Parsing Total Depravity

Question five of An Orthodox Catechism no doubt has the doctrine of total depravity in view. It is what John Owen calls our native perversity. Total depravity is a doctrine that has suffered much ignorance, both willful and not. It has experienced much confusion, perversity, obscurity, and outright rejection. It is a doctrine rejected unanimously by the world and even by many so-called Christian denominations. But the doctrine of total depravity is key in understanding both law and gospel, and man’s relationship to either, properly. What we must do at this point is untangle the doctrine of total depravity. To unconfuse it, I will try to state it as clearly as possible—

The doctrine of total depravity is the teaching that all men are corrupt, sinful, and altogether opposite of goodness, by nature.  The doctrine of total depravity corresponds to the doctrine of original sin, namely, our inherent sinfulness and natural adversity toward the things of God. When we hear the term “original sin,” we should also think of total depravity which is part of original sin. Not only are we imputed with the sin of Adam from birth, but we inherit from our first parents a sinful nature. This human nature entails both a soul and a body. The soul comprises two operations—the intellect or understanding, and the will. The doctrine of total depravity states that both the intellect and will of man are altogether corrupted by sin. Let’s unpack this by looking at each of these operations—

Intellect. When we speak of man’s intellect or understanding, we speak of that by which man comes to knowledge of the world around him. The intellect is seen most clearly in man’s ability to rationalize the world around him, or to make sense of his surroundings. But the human intellect doesn’t only rationalize man’s immediate environment, but also moves beyond his immediate environment toward God and spiritual or immaterial realities. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse… (Rom. 1:20).”

The only creature on planet earth whose intellect moves beyond the natural world to the supernatural is the human being. But because man’s intellect is corrupted by sin, he “suppress[es] the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18).” Instead of man’s intellect settling upon a right or proper understanding of God through creation, man, in his sinfulness, perverts his knowledge of God. This is because man tends toward hating God rather than loving Him. He is this way by nature. So, as far as man’s corrupt intellect is concerned, he apprehends true knowledge of God through creation, but immediately perverts it as it enters upon his mind. He has, to that end, a perverted idea of God.

Also retained in the intellect is man’s judgment. Man’s choosing or determination belongs to the intellect, while the execution of the choice occurs by the will, to which we now turn—

Will. The intellect of man determines man’s will. The will may be defined as the power to act. But we have to understand that the will is always going to act according to nature, or more precisely, according to the ideas (or lack thereof) in man’s intellect, e.g. his ideas of what is good and evil, his ideas about who God is, etc. We might, therefore, ask whether or not man has free will. If we mean by “free will” a mere power to choose, then yes, man has free will. If, however, we mean man has the power to choose regardless of his nature, intellect, affections, desires, etc., there is no such thing as free will in man. All the will is is the power to act, and that power to act is always going to be defined by man’s intellect. If the intellect is corrupt, man is always going to choose corruptly.

If the intellect is not corrupt, then man will choose incorruptly. To put it another way, the intellect forms judgment. The will acts upon said judgment. Whatever the intellect judges as good, that also the will will act upon. The reason our Catechism denies man’s ability to keep God’s law perfectly is because man is totally depraved, that is to say, the intellect judges that which is evil to be good, and the will acts upon that corrupt judgment. So, does man have the power to judge? Does man have the power to decide, choose, adjudicate? Yes he does. However, since the intellect is depraved, man’s judgment will always tend away from the true good, away from God, and toward evil. And the will follows that corrupt judgment.