Thursday, September 8, 2022

How the Old Testament Passages Paul Uses in Romans 3 Refutes the "Total Depravity" Reading

  

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)