David Thinking

I’ve taken quite a hiatus from my writing on total depravity. In talking to some friends, various objections were brought up concerning where I was taking the logic train. Before I can state the problem, I need to state some background.

I have been taught the think-right, want-right, do-right, feel-right “train” of human motivation and action. We do what we do because we want what we want. (If we want chocolate, we eat it. If we want to lose weight more than we want chocolate, we don’t eat the chocolate.) What we do determines how we feel. (We do a bad thing, or just a thing that we believe is bad, and we feel bad.) Feelings, then, are the “caboose” of the train. We don’t need to worry about fixing feelings so much. They’re symptoms, not conditions. If we are depressed, chances are, it’s because something further up the train has derailed. We should fix that problem, and the depression fixes itself. Emotions are like a thermometer on the human persona. (I’m using depression as a quick example here. Please, no comments on the legitimacy of medical causes. I’m not arguing that there are no biological causes for depression.)

At the very front of this train is the “thought locomotive.” We think a certain way about chocolate. This causes us to want it or not. This causes us to eat it or not. This causes us to feel good or not. Think, want, do, feel.

So in a counseling situation, the first thing that we focus on is the thought process that’s going on. If someone is sitting around all day long, with nothing to do, and is thinking, “Woe is me; I have no friends,” then of course they’ll feel depressed. But the key isn’t medication. It’s to find ways to change the underlying condition. Get them out of the house. Get them thinking different thoughts. Get them focused on activities where they see nice people. Use practical tools (like, make them write a list of 10 things people have done in the past week that showed care for me) to change what thoughts the person is thinking. True thoughts will lead to wanting good things, which leads to right decisions which leads to happiness.

This is very much an oversimplification. And I haven’t mentioned where the Gospel fits into this paradigm at all. But generally speaking, I buy this idea of how the human works. I think this is an excellent counseling paradigm. But this is really a super-simplification of a complex human process that looks somewhat difference. This works beautifully in counseling, but for theological purposes, it’s just a but shallow.

Primarily, I think that this model makes too great a distinction between doing and thinking. A thinking is a doing. We often choose what to think. Now, it’s true, when someone says, “Don’t think about a pink elephant!” we all think about a pink elephant. But generally speaking, thinking isn’t purely involuntary. Sometimes, based on visual stimulus, it can be very easy to begin thinking lustful thoughts, for example, but hopefully we make a choice to excise those thoughts and fill that thought-space with something else (like pink elephants). For a moment, when a less than perfectly dressed female crosses my path, it’s almost as if my mind is hijacked, just for a split second, but immediately comes a point of decision where I can choose what thought to think next. On the basis of what will I choose my next thought? I will choose what I want. If I want to honor God, I will notice how blue the sky is and how rather fluffy the clouds are today. If I want to lust, I will choose a very different train of thought.

So, thinking is a doing. At some point in our thinking, we have an opportunity to think one thought or to think another thought. Therefore, thinking not only affects wanting, but wanting also affects thinking.

This is almost completely useless in the counseling room. I have no way to reach inside your head and change your wants. But I can give a homework assignment that almost (but not really) forces you to think thankful thoughts. (Write 50 reasons why you are thankful for your spouse.) The knowledge of the feedback cycle of wanting and thinking isn’t very helpful to the counselor. The counselor seeks to get a handle on the train at some point so he can start re-railing the cars. The best handle is at the thinking car of the train (and, to some degree, the doing car). But thinking really is a sub-genre of doing.

To state that the root of the human problem is thinking untrue thoughts is at best an over-simplification and at worst grossly mistaken. The solution to the human problem, then, is not purely or even primarily correcting our thoughts of God and self. (Ooh, radical statement. I may need to revise this in the future…)

I hold that the root of the problem is the “wanting” car. Wanting, though part of the thinking-wanting feedback cycle, is causally prior and more important than the “thinking” car. In Romans 1 we read that truths about God were obvious, that, in fact, there was some sense in which people knew God but refused to acknowledge Him. This is like me, confronted with immodesty: I can refuse to acknowledge it and choose to think of something other than what is right in front of me, but that choice in no way results from epistemic inaccessibility or ignorance. So, too, the choice of the Romans 1 reprobate does not simply reflect a problem in the “thinking.” Sure, the thoughts were wrong, and obviously so, but the wrongness of the thoughts resulted directly from thought-choices driven by the affection, the “wanting” part of the mind. The problem with the reprobate is that he wants to think a certain way.

The desires or the affections are the root of the problem. Thence flows the corruption of depravity to every other part of the human being. We want bad things, so we think bad things, those two together mean that we do bad things, so we feel bad. Regeneration does involve a change in thinking, but it is fundamentally a change in wanting (which causes a change in thinking).

Next I should write a post attempting to support that view from more than one passage…

I recently learned that Calvinists go through a “cage period.” I hadn’t heard that before coming to Southern, but it makes sense. It’s naming a thing I knew about, though I’d never heard it delineated and named before. The cage period is the time shortly after someone has become a Calvinist when they are just bit too enthusiastic about their Calvinism. They see every doctrinal error and solution in terms of Calvinism. Calvinism is the solution to every sinful habit and vice. Calvinism, Calvinism, Calvinism. The error of Arminianism is so obvious and odious that their life (for that hopefully brief cage period) becomes dedicated to bringing others from the bondage of Arminianism into the shining light of Calvinism.

I have to admit, there is a bit of me that is still in the cage period, but I’ve learned to control myself. Generally, I find something more important to talk about, or I find a way to tweak a piece of the theology of the person I’m talking to without mentioning the broader systems in play. After all, no one even needs to know what Calvinism is to be a Calvinist. My goal is not to educate people on what Calvinism is. Rather, I should be seeking to instruct biblically in this or that issue as I may. Systems mature and develop over time. Rather than correct an Arminian on Arminianism, I’ll choose some key point and address that issue. Ramifications can be left for another discussion. And, if possible, depending on the discussion, it might be best to just let the issue slide altogether. Jesus died for your sins? Great! He died for mine, too!

But this past Sunday school, we were talking about unity/disunity from Eph. 4. We had a sub in Sunday school, not the normal teacher. He asked if there were any points of theological dispute that caused disunity at Southern. I said, no, generally, as Southern tends to draw a crowd that already has put together its theology into a vaguely similar format. Most disagreements are not sufficient to cause any disunity worth mentioning.

There was a girl from Boyce in Sunday school, too. (Boyce is the undergrad institution attached to Southern.) She mentioned that at Boyce there were significant numbers of Arminians, so there was sometimes a touch of fervent debate occasionally leading to disunity over the issue of Calvinism/Arminianism. The teacher paused a bit and then asked, “Now isn’t Calvinism the one that means it doesn’t matter if you sin or anything because of grace?”

I regressed back to my cage period. I think it was 10 minutes before we got back to talking about unity. Now they all know I’m a Calvinist. That definitely wasn’t my intent when I walked into Sunday school that morning.

Perhaps, if you’ve been following the news, you’ve heard about the Supreme Court case concerning Westboro Baptist Church. In case you’re not familiar, Westboro Baptist Church goes around picketing at soldier’s funerals, talking about God’s wrath against America. This got me thinking: if I were delivering a eulogy at a funeral and they showed up protesting, what would I say? I’d take a deep breath, gather my thoughts, and then…

Let’s be clear: God is a God of wrath. He hates sin more passionately and violently than we could imagine. Though we all quit our jobs and march the world over preaching and protesting, screaming and yelling, we could not come close to demonstrating the hatred that a holy God has for sin. Though we march the world over not merely protesting, but in fits of violence rendering justice to those who so obviously trash the name of God, to those who sin against their fellow man, who brutalize nations and peoples, still, we could not show even a fraction of the wrath that God has for sin. We cannot show even the smallest iota of the wrath stored up for those whom God will punish fully at the day of judgment. Our wrath, in all its show, is nothing compared to the wrath of God.

The same is true of God’s love. It is beyond our capacity to express. It is beyond our faculties to understand it. It is as full and rich and verdant as God’s wrath is powerful and violent and final.

But though God’s wrath be beyond us, we do have some means of understanding it. If we want, as best we can, to understand God’s wrath, we must go to the place where he showed it most clearly and finally. This is not in the Garden, where Adam’s sin demanded exile. This is not Sodom and Gomorra; even their annihilation was a trivial display of displeasure. Even in Hell we do not see the depth and the breadth of God’s wrath. We see it only at the cross. There, God’s wrath shone so brightly as to blot out the sun, even as it blotted out sin. There, God poured out his wrath on God: there was no sufficient target for so great a wrath but the divine. All of mankind could not withstand it. The temple veil did not withstand it. In all our anger, does the earth shake? Are the very rocks so frightened that they tremble in fear? Does the Sun flee from the face of the earth? Is our wrath against sin so great that it can kill the Son of God, very God of very God, the Word of God made flesh, God made man? Our wrath is so paltry and trivial that its effects even can be ignored by those humans at whom we are angry, if they so decide. God’s wrath is so full and potent that inanimate objects tremble and a member of the divine and holy Trinity is sent to the grave.

But if we consider the complete and utter finality of God’s wrath, if we pause to think about its power and passion, we find the strangest coincidence in all of creation, even beyond creation: that God’s greatest act of violence in anger is God’s greatest act of Love.

For, though we see wrath poured out from God to God, in a display that transcends the power of words to communicate or minds to understand, we find that it is inextricably bound up in God’s consummate act of kindness toward all men. For we are all, every one of us, deserving of God’s wrath; we are the ones who have sinned, every one of us. Jesus rightfully deserved none of that grand display. We deserved to be the recipients of everything done to Jesus. We deserved his tortures, his pain, and his agony. We deserved to have God’s wrath against us so hotly as to burn the sun, so powerfully as to shake the mountains on which we stand, so finally as to condemn us eternally to Hell. Indeed, we are or were the enemies of God. We have hated and despised him. Our desires are not for his glory but for our own, for our happiness instead of his blessing. We have found other gods and declared them to be the most high; we have worshipped his created order. We have found things other than the good and declared that it is The Good. We have sinned. Any wrath deserved by sin is deserved by us.

So God’s wrath at Calvary is not only God’s greatest display of his hatred for his, but of his love for his followers. It makes possible a reconciliation. Because God’s wrath is no longer against me, I can be with him and know him, and love him, a position which was not possible before. For what father, existing every day in a state of anger towards his children can have friendship with them? But we, though God’s enemies, now can be his friends, being delivered by God from wrath to love. Here at the cross, God’s wrath puts us in awe and wonder, but that awe and wonder crescendoes still higher when we consider that it is all within the confines of his even more expansive love. Oh, how great is his love!

So if we consider it important to share God’s wrath, if it is a priority to show God’s hatred for sin, his vitriolic repulsion for what is wrong, then we must, like God, show people the cross. If we want people to know and understand the wrath of God as fully as the human mind can comprehend, then we must go that place where the outpouring of God’s wrath is most immense, where, like a mountain, God’s anger towers above men’s, where God was so angry at sin as to aim his hatred at very God. Here is wrath.

But if we stop our story there, we leave out the whole point of God’s wrath! We cannot tell a half-truth as though it were the whole truth. In doing so, we ignore what God accomplished in his wrath, a thing I think he would not have us ignore. We miss the fact that the greatest show of God’s wrath is simultaneously the greatest show of God’s love. If we are to have the fullest possible idea of God’s wrath, it must be from within the fullness of God’s love.

In simplest terms: if we want people to understand the totality of God’s wrath against sin, we must share with them the whole gospel. To yell about wrath, to march about God’s wrath, and to protest someone’s funeral in the name of God’s wrath and eternal punishment is not to have too big a view of God’s wrath, but too small a view. God’s wrath is bound up in the good news of the Gospel! At the cross we find love, yes, but we find it tangled up in wrath, the two strands of an immense rope reaching from the Hill of the Skull to the Throne of Heaven. Let us have this full view of God’s hatred for sin.

Again, if we want others to know of God’s wrath, let us share the gospel. Love without wrath means that no one needs help. Wrath without love means that there is no help. Love and wrath mean that we are in desperate need, but there is deliverance for any who come to the cross. There is the wrath of God satisfied, which satisfaction is shown at the resurrection. To know God’s wrath we must go to the cross, and we must bring others to the cross. But if we have seen the fullness of God’s wrath, we cannot but see the immensity of God’s love. Let him see who has eyes to see.

This election season, the left and the right are both shouting about how much they have listened to the American people. The Republican’s claim they understand how hard it is on Main Street. Joe the Plumber has had to tighten his belt. The Grand Ole Party hears. They will tighten the belt of government, too. The democrats claim to know how hard it is. The have heard the cries for help. And they pledge to send help.

I don’t like either of these ideas exactly, or at least either of these rationales. Give me a political party that is not listening to the people but has something to say. Give me a party that, rather than pretending to be of all the people, is willing to be of none, to do the unpopular thing, instead of listening to us and trying to give us what we want, give me a party that sees the problem and is willing to tell me what needs to change.

The reason we’re in this mess is because congress has been listening to the people. They’ve been giving us exactly what we want. But this is not a democracy. (The founders hated the word.) It is a republic. The reason we have a republic is specifically so that we could elect officials who could vote for exactly what we don’t want, so that the power is derived from the people but also separated from them. Decision making is supposed to be insulated from the people. Instead, every side panders, promising they’re the side to deliver. Where is the side that will be honest, speak of the hard times ahead, tell me what I don’t want to hear, and vote for the programs I don’t want?

That’s the politician I’ll listen to.

Benjamin Franklin said that the government would fail when people began to vote themselves money. More than ever, this is beginning to be the case, especially in “handout” programs, but also in big business subsidies, targeted tax cuts, etc. What’s more, it has become the singular goal of politicians to create an economic environment where business thrives. Though I desire for policies that promote a thriving business environment, this is an entirely wrong-headed approach to governance. The role of government is to protect an environment where virtue thrives. When virtue thrives, those who work hard and produce will thrive. Then they thrive, the economy will thrive.

In focusing on economics instead of ethics (and I mean ethics in a much broader sense than mere rules of business and politics), the government is putting the cart before the horse. The people have lobbied congress to move the cart (the economy), and so congress has gotten behind the cart and started pushing. Congress, ignore the people and go get a horse. While you walk away from the cart to go get a horse, the people will undoubtedly hate you for your seeming abandonment. But this problem will not be solved by a bunch of fat old men grunting and pushing a cart that is stuck in the mud.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I’ve never heard of the guy, but I analyzed my writing from two different posts (Total Depravity: Evil & Desire and Total Depravity: Extension), and I got the same result twice. That’s better than Brian Leiter did.

In other news, Total Depravity: Inability is half written, but I won’t be finishing it until July 27 or so. Too busy.

Gravity is so unpredictable. Why, just the other day, it decided (with no provocation whatsoever) to introduce my face to the ground. Now, I have a great deal of affection for the earth, but this affection is a lot like the affection a man might have for his TV and not a lot like the affection a man might have for his wife: a bit of distance is much appreciated.

(Actually that never happened. I just thought it sounded funny, so I wrote it. I do that sometimes.)

[NOTE: I welcome criticism and even rejection of these ideas, particularly from those of you who are more theologically schooled, though I’ll listen to anyone to some degree. I definitely don’t want to be a hyper-Calvinist.]

In the first post in this series, we surveyed the accepted meaning of “total” in total depravity. Typically, this “total” is thought to imply the extent or breadth of the corruption, that depravity has corrupted every part of man. (The extension, or the set referred to, is complete and total.) This view also seems to explain why man is not as evil as he could be, for his corruption, though extensive, is not intensive, not corrupting him as deeply as possible.

In the previous post, we discussed why depravity might not be total in extent. I proposed that the will is singularly uncorrupted, a presumed exception to the totality of the extent of the corruption. That argument is intended to demonstrate that the corruption may not be total in extent.

In this post, I will investigate our notion of evil to lay the groundwork for the claim that man actually is as evil as he can possibly be. I will show that this evil implies the full corruption of desire, a corruption that is total in intension.

To understand evil properly, we must understand this mysterious notion of “good.” There are many “goods” in the world, most of which are only relatively or contextually good. For example, Jones and Smith are both be farmers. A terrible flood comes along and wipes out all of Smith’s crops. Supply is constrained; prices go up, and Jones profits handsomely. The flood was good for Jones’s bank account but not for Smith’s. Another example: A knife or a piece of wood can be good things, used for art or creativity. They can also be very bad things, used very wickedly to hurt or destroy. Most thing in the world are this way: they don’t have inherent goodness or badness, but to those who stand in proper relation to them, they are good; otherwise, they are bad.

However, there is one thing in the world that is absolutely good in an inherent, unmitigated sense: God. To consider something other than God to be absolutely good is to believe a lie. To please God is absolutely good, for God only desires good and only is pleased by good. To desire to please God is (by derivative) an absolute good. An absolute evil is anything that is opposed to the absolute good.

It should be easy to see ways that one could be doing relative good while engaging in absolute bad. For example, let’s say that Jones, an atheist, embarks on a charitable mission to Africa with the primary desire of proving to his friends that God is not necessary for moral goodness. Indeed, this is the worst evil imaginable because it is intentionally spitting in the face of what is really good and attempting to set up something else as the one true Good. Or what if one decided to use church as a way to get something: professional contacts or a relationship. This is making God into a means to an end instead of the End. This is setting up something else as the Good and demoting God to a method by which to get to that other good.

And this is how we humans are. We constantly, though engaging in relative good, immerse ourselves in absolute evil, because our desires are for something other than God. This is the essence of idolatry: treating something other than God as though it is the Good. To set up an idol is the ultimate act of wickedness: It is dishonest, not recognizing goodness. It is prideful, not recognizing the lofty nature of God over humankind. It is insulting to God, a demotion of uncreated Goodness to a level below corrupted creation. Because other things are not Good like God, our entire life becomes a lie, the living out of an untruth.

Biblically speaking, this is the nature of every man. Genesis 8:21 says, “The intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” What we desire and naturally seek after is evil. There is a wealth of additional verses showing that our desires are naturally opposed to God, that we seek things other than God, even if these things are relative goods. In the Bible, this fact about our desires becomes especially clear if we read “heart” to mean the seat of human desire. Even in children this is evident: “the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live” (Ecc. 9:3). Any self-respecting theologian who ascribes to total depravity will cite Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately; wicked, who can understand it?” Mark 7:21-23 says, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual imorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” John 3:19 gets to the point with clarity when it says, “And this is judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.” What is it the people loved? Not what is good; they loved darkness. Romans 8:7-8 says, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” All these verses, in their different ways, point to this one fact: that our desires are wicked (i.e. our hearts are set on wickedness). The objects of our desire are the not-Good, even if sometimes they are little-“g”-goods.

Thus, that we seek something other than God as the Good shows us ultimately to be evil. This is not a partial but a complete bend: “Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.” (C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity.) The goodness that we have is an illusion. We really are as evil as we could possibly be.

To some, this notion—that idolatry is the worst evil and that unregenerate man is as evil as he could possibly be—must seem ridiculous. In recent generations, our culture has begun to ascribe to what I will call “the ethic of harm.” We consider evil to be that which causes harm to others. What harms no one is permissible. What harms one (maybe even one’s self) is impermissible. From this framework an idolatry of cars, for example, or a green lawn seems utterly harmless, innocent, an very un-evil. It is inconceivable to understand how that “harms” one’s neighbor. Thus, to those whose highest ethical goal is to avoid harm, it is impossible to see how man is naturally as evil as he could be. He has a capacity to harm far beyond what he typically does. That he does not harm as much as he can shows that he is not as evil as he could be.

This view of morality is unbiblical. We are not called to figure out whether or not something is harmful or permissible, but whether it is right and good. These are radically different categories and priorities. When we talk about evil, we must make sure that we are not confusing it with harm. Evil is the opposite of Good, not the presence of harm. We must understand good to understand evil. Good is not not-harm. God is a positive thing to be pursued, not a negation.

But if we must debate in terms of harm, we must see that idolatry is harmful to others in every possible respect, for it is from this fount that does flow all the evil alluded to earlier. To make the approval of people an idol can lead to reduced sharing of the Gospel, and nothing can be more harmful than that. If my car is more important to me than my friendship with another human, who can say what harm will result? Moreover, as unregenerate man, our idolatry stands between us and life eternal with God, the ultimate harm beyond any harm that could happen to us in this short time on earth.

The primary problem of man, then, (what depravity is) is that we want little-“g” good things as if they are the Good. When we do this, we end up making the good into a bad (the way that a knife used to carve is good but used to kill is bad). Most simply, we end up wanting bad things. There is an almost magical sort of metaphysical miracle that is accomplished by the twisted heart of an idolater that turns a good thing into a bad thing. This, then, is the essence of depravity, that man wants bad things.

I argue that our desires are the seat of corruption, the ground zero of human evil. These desires are inevitably, helplessly, and necessarily pointed toward not-God things. This is not a partial or a majority corruption, but a total corruption. Where our desires do seem to be for a God, they merely are for God as a means to some not-God end. The fullness of this corruption is signified by the “total” in Total Depravity.

Next time, I’ll talk about where this leaves us with the original “extension/intension” question. Maybe I’ll even draw some more fancy diagrams for DTH.

First of all, I promise that I’ll complete the series on depravity. The topic is really getting away from me. The next post in the series is at 1500 words right now. When it and the following 2-4 planned posts are finished, I should have the longest work of non-fiction (or fiction, for that matter) ever penned (or typed) by me. Just for your information, the next post will be on Evil & Desire. After that comes Intension, something on deadness/inability, and something about regeneration, perhaps with a trek to Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones. (Bring the whole family for a rollicking good time!)

But no promises for how soon it will be done. This coming week I’ll be in Louisville all week long for a class in Systematic Theology. I’m stoked like the sun is bright. (Try looking at the sun sometime on a clear day. It’s bright. I’m stoked.) I’ll try to complete it this week, but no promises.

But I’ll leave you with this:
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~iav202/powers/anselm.html

It’s only funny if you know the ontological argument for the existence of God. I thought it was hysterical. (Sorry, Z, I know I showed you already.)

Later

There are two reasons why I don’t believe that depravity is total in extension but not in intension. First, I don’t happen to think that depravity is total in extension: it hasn’t quite corrupted the proper function of the will (a.k.a. the volition). Second, I do happen to believe that depravity is total in intension: it has completely corrupted human desire. It is nearly impossible to separate these two objections into two separate arguements because of the inseparable connection between the desire and the will, but we’ll start with the will.

The will is the faculty of the mind that makes choices. It takes desires for its input and gives choices as its output. Simply put, desire determines the will. Or, you do what you do because you want what you want. Occasionally, the will also heeds the input of “reason” (the faculty of the mind that senses the truth of some propositions by applying logic to other, known propositions, i.e. knowledge) to find the most suitable means by which to obtain the desired object. Then the will makes the immediately necessary choice to pursue that object. Again, desire determines the will. We always go after what we want.

Oddly, this idea of the will preserves human freedom and responsibility while abolishing a “free will.” (Wait, how can you have human freedom if humans don’t have a free will?) Freedom is the power or ability to do what one wants. Negatively, it is the lack of hindrance, impediment or coercion keeping one from what one wants. But the will isn’t the faculty of the mind that wants or desires (let’s call that the heart, appetite, or simply the desire.) The will cannot do what the will wants because the will doesn’t want. The will chooses. We should no more expect the will to desire than we should expect our sight to hear, reason to feel, or emotion to will.

However, it is this necessary connection between desires and decisions that make us morally responsible agents. Suppose that I fully desired (and had no opposing desires) to swim out to save a drowning person; it would seem utterly bewildering if, in spite of my desire, I decided not to swim out. Inversely, if I fully desired not to steal, it would be inexplicable for me to decide to steal. If something like that were to happen, we would know that something is wrong. Our choices must be tied to our desires if we are to have control of them. In these two examples, what would be the basis of the choice? Here the will seems utterly unhinged, arbitrary, and random, uncontrolled by the agent.

It should be self-evident and obvious that what we want (regarding the relation between our desires and our choices) is that we do what we want. A reality in which we do things that we don’t want would be incomprehensible and morally unintelligible. It is a good and desirable thing that our desires determine our will. This makes us free to do exactly what we want. Indeed, this very fact makes it possible for us to do what we want rather than having unhinged choices that go contrary to our desires.

Now, I don’t think that I have made a very strong case for our lack of free will or offered much evidence that this is the proper way for the will to function. I merely threw out some claims. If you are unconvinced, I can refer you to Jonathan Edwards’s Freedom of the Will. Good luck. What I have attempted to show, however, is that a free will—or rather, an unconnected will—is not really desirable. If desire does not determine our decisions, what does? A person whose choices are not firmly connected to his desires would be arbitrary, capricious, and random. Furthermore, when I introspect, I find that I always only ever do what I want, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Hopefully this also lays some groundwork for human moral responsibility. If our choices are random, unconnected to our desires, and arbitrary, how are we—who have minimal (at best) control over them—to be held responsible? But if we are free, and (just as importantly) if our will is not, then we have grounds for human responsibility and accountability.

If these premises are accepted, it should be quite obvious the corruption of depravity is most deeply rooted: in our desires. The will—though it function flawlessly—is a Garbage-In-Garbage-Out system. If we see bad choices coming out of a properly functioning will, it is because bad desires are going in.

Next time, we’ll take a look at our desires and see that within the heart, the corruption if depravity is total in intension. Also, we’ll talk about how this means that humans really are as evil as we can possibly be (in our unregenerate state).

I consider myself, at best, to be an amateur theologian. But I think that is the calling of all of us, unless we are paid to be a theologian. But being an amateur does not mean that we are to do it poorly. Amateurs, being unpaid, engage in their hobbies for the sheer joy of it. Usually, there is no other motivation. I hope that can be our reason–and our only reason–for doing theology. Let us never forget that God is good clean fun. I do not mean that there is no pain or difficulty in getting to know God properly; I only mean that we should always remember the simple joy of knowing God. When we’ve forgotten that, we may have lost everything. Let us always be amateur theologians.

But any good amateur at anything wants to do it well. Any good thing (such as theology) is, by virtue of its being good, worthy of being done well. We may not be perfect, but we must do well. We must enjoy doing well, for doing well is good, and all good things are enjoyable. So any good amateur will find those who do better work and study from them. Even a budding artist planning to ignore all the rules and break out of all the forms goes humbly to whomever broached the last set of conventions so that she can learn all the methods for proper disrespect.

As an amateur theologian, I happen to be a staunch two-point Calvinist. I believe quite thoroughly in Total Depravity and Absolute Sovereignty. (The rest of the traditional five points flow directly from these.) These two points, then, are the two about which I’ve done the most reading (which isn’t saying much at all; after all, I have no pretensions to being more than an amateur.) And on the topic of Total Depravity, I have found myself much confused. Though I myself am more than sympathetic to the doctrine, I find no one able to satisfy my understanding of what the “total” means. Everyone seems quite close to having something worthwhile to say about it, but so many authors present such weak arguments for a strong view of the “total”, or else offer strong arguments for a weak view that ends up contradicting the rest of the Reformed Soteriology.

So I am here to take a stab at it, in all my amateurish glory, an attempt to draw pictures of what I think others fail to see in words. This is what an amateur thinks Total Depravity is.

First, let me clarify why this is even a problem. Despite the modifier “total,” we depraved folks do not not seem to be as wicked as we could possibly be. We are not all little Hitlers. Very few of us have participated in anything remotely resembling the Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Only a small minority of our population is currently engaged in human trafficking, terrorism, and child pornography. Believe it or not, I do not spend my off hours roving the countryside looking for small children to torture and kill. Instead, we live (at least in America) in a country where many people donate a bit to small causes, where the fireman still call around raising money because it still works–people will give them money. Some people actually donate time. And every 501c3 that exists is actually run by real people, some of whom may care about what they do. We may not be very good, but we seem to be at least a little good. Of course, those of us that are sane will recognize that we are a little depraved, too. But very? Or totally? No, we are not that. So what does the “Total” mean?

Theologians have tried to solve this problem using the distinction of extension & intension. They claim that depravity is total in extension but not in intension. These are set theoretic terms often used in discussions of semantics. The easiest way to explain the difference between extension and intension is to draw pictures. Now, though I cling to the title of Amateur Theologian Extraordinaire, I have no pretension to being a good artist. But here goes.

Let us suppose that the human being were able to broken apart into components. No doubt this is impossible on some level, but for the sake of the example, bear with me. Let us suppose that humans had 5 components: the volition (or will), emotion, desire, reason, and flesh. Though no doubt entangled, logic is different than the body, and emotion is different than volition. Thus, though our being is almost inconceivably different than the drawing below, let us pretend that this is a picture of me.

In this picture, extension is the X-axis and intension is the Y-axis. So the extension of my depravity would be the set of parts of me that are depraved. Intension is the completeness with which any part of me is depraved. Another way to put it: extension is the breadth of the depravity (or the set of the things that are corrupted) and intension is the depth of the depravity (or the quality and completeness of the corruption) The following is a picture of what I look like if my depravity is total in extension but not in intension.

This picture (where depravity is represented by the gray) shows that depravity has touched every piece of me, but only partially. According to this view of depravity, sin has corrupted my body: this is why I get illnesses, etc. Sin has corrupted my reason. This is why I am imperfect at math and why some people completely fail to believe in God. Sin has corrupted my desire: this is why I want wrong things, even things that are bad for me and will not bring happiness. Sin has corrupted my emotion. This is why I do not respond properly to beautiful things but often enjoy that which is crude or base. And sin has corrupted my volition, which is why I often make terrible choices against all that I believe is good.

We find this view in such works as “The Five Points of Calvinism: Defined, Defended & Documented” where we read, “When Calvinists speak of man as being totally depraved, they mean that man’s nature is corrupt, perverse, and sinful throughout. The adjective “total” does not mean that each sinner is as totally corrupt in his actions and thoughts as it is possible for him to be. Instead, the word “total” is used to indicate that the whole of man’s being has been affected by sin. The corruption extends to every part of man, his body and soul; sin has affected all (the totality) of man’s faculties–his mind, his will, etc.” (2nd Ed., p. 19)

Or as Philip Johnson puts it, “So the word total in “total depravity” refers to the extent of our sinfulness, not the degree to which we manifest it. It means evil has contaminated every aspect of our being—our wills, our intellect, our emotions, our conscience, our personality, and our desires.” (http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2008/01/in-what-sense-is-depravity-total.html)

Now, this makes good sense logically. I understand what is appealing about this view. To put it much more strongly seems to be overdoing it. We are not, after all as evil as we can possibly be.

Next time, I’ll attempt to explain why I disagree with this view. Stay tuned for some more amazing artwork.