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- Total Inability
- Free Will
- Dead in Sin
- Faith is a Work
- Faith is a Gift
- Regeneration Precedes Faith
In Their WordsMany people, including many Calvinists, object to the term “Total Depravity” because it gives the impression that human beings are totally and completely sinful. When some people hear about “Total Depravity” they think of someone who always and only does the most evil thing possible. This clearly does not happen. No person in history always does the most evil thing they can do in every situation. Thankfully, Calvinists recognize this as well and so are careful to clarify that the teaching on Total Depravity is not the same thing as “absolute depravity,” and that in general, humanity is not without some good. They say instead that Total Depravity means that mankind is as bad off as man can be.0 Total depravity does not mean that each man is the epitome of the devil. For, as a matter of fact, man does not commit all the sins possible; and those he does commit are not always as bad as possible. Furthermore, we see that he can even perform a certain amount of relative good. … Total depravity means that natural man is never able to do any good that is fundamentally pleasing to God, and, in fact, does evil all the time.0 Human nature has been and is utterly corrupted by sin so that man is totally incapable of doing anything to accomplish his salvation.0 When Calvinists speak of man as begin totally depraved, they mean that man’s nature is corrupt, perverse, and sinful throughout.0 Total Depravity means that unregenerate man is hopelessly enmeshed in sin, bound by Satan with the chords of spiritual death, and wholly disinterested in the things of the Creator.0 To be totally depraved, however, does not mean that a person is as intensively evil as possible, but as extensively evil as possible. It is not that he cannot commit a worse crime; rather, it is that nothing that he does is good. Evil pervades every faculty of his soul and every sphere of his life. He is unable to do a single thing that is good.0 What total depravity is meant to convey is the idea that sin has affected the whole person down to the very core or root of his or her being.0 By nature we are slaves to sin. This does not mean that the fall has destroyed or eradicated the human will. Fallen man still has all the faculties to make choices. We still have a mind and a will. The problem is not that we cannot make choices. Natural men make choices all the time. The problem is that, in our fallen condition, we make sinful choices. We make these choices freely. We sin precisely because we want to sin, and we are capable of choosing exactly what we want to choose.0 For the most part, though I would not state it in exactly the same way, I am not that opposed toward the teaching on Total Depravity as expressed in the quotes above. I firmly believe that in and of ourselves, there is nothing we can do to earn or merit eternal life before God, or even to place ourselves in good standing with God. We cannot become righteous on our own. Even all of our righteous works are like filthy rags (Isa 64:6). On this, I am in agreement with Calvinism.
As a creature the natural man is responsible to love, obey, and serve God; as a sinner he is responsible to repent and believe the Gospel. But at the outset we are confronted with the fact that the natural man is unable to love and serve God, and that the sinner, of himself, cannot repent and believe.0 Therefore, all people are conceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin. Without the grace of the regenerating Holy Spirit they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their distorted nature, or even to dispose themselves to such reform.0 Inasmuch as Adam’s offspring are born with sinful natures, they do not have the ability to choose spiritual good over evil. Consequently, man’s will is no longer free (i.e., free from the dominion of sin) as Adam’s will was free before the fall. Instead, man’s will, as the result of inherited depravity, is in bondage to his sinful nature.0 Natural (soulish) unregenerate men cannot comprehend the things of God. They are the unborn dead (spiritually) who know only darkness. They are totally depraved, wholly incapable of thinking, perceiving, or doing anything pleasing to God.0 In and of himself the natural man has power to reject Christ; but in and of himself he has not the power to receive Christ.0 In summary, total depravity means that our rebellion against God is total, everything we do in this rebellion is sinful, our inability to submit to God or reform ourselves is total, and we are therefore totally deserving of eternal punishment.0 There is a fundamental incapacity in the natural man. He does not accept the things of the Spirit of God (willful rejection), for they are foolishness to him. Why are they foolishness? Because he is not a spiritual man. He cannot (not “does not” or “normally chooses not to”) understand them. This is another phrase of inability…0 Free WillOften wrapped up in a discussion of Total Depravity and total inability is a discussion of free will. Though it is variously stated, most Calvinists believe that humans do not have a free will. Some argue that humanity did have a free will before Adam and Eve rebelled against God and fell into sin by eating fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Others argue that a form of free will is awakened in the minds of the Christian. What almost all agree on, however, is that no unregenerate person has free will. Of course, even here, you will occasionally run across a Calvinist who claims to believe that unregenerate people have a free will, but that the free will of unregenerate people is only a free will to do evil. In other words, though people can choose of their own free will to do what they want, their choices are only between various forms of evil, and they cannot choose to do any good. Here are some quotes from Calvinists on this subject: Free will is nonsense.0 Free will is the invention of man, instigated by the devil.0 Free will makes man his own savior and his own god.0 The heresy of free will dethrones God and enthrones man. … The ideas of free grace and free will are diametrically opposed. All who are strict advocates of free will are strangers to the grace of the sovereign God.0 To affirm that [man] is a free moral agent is to deny that he is totally depraved.0 In matters pertaining to his salvation, the unregenerate man is not at liberty to choose between good and evil, but only to choose between greater and lesser evil, which is not properly free will... As the bird with a broken wing is ‘free’ to fly but not able, so the natural man is free to come to God but not able.0 Inasmuch as Adam’s offspring are born with sinful natures, they do not have the ability to choose spiritual good over evil. Consequently, man’s will is no longer free (i.e., free from the dominion of sin) as Adam’s will was free before the Fall. Instead, man’s will, as the result of inherited depravity, is in bondage to his sinful nature.0
A dead man cannot exercise faith in Jesus Christ.0 A dead man is utterly incapable of willing anything.0 A dead man cannot cooperate with an offer of healing.0 The corpse does not restore life to itself, after life is restored it becomes a living agent.0 Because we were dead to God, we were dead to truth, righteousness, peace, happiness, and every other good thing, no more capable to respond to God than a cadaver. [Unregenerate sinners are] spiritual zombies, death-walkers, unable to even understand the gravity of their situation.0 The Calvinist holds to the plain teaching of Scripture and says: “No; he is dead. He cannot even open his mouth. Nor does he have any desire to call a doctor to help him. He is dead” … The Calvinist … would compare man to one who jumps off the top of the Empire State Building and is spattered over the sidewalk. Even if there were anything left of him when he landed, he could not know that he needed help, let alone cry out for it. That man is dead—lifeless—and cannot even desire to be made whole … And that is the picture of the sinner. He is dead in his sins and trespasses (Eph. 2:1, 5). He does not want to be made whole, let alone even know that he should be made whole. He is dead. When Christ called to Lazarus to come out of the grave, Lazarus had no life in him so that he could hear, sit up, and emerge. There was not a flicker of life in him. If he was to be able to hear Jesus calling him and to go to Him, then Jesus would have to make him alive. Jesus did resurrect him and then Lazarus could respond.0 Could the Word of God show more plainly than it does that the depravity is total? And that our inability to desire or procure salvation is also total? The picture is one of death—spiritual death. We are like Lazarus in his tomb; we are bound hand and foot; corruption has taken hold upon us. Just as there was no glimmer of life in the dead body of Lazarus, so there is no “inner receptive spark” in our hearts. But the Lord performs the miracle—both with the physically dead, and the spiritually dead; for “you hath he quickened—made alive—who were dead in trespasses and sins.” Salvation, by its very nature, must be “of the Lord.”0 [A sinner] has all the passive properties belonging to a corpse…0 The natural man is enslaved to sin; he is a child of Satan, rebellious toward God, blind to truth, corrupt, unable to save himself or to prepare himself for salvation. In short, the unregenerate man is dead in sin, and his will is enslaved to his evil nature.0 Faith is a WorkOne of the central ramifications to the Calvinistic understanding of Total Depravity as total inability is the idea that people are not even able to believe in Jesus for eternal life. The reason Calvinists have this idea is because they view faith as a meritorious act of the will. In other words, due to their emphasis on the inability of mankind to do anything good at all, and because of the impression that faith is something we do, Calvinists conclude that humans cannot believe in Jesus for eternal life. Calvinists argue that if people were able to believe in Jesus for eternal life, then this is something that they are doing, and therefore, their faith is meritorious before God. All of this is because of their view that faith is a sort of good work. Here is what they have to say about it: Faith itself is man's act or work and is thereby excluded from being any part of his justifying righteousness. It is one thing to be justified by faith merely as an instrument by which man receives the righteousness of Christ, and another to be justified FOR faith as an act or work of the law. If a sinner, then, relies on his actings of faith or works of obedience to any of the commands of the law for a title to eternal life, he seeks to be justified by works of the law as much as if his works were perfect. If he depends either in whole or in part, on his faith and repentance for a right to any promised blessing, he thereby so annexes that promise to the commands to believe and repent as to form them for himself into a covenant of works. Building his confidence before God upon his faith, repentance and other acts of obedience, he places them in Christ's stead as his grounds of right to the promise and so he demonstrates himself to be of the works of the law and so be under the curse.0 According to the Reformed doctrine, total depravity makes man morally incapable of making a virtuous choice [of faith] … If total depravity does anything, it renders a man totally unable because he is indisposed to respond to the overtures of grace. If [a person] maintains that man is morally able to respond to the gospel, then [that person] does not believe that man is totally depraved at all.0 The Arminian acknowledges that faith is something a person does. It is a work, though not a meritorious one. Is it a good work? Certainly it is not a bad work. It is good for a person to trust in Christ and in Christ alone for his or her salvation. Since God commands us to trust in Christ, when we do so we are obeying this command. But all Christians agree that faith is something we do. God does not do the believing for us. … Then why say that Arminianism “in effect” makes faith a meritorious work? Because the good response people make to the gospel becomes the ultimate determining factor in salvation. I often ask my Arminian friends why they are Christians and other people are not. They say it is because they believe in Christ while others do not. Then I inquire why they believe and others do not? “Is it because you are more righteous than the person who abides in unbelief?” They are quick to say no. “Is it because you are more intelligent?” Again the reply is negative. They say that God is gracious enough to offer salvation to all who believe and that one cannot be saved without that grace. But this grace is cooperative grace. Man in his fallen state must reach out and grasp this grace by an act of the will, which is free to accept or reject this grace. Some exercise the will rightly (or righteously), while others do not. When pressed on this point, the Arminian finds it difficult to escape the conclusion that ultimately his salvation rests on some righteous act of the will he has performed.0 To rely on oneself for faith is no different in principle from relying on oneself for works, and the one is as un-Christian and anti-Christian as the other.0
Genuine faith … is granted by God … faith is a supernatural gift of God … faith is not something that is conjured up by the human will but is a sovereignly granted gift (cf. Php 1:29).0 Faith is God’s gift. In no degree could a natural man produce faith. It is utterly beyond him. Let us adore the God who gives it.0 Faith and repentance are divine gifts and are wrought in the soul through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.0 Faith, too, is His gift. We are saved by mean of faith “which is not of ourselves.”0 Faith is a gift from God … it is permanent … the faith that God gives begets obedience … God gave it to you and He sustains it … May God grant you a true saving faith, a permanent gift that begins in humility and brokenness over sin and ends up in obedience unto righteousness. That’s true faith and it’s a gift that only God can give, and if you desire it, pray and ask that He would grant it to you.0 Regeneration Precedes FaithBut this leaves the Calvinist with a problem even more difficult. According to the Calvinistic teaching of Total Depravity (and total inability), the unregenerate person cannot do anything good—they cannot even have faith in Jesus. Therefore, even if God graciously gave faith to an unregenerate person, it would not matter because the person—as an unregenerate—would not be able to believe! God’s gift of faith to the person would be ineffectual. To get around this, Calvinists often teach that regeneration precedes faith. That is, before God gives a person the gift of faith so that they can believe in Jesus for eternal life, God knows that He must first remove the problem of “total inability.” So God sovereignly regenerates the person before He gives them the gift of faith so that they are now able to believe when God gives them faith.0 Calvinists often teach that regeneration precedes faith. That is, before God gives a person the gift of faith so that they can believe in Jesus for eternal life. “Calvinists put the new birth before faith, since they believe that spiritually dead humans cannot exercise faith and, therefore, need to be born again before they can believe.”0 If this is difficult to understand, maybe it would be better to let Calvinists explain it in their own words: When Christ called to Lazarus to come out of the grave, Lazarus had no life in him so that he could hear, sit up, and emerge. There was not a flicker of life in him. If he was to be able to hear Jesus calling him and to go to Him, then Jesus would have to make him alive. Jesus resurrected him and then Lazarus could respond. [Similarly,] the unsaved, the unregenerate, is spiritually dead (Eph. 2). He is unable to ask for help unless God changes his heart of stone into a heart of flesh, and makes him alive spiritually (Eph. 2:5). Then, once he is born again, he can for the first time turn to Jesus, expressing sorrow for his sins and asking Jesus to save him.0 Abraham Kuyper observed that, prior to regeneration, a sinner ‘has all the passive properties belonging to a corpse … [Therefore] every effort to claim for the sinner the minutest co-operation in this first grace destroys the gospel, severs the artery of the Christian confession and is anti-scriptural in the highest degree.’ Like a spiritual corpse, he is unable to make a single move toward God, think a right thought about God, or even respond to God – unless God first brings this spiritually dead corpse to life.0 Man is dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1). He cannot make himself new, or create new life in himself. He must be born of God. Then, with the new nature of God, he sees Christ for who he really is, and freely receives Christ for all that he is. The two acts (new birth and faith) are so closely connected that in experience we cannot distinguish them. God begets us anew and the first glimmer of life in the newborn child is faith.0 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. … A cardinal doctrine of Reformed theology is the maxim, “Regeneration precedes faith.” … 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.0 Faith is not the cause of the new birth, but the consequence of it.0 A man is not saved because he has first believed in Christ, but he believes in Christ because he is saved.0 A person is regenerated before he believes.0 If we are as desperately lost as the Bible say we are, then no one can come to God, choose God, or even believe on Jesus Christ and be saved—unless God first makes that person alive in Christ and draws him.0 The Calvinist says that life must precede faith, and is logically the cause of faith. Faith did not cause the new birth, the new birth caused faith.0 … Regeneration logically must initiate faith.0 Faith follows the giving of life. … [Man] is saved by the grace (“unmerited favor”) of God who first gives him life and then instills faith in his heart as a free gift.0 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.0 A man must be born again in order to exercise faith.0 The Reformers taught not only that regeneration does precede faith but also that it must precede faith. Because of the moral bondage of the unregenerate sinner, he cannot have faith until he is changed internally by the operative, monergistic work of the Holy Spirit. Faith is regeneration’s fruit, not its cause.0 And a long quote from R. C. Sproul: After a person is regenerated, that person cooperates by exercising faith and trust. But the first step is the work of God and of God alone. The reason we do not cooperate with regenerating grace before it acts upon us and in us is because we can- not. We cannot because we are spiritually dead. We can no more assist the Holy Spirit in the quickening of our souls to spiritual life than Lazarus could help Jesus raise him for the dead. When I began to wrestle with the Professor's argument, I was surprised to learn that his strange-sounding teaching was not novel. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield - even the great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas taught this doctrine. Thomas Aquinas is the Doctor Angelicus of the Roman Catholic Church. For centuries his theological teaching was accepted as official dogma by most Catholics. So he was the last person I expected to hold such a view of regeneration. Yet Aquinas insisted that regenerating grace is operative grace, not cooperative grace. Aquinas spoke of prevenient grace, but he spoke of a grace that comes before faith, which is regeneration. These giants of Christian history derived their view from Holy Scripture. The key phrase in Paul's Letter to the Ephesians is this: "...even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have you been saved)" (Eph. 2:5). Here Paul locates the time when regeneration occurs. It takes place 'when we were dead.' With one thunderbolt of apostolic revelation all attempts to give the initiative in regeneration to man are smashed. Again, dead men do not cooperate with grace. Unless regeneration takes place first, there is no possibility of faith. This says nothing different from what Jesus said to Nicodemus. Unless a man is born again first, he cannot possibly see or enter the kingdom of God. If we believe that faith precedes regeneration, then we set our thinking and therefore ourselves in direct opposition not only to giants of Christian history but also to the teaching of Paul and of our Lord Himself.0 Do you see how the theological dilemmas and philosophical difficulties begin to pile up and multiply? Of course, just as with any theological debate, there is a wide diversity of opinions even among Calvinists on the ideas that faith is a work, faith is a gift, and regeneration precedes faith. Numerous other Calvinistic authors and teachers could be quoted to show what Calvinists believe regarding Total Depravity and the related ideas, but the quotes above are fairly typical and adequately represent the Calvinistic teaching on this issue. Let us now turn to examine several of the main texts from Scripture that Calvinists use to defend their teaching on Total Depravity. 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