The Depravity of Total Depravity and the Imago Dei

The first time I heard the term "Total Depravity", I thought to my self- "surely that doesn't mean what I think it means, and if it does, surely no-one believes that". But, it does mean what I thought it meant, and yes, people do believe that. It is one of the more radical, and controversial doctrines of the protestant reformation."Total" meaning "complete" or, "entirely. "Depravity" meaning "corruption". There are essentially two parts of this doctrine: 1) inability to choose God, and 2) inability to choose anything but sin. In the former sense, we are disconnected from relatedness to God, and therefore our only hope is that he would choose to rescue/choose us. In the latter sense, we only choose evil/sinful things. We have the inability to choose good things.

In general, I take no issue with "the inability to choose God", but I will come back to this in order to give it a more nuanced definition. What I do take issue with is the "inability to choose anything but sin". This is a strange statement, because if you take this reasoning to its extreme it seems to contradict other doctrines. The notion of being created in the Image of God falls apart, because our corruptness over shadows and taints the Image to being void of meaning and quality. A body after death, and over time, decomposes and becomes so corrupted by different biological factors that it is no longer a body. To say that a body is corrupted in every way is to essentially say it is no longer a body. It is something else. We were created in the Image of God, but now that image is so shattered (assuming total depravity) that it cannot be called the Image of God. Sand is not a mirror. Ashes are not a log. For this reason, I believe the doctrine that people were created in the Image of God, and still reflect that image, stands in opposition to the notion that of peoples "inability to choose anything but sin". I think this is partially intuitive as well. Many a Christian will respond to questions of the goodness of figures such as Ghandi with the explanation that non-believers are created in the Image of God, just as believers are. They have a capacity to look like God, they have a capacity to reflect his characteristics.

Obviously I am critical of this, but truth be told, I actually agree (in part) that all our choices are sinful, but let me be more specific and nuanced than that. I want to argue against putting all humans in one giant category, and then saying that that whole category has two characteristics 1) all humans are made in the Image of God, and 2) all humans have the inability to choose anything but sin. Here is what I will submit to you- what we call humanness is the characteristic of the Image of God. Our expressing Humanness, and our being in the Image of God are numerically identical. They are the same thing. What do I mean by this? I must define what being in God's Image means in order to define humanness. Saying something is in the Image of something is to say one the looks like another thing. A painters self portrait is in his own image. They are not the same thing, but they look like each-other.  We Image God. We are in God's Form. We look like God. When you see us, you see God (in part). This is where the lines blur, to some extent, like lines always blur when something is closely related to another thing. But the scripture goes further, it tells us to not only Love the Lord thy God, and to Love thy Neighbor as thy self, but also talks of how what we do to the "least of these" we do to Him. How can we love God whom we can't see, yet hate our brother that we can see? This is a common theme in the New Testament. Here is where I am stealing what Calvin says in his commentaries, and using it against him. He states that the injustices of man are the wounds of God. That to wrong a human is to wrong God, and to love a human is to love God. He connects the two greatest commandments.

What is the significants of this? Well, our humanness is contingent on our loving others. The good is to love others. The best people are the most loving people. The most human of people (I mean this in a positive sense) are the most loving people. But, we in some ways have lost our humanness. Us humans, at times, can be less than human. We can do things that are "abominable". How can that be? How can we seem less than human? How can a rock be any less than a rock? How can a tree be any less than a tree? It is simple, our humanness is dependent on our Imaging God. The less we look like him, the more abominable we look. The less we love one another, the less good, the more wretched, so on and so forth. We are like pools of water, that in some way are small oceans. We are not oceans, but are rather very similar to the ocean. There are little streams that run from one pond to another, and the flow of water from one pond to the next eventually leads back to the ocean. This flow of water protects against stagnation, and causes the water to run more pure. If the ponds should be disconnected from one another, and there to be no stream back to the ocean, the ponds would all either dry up or become stagnant pools of disgusting water. The ponds completely depend on and derive their existence from the ocean. If it didn't rain, there would be no ponds. What is more, the more it rains, and the more the water flows from stream to stream, the better it is for the whole cycle. Without water, the ponds would just be empty holes in the ground. We wouldn't call them ponds anymore, we would call them something else. That is how we relate to each other in love- we love and are loved, but it all ultimately comes from God. Without him, the Living Water, there would not be us, these little wells. These little ponds. Now, John Calvin believed something very similar to this, as do many in the Reformed crowd. But here is where I think they go wrong: they are essentially saying that our ponds are totally corrupt and contaminated that there is nothing left in them that is good, unless God cause it to rain. That is just a confusion of terminology. Of course a pond doesn't have anything in it unless it rains. We don't call those ponds, we call those large holes in the ground. But if you are talking about a pond, then it by definition does have something good in it, namely, water. Because a pond is contingent on an ocean for it's existence, than it has to, by its very definition, share qualities in common. Man has some good things in him because his is created in God's Image, and without God he would cease to be what we call "Man". This is all a conceptual critique. What I have done here is to simply argue with doctrinal ideas. What is to come is a more practical critique in which I will seek to show how these things actually flesh out into reality, where the rubber meets the road.

All orthodox Christians would believe that we are sinful, but is it the case that we are unable to do anything but sin? Here is my critique of the Doctrine of Total Depravity. Curious as to what you think, especially if you are of the Reformed Persuasion. This is a part of a series me and Maxwell are doing on Doctrines of Reformed Theology. For his first article, check out this.