Total Depravity

I'm traveling to Katy, Texas this week for a special event on Thursday night, Renewing Your Mind Live. Listeners from throughout Texas are gathering for teaching from Stephen Nichols and Derek Thomas, fellowship together, some free Renewing Your Mind swag, and an interactive Q&A session to have your biblical and theological questions answered and to take you behind the scenes of Renewing Your Mind. We'll be in several cities and we'll even host a couple of events in Australia later this year. Visit Ligonier.org slash events to see a list of dates and cities near you. More dates will be added throughout the year.

For everyone registered for Thursday's event, I look forward to greeting you in Katy, Texas. Now onto today's episode. There is a common misconception about the term original sin. Actually, original sin refers to the consequences of Adam's first sin, that because of his fall, we're all affected by the power of sin. But there's been a long-running debate over just how much we're affected.

Does it influence us just a little or completely? Today on Renewing Your Mind, R.C. Sproul will examine the doctrine of total depravity. This message is from his 12-message series, What is Reform Theology?

And all week you'll hear messages from the series and you can request a digital download of it along with a copy of his companion book by the same name when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. Well, here's Dr. Sproul to clear up the confusion surrounding original sin. As we continue now with our study of the core ideas that make up what we call Reformed Theology, I think of an event that took place in history just a couple of years before the pilgrims landed on the shores of New England in the Mayflower, a controversy that spread throughout Europe and then around the world that had its roots in the Netherlands. It began in a theological faculty of a Dutch institution that was committed to Calvinistic theology when some of the professors began to have second thoughts about issues relating to the doctrine of election and predestination and that sort of thing. And this theological controversy erupted, and as it spread across the country, it upset the church and it upset the theologians of the day until finally a synod was convened and issues were squared away and certain people were rejected in their views, among whom was a man by the name of Arminius. But the group who led this movement against orthodox Reformed Theology were called the Remonstrants. They were called the Remonstrants because they were remonstrating or protesting against certain doctrines within their own theological heritage. And there were basically five doctrines that were the core of the controversy, and what has happened as a result of this debate is that these five core theological issues became known in subsequent generations as the so-called Five Points of Calvinism, and they are known through the very popular acrostic TULIP, P-U-L-I-P, which is a sort of clever way to sum up the five articles that were in such dispute.

And I mentioned that historical event for this reason. As we've said all along, it would be a serious mistake to understand the essence of Reformed Theology simply in light of these five doctrines because the Reformed faith involves many, many, many other elements of theological and ecclesiastical confession. But these are the five controversial points of Reformed Theology, and they're the ones that are popularly seen as being distinctive to this particular confession. So, we're going to spend some time looking at the five points of Calvinism as they are spelled out in this acrostic. And we remember that this acrostic TULIP uses the first letter of five different doctrines. The first is total depravity, hence the T, and the second is unconditional election, and hence the U. The L stands for limited atonement. The I for irresistible grace, and P for the perseverance of the saints. And when I have lectured on these doctrines in the past, I have stated one or more objections to these subheadings as defining the doctrines because many of them, if not all of them, are somewhat misleading. But they fit so nicely into this acrostic, people insist on using these abbreviations to define the five points.

And so, what we're going to do today is begin with a brief overview of the T of the TULIP, that which stands for total depravity. I remember many, many years ago I was teaching a course in theology at a college, and the students who were enrolled in the college did not come from a Reformed background by any means, and we were working through various doctrines. And I came to the doctrine of total depravity, and I gave an exposition that went over about a week of classes. And at the end of that time, I asked the students if they were persuaded that this indeed was the biblical view of human sinfulness. And everybody in the class raised their hand and indicated, yes, they were convinced that this was the correct biblical view. And I said, are you sure?

And they said, yes, they're absolutely sure. So, I went on the top left-hand side of the blackboard, and I wrote the number of the students there, like twenty-eight students, put it in a box, and I wrote next to it for the janitor, please do not erase. And I did that for a reason, that they were all committed. And then the next week we started in on the U of unconditional election, and there were howls of protest from the students who rebelled against that doctrine. They didn't like that at all. And when I began to press them on the doctrine, I said, now are you sure you still want to subscribe to total depravity as you did last week?

And one by one I had to erase the names up there in the left-hand corner of the blackboard. And I say that for this reason, that there's one sense in which if a person really embraces what is called the doctrine of total depravity, the other four points in this five-point system more or less fall in line. They become duck soup and corollaries, more or less, of this first point. And so, let's take some time to look at that. The historical situation where this doctrine first became a matter of great import and great controversy was early on in church history during the teaching ministry of Saint Augustine. And I'm sure you've heard a little bit about the so-called Pelagian controversy of the latter part of the fourth century and into the fifth century, which began when this British monk, whose name was Pelagius, protested against a statement that was in one of the written prayers of Augustine. In this prayer, Augustine made this comment before God. He said, O God, command what thou wouldst and grant what thou dost command.

Let me say that again. Command what thou wouldst and grant what thou dost command. And, of course, Pelagius had apoplexy over this prayer. Now the reason for his displeasure was not the first part of the prayer, wherein Augustine said, O God, command whatever you want to command. Pelagius, being a pious monk, being a pious monk, certainly agreed with Augustine that God had every right to exercise his authority over the creatures and to command what's deemed pleasing to him.

But what exercised, Pelagius, was the second part of the prayer when Augustine asked God to grant what he commands, because Pelagius said, that assumes that the creature somehow is not morally able to do the will of God. And so that created a lengthy controversy. Frankly, which controversy goes on even to this day? And we continue to have discussions about Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism. Augustinianism and so on. In fact, I just finished writing a book about the entire historical development of that controversy from Pelagius down to last week. And so I will be going into that in much greater detail later on.

I hope to have a separate course just on that question. But by way of introduction and overview, the issue has to do with the question of original sin. And the doctrine of total depravity reflects the Reformed viewpoint of original sin. Now that term, original sin, is often misunderstood in the popular arena. Some people just assume that the term original sin must refer to the first sin, the original, the original that we've all copied in many different ways in our own lives.

That is the first sin of Adam and Eve. But that's not what is referred to historically in the church by the doctrine of original sin. Rather, the doctrine of original sin defines the consequences to the human race of that first sin. And virtually every church historically that has had a creed or a confession has agreed that something very serious happened to the human race as a result of the first sin, that the first sin produced original sin. That is, as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve, the entire human race fell. And so that our nature as human beings since the fall is a nature that has been influenced by the power of evil. As David declared in the Old Testament, O God, I was born in sin, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

He was not saying that it was a sinful thing for his mother and father to have born children, nor was he saying that he had done something evil by being born, but rather he was acknowledging the human condition of fallenness, that fallenness that was part of the experience of his parents, that fallenness that he brings himself into this world. And so, original sin has to do with the fallen nature of mankind. The idea is that we are not sinners because we sin, but that we sin because we are sinners. We are by nature sinners. And we've all heard the axiom, nobody's perfect.

We might improve upon that a little bit by saying not only is no one perfect, but no one's even close to perfection. And so, the doctrine of total depravity describes and defines a particular view of original sin that has its roots in the teaching of Saint Augustine. And remember that Augustine was the patron saint of the monastery where Martin Luther was reared in the faith and where he taught at Wittenberg.

He was an Augustinian monk, and also Augustine was the most revered mentor of John Calvin, so that the thinking of Augustine had an enormous influence in the shaping of the doctrine of the Protestant Reformation. Now, what total depravity does not mean in the Reformed tradition is what we call utter depravity. Utter depravity.

And we often use the term total as a synonym for utter or for completely. And so, the notion of total depravity conjures up the idea that every human being is as bad as that person could possibly be. You might think of some archfiends of history like Adolf Hitler and say there was absolutely no redeeming virtue left in the man, but I suspect that he had some affection for his mother, and as wicked as Adolf Hitler was, we can still conceive of his being even more wicked than he actually was. And so, the idea of total depravity doesn't mean that every human being is as wicked as they could possibly be, but rather it means that the fall is so serious that it affects the whole person. Our fallenness that captures and grips our human nature affects our bodies. That's why we become ill and we die.

It affects our minds and our thinking. We still have the capacity to think, but the Bible speaks about the way in which the mind has become darkened and weakened. The will of man is no longer in its pristine state of moral power, but the will, according to the New Testament, is now in bondage.

We are enslaved to the evil impulses and desires of our hearts. And so, the mind, the will, the spirit, the whole person has been infected by the power of sin. Now again, if that's as far as we would go with the definition of total depravity, most Christian communions would say, yea and amen, this far. I mean, most would agree that we're fallen and that the fall is a serious thing and that the human nature that we bring into this world has been so influenced by sin that it touches every part of our nature. Again, most Catholic or universal creeds of Christendom would grant that much.

So then the debate becomes over the question of degree. How far have we fallen? What is the degree of that human corruption? Now, I like to replace the term total depravity with my favorite designation, which is radical corruption. It's a concept that my friends find very easy to remember as they make their own acrostic for it. They just abbreviate radical corruption by the initials R.C.

They take great delight in the ease with which this facilitates their memory as they have a living model before them of radical corruption. And I remember a gym teacher I had in the seventh grade when he called the roll for the first day that he was there and called my name R.C., as that's what I was called in grade school, and he said, oh, rotten crabapple. So, in that instant, I had a new nickname that I probably should not have mentioned because I'll probably hear it again in these days. But the reason why we use this term, although it completely ruins our flower garden here, the tulip now becomes rulep, and nobody's going to remember that. But the reason I prefer this is because of the term radical. Again, there's another one of those words that we use bandied about in various ways in our culture, particularly in the political arena where we say somebody's on the radical left or on the radical right or so on. But the word radical, ironically, has its roots in the Latin word for root, which is the word rodex, and it can be translated root or core. And the idea of the term radical is something that permeates to the core of a thing.

It's not something that is tangential or superficial, namely lying on the surface, but it penetrates into the core of the thing. In a recent poll done of professing evangelicals, the overwhelming majority of people who answered particular questions in this poll indicated that they agreed with the statement that man is basically good. Usually that phrase, basically good, means that the basis or the essence of humanity or the core of a person is good. And though we recognize that no one's perfect and all are sinners and that we all are marred and blemished by various imperfections, the problem with sin in the idea that man is basically good is that sin then is seen as accidental or peripheral to human nature. And this, of course, is part of the optimistic view of mankind that is essential to historic humanism.

The humanist acknowledges that there are problems, but basically what we need is more education, more government help, and we'll get better and better and better and erase those blemishes on the surface that produce crime and other forms of wickedness. And it seemed to me when I heard that poll that perhaps what is happening is that those who are professing evangelicals are taking their cue for the basic nature of fallen humanity from the culture rather than from the historic biblical view. The Reformed view says that the fall extends and penetrates to the core. The word that is used for core actually is a translation from the Latin word core, which means what?

Heart. That is, the idea is that our sin is something that comes from our hearts, and in biblical terms that means from the core or very center of our existence. And so what is required for us to be conformed to the image of Christ is not simply some small adjustments or behavioral modifications, but nothing less than renovation from the inside, nothing less than regeneration, being made over again, being quickened by the power of the Spirit. And so we see that the only way in which a person can escape this radical situation is when the Holy Spirit changes the core, changes the heart, and even that change does not instantly vanquish sin. The complete elimination of sin awaits our glorification in heaven. In the sixth chapter of John, we read that it's the Spirit who gives life.

The flesh is no help at all. I'm glad you're joining us today for Renewing Your Mind. That was R.C. Sproul providing a clear definition of total depravity. This message is from Dr. Sproul's series, What is Reform Theology?

And as we heard him say, many evangelicals know very little about their theological heritage. We owe much to men like Martin Luther and John Kelvin, and that's why we'd like to provide you with an opportunity to study this topic more deeply. You can request lifetime digital access to the entire series and its study guide, plus we'll mail you the companion book to the series when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, or when you call us at 800-435-4343. Listen to the messages, read the book, and go deeper with the study guide when you ask for this week's resource offer at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes. And if you live outside of the U.S. or Canada, lifetime digital access to the series is available when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org slash global.

Your support week in and week out makes Renewing Your Mind possible. It also supports all of the global outreach of Ligonier Ministries. You've heard me mention before that we're striving to have sustained ministry in the world's top 20 languages.

Well, if you know someone who doesn't speak English and you'd like to see if we have resources available in their language, scroll to the bottom of ligonier.org and you'll see all of the available languages with links to the articles, videos, and audio in that language. Please pray as these teaching materials go out online and physically and that God would be glorified as God's people are helped as they grow in their knowledge of Him. Thank you. We'll continue our study of Reformed theology next time. Here's a preview. If God chooses sovereignly to bestow His grace on some sinners and withhold His grace from other sinners, is there any violation of justice in this? That's tomorrow, here on Renewing Your Mind. That's tomorrow, here on Renewing Your Mind.