Is the doctrine of total depravity really against an indiscriminate gospel call to repentance and faith?

Joseph sold by his brothers; Image from Wikimedia Commons

It is sometimes put that way, isn't it?  The sinner is dead in trespasses and in sin, and cannot of his own free will (which is in bondage to sin) respond to the gospel, and therefore the gospel call to repentance and faith should not be addressed to them. Is this right?  The way the adherents of such a position put it, you would think this was a slam dunk argument against which its opponents cannot recover.

However, as one who thoroughly believes in the doctrine of the total depravity and inability of mankind, this argument is a bit frustrating to me.  Frustrating, not because I feel stumped by it, but because the logic of the argument is bafflingly weak.  In fact, I deny the logic of the argument and I deny that it has a shred of Biblical warrant.

Let's start with the logic of the argument.  It depends on believing that the following conditional statement is universally applicable: responsibility implies ability.  (Though the Hyper-Calvinist usually comes at this through the contrapositive of that statement, which is logically equivalent: inability implies no responsibility.) But this is not universally applicable.  For example, a man may have accrued a debt which he cannot pay.  But his inability to pay it does not deliver him from the moral responsibility to pay it.  Joseph's brothers "hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him" (Gen. 37:4, italics added), but that clearly did not deliver them from the obvious moral responsibility to love him and speak peaceably to him.  It follows then, that simply saying a sinner cannot do something does not mean that he should not do something.  

This is important to note for it means that saying that the gospel is addressed to sinners dead in sin does not imply, logically or otherwise, that they must therefore be able to respond on the basis of their own free will to the gospel.  As Dr. John Gill said many years ago, just because man has lost his ability to obey does not mean that God has lost his right to command!

This logic, by the way, is exactly the same logic employed in Arminianism.  They assume that the responsibility exists, and therefore reason from that to their doctrine of libertarian freewill (which also has no place in Scripture).  But both the Arminian and the Hyper-Calvinist are wrong.

Unbelief is a sin (Jn. 16:9).  A state of impenitence is sin.  To allow that the unregenerate need not believe the gospel and repent of their sin is mistaken.  After all, the gospel call is not a call to determine one's election.  It is a call to embrace the reality that the only hope of salvation is in Jesus Christ and him alone.  It is a call to turn from one's sins to God.  This is a responsibility which is incumbent upon the entire human race, regardless of their election, and regardless of their regenerate state.  There is therefore no problem to call upon all sinners, indiscriminately, to repent and believe the gospel.

It is sometimes argued that a universal gospel call is incommensurate with an atonement that actually saves.  But J. L. Dagg decisively answered this argument:

"Some have maintained that, if the atonement of Christ is not general, no sinner can be under obligation to believe in Christ, until he is assured that he is one of the elect. This implies that no sinner is bound to believe what God says, unless he knows that God designs to save him. God declares that there is no salvation, except through Christ; and every sinner is bound to believe this truth. If it were revealed from heaven, that but one sinner, of all our fallen race, shall be saved by Christ, the obligation to believe that there is no salvation out of Christ, would remain the same. Every sinner, to whom the revelation would be made, would be bound to look to Christ as his only possible hope, and commit himself to that sovereign mercy by which some one of the justly condemned race would be saved. The abundant mercy of our God will not be confined to the salvation of a single sinner; but it will bring many sons to glory through the sufferings of Jesus, the Captain of our salvation. Yet every sinner, who trusts in Christ for salvation, is bound to commit himself, unreservedly, to the sovereign mercy of God. If he requires some previous assurance that he is in the number of the elect, he does not surrender himself to God, as a guilty sinner ought. The gospel brings every sinner prostrate at the feet of the Great Sovereign, hoping for mercy at his will, and in his way: and the gospel is perverted when any terms short of this are offered to the offender. With this universal call to absolute and unconditional surrender to God’s sovereignty, the doctrine of particular redemption exactly harmonizes.” J. L. Dagg, Manual of Theology (Gano Books, 1990), p. 330-331.

But the fact of the matter is that the Scripture is exceedingly clear here.  The Bible both commands by precept and commends by practice preaching the gospel to all.  By precept: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mk. 16:15-16).  As Elder Watson pointed out long ago, "That the commission extends to such [that is, to unbelievers], is apparent from the fact that some believe, and some do not. Those who believe were unbelievers before, and the unbelieving of others can only be predicated of their hearing."  Our Lord did not command the apostles only to preach to such as they thought were elect, or regenerate.  He told them to preach to all, and they did.

It is commended by practice.  Peter preaching to a crowd in the temple that certainly included those who "denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; and killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead" (Acts 3:14-15) - that is to say, unbelievers! - nevertheless goes on to preach to them these words: "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord" (19).  Spurgeon, commenting on these words, made the following observations: 

"Grown up among us is a school of men who say that they rightly preach the gospel to sinners when they merely deliver statements of what the gospel is, and of the result of dying unsaved, but they grow furious and talk of unsoundness if any venture to say to the sinner, 'Believe,' or 'Repent.' To this school Peter did not belong— into their secret he had never come, and with their assembly, were he alive now, he would not be joined. For, having first told his hearers of Christ, of his life and death and resurrection, he then proceeds to plunge the sword, as it were, up to the very hilt in their consciences by saying, 'Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out.' There, I say, in that promiscuous crowd, gathered together by curiosity, attracted by the miracle which he had wrought, Peter felt no hesitation, and asked no question; he preached the same gospel as he would have preached to us to-day if he were here, and preached it in the most fervent and earnest style, preached the angles and the corners of it, and then preached the practical part of it, addressing himself with heart, and soul, and energy, to every one in that crowd, and saying, 'Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out.'”

I do not hesitate to call upon all who hear me to believe the gospel and to repent of their sins.  I do so upon the command of God in his word, and I do so trusting that he will sovereignly call his elect to respond to that message in true faith and repentance.  As Paul himself put it to the Thessalonians, "But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Thess. 2:13-14).   To  what does God call his elect?  To belief of the truth.  How does he bring them to this belief of the truth in the effectual call?  By the gospel.  There is therefore every reason for the ministers of the gospel to preach the gospel to all, to scatter the seed wide, trusting that God will call his own.  The sufficiency of the work is not of ourselves, but of God (cf. 2 Cor. 4:7).

Furthermore, the claim I sometimes hear that this makes God dependent on means, and that this in turn makes God dependent on man, is stupefying to me.  I really don't know how else to put it.  Again, there is simply neither logic (at least not good logic) nor Scripture behind such a claim.  Elder Watson answered this argument so well in his book The Old Baptist Test; you can read part of his answer in that book here.  It is like saying that God was dependent upon Moses to split the Red Sea, or dependent on Joshua to bring the walls of Jericho down, or dependent upon Ezekiel to give life to corpses.  Frankly, I wonder sometimes if this position does not come from a very attenuated view of God's sovereign power.  As if God cannot take a Jonah and get him to exactly where he wants him to go!  The fact that God uses means (and this is just undeniable if you read the Bible without blinders) does not mean that he is dependent upon them, but it does mean that we can use them with every hope that God will bless them.

To sum up, as God was not dependent upon the rod in Moses' hand, but Moses certainly was, so God is not dependent upon the preaching of the gospel to bring sinners to faith in Christ by which they are saved, but we certainly are.  We are, because this is the rod that God has put in our hand, and we are just as likely to see conversions to Christ apart from the gospel as Moses was to see the Rea Sea parted without his staff.  Preach the gospel, brethren, far and wide, and call upon all to turn from their idols to serve the living and true God, trusting in Almighty God to use clay pots such as ourselves so that the excellency of the power might be of God and not of ourselves.