AG STUDY GUIDE FINAL - The Forerunner

Dr. D. James Kennedy – Are total depravity and free will compatible? Yes and no. As
we said to an earlier question, free will can mean one of two things. If we are talking
about the sense in which free will exists in every human being, whether regenerate or
unregenerate, then we can say “Yes”, obviously they are compatible because
unregenerate people do make choices. That is the sense in which man is free to choose
whatever he wants to choose. All men are free to do that. The unregenerate man makes
choices every day: what tie he will wear, what he will eat for dinner; whatever it may be.
But in the significant sense in which its used in the Bible, which is man is free to do what
he ought to do, (which is repent of his sins, turn from his wickedness, surrender his life
to Christ and follow Him in godliness), unregenerate man is not free to do that. The
more he hears of it, the more he dislikes it. And his will and heart and mind must be
changed for him to do that.
The Reformers believed that man did have a will; and they believed that man's will is
free to choose one thing over another without the necessary intrusion of some outside
force. What they objected to was the Pelagian, semi-Pelagian, and Arminian view of free
will. They unequivocally held that as a result of the Fall, man's will was now in bondage
to sin and death and has lost the ability — apart from the outside influence of God’s
grace — to choose the perfect good in relation to the spiritual realm. Rather than a Godcentered
will, a will that desires to please and honor the Lord as the prima facie
motivation for everything man says, does and thinks, the fallen will is ultimately
grounded in self. And while this self may and often does choose things that are
relatively good and that can occasionally even outwardly approximate the moral
perfection modeled by Jesus —
“But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are like filthy
rags.” ~ Isaiah 64:6
- in the consuming fire of God’s perfect sight, fallen man’s most righteous deeds are as
“filthy rags” corrupted by the leaven of a self-directed will. In the end, man is free to
choose, but can of necessity only choose from among the things that his fallen nature
will of its own accord consider. Dying to self and living whole-heartedly for the true
God is not something that would ever show up on fallen man's radar screen of options.
In spite of all the counsels, synods, creeds and confessions created to deal with this
issue, most of the Bible-believing church today is Arminian. Of course, most are not
consistent with respect to many aspects of their theology. People pray, for example, as if
God were truly sovereign and omnipotent, leading the great Baptist preacher, Charles
Spurgeon, to famously declare:
“…You have heard a great many Arminian sermons, I dare say; but you’ve never
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