As we continue now with our study of the core ideas that make up what we call  Reformed theology, I think, of an event that took place in history just a couple of  years before the Pilgrims landed on the shores of New England in the  Mayflower, a controversy that spread throughout Europe And then around the  world that had its roots in the Netherlands. It began in a theological faculty of a  Dutch institution that was committed to Calvinistic theology when some of the  professors began to have second thoughts about issues relating to the doctrine  of election and predestination and that sort of thing. And this theological  controversy erupted, and as it spread across the country, it upset the church and it upset the theologians of the day, until finally, a synod was convened and  issues were squared away, and certain people were rejected in their views,  among whom was a man by the name of Arminius. But the group who led this,  this movement against orthodox Reformed theology, were called the  remonstrance. They were called the remonstrance because they were  remonstrating or protesting against certain doctrines within their own theological  heritage. And there were basically five doctrines that were the core of the  controversy, and what has happened as a result of this debate is that these five  core theological issues became known in subsequent generations as the so  called Five Points of Calvinism, and they are known through the very popular  acrostic tulip, T, U, L, i, p, which is a sort of clever way to sum up the five articles that were in such dispute. And I mentioned that historical event for this reason,  as we've said all along, it would be a serious mistake to understand the essence of Reformed theology simply in light of these five doctrines, because the  Reformed faith involves many, many, many other elements of theological and  ecclesiastical confession. But these are the five controversial points of  Reformed theology, and they're the ones that are popularly seen as being  distinctive to this particular confession. So we're going to spend some time  looking at the five points of Calvinism as they are spelled out in this acrostic,  and we remember that this acrostic tulip uses the first letter of five different  doctrines. The first is total depravity, hence the T and the second is  unconditional election. And hence the U, the L stands for limited atonement, the  I for irresistible grace, and P, for the perseverance of the saints. And when I  have lectured on these doctrines in the past, I have stated one or more  objections to these subheadings as defining the doctrines, because many of  them, if not all of them, are somewhat misleading, but they fit so nicely into this  acrostic, people insist on using these abbreviations to define the five points, and so what we're going to do today is begin with a brief overview of the T of the  tulip, that which stands for total depravity. I remember many, many years ago, I  was teaching a course in theology at a college, and the students who were  enrolled in the college did not come from a reformed background by any means. And we were working through various doctrines, and I came to the doctrine. Of  total depravity, and I gave an exposition that went over about a week of classes. 

And at the end of that time, I asked the students if they were persuaded that this indeed was the biblical view of human sinfulness. And everybody in the class  raised their hand and indicated Yes. They were convinced that this was the  correct biblical view. And I said, Are you sure? And they said, Yes, they're  absolutely sure. So I went on the blackboard, on the top left hand side of the  blackboard, and I wrote a number there, the number of the students there, like  28 students. Put it in a box, and I wrote next to it for the janitor, please do not  erase and and I did that for a reason that they were all committed. And then the  next week, we started in on the U of unconditional election. And there were  house of protests from the students who rebelled against that doctrine. They  didn't like that at all. And when I began to press them on the doctrine, I said,  Now, are you sure you still want to subscribe to total depravity, as you did last  week? And one by one, I had to erase the names up there in the left hand  corner of the blackboard. And I say that for this reason, that there's one sense in which, if a person really embraces what is called the doctrine of total depravity,  the other four points in this five point system more or less fall in line. They  become duck soup and corollaries, more or less of of this first point, and so let's  take some time to look at that. The historical situation where this doctrine first  became a matter of great import and great controversy was early on in church  history, during the teaching ministry of St Augustine, and I'm sure you've heard a little bit about the so called Pelagian controversy of the latter part of the fourth  century and into the fifth century, which began when this British monk whose  name was Pelagius, protested against a statement that was in one of the written prayers of Augustine, wherein, in this prayer, Augustine made this comment  before God. He said, O God, command, what thou wouldst and grant what thou  dost command, let me say it again. Command, what thou wouldst and grant  what thou dost command. And of course, Pelagius had apoplexy over this  prayer. Now the reason for his displeasure was not the first part of the prayer  wherein Augustine said, Oh, God, command whatever you want to command.  Pelagius, being a pious monk, certainly agreed with Augustine that God had  every right to exercise his authority over the creatures and to command what is  deemed pleasing to Him, but what exercised Pelagius was the second part of  the prayer, when Augustine asked God to grant what He commands. Because  Pelagius said that assumes that the creature somehow is not morally able to do  the will of God. And so that created a lengthy controversy, frankly, which  controversy goes on even to this day, and we continue to have discussions  about Pelagianism or semi Pelagianism, augustinianism and so on. In fact, I just finished writing a book about the entire historical development of that  controversy, from Pelagius down to last week and and so I will be going into that in much greater detail later on? Well, I hope to have a separate course just on  on that question. But by way of introduction and overview, the issue has to do  with the question of original sin, and the doctrine of total depravity reflects the 

reformed viewpoint of original sin. Now that term Original Sin is often  misunderstood in the popular arena, some people just assume that the term  original sin must refer to the first sin, the original, the original that we've all  copied in many different ways in our own lives. That is the first sin of Adam and  Eve. But that's not what is referred to historically in the church by the doctrine of  original sin. Rather, the doctrine of original sin defines the consequences to the  human race of that first sin, and virtually every church historically that has had a  creed or a confession has agreed that something very serious happened to the  human race as a result of the First Sin, that the first sin produced original sin,  that is, as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve the entire human race fell, and so  that our nature as human beings since the fall is a nature that has been  influenced by the power of evil. As David declared in the Old Testament, O God,  I was born in sin, and in sin did my mother conceive me? He was not saying that it was a sinful thing for his mother and father to have born children, nor was he  saying that he had done something evil by being born. But rather he was  acknowledging the human condition of fallenness, that fallenness that was part  of the experience of his parents, that fallenness that he brings himself into this  world and so original sin has to do with the fallen nature of mankind. The idea is  that we are not sinners because we sin, but that we sin because we are sinners. We are, by nature, sinners. And we've all heard the axiom, nobody's perfect. We might improve upon that a little bit by saying, not only is no one perfect, but no  one's even close to perfection. And so the doctrine of total depravity describes  and defines a particular view of original sin that has its roots in the teaching of St Augustine. And remember that Augustine was the patron saint of the monastery  where Martin Luther was reared in the faith and where he taught at Wittenberg.  He was an honest Augustinian monk, and also Augustine was the most revered  mentor of John Calvin, so that the thinking of Augustine had an enormous  influence in the shaping of the doctrine of the Protestant Reformation. Now,  what total depravity does not mean in the reformed tradition is what we call utter depravity. Utter depravity, we often use the term total as a synonym for utter or  for completely. And so the notion of total depravity conjures up the idea that  every human being is as bad as that person could possibly be. You might think  of some arch fiends of history like Adolf Hitler, and say there was absolutely no  redeeming virtue left in the man, but I suspect that he had some affection for his  mother. And as wicked as Adolf Hitler was, we can still conceive of his being  even more wicked than he actually was. And so the idea of total depravity  doesn't mean that every human being is as wicked as they could possibly be,  but rather it means that the fall is so serious that it affects the whole person, our  fallenness that captures and grips our human nature affects our bodies. That's  why we become ill and we die. It affects our minds. And our thinking, we still  have the capacity to think, but the Bible speaks about the way in which the mind has become darkened and weakened. The will of man is no longer in its pristine 

state of moral power, but the will, according to the New Testament, is now in  bondage. We are enslaved to the evil impulses and desires of our hearts and so  the mind, the will, the spirit, the whole person, has been infected by the power of sin. Now, again, if that's as far as we would go with the definition of total  depravity, most Christian communions would say, yea and amen. This far. I  mean, most would agree that we're fallen and that the fall is a serious thing, and  that the human nature that we bring into this world has been so influenced by  sin that it touches every part of our nature. Again, most Catholic or universal  creeds of Christendom would grant that much. So then the debate becomes  over a question of degree. How far have we fallen? What is the degree of that  human corruption? Now I like to replace the term total depravity with my favorite  designation, which is radical corruption. It's a concept that my friends find very  easy to remember, as they make their own acrostic for it, they just abbreviate  radical corruption by the initials R, C, they take great delight in the ease with  which this facilitates their memory, as they have a living model before them of  radical corruption. I remember a gym teacher I had in the seventh grade when  he called the rule roll for the first day that he was there and called my name RC,  as that's what I was called in grade school. And he said, Oh, rotten crabapple.  So in that instant, I had a new nickname that I probably should not have  mentioned because I'll probably hear it again in these days. But the reason why  we use this term, although it completely ruins our flower garden here, the tulip  now becomes rulip, and nobody's going to remember that. But the reason I  prefer this is because of the term radical again, there's another one of those  words that we use bandied about in various ways in our culture, particularly in  the political arena, where we say somebody is on the radical left or on the  radical right, or so on. But the word radical, ironically, has its roots in the Latin  word for root, which is the word radix, and it can be translated root or core. And  the idea of the term radical is something that permeates to the core of a thing.  It's not something that is tangential or superficial, namely lying on the surface,  but it penetrates into the core of the thing. And a recent poll done of professing  evangelicals, the overwhelming majority of people who answered particular  questions in this poll indicated that they agreed with the statement that man is  basically good. Usually that phrase basically good means that the basis or the  essence of humanity or the core of a person is good, and though we recognize  that no one's perfect, and all are sinners, and that we all are marred and  blemished by various imperfections. The problem with sin, in the idea that man  is basically good, is that sin, then is seen as accidental or peripheral to human  nature. And this, of course, is part of the optimistic view of mankind that is  essential to historic humanism. The humanist acknowledges that there are  problems, but basically what we need is more education, more government  help, and we'll get better and better and better and erase those blemishes on  the surface that produce crime and other forms of wickedness. And it seemed to

me, when I heard that poll, that perhaps what is happening is that those who are professing evangelicals are taking their cue for the basic nature of fallen  humanity from the culture, rather than from the historic, biblical view, the reform  view, says that the fall extends and penetrates to the core. The word that is used for core actually is a translation from the Latin word cor, which means what heart that is. The idea is that our sin is something that comes from our hearts, and in  biblical terms, that means from the core, or very center of our existence. And so  what is required for us to be conformed to the image of Christ is not simply  some small adjustments or behavioral modifications, but nothing less than  renovation from the inside, nothing less than regeneration being made over  again, being quickened by the power of the Spirit. And so we see that the only  way in which a person can escape this radical situation is when the Holy Spirit  changes, the core changes the heart, and even that change does not instantly  vanquish sin. The complete elimination of sin awaits our glorification in heaven. I will look at some more aspects of this doctrine in our next session. 



آخر تعديل: الاثنين، 28 يوليو 2025، 8:07 ص