Does the
Bible teach the doctrine of Total Inability?
Opening Affirmative Statement
By:
Moses Flores
I would like to first thank Blair for agreeing to this debate and by God’s grace, hopefully it will prove to be a fruitful and beneficial one for both of us and the readers.
Before I begin to make my case for the doctrine of Total Inability, also known as Total Depravity, I believe it is important to start with definitions and proper understanding of what Calvinists say about this so that there is no confusion about what is meant. In order to help with this, I would like to quote from the Westminster Confession of Faith(1648) as well as the Canons of the Council of Dort(1618-19). The confession says,
1. God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good, or evil.
2. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom, and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God; but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it.
3. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation: so as, natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto. (WCF 9:1-3)
The Canons of Dort state, “…without the grace of regeneration, they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their distorted nature, or even to dispose themselves to such reform.” (3rd and 4th main points, Art. 3).
So what is the doctrine of Total Inability? Simply stated, it is the teaching that by our corruption into sin through our first father, Adam, the entirety of the human race has been corrupted by sin. There is no part of the whole person that has not been effected by the power of sin. Mind, body, spirit, soul, heart, intellect and will have all been corrupted by sin. The effect that this has on the whole person is that they have a corrupted inability to submit to and seek the things of God. This doctrine of “Total Depravity” does not mean to say that mankind is as sinful as they possibly can be. On the otherhand, Calvinist teach that God, in His grace, actually is responsible for restraining much of the sin that could very well be committed by mankind were our sinful hearts given free reign to manifest themselves. Indeed, there are a few individuals in history whom we have seen “unleashed” as it were from the restraints of God’s providential grace.
This debate is not particularly about the universal nature of sin, but rather the effects of sin, especially on mankind and the implications that this has on the nature of the Gospel, and salvation. Let me be very clear from the start about the implications and the clarity of my position. If what I am espousing is true – that man has been corrupted by sin in the totality of his original nature as created by God – then salvation is something that is and must completely be accomplished by God. This is something that is also true of regeneration especially. This will be dealt with more in the fourth debate of this series on Irresistible Grace. Historically, this is known as “monergism” – from the Greek words “mono” (meaning “one) and “ergo” (meaning “work, energy”). This is in contrast to the belief that salvation must be accomplished by the cooperative work between God and man known as “synergism”. So to put it all on the line, depending on how we see ourselves in sin will determine the extent to which God must go to save us OR the extent to which we must go to save ourselves.
In answering the question whether or not this is the Biblical teaching on this subject of human depravity/inability, Paul offers us the summative teaching of God’s verdict over all of mankind in Romans 3:10-18. He says,
as it is written:
“None is
righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
“Their
mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
in their paths are ruin and misery,
and the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (ESV)
These words are derived from various portions of the OT Scriptures and were intended by Paul to display the universal guilt and extent of sin of all and in all people, both Jew and Gentile, before the Holy God.
The Bible says
that “none is righteous”. That is to say, morally we have nothing within us
that is morally presentable before God. Like the prophet Isaiah said, “our righteousness is like filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6). It was
in this same manner that Jesus spoke to the “most righteous” of Jews, the
Pharisees. In Matthew 23:27-28 Jesus told them, “Woe to you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which
outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all
uncleanness. So you
also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy
and lawlessness.” It is this effect of the fall that creates our need for
righteousness, or justification before God. Biblically, we may posit the
statement that man is NOT ABLE to be righteous in his own power (cf. Rom. 3:23;
Gal. 2:16-21).
The Bible goes on to say, “no one understands.” What does is meant by this statement? The Bible helps us to understand what man does not understand in several places. One such place is I Corinthians 2:14 which says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” According to this text the “things of the Spirit of God” are NOT ABLE to be understood by the “natural” or unregenerate person. In fact, there are plenty of Scriptures that describe man as “blind” to and “ignorant” of the ways of God in prior to their conversion. For instance, in Ephesians 4:17-18 the audience is described as walking “in the futility of their minds” and “darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” I Corinthians 1:18 describes “those who are perishing” understanding the Gospel as “folly” because they do not understand it. 1 Peter 1:14 reminds the audience to not be conformed to the passions of their “former ignorance”. Several times in Matthew, the Pharisees were referred to as “blind guides” showing that even the most apparently righteous were still ignorant of the things of God (Matt. 15:14, cf. 23:16,24). Colossians 1:21 reminds Christians that before Christ they were “hostile in their mind”. In the parable of the Sower, the difference between the ones who were saved and who were not saved was ultimately the difference between those who “heard but did not understand” and those who “heard and understand” (Matt. 13:18,23). Stephen’s sermon before being martyred tells us that Moses’ Jewish brethren “did not understand” what God was doing through Moses (Acts 7:25).
In short, fallen man is unable to properly comprehend and understand the things of God. We know this to be true when we talk to people about the Gospel. How many times have we heard unbelievers mock the Gospel of Jesus Christ or the media go off about things they do not understand? The Calvinist Doctrine of Total Inability is simply a statement about what Scripture already says about fallen man: that we are unable to understand the things of God. In fact, it is not until we are renewed and regenerated by the Spirit that anybody is described as having a proper or renewed mind (cf. I Cor. 2:12, Romans 12:2; Col. 2:10).
The Bible goes on to say that “no one seeks after God.” I take this to mean that our very wills have been so tainted by the corruption of sin that we do not even have the capacity to return to our creator in our own fallen strength. Seeking God means to repent of our ways, to have confidence in Him, to ask for His support and strength, and to ask for His guidance and protection among many other things. Scripture says that there is no one who does this and goes even further to say that we cannot submit to God’s law nor can we please God. In Romans 8:7-8 we read, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
The key word I want to take some time to focus on is the word “cannot”. This word is translated from two Greek words in this phrase “ga.r du,natai” or “ou. du.nantai”. The root word that is important for us here is the word “dunamai” which mean “ability” and is often translated as “able” or “can”. This text is denying a specific ability to the “carnal man” (which is the man without the Spirit of God in this context). The natural man CANNOT submit to the law of God nor can he do anything pleasing to God. It should be noted that this is the same Greek root word used in I Corinthians 2:14 which says that “the natural man CANNOT understand the things of God.” There is a lack of ability or capacity to do.
The point that I wish to make here is that the natural man, the unregenerate man, the life apart from the grace of God, does not and cannot seek to convert himself and be pleasing to God. There are several Scriptures that support this position as well as affirm mankind’s slavery to sin. For instance, in Genesis 6:5 “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” It is significant that the “heart” is mentioned here because in Hebrew thought, the heart represented the core of the person; their thoughts, will and emotions (cf. Prov. 4:23). So when the Bible says something about the “heart” of man being continually evil, it reveals a lot about who we are/were apart from Christ! Lest one think, “well this was before the flood…things have changed!” Genesis 8:21 reflects the same thought in saying “…the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.” Allow the Biblical witness to come forth:
This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. (Ecclesiastes 9:3)
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9)
For from within, out of the
heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit,
sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from
within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:21-23; cf. Matt. 15:19)
Jesus said in John 8:34 that
“everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” The word “slave” here is a
particular word used in the New Testament that is used to “describe the sole
commitment of one person to another” (Mounce’s Compelete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament
Words, Servant , doulos). The proper rendering of this word is
a “bond servant” or one who has willingly submitted themselves to someone else.
Prior to our conversion, we are described in the Bible as willing slaves to sin
(Romans 6:16-17, 20). Since we are
described as “bondservants” to sin, it is no wonder that even in John 3:19 no
one came to the light “because men loved the darkness.”
The best way that the Bible
describes this horrific sinful state that man is in that the natural man is
“dead”. In Ephesians 2:1-3, we read that Christ has made us alive because we
were formerly “dead in your trespasses and sins” (cf. Col. 2:13). This is not
physical death but a spiritual death to God and the things of God. The penalty
for sin that was promised to Adam and Eve in the Garden was death (Gen.
2:16-17) and God did certainly carry out that penalty even if it was not
immediate physical death (cf. Rom. 5:12-14). What does this “death” look like?
Ephesians 2 describes it as living in the passions of our flesh, carrying out
the desires of the body and the mind, and lived as children of wrath.
Such a nature wants nothing at all
to do with God because it is so in love with sin and its passing pleasures!
Such a nature does not and cannot will itself to spiritual life nor to even
desire it! These CANNOT submit to God’s law. These CANNOT please God. These
CANNOT understand spiritual things unto eternal life. The prophet Jeremiah
commented on the inability of the people of
“Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.”
These rhetorical questions are designed to show that just as no person possesses the ability to change their skin color or an animal any defining characteristic that belong to it, so these sinful and rebellious people do not have the ability to change their own nature to will the good the that God requires and holds them accountable to. And these are God’s chosen people!! If they do not have this ability, what hope do we Gentiles have to be better off than they?
Job likewise expressed a similar thought when he said,
“Who can bring a clean thing out
of an unclean?
There is not one.” (14:4)
The logic here is basically that one cannot bring forth what one does not possess. If our righteousness is filthy as rags, how can we expect anything pure to come from a tainted source?
Jesus expresses the helplessness of man to be able to “come” to God in a salvific way in a discourse in John. In John 6, 44 and 65 he says,
“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent me draws him…”
“This is why I told you, that no one can come to Me unless it is granted him by the Father.”
These are universal categorical statements: “No one…”. No one AT ALL can come to Christ – which in this context is to believe in Christ (cf. 6:29, 35, 36,40,47, 54). Scripture places a limit on what fallen man can or cannot do. Again, we note the use of the word dunatai referring to an ability that man does not have. The only way men may come to believe in Christ is if the Fathers “grants” it to them or “draws” them to Himself. Apart from this grace of God, NO ONE CAN COME.
Truly man is dead to the things of God. He is so dead that the only remedy for such a condition is that since his first birth was ruined (cf. Psalm 51:5, 58:3), that he must be “born again” (John 3:3,5). But make no mistake; it is this deplorable and helpless condition that fallen man is in that necessitates the need for the new birth. Man cannot prepare Himself or dispose Himself, as a sinner, to receive the Grace of God. In fact, as the Scriptures have already pointed out, the natural man is at enmity with God and is in love with sin. How does one who hates God and loves sin turn from what they love to what they hate in and of their own natural capacity? A bad tree CANNOT produce good fruit (cf. Matt. 7:18)!
In finale, Romans 3:12-18 says that we are completely worthless and that NO ONE does good, NOT EVEN ONE. Our entire being is corrupted including our throat, tongues, lips, mouth, feet and our eyes. O, wretched creatures that we are apart from Christ indeed!
In summation, the doctrine of Total Inability is certainly something that is clearly taught in Scripture. WE have seen that we are :
1) Not able to understand the things of God
2) Not able to please God
3) Not able to submit to God’s law
4) Not able to be justified before God
5) Not able to come to believe in Christ
UNLESS God’s grace comes to us first.
Now, there are many questions regarding “free will” that I was not able to touch upon in this presentation and that I hope to address in the following presentations. But it is sufficiently clear that fallen man does not possess the abilities listed above. The implications are clear that man cannot dispose himself to will or desire salvation. Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher noted,
“Permit me to show you wherein this inability of man really does lie. It lies deep in his nature. Through the fall, and through our own sin, the nature of man has become so debased, and depraved, and corrupt, that it is impossible for him to come to Christ without the assistance of God the Holy Spirit….Now, the reason why man cannot come to Christ, is not because he cannot come, so far as his body or his mere power of mind is concerned, but because his nature is so corrupt that he has neither the will nor the power to come to Christ unless drawn by the Spirit….” (Human Inability)
The
doctrine of human inability is not an easy one because it renders us helpless
and truly at the mercy of God. For if we cannot bring ourselves to spiritual
life to believe in the Gospel for eternal life what hope do we have? No. In
such a view, we are truly left to the mercy and grace of God. In such a
deplorable condition, It is God who must save and God
alone! It is in such a consistently Biblical view of man, that the Biblical
Gospel truly emerges…that we were dead in our trespasses and sins – not sick,
or “not that dead” , but truly dead – that God has to make us alive again with
new life and we can say with the Scriptures, “for by grace you have been
saved…” In Christ’s name, Amen.