When we speak of man's depravity we mean man's natural condition apart from any grace exerted by God to restrain or transform man.
This is a... convenient definition that is not naturally understood from the words "Total Depravity" - which is why Piper must provide his own definition. As I've already pointed out, Scripture doesn't give us a view of mankind that is
actually universally and totally depraved and so "Total Depravity" must be "nuanced" by the Reformed proponent to account for this fact.
I wonder about Piper's definition: Paul the apostle wrote that every mentally-competent person has the testimony both of Creation and their own conscience to the existence of God (
Romans 1, 2) and I think this could be argued to be a sort of "grace" of God in the way that God making the rain and sunshine to fall on the just and the unjust expresses a sort of general divine "grace." An awareness of God naturally restrains Man, which is why Man suppresses such an awareness in unrighteousness (
Romans 1:18-22). Is there, then, actually a state in which Man can exist where the grace of God is truly, completely absent? I guess this would depend upon what one means by God's "grace." For myself, I don't think there is such a state - except in hell, of course.
What I see in evidence in the World is people choosing to suppress the knowledge of God which He has made them uniquely capable as earth-bound creatures of apprehending. People do so to varying degrees, some descending into violent, mad psychopathy, others choosing a shallower dive into darkness and sin, still others living in such a way as to make it difficult (on the surface of things, anyway) to distinguish them from born-again people. There is definitely not a uniform depravity that is in anything like a "total" degree in every unregenerate human being.
But if there were such a thing ordained of God, it would be only God who could be held properly responsible for it. And we shouldn't complain about such a God-decreed moral profligate, or urge them to better living since it is God's will, at bottom, that has made them as they are.
There is no doubt that man could perform more evil acts toward his fellow man than he does. But if he is restrained from performing more evil acts by motives that are not owing to his glad submission to God, then even his "virtue" is evil in the sight of God.
Romans 14:23 says, "Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin." This is a radical indictment of all natural "virtue" that does not flow from a heart humbly relying on God's grace.
This is
such awful thinking displayed here. An unsaved man who rescues a child from, say, drowning has, in Piper's view, not merely done anything morally virtuous but is actually guilty, in preserving the life of the child, of having done
evil. Wow. How twisted this view of things is! As far as I understand Scripture, the child-saving man might not have done anything
spiritually profitable (
1 Corinthians 13:1-3) in saving the child, but he is absolutely
not guilty of having done
evil in rescuing the child from death.
Romans 14:21-23
21 It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine, or to do anything by which your brother stumbles.
22 The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves.
23 But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.
"Faith" in
Romans 14:23 does not mean "flowing from a heart humbly relying on God's grace," as Piper suggests in the quotation from him above. Instead, "not from faith," as
Paul explained it, refers to having a "conviction before God" (
vs. 22) that what one is doing is right. If a person is not so confident and acts from moral uncertainty, they do wrong, they sin.
The terrible condition of man's heart will never be recognized by people who assess it only in relation to other men. Romans 14:23 makes plain that depravity is our condition in relation to God primarily, and only secondarily in relation to man. Unless we start here we will never grasp the totality of our natural depravity.
??? The entire 14th chapter of Paul's letter to the believers at Rome not once mentions "natural depravity," let alone "total depravity." Paul certainly says nothing about human depravity in relation to God rather than in relation to other people. But, then, Paul wasn't wearing Reformed doctrinal lenses, or consulting John Calvin, as he wrote the chapter.
Man's depravity is total in at least four senses.
(1) Our rebellion against God is total. Apart from the grace of God there is no delight in the holiness of God, and there is no glad submission to the sovereign authority of God.
Of course totally depraved men can be very religious and very philanthropic. They can pray and give alms and fast, as Jesus said (Matthew 6:1-18). But their very religion is rebellion against the rights of their Creator, if it does not come from a childlike heart of trust in the free grace of God. Religion is one of the chief ways that man conceals his unwillingness to forsake self-reliance and bank all his hopes on the unmerited mercy of God (Luke 18:9-14; Colossians 2:20-23).
Yes, the lost person's rebellious state toward God is an all-or-nothing sort of thing. One cannot be in partial rebellion toward God. As has been said, "He is Lord of all or he is not Lord at all." But, then, there is the Roman centurion, Cornelius, who responded to what light he had and, though not yet yielded to Christ as Savior and Lord and thus not spiritually regenerated, was not
totally depraved but described in God's word as "just," and "devout," and "God-fearing" (
Acts 10:2, 22). Not a born-again man, Cornelius was not called a reprobate, he was not described as a dogged hypocrite full of pride and envy, a "son of hell," his conscience well-seared, as were the Pharisees (
Matthew 23). No, instead, Cornelius was given a glowing report in Scripture and an angelic visit in response to his "depraved religion" (as Piper would call it).
It is a myth that man in his natural state is genuinely seeking God. Men do seek God. But they do not seek him for who he is. They seek him in a pinch as one who might preserve them from death or enhance their worldly enjoyments. Apart from conversion, no one comes to the light of God.
Yes, lost sinners need God's aid in coming to understand their need of salvation (
John 6:44; John 16:8; 2 Timothy 2:25). In Cornelius's case, God aided him to salvation by sending him to the apostle Peter. But it was because Cornelius
was genuinely seeking God as best he knew how to do that he was sent to Peter to hear the Gospel. Cornelius wasn't seeking God "in a pinch," or hoping to have God "enhance his worldly enjoyments," as Piper asserts in an illegitimately broad-brush manner that the lost do.
And the
ordo salutis that Piper slips in at the end of the quotation from him above is just, well, silly. He seems to be saying, as Calvinists of his stripe do, that one must be saved in order to be saved. That is, they must be spiritually regenerated by the Holy Spirit ("conversion") so that they can
then respond positively to the Gospel ("come to the light of God") by which, the Bible says, one is saved (
Romans 10:12-14). This is the sort of horrible nonsense Reformed doctrine requires of the one who wishes to follow it to its logical ends.
In Romans 14:23 Paul says, "Whatever is not from faith is sin." Therefore, if all men are in total rebellion, everything they do is the product of rebellion and cannot be an honor to God, but only part of their sinful rebellion. If a king teaches his subjects how to fight well and then those subjects rebel against their king and use the very skill he taught them to resist him, then even those skills become evil.
But
Romans 14:23 doesn't say "all men are in total rebellion" to God. And as Scripture indicates about Job, Noah, David, Simeon and Cornelius, though none of them were saved, none of them were in "total rebellion" toward God, either.
I haven't time to go through the rest of Piper's weirdness at the moment. If the mood strikes me, I may write more.
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