What in the world are you supposed to do when a cow gets all up in your grill and won’t back up?
Total Depravity in Genesis 6:5?
*Before I jump in here, I want to make clear it is not my intention to deny the doctrine of Total Depravity. Rather, I want to show that this verse (Genesis 6:5) does not, itself, touch of on the subject of Total Depravity.*
Genesis 6:5:
The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.
From John Wesley to John Calvin to John Stott, Genesis 6:5 has been used to argue for the doctrine of Total Depravity. Total Depravity affirms human persons are, because of the Fall, totally corrupt in our entire nature. Sin has touched every one of our faculties – spiritual, emotional, psychological, and physical – and because we are totally corrupted in our sin, we cannot, in our own will, make a decision for God without his prior actions of grace toward us.
It’s easy to see how this doctrine can be derived from Genesis 6:5. It’s easy.
But easy doesn’t make it right.
The larger context of Genesis 6:5 demonstrates why utilizing Genesis 6:5 out to prove the doctrine of Total Depravity is a mis-use of the text.
Genesis 6:5 is concerned with a special, extensive, particular form of wickedness directly tied to the Nephalim (6:4) – offspring of the Son’s of God (evil angelic beings?) having sexual relations with the daughters of men (human women).
In other words, according to Genesis 6, itself, we’re not talking about normal, run-of-the-mill human sin(fulness). We’re talking about an extreme (and odd!) form of sin(fulness).
Indeed, the passage claims that humanity’s wickedness had become great, not that it always was great. And then later the passage describes God’s grief for having created humanity because of how wicked they had become.
Furthermore, the Nephalim wickedness was so extreme in form that Genesis 6:5 posits it is the direct, causal factor for the subsequent flood narrative. In other words, we have an extreme form of judgment (the flood) because of an extreme form of sin (Nephalim wickedness). And if this wickedness is extreme, then we’re not talking about normative, universal human nature existing in all times, all places, and within every human heart.
In fact, if the words of Genesis 6:5 were universal to humanity, and therefore relevant to the doctrine of Total Depravity, then God would have destroyed the world long before Genesis 6.
But since God doesn’t, this leads me to the conclude that Genesis 6:5 is an irrelevant text in the Total Depravity discussion, except insofar as it illustrates how far human sinfulness can go. But let’s be clear that it cannot prove the Total Depravity of non-Nephalim peoples.
Again, I am not challenging the doctrine of Total Depravity here. That’s another discussion altogether. But I want to argue that we shouldn’t be using this passage.
What do you think? Have I completely missed the boat? Have any of you ever wondered about the use of this passage to prove Total Depravity?
Conversations with My Wife: Gorgeous
The Wife: I was sitting at a stoplight and the guy next to me yelled out his window, “HEY, GORGEOUS!!!”
Me: That’s cool.
The Wife: Apparently he didn’t see this big-ole pregnant belly.
Me: Or maybe he did. You should be flattered.
The Wife: I would’ve been more flattered if he had more teeth.
Protestant Ethics 1, Pastel Ethos 0.
My wife just expressed her disappointment that I’m not wearing “Easter colors” tomorrow. She says I have no Easter spirit. I’ll hold back expressing my disappointment in her participation in a socially constructed chromatic ritual having no basis in the biblical tradition.
*Unfortunately, I think this means Mark Driscoll would be proud of me. Maybe I’ll have to change my mind.
Wanna See Something Gross?
This is what happens when you try to turn a double-play and your cleat gets stuck in the dirt when you turn to throw.
QoD: Tozer on the Sacred/Secular Divide
“One of the greatest hindrances to internal peace which the Christian encounters is the common habit of dividing our lives into two areas, the sacred and the secular. As these areas are conveived to exist apart from each other and to be moraly and spiritually incompatible, and as we are compelled by the necessitites of living to be always crossing back and forth from one to the other, our inner lives tend to break up so that we live a divided instead of unified life.”
“The sacred-secular antithesis has no foundation in the New Testament.”
“Paul’s sewing of tents was not equal to his writing of an Epistle to the Romans, but both were accepted of God and both were true acts of worship. Certainly it is more important to lead a soul to Christ than to plant a garden, but the planting of the garden can be as holy an act as the winning of a soul.”
QoD: Participation in Worship
In contemporary society the heart is reached through participation, and all approaches to worship—traditional, contemporary, or blended—need to relearn how to achieve services characterized by immersed participation.
Robert E. Webber
QoD: The Least Self-Regarding Virtue
Faith is the least self-regarding of the virtues. It is by its very nature scarcely conscious of its own existence. Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays not attention to itself at all. While we are looking at god we do not see ourselves – blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him. It will be God working in him to will and to do.
A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God.
Conversations with My Wife #46: Different Tastes in Men
Cassie: So-and-So’s a pretty weird looking dude.
Me: Really?
Cassie: Yeah.
Me: I was just getting ready to say I thought he was a pretty good looking guy.
Cassie: Well, I guess we just have different tastes in men.
Read in 2011
Here are the books I read in 2011. I’ve got pictures of the ones I highly recommend.
Non-Fiction
After You Believe: NT Wright
The Theology of Paul the Apostle: James Dunn
Scandalous: DA Carson
A Peculiar People: Rodney Clapp
The Anti-Christ: Friedrich Nietzsche
Made to Stick: Chip and Dan Heath
Resonate: Nancy Duarte
Word Biblical Commentary on Jonah: Douglas Stuart
Liberating Jonah: Miguel De LaTorre
Brazos Theological Commentary on Jonah: Phillip Cary
Raised with Christ: Adrian Warnock
Dissident Discipleship: David Augsburger
Practice Resurrection: Eugene Peterson
Velvet Elvis: Rob Bell
Love Wins: Rob Bell
Bowling Alone: Robert Putnam
Better Together: Robert Putnam
Epic of Eden: Sandra Richter
The Great Divorce: CS Lewis
Girl Meets God: Laura Winner
Radical: David Platt
UnChristian: David Kinnaman
Communicating for Change: Andy Stanley
The Life You Always Wanted: John Ortberg
Leading from the Second Chair: Mike Bonem and Roger Patterson
Unlearning Church: Mike Slaughter
The Challenge of Easter: NT Wright
Creating Community: Andy Stanley
For Men Only: Shaunti Feldhahn
Fiction:
Dracula: Bram Stoker
Against All Things Ending: Stephen Donaldson
The End of Mr. Y: Scarlett Thomas
The Stand: Stephen King
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: JK Rowling
