes, if the doctrine of total inability is correct, God must either be not loving or not omnipotent. Advocates of total depravity offer a variety of responses to this line of argumentation. Wesleyans suggest that God endowed man with the free will that allowed humanity to become depraved and he also provided a means of escape from the depravity. Calvinists note that the argument assumes that either God's love is necessarily incompatible with corruption or that God is constrained to follow the path that some men see as best, whereas they believe God's plans are not fully known to man and God's reasons are his own and not for man to question (compare
Rom. 9:18-24
;
Job 38:1-42:6). Some particularly dislike the Calvinist response because it leaves the matter of God's motives and means largely unresolved, but the Calvinist sees it merely as following
Calvin's famous dictum that "whenever the Lord shuts his sacred mouth, [thestudent of the Bible] also desists from inquiry."
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