In this post and the next I want to try to help clear up confusion and address a couple of misconceptions concerning the doctrine of total depravity. (I thought I could do it all in one post, but alas, it will take two ...) Some may not realize that total depravity does not imply utter depravity. I'll try to deal with that misconception here. Others may think that the bondage of the will implies that we’re automatons. I'll attempt to deal with that next.
Total depravity is not utter depravity
First, the terminology of “total depravity” may conjure up images of a wild-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth, serial rapist (or something like that). But clearly we’re not that far gone, right? So one objection flows from the obvious fact that we are clearly not utterly depraved—at least most of us aren’t.
So the first thing to be clear about is that total depravity does not imply that we are as depraved as we can possibly be. On the contrary, the bible teaches that God preserves the human race by common grace (i.e., His grace toward all creatures, as distinguished from His special grace to the elect alone), such that fallen man is capable of “civil righteousness,” and of engaging in fruitful cultural endeavors such as agriculture, industry, and the arts. I’ll try to unpack this a little.
Common grace and the interim world order
When Adam and Eve defied God’s law (Genesis 3), He could have justly inflicted the covenant curse of eternal death immediately. Instead, He established a new covenant—one that operates according to a radically different dynamic, that of grace instead of works. According to this covenant, elect sinners would be delivered from God's wrath and ushered into eschatological glory solely on the grounds of the vicarious covenant-keeping of the woman’s Seed. Though Adam could no longer fulfill the “culture mandate” of world dominion, one day the second Adam would.
Therefore, in order to enact His redemptive plan, it was necessary that God preserve His creation—to see to it that the human race would be propagated and life sustained. He established the city of man as an interim world order, the arena in which He would enact the drama of redemption. Though His wrath would be displayed in one terrible act of (temporal) judgment, the Great Flood (which mightily prefigured the eschatological wrath to come), the covenant of preservation (see Genesis 9:8-17; Matthew 5:43-45) ensured that the cycle of seasons and days and years, rain and sunshine, harvests, and all other blessings of common grace, would continue uninterrupted until the end of the present world order.
Common culture and the city of man
Thus, in keeping with God’s redemptive purposes, the state was established to administer civil justice. Likewise, all the accoutrements of culture—arts and agriculture, science and industry—were granted as gifts of common grace for the purpose of preserving and sustaining human life and society until the eschaton. Though man had been exiled from the Garden and had forfeited his royal-priestly task, he was not left altogether without a vocation.
It is important to recognize that this common grace order was and is just that—common—to both believers and unbelievers, the godly and the ungodly alike, with all humanity living, working, and cooperating together in the divinely legitimated project of building the city of man. Interestingly (and perhaps contrary to the expectations of today’s “culture warriors”?), it was not necessarily the covenant people who had the most important role to play in the development of culture and civilization. (See for example Genesis 4:19-22.)
To be sure, there was from the beginning a radical distinction between the covenant people and the rest of the inhabitants of the earth. The former possess dual citizenship, are sojourners on a pilgrimage to heaven, living by faith, and calling on the name of the Lord. The latter trust in their own strength and cunning alone, striving to pile up earthly treasure without regard for the coming judgment. Crucial as this distinction is however, it is no hindrance to their cooperation together in the common project of building civilization.
Earthly things and heavenly things
So fallen humanity is not utterly depraved. If we were, civilization would be utterly impossible. No, total depravity does not imply that fallen man cannot think, invent, produce, create, and (for the most part) abide by the laws of the civil realm. What it does mean is that every constituent part of man—his body and soul, mind, heart, and will—has become incapacitated for communion with, and obedience to, His Creator.
It is necessary then to make the distinction between man's capacity for earthly pursuits and his capacity for heavenly pursuits. In the words of John Calvin:
It may therefore be proper, in order to make it more manifest how far our ability extends in regard to these two classes of objects [i.e., earthly and heavenly], to draw a distinction between them. The distinction is, that we have one kind of intelligence of earthly things, and another of heavenly things. By earthly things, I mean those which relate not to God and his kingdom, to true righteousness and future blessedness, but have some connection with the present life, and are in a manner confined within its boundaries. By heavenly things, I mean the pure knowledge of God, the method of true righteousness, and the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom (Institutes 2.2.13).
Though God has preserved man such that he is suited for earthly pursuits (the sphere of creation), he is totally incapacitated for heavenly pursuits (the sphere of redemption and the new creation) apart from a work of God's special grace.
The Canons of Dordt sums up the matter nicely as follows, speaking first of our lack of ability with respect to heavenly pursuits:
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 (CD 3/4.3).Next, the Canons concedes our ability with respect to earthly pursuits, but carefully explains how little our capabilities in the sphere of creation help us in matters pertaining to salvation and the things of heaven:
There is, to be sure, a certain light of nature remaining in man after the fall, by virtue of which he retains some notions about God, natural things, and the difference between what is moral and immoral, and demonstrates a certain eagerness for virtue and for good outward behavior. But this light of nature is far from enabling man to come to a saving knowledge of God and conversion to him—so far, in fact, that man does not use it rightly even in matters of nature and society. Instead, in various ways he completely distorts this light, whatever its precise character, and suppresses it in unrighteousness. In doing so he renders himself without excuse before God (CD 3/4.4).
(To be continued ...)
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