TOTAL DEPRAVITY: or Free Will? (Calvinism Series: TULIP Part 2) | ask Theocast

CALVINISM SERIES:

TULIP refers to the following:
T - Total Depravity
U - Unconditional Election
L - Limited Atonement
I - Irresistible Grace
P - Perseverance of the Saints

Also known as, "Doctrines of Grace."

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#reformedtheology #calvinism #doctrinesofgrace

[Mike]

Paul said in his FLESH dwelt no good thing. Yet in his mind he wanted to serve the Lord. The context is his life under the Mosaic Law (see logical flow of Romans 7). So man is not totally depraved. He just is drawn to sin and the Law makes it worse.

[secondmanup]

Jon, you def have a gift of clarifying and explaining tough concepts. Also doing it without coming across as arrogant or condescending but rather with humility. I’m so thankful for you guys and gals at Theocast. I feel like the building blocks of faith are being constructed one by one and I’m slowly being able to connect the many dots that are strengthening the faith given to me. Even better yet, I’m better able to communicate with the body and my unsaved friends.

[broadband]

Brilliant John, thank you for this and to the rest of the team at Theocast 👍👍

[duncescotus]

General depravity (though sinfulness is the correct word) and sufficient free will are the right doctrines. Mankind is born in a state of sin which leads to inevitable sinning without grace to counteract the downward pull. Grace is now generally available and sufficient given the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in the world ever since Pentecost. Furthermore, once the law is fulfilled and Christ dies, things change in the cosmos. These doctrines need to reflect that cosmic reordering. They should also have some wiggle room for the expansion of the kingdom with time. In other words, some kind of accommodation for dispensations is required. Otherwise we're stuck in the 16th century.

[sketchbook]

Two things which Calvinism gets wrong, and out of these come all the difficulties.
Faith and Death.
1) Faith is not a work. Calvinism turns this on its head and tries to say faith is a work, though the first several chapters of Romans.
2) Death is not destruction but separation. Calvinism misconstrues this and says that death is total destruction, and therefore spiritually dead people are like Lazarus. But death everywhere in the Scripture is about separation-- from the body (ie physical death) or from God (ie spiritual death).

[sooner]

Great video explaining what John Calvin's followers believe. It helped to assure me that I do not agree with Calvin and his system. I never heard one verse that stated that man can not realize his sinful condition and turn and asked Jesus to save him.

[brianschmidt]

You are confusing original sin with total depravity. We are sinners by nature, but you are taking it to another level where, even when God presents the offer of salvation, we are unable to even respond to it. That is not found in the scripture, What is found is that salvation is the work of God. Paul reminds us that faith comes by hearing, hearing the word of God. This is why the Good News is that God redeems sinful men by His finished work. You have added our inability to receive God's salvation to the text.

[spacesciencelab]

I feel that there is a duality to this because I noticed that in my testimony that i said God saved me out of my atheism. Maybe 99.9% God but 0.1% is due to faith?

I recognise we have a corrupted nature so that would also mean we have a corrupted free will.

[LyubenV]

Thanks for the videos. Just wanted to ask, slightly off topic, have you done any podcasts or videos on Lordship Salvation?

[Funkydood]

Quick answer: Robots or Human beings??? BTW, I just unsubscribed from your podcast.

[arthur]

Because of our estrangement by nature from God, we are in our natural state incapable of keeping (i.e., not breaking) the first great commandment of Christ in anything and everything we think, say, or do.

[Mark 12:30 NKJV] "[30] 'And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This [is] the first commandment." (This is required to be our motive for, and our attitude in, everything we think, say, or do.)

This means that the natural man CANNOT-NOT sin against God in everything he thinks, says, or does (Total Depravity). However, this usually amounts to the natural man polluting with evil motives or attitudes what would otherwise be a good work in and of itself. Think of this as dropping a grain of potassium cyanide into a cold glass of milk. The grain of cyanide is a tiny volume and mass when compared to that of the glass of milk, yet it transforms the entirety of the otherwise wholesome glass of milk into a deadly poison. In the analogy, the glass of milk is the bare good work and the grain of cyanide is a wicked motive or attitude associated with or for the work. Our wicked motives or attitudes contaminate what would otherwise be a wholesome good work as a single grain of cyanide contaminates the entire glass of milk - making everything we think, say, or do morally evil (i.e., making even our "good works" sin).

This being said, it does not mean that everything we think, say, or do as natural men is as evil as it could be. God restrains the evil of all men by his Common Grace, though he does not restrain everyone's evil equally. It simply means that everything we think, say, or do is evil to one degree or another. This is soteriologically critical because it means that the self-generated repentance and faith of the natural man is itself sinful and therefore unacceptable to a holy God. IOW, a false convert is one who has been "converted", according to the order of salvation of soteriological Synergism, by his own self-generated sinful repentance and faith (naturalistic conversion). This is why we must be regenerated by the Holy Spirit using the word first, and why true repentance and faith must then be miraculously created in us by the Holy Spirit through that same word and given to us as a gift (supernatural or miraculous conversion). IOW, the Holy Spirit miraculously regenerates us using the word and then miraculously creates true repentance in us and the faith to believe the same word by which He regenerated us. Only pure repentance and faith are acceptable to the Holy God, and while regeneration gives us the ability to will to do actual good it does not give us the ability to perform that good apart from the indwelling Holy Spirit's power, the power of our "mighty man (of war)" Adamic natures supported by the World and the Devil being too great for our newborn Christic nature to overcome by itself. Furthermore, as created we were always meant to be guided and empowered for service by the Holy Spirit in everything we do, and after the final death of our Adamic nature and the creation of a complete Christic human nature at the Resurrection, in the eternal state, this mode of our activity, incompletely and inconsistently reestablished at our regeneration and indwelling by the Spirit, will be perfected, being made complete, immutable and exceptionless.

Thus, the soteriological Synergist must believe himself and others to be "good enough" (or at least, not too evil - whatever THAT could mean) to repent and believe without the miraculous intervention of the Holy Spirit in creating ex nihilo a moral and spiritual nature in the image of Christ's own human moral and spiritual nature in them. Because of this, whether they admit it or not and whether they are consciously aware of it or not, Synergists, at a minimum, believe in salvation by merit and personal ability. Their chief error is anthropological. They don't correctly understand fallen human nature or even the very concept of a moral and spiritual nature. They think of salvation "according to the Flesh", as unbelievers do. Not that they necessarily ARE purely natural men rather than truly converted men with two warring moral and spiritual natures. As human beings walking in their fallen Adamic nature rather than their Christic nature from above when considering this, they have never met any human being who isn't evil by nature, including regenerate Christians who still drag around the rotting evil-by-nature corpses of their Adamic natures. They have no one who is actually righteous in the Flesh with which to compare themselves or their unconverted neighbors and fail to understand that even regenerate Christian are only righteous BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH in God's eyes by virtue of God's heavenly verdict regarding them IN CHRIST.
[2 Corinthians 10:12b NKJV] "[12] ... But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise."
Those people they think of as "good", are merely LESS EVIL than the majority, or, because they are evil themselves, and therefore likely to set themselves up as their own moral standard - LESS EVIL than themselves. This is due to them reasoning in the Flesh rather than in the Spirit by the word as they should. This is how they get the idea that fallen humans are not so bad, and that humans can obey God's law in the Flesh. It is a false understanding carried over from when they were unconverted and thus far left uncorrected by the Spirit in his providence. But they don't understand that the entire purpose of the OT and particularly of the Mosaic Law is to drive home to fallen self-righteous evil-by-nature humans that no one can or has kept the entire Law of God flawlessly - except for Christ Jesus our Lord alone. You see, part of being evil-by-nature is to think of oneself as being better, or at least not as bad as, one actually is. This is part and parcel of being evil. Satan, the fallen angelic host, and all fallen men in Adam all believe themselves to be better than they are. They all "justify" their war against the LORD and his Christ as Eve "justified" disobeying God in the Garden. "It is God who is evil", they all say in their hearts, "not I. He is withholding some good thing from me to which I am due".

This all being said, I am convinced that the vast majority of otherwise orthodox protestant Synergists are truly converted. Their inability to see and hear accurately is due to the Lord not completely healing their blindness or deafness - yet:

[Mark 8:23-25 NKJV] "[23] So He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. And when He had spit on his eyes and put His hands on him, He asked him if he saw anything. [24] And he looked up and said, "I see men like trees, walking." [25] Then He put [His] hands on his eyes again and made him look up. And he was restored and saw everyone clearly."

And that it is a matter of our God sovereignly giving whom he wills among his people ears to hear and eyes to see the truth in this matter as he pleases:

[Matthew 11:14-15 NKJV] "[14] "And **if you are **willing** to receive [it]**, he (John the baptist) is Elijah who is to come. [15] "**He who has ears to hear, let him hear!**" - Jesus

TLDR <><

[guardianmeister]

TD is the only position that stands the test of all Scripture. May I suggest, at some point, a debate with Soteriology 101 who denies TD? As long as one is still holding on to something in themselves that commends itself to Got they are either not saved or, if saved, have slipped into the old nature in Adam and struggling with that (the same way they can struggle with some habitual sin). I do not believe the importance of understanding TD can be overstated. Great stuff.

[johnhoffman]

This dilemma we have, that unless God calls us and gives us the faith to believe, is our assurance that He and His plan are real and not imaginary or myth, or the figment of somebody's imagination, because unless God gives you the faith to believe per Eph 2.8&9 you cant believe, as it is impossible. So, if you believe in Christ then you can be sure that it is real and trustworthy.