Total Depravity Means Total Inability
By Terry Benton

Calvinism is commonly summarized and remembered by way of an acrostic formula that uses the word TULIP. The first letter stands for Total Depravity or Total Spiritual Inability. Let's allow a Calvinist to explain what this term means.

Quote:
Total depravity is a concept that everyone, including the elect and non-elect, is incapable of choosing God because he is sinful. In my opinion, Armenians, who reject this point, do not understand Romans 3:10-11 as it is written, THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS GOD. Unquote

Calvinists say that none seek God because they are incapacitated or unable to do so. That is why some prefer to call Total Depravity Total Spiritual Inability.

Quote:
(T) - Total Spiritual Inability (Sinners are unable to come to Christ unless the Holy Spirit regenerates them.) Unquote

This idea says that, from birth, we were totally unable to choose God and righteousness; thus, we were inborn with total depravity. But, if we are totally depraved from birth, then we were never able to be responsible before God; therefore, at no time were we ever alive spiritually and safe from sin and condemnation (Romans 7:9). In other words, if we are totally depraved from birth, then we are unable to be held accountable.

The totally disabled are not accountable. It cannot be a newborn baby's fault that he is totally unable, and at no point in time as he grows to manhood can a totally incapacitated person ever be responsible to do what he has always been unable to do. Imagine how useless and silly it is to talk to a hammer, command the hammer to go build you a house, and then warn it that if it does not obey you, you will throw it into the fire. That is the same scene as God commanding people, who never had ability, to hear and obey and then acting as though they can be moved by warnings.

While guilt is a necessary conclusion for all, the responsibility lies within ability. In other words, we are guilty because we do not seek God to understand Him, not because we CAN'T do so. Total depravity says we don't even have the ability to seek and understand God. If we can't do these things, then we are not responsible for doing them. Romans 3 does not speak of our inability, but of our guilt, and guilt implies that we did not use our ability to seek God; therefore, we could not be anything but guilty before Him. Furthermore, the passage says we all have "gone out of the way" (implying that there was a time when we were not out of the way). Total inability implies that we never had any ability and, therefore, were always out of the way. This passage does not support Calvinist doctrine.

"God made man upright but they have sought out many schemes." (Ecclesiastes 7:29) (The plural pronoun can't refer only to Adam.) The verse talks about being upright (not totally depraved), and then tells what went wrong with these upright men. They sought many schemes. Watch this verse carefully.

"God made man upright, (not totally depraved and totally unable to do upright things or be upright) but they have sought out many schemes." Depravity was not built into mankind. They went from an upright state to seeking schemes that were not already built into their nature.) (NKJV)

But, also remember that if man was born totally depraved, then a child can have no good feature that we need to mimic; yet, Jesus said, "Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:1ff) Why would God want us to mimic those totally depraved little brats?

If all people are totally and inherently depraved, when God said "Hear O Israel," they couldn't hear or obey His commands. They were totally unable to hear and obey. In fact, it is silly to command a hammer to do anything on its own, or to even take the first step toward cooperating with another tool. If the Calvinist's doctrine of Total Inability and Total Depravity is true, then Israel could no more hear than a hammer could hear, and it would be just as silly for God to talk to totally unable people as it would be for me to command a hammer to listen to and obey me. Nor could God hold us accountable any more than I can hold my hammer accountable for being lazy and just lying around doing nothing, a total waste of existence. The scene that Calvinism creates actually blasphemes God. It makes Him look as ridiculous as a man talking to his hammer and then becoming angry with it for not obeying his commands.

Steve Rudd observed:
Quote: If every newborn is "utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil," then how do we account for the goodness of the unregenerate, such as Cornelius (Acts 10: 1-4, 22), or anyone else today. How do we account for all the good things that non-Christians do? How can "evil men and imposters go from bad to worse" (2 Timothy 3:13)? Unquote

Indeed! How can a person move from totally depraved to worse than totally depraved? I would add that if we are all inborn with total inability and total depravity, how can there be a situation where Gentiles "do by nature the things contained in the Law" (Romans 2:14)? I guess they were pre-programmed and regenerated first, which leads us back to the question of how any man can really be guilty at all. It looks like all the guilt falls on the Programmer, not on what He programmed. A computer can only do what it is programmed to do. If the programmer does not allow and give the computer the capability to do a thing, how foolish it is to destroy the computer for not doing what it couldn't do anyway.

I fully anticipate that Calvinists will say the issue of fairness was raised in Romans 9:20, and we have no right to question God's justice and fairness. Wait a minute! This context is not about leaving the Jews programmed to reject God, but of God's right to choose between the fleshly seed of Abraham and the spiritual seed of Abraham. At the end of Paul's discussion, he wrote that the reason many Jews were rejected and Gentiles accepted was "Because they did not seek it (righteousness) by faith" (v.32). Paul put the responsibility where it belonged. The context is not showing that God had a right to be arbitrary about SALVATION, but that He had a right to reject Jews who did not believe in Jesus, even though He promised to bless Abraham's seed. God chose to reject Abraham's descendants who did not seek righteousness by faith but as it were, by the works of the Law. He had as much right to make that decision as He did to make the decision to select Jacob over Esau or Isaac over Ishmael. There is no unrighteousness with God.

He did not arbitrarily decide to send Esau and Ishmael to hell. In their cases, God's decision was not about their eternal destinies. It was a decision regarding which seed line to use to bring the Savior into the world.

The decision to bless only BELIEVING Jews is not arbitrary; it is well within the right of any just ruler to choose the avenues and conditions for receipt of his blessings. Was God unjust because He did not bless some of Abraham's descendants? Not at all. Paul argues that they can still seek righteousness by faith (9:33; 10: 1-3, 13, 16; 11:20, 23). So, though a Sovereign Lord may, without being unjust, choose certain conditions for receiving His blessings, God's conditions caused some of the Jews to think that-if Christians were correct--He had not kept His promise to bless them. They argued that they were Abraham's descendants who had received the law and circumcision from God; and now the Christians seemed to be claiming that counted for nothing, that God would bless only a few Jews and many Gentiles. To them, that appeared to make God unfair and unjust.

So, Paul lays out the case for God having the right to have mercy on whomever He wills and make the choices He makes without really being unjust and totally arbitrary. He lays the blame squarely on the shoulders of the unbelieving Jews because their own Scriptures foretold that an unpopular "rock of offense" would be the one they would need to believe in order not to be put to shame (9:33; 10:11). They stumbled over that rock anyway, and their unbelief was what put them to shame. So Paul argues that God was indeed just, and He gave the Jews fair warning about what would happen. If they failed to believe, God was fair in choosing not to bless them.

God never arbitrarily chose people to salvation or condemnation. If He did, THAT would indeed make Him unjust. We may have more to say about this passage when we analyze the doctrine of Unconditional Election, the next link in the TULIP chain. Right now, we are establishing that God did not pre-program the Jews to be unbelievers, which would indeed be unjust and unfair. If all people are totally depraved and totally incapacitated through no fault of their own, and God chooses to leave many incapacitated, blame them for it, and send them to hell, THAT would be unjust. If God arbitrarily decided to give a few the capacities to believe, actually programmed them to believe, then acted as if He was rewarding and blessing them with eternal bliss for the way He programmed them, THAT would be unfair and unjust.

If the Judge of all the earth behaves that way, then it would be just for an earthly judge to dismiss all juries, have the criminals file past his desk, arbitrarily hand some their walking papers, and sentence the others to death, with no basis other than the judge's own goodness. THAT is not at all right or just.

If Jesus was sinless because God did not allow Him to inherit the depraved nature that would have totally disabled Him, then why does God hold others responsible and accountable for sin? Did God make us so that we could not walk upright, and then condemn us for doing that over which we had absolutely no control? Why did He not give us the same advantage that, as Calvinists assert, He gave Jesus? This totally perverts justice. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?

It's like sending mentally retarded folks to eternal fire for being born mentally retarded. If we inherited mental retardation from Adam's sin, then true justice would hold only Adam responsible. The rest of us could not help being totally incapacitated, and true justice does not condemn the innocent. Romans 3 says we have all "gone out of the way," which implies that we moved away from the state of innocence and uprightness with which we were born. So, even though we have all sinned, the guilt is ours for going out of the way and letting sin dominate and control our thoughts and actions. Somewhere along the way, the drunkard sinned by taking his first drink. He was totally responsible, but he never stopped drinking, and it mastered and enslaved him. He was not born enslaved. He was responsible for his own sins.

Consider the Calvinistic doctrine and apply it to particular cases of conversion found in the book of Acts. Let's begin with the first conversions found in Acts 2. ALL were totally unable to listen to the Spirit speaking through Peter because ALL were inherently totally depraved and had TOTAL spiritual inability. Yet, Peter preached, they heard (2:37), and they cried "...what shall we do?" Had they already been regenerated by the Holy Spirit? If so, why did the Holy Spirit regenerate only 3,000 and not all of those who heard Peter? Is that just and fair?

Further, if the reason only 3,000 had power to hear and ask "what shall we do" was because God desired to save only a few and caused only those few to hear and seek, does that mean the others did not hear and seek because God arbitrarily chose for most of them, through no fault of their own, to perish? That is not justice at all.

Also consider that Calvinistic doctrine makes God a liar. Peter said that God "is not willing that ANY should perish" (2 Peter 3:9-10). But if He wanted everyone to be saved and none to perish, then He would have given all the same ability to hear and seek. Yet, because God does not want any to perish, this same apostle preached to all the Jews, and then God only regenerated 3,000 enough to allow them to hear and obey? The others were given no ability. That is not justice. It is injustice. ALL were totally disabled, but only 3,000 received the ability to hear and obey.

We could conclude, and rightly so, that no one was actually guilty, and no one was actually guilty of crucifying Jesus. Inborn total depravity can do no better or worse than TOTAL depravity dictates, and TOTAL inability means that the Jews who crucified Jesus were unable to do any better.

If the reason the 3,000 heard and asked "what shall we do" was because the Holy Spirit had already regenerated them, then Peter's answer makes no sense. How can you "repent" (vs.38) if you have already been regenerated? If they had already been regenerated, and that regeneration was what gave them the ability to hear Peter's spiritual message, then the "washing of regeneration" (Titus 3:5) and the "renewing of the Holy Spirit" had already occurred. If they had already been washed and renewed by the Holy Spirit, then Peter should have answered the question as follows:

Acts 2:38 should read: "There is NOTHING for you to do. God has already done it all for you. You have already received the gift of the Holy Spirit."

But, "those that gladly received his word were baptized" (v.41). That's odd. They could not do anything but "gladly receive his words" since they had already been regenerated to do that very thing. Keep looking at this case of conversion and asking yourself if you can see any trace of the five points of Calvinism.

Calvinists make a total mess of the Bible. They tell us we can't see it the way they do because we have not been regenerated. When and if we are regenerated (which, if this doctrine is correct, is totally out of our control and up to God), we will be able to see the Bible the way the Calvinists do. That is much like the Jehovah's Witnesses. They say we cannot see things their way until we read the Watch Tower publications and become enlightened. The Mormons say we can see it their way if we pray to see it and receive Joseph Smith's records and revelations of God. Calvinism teaches that none of us can actually understand Peter's sermon until the Holy Spirit does something to totally enable our ears and hearts and understanding. They call this regeneration, but, their version of regeneration is totally arbitrary, which is totally unjust.

We reject the entire deck of TULIP-doctrine cards because its very foundation is false. If God made man upright, then we were not born totally disabled and depraved. We have "gone out of the way," but we were not born out of the way. We bear responsibility only if we have ABILITY. If we all have ability, then there can be no total disability or total inability. If we are responsible for sin at all, it would only be because we could have done better. Thus, we must reject, as false, the first point in the TULIP acrostic.

Brother Benton has shown Calvinism's false conclusions concerning TOTAL DEPRAVITY. The other TULIP-theory points are equally false.

Human wisdom concocts such theories, which deny Divine wisdom. The God of Calvinism is not the God of the Bible! (KMG)


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