As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. (Eph 2:1, NIV)
Eph 2:1 (cf. Col 2:13) is a common proof-text for the Reformed doctrine of Total Depravity. As with so many teachings within Reformed theology, such is based on eisegesis. One can read a thorough refutation of the Calvinist abuse of this verse as well as this doctrine itself many times, including my lengthy article:
Andrew T. Lincoln, in his commentary on Ephesians in the Word Biblical Commentary, offered the following insightful analysis of this passage and how Paul is speaking metaphorically and not presenting a systematic theology of the nature of man pre-conversion, let alone that he is teaching Total Depravity:
Who is it that the readers’ pre-Christian past can be described as a condition of death? Such a description was a natural implication of the way of thinking in which the death and resurrection of Christ was the turning point of history. If Christ’s resurrection introduced the life of the age to come ahead of time then one’s state prior to participation in that resurrection life must, comparatively speaking, be viewed as death. In addition, the notion of participation in the events of the end ahead of time can be seen to have a reverse, negative side. The death which comes to all as the wages of sin (cf. Rom 6:23) and which in its final form involves physical death and the judgment of exclusion from the life of God is experienced in this life. Best (JSNT 13 [1981] 16) has called this “a realized eschatological conception of death.” The depiction of this life in terms of an experience of spiritual and moral death, while it took on special force in the light of Christ’s resurrection, was not unique to the early Christians. Already in the OT, particularly in the Psalms, a life in disease, sin, alienation, captivity, or under the rule of one’s enemies was seen as a life in Sheol or in the realm of death (e.g., Pss 13:1-3; 30:3; 31:12; 88:3-6; 143:3; Hos 13:14; Jonah 2:6; cf. C. Barth, Die Errettung vom Tode [Zürich: EVZ, 1947] 91-122). This way of thinking is found also in the Qumran writings in 1QH 3.19, “I thank Thee, O Lord, for Thou has redeemed my soul from the Pit, and from the Hell (Sheol) of Abaddon. Thou hast raised me up to everlasting height,” and 1QH 11.10-14, “For the sake of Thy glory raised from the dust . . . that he may stand before Thee with the everlasting host . . . to be renewed together with all the living . . . “These texts refer not to physical death and future resurrection but to the community member’s present experience of salvation. They provide a remarkable parallel to the thought of Ephesians with their notion that entrance into the community is a passing from death to life and to participation in the heavenly realm (cf. Mussner, “Contributions,” 174-76; H.W. Kuhn, Enderwartung und gegenwärtiges Heil [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966] 78-90). Later, the rabbis could describe the Gentiles or the godless as dead (cf. m. ‘Ed. 5.2; y. Ber. 2.4; b. ber. 18a; Midr. Qoh. 9.5; Gen. Rab. 39.7). Outside Judaism Stoic writers used the term “dead” in a figurative sense, since they considered that what did not belong to the highest in a person, to the mind or the spirit, was not worthy of being described as alive (cf. M. Ant. 2.12.1; 12.33.2). That which a person had in common with the animal world and which separated him or her from the divine was deemed to be dead (cf. Epictetus, Diss. 1.3.3; 2.19.27).
In the NT itself “dead” is used metaphorically in the saying found in Matt 8:22 and Luke 9:60 and in the parable in Luke 15:24, 32. In 1 Tim 5:6 and Rev 3:1 it is used of members of the Christian community who are not living the new life as they ought. Outside the Pauline corpus the greatest similarity to the usage in Eph 2:1, 5 is found in the Johannine literature where there is a strong realized eschatology of life and death (cf. John 5:24, 25; 1 John 3:14). Later, Hermas employs the term “dead” of the state of people before their baptism (Sim. 9.16.3, 4), and in Gnostic writings the non-initiate could be called dead (cf. Gos. Phil. 70.10-17; Hippolytus, Ref. 6.35.6). (Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians [Word Biblical Commentary 42; Dallas: Word Books, Publishers, 1990], 92-93, emphasis in bold added)
