Hi Haas,
You wrote:
Isaiah 64:6
6 We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
1.6 We have all become like one who is unclean, (fallen sinful nature)
2.and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. (“moral” deeds done apart from the righteousness of Christ have no value before God).
3.We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. (the wages of sin is death)
Thanks for responding to my challenge. However, there is something lacking in your explanation of Isaiah 64:6 that I would urge you to consider more carefully.
Like every other passage that people quote about total depravity, Isaiah is talking about the state of specific people—in his case, the corrupt Jews of his generation, and also (by extension, according to Jesus) the Jews of Jesus' generation.
Calvinists take these verses as if they have no context, and pretend that they are written about the state of all men since the fall. Certainly such descriptions do not apply to people like Cornelius, or Lydia, who were faithful worshippers before their conversion. Christ's words to Peter, "What God has cleansed, do not call common (or unclean)," was with reference to a class of people (Gentiles), whom Peter's theology had relegated to utter damnation. Calvinists commonly make the same mistake, and stand to be reproved with the same words.
Isaiah says that the Jews "have all
become...unclean." This speaks of the result of a trend of corruption—not an original condition. There were times in Israel's history when they, mostly, honored God and were pleasing to Him. Most of their history, though, they tended to compromise, and by Isaiah's time, they had become totally unclean, and ready to be discarded, like a used menstrual cloth. Their "righteousnesses" (their religious practices) were incongruous with their moral behavior (see Isaiah 1:12-15/ 58:3).
If Calvinists were not so desperate to find proof texts for their untenable position, they would never make such exegetical leaps as they do when they take scriptures about the corruption just prior to Noah's flood (Gen.6:5), or the hypocritical worship of Isaiah's generation (Isa.64:6), or the wickedness of the Jerusalemites prior to the Babylonian invasion (Jer. 13:23/ 17:9), and extrapolate from these notorious cases that this is God's evaluation of every man since Adam!
My reaction to Romans 3 is not "knee-jerk." It is exegetical. I actually do what Calvinists can not afford to do with that passage—namely, follow Paul's train of thought in the whole chapter and read the quotations in their context. I recommend to you my lectures on Romans, if you would like to see the flow of Paul's thought in context.[later note: One can find a summary of Paul's argument in my post at the bottom of the page at this link:
http://www.wvss.com/forumc/viewtopic.php?t=1916 ]
I do not explain away any passage in order to avoid taking the Calvinist view. I would have no objection to being a Calvinist, if Jesus and the apostles had been. I am not a Calvinist, for the simple reason that I have made it my lifetime goal to self-correct my theology (which used to be considerably more Calvinistic than it is now) by a disinterested analysis of the scriptures. If Calvinists believe that they have reached their views by the same objective process, I will not argue with them on the point. However, I cannot be blamed for thinking them to be naive.
As for Paidion's views, they are not the same as mine, though they are very close to the beliefs of the Christians of the first four centuries. I don't have to object to them in order to disagree. Paidion has had plenty of people disagree and debate with him at this forum (including myself). However, I do not see him as the agent of division in the Body of Jesus Christ that many of our Calvinist friends (I don't mean you) have been.
The reason I challenged any Calvinist to post scriptures that support their view of total depravity is because I already have looked at all the passages Calvinist writers and debaters have used—and I have also done something they apparently have not bothered to do—I have looked at their contexts as well.
If you really think Isaiah 64 can legitimately be exegeted to support a general doctrine of total depravity, I am willing to hear your arguments (or anyone else's). However, those who attempt such explanations will not have it as easy here as they do among fellow Calvinists, who apparently accept Calvinistic proof texts uncritically, as if truth was not as high a priority as is the defense of a provincial theology. I am genuinely interested in seeing what you folks can come up with, but let's actually exegete the passages in context—not just play proof-texting games. We are adults, and truth is not something to be trifled with.
I hope not to sound unkind. I confess that I have a great respect for the Word of the living God, and do get impatient with the disrespect for the scriptures that many Calvinistic arguments exhibit by their shallow, agenda-driven exposition.