Week 3 - Total Depravity (Part 2)

Total depravity part two

Welcome to week three in our series on the doctrines of grace. There's a notes page that will be particularly helpful, especially if you missed last week, because this is total depravity part two. So this is the first of the doctrines of grace. Last week, I introduced it and sort of more positively tried to show from scripture, well, explain this as a definition and then show where that definition comes from, how it's supported scripturally. Today we're going to spend more attention to kind of some questions, you know, what are the other views, how do they relate, and then maybe some questions some of you may be asking in response to this doctrine of total depravity. But first I want to give a little bit of review just to remind you if you were here and to bring you up to speed if you weren't. So at the top of your notes page you'll see a definition. Total depravity means that due to original sin, We are born without the ability to do any spiritual good because our corruption extends to every part of us. Okay, so in other words, total depravity is asserting something about the seriousness of original sin. All Christians agree that Adam's sin had a serious effect on us. We're born corrupted or depraved, that's called original sin. But total depravity says that this original sin or depravity is total in two main ways. First, it's total in that it extends to the totality of our being. So it affects our bodies, our minds, our hearts, and wills. And therefore, everything we do proceeds from sin and is fundamentally motivated by it. In our heart of hearts, We love sin and we hate God. And so then secondly, and which follows from that, total depravity says that our depravity is total and that it renders us totally incapable of doing any spiritual good. Now it's not saying that we can't do anything good in any sense, but that we can't please God. That apart from God's saving grace, everything we do is fundamentally driven by sin and therefore not pleasing to God. Even if it's an outwardly good thing, if it comes from false motives, it's not pleasing in the sight of God. And therefore, as regards the doctrines of grace, the crucial implication of total depravity is that we are incapable of choosing to come to Christ. Our sin is so deep that no matter how much the gospel is offered to us, we will always reject it if it was just left up to us. As Jesus says in John chapter 6 verse 44,

no one can come to me unless the father draws him.

Right, so God must initiate, God must draw, God must give us the ability to come to Jesus. That's why last time I closed with the analogy of, you know, imagine that, you know, someone's drowning in an ocean and you throw them a buoy and you cry out, grab on and be rescued, grab the buoy and be saved. But then you realize they've already drowned, right? It doesn't matter how hard you try, nothing you can say, no matter how loud you scream, it will never convince the dead man to grab the buoy. Well, total depravity is saying that that's what it's like when the gospels preached to us. Our sin is so serious, original sin goes so deep that we're dead in sin. We're unresponsive and that God must regenerate us and give us life by his spirit so that we respond in grabbing hold of Christ and being saved. So that's what we covered last time. If you missed that and you want to learn more, it was recorded so you can make use of that. Just go to the website under sermons and you should be able to find it. But today we're going to move on to some questions that you might be asking in response to that. So first of those would be, well, how might non-reformed Christians disagree? You know, maybe all this seems really convincing, but you're kind of wondering, well, what is the other side of this? Surely there's some reason that some Christians Don't agree, so what is it? Well, in your notes, I've provided a chart, and I'm going to try to explain. You'll see four things there, Pelagian, Semi-Pelagian, Arminian, and then Reformed. And I want to walk through that by kind of continuing this analogy of a drowning person to see if that kind of helps it make sense. So first, Pelagianism. As I explained last week, Pelagius denied original sin altogether. So in his view, you're not drowning in the ocean. You're walking on the beach. You don't need grace for salvation. You don't need to be rescued. You just need to be smart enough not to put yourself in the situation where you're drowning in the ocean in the first place. Just obey God, obey his law, and everything will be fine. Just see the no swimming sign, don't go in the water, you'll be fine. Well, that was condemned as heresy in the 5th century. So that's Pelagianism. Next one would be semi-Pelagianism, which emerges soon after that. And the semi-Pelagians agreed that Pelagius was wrong. They agreed that there is original sin, that we need God's grace for salvation, but they were uncomfortable with some of the things that Augustine was saying. Augustine was the main opponent who was arguing against Pelagius. They were like, yeah, Pelagianism is wrong, but Augustine just seemed to make everything depend too exclusively on grace for them. So the semi-Pelagians wanted to say that pure human willpower must contribute something. And while there's some variance in there, it seems like the main thrust of it is the idea that man must initiate. Okay, so again, it's for them, we're drowning in the ocean, we need grace, we need rescue, but we have to be the ones who initiate, right? So maybe we're the ones that are crying out to call for a rescuer to come save us, or then when the buoy is thrown to us, we're the ones that have to make the first strokes to swim toward the buoy. We have to initiate in some way and then God's grace is there to help us, to strengthen us, to enable us. But the reason this is called semi-Pelagianism is because it means that our original sin or original depravity is only partial. Even if we're 99% tainted with sin or corrupted by sin, there has to be at least some island of righteousness, some intrinsic goodness that's remaining in the human heart by which we can incline ourselves to God, seek God, respond to the offer of the gospel in and of ourselves. So that's why the chart says, well, grace is needed but it's responsive. God helps us as we receive and follow the gospel, but only after we first initiate towards him. Now, personally, I think John 644, as we already read, is a pretty strong rebuttal to semi-Pelagianism. Jesus says,

no one can come to me unless the Father draws him

, that's very clearly saying God has to initiate even in our responding to the gospel, even in coming to Christ. And actually, this may surprise some of you, semi-Pelagianism was condemned as heresy in the 6th century. So Pelagianism in the 5th century, then following that, semi-Pelagianism was also condemned as heresy at the Council of Orange in 529. Well then, let's move on to think about the third row, which is Arminian theology, Arminianism. And some of you might be thinking, wait a second, what you just described is semi-Pelagianism. Like, that sounded like Arminianism to me. And I think it's true that some people who are otherwise Arminian are also semi-Pelagian. I mean, some Arminians do believe that we're just sort of free to choose Christ to initiate. But it's important to know not all of them believe that. Arminius didn't think that. The Raimonstrans didn't think that. Wesleyan Arminians don't believe that. They would actually agree with reform that no one can come to Christ apart from the grace of God and that God must take initiative in drawing us. Okay? The difference is that instead of believing that God effectually reaches down in his grace to save us, They believe that God draws us with something called prevenient grace, which is grace that precedes, grace that goes before salvation. So it's not saving grace, it's a grace that sort of overcomes our depravity and our inability and brings us into a position where we now are sort of free and able to either accept Christ or reject him. So back to our analogy. For them, we're drowning the ocean. And for them, our depravity is so serious that we're not just of ourselves going to be calling out for salvation. In fact, even if a buoy is thrown, we're not immediately responsive. We're not innately going to respond to it. So maybe we're sort of asleep. Maybe we're sinking. Or maybe the current is too strong. We're being sort of swept away. But this is where provenient grace comes in, right? It's almost like the Holy Spirit is this current that's sort of drawing us, pushing us, enabling us, so that if we cooperate, if we go along with it, we can choose to come to the buoy and grab hold of the buoy and be saved, or we can choose not to follow. We can choose to resist and thereby be lost in sin. The Arminian view is similar to semi-Pelagianism in that ultimately, at the end of the day, it's up to us to either respond to the gospel or reject it, right? Man is the determining factor. But it's different in that they would say God must initiate, that God's grace must sort of come first, this prevenient grace must be there. But, of course, the big difference between that and The Reformed view is that God's grace is resistible, where the Reformed view is going to say, no, God's grace is effectual. And then we'll kind of double down on that point when we get to the fourth doctrine of grace, which is irresistible grace. But with respect to total depravity specifically, you'll notice in that line, the Arminian view of original depravity, I say it is total, but sort of in parentheses. Why is that? Well, first of all, it's because Armenians generally don't like that term. You know, they sort of want to distinguish themselves from reform folks and Calvinism. They don't agree with all the implications that Calvinists draw from it. But they would be able to say that, you know, our depravity is total in the sense that it extends to every part of us, that our depravity renders us without the ability to do any spiritual good, because apart from God's grace, they would agree with that much. They just have a different view of what God's grace is. But the reason that I still want to kind of put it in parentheses is because I think that the very idea that we are the determining factor in salvation kind of seems to come into an inherent conflict with sort of a full, robust view of total depravity, right? Because if we're all totally depraved and then God sends his sort of this equal, prevenient grace to kind of draw everyone, presumably equally, to draw everyone to the point where now we're sort of free to either choose or not, what is it that makes the difference? Arminian Theology wants to say it's not the grace of God that makes the difference. It's us. But if total depravity is true, why does person A acquiesce to God's prevenient grace and become saved and person B does not, right? So this is where I think there's an inherent tension in Arminian theology and part of where in some sense you could say, yes, they can agree with total depravity, but in another sense, you can always say no. The deadness is not quite the same. The view of the human will is not quite the same. I don't want to get into libertarian free will versus compatibilism tonight, but there's differences beneath the surface where it's not exactly the same, but it is perhaps more similar than we might think at first. So jumping down now finally to the reform view, well, this is going to say original depravity, it's total, in the sense I already defined. Grace is needed. Who initiates? Well, God must initiate, and then can we resist? No. Because the grace that God extends to save us is not just grace that sort of brings us from this place of total depravity to partial depravity. It doesn't just bring us from the total depravity to being kind of like the semi-Pelagian position. It brings us from total depravity to being regenerate. to having a new heart, to having a love for Christ from within. New affections are placed within us, right? So it's like we are dead in the ocean. God doesn't just sort of bring us so that now it's a free choice and we might choose against him. He brings us, so yes, in one sense it's a free choice, but it's a choice we will necessarily, definitely make. We will grab hold of that buoy. We will grab hold of Christ because of the regenerating work of the Spirit in our heart. And therefore, for the Reformed view, we would say His grace has to be effectual because sin is so serious that nothing could ever cause me to differ from another except for the grace of God. The only way that I can explain why I would choose Christ and this person wouldn't is the grace of God. And therefore, salvation is holy of the Lord. So any questions about this chart, about this first point, how do non-reformed Christians differ? Dara? That's a good question. I think I would say talk to particular Arminians to really press them on how far they're going to take the equalness, but yeah. Matt. You know, I think what I would say, I have a pretty broad category for like, I think Christians can be confused about a lot of things. So yeah, technically, it was condemned as a heresy. Clearly, this is far less clear and bad of a heresy as like Pelagianism. So there's a lot of, OK, what exactly do you mean by this? And how does that work itself out? I think you just have to ask a lot of questions. But I think in principle, yes, I think someone can hold to some version of semi-Pelagianism, but still be a Christian. Yes? I've known multiple people who have, for a time, seemed really drawn to the gospel, found, you know, asked a lot of really good questions, seemed very responsive, and then, for one reason or another, ended up just sort of, that interest dissipated. But when it was happening, it looked very much like God working in that person's heart. Yeah, great question. I think I would put that under the category of common grace. So in Reformed theology, I think everybody's going to agree that there is clearly grace of God working in non-Christians. And so how you wrestle through that, I think what's distinctive about Reformed theology is we're going to say that the person who truly comes to faith, that is an act of God's effectual saving grace. that regenerates the heart, whereas, yeah, I think there's people that it is a work of the Spirit, bringing conviction of sin, bringing some ability to understand the truth of the gospel and to consider those things, and yet the reality of their heart being opposed to God is played out in them rejecting in spite of all of that. Right. Yeah, and even within Reformed theology, there's not this idea that common grace is just universally equal. Romans 1, it talks about God giving people over. I think that's sort of God kind of taking back some grace that previously was allowing them not to be as sinful as they otherwise would be. And then God is giving them over to deeper sin because of sin. Well, in the interest of time, Brian? So we're going to Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. Great question. I sort of intentionally skipped it because I think it's complicated, and I'm just going to punt on that. Well, in the interest of time, I do want to address especially this next question. This is a natural one that probably at least some of us here are asking. Well, so if total depravity means I'm unable to do any spiritual good, why am I guilty for sinning? Well, like, if total depravity means, like, I don't even have the ability to choose to come to Christ, why would I be guilty for rejecting him? That seems unfair, unjust. How would you explain that? Okay. Yeah. Nick? Yeah. Yeah. He's the potter, we're the clay, who are we to talk back to God? I think one other, in my mind, really the crux of it is to get at this question, why is it that we're unable? What is it, you know, what does this moral inability really mean? And so I want to illustrate this. Let's imagine that there's a serial killer who's on trial. And the fact that he committed the murders is beyond dispute. But his defense is that he shouldn't be held accountable because he wasn't able to do otherwise. Right, he didn't have the ability to not do it. Well, okay, in one scenario, let's assume that someone had planted a mind control device that caused him to commit these murders. Right, well, I think we'd all agree that that might, if that was true, he may have a legitimate argument. Right, the guilt is not the same if he wasn't able to act according to his own will or desires. If he was under mind control, that changes things. But let's imagine a second scenario where he says, well, I had no choice because in my heart of hearts, I just hate people so much that I just want to kill them. And no matter how hard I try to resist it, my hatred just overwhelms me and so I murder them. would that kind of inability reduce his culpability? Would you feel any more sorry for him? Would you be offended at a judge that sentenced him for murder based on that kind of defense? Well, of course not. Because the fact that he hates people so much that he can't even restrain himself from murdering them, That's like the definition of culpability, right? That doesn't reduce it. It just shows us that he's acting in perfect consistency with his true nature. The fact that he can't even do otherwise just helps us see how bad what he's doing really is, how bad he is. And the point is, when we say that total depravity results in moral inability, it's like the second scenario, not the first. The point is not that there's some sort of external restraint where there's people who just in their heart of hearts want to come to Christ but are being restrained by something outside of them or some superficial reason. It's that in their heart of hearts, they don't want to come to Christ. They don't love God. They love sin. They are making the most genuine, sincere decision when they reject it. And total depravity is saying that that's how deep sin goes, so much that we can't come to Christ because of our hatred within. And therefore, it doesn't reduce culpability. It's not saying, since I can't come to Christ, well, therefore, it's God's fault. Therefore, it's somebody else's fault. Therefore, I'm not responsible for my choice. It's saying that, no, we make a real choice. But the choice that we always make is to reject him because that's what our hearts are like. It's kind of like with Joseph's brothers, right, where the Bible says