(Continued from page 324.)
(3) THE TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF MAN.
THIS is a doctrine against which the heart of the natural man rises in rebellion. It meets with tremendous opposition from graceless professors of religion and Modernists spurn it as something not to be mentioned in the hearing of enlightened men. But this doctrine is no more to be set aside than others simply because of the opposition it meets with. To the law and to the testimony we make our appeal and there we will find abundant evidence that the doctrine is clearly taught. By total depravity is meant an entire want of desire to seek God’s glory, to love holiness, to submit to His will. The heart of man proclaims in a thousand ways its total alienation from God; no unrenewed man ever seeks after God or desires that He would be his portion. The apostasy from God is total. At the formation of our Church this doctrine came prominently to the fore in view of the erroneous teaching of the Declaratory Act on the subject and as we have dealt with the matter in the pages of the Magazine before we may be allowed to re-state
what was written then:—The objectionable clause (IV.) of the Declaratory Act which touches on the subject is as follows: “That in holding and teaching, according to the Confession of Faith, the corruption of man’s whole nature as fallen, this Church also maintains’ that there remain tokens of his greatness as created in the image of God; that he possesses a knowledge of God and of duty; that he is responsible for compliance with the moral law and with the gospel; and that, although unable without the aid of the Holy Spirit to return to God, he is yet capable of affections and actions which in themselves are virtuous and praiseworthy.” For the sake of comparison, the Confessional statement on the total depravity of man may be quoted:—”From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions” (chap. vi., sec. iv.)—”Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or prepare himself thereunto” (chap. ix., sec. iii.). These sections in the Confession teach as plainly as words can put it the scriptural doctrine of the total depravity of man. What, then, is really meant by this doctrine may now be asked? In reply we cannot do better than quote Dr. Charles Hodge on the subject:—”This universal depravity of men,” he says, “is no slight evil. The whole human race, by their apostasy from God, are totally depraved. By total depravity, is not meant that all men are equally wicked; nor that any man is as thoroughly corrupt as it is possible for a man to be; nor that men are destitute of all moral virtues. The Scriptures recognise the fact, which experience abundantly confirms, that men, to a greater or less degree, are honest in their dealings, kind in their feelings, and beneficent in their conduct. Even the heathen, the Apostle teaches us, do by nature the things of the law. They are more or less under the dominion
of conscience, which approves or disapproves their moral conduct. All this is perfectly consistent with the Scriptural doctrine of total depravity, which includes the entire absence of holiness; the want of due apprehensions of the divine perfections, and of our relation to God as our Creator, Preserver, Benefactor, Governor, and Redeemer. There is common to all men a total alienation of the soul from God, so that no unrenewed man either understands or seeks after God; no such man ever makes God his portion, or God’s glory the end of his being. The apostasy from God is total or complete. All men worship and serve the creature rather than, and more than, the Creator. They are all, therefore, declared in Scripture to be spiritually dead. They are destitute of any principle of spiritual life” (System. Theol., II. 233).
1. The Declaratory Act’s statement, in speaking of man’s fallen condition as “the corruption of man’s whole nature,” is open to objection, for though it is the truth so far, it is not the whole truth. The Confessional statement is much stronger and is in accordance with Scripture when it sets forth that “we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.” In other words, man’s whole nature is not only corrupt, as the Declaratory Act sets forth, but is totally corrupt. It is possible to conceive of the whole nature being corrupt, but not totally so.
2. The Reformed theologians did not deny to man in asserting the doctrine of total depravity that he is in possession of virtues (justitia civilis) in a limited sense. But they were careful to point out that such virtues terminated on the creature and not on the Creator, and that while they met with approval from men as acts between man and man, yet there was in them a fatal defect towards God. The Declaratory Act here in its efforts to soften the statements of the Confession has not been careful enough in conserving the truth. For instance, to put such a statement as the following in an explanation of a creedal document:—”That he [man] possesses a knowledge of God and
of duty [and is] capable of affections and actions which in themselves are virtuous and praiseworthy,” is evidence of the want of care if not worse, of the framers of the Declaratory Act. In their effort to safeguard the justitia civilis of the Reformed theologians, which is better and more clearly stated by Dr. Charles Hodge in the paragraph quoted above, they were not sufficiently careful to safeguard the doctrine of man’s total depravity, and it is quite evident that their aim was to present a phase of this doctrine that would be more acceptable to the modern mind. To say that man “possesses” a knowledge of God is a statement open to grave misunderstanding. Fallen man certainly may have a natural knowledge of God and of His works in creation and providence, and these and the light of nature leave him inexcusable, “yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of His will which is necessary unto salvation” (chap. i., sec. 1). The Confessional teaching is further set forth in the words: “Works done by unregenerate men, although, for the matter of them, they may be things which God commands, and of good use both to themselves and others; yet, because they proceed not from an heart purified by faith; nor are done in a right manner, according to the Word; nor to a right end, the glory of God; they are therefore sinful, and cannot please God, or make a man meet to receive grace from God. And yet their neglect of them is more sinful and displeasing unto God” (chap. xvi., sec. vii.). The Declaratory Act statement, therefore, that man possesses a knowledge of God and duty, and that he is capable of affections and actions which in themselves are virtuous and praiseworthy as it stands in the Declaratory Act without qualification or explanation is anti-Confessional and anti-Scriptural. “There is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Ps. liii. 3). All such actions, whatever they may be in men’s eyes, are sinful in God’s. The knowledge of God and Jesus Christ is life eternal, and to say that man possesses a knowledge of God without any qualifying statement is in the direct face of the teaching of Scripture. Man is spoken of as being without God, and the Apostle in writing to the Corinthians says that the world by wisdom knew not God. The Declaratory Act framers, if they had been more careful theologians and guided more by the Scripture, would have inserted the qualifying word “natural” before knowledge, and should then have said “may possess” instead of “possesses.”
3. The next statement in this Clause which demands our attention is:—”He [man] is responsible for compliance with the moral law and with the gospel, and that though unable without the aid of the Holy Spirit to return to God,” etc. The opening words of this section are very suspicious in view of their relation to the words that follow. Man’s responsibility, as would appear from these words, is based not so much upon God’s authority, as on the power arising from his so-called knowledge of God and duty. According to the teaching of the Reformed theologians, man has a responsibility in keeping the law and obeying the gospel, but they never taught that his responsibility was founded on or limited by his ability. They made it quite clear that while man was utterly unable to do what was required of him, yet he was not relieved from his responsibility. It is this failure to conserve the doctrine that by the fall man “wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation” that led the framers of the Declaratory Act to say that man, “although unable without the aid of the Holy Spirit to return to God, he is yet capable of affections and actions which in themselves are virtuous and praiseworthy.” The doctrine of man’s total inability is so clearly taught in the Scripture that it is unnecessary to dwell at great length on the subject, but merely to note in passing that such explicit statements as man being dead in trespasses and sins, and that Scripture nowhere affirms that man possesses any ability to return to God are convincing enough to any reasonable person. The Declaratory Act statement leans very heavily towards, if it is not out and out, Semi-pelagianism, as may be
seen from Dr. A. A. Hodge’s definition of that heresy. He thus defines it:—“(a) Man’s nature has been so far weakened by the fall that it cannot act aright in spiritual matters without divine assistance. (b) This weakened moral state which infants inherit from their parents is the cause of sin, but not in itself sin in the sense of deserving the wrath of God. (c) Man must strive to do his whole duty, when God meets him with co-operative grace, and renders his efforts successful. (d) Man is not responsible for the sins he commits until after he has enjoyed and abused the influences of grace” (Outlines of Theology, p. 338). From this definition of Semi-pelagianism it will be seen how closely in touch the Declaratory Act teaching is with some of the leading principles of the heresy. Its “co-operative grace” has its counterpart in the doctrine of the Declaratory Act, and the whole Clause was framed evidently with the intention of softening the Scriptural doctrines of man’s total depravity and his inability to any spiritual good accompanying salvation. Over against the Declaratory Act teaching may be set the Confessional statement which has clear Scripture authority:—“When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and by His grace alone enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good” (chap. ix., sec. iv.). What Dr. Warfield says of the American attempt at the revision of the chapter on Effectual Calling may truthfully be said of the Clause under discussion:—“A certain shyness,” he says, “in treating of the subjective effects of sin is already traceable in the modification proposed for chap. vi., sec. 4, and xvi., sec. 7, as if the Committee were afraid the evil effects of sin might be over-stated . . . Of similar import is the proposal to cast out of our Confession that ‘man by his fall into a state of sin hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation’ . . . The question which the Church is asked to face by the proposition to make these two changes, when stripped of all confusing side-issues, is
simply and nothing less than this: whether she is prepared to remove her testimony to the essential Reformed doctrine that man is passive in the first moment of conversion, and whether she is willing to desert common Confessional Protestantism in its assertion of the inability of will of the sinner to all spiritual good” (Pres. and Reformed Review, III. 328).
(To be continued.)