Defending Calvinism: Total Depravity

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I would say if the authorities didn't want us involved in the public square, they ought not to have crucified Jesus in the public square. We use humanistic principles, it's the same idea, it's the same answer.

I would say, what's the problem with stardust. Bumping into stardust?

In the cosmic picture, none, there's no problem, in the cosmic picture it won't matter.

No, Mr. President, you are not protecting reproductive freedom, you are authorizing the destruction of freedom for one million little human beings every year. I'm sorry my friends, but I am tired of seeing Jesus presented as a weak beggar.

He is a powerful saviour, and the Gospel is not a suggestion, it is a command.

Don't you sympathize with that?

I sympathize with every single human heart wishing to know the one true and living God, but I believe there's only one way that that can happen through Jesus Christ, and the Gospel is about repenting of sin, not celebrating it.

Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast.

Out.

For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me, and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. John chapter 6 everybody.

It's a big one.

It's a big one. Get it. That's really the summary of much of what we're saying in this Apologia Radio series, Defending Calvinism. Today, we're talking about total brevity or total inability. Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio.

This is the Gospel Heard Around the World. I'm Jeff the Callman and Ninja, and that's Zachary Conover. Hey, hey. Director of Communications for End Abortion Now. Thank you so much for joining us. Go and get more at ApologiaStudios .com.

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Thank you guys for joining us. We thought that we would continue that discussion that Zach and I had a couple of weeks ago now on Calvinism, the doctrines of grace, and we think it's an important subject because so much of it provides a foundation to the grace of God in the Gospel.

So many of you remarked on how it was just a blessing to listen to an hour or so of teaching, and we started with the sovereignty of God.

Stulip.

Stulip, yeah. And of course, if you're new to this discussion about Calvinism and the doctrines of grace, you've probably heard tulip, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints.

We like to start that discussion, as my fellow elder has remarked on, with the real foundation underneath all of it, and that's the sovereignty of God. So we call it stulip or stupip and whatever.

Which is basically just a way of saying we're reasoning from God downward.

Right, yes.

We're not starting with man as the creature.

Yeah, so I mean, admittedly, and this is nothing to be ashamed of, it's exactly where you need to go in this, this discussion about the grace of God and salvation, the discussion about predestination, election, all of that has to start with the foundation of the Word of God.

What do the scriptures say? So, of course, underneath the sovereignty of God components of this discussion is the affirmation of sola scriptura, or the revelation of God is supreme, that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the rule of faith by which we should measure this discussion.

What does God say, not in one place, but throughout His revelation on this? And so, of course, affirmation of sola scriptura, an affirmation of the sovereignty of God over all things, the comprehensive sovereignty of God.

And then we get into the discussion about the nature of man, God's electing grace. Did the atonement accomplish anything? Was it a potential atonement, a potential salvation? Or was it a particular atonement that actually accomplished God's will for the atonement?

What power does God have to convert sinners? And when God saves somebody, does He keep them? That's the question. And so we're going to get into those. You guys were really blessed by that discussion.

We're blessed to have it. It always is a blessing to talk about these things because it brings glory to God. It makes much of God, it makes little of us. And so today we're going to be talking about total depravity, or as I like to refer to it, total inability.

Many people prefer that terminology.

R .C. Sproul used radical corruption also.

Yeah, so great ways to express it. It really just has to do with the nature of man in the fall. Are we dead in sins and trespasses? Or are we spiritually sick? Do we go with what the Bible says when it says people are unable to come to God, apart from God drawing them, that they have no ability?

Or is their will free? Are they truly free? Do people come into the world with a tabula rasa, a blank slate? Or do people come into the world dead in their sins and trespasses, inheriting, of course, that condemnation from Adam, our first parent?

What is our condition? Are we by nature children of wrath? Or do we all come into this world as children of God?

Right?

Which is the popular teaching today.

That's the popular teaching of today, exactly. And so we're going to get into that today, but before we do, just real quick, so that we don't get messed up in the discussion we're having, I wanted to, you guys are probably all seeing this and you've probably heard me talk about this before.

Does Jeff have a problem? What is this patch going on here? What weird thing is going on? And so I like to announce it because I'm a big, big believer in it. It's a Christian-owned company, and I'm so grateful to God for what they have come up with.

This is an NAD patch. NAD, NAD patch. And you guys maybe have heard me talk about this before. Again, I'm a big believer in people creating things that extend human life and bless human life. And so NAD is something that you have available within your system.

It's just a God-given biochemical. It's something in your system. It's referred to as the fountain of youth because it's the chemical or what's in your system that helps to keep everything operating.

It feeds everything. And so your cells are kept in the state that they're supposed to be. Everything's working properly because you have an abundance of NAD when you are younger, an abundance of it. And so that's why they call it the fountain of youth because you've got so much of it, and it keeps everything working the way it's supposed to.

If you went without NAD in your system for 30 seconds, you'd be dead. That's how important it is to your system. As you get older, your levels of NAD drop pretty dramatically, like half. And so you start to age.

You get older, and you're aging because a number of reasons. One of the things is you don't have as much NAD anymore. And so a lot of people, wealthy people, sports stars, athletes, all that stuff, they've been in on the NAD for a long time.

And what they have done, you may have even heard Joe Rogan talking about it when he got the vid. He did NAD IV treatment, and he also did some other stuff. But he announced it, and some people were like, what's NAD?

But NAD has been used for a long time helping people recover, get their systems back online. But the problem is, and this is why I was always afraid of it, the problem is that NAD through an IV everyone knows is torture.

I don't exactly. I know there's a reason why, and you can look it up. But it's torture. People talk about having an elephant on their chest. It's very, very difficult to endure.

And more costly to obtain.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like an hour-long process to get that IV drip to happen. And sometimes people say they have to just stop midway and say, turn it, just turn it off. And as soon as you turn it off, it stops. But as soon as you turn it back on, that drip is happening.

It's really, really painful. So people do it anyways because the benefits of get that NAD drip. And then, like my friend said, it felt like you're Iron Man. You can knock down walls afterwards. And my friend, a good friend of mine, someone I love dearly, a famous baseball player, after a hip replacement surgery, he did it.

And he was, like, exercising a week later or something. It's just insane to get a hip surgery or hip replacement and then be working out like that. And so, anyway, my wife and I got connected to this company, Ion Layer.

And Ion Layer does it through a patch so you don't have the torture of the IV drip. And, like Zach said, it is significantly cheaper. You're looking at, like, $800 for a drip.

So they've made it more accessible.

Yeah, and this is a medical patch where it gets into your system over, like, 14 hours and you just skip over all the pain and all the difficulty. And you actually get fresh NAD because you mix it yourself.

And you get a lot of it. And so it's just way, way cheaper. And it's just such a blessing to our bodies and human life. You may have heard me mention that when I started taking it, my clarity of thought was so much better.

I was able to think without fog. I was, like, really impressed with that. It felt like a lot of really clean, amazing energy. Not like caffeine. Just I felt good. I felt healthy.

Good.

I felt really, really good.

Vibrant.

My wife had, like, the long vid symptoms where she had no she had favorite smells were all, like, they smelled like sewage. Coffee tasted like garbage. All that stuff for, like, two years. And she thought she was going to be stuck with it for life.

I mean, she legitimately thought, this is just what I've got to deal with. Coffee's going to taste like hot garbage. And so we got these in, gave it to her. And it was, like, I think three days later.

And she was, like, I got two of my smells and tastes back. Now, take that for what it is. The only thing different she did is she did the NAD patch, and then it came back. And so I'm grateful to God for that.

I thank God for this company. I thank God for these brothers who are over this company. I'm so thankful for things like this that bless and prolong human life. And so, yeah. So if you go to IonLayer .com, IonLayer .com, and you go put in APOLOGIA in the, I think it's all caps, in the coupon code, they give you a big discount.

Love them. I have to just be honest as we have these discussions in a show like this. So many people regularly ask us to be a part of APOLOGIA Radio and to have their stuff put on APOLOGIA Radio. Honestly, we turn the vast majority of it down.

If I don't truly believe in something, it's not going up on our program. I really love these guys. I love this product. I love this. I love what it does. I love how it blesses human life. I love their business.

I love the fact that they're believers. And so that's why we're talking about it on the show because I am just, I'm really grateful for it. I really, really am. It's really helped me because I'm 45 years old right now, 45 years old right now, and I've noticed.

Old man.

The muscles ain't working as quickly as they used to, and so I have to train extra hard to get where I need to be.

Pull a hammy on a sidekick?

That happened to me like a year and a half ago. I was training hard again. And then one day I run every day and I do martial arts and all this stuff. And so I come around the bend of my house, and then the last part I sprint as hard as I can because I'm exhausted.

I'm like, fight, push, push. And so I just start to sprint. I get halfway up my driveway, and I'm just like, bloop, and like hammy blew out. And so anyway, I've been recovering faster with NAD now. I can work harder and not experience like the week-long pain stuff.

And so that's what it's done for me. So that's what we wanted to do is tell you about that. So ionlayer .com. Go there. Check it out. I think it will be a real blessing to your life. And so let's get into it.

Why Total Inability Matters for the Grace of God

When you think about total inability, Zach, why? Okay, first of all, why do you believe it and why do you think it's important to know and defend it? That particular starting point, total depravity, total inability.

You know, I was thinking about this very thing and asking myself, anytime we do studying the Word or we're preparing to teach or instruct, it's really the so what of it all that comes at the end. What's at stake here?

Like getting this right. Why is it so important to get it right? It's actually one of my favorites of the acrostic to discuss because I think if you fail here, then you get everything else wrong.

That's exactly right.

So what's at stake? The grace of God, I would say, in the Gospel, and by extension to that, the fact that if we get grace right, then we understand that God isn't under any compulsion to give it. Yeah, to anybody.

Right.

If he is, if he's compelled to do this, if he must, then it's no longer grace. Grace loses its graciousness, I think, when we get the condition of man wrong. So when we're talking about total inability, total depravity, radical corruption, really what we're talking about is to what extent has mankind fallen?

Everyone agrees that the whole human race fell on Adam. The Bible teaches very, very clearly the doctrine of original sin, that all of us have a representative outside of Christ, and his name is Adam.

He's our first father. But where the dispute tends to come in this is, well, how serious was the effect of the fall on our human nature? Like, how far-reaching is sin's corruption, actually? Like, does it touch every part of us, or is there something preserved from sin's corrupting effects upon us?

We all know that our bodies wear out and get sick, and we die. We all know that our thoughts are corrupt and futile outside of Christ. But is there something intact that hasn't been touched by sin? Our reason, for example, our human reason.

Are we able to actually come to God? So it's not utter depravity, right? That's not what we're saying when we talk about total depravity, in that we're humanity in our fallen state is as evil as we possibly could be.

It's not that. It's that, you know, because God has preserved us in many ways by his grace from going off the deep end and falling into complete sin and self-destruction.

To that point, God is constantly restraining man from the evil that he wants to do.

Right, and that's the key right there is desire, motivation, will. You know, what we're talking about in this is not that, you know, people don't make choices. You know, a fallen man makes choices. It's what's the nature of that choice, and what does man desire in the natural state apart from God?

And the answer to that is it's not God.

Right.

He's not looking for God. He's not running towards God. When you ask the question, what does the Bible have to say about our condition? We're enemies, we're rebels, we're hostile against God, we're disobedient, children of wrath is the other designation.

And all those identifiers you just gave, you're literally quoting scripture.

Right, right.

And so every part of us has been touched by sin. It's not that we're as evil as we possibly could be, but there isn't a part of us that hasn't been affected by the fall.

And we're talking in that sense about the nature of man in the fall.

Right.

That's the main issue is what is the nature of man in the fall?

We're held captive to a master, and the Bible defines that master as sin. And of course, there is description about us, you know, the bondage of the will, the famous book by Martin Luther.

Luther versus Erasmus.

That's a biblical definition of our fallen estate is that we're captive to Satan. We're captive to the bondage of sin. And therefore, we cannot originate the love of God within our own hearts. We can't affect our own conversion, and we cannot do that, which is spiritually pleasing to God.

That's what we're talking about here. Not can we have moments of virtue in our lives, you know, when we help a neighbor across the street, or we, you know, give to the poor. Unbelievers can do those things, too, by common grace.

There's atheist charities.

Yeah.

But there's a Lorraine Bettner referred to this as even in man's charity, there's a fatal defect in his goodness.

I'm glad you brought that up, yeah.

There's a fatal defect in his goodness, and that is his motivations are all wrong.

He's not doing it for the glory of God.

And he's not doing it in independence upon God's power to carry it out, because he thinks that he is self-originating, self-sustaining, self-existent, apparently, in his idolatrous condition, in his desire to be completely separate from God, which, by the way, is how the Bible refers to how we are.

You know, we don't want God in our knowledge. We don't want the reminders of God in creation all around us.

Romans 1.

Constantly screaming at us that he exists, that he's the creator, and that we're accountable to him. You know, we want to do our own thing.

To that point, real quickly, Gordon Stein, there's a part in the Gordon Stein-Greg Monson debate on the existence of God, where I think it's near the end of the debate where they start talking about atheists doing good things.

And Stein, as an atheist, says that himself, out of his own mouth. He says it by his own mouth. He says, no, atheists do good things. He said, and there are many atheist charities. He goes, and the great thing about not believing in God and all this is that when you do these good things, you get the credit for it.

That's what he said.

And so it's like, well, yeah. There's the departure.

There's the departure.

If you're not doing it for the glory of God, for the good of the image of God, you're doing it because you want the credit for it.

Right.

Yeah.

That's the distinction is that man can do those good things in and of themselves, but whatever does not proceed from a heart of faith is sin. The Bible tells us. Romans 14, I believe. So what's the motivation?

Is it self-aggrandizing? Is it to have a name and fame with the world? Is it to be viewed in a more morally positive light? None of those things are the kind of righteousness that God commands us to have.

And the point about righteousness is that it's an inward renovation of God by the spirit. So when we're talking about total inability, the Ethiopian can't change himself. The leopard can't change its spots.

Right.

Right.

This is how we are by nature. And we cannot change ourselves. We can't. The decisive hinge point of salvation does not come from within us. It has to come from outside of us. It has to come from a power acting upon us.

And of course, that comes later on in the tulip with regeneration.

Yes.

The inward renewal of the person. That's what has to take place. Because apart from that, we're hopeless. Ephesians chapter two describes our condition, in which it says that we're separated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, talking about the Gentiles, having no hope and without God in the world.

That's the condition. And I'd love for you to talk about Ephesians chapter two as well. In the beginning, there are dead and trespasses and sins. But just maybe set up the discussion that way.

Yeah.

We are unable. We don't have the power to come to God. And we can't do that, which is spiritually pleasing to him.

That's right.

And a lot of Christians will hear all the verses. You're literally just speaking scripture right now. You're taking little snippets of verses and pulling it into conversation.

And there's more.

No, there's more. But a lot of Christians will say, well, I agree with all that, and I'm still not reformed. And I would say, okay, it's one thing to acknowledge that that's what the Bible says, that we are by nature children of wrath, that we're dead in our sins and trespasses, we're hostile, all of that, unable to come to God.

It's another thing to actually allow your theology to actually express it. Now, I believe that's true about you to the degree that now it impacts my evangelism.

Precisely.

It impacts my view of man and the grace of God and salvation. So the real question here with TULIP is just this, how gracious is God's grace? That's the key issue. And the reason why I'm bringing that up now is because we're going to get into a ton of scripture here.

But in terms of people understanding the particulars of where this dispute arises in Christian history, this is really important. So in Christian history, literally it's in the pages of scripture themselves in the New Testament record, the ancient record of the church is the New Testament itself.

So if you want to know about what the ancient church was like, read the New Testament. That's the ancient record of the church. And in that ancient record of the church, you've got now evidence that the apostles, the inspired apostles, are having to contend with opposition that looks like Christianity.

So this came as a response to something.

Exactly. So in the New Testament itself, you see the marks of the dispute going on between the early Gnostics and the Christians. And the early Gnostics were using Christian language. They are borrowing Christian terminology, but they were seen as enemies of the Christian church.

And so you've got the apostle John and the apostle Paul dealing with the early beginnings of Gnosticism. And so my point is, they're having to deal with heretical and apostate theology in the pages of the New Testament itself.

And then you get out of the apostolic era and you move into the second century. And now what are you dealing with? Well, the church has to contend with other things like, again, Gnosticism. They are the enemies of the Christian church.

So the second century of the church, Christians are now having to deal with these are the disciples of the apostles. They're having to deal with the Gnostics. And then you have, like, Marcion, and you've got the attempt to pull sort of an Andy Stanley of the second century.

The OG Andy Stanley. Yeah, the OG Andy Stanley, in a sense, and detach the Old Testament scriptures from the New Testament. And so they're having to deal with that nonsense. And the early Christian church is having to deal with Sabellianism and modalism.

And as you start to move forward in history, let's just be honest, not everything is on the map in terms of theological disputes. Some of the main things the church is having to deal with is you're having to deal with the authoritative record of the church.

That is the inspired writings. You're having to deal with that and contend with Marcionites and all that stuff. But you're also having to deal in those first few centuries, I mean, in a big way, like the premier issues, the big ticket items is the nature of God, the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, because then you start moving forward.

And now what are you dealing with? Well, you're dealing with issues like Arianism, Bishop Arius of Alexandria. You've got to fight against that heretic who's teaching Unitarian perspective and that Jesus is this first and greatest creation of God sort of a thing, like early on, that kind of thing.

And so the church is not having to fight every single spiritual battle at once in the first few centuries. They're sort of like the big ticket items, like the Trinity.

Who is God?

Who is God? The deity of Christ. You're dealing with those kind of big ticket items. Now, as time goes on, though, yeah, you're dealing with like Augustine has to deal with Pelagius. And you got, of course, Augustine is squarely on the side of the Reformation when it comes to like monergism in so many ways.

Like, look, you're going to find a mess in Christian history. It's a beautiful mess. You're going to find the giants of the faith saying the things that sound just like Paul and Jesus, and you're going to see them face planning.

And so you do like, look, Augustine.

As such with all history.

Augustine is a premier example of this. And this is really important as you get into the discussion of total depravity and like where this comes and this dispute in the Reformation. Augustine is just this giant.

Look, I love Augustine. I named my son after him. Okay. He's a giant. He teaches that the rule, he teaches in many ways, Sola Scriptura. I mean, some of the greatest discourses about Sola Scriptura are from Augustine.

I mean, he's talking about the rule of faith. And I don't care what this person said or that person said. If it doesn't match the Old and New Testaments, it's not true. It's not binding. He says things like that.

It's like, well, that's just pure Sola Scriptura.

Right there.

Welcome to the Reformation. But Augustine also staunchly defends monergism because he's fighting its Pelagianism. Right. And so you're like, dude, Augustine is on the side of the reformers here. And then at the same time, you're going to find Augustine where the Roman Catholics are quoting from him because he's saying stuff that the Roman Catholics love.

And you're like, yeah, I acknowledge it. Look, Augustine was an uninspired, fallible man. And you've got him saying great things that are in accordance with the scriptures and other things that Rome loves.

But here's the point. You move forward in history. And of course, you've got the schism and you've got the separation of the East versus the.

West.

Time goes on in the West. You talk about Rome just starts adding on so much over time, doctrinal perversion and starts adding things and binding things to the consciences of people that are not, A, in the Bible and B, in church history.

And that's one of the things the reformers were arguing about with Rome is they're like, look, you guys have departed from scripture and church history. So the reformers regularly, regularly quoted from the fathers.

Their argument was like, this is not a theological novum. We're not giving you something new. This stuff is in the whole history of the church. You find it everywhere. And so when you get into the time of the actual Reformation itself, by that time, there is so much theological darkness.

Rome has face planted to such a degree that a reformation is necessary and a call back to the rule of faith. Now, what does this center around? The reformation is sending around a couple of things that are in orbit with each other.

And one of those things primarily is what's the final authority here? Because you guys are pulling rabbits out of a hat here, guys. I mean, this isn't in scripture or church history. Like where are you going?

Is the papacy just gets to make stuff up now? This person over here just gets to define? Eastern Orthodox, they don't even agree with the papacy. Like the reformers are going, they agree with us on this.

Like you pull the rabbit out of the hat with this one. You're not even going to find this in early church history. This role, this infallible interpreter, this guy, this position of the papacy. Look, even Eastern Orthodox, they don't agree with you on this.