Nature Destroyed: The Doctrine of Total Depravity
The doctrine of sin is that man knows, but he does not will the good.
During my first semester at Westminster Theological Seminary, Dr. K. Scott Oliphint offered a course on the philosophy of Alvin Plantinga. Having just studied Plantinga’s Warrant and Christian Belief in some detail in my capstone epistemology course at Wheaton College - and over my honeymoon, just some light reading - I signed up.
While my sympathies weren’t exactly for Plantinga himself, I found myself as the lone defender of Plantinga against extraordinarily unjust attacks. Westminster subscribes to a peculiar, extreme form of what I’ve been calling CGT, Common Grace Theology, namely Van Tillianism, which holds that only Van Tillians are ever correct about anything.
I’m sorry: That was about as informative a description as “defining” “Woman” as “anyone who identifies as a woman”: Van Tillianism teaches that the mind of man is so fallen that it cannot operate on rational principles must begin instead from Reformed Christian theological dogmas as its “presuppositions” or intellectual first principles.
When I privately raised objections to the philosophical methodology of the course, Dr. Oliphint told me, “You’re an Arminian.” For those who don’t know the theological background, that is what we Calvinists aspire not to be; it’s the view that people are not predestined for salvation but choose it by their own free will.
Van Tillianism teaches that the mind of man is so fallen that it cannot operate on rational principles must begin instead from Reformed Christian theological dogmas as its “presuppositions.”
In person and afterward, I objected, “But I’m a seven-point Calvinist. How could I also be an Arminian?” What had been my crime?
I had proposed that philosophy and theology could begin from rational first principles and human intellectual faculties, rather than beginning from Reformed Christian dogma. I had suggested that the fall of man affected his will primarily, and his intellect indirectly. In short, I had argued that the mind of man is still, in principle, operational even in a fallen condition.
This was, to Dr. Oliphint, a denial of Calvinism because it was a denial of the doctrine of total depravity and its implication for the human intellect, what Van Tillians call, “the noetic effects of sin.” In granting power to the human intellect, I was denying a sort of intellectual Calvinism: The fallen mind is incapable of knowledge apart from the intervention of God’s Holy Spirit.
Now, the Van Tillian form of Common Grace Theology is the strongest stuff on the market. But even where the edges are a bit more rounded, Reformed evangelical cultural engagement accepts this theological account: The fall rendered the human intellect incapable of reaching truth without the intervention of the Holy Spirit and arguing deductively from Scripture or the intervention of God known as his “common grace.” In short, non-Christians are incapable of intellectual function apart from divine intervention.
Even where the edges are a bit more rounded, Reformed evangelical cultural engagement accepts this theological account: The fall rendered the human intellect incapable of reaching truth without the intervention of God’s Holy Spirit or of his “common grace.”
Given that Christians recognize knowledge of truth in the general human populace, “common grace” turns out to be rather ubiquitous. Even among the many who recognize that “All truth is God’s truth,” the primary explanation of the phenomenon of non-Christian truth-seeking is “common grace.”
In recent posts, I have drawn attention to the mental gymnastics involved in explaining so much by “common grace,” as opposed to “nature.” But a reader pointed me to the underlying source of this theology: The doctrine of total depravity. “Common grace” must be called in because of the power of total depravity.
Now, “total depravity” is one of the five points of Calvinism; and I have been trying to argue, not that Reformed theology should be abandoned, but that Reformed theology does not require “Common Grace Theology.” But what of the doctrine of total depravity? Can I really embrace Reformed theology without accepting that total depravity has blinded the mind of man and rendered him incapable of autonomous intellectual capacity?
In short, yes. Total depravity does not entail what the Common Grace Theologians take it to entail. But the longer answer is that “total depravity” is a poor way to express the teaching of Reformed Christianity about the will of fallen man and does lend itself to the more radical interpretation of the Common Grace Theologians. The first point of Calvinism is due for a rebrand.
The Theological Home of “Total Depravity”
One of the difficulties of theological and philosophical debate is that things often take a turn to the question of language. One wants to argue about the nature of God, man, and sin, and all of a sudden, the terms we use to describe them come to the forefront. Luckily, my dissertation is on the philosophy of language; I’m an expert - no, but I have more of a sense of how to debate the meaning or use of terms.
Take the doctrine of total depravity. I’m not sure that this is a traditional formulation of the Calvinist account of sin, but I do know it has “its home” in contemporary elaborations of the “five points of Calvinism,” a popular summary of Reformed soteriology (theology of salvation). The question of the “home” of a term is one that Wittgenstein highlighted in his Philosophical Investigations; it involves looking for the most common and uncontroversial use of a phrase as a test of its most fundamental “meaning.”
The five points of Calvinism are, following the acronym “Tulip”:
Total Depravity
Unconditional Election
Limited Atonement
Irresistible Grace
Perseverance of the Saints
The idea is that salvation through Jesus Christ is not simply the possibility of forgiveness and redemption afforded by the cross of Christ, free for every human to take or leave. God also takes initiative in bringing people to knowledge of and faith in Christ, through his providence in people’s lives (watch out non-Christian reader!) and his Holy Spirit’s work on the heart.
In this context, total depravity describes the reason that God has to take initiative in people’s conversion to Christ: Apart from that initiative, we would all turn God down. Conversion to Christ requires humble acceptance of our own sinfulness before God, repentance from our sin, and trust that only Christ can save us, not we ourselves. The humbling and change of heart that this requires is the opposite of the orientation of heart subject to sin; it can only come about by divine intervention.
Total depravity describes the reason that God has to take initiative in people’s conversion to Christ: Apart from that initiative, we would all turn God down.
I wholeheartedly affirm this doctrine. I find it taught in the Bible, and I found it to be true in the experience of my own conversion.
The Augustinian Background
Total depravity also has a connection to a certain Augustinian summary of man’s will in the various states of human history. (Augustine was a Calvinist before Calvinism was cool.) Before the fall, in the state of integrity, man was capable of sin, though not yet a sinner; posse peccare. After the fall, having original sin, man was not capable of not sinning; non posse non peccare. By the renewal of the will through Holy Spirit in Christian conversion, man was capable of not sinning; posse non peccare. By the confirmation of our wills in glory, man will become incapable of sinning; non posse peccare. It’s a beautiful summary: posse peccare; non posse non peccare; posse non peccare; non posse peccare.
Total depravity has a connection to the Augustinian account of man’s will after the fall but before conversion to Christ: non posse non peccare. Man can’t not sin. What does this mean if not a radical version of total depravity? It means that everything man does is vitiated by sin. Every action, every passion, is the fruit of a heart whose loves are disordered. Even acts of kindness and compassion are vitiated by self-congratulation or pride, self-love or the desire for praise. In short, non posse non peccare means that every human act after the fall falls short of 100% goodness, short of the glory of God (Romans 6:23).
In my own idiotic numbering system, this means that non posse non peccare does not mean that every human action is at 0%! Far from it. To sin is to fall short; evil is negation, but being is goodness. The evil intermingled with a human act vitiates the goodness of the act; but insofar as the act is not pure evil, it is also good in measure.
Everything man does is vitiated by sin. Every action, every passion, is the fruit of a heart whose loves are disordered.
This balance was hit best perhaps by the Reformed Scholastic theologian Francis Turretin (theologian in Geneva, several generations after Calvin). He discussed the civic goodness of the acts of non-believers. The classically-educated, learned men of the Reformation knew of many heathens and pagans whose actions had been praiseworthy in a political or civil sense. There were all sorts of moral gradations to affirm between the worst criminal and the greatest statesman. Yet, the Christian could not affirm that the greatest of human actions, apart from Christ, was meritorious before God. Nor could they say that the aspect of human action visible to the human eye and praised by the cities of men was definitive for the judgment of God: Man looks on the outward appearance; God looks upon the heart.
Turretin distinguished, then, two aspects of an action: The formal and the material. The civil goodness and praiseworthiness of human action apart from Christ was merely formal. You owe your neighbor, by justice, a sum of money; you pay the sum of money. You have fulfilled the formal conditions of the action - no one can fault you. But the material aspect of the act involves the affections and passions, the motivations of the heart. It is here that Calvinists identify the flaw in civic goodness without Christ.
It may feel like we’ve taken a detour from total depravity. We argued that total depravity has its doctrinal home in the five points of Calvinism as an affirmation of the inability of the human will to choose repentance and faith apart from the enabling grace of the Holy Spirit. Then we also explored the Augustinian doctrine of non posse non peccare, finding that its apparently radical formulation of human fallenness is satisfied by an account that finds fault with every human act but does not discount the goodness that may there be found. Turretin helped us to formulate the relation between the good and bad in unsaved human action; heathens and pagans may act well formally and so by civically good, but their actions are vitiated materially and qualify as sinful before God.
Hamartiological Hyper-Calvinism
It is time to draw implications from this summary: Total depravity primarily means that every human action is vitiated by sin such that we are incapable of acting purely; particularly, man cannot will the good of salvation in Christ with the humiliation and self-abnegation this requires. Total depravity does not mean that human action is devoid of good, chiefly within the sphere of natural, civic human life. It does mean that human action is incapable of willing the good of salvation that is offered us by grace.
Further, this account has said nothing of the intellect of man nor has it denied man’s ability to act formally well within the realm of natural and civil human action. What are the implications for the intellect? In short, man’s intellect can be corrupted and misdirected via his will. Self-deception and ignorance are often the fruit of a will that cannot face the truth. However, knowledge, especially of God’s existence and attributes and his natural law, is required from man to be a responsible being, one who is guilty of sin.
This means that the fundamental teaching concerning the intellect of fallen man must be that he does know. This is very different than the teaching concerning his will. There the fundamental thing is that his will is corrupted and falls short of the glory of God. With each, we can make qualifications. The will of man can do civic good formally, in spite of its corruption. The intellect is darkened by sin; but fundamentally, man knows the righteous requirement of God. The cases of the intellect and the will are not parallel but basically opposite. The doctrine of sin is that man knows, but he does not will the good.
Man’s knowledge of God and of his law is, also, a part of nature. Man must know, in virtue of his created nature, from the revelation of God in nature of his responsibility. Otherwise, man’s natural state would be without responsibility, and therefore, without sin. This means that man’s knowledge of the world and of God cannot be dependent on modes of revelation that are specific to the order of saving grace, namely God’s special and supernatural revelation.
The doctrine of sin is that man knows but does not will the good.
This means that, in talking to unbelievers, and in strengthening their own knowledge of God and of his law, Christians may and must appeal to nature, to what can be sensed and thought by man’s natural faculties. Not to do so would be the allow the heathen to think that Christian teaching is parochial and foreign to his nature, only based on accepting a book he does not accept.
It also means that there is a great amount of human activity and thought that is in accord with his nature and an expression natural human capacity. Human nature and capacity are not at 0% (in the idiotic numbering system) after the fall. By no means. Man falls short of the glory of God; if man were measured by height before God, he would be short, too short, but not lacking in height altogether.
Common Grace Theology effectively teaches that man shrunk to non-existence after the fall, in principle, like the Wicked Witch of the West melting away to nothing, but God intervened by his common grace to maintain some semblance of the nature that had existed before the fall. Nature has been destroyed; what we see is a realm of temporary divine artifice to make room for the further and eternal divine artifice of salvation.
But as we have seen, the full Calvinist and Augustinian teaching of total depravity does not require this. Common Grace Theology is hamartiological hyper-Calvinism.
Nevertheless, in light of a century of neo-Calvinist misinterpretation, and the arguments here, it is time for “total depravity” to go as the terminology to express a Calvinist doctrine of sin. We want to express that every human act has been tainted by sin, that man is incapable of action that meets God’s standard materially, and that man is incapable of willing his humiliation and self-abnegation in conversion to Christ. We have, already, the doctrine of original sin to express the core of man’s moral impurity; we can repeat the Augustinian aphorisms about the will of man; we can articulate Turretin’s teaching about civic goodness; and we can argue for the first point of Calvinism, human inability to will conversion. At this juncture, I don’t have a word that can say all these things in one go. Careful theology will have to do in place of a single moniker. But “total depravity?” It communicates poorly the relation between the goodness of human nature that persists after the fall and the sinfulness of man as a result of the fall. For now, it’s “the first point of Calvinism,” and if you have suggestions for how to rebrand it, I’m all ears.