Theological Ramblings

As usual I apologize for my long drought of posting, and call on my typical excuse of busyness. Though I do have to say that on my list of priorities this blog is not very high. I certainly enjoy posting here, though there are a myriad of other responsibilities and distractions which can and have squelched my time for posting. Thank you for bearing with me.

Today I want to examine the doctrine of Total Depravity. I first want to state its importance. It is vital doctrine to believe for Calvinism, but it is also a crucial doctrine for the whole of Christianity. Much of the foundation of what we believe rests upon the truth of Total Depravity.

Briefly, Total Depravity (also called total inability) states that when Adam fell, all of mankind as a whole fell. The punishment for this fall is death, as God had warned Adam prior to the fall. This death takes place in three stages. Physical death is the end of our time on this planet. Eternal death is the unending punishment for our sinful state. Spiritual death is the depravity in which we find ourselves. Each man1 is spiritually stillborn. What is the nature of this death?

Ephesians 2:1-5: Spiritual Stillbirth

[1] And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
[2] in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience–
[3] 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.
[4] But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
[5] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved–

Paul tells us in this passage that in our depravity we:

• are Spiritually Dead
• Live in sin
• Are by nature children of wrath

From this passage we conclude that our nature is set against God from the start. We are intrinsically resistant to his work in our lives, and want nothing to do with him. Of course, this bears itself out in myriads of anecdotal evidence. People all over the world are dreadfully antagonistic to God. This is a result of the dead state in which our spirit lies.

Romans 3:10ff

[10] as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;
[11] no one understands; no one seeks for God.
[12] All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
[13] “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.”
[14] “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
[15] “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
[16] in their paths are ruin and misery,
[17] and the way of peace they have not known.”
[18] “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Paul points out here that men are thoroughly sinful - a result of our dead state. We live lives that do not honor God, but rather seek our own interests. Of course we are all familiar with Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

By this point you are most likely not disagreeing with anything I have said. This is good. These are foundational truths to the Gospel. We are all sinners. That’s part one of the 4 step Gospel presentation. But while I have you nodding your head, let me shift gears on your really quickly. This doctrine is not only foundational for Christianity, but also for Calvinism, because all four of Calvin’s other doctrines, while having good exegetical founding in the Scripture, are also logical followings from this one pivotal truth. So we must examine this doctrine carefully, because the standing or falling of Calvinism depends on the truth or error of its foundation - depravity.

The first thing I would like to point out is back in Ephesians. The language here is important. There are three Greek words used in the New Testament for dead. Teleutao means “to finish life, expire”. Thne sko means “to die, to be dead”. While the word used in Ephesians 2 is nekros, which is the word for corpse, from which we get the word necromancy (a form of witchcraft involving the dead). The StudyLight.org New Testament Greek Lexicon2 provides the following definition of nekros:

1. properly (how it’s used/defined)
   1. one that has breathed his last, lifeless
   2. deceased, departed, one whose soul is in heaven or hell
   3. destitute of life, without life, inanimate
2. metaph. (metaphysically: what is is/means)
   1. spiritually dead
      1. destitute of a life that recognises and is devoted to God, because given up to trespasses and sins
      2. inactive as respects doing right
   2. destitute of force or power, inactive, inoperative

I, of course, added the emphasis and the words in the italics. I wanted to call special attention to the second metaphysical definition here. Perhaps we should define this word ‘destitute’. The second definition listed on Dictionary.com3 is “deprived of, devoid of, or lacking”, meaning that the one in a nekros state has a complete lack of force or power. In other words, a corpse can’t move. Dead men don’t do anything. Paul tells us that we are corpses before we are made new. Recall briefly with me how Jesus tapped into this imagery when he was speaking with Nicodemus, “You must be born again”. Paul tells us that we are corpses, but then proceeds to tell us that we walk in this world, and satisfy our desires, which are not things characteristic of a physical corpse. This leads us to the conclusion that Paul is speaking of the spirit here.

Before Christ our spirit is nekros. This means that our spirit has no force or power to do anything. This is where the alternative term for this doctrine (Total Inability) becomes most apt. Before our salvation, we are dead. Therefore we are totally unable to do anything spiritually. This includes responding positively in any way to God’s call. This is why the Calvinist strongly rebells against the notion that we must in our own free will make a choice to place our trust in God for our salvation, because the Calvinist knows that were that the case, none of us would be saved. It is simply not possible for our nekros spirit.

Now, stop. I know your objections already. Save them. I will address them when I get to Limited Atonement. You’re going to say that Christ’s death provided this life for us. ‘But of course’, I reply. For whom did Christ die? That is a discussion for another post. Please stay tuned.

Our Imputed Sin
In the meantime I have another observation about our sinful state. It comes from Romans 5:12-14

[12] Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned–
[13] for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.
[14] Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

Follow Paul’s logic here:

• Adam’s sin introduced death into the world as the punishment for sin.
• Death spread because sin spread
• Sin doesn’t count where there is no law
• There was no law between Adam and Moses
• There was death between Adam and Moses
• For what sin were those who died between Adam and Moses dying?

The logical conclusion, what Paul’s trying to get at here, is that those who died between Adam and Moses (and by implication all who have ever lived and died) have died for Adam’s sin. In other words, Adam sinned. Death entered the world. Death spread, because we all sinned in Adam.

There are several ways of looking at this idea of Original Sin, of course. The Arminian view denies that we receive sin at all from Adam - that we incur sin on our own by our own sinful actions. The Calvinistic views run from saying that we inherit sin indirectly from Adam when we inherit it directly from our parents. Another view states that Adam was our proxy or legal representative at the fall (Federal Headship), while the third (the one I hold) states that we were somehow metaphysically present and taking part in the action when Adam fell. But whichever of the three Calvinistic views are true (it could be all of them), they boil down to the same conclusion: If I am born and never perform a sinful action, living a completely holy life and die I will go to hell forever because Adam fell. This is the truth of Scripture.

This bears itself out in Paul’s logical argument here. John Piper observed in his sermon on this passage that later in this chapter, Paul is obviously drawing a parallel between Adam and Christ, but in verse 12 he appears to cut himself short. Piper claims that this is because Paul doesn’t want people to be confused by what he says. Here’s what Piper had to say4:

(Paul) has just said that through one man… sin entered the world of mankind, and through sin death… He says, “because all sinned.” Does this mean “because all sinned in Adam”?… What’s at stake here is the whole comparison between Christ and Adam… Let me try to illustrate… If you say, “Through one man sin and death entered the world and death spread to everybody because all sinned individually,” then the comparison with the work of Jesus could be, “So also through one man, Jesus Christ, righteousness and life entered the world and life spread to all because all individually did acts of righteousness.”

This is not the parallel Paul wants us to see! He wants to compare the imputation of sin to us from Adam to the imputation of righteousness to us from Christ. We know it is surely not the case that we are made alive by our own works. It’s impossible. See my definition of death! Paul instead wants us to marvel at the underservingness of our salvation! We did nothing to obtain it! I find this argument intrinsically compelling.

You may object that it is not fair for us to receive imputed sin when we were not willing participants in the fall. You may say, “Were I there in Adam’s place, I would not have been so foolish as to allow this to happen.” My first response is to remind you that you are not the one who is in the place to question God’s justice. My second response is to point out that your arguments bears nothing upon the truth of the matter. The truth of Original Sin. The truth of Imputed sin. The truth of our depravity and inability is clearly spelled out in Scripture. Were we not deprave and unable to save ourselves, then we could have been saved by the Law. We would not need Christ. But we do, because in Adam we are sinners. Neither your opinion on the matter nor its offenses to your sensibilities do anything to alter this irrefutable truth.

What does depravity not mean?
Many are confused by this. They think that when the Calvinist says that we are totally deprave he means that we are all as evil as we possibly could be. This is not the case. Many depraved sinners do wonderfully good things - though they are mainly done from selfish motives, and are thus sin. Depravity makes no statement about whether mankind can “act good”, just about his metaphysical nature and the fact that we are existentially evil.

1. Peter Kreeft states in his book, Philosophy 101 by Socrates, “‘Man’ means ‘mankind’ not ‘males’. It is traditional inclusive language. ‘Humanity’ does not go with ‘God’ (’God and humanity’) because ‘God’ and ‘man’ are concrete nouns, like ‘dog’ and ‘cat’, while ‘divinity’ and ‘humanity’ are abstract nouns, like ‘canininity’ and ‘felinity’ or ‘dogginess’ and ‘cattiness’. Whatever political or psychological uses or misuses of these words, that is what they mean. We do not undo old injustices against women by doing new injustices against language.” I emphatically agree with his statement.
2. http://www.studylight.org/lex/grk/view.cgi?number=3498
3. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/destitute?r=75
4. http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByScripture/10/22_Adam_Christ_and_Justification_Part_2/