“Man of sorrows,” what a name
for the Son of God, who came
ruined sinners to reclaim:
Hallelujah, what a Savior!
-Philip P. Bliss (1838–1876)
Tulip. What does it mean to you? To some, it’s their favorite bulbous flower. To others, it’s their favorite city in Indiana. To you, it might be your favorite Bloc Party song. To others, it’s a much avoided class/church/family discussion. Maybe it’s not your cup of tea; maybe it’s the only way of life you’ve known.
This book is the second volume in The Doctrines of Grace series. The first volume on definite (limited) atonement was originally a stand-alone volume. It is the most controversial of Calvinism’s famous five points, and the editors felt it was “the one most in need of defense and contemporary explanation and application” (xix). Since then, they have wanted to fill out the rest of the doctrines of grace for us readers. In each volume the numerous contributors view each doctrine through the angles of historical, biblical, theological, and pastoral richness.
This book tackles the first letter of TULIP: T for Total Depravity. As Michael Horton writes in the book’s Foreword, according to the biblical doctrine of sin,
We are warped throughout not just because of deliberate decisions we have made but because of a common human condition. We are sinners and therefore responsible for our own agency. But we are also sinned against, which means we are also victims of other people’s attitudes and actions. And we live in a fallen world that is broken not only ethically but also in our decaying bodies, dementia, and other brain illnesses, such as depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, personality disorder, and so forth. To pin sin on any one of these pegs alone is to forget that God created us good and whole creatures in the beginning.
“Total depravity” is not only a Calvinistic doctrine. Augustine’s view of man was that the whole person—body and soul—”is created in God’s image and is therefore good—and, at the same time, is wholly depraved” (xvi). It doesn’t mean we are as bad as we could possibly be, but that every part of is is corrupted, like a drop of poison in a glass of water. The water is still there, but now it is corrupted. Only now “the beautiful ways in which we are like God have become weapons to be used against him” (xvii).
This book isn’t intended to defend “the five points of Calvinism” or the “TULIP” acronym, as if all that was said 400 years ago at the Canons of Dort is all we need to know. The contributors take into account how total depravity “is so tightly related to several other facets of sin that this volume widens its scope to consider them as well” (2). This is important because knowing from what we have been saved gives us abundant delight in the gospel of Jesus.
The book, in keeping with the previous book, is divided into four main sections. A few chapters are attached to each section to give you an idea of what to expect without summarizing everything inside:
- Sin and Depravity in Church History: how did the church before us understand the pervasive influence of sin, particularly that due to Adam’s sin all people are sinners through and through?
- Sin and Depravity in the Bible: how do we see total depravity in the Bible?;
- Sin and Depravity in Theological Perspective: the theological implications of our total depravity?;
- Sin and Depravity in Pastoral Practice: What is a pastor to do with the consequences of total depravity?
As with volume one, I cannot give this book an “adequate” review. It’s massive! There are thirty essays written by twenty-six pastors and theologians weighing in at 918 pages. I will try to give an overall survey on some strengths and weaknesses. There are other reviews you can, and should, read before you consider purchasing this book.
In their introductory chapter, brothers David and Jonathan Gibson point out that we need the “historical awareness, biblical precision, and theological consistency” to understand the nuances of how sinful we are (and thus how amazing God’s grace is, p. 9). This is important when it comes to concupiscence “(literally, the faculty of desire and, in church history, the anatomy of sinful desire)” (6). The discussion here revolves around same-sex desire and whether one can be a “gay” or “same-sex attracted” Christian or not. (This also applies to any sexual desire toward someone who is not your spouse.) But if someone (in this case, John Stevens) “eliminates the need for repentance in the case of concupiscence, ironically, he provides less gospel hope and comfort, not more, to those struggling with same-sex desires. For he ends up implying that there are parts of our fallen human natures that God’s grace does not need to redeem” (8).
The topic of concupiscence comes up again in chapter 21, “The Heart Wants What It Wants,” by Steven Wedgeworth. Concupiscence is associated with covetousness, arising “from our sinful natures to desire the wrong thing or to desire the right thing in the wrong way” (634). this applies to “any and all inordinate or disordered desires” such as “‘LGBTQ’ or ‘Side-B’ Christianity” (662). This means that the desires themselves, the internal temptations, are sinful. This is the historical position (which Wedgeworth shows through the writings of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Bavinck, Owen, etc.), and it is in disagreement with the position Sam Allberry and Wesley Hill take. The subject of Jesus the sympathetic high priest comes up too. However, since Jesus didn’t have a sinful nature, he never experienced internal temptations, that is, “illicit internal attractions” (666). Jesus was only tempted externally.
In his chapter, Mark Jones (ch 25) looks more into this in his very helpful chapter on Christ’s sinlessness. He writes,
“Jesus not only could never act apart from his identity of who he is, but he necessarily fought temptation by a constant appeal to who he is. As the eternal Son, he resisted temptation not only because of the power of the Spirit working upon his humanity, but also because of his identity shaping his actions, thoughts, and emotions. Christians, too, can successfully fight temptation not only because they possess the Spirit, but also because of their identity in Christ” (792).
While Jesus didn’t feel a inward sinful pull to evil, like all of us, he felt the pull of temptations toward good things made evil. Allow me to explain. When he was fasting in the wilderness, Satan tempted him with good things. Turn a stone to bread. Bread is good! But doing so would mean Jesus was not trusting God with all of his needs, like Israel in the wilderness had done.
Not all chapters were so easy to read. Many, even outside of the church history section, still get into the weeds with the historic Catholic Church, or Pelagius, or others. Some chapters were difficult to read, particularly Daniel Strange’s chapter “An Apology for Elenctics” (a word which he himself admits is hard enough to say. I also read and reviewed Strange’s Their Rock is Not Like Our Rock eight years ago, and it was a tough read). Strange writes, “In all elenctics, the concern is always with the all-important question: ‘What have you done with God?’” Our task “is to demonstrate the ‘appallingness’ of idolatry and the ‘appealingness’ of Christ” (838). His emphasis on Jesus as the “subversive fulfillment” of other religions is still fascinating. All people, made in the image of God, are sinners trying to run away from God. And yet they direct all their attention to non-gods to win abundant life. His explanation of J. H. Bavinck’s “magnetic points” was very helpful, and he shows that all of our idolatrous longings are fulfilled in Jesus. We are to be careful physicians of each person we meet or evangelize, to understand them specifically to know how to point them to Jesus.
James Anderson (ch 28) wrote about apologetics and the doctrine of sin. He surveys classical apologetics and evidentialist apologetics, ultimately arguing for the presuppositional (covenantal) apologetic method. He makes a good argument for this and argues well against the counter-arguments. This chapter works because the presuppositional approach agrees that total depravity has affected the total person, including their reason. We can’t argue a person to Jesus. Within the Presupp. approach, we can talk and evangelize to a person about almost anything. Anderson writes, “Whatever the topic, the basic strategy is the same: ‘You take X for granted, but X makes sense only in the context of a Christian worldview. If your worldview were true, there would be no X!'” (874). My disappointment with this chapter that, besides that sentence, there were no hypothetical examples of how this could be played out. How does their position only make sense within a Christian worldview, and how would we discuss that with them? Perhaps see Glen Scrivener’s The Air We Breathe to see how the West swims in the teachings of the Bible.
Summary
This is a book thick with an important understanding of what the Bible says about sin. It is written for scholars and pastors first, but seminary students and well-read laypeople would find great use here. This book is an incredible resource that will hold for years to come on the doctrine of Total Depravity. I am excited for the remaining volumes.
Lagniappe
- Series: The Doctrines of Grace
- Editors: David Gibson & Jonathan Gibson
- Hardcover: 998 pages
- Publisher: Crossway (April 30, 2024)
- Audience: Scholars, Pastors, Students, all who want to better understand the position of Total Depravity.
- Sample: PDF
Buy it on Amazon or from Crossway!
Disclosure: I received this book free from Crossway. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html.
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