MORE FUN WITH SIN!: Lots of interesting emails in re my post on original sin. Here are a bunch of responses, mostly cashings-out of the concept of “total depravity.”

Aaron Armitage of Calvinist Libertarians replies here. I approve of the language of “common grace.” Not as sure about the rest of the post. I am not sure that he means what I would mean if I said that stuff. However, I am way too tired right now to think these things through–sorry–operating on only four and a half hours of sleep. So I’ll just point you to his post so you can see for yourself.

OTOH Aaron may simply be saying what Willard S. Moore says, with which I completely agree: As I understand it, the doctrine of total depravity means not that we are wholly bad, but that every faculty is tainted. For example, those who think that virtue is a matter of letting reason control our bad emotions are mistaken, because our reasoning capacities are flawed. We cannot reason our way to God. The same response, mutatis mutandis, would be made to those who believe that following our hearts, or our instincts, or any other native faculty, will lead us to God. Only if God comes and gets us, as the father ran out to the prodigal son, can we know Him.

So possibly we don’t disagree, which is kind of disappointing.

Similarly from Eric Enlow: You are a little off on the meaning of “total depravity” which isn’t surprising (I’m guessing you haven’t been browsing the canons of Dordt). Total depravity simply refers to the state of affairs set out in Romans 14:23 that “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” Man in his natural state cannot do well. The totality of depravity refers to the effect of sin on all aspects of our powers, ie it is intended to deal with scope as opposed to quality as might be suggested by “absolute depravity.”

Specifically, total depravity is opposed to confusions of the Pelagian nature, which arise if we believe that we seek God as we should without his power. It has never been taken to be opposed to conscience or an awareness of God and sin, only to the idea that we are capable of acting on such an awareness naturally.

Jason Spak of Spak writes in with Rousseau’s take, but to me this explanation just pushes the question back one step. If society corrupts us what made society suck? Anyway: I liked your post on original sin very much. Same for your blog in general.

Sadly, I think your questions have answers. You probably know this, but Rousseau argues that we’re all born good, without taint of sin, and society

inexorably corrupts us. If true, this would account for both our sense of

goodness and our earliest memories of badness. It’s not true, of course,

but absent revelation Rousseau’s account strikes me as being as logically

compelling as original sin is. You’ll find a brief discussion of all this in what is, for me at least, a surprising place: the website of the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, better known as the home of the world’s largest six-pack.

And from John Louis Schwenkler: [O]n Wednesday, you asked how people who don’t believe in original sin can make sense of its obviousness. Good question, which reminds me of a great Chesterton/Shaw story I once heard during a homily on the Immaculate Conception. Legend has it that as GBS is raging against anyone who could believe in something so silly as the IC, GKC promptly asks whether he believes in OS, and GBS replies that, no, that is utter silliness as well. To which GKC responds by pointing out that the denial of OS amounts to the claim that everyone was immaculately conceived. Boo ya.

Thanks very much to all who wrote in.