Green Baggins

posted by R. Fowler White

Total depravity is utter depravity, precisely because, as the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) expounds the biblical truth concerning “The Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof” in chapter 6, the terms total and utter apply to the sinner’s defiled and corrupted nature, not to the frequency or severity of all actual transgressions that proceed from that nature (WCF 6.4). That being the case, the Assembly states quite forthrightly that “all the posterity” of our first parents are “dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body” (WCF 6.2),” and are “from this original corruption, … utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil” (WCF 6.4; emphasis added).

To reflect briefly on the meaning of total depravity, it might prove useful to annotate a short essay entitled “How Sinful Is Man?” which appeared in 2014 on The Aquila Report (https://www.theaquilareport.com/how-sinful-is-man/). The original article’s three paragraphs appear below with annotations after each paragraph. The point of the annotations is to suggest that even in the most commendable efforts to present biblical and confessional teaching to a popular audience, it is difficult to avoid imprecision or inconsistency. If/when that happens, it is good to try to improve our efforts.

“Imagine a circle that represents the character of mankind.[1] Now imagine that if someone sins, a spot—a moral blemish of sorts—appears in the circle, marring the character of man.[2] If other sins occur, more blemishes appear in the circle. Well, if sins continue to multiply, eventually the entire circle will be filled with spots and blemishes. But have things reached that point? Human character is clearly tainted by sin,[3] but the debate is about the extent of that taint. The Roman Catholic Church holds the position that man’s character is not completely tainted, but that he retains a little island of righteousness. However, the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century affirmed that the sinful pollution and corruption of fallen man is complete, rendering us totally corrupt.”[4]

[1] The essay opens by focusing our attention on the character of mankind. Presumably, the word character refers to the nature of mankind, especially (though not exclusively) the nature of, in the WCF’s words (6.2), “all parts and faculties of the [human] soul.”

[2] With the words someone sins, the article’s focus shifts from the character of mankind to acts of mankind. The shift of focus reminds us that our acts and our character are not separable, though they are distinguishable.

[3] We note that sins are something done by mankind that taints its character. Further, sinful acts are moral spots and blemishes that “[mar] the character of man.” The contingent proposition if sins continue to multiply confirms that the essay’s intent at that point is to distinguish acts from character.

[4] The last two sentences of this paragraph sum up the contrast between the Romanist view and the Reformed view of fallen man’s character. The next paragraph turns to the Reformed view to clarify a point about which there is confusion.

“There’s a lot of misunderstanding about just what the Reformers meant by that affirmation. The term that is often used for the human predicament in classical Reformed theology is total depravity. People have a tendency to wince whenever we use that term because there’s very widespread confusion between the concept of total depravity and the concept of utter depravity. Utter depravity would mean that man is as bad, as corrupt, as he possibly could be.[5] I don’t think that there’s a human being in this world who is utterly corrupt, but that’s only by the grace of God and by the restraining power of His common grace. As many sins as we have committed individually, we could have done worse. We could have sinned more often. We could have committed sins that were more heinous. Or we could have committed a greater number of sins. Total depravity, then, does not mean that men are as bad as they conceivably could be.”[6]

[5] In the interest of clarifying the Reformed view, the essay offers to unpack the meaning of the concept of total depravity by differentiating it from the concept of utter depravity: “Utter depravity would mean that man is as bad, as corrupt, as he possibly could be.” Two things get our attention here. First, this statement focuses on what fallen man is (i.e., his bad/corrupt nature) as distinct from what fallen man does (i.e., his actual transgressions). Second, this statement also differentiates actual nature (character) from possible (or potential) nature—note the words what man “is” as opposed to what man “possibly could be.” In the last sentence of this paragraph, the essay uses the phrase total depravity instead of the phrase utter depravity, preferring the former over the latter, while the WCF speaks of being both wholly and utterly depraved.

[6] In the six sentences that end this paragraph, the article maintains that we should use the adjective utter to describe fallen man’s depravity (pollution and corruption) only if fallen man were to commit sins worse, more frequent, more heinous, and more numerous than the sins he does in reality commit. In addition, the article identifies the only circumstance under which a human being would be considered utterly corrupt: that circumstance is the one in which “the grace of God and the restraining power of His common grace” are absent. Let’s consider this statement more carefully.

As written, the article’s wording implies that God’s grace restrains corruption. Several questions arise at this point. Is it true that common grace restrains corruption? If so, in what does that restraint consist (i.e., how is that restraint to be defined)? Do we mean to say that restraining grace tempers or otherwise ameliorates corruption? If so, can we speak of restraint on corruption without denying the WCF statements that sinners are “utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil”? That is, can we speak of restraint on corruption without denying that corruption is maximally deep and wide in fallen man, or without denying that the offspring of our first parents are “dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul”? Did the Westminster Assembly teach that God’s grace restrains corruption? Or did they teach instead that grace restrains the “actual transgressions” that “proceed from corruption”? In other words, we must ask whether it is fallen man’s corrupt nature, or his actual transgressions, or both that are the object of restraint by divine grace.

“When the Protestant Reformers talked about total depravity, they meant that sin—its power, its influence, its inclination—affects the whole person. Our bodies are fallen, our hearts are fallen, and our minds are fallen—there’s no part of us that escapes the ravages of our sinful human nature. Sin affects our behavior, our thought life, and even our conversation. The whole person is fallen. That is the true extent of our sinfulness when judged by the standard and the norm of God’s perfection and holiness.”[7]

[7] The essay’s concluding paragraph sums things up. Interestingly, the adjective utter and the adverb utterly disappear, and we read only that depravity is total. The essay now declares that total depravity is meant as an assessment of sin’s effect on fallen man’s nature (“all the parts and faculties of soul and body”), not an assessment of its effect on fallen man’s actions (“actual transgressions”). Assuming this is the case, it would seem that we must reevaluate the fairly common adage cited at the end of the essay’s second paragraph, namely, “total depravity does not mean that men are as bad as they conceivably could be.” Would it not be better to say this: “men are as depraved and corrupt as they could be, but they don’t sin as frequently or as severely as they could because of restraining grace”? In other words, “our nature as sinners is as depraved and corrupt as it could be, but by God’s restraining grace our actual transgressions are not as frequent or as severe as they would be without that restraint.”

For similar but more extensive thoughts on the doctrine of total depravity, see here: https://philosophical-theology.com/2020/09/19/a-robust-depravity-a-return-to-calvinism/.