The very practical doctrine of total depravity

There’s an old 19th-century American joke about the woman who, when asked what she thought of the doctrine of total depravity, replied that it was “a very good doctrine if people would only live up to it”.¹

The joke epitomizes the bad press that the doctrine of total depravity has suffered over the years: instead of providing inspiration and uplift—something to “live up to”—it is a doctrine that depresses and deflates; instead of making us feel good about ourselves, it is a doctrine that makes us feel wretched.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the doctrine is one that contemporary preaching frequently denies or (perhaps even more frequently) politely ignores. If the gospel is a product to be marketed, we will not make many sales by telling customers that they are totally depraved. So we reinvent the message to tell our hearers something more positive about themselves. Or we quietly de-emphasize the bad news of the depravity of our nature, hoping that our hearers will already be aware enough of their predicament and ready for us to tell them about what God has done to deliver them from it.

I remember vividly a Christmas sermon I preached several years ago and a conversation I had afterwards with a visitor who was there that day. He was a prosperous, upright, well-respected man—a pillar of the community who was visiting our church with his family for his annual observance of Christmas. He approached me after the service and thanked me warmly for the sermon. He said, “It was so positive and uplifting. The minister at the church I normally go to on Christmas Day always seems to end up talking about our sins and faults and failings, and I feel like saying to him, ‘Don’t you know it’s Christmas? Can’t you talk about peace and joy and love?’”

At the time, my reply went something like this: “Deep down, I think we know that we’re not right with God and that we need forgiveness, and this morning I was focusing on what God has done about that”. But as I mentally re-preached the sermon and replayed the conversation later, I knew that my rationale didn’t really hold up: it doesn’t go without saying that we are sinners, under God’s condemnation and in need of his forgiveness. The same God who commands that the good news of salvation be shouted with a loud voice from the top of a mountain (Isa 40:9) also commands that the bad news of his people’s sin be preached, and preached out loud, with a voice “like a trumpet” (Isa 58:1). The doctrine of sin needs to be preached, not just presupposed. Cornelius Plantinga puts it well:

[A]lthough traditional Christianity is true, its truth saws against the grain of much in contemporary culture and therefore needs constant sharpening. Christianity’s major doctrines need regular restatement so that people may believe them, or believe them anew. Its classic awarenesses need to be evoked so that people may have them, or have them again. Recalling and confessing our sin is like taking out the garbage: once is not enough.²

With all this in mind, let us rediscover this doctrine and the depth of our problem anew by turning, first, to the Bible and, second, to how total depravity has been understood by Christians throughout history. I’ll then finish up with some implications of the doctrine for the Christian life.

Sin in the Bible

When we look at the Bible, the picture it paints of our sin and the corruption of our nature is stark and depressing. The first 11 chapters of Genesis narrate a catastrophic fall from right relationship with God and the avalanche of sin that follows. As early as chapter 6, we are told that “the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence”, and that God laments the fact “that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen 6:5, 11).

Israel, God’s chosen nation, is not immune from this sort of bleak assessment. Isaiah’s description is as poignant as it is damning:

Ah, sinful nation,
a people laden with iniquity,
offspring of evildoers,
children who deal corruptly!
They have forsaken the Lord,
they have despised the Holy One of Israel,
they are utterly estranged …
The whole head is sick,
and the whole heart faint.
From the sole of the foot even to the head,
there is no soundness in it …

(Isa 1:4-6)

Jeremiah describes the sin of Judah as having been “written with a pen of iron; with a point of diamond it is engraved on the tablet of their heart, and on the horns of their altars” (Jer 17:1). Even David, the king after God’s own heart, describes himself as having been “brought forth in iniquity” and ‘conceived in sin’ (Ps 51:5).

In the New Testament, Jesus criticizes his Pharisaic opponents’ obsession with outward, ritual purity, and reminds them that

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)

Paul piles up the evidence of Scripture in Romans 1-3, asserting on the basis of Scriptural testimony that “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside …” (Rom 3:10-12a).

Original sin and total depravity

The cumulative weight of the Bible’s testimony concerning the extent and severity of human sinfulness compelled Augustine in the fifth century to reject the self-confident moralism of the British monk Pelagius. Pelagius taught that if God commanded virtue, then we must be capable of achieving it. He explained the gist of his teaching like this:

Whenever I have to speak on the subject of moral instruction and conduct of a holy life, it is my practice first to demonstrate the power and quality of human nature and to show what it is capable of achieving, and then to go on to encourage the mind of my listener to consider the idea of different kinds of virtues, in case it may be of little or no profit to him to be summoned to pursue ends which he has perhaps assumed hitherto to be beyond his reach; for we can never enter upon the path of virtue unless we have hope as our guide and companion … Any good of which human nature is capable has to be revealed, since what is shown to be practicable must be put into practice.³

Augustine, by way of contrast, cast himself helplessly upon the grace of God in terms that scandalized Pelagius: “You command continence: Give what you command and command what you will”.⁴ Augustine’s own painful experience, enslaved to the pleasures and desires of the flesh until he was mastered by God, “the true, the sovereign joy”,⁵ coincided with the teaching of Scripture about the darkness and deadness of the human heart, apart from the gracious work of God:

Those who are forsaken by the light of righteousness, and are therefore groping in darkness, produce nothing else than those works of darkness which I have enumerated, until such time as it is said to them, and they obey the command: ‘Awake you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light’ … That free will, whereby man corrupted his own self, was sufficient for his passing into sin; but to return to righteousness, he has need of a Physician, since he is out of health; he has need of a Vivifier, because he is dead.⁶

Despite Augustine’s resolute opposition to the teachings of Pelagius, the condemnation of Pelagius’ teachings in 431 at the Council of Ephesus, and the condemnation of various semi-Pelagianisms at the Second Council of Orange in 529, the medieval church ended up settling into a position somewhere between Pelagius and Augustine:⁷ humans were indeed fallen from their original righteousness, and human nature was certainly corrupted by that fall, but the corruption was to be understood in terms of “languor” or “weakness”,⁸ and enough strength remained for fallen human nature to cooperate with God’s grace in its redemption.

The Protestant Reformers of the 16th century strongly reasserted the gravity and pervasiveness of the effect of original sin on fallen human nature. Calvin, for example, argued that Adam’s fall had such a devastating effect on the image of God in humanity that “nothing remains after the ruin except what is confused, mutilated, and disease-ridden”:⁹ “Everything which is in man, from the intellect to the will, from the soul even to the flesh, has been defiled and crammed with this concupiscence”.¹⁰ Statements such as these came to be summarized as the doctrine of the ‘total depravity’ of fallen human nature.

Understanding the doctrine

The Reformers’ doctrine of total depravity is a much-misunderstood article of theology. It does not mean that fallen human beings are all as sinful as they could possibly be, or that there is no such thing as virtuous action apart from the saving work of God’s Spirit, or that fallen humanity is bereft of all conscience.

What it does mean is that every dimension and faculty of humanity is affected by the stain and corruption of original sin: in the words of Romans 3:10-18, our sin affects our “throat”, “tongues”, “lips”, “mouth”, “feet” and “eyes”. It is all-pervasive, like a drop of poison in a glass of water: it is not that the whole glass is poison, but that the whole glass is poisoned.¹¹ Our intellect, our will, our emotions, our desires, our culture, our morality—every part of us is affected. This includes our consciences, which sin has the effect of hardening—even “searing”—and disordering (e.g. 1 Cor 8:7, 1 Tim 4:2, Titus 1:15). Sin affects not only what we do, but also what we approve and disapprove of (e.g. Isa 5:20, Rom 1:32). Even our good deeds and our virtues are defiled by our sin (e.g. Isa 64:6).¹²

The effect of this on our standing before God is to render us spiritually dead (e.g. Eph 2:1-5), blind to the glory of God in Christ (e.g. 2 Cor 4:4); apart from the regenerating work of the Spirit, we are powerless to please God (e.g. Rom 8:7-8) and powerless to save ourselves (e.g. Rom 8:2-4).

A very practical doctrine

What are the implications of the doctrine of total depravity for how we live as the redeemed people of God? What does it mean to ‘live up to’ the implications of the doctrine? Here are half a dozen suggestions.

1. Depravity and Watchfulness

Although the reign of sin over us as regenerate people has been broken by the redemptive work of Christ, we remain utterly dependent upon God for both our forgiveness and our sanctification. According to the model prayer taught us by Jesus, we are still to ask God for the forgiveness of our sins every day. Paul reminds us that even though we who belong to Christ “have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24), there remains for us the urgent, ongoing command to “[p]ut to death therefore what is earthly in you” (Col 3:5; cf. Rom 8:13).¹³

2. Depravity and Compassion

If the doctrine of total depravity teaches us watchfulness in relation to our own sins, it also teaches us compassion in relation to the sins of others. Christians who hold to a vigorous doctrine of human depravity ought to be on guard against the cruelties of perfectionism. We worship a God who “remembers that we are dust” (Ps 103:14). Jonathan Edwards makes the point forcefully: “This doctrine teaches us to think no worse of others than of ourselves; it teaches us that we are all, as we are by nature, companions in a miserable, helpless condition; which under a revelation of the divine mercy, tends to promote universal compassion”.¹⁴

3. Depravity and Culture

While the doctrine of total depravity is not at all a denial that fallen human culture is capable of accomplishing magnificent works of beauty, truth and wisdom, it does remind us that on all these works of human hands—even the most magnificent—there will be the stains and smudges of human sin. Thus, whilst our engagement with the culture of the society we live in may involve particular preferences and alliances and associations, our ultimate allegiance is not with one part of fallen human culture against another—with ‘high culture’ against ‘low culture’, conservative politics against progressive (or progressive against conservative), elitism against popularism, the religious against the secular—but with the kingdom of God against the kingdom of darkness. The judgement of God falls not only on the crass and the banal, but also on the sophisticated and idealistic.

4. Depravity and Evangelism

In our evangelism, the doctrine of total depravity (and the companion doctrine of total inability) is a reminder that all genuine conversion is a miraculous work of the Spirit of God, without whom we are as powerless to repent and believe as we are to re-enter our mother’s womb and be born again (John 3:1-8).

This being the case, total depravity warns us against the temptation to engineer the success of our efforts by the dilution or distortion of the message. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:2-6,

[W]e have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

5. Depravity and Parenting

At home, in the way we parent our own children, the doctrine of total depravity not only warns us against the compassionless perfectionism that we spoke of above, it also warns us (in the opposite direction) against the naive assumption that our task is simply to stand back as parents and let the natural personalities of our children unfold. Our children do not enter the family pristine, waiting to be messed up by the excesses of our parenting. They are born as inheritors of their parents’ sin, and need the kindness of discipline to teach them the ways of wisdom (cf. Prov 22:15).

6. Depravity and Doxology

Finally, and most practically of all, the doctrine of total depravity teaches us to give glory to God. The doctrine of total depravity is a humbling doctrine. It reminds us that our salvation is (to borrow Paul’s words in Ephesians 2:9) “not a result of works, so that no one may boast”, forcing our eyes upward from the impossibilities of our own condition to the infinity of God’s power and grace, and driving us to prayer and praise (e.g. Rom 7:24-25a, Eph 3:20-21). What could be more practical than that?