The Scriptures represent human nature as totally depraved. The phrase “total depravity,” however, is liable to misinterpretation, and should not be used without explanation. By the total depravity of universal humanity we mean:
A. Negatively,—not that every sinner is: (a) Destitute of conscience,—for the existence of strong impulses to right, and of remorse for wrong-doing, show that conscience is often keen; (b) devoid of all qualities pleasing to men, and useful when judged by a human standard,—for the [pg 638] existence of such qualities is recognized by Christ; (c) prone to every form of sin,—for certain forms of sin exclude certain others; (d) intense as he can be in his selfishness and opposition to God,—for he becomes worse every day.
(a) John 8:9—“And they, when they heard it, went out one by one, beginning from the eldest, even unto the last” (John 7:53-8:11, though not written by John, is a perfectly true narrative, descended from the apostolic age). The muscles of a dead frog's leg will contract when a current of electricity is sent into them. So the dead soul will thrill at touch of the divine law. Natural conscience, combined with the principle of self-love, may even prompt choice of the good, though no love for God is in the choice. Bengel: “We have lost our likeness to God; but there remains notwithstanding an indelible nobility which we ought to revere both in ourselves and in others. We still have remained men, to be conformed to that likeness, through the divine blessing to which man's will should subscribe. This they forget who speak evil of human nature. Absalom fell out of his father's favor; but the people, for all that, recognized in him the son of the king.”
(b) Mark 10:21—“And Jesus looking upon him loved him.” These very qualities, however, may show that their possessors are sinning against great light and are the more guilty; cf. Mal. 1:6—“A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: if then I am a father, where is mine honor? and if I am a master, where is my fear?” John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:75—“The assertor of the total depravity of human nature, of its absolute blindness and incapacity, presupposes in himself and in others the presence of a criterion or principle of good, in virtue of which he discerns himself to be wholly evil; yet the very proposition that human nature is wholly evil would be unintelligible unless it were false.... Consciousness of sin is a negative sign of the possibility of restoration. But it is not in itself proof that the possibility will become actuality.” A ruined temple may have beautiful fragments of fluted columns, but it is no proper habitation for the god for whose worship it was built.
(c) Mat. 23:23—“ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone”; Rom. 2:14—“when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are the law unto themselves; in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith.”The sin of miserliness may exclude the sin of luxury; the sin of pride may exclude the sin of sensuality. Shakespeare, Othello, 2:3—“It hath pleased the devil Drunkenness to give place to the devil Wrath.” Franklin Carter, Life of Mark Hopkins, 321-323—Dr. Hopkins did not think that the sons of God should describe themselves as once worms or swine or vipers. Yet he held that man could sink to a degradation below the brute: “No brute is any more capable of rebelling against God than of serving him; is any more capable of sinking below the level of its own nature than of rising to the level of man. No brute can be either a fool or a fiend.... In the way that sin and corruption came into the spiritual realm we find one of those analogies to what takes place in the lower forms of being that show the unity of the system throughout. All disintegration and corruption of matter is from the domination of a lower over a higher law. The body begins to return to its original elements as the lower chemical and physical forces begin to gain ascendancy over the higher force of life. In the same way all sin and corruption in man is from his yielding to a lower law or principle of action in opposition to the demands of one that is higher.”
(d) Gen. 15:16—“the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full”; 2 Tim. 3:13—“evil men and impostors shall wax worse and worse.” Depravity is not simply being deprived of good. Depravation (de, and pravus, crooked, perverse) is more than deprivation. Left to himself man tends downward, and his sin increases day by day. But there is a divine influence within which quickens conscience and kindles aspiration for better things. The immanent Christ is “the light which lighteth every man” (John 1:9). Prof. Wm. Adams Brown: “In so far as God's Spirit is at work among men and they receive ‘the Light which lighteth every man,’ we must qualify our statement of total depravity. Depravity is not so much a state as a tendency. With growing complexity of life, sin becomes more complex. Adam's sin was not the worst. ‘It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee’ (Mat. 11:24).”
Men are not yet in the condition of demons. Only here and there have they attained to “a disinterested love of evil.” Such men are few, and they were not born so. There are degrees in depravity. E. G. Robinson: “There is a good streak left in the devil yet.” Even Satan will become worse than he now is. The phrase “total depravity”has respect only to relations to God, and it means incapability of doing anything [pg 639]which in the sight of God is a good act. No act is perfectly good that does not proceed from a true heart and constitute an expression of that heart. Yet we have no right to say that every act of an unregenerate man is displeasing to God. Right acts from right motives are good, whether performed by a Christian or by one who is unrenewed in heart. Such acts, however, are always prompted by God, and thanks for them are due to God and not to him who performed them.
B. Positively,—that every sinner is: (a) totally destitute of that love to God which constitutes the fundamental and all-inclusive demand of the law; (b) chargeable with elevating some lower affection or desire above regard for God and his law; (c) supremely determined, in his whole inward and outward life, by a preference of self to God; (d) possessed of an aversion to God which, though sometimes latent, becomes active enmity, so soon as God's will comes into manifest conflict with his own; (e) disordered and corrupted in every faculty, through this substitution of selfishness for supreme affection toward God; (f) credited with no thought, emotion, or act of which divine holiness can fully approve; (g) subject to a law of constant progress in depravity, which he has no recuperative energy to enable him successfully to resist.
(a) John 5:42—“But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in yourselves.” (b) 2 Tim. 3:4—“lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God”; cf. Mal 1:6—“A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: if then I am a father, where is mine honor? and if I am a master, where is my fear?” (c) 2 Tim. 3:2—“lovers of self”; (d) Rom. 8:7—“the mind of the flesh is enmity against God.” (e) Eph. 4:18—“darkened in their understanding.... hardening of their heart”; Tit. 1:15—“both their mind and their conscience are defiled”; 2 Cor. 7:1—“defilement of flesh and spirit”; Heb. 3:12—“an evil heart of unbelief”; (f) Rom. 3:9—“they are all under sin”; 7:18—“in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.” (g) Rom. 7:18—“to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not”; 23—“law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members.”
Every sinner would prefer a milder law and a different administration. But whoever does not love God's law does not truly love God. The sinner seeks to secure his own interests rather than God's. Even so-called religious acts he performs with preference of his own good to God's glory. He disobeys, and always has disobeyed, the fundamental law of love. He is like a railway train on a down grade, and the brakes must be applied by God or destruction is sure. There are latent passions in every heart which if let loose would curse the world. Many a man who escaped from the burning Iroquois Theatre in Chicago, proved himself a brute and a demon, by trampling down fugitives who cried for mercy. Denney, Studies in Theology, 83—“The depravity which sin has produced in human nature extends to the whole of it. There is no part of man's nature which is unaffected by it. Man's nature is all of a piece, and what affects it at all affects it altogether. When the conscience is violated by disobedience to the will of God, the moral understanding is darkened, and the will is enfeebled. We are not constructed in water-tight compartments, one of which might be ruined while the others remained intact.” Yet over against total depravity, we must set total redemption; over against original sin, original grace. Christ is in every human heart mitigating the affects of sin, urging to repentance, and “able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him” (Heb. 7:25). Even the unregenerate heathen may “put away ... the old man”and “put on the new man” (Eph. 4:23, 24), being delivered “out of the body of this death ... through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7:24, 25).