Original Sin (Total Depravity)

R L Dabney

What Presbyterians really mean by terms such as “Original Sin,” “Total Depravity,” and “Inability of the Will” is defined by our Confession of Faith, Chapter IX, Section iii: “Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.”

By original sin we mean the evil quality which characterizes man’s natural disposition and will. We call this sin of nature original, because each fallen man is born with it, and because it is the source or origin in each man of his actual transgressions.

By calling it total, we do not mean that men are from their youth as bad as they can be. Evil men and seducers wax worse and worse, “deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13). Nor do we mean that they have no social virtues towards their fellowmen in which they are sincere. We do not assert with extremists that because they are natural men, therefore all their friendship, honesty, truth, sympathy, patriotism, domestic love, are pretenses or hypocrisies. What our Confession says is, “That they have wholly lost ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation.” The worst retain some, and the better much, ability of will for sundry moral goods accompanying social life. Christ teaches this (Mark 10:21) when, beholding the social virtues of the rich young man who came kneeling unto him, “He loved him,” Christ could never love mere hypocrisies. What we teach is, that by the fall man’s moral nature has undergone an utter change to sin, irreparable by himself. In this sense it is complete, decisive, or total. The state is as truly sinful as their actual transgressions, because it is as truly free and spontaneous. This original sin shows itself in all natural men in a fixed and utter opposition of heart to some forms of duty, and especially and always to spiritual duties, owing to God, and in a fixed and absolutely decisive purpose of heart to continue in some sins (even while practicing some social duties), and especially to continue in their sins of unbelief, impenitence, self-will, and practical godlessness. In this the most moral are as inflexibly determined by nature as the most immoral. The better part may sincerely respect sundry rights and duties regarding their fellowmen, but in the resolve that self-will shall be their rule, whenever they please, as against God’s sovereign holy will, these are as inexorable as the most wicked. I suppose that a refined and gently reared young lady presents the least sinful specimen of unregenerate human nature. Examine such a one. Before she would be guilty of theft, profane swearing, drunkenness, or impurity, she would die. In her opposition to these sins she is truly sincere. But there are some forms of self-will, especially in sins of omission as against God, in which she is just as determined as the most brutal drunkard is in his sensuality. She has, we will suppose, a Christian mother. She is determined to pursue certain fashionable conformities and dissipations. She has a light novel under her pillow which she intends to read on the Sabbath. Though she may still sometimes repeat like a parrot her nursery prayers, her’s is spiritually a prayerless life. Especially is her heart fully set in her not to forsake at this time her life of self-will and worldliness for Christ’s service and her salvation. Tenderly and solemnly her Christian mother may ask her, “My daughter, do you not know that in these things you are wrong toward your heavenly Father” She is silent. She knows she is wrong. “My daughter, will you not therefore now relent, and choose for your Savior’s sake, this very day, the life of faith and repentance, and especially begin tonight the life of regular, real, secret prayer. Will you?” Probably her answer is in a tone of cold and bitter pain. “Mother, don’t press me, I would rather not promise.” No; she will not! Her refusal may be civil in form, because she is well-bred; but her heart is as inflexibly set in her as the hardened steel not at this time to turn truly from her self-will to her God. In that particular her stubbornness is just the same as that of the most hardened sinners. Such is the best type of unregenerate humanity.

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