Sharpen your Heretic Sword because here goes: Does total depravity mean total inability to respond to the message? Indeed, does being dead in trespasses and sin mean that men can?t even hear the message?
?The unregenerate (unsaved) man is dead in his sins (Romans 5:12). Without the power of the Holy Spirit, the natural man is blind and deaf to the message of the gospel (Mark 4:11f). This is why Total Depravity has also been called "Total Inability." The man without a knowledge of God will never come to this knowledge without God’s making him alive through Christ (Ephesians 2:1-5).? ? the Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics
Basically, they?re saying that Men are dead, incapable to hear the message and respond to it, because in Adam all men died. The theologian points out those key passages and lets you make the connection of thought. Theological clay pigeons that countless theologians (including R.C. Sproul) have tossed up into the air while smugly chuckling about how obvious it is as we shoot them down cheering at our skill to understand. ?The Bible says you?re dead, doesn?t it? Does a stinking dead corpse hear? Can it respond? Can it do anything? No! It needs new life!? Oh, what a great illustration! Argument won and I am left dumb!
It?s pretty funny in that some of this group may defend their fuzzy position against the universal offer of the gospel in John by saying ?world doesn?t mean everybody? and simultaneously pin their theology to metaphors.
Now, let me stop the billows of smoke coming out of collective ears by saying that men are dreadfully sinful. Not only are men ruined by sin, they?re culpable in their personal sin (Rom 3). Not only are they culpable but they prove that they are ruined as a whole because all men personally sin (Rom 5). Men are so sinful that some have taken the revelation of God, knowingly suppressed it and subjected their own minds to uselessness?their condemnation is just (Rom 1). If it weren?t for God?s personal intervention in history, men would have no access to the Father for salvation is by no other but by the Lord Jesus Christ and His work on the cross of Calvary.
So does dead mean inability to hear, listen or respond? Obviously when we?re talking about God raising the dead, we would say ?no!? The dead will rise at the last trump, at the shout of the archangel and we who are alive will be caught up with those who died in Christ in the air (1 Th 4). They heard the call and got up?marvelous grace is that and I?m sure my Calvinist brethren would say ?Amen! Solo deo Gloria! Semper fide!? and even more charismatic tongue speaking.
How about the dead standing tall after death and Hades gave up their contents (Rev 20:13). There they go standing before a great white throne, awaiting their verdict. Ah, but those are ?the dead? they were never saved and there they stand awaiting judgment. This doesn?t prove anything. Doesn?t prove anything besides the dead standing and awaiting to hear their verdict.
But we?ll move along and see that Paul describes certain female believers who give themselves over to wanton pleasures as being dead even while they live (1 Tim 5:6). The woman is being put in contrast to the woman who is an actual widow with a fixed hope (1 Tim 5:5). So is she an unregenerate unbeliever or is she a believer whose testimony is dead? What part is alive?what part is dead?
How about those men that Jude speaks of?they revile what they don?t understand. What is this that they?re reviling? Is it the doctrines of grace? Actually, Jude let?s us know that they?re rejecting authority and reviling angelic majesties. Their sin is religious in nature, going out the way of Cain, rushing headlong into Balaam?s error and doomed to perish in the Korah?s rebellion. How does Jude describe them? Dead twice over (Jude 1:10-12). Doubly unable to hear, listen, understand and respond or act? Then, using an example of three different men who all heard, knew and understood the message?and yet blatantly rejected it? Odd that.
Paul has been caught on occasion telling believers to consider their earthly members as dead (Col 3:5). Does that mean that the believers are to consider their earthly members as unable to hear, unable to respond and unable to act? Strange Paul?why would you be telling us to take that approach with something that so constantly sneaks up on us (Romans 6)? Once even saying that we have died with Christ then warning of living to the world?s principles (Col 2:20). Why bother with the warning, Paul, since we are unable to hear sin, listen to the world or respond to in Christ (Col 3:3)?
One time Paul even describes Abraham?s body as good as dead (Rom 4:19)! Does that mean that Abraham?s body was unresponsive, unable to act or move or just as good as that uselessness? Or does Paul have an alternate purpose? Or what of that time that Paul points out that without the Law sin is unable to hear, respond or act (Rom 7:8)? That?s strange?my Bible has sin very active for hundreds of years before the Law?culminating in a flood I think (Gen 6)? Or maybe he?s talking about God?s commands, although it doesn?t explain why Paul would say that he was alive once, but then the Law came up and he died (Rom 7:9).
You shall not surely die, Satan tells Eve before she eats the fruit. Was he telling the truth or did they really die? ?Yes, they died years later!? He doles out a bunch of punishment up front and saves the big ones for later. Or wait, they spiritually died?they were spiritually safe once, but God lost them when they chose sin. I speak as a fool.
I?ll submit that those theological clay pigeons are based on a false assumption. I?m no theologian and I?m bracing myself for attacks. That being said, if I were a theologian I would take a hard look at my theology against what Scripture says.
-r-
Not a Calvinist, Arminian, Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian