wondering,
I don't accept some of your premises. If my total person is affected by a severe bout of pneumonia (or COVID-19), it does not mean I'm incapable of responding to you on my PC or phoning my daughter and chatting with her.
So, since we had total/comprehensive depravity it does not mean we can't respond to God (see Rom 1:18-20 NIV). However, he has to take the initiative of drawing us like a fishing net trawling through the ocean waters for Australian king prawns (John 6:44 NIV and John 12:32 NIV).
I don't accept your logic:
Total Depravity causes God to have to decide which is
Unconditional Election
Total depravity means we are so dead in sin that we need God's grace to draw us to him. This is not irresistible grace.
Does it mean that unbelievers cannot respond to God's offer of salvation? We know this is not the case because of the content of
Titus 2:11 (NIV). Do sinners have a total inability to respond to the offer of salvation without God's unconditional election and irresistible grace?
We know that Adam and Eve, after they had sinned, could still hear the voice of God (
Gen 3:8-19 NIV). Therefore, Total Depravity does not cut one off from hearing the voice of God. It is a demonstration of what has happened within human beings.
The crunch is this, described as total depravity, and it is that sinful human beings cannot do what is good towards God because the free will has not only been 'wounded, maimed, made infirm, bent, and weakened' but also it is 'imprisoned, destroyed, and lost'. And its powers are not only debilitated and useless unless they be assisted by grace, but it also has no powers whatever except such as are excited by Divine grace. For Christ has said, “Without me you can do nothing.”
In my theology, I can accept T and P of TULIP but not ULI. That's the Reformed/Classical Arminian position as well. Since I don't agree with infant baptism, that makes me a 'leaky' Reformed Arminian.
Oz
