Total depravity

What ‘total’ means

Total depravity is the name the Reformation tradition, the Reformed churches above all, gives to what original sin has done to us. ‘Total’ describes extent, not degree. It does not mean that people are as evil as they could be, but that no part of us is untouched: thought, will, desire and body alike. God saw that "every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was altogether evil all the time" (Genesis 6:5); "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure" (Jeremiah 17:9). Paul gathers the Psalms into one diagnosis:

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

Romans 3:10-12

The result is spiritual inability. The mind of the flesh does not submit to God's law, "nor can it do so" (Romans 8:7). Paul reminds believers, "you were dead in your trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1), and Jesus says, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him" (John 6:44). Augustine comments: "This is the doctrine of grace: none comes, except he be drawn." Augustine

This does not mean sinners have nothing good in them. Fallen people still bear the image of God and have a conscience; they love their families, work honestly and make beautiful things. Reformed theology explains this as God's common grace restraining sin. But nothing in us can make us right with God or turn us back to him.

How the church came to say it

The teaching is rooted in Augustine's theology of grace against Pelagius. In 1525 Martin Luther answered Erasmus by arguing that in the matter of salvation the human will is bound by sin Luther, The Bondage of the Will. The Synod of Dort (1618–1619) confessed in its third and fourth heads of doctrine:

Therefore all men are conceived in sin, and by nature children of wrath, incapable of saving good, prone to evil, dead in sin, and in bondage thereto, and without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, they are neither able nor willing to return to God

Canons of Dort, III/IV.3

The same canons add that glimmerings of natural light remain in fallen people, but are far from enough to bring them to saving knowledge of God Canons of Dort, III/IV.4. The phrase ‘total depravity’ is not the canons' own; it became current later in English, and is best known today as the first letter of TULIP, a summary that spread in the twentieth century (see Calvinism).

Where the traditions differ

Lutherans and Reformed agree that in spiritual matters the fallen will can do nothing toward its own salvation, and that conversion and new birth are wholly God's work. The Reformed teach that this grace always takes effect in the elect (see effectual calling); Lutherans hold that it can be resisted.

Wesleyans and Arminians describe the fall just as deeply. The Remonstrants themselves confessed that fallen man cannot of himself think, will or do anything truly good, and must be born again by the Spirit The Five Articles of Remonstrance. They differ over how grace overcomes that inability: God gives prevenient grace to every person, restoring freedom to respond to the gospel, and this grace can be refused Wesley, The Scripture Way of Salvation. This is a long-standing debate among evangelicals; both sides read Scripture seriously and agree that salvation is by grace from first to last (see Arminianism).

The Catholic Church teaches that original sin wounded human nature without wholly corrupting it, and that free will was weakened but by no means extinguished Council of Trent, Decree on Justification; it also receives the confession of the Council of Orange (529) that even the beginning of faith comes from grace Council of Orange. The Orthodox churches do not use the language of total depravity: the image of God is darkened, but freedom remains and works together with grace. See the lessons Original sin and its effects and The five heads of Dort.