Introduction 

Total Depravity. This might sound like an excellent horror film or the description of an awful atrocity, however, this is a theological term used for the condition of humankind. You might be thinking, “I’m a pretty good person” and that is a perfectly normal thought to have but what does that mean? 

The first thing we should look at is when we make the judgment that we are good people, what standards are we applying to ourselves? What is your reference point? The typical response I see is a comparison to others but is being better than your fellow man really make you good? Let me present an example. Let us say that someone says they are a good person, because they’ve never been arrested or broken any laws in their country. They continue to reason that they have never intentionally caused harm to anyone in their life and so they are good. These are all laudable characteristics; they only amount to opinion though. 

We could get into whether intention matters when it comes to physical or emotional harm, but the overall point is that your judgment of your status as a good or bad person is subjective. It is an opinion formed by your upbringing, your values, and your perception of others around you, including historical figures. 

If you would humor me for a moment and accept the assumption that there is a God, and that God happens to be the God of the Bible. Now that you have theoretically accepted the God of the Bible, let us accept that the Bible is God’s word. Now, if God’s word says that we have broken God’s law (James 2:10-11, Romans 3:23-24) and that the wage of this sin is death (Romans 6:23) would you still consider yourself a good person? 

If you are guilty of breaking the law, does that make you a bad person? Whether you answered yes or no to that question, I hope you caught something within the question itself. Being that “bad” is subjective in this instance, as being arrested for jaywalking or murder are completely different degrees of moral choices. Follow me with this train of thought. Why did I construct jaywalking as a minor crime and murder as a major one? Isn’t that subjective based on what society has determined? Ah, you are correct. The question that this leads us to is who gets to decide the hierarchy of crime and its seriousness? Morality at its essence is subjective, yet we see many folks say they are good people. There is something intuitive about our morality, some of it is not exactly learned. (Romans 2:12-16)

With that in mind, there are many diverse moral opinions, most commonly in politics. So, everyone cannot be good, unless you want to affirm that two contradictory moral choices are equal in some way. You shoplifted as a teenager or lied to your parents, but you did not rob a bank, so you are not too bad, right? 

Look, Humans are mostly good, but there is a catch. We are mostly good by our standards, which are subjective to our current social climate. How do we know that morals will not progress? How do we know that we will not be viewed as barbaric for things we view as socially acceptable today, 500 years from now? The simple answer to that is that we do not know. To take it back to the God of the Bible, this is why Christians tend to argue for objective morality, which provides us with a standard that can be applied to anyone at any time in history and beyond. The problem is that objective morality itself is subject to the subjectivity of interpretation of the objective moral pronouncements. (This is why most arguments for objective morality fail). 

All of this is to bring us to a better understanding of Total Depravity. Total Depravity is not the belief that humankind is as evil as they can be, or that everyone is at the maximum capacity for evil. Such pronouncements are subjective anyway. This is a common misunderstanding, as someone might assume total means “totally evil” instead of the entire person being stained by sin. When you spill spaghetti sauce on your white t-shirt, you may not say the shirt is totally stained, but you still refer to the shirt as stained, no matter how big the stain is. You cannot use that shirt for the same purpose without the stain playing a factor, whether in public perception or your own. That stain needs to be removed, whether by laundry or a Tide to-go stick. In a similar fashion, we are stained with sin. This does not mean every act I do is evil, but I need to have that stain removed or I cannot enjoy the full functions of a clean white t-shirt.  

So, if Total Depravity does not mean that we are all as evil as we can be, what does it mean? 

What Is Total Depravity?

Total Depravity is the idea that man is unable to come to God without first receiving grace from God to come to him. ¹Total Depravity means that every aspect of human existence is influenced by sin, our shirts are stained. While every Christian does not espouse this doctrine, I would be hard-pressed to justify a doctrine that prioritized biblical data stating that we were not at our best in the flesh, sinful. 

I do not believe anyone is completely depraved, though there are theological categories for such, what theologians would call “utter depravity.” You may have no problem applying that to Adolf Hitler, for example, I would not object to that. Those who could be suggested for utter depravity are so exceedingly rare that I do not think it is theologically relevant, at least not for this discussion. I want to better illustrate this concept by having you humor me for a second time. I would like you to think of an iconic video game franchise that has dialogue trees that influence your persuasion. This game is called Knights of the Old Republic, which is based on the Star Wars franchise. This game has you make decisions that influence how your companions view you as well as your walk throughout the story.
 
Some of your decisions do not change the story at all but influence your overall disposition as a light side force user or a dark side force user. Other choices mean life or death or change the ending of the story. Just like real life, some of the choices we make are weightier than others, though I would argue that we all make dark side choices. Like the game, the bad choice tends to be the straightforward way out, we save money this way or feel good after getting revenge on someone. If you do something and know it is wrong, you must ask yourself, why? (James 4:17) 

Give yourself some time to ponder on that, when you are ready let us continue to look at some common defenses of the doctrine of Total Depravity. 

With Total Depravity properly defined, let us get into some common defenses of this doctrine. First, is there any biblical data that would allude to the idea that we are totally depraved? Some Christians say yes, and they cite several verses to prove their case. For the sake of brevity, we will not go over every single verse used to support Total Depravity, but we will go over what I view as the more important ones.   

Biblical Defense of Total Depravity

While I could just sit here and list a ton of verses, that does not make for a very entertaining reading experience. It also is not much of an argument to Mucho texto someone.  Instead, we will go over just a few verses and explain why they are seen to support Total Depravity.  Let us begin. 

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—  among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” (Ephesians 2:1-3 ESV) 

 
Here, the Apostle Paul addresses those who have converted to the faith, stating that we were dead. Obviously, Paul is not suggesting that these Christians were physically dead, but a spiritual death, a death marked by following the “prince of the power of the air” that is, Satan. Satan is the prince because he has a kingdom (Matthew 12:36) and his kingdom is of the world, why Jesus says his kingdom is not. (John 18:36) 

What does it mean to be following Satan’s ways? Well, you do not have to be a Christian to put that together, living a life of sin. What is living a life of sin? Paul defines it as serving the passions of our flesh, which is carrying out our desires.  Paul is arguing that we are naturally sinful, tainted and stained by sin, and that God had to intervene in this situation. 

I obviously did not just make this up, this has been the view of many.² Like with the scriptural references, I will not cite every single one but show enough to demonstrate the view. In The Geneva Bible, there were many study notes written by Christians of this time. Their note on Ephesians 2:1-3 I found most helpful. 

“He declares again the greatness of God’s good will by comparing that miserable state in which we are born, with that dignity unto which we are advanced by God the Father in Christ. So he describes that condition in such a way that he says, that with regard to spiritual motions we are not only born half dead, but wholly and altogether dead.”³ 

Our heart is deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9) our minds and consciences are defiled (Titus 1:15-16), our hearts are full of evil (Ecclesiastes 9:3) and whoever trusts this heart is a fool. (Proverbs 28:26). 

Jesus says whoever commits a sin is a slave to sin. (John 8:34) We are dead in sins until God makes us alive (Colossians 2:13). While we can disagree on what to call this doctrine, we should not overreact to doctrines presented by those we may not like by denying the biblical data. 

Conclusion

With a definition and some biblical data, my goal was to establish why Total Depravity is believed and the reasoning some may use to argue for the doctrine. Whether you accept this or not, I hope you came away with a better understanding of the doctrine.

1. Mcfarland, I., A. (2011). Total depravity. In I. A. McFarland, D. A. S. Fergusson, K. Kilby, & et. al. (Eds.), Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press ↩︎
2. Gordon, M., J. (2016). Total depravity. In J. G. Melton, Encyclopedia of World Religions: Encyclopedia of Protestantism (2nd ed.). ↩︎
3. The Geneva Bible Translation Notes (1599). Ephesians 2 ↩︎