A Deeper Look: Total Depravity

"Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." --Genesis 6:5

"Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil." --Jeremiah 13:23


Total depravity is the first point in the "TULIP" acrostic. It's also the first point that comes to many people's minds when they think of Calvinism, and indeed Christianity in general. To me, of the five points, it has the clearest Biblical base. Free-willers can make a convincing case, but if you deny total depravity, you deny the need for salvation itself; the heart of the Christian religion. Total depravity is, quite simply, the doctrine that Man is inherently sinful. All men. Every single one. Since Adam's Fall, we are cursed with disease, death, pain, suffering, and, worst of all, sin.

RC Sproul, in his seminal "Chosen By God," clarifies the horrifying extent to which sin has taken hold in our beings. "Total Depravity also stresses the fact that sin reaches to the core of our being. Sin is not a peripheral thing, a slight blemish that mars an otherwise perfect specimen. Sin is radical in the sense that it touches the root (radix) of our lives." As Romans 3:10-12 says, "As it is written, 'There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; There have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.'"No, not one. Every human on Earth, from Adolph Hitler to Mother Teresa, has turned aside. Our natural inclination is to spurn God utterly. We chose sin. For Adam, it was a conscious choice. For us, it is despairingly, horrifically instinctive.

"TULIP" is a profound theological doctrine because each of its tenets is dependent on the others. This is why, as Renzzy explained in the comments of the last post, a "four-point Calvinist" is missing something somewhere. The two possibilities are: Either Calvinism is in its entirety a Biblically false doctrine, or it is Gospel truth. To deny one of the five points, just as if they were the pillars of the Acropolis, is to undermine the support of all the others. A "four-point Calvinist," which I confess is what I am at the moment, is always a weak Calvinist.

Calvinism is often viewed as constrictive. All too often, Christians give in to the sinful inclination of false independence; we want to live our lives "our own way." Calvinism denies us this in favor of true independence through the sanctifying blood of the Lamb. There are even some Calvinists, I'm sure, who are proud of their clear-eyed acceptance of the "hard truth." But Total Depravity is in fact a freeing doctrine. Before I was aware of real theological doctrine, I believed in what RC Sproul calls "utter depravity." That is, everything we do is completely sinful. This was depressing, and I never followed the train of thought it led to for very long. But total depravity is very different. Everything we do is tinged with sin; but not entirely sinful. If our every action was entirely sinful and we committed every sin, the human line would not have survived past Adam. Even Adolph Hitler, as RC Sproul points out, refrained from murdering his mother. This is like a breath of fresh air, at least to me, because it reveals that we can do some "good," although tinged with sin and empty without God.

RC Sproul--if you're getting sick of him, take a deep breath, because we're just getting started-- has an anecdote about a college class on theology he taught to a group of mixed-theology students. At the beginning of the study of total depravity, only one student said he held the Calvinist view. After several days of lecture, all the students accepted the doctrine of total depravity. After asking twice if they were certain, Sproul wrote the number on the chalkboard, with instructions not to erase it. Later, when the class covered predestination and man's inability to accept God of his own accord, many of the students voiced disagreement. Then he went to the board and reminded them of the poll he had taken earlier, and their agreement. According to Sproul, it took him another two weeks for him to convince the students that, if one accepts total depravity, the debate about Calvinism is, in many senses, already over.


"As it is written, 'There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God.They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.'" --Romans 3:10-12

Thanks for reading,

Sola Gratia