The Error of Total Depravity

One of the great errors the Church has had to fight throughout her history, but especially during the Protestant Reformation, is the doctrine of “Total Depravity”. This is the idea that human beings are pure evil, that there’s nothing good about us at all. And because there’s nothing good about us at all, there’s nothing we can contribute to our own salvation. There’s nothing to work with, nothing on which to build. For Luther, our only hope was that God would forgive us by declaring us to be acceptable to Himself. But He wouldn’t actually clean us or heal us from our sin. He wouldn’t really make us holy. 

If we accept salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, Luther said, that’s all there is to it. We don’t have to get over our sins, grow in the love of God, or come to a deeper understanding of God’s ways. We can just be saved, then and there, because even though God leaves us as the same wretched sinners He found us, he won’t hold it against us. Because we’re totally depraved, and God knows that’s all we’ll ever be. But actually, that’s not how salvation works. Not at all.

Salvation as Healing

Whenever Jesus passes someone sick, or blind, or lame in the Gospels, what does that person want? Does that person just want Jesus to overlook their problems? Of course not! That person wants to be healed. No blind man cries out to Jesus, “Son of David, have pity on me! Accept me as I am!” No lame man says, “Please, Lord, I want you to ignore my disability.” They say, “I want to be healed.” “I want to see.” They say, “If you will, you can make me clean.”

Jesus doesn’t ignore our problems. Jesus doesn’t just decide not to hold our problems against us. Jesus offers healing from our problems; that’s the promise of salvation. Because God made us good. And we are still good. And God wants to heal us to make us as good as we can be, so that we will be fit company for Him for all eternity.

The Three Solas of the Protestant World

Martin Luther, because he believed humans were all hopelessly corrupt, didn’t think God could use or perfect any aspect of our nature. This is how he came up with his three great “solas”, the three great “only”s of the early protestant system. He said we were saved by “Grace Alone” (sola gratia). In other words, God just decided to be merciful to certain sinners. That mercy was a grace, but it didn’t change our character. Our characters remained as awful as ever. So we’re saved “by grace,” but not by our characters becoming virtuous.

Luther also said we were saved by “Faith Alone” (sola fide). Faith was an acceptance of God’s mercy and forgiveness, and that was all that mattered. Works didn’t matter; it didn’t matter what you did, that could never contribute to your salvation, because a rotten sinner like you could never do anything good anyway.

And Luther said we could only know anything about God or salvation through “Scripture Alone” (sola scriptura). Reason is a human faculty, and if all our human faculties are depraved and worthless, then reason can’t ever help us understand anything about God or His will for us. So forget philosophy. Forget theology. Forget the Church’s careful reflections and teachings on our faith over the centuries. For Luther, those were all “vain reasonings,” human things that have nothing to do with God. The Bible alone. That’s the only place for any truth.

Again, this is all based on the view that human nature is so totally broken that it can’t be fixed, even by God. But if it turns out that we are still basically good and that with God’s help, what is broken in us can be healed and sanctified, then salvation is going to look a lot different.

The Goodness of Human Nature

The Catholic Response to the Protestant Reformation was to reject the doctrine of total depravity. God made us good, and we are good. God loves that goodness in us. He respects that goodness, and He wants to enhance and employ that goodness in all His saving work. That’s why He took on our human nature in the first place, because He loves our human nature, and He wants to show us how good it can be and how much good it can do.

So it’s not just grace alone. It’s grace working with human nature. Taking what’s good in human nature, raising it, purifying it, empowering it. Grace doesn’t ignore or replace nature. Grace builds on nature and perfects nature. And it’s not just faith alone. We have to believe, yes, but then we have to live according to our beliefs. We have to work, we have to be God’s coworkers in the vineyard, as St. Paul says. Paul also tells us to “work out our salvation,” for “God will repay everyone according to their works.”

God wills that we cooperate with Him in our salvation. He forgives us our sin, but He also wants to be perfect as He is perfect, which takes a lot of prayer, love, sacrifice, and growth in virtue. And it’s not just Scripture alone. Yes, Scripture is a source of divine truth, but Scripture came to us through the human hands of the Apostles and those they authorized, and through their successors. And the Church’s reasoning reflection on Scriptural truth, preserved from error by the Holy Spirit, is what makes it possible to understand Scripture, and apply it, in our own time and in our own day.

The point is that the Christian life, the moral life, the process of Justification, it’s not just letting God do things to you. It’s not God ignoring your nature or overriding your nature. It’s God using your nature, celebrating your nature, enlisting the cooperation of you and everything there is about you. The Christian life isn’t just passive acceptance on the part of a totally inert and worthless person. God thinks you’re better than that.

The Christian life is a dynamic, active, constructive participation in the work of God. It’s working with Christ as we strive to become more and more like Christ. That’s what salvation means. That’s what justification is.

The Work of Justification

Of course, in a sense, Luther’s vision of salvation is a lot easier. You just get to do your own thing, and as long as you admit you’re a sinner and have faith in Jesus, you’re set. You don’t have to do anything else, because there’s really nothing else a miserable worm like you could even do. Whereas if God wants to be a protagonist in your own healing, your own sanctification, if you have to constantly work to get over vice and grow in the rectitude of divine love, that’s a lot more work.

But the work is worth it. Because it’s a great joy to know you’re loved by God, not just because He’s good, but because you are good too, even if you have a long way to go. And it’s a great joy to be able to give back to the Lord from your own efforts, no matter how small, in the confidence that He appreciates those efforts and will use them for the salvation of yourself and of others. 

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