Original Sin and Depravity (Part 1)

Original Sin & Depravity — Steve Gregg

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Original Sin and Depravity (Part 2)

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Original Sin and Depravity (Part 1)

Original Sin & DepravitySteve Gregg

Steve Gregg provides an insightful examination of the significant theological concepts of Original Sin and Human Depravity. He discusses the commonly understood definition of Original Sin as the belief that the entire human race inherited Adam's sin and sinful nature. Gregg delves into the Augustinian perspective of Original Sin and the idea of inherited guilt, contrasting it with the opposing views of Pelagius. He also explores the idea of total depravity, emphasizing that it does not mean absolute depravity but rather a natural inclination towards sin that goes against the nature of God. Overall, Gregg offers a thought-provoking discussion on these complex theological themes.

Transcript

So, we're going to be examining this doctrine of Original Sin and the related doctrine of Human Depravity. Now, of course, we need to first decide what the subject is we're talking about. And I've often been asked, what do you believe about Original Sin? Not everyone means the same thing when they use that term.

So, I can tell you what I think about the subject, but I don't know what you mean by that subject. Because there are a variety of ways that Original Sin has been defined by those who talk about it. The Roman Catholics and the Episcopalians have one way of understanding it.

The Reformed denominations have a different way of understanding it. The Wesleyan groups have different ways still. And so, we actually have to define what we're talking about.

The term is not actually found in Scripture. Like so many of our theological labels, it's not there in the Scripture by name. But some concept is certainly there that has been labeled by that popular term.

And so, we need to see what the Bible teaches. Now, let me give you the main Scriptures, just at the outset, that the idea of Original Sin is usually based upon. One of them is in Psalm 51, verse 5. Now, you may know that Psalm 51 was written by David after he had sinned with Bathsheba.

He had been confronted by Nathan the prophet and had repented of his sin. And he wrote this Psalm as an expression of that repentance. And in the midst of that, he's bewailing what a sinful man he is.

And in verse 5, he says, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Now, this latter point, especially, In sin my mother conceived me, is often quoted to support one or another idea of Original Sin. However, even that statement can be pressed into the service of more than one possible definition of Original Sin.

So, we're going to have to look at possible definitions. But I just want you to see the Scriptures that are kind of at the foundation of the discussion. Now, I also want to say this.

That statement doesn't necessarily support any view of Original Sin. What would you think of me if I said, I was conceived by my mother in sin? Would you think I was making a statement about Original Sin or something else? You know, now, when David said, In sin my mother conceived me, there are actually some, there's certainly the minority. But there are some theologians who think David's saying he was illegitimate.

And while many people might want to back away from that, just almost by distaste for the idea. It is rather interesting that other heroes in the Bible sometimes were illegitimate. Jephthah, the judge, was the son of a prostitute.

And his brothers rejected him because they were legitimate sons of their father. And he was illegitimate. They rejected him.

And we see David's brothers sort of treated him as an outcast. Even his father did. When Samuel the prophet came to Jesse's house, he said, Bring all your sons in here.

I'm going to anoint one of them to be the king. He brought in seven sons and left David out in the field. Didn't even bring him in.

And Samuel said, I think there's got to be another one. And he said, yeah, we do have one more. So he brought him in.

And you think, well, why didn't he bring him in the first place? He was one of his sons. And then when David was sent to the battle lines to bring provisions to his brother, they treated him with contempt. Here he's just bringing them food.

And they said, go back to your sheep. What are you doing here with us, you know, with us men? And David actually wrote in Psalm 27, If my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up. You got to wonder how many people even contemplate their mother and their father forsaking them.

You've got to wonder. I don't know if he was illegitimate. I won't argue that he was.

But when he said, in sin my mother conceived me, there is at least that possibility among the range of possibilities. That he's saying I was illegitimate. It's possible.

But it's not generally taken that way. It's generally taken to mean that he had a concept of being born already in a state of sin. Personal sin and guilt.

That's what the doctrine of original sin often draws from the state. The statement is a little ambiguous. It might not really mean that.

It could, but it might mean something else altogether. Now in Romans chapter 5, this is the most important passage. In my opinion, it's the only passage from which certain aspects of the doctrine could be argued.

And that's Romans 5, 12. Actually, this last section of Romans 5 is one of the most difficult passages to follow the line of thought. Because Paul begins the sentence in verse 12.

In verse 13, he breaks away from... he doesn't finish the sentence. He breaks away into a parenthesis. And before he finishes that parenthesis, he breaks away again.

And there's a parenthesis inside the parenthesis. And then the parenthesis ends. And he finally... he's gotten so far from the first part of his sentence, he starts it over again.

You can see this in verse 12. Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned, okay, just as that is true... what? You expect him to finish the sentence. As, even so.

There's no even so. It's just, just as this is true. And then he breaks off into this long digression, which is in parenthesis.

And even within it, there's a digression from the main subject of the parenthesis. That goes all the way through verse 17, this digression. Then in verse 18, he comes back to his original point, but he has to start it over again because it's gotten lost in all the verbiage.

So he starts over in verse 18. Therefore, just as through one man's offense, judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation. Now he finishes it.

Even so, through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of lives. So he's going to make a comparison here between the effects of Adam on the human race and the effects of Christ on the human race. It takes him a while to get around to making that final point, but that's where he's going.

Now, it's the first part of that sentence that's very important in our present subject because he says that through one man, sin entered the world. He means Adam, of course. So sin entered the world through Adam.

It is generally understood that this means that the whole human race sinned when Adam sinned. And this could be Paul's meaning. The idea of the whole race being in Adam and being affected by Adam is certainly not far-fetched in Paul's way of describing things.

For example, the writer of Hebrews talked about how the Levites paid tithes to Melchizedek in Abraham. Why? Because Abraham did it before they were born, and they came out of him later. So in Abraham paying tithes to Melchizedek, the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 7, thus in a sense, the Levites who received tithes in the Jewish order, they actually paid tithes to Melchizedek in Abraham when he did it.

So the idea that something can be done by progeny before they're born because their ancestor did it is not unthinkable. And so some feel that what this means is that we all sinned when Adam sinned. And at the end of that verse, 12, it says, death spread to all men because all sinned.

Now what does it mean, because all sinned? It sounds like it means that we all individually sinned. In fact, Paul uses the same expression earlier in Romans 3 in verse 23, where he said, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We all know that verse.

It's a famous verse to use when you're witnessing to people. All have sinned, Paul said. He means all have individually sinned.

And he might mean it that way here. He might say death spread to all men because all have sinned individually. Everyone who sins, or everyone dies.

The wages of sin is death. But since the time of Augustine, at least, it has been taught that what Paul is saying that when he said for all sinned, he doesn't mean all sinned in their own individual lives, but they all sinned when Adam sinned. In Adam, they all sinned.

And that's why all die. And one of the arguments for this that is usually given by Augustinians is that it's not that we die because of our own individual sins. If this were true, babies wouldn't die.

Because babies haven't committed any individual sins, but babies die too. Therefore, they're dying, they're paying the penalty for us, a previous sin before they were born, Adam. We all sinned in Adam.

That's how it's usually argued. And there's a similar passage in 1 Corinthians 15. These three, Psalm 51, Romans 5, and 1 Corinthians 15, are the primary biblical foundation for the doctrine of original sin.

We'll define it more clearly soon. 1 Corinthians 15, verses 21 and 22, Paul says, Since by man came death, of course he means Adam, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.

Now, in Adam all die. In Christ all shall be made alive. We know that all people die.

That's a universal thing. It's appointed unto man once to die. And after this, the judgment, it says in Hebrews 9.27. So, how come? Well, we all die in Adam.

The doctrine of original sin, as it's taught by some, remember not everyone teaches it the same, but some people teach that what this means is that in Adam all sinned. And therefore in Adam all die because death is the wages of sin. So, that this is affirming, although notice, Paul in this passage doesn't mention sin.

He only mentions death. In Adam all die. He doesn't mention in particular anything about sin, but we know we die because of sin.

So, we have these two statements of Paul in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 that talk about how Adam brought disaster on the human race, sin and death. Let me read you two quotes. These are from two of my favorite scholars, F.F. Bruce, who was probably the most respected evangelical commentator and New Testament scholar in the 20th century.

And the other one is from John R.W. Stott, who until his recent death was one of the most respected evangelical leaders in Great Britain. F.F. Bruce in his commentary on the epistle to the Romans wrote this. This is when he was talking about Romans 5. Death spread to all men because all men sinned.

Does this mean that all have sinned in their personal lives, which is apparently the meaning of the words in Romans 3.23, or that all sinned in Adam's primal sin? In support of the latter, it might be argued that human beings are mortal before they commit any sin, so that the mortality of the race is the result of the original racial sin. The construction with the underlying thought is paralleled in 2 Corinthians 5.14, where Paul said, One has died for all, therefore all died. Now, before I read further in this quote, you need to be familiar with what Paul says there.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, He says, We reasoned thus, that if Christ died for all, then all died. Meaning he was the representation. He died for us as our agent, as our substitute.

So in him we all died. We all have benefited from his death as if we died. We didn't have to die personally.

We experienced, you know, we were all under the death penalty for our sins, the Bible teaches, but we don't have to pay it because he paid it. We already died. We were on death row, but that death has now passed because we died in Christ.

And so when he died for all that is in place of all, Paul says we reason, well, then all have died. Meaning in his death, because he did it for us all. It might seem like a strange concept, but it is clearly what Paul teaches in that passage.

And what FF Bruce is saying is the idea is similar, possibly here, that in Christ we all died. In Adam we all sinned would be a similar concept. He continues, It is not simply because Adam is the ancestor of mankind that all are said to have sinned in his sins.

Otherwise it might be argued that because Abraham believed God, all his descendants were necessarily involved in his belief. It is because Adam is mankind. Unquote.

I think you probably followed that argument, though I read it very poorly. He's saying, you know, if it was simply a matter of saying he's our ancestor and he sinned, so we sinned in him. Well, Abraham believed God.

So we can say, well, everyone has all Jews have believed in him. I mean, it's like if everything Abraham did, all his ancestors did. If we sinned in Adam, was it only his first sin? How about all the other sins? Do we do all those too? Was it only the sin at the tree that we did with him? Or did he all the other sins in his other 900 years of living? Did we do all those? Some might argue.

And he said, it's not simply that he's our ancestor. It's that he is the human race. Now, after Adam and Eve began to have children, then, of course, what Adam and Eve did didn't necessarily bequeath to those children already born from him.

But the whole human race was in him when he sinned. And the argument for original sin is that what he did, the whole human race did. It's just that the whole human race hadn't yet bloomed out of him yet.

But it was, he's it. He and Eve were the whole human race. So that's what Bruce is arguing.

Now, this might seem like a strange concept. You might not even accept it. I don't know that you're even required to accept it.

I'm just saying this is the doctrine of original sin, as it's usually understood in an Augustinian way. John R. W. Stott, in his book, Men Made New, which is an exposition of Romans 5 through 8, said, quote, death is visited on all men today, not because all men have sinned like Adam, but because all men sinned in Adam. The reason why people prior to the law died is not because they deliberately transgressed like Adam and died for their transgression, but because they and the whole of humanity, Christ only accepted, were included in Adam, the head of the human race, unquote.

Now, this is pretty much the standard teaching on Romans 5, 12 and following that you'll hear in most cases. Now, you need to understand that this teaching came from Augustine and the church fathers before that, before Augustine, we're talking about 400 A.D., Augustine, before that, church fathers had mixed opinions on the subject. But one thing you need to know about Augustine is whatever Augustine taught eventually became Orthodox for the whole church, initially for the Catholic Church for the first thousand years, and then even the Protestant Reformation was Augustinian.

Luther was an Augustinian monk before he was a Protestant, and Calvin was an Augustinian Catholic priest. So the founders of the Reformation were Augustinian in their thought, even though they branched away from the Pope and from some of the Romanist views. It is said by church historians that Augustine is the father of Roman Catholicism, and he's also the father of the Protestant Reformation.

Augustine is the most influential theologian in history, for good or for ill. So Augustine is credited and blamed for a whole bunch of doctrines, depending on what you think about the doctrines. But we might ask ourselves, you know, the church did follow Augustine in many things.

Is that more or less an accident of history? Is it possible the church could have taken a wrong turn somewhere and just never gotten back on the right road because it became established Orthodoxy? Or was Augustine truly the greatest genius of theology that ever lived, and the church should well have, you know, hung on his every word? I think it's a mixture between. I think Augustine was a brilliant man. He was a godly man, too.

He was a monk in North Africa and lived a very austere life. He was a great defender of the faith. He wrote probably more theological works than any church father before him had.

And he was a philosopher and he was a pretty interesting writer. And he engaged in most theological controversies of the day and was considered to be the best. He won most of the controversies, officially at least, in the church.

And that would include the controversy about original sin. What, again, does original sin refer to? I've been saying all along there's different views of it. I'm going to tell you what they are now.

The first plank in the platform of original sin doctrine is the idea of the sin nature. What that means is that when Adam sinned, he did not previously have a sinful nature. God didn't make man and woman having sinful nature.

But it was in the act of rebelling against God and eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they not only became guilty of sin, they also became infected with a disease of sin. So that from that point on, they were slaves of sin. They could not live an obedient life.

Sin became part of human nature, sinfulness. And that ever since that time, they reproduced children after their kind in sin. Adam and Eve then would have been the only people ever to have walked on the earth besides Jesus Christ who did not have a sin nature.

But when they sinned, they had it. And they had it to pass on to their children. We're going to examine some of the scriptures eventually that are used to support this.

And I want to say that I don't have any bone to pick with that aspect. It does seem to me that all people do have a sinful nature. Now, whether it's inherited or acquired is still a matter of debate in some circles.

But to my mind, it's an academic debate. If I have a sinful nature, whether I was born with it or whether I acquired it when I first sinned as a child, but I've had it ever since, practically speaking, what difference does it make? I've got it now. It's a problem.

But nonetheless, one of the aspects of it is the idea that human beings at birth acquire this sinful bent, this infection of bad behavior, of rebellion against God. And so that was taught even before Augustine by Irenaeus. Not very much.

There's just a few statements in Irenaeus that are thought to teach this and probably do. Irenaeus was a very important church father. His writings were around 170 AD, so he's like 200 years before Augustine.

And Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp, and Polycarp was a disciple of the apostle John. So Irenaeus is only removed from the apostles by a couple of generations. And so he's considered a very important theologian.

In fact, one of the most important early theologians in the church was Irenaeus. Now, some of the things Irenaeus said seemed to teach that man was born with a sinful nature. And so that's perhaps the earliest record we have of church fathers teaching that.

And like I said, frankly, I don't have any problem with it, but that's just so we'll know where these things begin to be taught in the church. Now, the second plank of the platform of original sin is that babies are born not only inheriting a sinful nature, which disposes them to be sinful in their behavior, they're also born guilty, not of any sin they've committed, but of Adam's sin. Because the race sinned in Adam, it is argued, we are all guilty before we're ever born.

We all ate from the tree when Adam ate from the tree. We were in him. And so babies, even before they're born from conception, they're already guilty.

This is the doctrine of inherited guilt. So these two things are both involved in a reformed view, the Augustinian view of original sin has these two things. Inherited sinful nature, which makes me want to sin instead of do right.

Inherited guilt from Adam's sin. Now, one of the concerns about that latter part is what is the fate of infants who die? About a century before Augustine, infant baptism began to be a fairly widespread practice in the church. And by the time of Augustine, it was universally practiced in the churches as far as we know.

And Augustine argued for infant guilt based upon the established practice of infant baptism. They were already baptizing infants without knowing why. And Augustine had to give a reason for it.

And so he said, well, they're in they're born guilty. And therefore they need to be baptized to wash away original sin. His main arguments for original sin are based on the assumption that infant baptism cleanses sin.

And you can't cleanse sin if there's none there. So infants must have some. This is a view that is not adopted by all Orthodox people.

Although Augustine did influence the church more than any other person, not all branches of the church accepted what he said. For instance, the Eastern Orthodox Church never, never followed Augustine. He was a Latin church father.

The Eastern Church just never was impressed with Augustine and never followed him in any of his doctrines. They didn't accept what we call Calvinism. They didn't accept, you know, original sin as he described it and so forth.

So it was mainly the Western Church. But even the Western Church didn't follow him all the way on this. Today, I believe the modern Catholic Church does not accept this idea of infant guilt.

They do accept the idea of the sinful nature. And at least from what I've read in my research, I've really not talked to any priests about this. But I believe that they believe that original sin means the inheritance of a sinful nature, but not the inheritance of sinful guilt in an infant.

The Reformers, on the other hand, Luther and Calvin, they actually accepted Augustine's full definition of infant guilt and the sin nature. And so those of us who are from Protestant background have probably more often heard original sin explained that way. That we, you know, babies are born guilty and bent in the wrong direction.

Catholics came up with a doctrine. It's not official, but it's widespread, of limbo. That unbaptized infants go to limbo.

Limbo is a word that was invented to refer to a... it's like purgatory of a sort, but it's not really. Purgatory and limbo are two ideas that the Roman Catholic Church came up to solve certain problems, but they're not mentioned in the Bible. But infants who die unbaptized, I believe, go to limbo.

So they're not really in hell, but they're not in the joys of heaven either, as I understand it. But Calvinists, who are Augustinians, believe that if a baby dies, of course, a baby dies unconverted, obviously, since you have to have faith and repentance to be converted, and babies don't have that. A baby that dies unconverted, they have two different views.

Either they all go to hell, because God's election is sovereign. And if he had elected them for salvation, he would sovereignly preserve them alive to be saved someday. And that if he hadn't elected them to be saved, they wouldn't be saved even if they lived 100 years.

So them going to hell is inevitable anyway, because they're not elect. And then... so some Calvinists have taken the view that babies who die all go to hell. But it seems more common among the Calvinists I know to say, no, not necessarily.

When a baby dies, God knows if it was elect or not. And if it was an elect baby, it goes to heaven. If it was not elect, it goes to hell.

So in Calvinism, you've got some babies going to hell anyway. Either all of them or the ones that weren't going to become Christians because they weren't elect in the first place. Now, those who are not Calvinistic, like myself, I'm not.

I personally have always believed that there's something called an age of accountability for children. Most Calvinists don't believe this. In fact, they ridicule it.

They say there's nowhere in the Bible that mentions an age of accountability. Well, there actually is. It's just not... doesn't use the term age of accountability.

Similarly, you don't have... you might have the doctrine of original sin, but you don't have the term original sin. You might have the doctrine of the Trinity, but you don't have the term Trinity in the Bible. Just because there's no term age of accountability in the Bible doesn't mean you can't find the concept there.

I believe you can. And the idea of the age of accountability is that God recognizes that babies, even if they are infected with a sinful nature, and they do things that people shouldn't do because babies are pretty selfish little creatures, and that's pretty sinful. But even though they sin, God doesn't hold it against them until they're old enough to know better.

And they have to reach an age of accountability. At that age, then they become, by definition, accountable for their sins. And then they can go to hell.

But how old that age is, there's different views about. But is there such a thing as this concept? I believe it's mentioned very specifically in Isaiah chapter 7, in verse 16, after it talks about the birth of the child. It says in verse 16, "...before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings." It's talking about the Syrians and the Israelites that were besieging Judah.

And he's talking to the king of Judah that God's going to drive those kings away. How soon? Well, there's going to be a baby born, and before that child knows to choose the good and refuse the evil, those kings will be history. Well, although the message is not about age of accountability, it presumes an age of accountability.

It assumes there's one. A baby's going to be born before he knows right from wrong this is going to happen. Well, very clearly, this is a prophecy.

This is God speaking through Isaiah. God does know about an age of accountability. There's other scriptures of importance about that, too.

Notably, in Romans 7, where Paul gives sort of an autobiographical section, where he says, I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which I thought to give me life, slew me. And now he's not talking about physical death, because he wasn't killed when the commandment came.

He's talking about spiritually. He's talking about his relationship with God, that before he had the law, he was alive. After the law came in and convicted his conscience of his sin, he became accountable to know.

Well, then it slew him. So there are a number of places in the Bible that do suggest that there is an age where someone actually comes to know the commandments of God, or comes to know right from wrong. At that point, they have accountability.

Before that, apparently not. This is something of a side issue, but it's definitely a corollary of this original sin idea. If there is original sin, what is the fate of an infant that dies? And so we have these different ideas.

Roman Catholics say the infant has to be baptized to be saved. Reform people say, well, they're either elect or not elect, and so that determines where they go. People who are not of either of those camps, like myself, often take the position, well, they're the lords.

They're under the grace of God until they're old enough to make a decision against God. And all people eventually do, if they live long enough. They all sin.

In fact, babies are even sinning before they know they're sinning. But they're not accountable for it. Just like if your child, your baby, throws up all over you, you don't get mad at the baby.

You're very displeased, but you're not angry. Because you realize the baby didn't know any better, couldn't help it, or whatever. That's how it is.

God knows what children can do and what they can't do, and so he doesn't hold them accountable for what they can't do. That's another view. That would be the one that I think has plenty of scripture on its side and actually seems the most benevolent too.

Now, with this idea of there being a sinful nature and inherited guilt, these are the two prongs of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin. In Augustine's day, he had an opponent, theologically, named Pelagius. Today, among Calvinists, the worst thing they can say about you is you're a Pelagian.

In fact, it's bad enough if they call you a semi-Pelagian. If you're not a Calvinist, you're at least a semi-Pelagian, as far as they're concerned. And that's supposed to really sting.

Because Pelagius was condemned as a heretic by the Western Church, by the Augustinian Western Church. The Eastern Church vindicated Pelagius, but they're so far out of our range of consideration. Pelagius, as far as Western Europeans and Americans are concerned, generally speaking, he's considered to be a bad guy.

Actually, he was a very good guy. And even those who don't agree with Pelagius admit he was a godly man. He was a monk, a British monk, and he lived a very austere life, and he wrote a lot.

And he just happens to think just the exact opposite of how Augustine saw them on this matter. Pelagius denied both of those planks. He denied that man has a sinful nature, and he denied that there's inherited guilt.

And Augustine and Pelagius had a written debate that went on for the latter years of Augustine's life. And Augustine developed some of these doctrines, especially the more Calvinistic type doctrines, and also the original sin doctrine. He refined it more in the context of this debate with Pelagius.

And so to those who are Augustinian, Pelagius is like he's the worst devil from hell. But in his own day, he was a good Christian. And it wasn't until Augustine's doctrines prevailed that Pelagius was branded as a heretic.

Same thing happened to Origen. In his day, he was considered a great Christian. In fact, for two or three centuries after his day, he was like one of the greatest theologians of the church.

And then after Augustine prevailed and condemned Origen, Origen also became a heretic, too. Interestingly, the man can become a heretic centuries after he died. Let me summarize for you, because I've done a lot of reading this week on the views of the early church on this matter of original sin.

And they didn't hold to the views of Augustine until Augustine did. And there were a lot of church fathers before him who actually spoke something relevant to the subject. Now, instead of printing out everything the church fathers said, because their quotes are often lengthy, I've decided to, instead of quoting them in this case, to put in your notes summaries of what church historians have said about them.

Now, this first quote comes from Gerald Bray, who wrote the ancient Christian commentary on scripture of Romans. Now, this you may not be familiar with this set. This is a set of commentaries by different editors on different books of the Bible.

And they basically just use the quotations of church fathers on the passages they're talking about. So it's just basically the ancient churches commentary kind of collected from all the church fathers whenever they spoke on a particular passage that gets in that part of the commentary. But there's a summary before each passage that the editor gives before he quotes all the church fathers themselves.

And Gerald Bray is the one who put together the commentary on Romans. And he said, quote, many fathers found it difficult to accept any concept of what we would call inherited guilt. To most of them, disobedience was a personal act repeated in each individual, but not directly inherited from Adam in a way that would make us responsible for his disobedience, unquote.

In other words, they weren't Augustinian. Now, I've actually got a quote from Pelagius himself because I have his commentary on Romans on my shelf. And in his commentary on Romans 5, Pelagius said these things.

He basically was telling some of the arguments that people of his day, including himself, most likely, used to disagree with Augustine on this point. And here's what Pelagius wrote. Those who oppose the idea of the transmission of sin, he means the hereditary transmission of sin from father, son, tried to attack it as follows, quote, if Adam's sin harmed even those who are not sinners, then Christ's righteousness must help even those who are not believers.

For Paul says that people are saved through Christ in the same way or to an even greater degree than they had previously perished through Adam, unquote. That's one of the things he says they say. Secondly, they say, quote, if baptism washes away that ancient sin, those who are born of two baptized parents should not have that sin, for they could not have passed it on to their children what they did not possess themselves.

You see, under the old view that baptism washed away original sin, two baptized parents couldn't pass on original sin to their children because they didn't have it. They'd been washed away in their case. This is what Pelagius said.

Some people were arguing against Augustine pretty much. He says, besides, if the soul does not exist by transmission, but only the flesh, then only the flesh carries the transmission of sin. And it alone deserves punishment.

Now, what's that mean? If the soul does not exist by transmission, what he's saying is we know that the flesh, the qualities of the flesh are genetically passed down from your parents because we got DNA. Now, he didn't know about DNA back then, but people already knew the traits you have in the flesh are from your parents flesh. But the soul, where does that come from? Is there some way that this is there some DNA of the soul? Well, that's something that's really curious and hard to answer.

But he said, it's at least arguable that the soul is a direct creation from God in each case. What a child inherits from his parents is simply his physical aspect, but that at birth, God gives each child a soul, in which case they don't inherit soul sin. They only inherit physical corruption and mortality.

That's what the argument is he's using. He says, declaring it. He's talking still at these people who argue against Augustine, which would include himself, no doubt, declaring it to be unjust that a soul which is born today and not of the lump of Adam bears no ancient sin belonging to another.

These people say that on no account should it be accepted that God who forgives a man his own sins imputes to him the sins of someone else. So this is some of the way that Paul Aegeus argued. He represented this as other people's arguments, but he never refutes them in his commentary.

He just said, this is what some people say. Much safer to quote others, even if you happen to agree with them. Now, Louis Burkhoff is a strong Calvinist writer and therefore a strong believer in Augustinian original sin.

He wrote a book called The History of Christian Doctrines. And what I found interesting about this quote is that it's coming from a Calvinist because the quote is not extremely favorable toward Calvinism. Now, he is.

The author is, but he's he's summarizing what the history of doctrine is. He's talking about the history of the doctrine of original sin. And he says in his book, The History of Christian Doctrines, the writings of the earliest Greek fathers show a manifest affinity with the later teachings of Pelagius rather than with those of Augustine.

In a measure, it may be said they prepared the way for Pelagianism. And then it kind of represents what the early fathers taught. He says, Adam could sin and did sin and thus came under the power of Satan, death and sinful corruption.

This physical corruption was propagated in the human race, but is not itself sin and did not involve mankind in guilt. There is no original sin in the strict sense of the word. They do not deny the solidarity of the human race, but admit its physical connection with Adam.

This connection, however, relates only to the corporeal and sensual nature or sensuous nature, which is propagated from father to son and not to the higher or rational side of human nature, which is in every case a direct creation of God. It exerts no immediate effect on the will that is original sin does. So denying original the sin nature, even in this case, that Adam's sin does not exert any direct effect on man's will, but affects this only immediately through the intellect.

Sin always originates in the free choice of man and is the result of weakness and ignorance. Consequently, infants cannot be regarded as guilty for they have inherited only a physical corruption. It should be noted, however, that there were some departures from this general view.

Origin, admitting that a certain hereditary pollution attached to everyone at birth, found the explanation for it in a prenatal or pre-temporal fall of the soul and came very close to a doctrine of original sin. Gregory of Nyssa came even nearer to teaching this doctrine, but even the great Athanasius and Chrysostom scrupulously avoided it. Now this is from a Calvinist author who believes in the Augustinian doctrine, but he's writing about church history, the history of Christian doctrine.

He said, you know, the early fathers before Augustine, they pretty much were aligned with Pelagius, not Augustine. And he gives some of the ways that they argue. We're going to try to look at the scriptures themselves and see whether Augustine or Pelagianism or semi Pelagianism or some other option really lines up more with what the scriptures say.

But there's one other aspect we need to talk about first, and that is the doctrine of total depravity, which is a distinctly Calvinistic doctrine. And after we do that, we're going to take a break and then I'll come back to the rest of our talk. Okay, so let's.

What is total depravity? Now, I was raised a Baptist, not a Presbyterian. Let's say a Presbyterian would be fully Calvinistic. Baptists usually identify themselves as two or three point Calvinist.

There's there's there's five points usually identified with the Calvinistic theology. And the group I was raised in saw themselves as moderately Calvinistic, but would only agree with him on maybe three, maybe maybe three and a half points or something like that. So there'd be not a full acceptance of all of Calvin's ideas.

But one of the points that we would have agreed with was total depravity as we understood it. And so I grew up believing that I was a believer in total depravity. But I didn't understand what total depravity really teaches in Calvinism, because I thought total depravity just meant everybody's sinful.

I thought, well, that's a no brainer. Of course, everybody's sinful, all of sin and come short of the glory of God. There's none righteous, you know, so I mean, everybody's a sinner.

And I thought, you know, total depravity. Sure, it's a totally, you know, the whole human race is totally sinful. But the Calvinist doctrine goes much more more fully into this and Augustine held it because he was the father of Calvinism.

But the idea of total depravity is that everything every person does until they're regenerated. And that means before they're born, until they're born again, supernaturally in their natural unregenerated state. Everyone sins every moment.

That is, every single thing you do, including your good deeds, are tainted by sinfulness. Now, Calvinists want to make it very clear that total depravity does not mean absolute depravity. What's the difference? Absolute depravity, they say, means every man is absolutely as bad as a man can be.

And they know that some unsaved people are not as bad as they could be. Everybody, in fact, could do worse than they do. Everyone restrains himself in some measure or another that they could have not.

And therefore, total depravity does not say that every man is as wicked and sinful as he could possibly be. But they do say that everything he does, even his best deeds, are tainted by his sinful nature and therefore unacceptable to God. And that his bent toward sin is such that every man is bent toward rebellion against God.

Now, some of the most popular Calvinist authors argue that every person who's not regenerated is a hater of God. And, you know, that they cannot love God. They can't even want to love God because they're so bent in the direction of sin that repentance and faith in God are just totally against their nature.

They can't love God any more than I could fly, you know, across this room by flapping my arms. A bird could do it, but I can't because it's not in my nature. And the sinner in his nature is so thoroughly sinful that he can't even seek God.

Now, you might be able to think immediately of some verses that might seem to support that. I can. I can because I've debated Calvinists so much they always bring them up.

But I would have brought them up myself, too, at one point. Some of the most important ones are here in your notes. There are certainly far more.

But these are a good sampling of the kinds of verses that Calvinists use to prove total depravity. Genesis 6 and verse 5 says, Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Now, that's pretty total.

Every intention, every thought of his heart was only evil continually. How many expletives do you need to say these people are, you know, they're all gone. They're all shot through with evil every moment continually.

Every thought, only evil. This is a great verse. Calvinists actually really like this verse because they think it proves their doctrine of total depravity.

But does it? Who is it talking about? You know, this is an interesting thing because they also like to bring up, and it's in your notes there, Jeremiah 17.9. And you probably know this verse. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Another proof of total depravity.

Back when I hadn't thought these things through much, I was witnessing once on the streets in Santa Cruz where I live. Actually in a park, there was kind of a big hippie festival there. I was out there witnessing.

And, you know, one thing hippies always do is say, you've got to follow your heart. And we evangelicals who witnessed them on a regular basis, we had standard answers for everything they'd say, of course. You put the quarter in, you get the answer out that we had memorized.

And the answer we had memorized for that one, follow your heart, the Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked. Who can know it? Knocked him out of the ring, didn't I? Well, I did that to a guy once. He said, yeah, I think we should all follow our heart.

I said, the Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? And he said, but who is that written to? I never thought of that. I never asked myself that.

Here, I'm the Bible scholar, and I've never even asked the most basic question of biblical study. Who is this addressing? I had just assumed it was a great proof text for a doctrine I wanted to prove. But I had never looked at it in its context.

I'd never considered that Jeremiah was describing the people of his day and explaining why God was going to wipe them out. Because they had become that far gone. Their whole heart was deceitful and desperately wicked.

The verse in Genesis is similar. God saw that wickedness was going to the earth, and the thoughts and the imaginations of his heart were only evil continually. That's why he sent the flood.

He's not describing all mankind at all times. He's describing the generation of the flood that had become so wicked that God couldn't put up with them anymore. He had to wipe them out.

You see, many of the passages, I dare say all the passages that Calvinists use for total depravity, they are taking these passages as if they are, as if the writers were theologians trying to lay out a scriptural anthropology for us. That they're trying to give you a systematic theology of what is man like. In fact, these are prophetic denunciations that the prophets made of their own generation.

Now, are there other generations like them? Sure there are. Would these words apply to others besides them? I'm sure. I'm sure today there are people who are as desperately wicked as everyone had become before the flood.

I'm sure there's plenty of people like they, whose hearts are just as wicked as those that Jeremiah described. But he's not describing everybody. He's describing his nation and the reason that God was going to wipe them out.

In Genesis 6, 5, he's describing the generation that was wiped out in the flood and telling why they were wiped out. Now, why didn't he wipe out the previous generations with the flood? Maybe they hadn't gotten that bad yet. I have to say that while I don't know every man's heart, there are some unbelievers I met that I don't know that I would be willing to say that the thoughts and intents of their hearts are only evil continually.

Sure, they're sinners. I'm not going to give them, you know, any kind of break on that. All of sin.

But really, I mean, of the non-Christians you know, have you not known any who seem to have some charitable thoughts? Genuinely charitable thoughts? Some general sympathy? Some general generosity? And now see, what I would have said about those things is, Oh, but you can't see the wickedness of their hearts. All those good things they do, they may look like they're righteous, but they're doing it for selfish reasons. They're doing it because they're trying to manipulate situations.

It's all sin. It's all manipulative. And I used to, because I was taught this, I was, you know, I guess that's it.

You know, all those good deeds that those Buddhists do and those good deeds that, you know, Jews do who aren't Christians, all those good deeds even some atheists have been known to do, they're just, you know, they're not really good. They're not doing good deeds. They're just trying to pretend to be good and they know they have these evil, wicked, seething, deceptive motives in their hearts because their heart's deceptive above all things.

But then I began to think, wait a minute, does the Bible tell me that about those people? It tells me that about some people, but does it say that about all people? The truth is, I don't think it does. Not if you take those passages in their context. I'm willing to believe that every person needs the salvation that Christ brings because every man's a sinner.

But I'm not quite ready to say that every thought that every non-Christian has is absolutely wicked. And for me to say it without biblical authority, and I don't know that we have biblical authority to say that about everybody, is to make a very uncharitable judgment about somebody I don't even know. It's for me to judge somebody's heart based on a doctrine that I've adopted, perhaps without sufficient biblical basis.

I've adopted this doctrine and now I judge them uncharitably because of my doctrine. That's not a very godly thing to do, to judge people like that. Now I can say without, on biblical authority, everyone is a sinner.

Everyone needs to be saved. Jesus died for the sins of all people and everybody's got a rap sheet that needs to be expunged. And Jesus can do that.

I have no problem saying that. The Bible's clear on that, I think. But to say that everyone is totally depraved and there's not a good bone in their body, actually that's not really what the Bible says.

I put some footnotes in your note, in the notes. I don't know how much of it I should take time to look up. But notice footnote number two.

Some of these things may be hyperbole since good things were found in some unregenerate people. And there's verses there. 1 Kings 14.13. I talked about one of the sons of one of the wicked kings.

God says he's going to be buried honorably because I found some good thing in him. Although he was not a good man altogether. In 2 Chronicles 16.9 it says, Job 1.1 tells us about Job.

What kind of man was Job? Not regenerate. Being regenerated came with the Holy Spirit being given through Christ. In the Old Testament regeneration wasn't part of the package of salvation.

They could be justified by faith that there's no regeneration until Jesus rose from the dead. That's what Peter says. Peter says in 1 Peter 1. I think it's verse 2 or 3. He says that we are born again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

So our being born again, our being regenerated is as a result of Jesus rising from the dead. That's one of the benefits of salvation coming from Christ's death and resurrection. In the Old Testament people could be justified by faith like Abraham.

But being regenerated was just not one of the things available in the Old Covenant. And Job, however, is said to be a pretty good guy. And the person who says about him is God.

In verse 1 it says, One who feared God and who shunned evil. Now is he absolutely a sinless man? No, I doubt that that's how we're supposed to understand it. Was he basically a good guy? Apparently so.

When the devil and God are talking about him, God actually speaks quite well. In verse 8, Have you considered my servant Job, that there's none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil? Well, I mean, even people who shun evil sometimes succumb to evil. I shun evil, but I sometimes succumb to it.

I'm not sinless. Job was not sinless, but he was certainly the right stuff. He was the kind of person that a person should be.

He was turned toward God. Now, the only thing a Calvinist could say is, well, he had to be regenerated to be like that. So they have decided that regeneration took place in the Old Testament, even though the New Testament teaches it's a phenomenon of the New Covenant.

But they had no choice. A Calvinist has to insist that regeneration took place in the Old Testament because there's too many people in the Old Testament who are good people. And you can't have any good people who are unregenerated in the New Covenant.

They have to be totally depraved. But you see, that's an imposition on the Old Testament of convenience. Once you've decided that you can't have any good people unless they're regenerated, then whenever you find good people, you have to say, well, David was regenerated.

Moses was regenerated. Joshua was regenerated. Caleb was regenerated.

The prophets were regenerated. Everyone who's good had to be regenerated. Even though there's no scriptural support for that fact, the Bible doesn't say they were regenerated.

It just says they were good. That is, they turned to God. This idea that total depravity in man is such that a man cannot turn to God unless God regenerates him first, nothing in the Bible says that.

And certainly there's a lot of cases of people that God found good things in. Now, Paul said in Romans 7, in verse 18, I know that in me that is in my flesh there dwells no good thing. But he might have meant by that nothing that's purely good.

After all, Jesus said there's none good but God. And certainly there's people who are relatively good. Barnabas is called a good man in the book of Acts.

Luke says he was a good man. Cornelius seemed to be a good man even before he ever heard the gospel. He was offering sacrifices to God.

An angel came down and said, yeah, that's us. God has seen your sacrifice. He received those from you.

God's pleased with you. You're not even born again yet, but you're on the right track. You see, the Bible does not teach that all men who are unregenerate are enemies of God.

Most are because that's the choice they make. And even the ones who are not are still sinners and still need God. But there are still read the book of Proverbs, the book of Psalms.

How many times the Bible speaks of the righteous, the righteous. In contrast, the righteous are this way, but the wicked are that way. Well, who's the righteous? People who are choosing to follow God.

And so the idea that men are so depraved that they cannot follow God or can't turn to God and seek his mercy or whatever is quite a mistake, I think. In Jeremiah 13, 23, one of the passages for total depravity says, can an Ethiopian change his skin or can a leopard change his spots? If they can, then so might you who are accustomed to evil turn and do good. Okay, Calvinists love that verse.

They say, see, a man cannot turn and do good any more than a leopard could change his spots or a person could change his own skin color. What you are by nature is not something you're going to be able to change. And you are by nature a sinner.

So you can't stop sinning. You can't turn to God. But, you know, what's he say? He says, you who are accustomed to evil.

He didn't say you were born totally depraved, but you who have made a habit of doing evil, you're trapped. Jesus said, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. He doesn't say whether they were born that way or not.

Doesn't matter. Once you commit sin, it traps you. It grabs you.

It slays you. Remember when Cain, his offering was not accepted by God and his countenance fell. God said, what's wrong, Cain? If you do well, won't you be accepted also? But if you don't do well, sin is crouching at the door.

Meaning it's ready to pounce on you and own you. You know, he says, but you must overcome it. Now, Cain had the responsibility given to him.

And he's a fallen man like us. He had the responsibility to resist sin and not let it overcome him. He didn't.

He failed in that. But notice God actually gave him a bona fide option. He says, if you do well, you also will be accepted like Abel was.

This was not some predestination thing where Abel was predestined to do well and Cain was predestined not to. God said to Cain, you can do well too. You can be accepted just like Abel.

This is not something in the deep secret councils of predestination in the eternity of the past that Cain was determined to be a child of Satan and Abel a child of God. He had a choice. God told him he had a choice.

If he didn't have a choice, God was sure of a cruel tease. To take a man who had no choice but to sin and say, but you could do better. If you do better, then you'll do well.

It'll go well for you. But God doesn't mention, but you can't. I'm not going to let you because I've trapped you in sin.

I'm not going to give you the grace of regeneration it takes to do well. You never read anything of this total depravity in the Old Testament, except as an acquired condition that some people come to. People can become totally depraved and all people are somewhat depraved.

But the Calvinist idea that everyone is so depraved that they cannot ever even want to turn to God, it just isn't true to fact. It's not true to scripture. And so we could accept, before we take a break, let me just summarize.

I believe we could accept the doctrine of original sin and still dispute total depravity. That is, I'm not saying you have to accept the doctrine of original sin. And if so, which form of it, you know? I'll tell you where I stand.

Then when we come back, I'll tell you why, what the scriptural case is for each of these things. I do personally, and I don't think anyone else has to agree with me about this, I personally believe in the sinful nature, inherited sinful nature. Though that would have to be defined.

I don't believe in inherited guilt. I don't find that taught in scripture. I think the opposite is taught in scripture.

I think the scripture teaches that a child will not be held accountable for his father's sins. I believe guilt is individual, but the disease, the infection, has been inherited, I believe. I know people who disagree.

Pelagius disagreed, for example. But some people are Pelagian. They reject both the sinful nature and the inherited guilt.

Other people are Augustinian. They accept both the sinful nature and inherited guilt. Then there's, I guess, the semi-Pelagians, like me.

I accept one but not the other. I accept the sinful nature as a biblical doctrine. I don't particularly accept inherited guilt.

Let's take a break here for a few minutes. I want to come back and we're going to look at the scriptural case for these things and examine pro and con of the scriptures for these particular points.