Showing posts with label Total Depravity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Total Depravity. Show all posts

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Total Depravity: Can’t We Come Up With A New Term?

I was talking with an ardent Calvinist about this article. He is firmly committed to “total depravity” as meaning that human beings are black, wicked and “dead” so far as God is concerned, devoid of any kind of goodness, light or value: utterly deplorable and despicable. I understand the misguided humility that drives him, but I don’t buy his argument, and I don’t like the term “total depravity”. I think it’s misleading. This is what I wrote to him:

The Meaning of “Death”

One of the things you said you believed, Sam, is that because the Bible calls us “dead in trespasses and sins”, that must mean that we are totally valueless, like a corpse, before God saves us; and that like a corpse, we are incapable of response before God regenerates us. As you said to me, “Dead means dead.”

Thursday, September 16, 2021

How Depraved Can We Be?

That’s a good question.

Our society is clearly messed up. It can be sick enough to think that promiscuity is normal, debauchery is freedom, and that homosexuality is love. It can be twisted enough to call killing the elderly “dignity” and butchering infants in utero “choice”. Morally, things look pretty bad.

That’s what the dictionary definition of “depraved” is. It means “very morally bad”.

Thursday, November 22, 2018

Total Depravity: Can’t We Come Up With A New Term?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Thursday, July 26, 2018

How Depraved Can We Be?

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Total Disappearing Act

The limitations of the Blogger platform became evident last week when the comments on IC’s post on the subject of Total Depravity started misbehaving.

Total Depravity ended like this:

I think we need a new term. “Total depravity” is a poor coinage, and terribly misleading, I think. I would opt for a biblical term instead. However, “dead” won’t do, unless we keep remembering that it’s a metaphor, not a total reality. The danger is that we will take that metaphor farther than the Bible takes it — which is an error comparable to adding or subtracting from scripture.

after which IC and Qman got into a lengthy exchange that Blogger truncated for us around the seventh comment. The original post and previous comments may still be read at the link above, but further comments (if there are any) may be made here.

For convenience, here are the portions of the exchange that are missing:

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Total Depravity: Can’t We Come Up With A New Term?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Monday, June 22, 2015

How Depraved Can We Be?

[Originally presented April 24, 2014]

That’s a good question.

Our society is clearly messed up. It can be sick enough to think that promiscuity is normal, debauchery is freedom, and that homosexuality is love. It can be twisted enough to call killing the elderly “dignity” and butchering infants in utero “choice”. Morally, things look pretty bad.

That’s what the dictionary definition of “depraved” is. It means “very morally bad”.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

How Depraved Can We Be?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

This Explains Why the People I Work With Are Frequently Nicer Than I Am …

The Sword takes up the subject of total depravity reasonably and biblically:
“… to suggest that there is no trace of anything good left in man at all is to contradict the Bible. The Bible teaches that we were created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27). That isn’t a reference to our physical appearance, but to a variety of spiritual, moral, emotional, and intellectual attributes. Whatever else it means, it means that we can think, reason, create, love, etc. If “total depravity” means that man is as depraved as possible in every way, then it would mean that the image of God has been utterly obliterated and that an unsaved man retains none of it. This is patently untrue. Unsaved men can think, reason, and create. Unsaved men can even love. Although diminished and corrupted, vestiges of the image of God remain. It is for this reason that the Holy Spirit can say through Peter that Christ “called us by His own glory and excellence” (2 Pet 1:3).
Read the whole thing here, including disclaimer.

And especially “The disclaimer disclaimer”.