Indeed, they sank so far that the
cry of their heart is that “there is no God.” (Psalm 14:1) It should come as no
surprise that they do not understand or seek God since that is the nature of
being atheists. As is common in the Psalms and Proverbs, the notion of lacking
understanding (14:2) is simply another way to describe a fool (14:1). The
Proverbs tell us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but
these people have no fear of the Lord at all. Borrowing from Psalm 14, Paul
describes their utter foolishness in their total self-reliance, but he is not
saying that from birth they are incapable of understanding God, incapable of
doing a good thing, incapable of understanding the gospel, or incapable of
seeking God, and indeed, if that were the case, why would God be found looking
“from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did not
understand, and seek God.” (Psalm 14:2) Rather, Paul explains what men do
without God, for in reliance only on their own resources and leaving God out of
the equation, “they are all gone out of the way, they are together become
unprofitable, there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” (Romans 3:12) The
incapacity to understand the gospel that Calvinists teach is nowhere found in
Psalm 14, nor does it even fit Paul’s argument in Romans 3. Calvinists say that
man is born with total inability. In contrast, Paul teaches a deepening
progression into depravity (the effect of being “under sin”) that takes us
further from God.
Likewise Psalms 5:9 and 10:7
(Romans 3:13-14) also provide no support for the Calvinist concept of total
depravity, but are additional Old Testament illustrations of Romans 1 theology
in application. Paul quotes the absolute language in Psalm 5:9 in 3:13, but in
the context of that Psalm, this verse is a statement by David about a specific
group of his enemies in his time these many centuries ago. Like Psalm 14, Psalm
5:9 uses universal language, but only addresses the conduct of a very small
subset of the human race in rebellion against God. Similarly, Psalm 10
describes how wicked people behave, and in Psalm 10:7 their speech is
addressed. Paul borrows language about speech from both Psalms to emphasize the
effects of sin’s dominion over unsaved humanity apart from the righteousness
that comes by faith that he addresses later in the chapter. Once again, we have
a picture, not of where man begins, but where depravity will take him if he
continues in rebellion against God. And this shows again that humanity is under
sin and thus guilty before God. Critically, however, Romans 3:13-14 only
describes their manner of speech, not their capacity to understand the gospel
or respond to God. Moreover, note that Psalm 10:4 (just before the language
Paul borrows for Romans 3:14) says of “the wicked” under consideration that
they “through the pride of [their] countenance, will not see after God.” it is
not that they cannot seek God because they are reprobate, but because of pride
that they do not seek God.
Paul next appeals to Isaiah 59:7-8
(Romans 3:15-17), whose language in isolation is absolute, but in context
speaks of sinful Israel living in rebellion to God, and again illustrates
Romans 1 by adding another charge to the indictment of unsaved humanity as
being under sin and therefore guilty before God. Paul speaks to their violence
in thought and deed. But once again, Romans 3:14-17 describes what people given
over to their depravity do, yet says nothing of a total inability to comprehend
the gospel and respond to God. We see the pattern continue that Paul addresses conduct
and not capacity.
And finally, Paul summarizes the
charges with a quotation from Psalm 36:1 (Romans 3:18), wherein David makes the
general statement that wicked people do not fear God, and in the context of the
Psalm, seems to have David’s enemies in mind. Note that David does not say that
wicked people cannot know God, but that they do not fear Him as they should,
which is a different matter. Moreover, the reason there “is no fear of God
before his eyes” is not that he cannot understand God’s revelation, but that
his pride is in the way, as the subsequent verse in Psalm 36 states: “For he
flattereth himself in his own eyes, until his iniquity be found to be hateful.”
(Psalm 36:2) This mirrors what Psalm 14 expressly teaches—pride, not
incapacity, is the reason people do not seek God. Nothing in Paul’s Old
Testament quotations suggest anything about a capacity to grasp the gospel and
place faith in Christ. Instead, his final quotation returns us to the issue of
pride; recall, it was unsaved man’s becoming vain in his imagination and
rebelling against the God he knew (Romans 1:21) that initiated the Romans 1
downward spiral. Romans 3:10-18 pictures the plight of unsaved humanity given
over to its depravity, unable to manage their own escape from being “under
sin,” for which they are guilty before God. (Hutson Smelley, Deconstructing Calvinism: A Biblical
Analysis and Refutation [3rd ed.; 2019], 88-90, italics in original)
