Video Transcript: Total Depravity (Part 1)
Now, that term Original Sin is often misunderstood in the popular arena, some people just assume that the term original sin must be 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 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 of 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 borne 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 fallennesss 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. And so 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, and 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. And 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 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 Creed's 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, RC, 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 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 instance, 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 rule up, 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's on the radical left or on the radical, right are so on. But the word radical, ironically, has its roots. And 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 in 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 was 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, was part of the optimistic view of mankind. That is essential to historic humanism. The humanists 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 reformed 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 core, 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.