Leighton Flowers vs Sean Cole

Total Depravity and Total Inability in Romans 1–3, John 6, and Romans 8

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. Today, we have a moderated discussion slash debate on a very interesting topic. Of course, a topic that has been covered a bajillion times, but it is a super important topic.

And I highly encourage people to continue to have these conversations as we are challenged to go to the scriptures to see what the Bible says with respect to any topic that we're discussing. Today, we're discussing the topic of total depravity, total inability, what does the Bible teach?

And I have two guests that will be hashing those issues out as I gently moderate in the background. So I hope that folks, I know that these debates can get very contentious, so I would appreciate that folks leave their contentious comments out of the comments.

And if you're going to share your agreement or disagreement, try to do so in a way that's honoring to Christ. And none of that garbage of speaking ill of someone and claiming you're justified in doing.

You can be respectful and gentle. So I really hope that that's what happens in the comments. But we also will be taking some time for some questions. You'll have an opportunity to ask my guests some questions with respect to some of the things they say in defending their position.

And then we'll wrap things up. I just wanna give a preemptive warning before I introduce my guests. This was unforeseen as I was setting things up and connecting with Pastor Sean and Leighton, there's a storm outside.

And so the internet was giving me some issues. So if for whatever reason, things freeze up and we can't reconnect, we will reschedule. So I'm just giving folks a heads up, but hopefully I won't get struck by lightning in the midst.

We don't wanna have a tragedy on our hands. So with that said, let me introduce the guests here. First, I'm gonna introduce Pastor Sean Cole, who folks may not be familiar with, but perhaps Pastor Sean, if you could just tell us who you are and what you do, and then we'll bring Dr. Flowers on.

Yeah, thank you, Eli, for inviting me on this. I'm excited to interact with Leighton. I've interacted with him for the past probably six years. So I'm looking forward to that. I'm the pastor of Emanuel Baptist Church.

We are in Sterling, Colorado. It's about an hour and a half Northeast of Denver. I'm also an adjunct instructor at Colorado Christian University. I'm a Southern seminary grad, got my doctorate in expository preaching, and I have a podcast called Understanding Christianity that deals with issues of reform theology as well as other issues as well.

And my website, seancole .net, and I do have a book called Your Identity in the Trinity. It talks about how we find our gospel identity in each person of the Trinity, and that's available on Amazon.

So that's a little bit about me. Mm, all right, and I highly recommend your podcast. Your podcast is awesome. You got a lot of great stuff, not just stuff covering like Calvinism and kind of analyzing some of the things that Dr. Flowers has presented, but you got a whole bunch of stuff there.

I highly recommend folks check that out, Understanding Christianity. Thank you so much for that, Pastor. Would you want me to call you Sean, Pastor Sean? Most people don't care. You can just call me Sean for this.

Okay, all right, sounds good. All right, and of course, everyone will know the wonderful Dr. Flowers, right? We agree on everything, don't we, right? I know, Dr. Flowers, and we haven't had a lot of interaction, but we have had some interaction, and it has always been respectful and congenial, and while we strongly disagree, we always have been able to interact in a respectful manner.

So I appreciate that about you, Dr. Flowers.

Well, likewise, with you and Sean, as Sean already mentioned, he and I have had each other on each other's podcasts, talked back and forth, have been doing dueling podcasts back and forth, and he's always shown a level of respect for me, and as a brother in Christ, we have mutual friends.

One of his former youth pastors is a good friend of mine in the Dallas area, I mean, in the Texas area, and so he has represented himself very well as a brother in Christ, as have you, Eli, and I appreciate that, because sometimes it is rare in these kinds of discussions, because oftentimes there's the tendency to resort to the heretic backing, and just assuming nefarious intentions on somebody because they happen to come to a different conclusion than you do with regard to the scriptures, and I think that's unfortunate.

I think it's a mark of Christian maturity for us to be able to disagree without being overly disagreeable. I see Chris Date in the side chat. He's another one of those brothers who I have a high amount of respect for, who disagrees with me vehemently on this topic, but does so with respect and love as a friend, and so I appreciate that very much.

All right, well, thank you for that. Chris Date says hello to both of you guys. Hey, Chris, how's it going? Okay, so let's jump right into the topic. Now, here's my plan, and Dr. Flowers, and I'm just gonna call you Leighton and Sean.

I was gonna get complicated with titles. I know you don't mind, but they both expressed that they were down to do what I'm about to say, and of course, Leighton's suggesting, let's see how a couple of these things go, and we'll see, but the hopes is to kind of have these discussions walking through each of the five points of the TULIP acronym.

So right now we're doing total depravity or total inability, and hopefully we can schedule one on unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and while I'm sure both of you guys hold to a sort of a perseverance of the saints, am I correct?

Do you guys hold to, right? Maybe we can have a discussion on whether one can hold to that consistently. There's the argument that each of the letters within the acronym are logically connected. So maybe that might be a little interesting to discuss.

So we'll see what happens. If this is a complete dumpster fire, which I'm sure it won't be, maybe we'll have that whole series out where folks can kind of listen to both your perspectives. I'm just messing around.

All right, well, the topic is total depravity slash total inability. And I'm a Calvinist, Pastor Sean is a Calvinist, right? We hold to total depravity and we believe that total inability is very much connected to that.

And Dr. Flowers is a provisionist and he has a different perspective with respect to that particular area of reformed theology. So what I want to do is to have Sean lay out the reasons why he holds to total depravity and total inability.

Perhaps he can kind of walk us through some of the key passages that he uses to support that. And then Dr. Flowers will share his perspective and then I'll step back a little bit and allow you guys to interact with each other.

How's that sound? Sounds good. All right, you can go whenever you're ready, Sean. Okay, well, thanks again.

I really appreciate it. And I think probably Leighton and I would both affirm total depravity to some extent, but where Calvinists usually diverge from non-Calvinists is taking it one step further to total inability.

So I'm going to deal with both of those together. And I want to start in the book of Romans. In Romans chapter one, Paul makes the case that Gentiles are under God's wrath because they suppress this truth and unrighteousness.

And then in Romans chapter two, Paul turns his gun and points the barrel at the self-righteous Jews, charges they too are guilty before God. And then in Romans chapter three, Paul closes out his argument by showing the universal depravity of all people, both Jew and Gentile under God.

And so one of the key passages is, I'm just going to stick with Romans three, nine through 12, where Paul says, what then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we've already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks are under sin.

As it is written, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Now, before we dive into what Paul is saying here, I want to focus on his statement that all, both Jews and Greeks are under sin.

What does it mean to be under sin? There's that Greek preposition, hupo, under, and some scholarly lexicons like the Leuniada define it as under the control of. The BDAG says under the obligation or power or rule of.

And so some translations even use the term we're under the power of sin. And so Paul often describes sin as an enslaving power. In Romans chapter six, verse six, we know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing.

So that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. He uses that enslavement terminology. Romans 6, 14, sin will have no dominion over you since you're not under law but under grace. Dominion language, bondage language.

Galatians 4, 8, formally when you did not know God you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. And so when Paul says we're under sin, that preposition really carries the idea that we're enslaved to sin, we're in bondage to sin.

And notice that he says that sin is singular, not individual sins, which is true, but he almost appears to like personify sin as a tyrant, as a power, as a slave master that exercises control and mastery.

That we're under its power, we're under its guilt. So we're not only under sin as a power that renders us corrupt, but we're under sin as a power that renders us actually. Now, I know that the provisionist viewpoint differs from this because I've heard Leighton say on many occasions, being enslaved to sin doesn't necessarily mean that one cannot admit this slavery and ask God to free him or herself from the slavery.

And what I would say is that Paul will not allow this view because he goes on to describe in graphic detail what being under sin actually looks like. So what does it look like, Paul? Well, he goes on and begins to string together a bunch of scriptures, especially from the Psalms to give this description of what it looks like to be under the bondage of sin.

No one is righteous. This is from Psalm 14 and Psalm 53. We are not positionally righteous before God. It's not that we're neutral, but we're morally unrighteous before God. No one understands. Now, this does not mean that a sinner can't understand the bare facts of the gospel, that a sinner can't understand doctrinal truths.

You can share the gospel with an unsaved person. They can track with what you're saying. They can understand the logic. They can understand the meaning. But fundamentally, because of the depth of sin that they're under, they don't understand the depth of their need and the truth of who Christ is unless God does a spiritual work in their hearts.

And then Paul goes on to say, no one seeks God. Now, what does it mean to seek God? Does it mean that sometimes you hear people are seekers, that person's seeking God? And I would say that a lot of people may seek the benefits that God provides, but like the psalmist would say about thirsting and hungering for God, can a truly unsaved person seek God in the sense that he desires God's glory as the greatest good?

No one seeks God. All have turned aside, become worthless. Notice again, Paul keeps saying all. No one does good. Now, this doesn't mean that you can't do acts of charity or disaster relief or the proverbial helping an old lady across the street.

We in the reform camp make a distinction between what we call a civic or societal good and a gospel good. In other words, unregenerate sinners can do good works, but they do those within pure motives and not for the glory of God.

And so to do no good here means spiritual good that's pleasing to God. And Paul here charges that everyone without exception is born guilty, powerless, enslaved, and under sin as a condition. And so let me just give two analogies from nature.

Sometimes the Bible uses nature to kind of help us understand a doctrinal truth in maybe a more metaphorical way. So Jeremiah 13, 23, can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you, can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil?

Now, obviously an Ethiopian during that time would have dark skin. Can an Ethiopian wake up one day and just change the color of his skin? And the answer is no, he can't because he's born that way. That's his fundamental immutable nature that he can't overcome.

Can a leopard change his spots? Can a leopard wake up one day and say, hey, I wanna be a tiger. I wanna have stripes. No, a leopard can't do that because it's its fundamental nature immutable to be a leopard.

And so Jeremiah takes it one step further and says, okay, if those are immutable characteristics that are by nature that we see in skin color and leopards, then he says, can you do good who are accustomed to evil?

And that's a rhetorical question that's meant to be answered with, no, you can't. And why can't you do good who are accustomed to doing evil? Well, it's in your nature. It's an immutable thing that can't change about you because you were born in that condition.

You're born under sin, you're born depraved. Jesus also teaches this kind of with a metaphor in the Sermon on the Mount, talking about fruit and trees. Matthew 7, 17 through 18. So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.

A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. So we understand this. Fundamentally, a diseased tree cannot produce anything positive or rise above its essential nature of corruption.

In the same way, Jesus is saying those who are spiritually diseased through the corruption of sin cannot produce anything positive that would result in the good fruit of repentance and faith or anything that would please God.

So what has to happen to the tree? Well, the fundamental nature of the tree has to change. The tree has to change from being a diseased tree to a healthy tree. Now, how does it do that? Can the tree do that itself?

And again, a provisionist or a non-reformed person would say, well, just because the tree's diseased doesn't mean it can't admit that it's infected and then cry out to be changed, cry out for salvation.

Yet what the diseased tree is doing by acknowledging that it's diseased is that it can't change its fundamental nature. So admitting you can't change is not the same thing as actually undergoing a radical inward change.

Merely admitting you're a sinner doesn't change your nature so that you can produce good fruit. Something from outside of you needs to come in and overcome that disease and transform you from the inside out.

And we can get to this later. We call this regeneration. And so I think probably both the reformed and non-reformed to some extent would agree with total depravity, that we're corrupt, we're born with a corrupt nature, we're born polluted by sin, we have a proclivity towards sin.

But where the reformed view takes it one step further is that we also believe the Bible teaches total inability in that sinners lack the moral and spiritual ability to repent and believe, to do anything pleasing towards God because we're spiritually dead, we're enslaved, and there needs to be a work of sovereign grace.

And so we could spend more time in John 6, but I mean, obviously Jesus feeds the 5 ,000. He identifies himself as the bread of life. And then he basically makes kind of some paradoxical statements in John 6.

He basically says, all that the Father gives me will come to me. Those who come to me, I'll never cast out. And so that's a great verse about God's electing love and those that will come to him. But then in John 6, 44, it almost sounds like Jesus contradicts what he said earlier, but he doesn't.

But if we understand his flow of thought, Jesus says, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day. No one can come. That's an emphatic statement where Jesus uses the Greek word dunamis.

It's the word power. In other words, no one has the inherent ability to come and come basically in the gospel of John means to believe or to receive Christ. There's a qualifier there, unless something has to happen.

Well, what's that thing that has to happen in order to overcome that inability? The Father has to draw the sinner and all that the Father draws will be raised up on the last day. So the Father must do a work to overcome that inability of a person who cannot come to Jesus in faith.

Jesus even reiterates it down in John 6, 65. He says, this is why I told you that no one can come to me, almost the same Greek instruction there, unless, there's the unless again, but he phrases it a little bit differently.

This time, instead of saying, unless the Father who sent me draws him, this time in verse 65, he says, unless it's granted him by the Father or enabled. I've often heard some provisionists say, God grants the opportunity or God grants the ability or God grants the possibility of the person being able to come and all that God's granting is just more the choice.

God grants the opportunity for the person to come. In the reform view would say, no, God actually grants everything because the person is spiritually dead. God has to grant even the faith to come to the son in that drawing, in that enabling.

And then one last scripture, just for the sake of time, I don't wanna dominate the time, but in Romans chapter eight, verses five through eight, Paul makes a pretty strong statement about inability. He writes, for those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit, set their minds on the things of the spirit for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Now here's a question about this passage of scripture because Paul's contrasting a person who's in the flesh and a person who's in the spirit.

And I take that to mean the person who's in the flesh is unregenerate, they're unsaved. The person who's in the spirit is saved. Question is, how does a sinner go from being in the flesh to the spirit?

Well, Paul answers that back up in chapter eight, verse two, where he says, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. This is basically Paul's way of saying, you can't liberate yourself from sin and death.

The spirit has to do that. And so the spirit is the one who sets you free from being an Adam. He sets you free from the law. He sets you free from your depravity. And then in chapter eight, verses five through eight, Paul gives four descriptions of an unregenerate person, which I think clearly illustrates or teaches the doctrine of total inability.

First thing he says is the depraved mind is set on death, set on death. Now, Paul uses a present tense verb here to show that an unregenerate person is spiritually dead right now. Without the spirit, they are dead.

Their lostness not only results in future death and hell, but being in the flesh renders a person spiritually dead in the present. Second, Paul says those in the flesh are hostile to God. Because of original sin, because of spiritual deadness, the unregenerate sinner hates God.

He stands condemned. That's a strong word, hostile or estranged. Paul reiterates this in Colossians 1, 21 and 22. He says, in you who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he's now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death to present you holy and blameless and abrupt reproach before him.

So Paul says you're spiritually dead, your mind set on death. Your mind is hostile to God, you're alienated from God. But then he goes on to speak about inability. Third, he says those in the flesh are hostile to God's law.

Cannot. Now, interestingly, that's the same exact Greek word that Jesus uses in John chapter six.

What one second, Pastor Sean, if I could just give you like a one minute warning so that we can hand it over to Leighton, but keep going and then we'll pass it over. Yep, I'm almost done, actually.

Yeah, it's the same Greek verb there, dunamis, cannot. Means sinners don't have the ability to submit to God's law. Now, we could say that God's law is the 10 commandments, but is that merely what it means?

I would say that the Reformed view says any type of command in the Bible, which I would include to repent and believe or commands, are God's law, which I would believe a sinner cannot repent and believe as those are commands.

And then fourth, an unregenerate sinner cannot please God. Why does Paul repeat the inability? Again, is pleasing God just a generic thing or is repenting, believing, coming to Christ, does that please God?

And so I think this passage and others clearly teach moral and spiritual inability as well as total depravity.

Thank you so much for that. Just to let folks know, there wasn't a set time, so it's not as though he was going over time. I just wanted to make sure that we would make a reasonable transition over to Dr. Flowers.

Also, I see folks interacting in the comments there. If you have a question for the latter part of this episode here, please preface your question with questions so I could differentiate it from all the other interesting conversations that happen in the comments section.

All right, so let's pass it over to Dr. Flowers for his presentation.

Provisionism, Human Responsibility, and the Categories of Sin, Help, and Hardening

All right, yeah, if you'll share that screen for me there, Eli, many who've watched my debates before have seen this, but it's just to show, I think, the categories, four categories of scripture passages that are often used when talking about anthropology or the nature of man with regard to man's sinfulness.

We all agree, as Sean rightly said, we agree with depravity. Men are depraved. All sin, all have sinned and fall short of God's glory. Now, you may have debates about when a person's accountable for sin, the age of accountability, all those kinds of things, but putting that aside, we all agree, everybody's sinner and they all need a savior.

So that's the all sin category. And a lot of times, Calvinists will spend a lot of time reading over scriptures that don't really hit our point of contention because they're in one of these white cups here.

They're in the all sin cup. Everybody sins, everybody's a sinner, and if they say it, they seem to, they want to say it louder and more dogmatic as if we disagree with that. And we just go, no, we agree.

We're in bondage to sin. We're hostile towards God. All of those things you heard Sean say in his opener are true. But when in any other category of life does being hostile towards somebody equal an inability to confess your hostility and come into reconciliation?

I know hundreds of people who are pagans, who have no relationship with the father, who are hostile towards their spouse or towards their child or towards their neighbor or somebody who comes to a place of reconciliation and they humble themselves and they reconcile.

Hostility does not equal inability. So every passage you heard him talk about men's hostility towards God or their fallenness or their depravity, just put them into the all sin category and just say, we agree with that, but that's not the point of contention.

The second set of verses that you'll hear is everybody needs help. And you heard him, you refer to John six. We can't believe unless God does something first. Well, amen, we're not Pelagian. We believe God takes the initiative.

God hasn't left us on our own. Many people make the argument. We can't do it on our own. We can't do it on our own. Amen, that's one of the reasons we don't believe God's left us on our own. He sent Jesus, he sent the Holy Spirit to bring conviction to the world.

He sent the scriptures inspired by holy apostles. What more does he need to do to show the world who he is? He has made himself abundantly known to us. And so, yes, we all need help. We cannot be saved without his intervention.

And we believe that he has intervened in a sufficient way through the gospel. The gospel is the power of God into salvation. And therefore we agree, all need help. And he has sent the necessary help we all need.

That's what provision is all about. Provision is, yes, we're in bondage. Yes, we're sinners, but God provides for those who are his enemies in sin. He provides for those who are in bondage. He provides for those who are dead in their sins and trespasses.

So what does a dead man need to do? A dead man needs to be given new life. Well, how does a dead man get new life? According to the scripture, John 20, 31, these things have been written so that you may believe and that by believing you may have life.

So how do we get new life? By believing. Jesus said, you refuse to come to me so that you may have life. He didn't say, I've refused to give you life so that you'll certainly come to me. He says, you have refused to come to me so that you may have life.

What's the order of salutis, the order of salvation according to Jesus. You come to me in order to get new life, not the other way around. And so, yes, dead men need new life. So how do dead men get new life?

By listening to the life-giving truth of the gospel and believing so as to get new life. So all need help. And so you'll hear a lot of passages that Calvinists will bring up and they'll say them dogmatically and they'll say them with passion and they'll preach them.

And I'm just going, amen, brother, that's great. But that's not our point of contention. We all agree we need help. And we all believe he takes the initiative. He does the drawing. He does the calling.

He sends the gospel. He sends the Holy Spirit down like fire to bring conviction to the world. He does all of those things, all of which are sufficient to enable us to respond to his call for reconciliation.

So yes, we all need help. Now, here's the category of talk that often gets very confusing. And many people don't understand this category of talk. And this is the hardened category. Because in the scriptures, it does talk about, in Romans 1, as he referenced, men becoming cut off to the truth.

They had the truth. That means they knew it, but they rejected it. They suppressed it, okay? That's their fault. That's not God's fault. It's not something God decreed for them to be from birth. They chose to do that willingly.

They didn't have to do that. They suppressed the truth and unrighteousness. And they can become cut off. They can reach a point of no return, so to speak, where God says, okay, you've rejected my revelation again, again, again.

You've ignored the warning in Hebrews 3 and 4, which says, when you hear my voice, do not harden your heart against me. You've ignored it, and you've become hardened. You've become callous. And now you're cut off from me.

That is a category of people that largely represents the nation of Israel in the first century. And it is talked about in scripture over and over and over and over again. And oftentimes, in my experience, Calvinists take texts that are talking about hardened Israelites who have grown calloused and self-righteous in their rebellion, who are now being cut off for the engrafting of the Gentiles.

And they use those as proof texts for the natural condition of all people from birth. And they're pulling these passages out of context, talking about people who are hardened, not from birth, that in the condition they were just born into, like their skin color, like the Ethiopian, just born like that, he can't help it.

Which, by the way, that passage is talking about people who are grown and accustomed to doing sin. What is that talking about? People who are habitually sinful and have therefore been hardened in their sin.

That's a different category of people than the natural condition of all people from birth. And so that's the four different categories here. Yes, we'd agree all ascend, all need a savior, all need help, God's initiative.

People can become hardened, calloused, and cut off from the revelation of God, and therefore become in an incapacitated state. Because if the revelation is taken away from you, you can't believe it because it's not there anymore.

So if the revelation is taken away from you because you have grown hardened and calloused to it, because he's taken the revelation from the Jews and he's taken it to the Gentiles, whose fault is that?

It's certainly not God's, it's the Israelites' fault for rejecting him over and over and over again. But if total inability is true, then they have no more control of their ability to believe the gospel than they do of their skin color.

And one of the reasons intuitively we find bigotry and judging people for things they have no control over, intuitively we judge that as wrong and as unjust. Why? Because we know intuitively it is wrong to judge and punish somebody for something they have no control over.

And yet that's exactly what the doctrine of total inability suggests, that you have no control or ability to believe the Bible. And yet God is going to hold you accountable for what you do with his words.

Hear me when I say this, the Bible says you will be judged on the final day, not by Adam's sin, not by your morality, the good and the bad you end up doing. What will you be judged by? The very words of Christ, John 12, Jesus says.

The way that Paul put it is they perish because they refuse to love the truth so as to be saved. They don't perish because Adam sinned, they don't perish because they themselves sinned, they're sinners in heaven and hell.

What's the difference between those in heaven and hell? Whether they accept the truth or reject the truth. And you're responsible for what you do with the truth of God. And if you believe that you can't accept truth because of a condition you were born in, that you have no more control over than you do the color of your skin, then intuitively all of us know that this is not just, it is not right, it is not fair, it is not biblical in my estimation.

Of course, that's the argument for today. And the verses you've just heard, Sean, lay out all fit within those white categories of cups that we just laid out. All sin, all need God's help, and people can become hardened and cut off in their rebellion.

Not one of them, in my estimation, even comes close to suggesting that people are born by nature and divine decree, mind you, in a condition that they can't control, where they cannot respond positively to God's own appeals to be reconciled from their fallen condition.

The Bible doesn't even come close to suggesting this. One of the scriptures I want to pull into this, and since the screen's up, I can just leave it up there, is Acts chapter 28, beginning in verse 23.

It says, they arranged to meet Paul on a certain day and came in even larger numbers to the place where he was staying. He witnessed to them from morning until evening, explaining about the kingdom of God and from the law of Moses and from the prophets.

He tried to persuade them about Jesus. Some were convinced by what he said, but others would not believe. There's an act of the will right there. Now, why would they not believe? According to Calvinists, they would not believe because they weren't unconditionally chosen before they were born and irresistibly regenerated or effectually caused to believe.

The Bible never says this anywhere in this text or any other. It seems to suggest this is their will. They chose not to believe, and they disagreed among themselves and began to leave, but Paul made this final statement.

The Holy Spirit spoke truth to your ancestors. He's speaking, obviously, to Israelites here. Go to this people. Who's this people? Israel, and say, you will be ever hearing, but never understanding. You will be ever seeing, but never perceiving.

Now, I want you to make note of this statement right here because you see it throughout the scriptures quite regularly. Is this a condition from birth by divine decree because of the fall of Adam, or is this a condition of hardened people?

Just answer that question because that is this debate. Total inability teaches that they are ever hearing and never understanding, ever seeing and ever perceiving from birth due to a condition they have no control over by the sovereign divine decree.

That is nowhere established in the Bible. Why does Paul say they're in this condition? For this people's heart has what? Become calloused. Notice it didn't say they were born by nature calloused. It says they have become calloused.