TULIP Calvinism's Overstatement of Total Depravity

 

Within the T of TULIP is Total Depravity. This doctrine is biblical (Romans 3:9-20). However, with in this doctrine is added Total Inability...which conflates "dead in sin" in Ephesians 2:1 to mean the sinner is MORE than separated from God because of sin...the sinner is a spiritual corpse incapable of hearing or responding to the gospel (contradicting Romans 10:14-17). Then they take Ephesians 2:8 & 9 to change "the gift" of salvation to mean "the gift" is faith. But it is God that gives "the elect" sinner (God will not give His gift of "faith" to a predestined to condemnation, non-elect sinner). But BEFORE this "gift of faith" can be given by God to "the elect" the Holy Spirit must regenerate and give spiritual resurrection FIRST, then they will be given "true faith" for "initial salvation" (unlike spurious faith that the Calvinist claim is what the majority Christians have that are not "genuinely saved" because they are not "the elect" who will not produce "the fruit of righteousness" and good works that God ordains, who have not made Jesus the Lord of every area of their life, who will not persevere to the end to final salvation).

Then to illustrate this as "true doctrine" they will go to the resurrection of Lazarus in John 11.

Here is a sermon by John MacArthur that makes this point:

The Doctrine of Absolute Inability
John MacArthur
Oct 24, 2004
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/90-276/the-doctrine-of-absolute-inability

I want to affirm to you that everything that I say I trust will be before your very eyes drawn out of scripture. (Jerry: Discern whether brother John is correctly handling the scripture without having a presuppositional bias that is reading into the text his meaning). Now to start this discussion, I want you to open your New Testament to John 11 - John 11 - and this will provide for us, I think, a good analogy to kind of launch us into our discussion. 
I want you to go to Ephesians chapter 2 and here we see the depth of this problem. Ephesians chapter 2. This is not a description of Lazarus. This is a description of everybody. Ephesians 2:1.

You all, all of us, Paul included, we “formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as everybody else.” We were all dead. Dead to what? Dead to God, dead to spiritual reality, dead to the truth.

Man’s basic problem is not a lack of self esteem. It’s not that he’s out of harmony with his environment. It’s not that he’s sort of out of sync with his Creator. It’s not that he needs to make a few adjustments to sort of get God on his wavelength. Man’s problem is he is absolutely dead, and he is incapable of relating to God at all - God’s person, God’s truth, or God’s commands.

Those who deny the doctrine of divine election, those who deny the doctrine of divine salvation as an act of God have to believe that there’s something in man left to himself that enables him to become willing and to come to life. Is that what the Bible teaches? The Bible doesn’t describe our condition as a disability. It describes it as death. And everybody knows that death means an inability to respond.

That is not what is meant when theologians refer to total depravity because not everybody is as bad as they could be, and not everybody is as bad as everybody else. What we’re talking about here is what I’ve chosen to call “absolute inability.” What is true of everybody is

• We have no ability to respond to the gospel.
• We are completely unable to raise ourselves out of a state of death.
• We are completely unable to give our blind hearts sight.
• We are completely unable to free ourselves from slavery to sin.
• We are completely unable to turn from ignorance to truth.
• We are completely unable to stop rebelling against God, stop being hostile to His Word.

We are not only unable but we are unwilling to do that,

• unwilling to repent,
• unwilling to believe.

And if we are to repent and to believe, then it must be like it was for Lazarus, where God who commands the dead to rise has to also give them the power.