Ephesians 2
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins . . . (Eph. 2:1)
Pelagius (360–418) was a British monk famous in his day for his piety and austerity. For most Christians ever since, however, Pelagius has been infamous for his theology. Pelagius taught that humans must have the ability to overcome their sin. “How can we be blamed for sins we are powerless to resist?” Pelagius thought. He did not believe in inherited guilt and depravity. In particular, Pelagius opposed this phrase from Augustine’s Confessions: “Grant what you command, and command what you will.” He thought Augustine’s view of human inability made man too passive and undermined human responsibility.
Throughout the controversy with Pelagius, Augustine proved himself to be the church’s champion of sovereign grace. The fallen human will, Augustine taught, is in bondage to sin, utterly incapable of choosing the good. We can only be saved by grace. More than that, we can only accept God’s grace by the regenerating power of grace itself.
The familiar phrase many Christians use to describe the fallenness of man is “total depravity.” This is a fine phrase so long as we realize the “total” refers to the extent of our depravity (e.g., our will, our desires, our reason, all our faculties) and not the depth of our depravity (i.e., we are all as bad as we possibly can be). A better phrase might be “total inability” because it captures the helplessness (and hopelessness) of the human will apart from Christ.
Some Reformed theologians have made the distinction between natural inability and moral inability. Francis Turretin was not fond of the distinction, but his nephew and successor, Benedict Pictet, used the terms, as did John Witherspoon. The disciples of Jonathan Edwards took the distinction in a more liberalizing direction, sowing the seeds for a rosier view of the human will. But Pictet and Witherspoon used the distinction to underscore that the impotence of the sinner did not arise from a physical or natural defect, but from a depraved nature. They wanted to make clear that man had no excuse for his sin, since his sin was voluntary and moral.
The Canons of Dort provide the best succinct definition of total inability when it affirms that “all people are conceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin; without the grace of the regenerating Holy Spirit they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their distorted nature, or even to dispose themselves to such reform” (3/4.3). Such a low view of man does not sit well with many people in our age, but Dort’s teaching is abundantly biblical. We are dead in trespasses and sin (Eph. 2:1). The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:14). The mind of the flesh cannot submit to God’s law (Rom. 7:18, 24; 8:7). No one can come to Jesus unless the Father draws him (John 6:44; cf. 8:34; 15:4–5).
There is no escaping the conclusion that we are utterly powerless to save ourselves. Not only that, but we are powerless to truly reform ourselves. We must be born from above. We must be born of the Spirit (John 3:5). Left to ourselves we would reject Christ, just as his fellow Jews did (1:12). But we are not without hope, for we who were born in sin can be born again, “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (1:13).
Kevin DeYoung is the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church (PCA) in Matthews, North Carolina and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary.
