An objection to Total Depravity from a psychological point of view

As I previously mentioned in my post about my theological journey, there was a time where I had believed in the doctrine of Total Depravity. As such, I had plenty of time to reflect upon the meaning of it. However, what I believed at the time was a more theoretical view of it since I believed also in prevenient grace and so I had a Wesleyan view of it. I however found the theoretical untenable due to my belief that the Bible speaks in practical terms. This forced a revaluation of the interpretation of the passages that it came from and in the end I came to believe that Total Depravity was a interpretation that failed to take into consideration the context. From that point since, I have reflected a lot on its faults and how it is essentially untenable in my opinion, which is what I am about to present.

Total Depravity states that every part of man has been corrupted. Its not that they are as bad as possible, but that they are bad in all ways. In other words, every ability of a person is affected.

Jesus preaching about the Kingdom gave two requirements to get into it: repentance and faith. A Calvinist would say that a person is incapable of repenting and believing in God unless God bestowed grace upon them first, from which the man will irresistibly repent and believe. In the natural state though, either it is impossible for the man or the man can never be willing to.

Lets look at the regular world so to speak that isn't explicitly religious. There are many examples of people who repent of something they have done or even of their whole life style, and they are sincere as they do change in some regards. There are many, many, many examples of people who have faith in someone or something. Outside of the religious realm, it is clear that repentance and faith are very possible and do happen.

Because of this, a person who holds to total depravity would probably have to separate non-religious repentance and faith with religious repentance and faith. However this becomes very untenable as it requires a different "mechanism" for repentance and faith of a religious nature (or more precisely, a Christian religious nature) when repentance and faith of both the religious and non-religious nature are very similar in what is happening on the person's side. Cognitively speaking, repentance and faith of a religious nature would be essentially something totally different from that of a non-religious and that there is in fact no similarity between the two whatsoever. Despite the great amount of similarity of repentance and faith of the religious and non-religious nature, there is nothing similar between the two. This is an objection to the idea that an unbeliever has not ability to repent and believe.

However, many persons would state that in total depravity that man is not incapable but totally unwilling to repent and believe. In this form of argumentation, total depravity is primarily a matter of the irrational aspect of man (not in the sense of being counter to reason, but including the realm of the emotion and affect that isn't itself based on rationale) and not a matter of cognitive ability. But then this forgets the basic meaning of repentance, to cognitively decide to change that which we are otherwise drawn to. Granted, our feelings affect whether we are willing to repent but the irrational sense does not in itself dictate us cognitively decided to go against what we otherwise feel and want. In the non-religious realm, there have been examples of people who have been passionately for a certain idea or behavior, but then somehow they decide to change (repent). Once again then, a Calvinist would have to differentiate that form of self-rejection from a self-rejection before God when the only visible difference is the direction in which the repentance is directed.

Either way, there becomes a seemingly artificial difference between repentance (and faith) in the religious and non-religious realms. The result then might be to try to attribute it to the spiritual realm which would explain how repentance might happen without God's grace in the non-religious realm but spiritual "blindness" prevents a religious repentance without God's grace. At this point however, we are getting away from what is observable in the senses and going to what must be accepted on the basis of faith (and therefore comes from Scripture), but that goes beyond the purpose of this objection.

My point is to say that in order to hold to a form of total depravity, a person must relegate the reason behind it to the realm in which we can not observe (hence the spiritual realm). Total depravity lacks any basis upon that which is observable and does not explain that which can be observed any better than other ideas of the nature of humanity. To be very polemical, often times a belief that can not be backed in observation is said to be founded in the realm of the unobservable, and this is essentially a form of retreat to a "fortress of safety" since no one can essentially be proven wrong in that which is unobservable (with the exception of the exegesis of Scripture for the Christian). This is not to say that relegating something to the unobservable disproves it. There are many things that are unobservable and come primarily through revelation and faith, especially God and His nature.

So, the argumentation would move to Scripture then, which by our faith is the basis of the revelation of the unobservable. I will probably proceed to that point in future posts (although my posting topics are a big unpredictable and enigmatic at times). However, a few remarks before I conclude.

I can see how some might draw the idea of total depravity from Scripture. There are passages that can at first blush seem to teach that. However, I would say that these interpretations fail to take all the context into consideration (which is what I will probably address in future posts). And even the greatest exegete can occasionally fail to recognize certain important facts about the context.

The first person that I know of in Christian theology that developed the concept we would call Total Depravity was Augustine of Hippo. He came from a Manichean background, and Manicheanism to my knowledge had a form of predestination, a very dualistic world view, and a teaching about certain individuals that they can not possibly advance similar to that of total depravity (this was characteristic of some gnosticism like Manicheanism). While Augustine did reject the teachings of Mani, people do not just get rid of everything they believed when they reject a system of thinking but instead much of the way of thinking is changed gradually. And even then, it is easier for a person to revert back to a way of thinking they held previously. So, it is very supposable that Augustine, when he saw the passages that might be read so as to teach the concept of Total Depravity, he reverted back to his Manichean theology in that area.

I say all that not to disparage Augustine at all, but rather to show that it is probably no coincidence that the idea of Total Depravity first came from a person who held to a similar view before his Christian conversion. But then this becomes an argument about tradition, especially before Augustine, which is not something I am going to tackle in the near future. It is something that I might pick up later, but any future posts on Total Depravity will stay within the observable realm or within the realm of Scripture and revelation of the unobservable.

Predestination: Individual or National?

The topic of predestination is a topic that can get even the mildest people up in arms in discussion. I remember one time a few years ago where I got into a discussion with a person who held to Calvinist teachings and we get into a very heated discussion. Perhaps it was the zeal of youth. Anyways, I bring that point up because in the middle of the discussion, the other person reads Ephesians 1:3-14 to prove his point.

With the exception of Romans 9, Ephesians 1:3-14 is perhaps the most often quoted verses in support of Unconditional Election (The U in TULIP). The typical response from someone who rejects that is to say that predestination is on the basis on foreseeing the repentance and faith of the people (See Romans 8:29-30 and 1 Peter 1:2). The problem with this idea is that is doesn't have much applicability to Christian life and the writers of the New Testament were not concerned with theoretical theology in my opinion, but theology that has a practical meaning and application to human life.

This lead me at a point where I was conflict. The voice of Scripture as a whole is clear to me in it saying that salvation is genuinely offered to all (or most everyone) with the capacity for them to accept it. But Ephesians 1:4-5 created a conflict with that idea. So it lead me to study the Ephesians passage deeper.

I noticed something. In the first three chapters of Ephesians, there is a "you" and "us" type language throughout. When one reads later in chapter 2, I notice that the "you" is directed towards the Gentiles. One might say then, that through Paul's letter the "us" could very well at times refer to the Jews, especially when he uses the "you" and "us" language. Low and behold, this seems to be how Ephesians 1:4-14 is formatted, with 4-12 using the 1st person plural whereas 13-14 using the 2nd person plural. What could the author (who I am take to be Paul) be saying here? Lets look at little closer at the verses then with my translation of it (based upon the NASB).

Ephesians 1:3-14

Blessed the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places because of Christ. Just as He chose us in Him from before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him, by having predestined us in love to the adoption as sons for Himself through Jesus Christ, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely gave us because of the Beloved, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the freedom from our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He made to overabound for us. In all the wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him toward a dispensation of the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things because of the Messiah, things in the heavens and things on the earth, in whom we also have been given an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the plan of His will, to the end that we would be to the praise of His glory, those who have hoped in the Christ first. In Him you also, having listened to the message of truth (the gospel of your salvation) and in Him, having also believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of the promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance until the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory.

Before going even further, it must be stated that the consensus is that Ephesians 1:3-14 is one long sentence. However, this seems a quite bit odd considering the other Pauline letters than have a benediction such as we have in verse 3 and then starts with teaching. This may be said to be a default setting but not the rule because 2 Corinthians 1:3-12 has a benediction that is used to teach from. Also, Romans 1:2-6 contains some teaching before Paul even gets to the greeting and then benediction. Nevertheless, the default for Paul's greeting and benediction to be short and then for him to launch into the main part of the letter.

So what am I trying to get at? That I think verse 3 is in fact a separate sentence from 4-14. In verse 4, Paul starts the sentence with "just as" (kathws). Keep in mind that there is no actually punctuation in the Greek like we have today, so our attempts to find sentences is based upon trying to find where the author begins and ends a thought. So, with a word like kathws which is used to compare two ideas and typically goes between the two things being compared, the presumption would be that verse 4 an on is being likened to what is said in verse 3.

However, I propose a different understanding. I propose that kathws is used before the first idea and that Paul brings that which the first is likened to, the "you" in verses 13-14 (notice the two phrases I bolded). For kathws to be used at the beginning is not unprecedented. See Luke 11:30, 22:29, John 15:29, Romans 1:28, 2 Corinthians 1:5, etc.

Why is this important? For two reasons. First off, the first person plural is used from verse 3 all the way through verse 12. If verse 3 is part of the long sentence, then we would be hard pressed to change the meaning of the first person plural from including the audience to excluding them. Language is not generally used so fluidly. However, if verse 4 marks a new thought, one could say that the first person plural is used differently without much objection. Secondly, if kathws is used before the first thing that is likened to a second thing, then this means that Paul is not speaking universally in verse 4-12, but that it is one segment of the population (the Jews) which the Gentiles are likened to in 13-14.

Leaving the technical aspects of the text, lets look more at the meaning if I am correct. In verse 4-12, Paul speaks of 5 different ideas: choice, predestination, redemption, revealing the mystery, and inheritance. These aspects are more or less repeated in some form in verses 13-14. "Having listened to the message of truth" could be likened to the revealing of the mystery. Additionally, receiving the Spirit who was promised could be the equivalent to predestination and choice, because having the Spirit is a sign of the acceptance before God. Furthermore, inheritance is spoken of and also redemption (though one might say the word is used in two different ways between verse 7 and verse 14). Additionally, one should compare Ephesians 1:4-14 with 3:1-12 (discussion of the state of the Gentiles) and see the similarities of languag between the two passages.

So if verses 4-12 refer to the Jews, what does Paul mean that they were predestined? A common theme throughout the Old Testament was that the patriarch's (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) children would never be totally forsaken, but on account of them their seed would continue and would have a part in the inheritance. So, in order for God to be faithful to the covenant with the fathers, God would always have a remnant from Israel that would be in God's grace. As a result, the Jews as a whole were predestined to have some saved, but no other tribe would have such a promise made for them. But then Paul later turns to the Gentiles has basically says something along the lines of "While we are predestined to have a part in God's salvation, you Gentiles are also partakers yourselves in salvation." Paul essentially acknowledges Israel as the chosen people of God and how God will keep that promise, but likewise stating that the Gentiles are not excluded, but they too are included.

This better fits the context than of a predestination of individuals, since Paul clearly discusses the Gentiles place in 2:11-22. Additionally, one can see hints of this in the end of chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 2.

The thinking of a predestined remnant (as I would term it) is not without precedent elsewhere. In Romans 11:1-6, Paul denies that all of Israel was forsaken, but that there will be a remnant with them. Looking closer at 11:2, we note that Paul refers to the people of Israel as those whom God foreknew (one might render that as those whom God knew first). Paul has previously used the word in Romans 8:29 and speaks of them being predestined. If those who God foreknew was a phrase used to refer to the Israelites being the people first known (or chosen) by God (see Romans 1:16 also), then Paul refers to Israel being predestined, which would align with what is said in Ephesians 1:5.

I write all this to give a different way to view Ephesians 1 and to study more deeply. I have not addressed every issue in detail here, but in my time of studying this idea, I have found it to have a lot of support. Once again, that is something I would be willing to discuss. What I have provided is the primary parts of my study without going into excruciating detail.