Total Depravity Refuted — Orthodox Response to TULIP (Part 1)
Source: Alex Ortiz (Alex Ortodoxie), "Total depravity REFUTED (TULIP deboonk'd, part one)" — https://youtu.be/a3DZSsxTDIM
What Total Depravity Actually Teaches
The Westminster Confession and London Baptist Confession (the two most authoritative Calvinist documents) teach:
"After the fall, the guilt of Adam and Eve's original sin was imputed and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions."
Key claims:
- Sin as a property of human nature — not just things you do, but what you are
- Guilt inherited — all humans are guilty before they act
- Total incapacity — no human can respond to God or understand spiritual truth unless first "effectually called"
- This applies to infants — John Calvin: "Even infants bringing their condemnation with them from their mother's womb… their whole nature is as it were a seedbed of sin and therefore cannot be but odious and abominable to God." Voddie Baucham: "That's not a little angel. That's a viper in a diaper."
Herman Bavinck (Reformed systematic theologian): "Sin is not an accidental phenomenon in the life of individuals, but a state and manner of life involving the whole human race, a property of human nature."
RC Sproul Sr.: "We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. We are born with a sin nature."
The horrifying entailment: RC Sproul Jr. tweeted that a 10-year-old girl who was kidnapped, assaulted, and murdered "received the judgment from God that she had earned." She was guilty by simply existing.
Biblical Refutation
Children are innocent in Scripture
Matthew 18:3-5: "Unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." If infants are "odious and abominable to God," why does God tell us to become like them? Calvin's anthropology and Christ's teaching directly contradict each other.
Deuteronomy 1:39: The adult Israelites were barred from entering the promised land. Their children were not. Why? "Every young child who today has no knowledge of good and evil — they will enter there." Scripture explicitly states children lack the moral knowledge that constitutes culpability.
Jeremiah 19:4-5: When Israel was sacrificing children to Baal, God declared this was something he "never commanded or spoke, nor even considered in my heart." If children bear inherited guilt and God is punishing them through divine decree, why does God call child sacrifice something he never willed or even thought of?
Psalm 106:37-38: Calls the blood of sacrificed children "innocent blood." Calvinist theology requires that this blood was guilty.
The "seedbed of sin" runs into Ezekiel 18
Ezekiel 18:20: "The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself."
This is perhaps the most direct biblical refutation of inherited guilt. Each person answers for their own sin. The Calvinist doctrine of imputed Adamic guilt is directly contradicted by Ezekiel.
Romans 5:12 — A Translation Error
The key Calvinist proof text: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men."
The problem: The last clause — "because all sinned" — was translated from Greek eph' hō into Latin as in quo ("in whom," i.e., in Adam). Augustine used this Latin translation to build the doctrine of inherited guilt. But eph' hō in Greek means because — not "in whom." Most modern scholars of all confessional backgrounds accept this. The Orthodox reading: death spread to all people because all have sinned — not because all inherited Adam's guilt.
John Meyendorff (Byzantine Theology): "Such a meaning cannot be drawn from the original Greek… It presupposes a cosmic significance of the sin of Adam, but does not say that his descendants are guilty as he was, unless they also sin as he sinned."
Synergy throughout Scripture
The Calvinist doctrine of total incapacity — you cannot respond to God unless effectually called — contradicts passages that assume human cooperation:
- Isaiah 1:16-18: "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean… Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord. Although your sins are like crimson, I shall make them white like snow. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good things of the land."
- Zechariah 1:3: "Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord."
- Amos 5:4: "Seek me and you will live."
- Deuteronomy 30:15-19: God presents Israel with a genuine choice — life or death — and commands them to choose life. This presupposes real human agency.
Proof Texts Answered
Psalm 51:5 — "In sin my mother conceived me"
Calvinists read this as David confessing he was born guilty. But who is doing the sinning in this verse? The mother who conceived him. This is David speaking of his mother's sinful environment, not of his own inherited guilt. This must be harmonized with Psalm 22:10 ("From my mother's womb, you are my God"), Matthew 18, and Ezekiel 18:20 — which uniformly contradict inherited guilt.
Ephesians 2:1-3 — "Dead in trespasses… children of wrath by nature"
Notice the pronouns: "Dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked." This is not Adam's trespasses — it is their trespasses. Paul is referring to actual sins committed, not inherited guilt. "Children of wrath by nature" must be harmonized with Romans 2:14: "Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law." Nature here shows that humans have knowledge of good and evil — not that nature itself is sin.
The Internal Incoherence
The Gnostic trap
Total depravity says: unless you are effectually called and enlightened, you cannot understand any spiritual truth in a saving way. But this means you cannot know whether you have been effectually called unless you already have been. Warren McGruff (open theist, debating Calvinists): "Total depravity leaves no way to trust that you've arrived at truth — you're just groping in the dark. If your mind and will are so corrupted and unreliable, how did you ever rationally judge that Calvinism was true?" The broken compass was used to verify itself. This is the exact structure of Gnosticism: salvation comes through special revealed knowledge that only the elect possess.
The Christological disaster
Hebrews 2:17 says Christ "had to be made like his brothers in every respect." Hebrews 4:15: "tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin." If sin is a property of human nature (as Bavinck and Calvin explicitly say), then Christ could not take on post-lapserian human nature — because then he would be sinful by nature. The Calvinists escape: "He took on the essential but not accidental properties of human nature." The problem: they have already said sin is not accidental but essential. "Sin is not an accidental phenomenon… a property of human nature" (Bavinck). If sin is essential to post-lapserian human nature, Christ cannot be fully human (contra Hebrews 2:17) without being sinful by nature (contra Hebrews 4:15). No way out of this contradiction.
The Orthodox Alternative: Ancestral Sin, Not Inherited Guilt
Orthodox anthropology does not deny that Adam's fall affected all humanity. What it denies is that guilt is inherited.
What is inherited: mortality and the tendency toward sin (phthora — corruption). Death entered through Adam's sin. Living under death's shadow — knowing we will die, experiencing bodily drives unchecked by the clarity we would have had before the fall — inclines us toward sin. We all then sin by our own choice and bear our own guilt.
This is why the Orthodox doctrine of salvation is theosis rather than forensic imputation. The problem is ontological (our nature is corrupted by mortality and corruption) not legal (we are guilty by inheritance). Christ takes on our mortal, suffering human nature — which is fully human, just damaged — and raises it. That is the Incarnation's purpose.
St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:18-20: "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their transgressions against them. We beg you, on behalf of Christ — be reconciled to God." The invitation is universal and genuine. The cooperation is real. This is synergy — not monergism.
Key Apologetics Points
- The Calvinist doctrine that infants are "odious and abominable to God" contradicts Christ explicitly telling us to become like children (Matthew 18:3).
- Inherited guilt — the linchpin of total depravity — is directly contradicted by Ezekiel 18:20 and the translation of Romans 5:12.
- The total incapacity claim is self-defeating: you used the allegedly broken tool (your reason) to verify that your reason is broken.
- If sin is a property of human nature, Christ cannot be fully human as Hebrews requires. This is a Christological crisis Calvinism has no clean resolution to.
- The Orthodox doctrine: ancestral mortality and corruption are inherited; ancestral guilt is not. We all sin by our own free choice. Christ heals human nature from within by taking it on.