TOTAL DEPRAVITY EXPLAINED
Accordingto Reformed Theology, irresistible grace always leads to regeneration. If God does not irresistibly call you to regeneration in particular and salvation in general, you are inevitably and irreversibly headed for damnation. If such is the case, regeneration is simply not in the divine cards that God has dealt you. As we read in the previous chapter Sproul correctly says:
Most Christians agree that God’s work of regeneration is a work of grace. The issue that divides us is whether or not this grace is irresistible .375
While this is not the only issue that divides Calvinists from nonCalvinist Evangelicals, it is certainly one of the more important differences. White says:
... that “irresistible grace” is a reference to God’s regeneration of His elect: any other use of the phrase is in error.376 More typical of Calvinists, and with John 1:13 in mind, Van Baren says:
It is by the irresistible grace of God that one is born again.377
Regeneration is also usually considered in connection with the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity, or the first point of Calvinism. Millard J. Erickson explains:
Calvinists . have insisted if all persons are truly sinners, totally depraved and incapable of responding to God’s grace, no one can be converted unless first regenerated ...378
Calvinists argue that man is not free to accept the salvation offered in the gospel, except as an inevitable and irresistible consequence of being chosen by God in the first place. In Calvinism, this non-freedom of man to accept the eternal life offered in a gospel proclamation is normally, if not primarily, understood in relation to the fall of man and its consequences. This is the primary implication of a Calvinist view of total depravity.
What the Calvinist means by this term, as with other distinctives of Calvinism, is often misunderstood by outsiders. For example, in the article “Resurgent Calvinism Renews Debate Over Chance for Heaven,” the author incorrectly equates the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity with the biblical truth that ... all have sinned. As long as Christians erroneously assume that the Calvinist distinctive of total depravity is simply that all have sinned, they will continue to think erroneously that they believe in or agree with the first point of Calvinism.
All Evangelical Christians agree with the scriptural affirmation that all have sinned. Relatively few agree with what the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity actually means. Christianity Today, in the article “Calvinism Resurging Among the SBC’s [Southern Baptist Convention’s] Young Elites,” gets it right when representing the Reformed view on total depravity. The author of this article accurately represents the Calvinist view when he says that total depravity means:
People are spiritually dead and therefore unable to respond to God’s offer of salvation unless He first regenerates them.379 The main thrust of the first point of Calvinism involves the relationship of faith to regeneration. In Calvinism, regeneration is the immediate cause of faith, or said another way, faith is the immediate effect of regeneration. As stated earlier, according to Calvinism, God, through regeneration, makes you believe and thus makes you a believer. Though some Calvinists do not like the sound of this, Palmer concedes that the position of Calvinism is that God:
... makes me, who did not really want Jesus, want to love Him and believe in Him.380
You do not and cannot believe to be born again, according to Reformed Theology. You must be born again to believe. You will believe when and because you are born again. In Calvinism, regeneration always comes before faith and faith always follows regeneration. You cannot have the latter without the former and you cannot have the former without the latter. And as already noted, the key to understanding this point is found in the relationship and logical order of faith to regeneration. Piper represents all Calvinists when he says:
We believe that the new birth is a miraculous creation of God that enables a formerly “dead” person to receive Christ and so be saved.
We do not think that faith precedes ... the new birth. Faith is the evidence that God has begotten us anew. ... God begets us anew and the first glimmer of life in the newborn child is faith. This new birth is the effect of irresistible grace, because it is an act of sovereign creation.381 MacArthur reasons that:
... Regeneration logically must initiate faith.382
He also says: The unregenerate do not accept the things of the Spirit of God; spiritual things are foolishness to them. They cannot even begin to understand them, much less believe (1 Corinthians 2:14). Only God can open the heart and initiate faith (cf. Acts 13:48; Acts 16:14; Acts 18:27).383 Not only so, says MacArthur, but:
... Genuine faith ... is granted by God ... faith is a supernatural gift of God ... it seems that what Paul had in mind [in Ephesians 2:8-9] was the entire process of grace, faith, and salvation as the gift of God . faith is not something that is conjured up by the human will but is a sovereignly granted gift of God. (cf. Php 1:29) ... The faith that God begets includes both the volition and the ability to comply with His will (cf. Php 2:13).384
While I am certain that MacArthur will not concede the following and will even attempt to deny this, in effect he is saying:
Man is not really responsible for faith or unbelief.
And:
God is really the one who actually believes in His Son.
Sproul says:
Regeneration is not the fruit or result of faith. Rather, regeneration precedes faith as the necessary condition for faith. We also do not in any way dispose ourselves toward regeneration or cooperate as co-workers with the Holy Spirit to bring it to pass. We do not decide or choose to be regenerated. To be sure, after we have been regenerated by the sovereign grace of God, we do choose, act, cooperate, and believe in Christ.385 In Calvinism, faith is not really a condition for salvation. Rather, regeneration is a pre-condition for faith, which in turn is a consequence of irresistible grace, which is a consequence of unconditional election, and so on. R. Allan Killen says:
Reformed theologians ... place regeneration before faith, pointing out that the Holy Spirit must bring new life before the sinner can by God’s enabling exercise faith and accept Jesus Christ.386 Sproul says that: A cardinal point of Reformed theology is the maxim: “Regeneration precedes faith.”387 FROM DEATH TO LIFE WITHOUT FAITH IN CHRIST The point is this—you go from death to life without placing faith in Christ. Faith in Christ, from a Calvinist perspective, comes with that life but is neither needed nor possible before that life begins. Sproul speaks for all five points of Calvinism when he says: In regeneration, God changes our hearts. He gives us a new disposition, a new inclination. He plants a desire for Christ in our hearts. We can never trust Christ for our salvation unless we first desire Him. This is why we said earlier that regeneration precedes faith.iSS Sproul also says: The Reformed view of predestination teaches that before a person can choose Christ his heart must be changed. He must be born again ... one does not first believe, then become reborn .. ,389 Spencer explains:
... The living human spirit which is “born of God” finds the living God wholly irresistible, just as a dead human spirit finds the god (Satan) of the dead irresistible. ... It is the gift of the New Nature, which makes us find Jesus Christ absolutely “irresistible.” A hog, because of its very nature, loves to wallow in the muck and mire, while a lamb, because of its nature, disdains mud wallowing.
“Dead in trespasses and sins,” the unregenerate wallow in sin and unbelief because it is their nature to do so. Yet, when God gives His elect, who are the direct objects of His love, a “new nature,” the old things pass away and all things become new! The new nature, which is a living human spirit, a new creation in Christ, finds God as irresistible as his formerly “dead” human spirit once found the devil “irresistible.”390
Irresistible regeneration is simply a logical extension of unconditional election (second point of Calvinism) and irresistible grace (fourth point of Calvinism). As with unconditional election and irresistible grace, irresistible regeneration also has a flip side, or what I have been calling the dark side. That is, just as the elect will be born again and have no say in the matter, so the non-elect or the reprobate will not be born again and have no say in the matter. When, therefore, the Evangelist says to the reprobate lost person you must be born again if you are to see or enter the kingdom, he is only telling him what would irresistibly happen to him if he were one of the elect.
Most Calvinists believe that those who can’t be born again, nevertheless, should be born again. In other words, hypo-Calvinists believe the reprobate ought to do what they can t do. They seem to think the rest of us are “stupid” for suggesting that ought implies can. Surprisingly, most Calvinists do not seem to see any problem with the view that says a person cannot do what they ought to do. Some will reason that it is because those in the reprobate caste are depraved and their depravity is their own fault. Those who argue this way do not seem to concern themselves with the fact that Calvinism teaches that the fall of man, which resulted in the depravity of man, as well as the eternal caste system they were born into, was not only allowed by God but also caused by God through His decree.
Calvinistically speaking, to appeal to the reprobate to be born again is like pouring water on a duck’s back. Those who do not become born again, after we proclaim you must be born again, are no more responsible for not being born again than the duck is for what happens to the water that rolls so quickly off its back. Conversely, when we tell a member of the elect (but still lost) community that they must be born again, we are only telling him what will happen eventually and unavoidably. This cannot, from a Calvinist point of view, be considered a meaningful appeal to him to be born again. Rather, it is a simple statement of fact of what will eventually and inevitably happen to him.
Moreover, if the one being appealed to is not among the elect lost, he does not have, cannot have, and is not supposed to have the capacity to believe in Christ. Left alone, I would agree that lost and sinful man is not naturally reaching out to God. I would even agree that without God’s gracious help (i.e., the Father must draw, the Spirit must convict, etc.), the unregenerate would not come to Christ in faith. However, in light of so much in Scripture that says otherwise, how can the Calvinist say that the unregenerate cannot believe the gospel unless he first becomes regenerate? Packer speaks for all Calvinists when he says:
Without [regeneration] there is no faith in the redeemer, and therefore no benefit from His death ... we are impotent to turn to Christ in repentance and faith; part of the effect of regeneration, however, is that faith dawns in our hearts.391 Notice the following bracketed commentary by Packer when he quotes Ephesians 2:8 : For by grace you have been saved, through faith—this not from yourselves, it [either faith as such or salvation and faith together] is the gift of God.392 To Packer, and virtually all Calvinists, the word “it” (touto) in this verse must refer to either faith alone, or faith and salvation, or faith in salvation, etc. According to Reformed Theology, Paul cannot possibly be saying that faith is a means to receive and not an integral part of that which is received as well. If it did, it would mean that faith is prior to and a condition for receiving the gift of salvation. To Packer and all Calvinists, faith and repentance is a gift that comes with regeneration. No unregenerate person can believe or repent. So a call to faith and repentance cannot possibly be responded to, unless and until a person is regenerated. It is very difficult to be consistent with the implications of such a view for most mainstream Calvinists. Calvin sometimes seemed to disagree with Calvinism relative to what the “it” or “this” (touto) refers to in Ephesians 2:8-9. That is, at times Calvin clearly indicated that he believed the “it” or “gift of God” in Ephesians 2:8 refers to a salvation received through faith. That is, Calvin did not always seem to teach that “it” referred to faith or the faith-salvation combination that Packer and most Calvinists suggest. We will consider this further a little later.
While I am convinced that a reading of good English translations of the Greek New Testament are sufficient to provide the basis for a sound interpretation, sometimes the impression is given that if you were a New Testament Greek scholar, you would see and concede that faith is a gift in the Calvinist sense. Only someone ignorant of New Testament Greek, it is intimated, could fail to see what Calvinists see here. Such is not the case. Perhaps no passage of Scripture is more heavily relied upon by Calvinists to teach their peculiar doctrine that faith is a gift of God versus a responsibility of man than Ephesians 2:8-9. Paul reasons: By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it [or “this”] is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast (emphasis added). The New Testament Greek scholar Harold W. Hoehner, in reference to these verses, explains:
Much debate has centered around the demonstrative pronoun ‘‘this’’ (touto). Though some think it refers back to “grace” and others to “faith,” neither of these suggestions is really valid because the demonstrative pronoun is neuter whereas “grace” and “faith” are feminine. Also, to refer back to either of these words specifically seems to be redundant. Rather the neuter touto, as is common, refers to the preceding phrase or clause. (In Ephesians 1:15; Ephesians 3:1touto, “this,” refers back to the preceding section.) Thus it refers back to the concept of salvation (2:4-8a), whose basis is grace and means is faith. This salvation does not have its source in man (it is “not from yourselves”), but rather, its source is God’s grace for “it is the gift of God.”393 The obvious point of this passage is that salvation is by grace versus a salvation of works. It is, however, through faith. To make faith a part of the gift of salvation, as opposed to the means through which we are to receive that gift, is to read into the text that which is not there. It is also to take away from the lost sinner the only means by which he can be saved. To suggest, as many Calvinists do, that faith, which is not a gift, is somehow a work, is to defy both Scripture and logic. The apostle Paul contrasts the works-debt way with the faith-grace way. Just as work is required to indebt an employer to an employee and thereby entitle the employee to payment of wages, so faith is required of the undeserving recipient of the salvation gift. That is, as work leads to earned wages, so faith leads to an undeserved salvation. A salvation, which is given and not earned, is a salvation by grace. Just as there is no debt without works, there can be no reception of the gift of salvation or salvation by grace without faith. The notions that faith is a gift and regeneration is before faith and produces faith are logically necessitated by the Calvinist doctrine and distinctive of total depravity, as it defines the fallen nature of man. Though few, if any, will admit it, the Calvinist arguments supposedly based on a reading of the Greek are, however, theologically necessitated rather than grammatically required.
TOTAL DEPRAVITY = TOTAL INABILITY So important to Calvinists is this notion that the unregenerate are unable to believe the gospel or to receive Christ in their unregenerate state, that most Calvinists use the terms total inability and total depravity interchangeably. Steele and Thomas explain:
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.394 The Westminster Confession of Faith states:
Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation.395 Harold Harvey explains that in Calvinism:
Total depravity is the cause of total inability and total inability is the result of total depravity.396 Steele and Thomas add: As a result of Adam’s transgression, men are born in sin and by nature are spiritually dead; therefore, if they are to become God’s children and enter His kingdom, they must be born anew of the Spirit.397
HARD AND SOFT
Among Calvinists, there are two schools of thought with regard to total depravity. I will call them hard versus soft. The difference between hard and soft among authentic Calvinists on this issue is one of degree and not kind. THE SOFT VIEW
Some Calvinists, mostly of the so-called hypo or mainstream variety, contend that the unregenerate is sinful in every area of his life, but not necessarily as sinful as he can be. This could be referred to as the comprehensive view of depravity. In other words, depravity affects every area of the unregenerate man’s nature, but not in an absolute or exhaustive sense. Steele and Thomas state: When Calvinists speak of man as being totally depraved, they mean that man’s nature is corrupt, perverse, and sinful throughout. The adjective “total” does not mean that each sinner is as totally or completely corrupt in his actions and thoughts as it is possible for him to be. Instead, the word “total” is used to indicate that the whole of man’s being has been affected by sin. The corruption extends to every part of man, his body and soul; sin has affected all (the totality) of man’s faculties—his mind, his will, etc.396 Edwin Palmer says:
Total depravity does not mean the same as absolute depravity. Absolute depravity means that a person expresses his depravity to the nth degree at all times. Not only are all his thoughts, words, and deeds sinful, but they are as vicious as possible. To be totally depraved, however, does not mean that a person is as intensively evil as possible, but as extensively evil as possible.397 Loraine Boettner says essentially the same thing. That is: This doctrine of Total Inability does not mean that all men are equally bad, nor that any man is as bad as he could be, nor that anyone is entirely destitute of virtue. ... His corruption is extensive but not necessarily intensive.398
White says:
Man is dead in sin, completely and radically impacted by the Fall, the enemy of God, incapable of saving himself. This does not mean that man is as evil as he could be. Nor does it mean the image of God in man is destroyed, or that the will is done away with. Instead, it refers to the all pervasiveness of the effects of sin, and the fact that man is, outside of Christ, the enemy of God.399
Piper states:
There is no doubt that man could perform more evil acts toward his fellow man than he does. But if he is restrained from performing more evil acts by motives that are not owing to his glad submission to God, then even his “virtue” is evil in the sight of God.400 Sproul explains:
Total depravity is the first of Calvinism’s famous five points. It is somewhat unfortunate that the doctrine is called “total depravity” because this name can be misleading. It has prevailed because it fits the familiar acrostic TULIP. Total depravity makes up the T of TULIP. The term is misleading because it suggests a moral condition of utter depravity. Utter depravity means a person is as wicked as he can possibly be. Utter suggests both total and complete corruption, lacking even in civil virtue.401 With virtually the same issues in view, elsewhere Sproul says:
We know that is not the case. No matter how much each of us has sinned, we are able to think of worse sins that we could have committed. Even Adolf Hitler refrained from murdering his mother.402
Sproul also uses the term radicalas a synonym for total(in regard to the first point). For Sproul, depravity is radicalversus utter.To Sproul, the best way to express the meaning of the Reformed version of total depravity is to equate it with humanity’s radical corruption.Sproul explains: The term total depravity,as distinguished from utter depravity, refers to the effect of sin and corruption on the whole person. To be totally depraved is to suffer from corruption that pervades the whole person. Sin affects every aspect of our being: the body, the soul, the mind, the will, and so forth. The total or the whole person is corrupted by sin. No vestigial “island of righteousness” escapes the influence of the fall. Sin reaches into every aspect of our lives, finding no shelter of isolated virtue.403 THE HARD VIEW
Other Calvinists, mostly of the hyper-Calvinist community, see the soft view of total depravity as a compromise. Hanko believes that totalmeans absoluteor what Sproul calls utterdepravity. This is also what Boettner referred to as intensiveversus extensivedepravity. In contrast to the comprehensiveview of depravity, the harder view could be called the consummate view of depravity. Hanko says the Synod of Dortintended us to understand: That man isjust as bad as he can be.404 Hanko goes on to say: When Calvin and the fathers of Dort insisted that depravity was total, they knew what words mean. And they knew that “total” means precisely that.405
Hoeksema says: The distinction between absolute and total depravity has in late years been applied to men in their fallen and corrupt state. They make this distinction in order to make clear how a totally depraved sinner can still do good works. Man, according to this view, is totally depraved, but not absolutely depraved. And because he is not absolutely depraved, he is able to do good before God in his natural state. Of course, with this philosophy they fail to make clear what they really want to explain.406 He goes on to say: For a totally depraved man is after all evil and corrupt in his whole nature, in all his thinking, willing, desiring, and acting; and the problem still remains, even with the distinction between total and absolute depravity, how such a totally depraved man can bring forth good fruits. Besides, if one would make the distinction between total and absolute depravity, the distinction must certainly be applied in a different way. For by total depravity is meant that man by nature in all his existence, with all his heart and mind and soul and strength, has become a servant of sin, and that he is entirely incapable of doing good and inclined to all evil.407 To recap, these two views of depravity can be compared and contrasted as follows:
Consummate versus Comprehensive
Intensive versus Extensive
Utter versus Radical
Absolute versus All
What I have called the harder view sees depravity as not only affecting all areas of a man’s nature but also affecting it as much as it possibly could. It is exhaustive. In other words, an unregenerate man, no matter what he does or how he behaves, is as depraved, corrupt, and sinful as he could be. The level to which he has fallen is the absolute bottom. Intensive is a good word for this view because it speaks of the depth of depravity to which a man has fallen or sunk and remains until he is regenerated. If he is not one of the elect, he will remain this way for the rest of his life and for all eternity as well.
What I have called the softer view, which is in some respects similar to my own view, does not see the depravity, corruption, or sinfulness of unregenerate man as necessarily the maximum degree of depravity, corruption, or sinfulness possible. While no area of an unregenerate man’s life is untouched or unaffected by sin, the softer view holds that most of the un regenerate population could be even more depraved, corrupt, or sinful than they are or even will be. Extensive is a good word for this view because it truly sees sin everywhere in an unregenerate man’s life, but not necessarily to the degree and depth that it could be.
If you can think of the boiling point of water as analogous to the maximum degree of depravity a man is capable of, then the harder view sees man as always and totally 212 degrees Fahrenheit (at sea level). The softer view sees the entire unregenerate man and every unregenerate man as overheated, maybe even very hot, but for most unregenerate men, maximum boil is not reached, or at least not always.
Whether a Calvinist subscribes to what I have called the hard view or the soft view, all Calvinists believe that faith is a gift and only comes with and in regeneration. They also teach that if you say that faith is a responsibility for the unbeliever (i.e., that it could be exercised before regeneration), you are guilty of synergism because you have combined the divine work of saving with the human work of believing. To say this the Calvinist must define preregeneration faith in Christ as a work of man. Boettner says:
Man does not possess the power of self-regeneration, and until this inward change takes place, he cannot be convinced of the truth of the Gospel by any amount of external testimony.408 To characterize faith in Christ as “the power of self-regeneration” reflects either a grossly distorted view of faith or a deliberate attempt to misrepresent those who hold that faith in Christ is required for salvation. It is not faith in Christ that justifies, regenerates, or saves anyone, it is God—the object of our faith—who justifies, regenerates, and saves all those who believe. God requires that we believe as a condition for justification, regeneration, and salvation. To confuse the responsibility of man to believe with the exclusive ability of God to regenerate is simply inexcusable. Hoeksema says:
... It is evident that regeneration is exclusively a work of God, wherein man is strictly passive in the sense that he does not and cannot cooperate in his own rebirth.409 Of course, “regeneration is exclusively a work of God.” If Hoeksema were to pay a little closer attention to how Paul defines faith, he would see that faith is not a work at all. Piper goes so far as to claim that saying Christ provisionally died for everyone means that you believe the cross was:
... Intended to give all men the opportunity to save themselves.410
Talk about misrepresentation of another’s views! As is discussed elsewhere, Calvinists give lip service to the truth that salvation is conditioned upon, and follows faith. Their order of salvation, however, makes this impossible. That is, Calvinists, like all Evangelicals, believe that justification is necessary to salvation and that faith is necessary to justification. They say, however, that faith is dependent upon regeneration, which is unconditional and always and immediately results in or produces justification and salvation. In reality, the Calvinist view is a denial of faith alone in Christ alone for salvation. Calvinists have traded sola fide for nola fide. When I point this out, Calvinists, without clearly thinking this through, will say that I am misrepresenting them. They will say that I have confused regeneration, a link in the Calvinist chain, with salvation itself. They reason that since regeneration is before faith and faith is before justification, they can logically say that faith is a consequence of regeneration but a condition of salvation. This is, however, logical nonsense. For:
If regeneration is requisite to faith and always results in faith,
And:
If faith is requisite to justification and always, inevitably, and immediately results in justification,
And:
If justification is requisite to and always, inevitably, and immediately results in salvation,
Then:
It must follow that salvation is not conditioned upon faith and is an unconditional consequence of regeneration and/or that which leads to regeneration. If salvation comes before faith in Christ and if faith is required for and is prior to justification, then a person is saved even before he is justified. I would love to hear a Calvinist explain how this can be.