The doctrine of total depravity (or total inability) says that all men, as a consequence of the Fall, are born morally corrupt, enslaved to sin, at enmity with God, and unable to please Him or even of themselves to turn to Christ for salvation. Thus God must elect us to salvation, basically we are predestined to be saved or lost before we are born and thus have no true free will.
Now Arminius came after Calvin and seems to have more fuller picture of the cause of the wretchedness of sinners as taught in Scripture. Arminius writes:
'In the state of Primitive Innocence, man had a mind endued with a clear understanding of heavenly light and truth concerning God, and his works and will, as far as was sufficient for the salvation of man and the glory of God; he had a heart imbued with "righteousness and true holiness," and with a true and saving love of good; and powers abundantly qualified or furnished perfectly to fulfill the law which God had imposed on him. This admits easily of proof from the description of the image of God, after which man is said to have been created (Gen. 1:26-27), from the law divinely imposed on him, which had a promise and a threat appended to it (Gen 2:17), and lastly from the analogous restoration of the same image in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 4:24; Col. 3:10).
But man was not so confirmed in this state of innocence as to be incapable of being moved by the representation presented to him of some good (whether it was of an inferior kind and relating to this [natural] life, or of a superior kind and relating to spiritual life), inordinately and unlawfully to look upon it and to desire it, and of his own spontaneous as well as free motion, and through a preposterous desire for that good, to decline from the obedience which had been prescribed to him. Nay, having turned away from the light of his own mind and his Chief Good, which is God, or, at least, having turned towards that Chief Good not in the manner in which he ought to have done, and besides having turned in mind and heart towards an inferior good, he transgressed the command given to him for life. By this foul deed, he precipitated himself from that noble and elevated condition into a state of the deepest infelicity, which is under the Dominion of Sin. . . .
In this state, the Free Will of man towards the True Good is not only wounded, maimed, infirm, bent, and weakened; but it is also imprisoned, destroyed, and lost: And its powers are not only debilitated and useless unless they be assisted by grace, but it has no powers whatever except such as are excited by Divine grace. 'Twenty-Five Public Disputations: Disputation XI. On the Free Will of Man and its Powers," in The Works of Arminius, trans. James Nichols (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1986), 2:191-92.
Scripture is clear that all have sinned, but then what.
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God ;
Now they both held to the doctrine of total depravity of man, the major difference between the two concerning their doctrine of depravity is in the solution of God in overcoming the effects of the fall.
Calvin basically drew a picture of man with no free will, all his abilities for good taken from him to the point that man just sits and waits for his execution or salvation with no input. Concerning the sinful state in which humanity exists, Calvin writes:
'Therefore, since through man's fault a curse has extended above and below, over all the regions of the world, there is nothing unreasonable in it extending to all his offspring. After the heavenly image in man was effaced, he not only was himself punished by a withdrawal of the ornaments in which he had been arrayed, i.e., wisdom, virtue, justice, truth, and holiness, and by the substitution in their place of those dire pests, blindness, impotence, vanity, impurity, and unrighteousness, but he involved his posterity also, and plunged them in the same wretchedness.'
It just seems wrong, as man from the beginning had free will that was the whole reason man was able to sin. If anything it was not God that takes it away but Satan, as evil plunges man into its grip and takes away his free will.
For Arminius, a person must be graced by the Spirit of God in the overcoming of the depraved nature so that the person may be freed to believe in Christ Jesus. If such is accomplished and not resisted, then the person is justified and regenerated. But sinners must be enabled by the Spirit of God because they are totally and utterly depraved, captured and enslaved by sin, and completely undone.
This seems to be with more understanding of grace, that anyone, through the workings of the Holy Spirit, can be saved. It is that God, (since He know the end from the beginning) knows who will respond to the workings of the Spirit, and out of freewill, man chooses what is extended to him, the gift of eternal life.
Now Arminius came after Calvin and seems to have more fuller picture of the cause of the wretchedness of sinners as taught in Scripture. Arminius writes:
'In the state of Primitive Innocence, man had a mind endued with a clear understanding of heavenly light and truth concerning God, and his works and will, as far as was sufficient for the salvation of man and the glory of God; he had a heart imbued with "righteousness and true holiness," and with a true and saving love of good; and powers abundantly qualified or furnished perfectly to fulfill the law which God had imposed on him. This admits easily of proof from the description of the image of God, after which man is said to have been created (Gen. 1:26-27), from the law divinely imposed on him, which had a promise and a threat appended to it (Gen 2:17), and lastly from the analogous restoration of the same image in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 4:24; Col. 3:10).
But man was not so confirmed in this state of innocence as to be incapable of being moved by the representation presented to him of some good (whether it was of an inferior kind and relating to this [natural] life, or of a superior kind and relating to spiritual life), inordinately and unlawfully to look upon it and to desire it, and of his own spontaneous as well as free motion, and through a preposterous desire for that good, to decline from the obedience which had been prescribed to him. Nay, having turned away from the light of his own mind and his Chief Good, which is God, or, at least, having turned towards that Chief Good not in the manner in which he ought to have done, and besides having turned in mind and heart towards an inferior good, he transgressed the command given to him for life. By this foul deed, he precipitated himself from that noble and elevated condition into a state of the deepest infelicity, which is under the Dominion of Sin. . . .
In this state, the Free Will of man towards the True Good is not only wounded, maimed, infirm, bent, and weakened; but it is also imprisoned, destroyed, and lost: And its powers are not only debilitated and useless unless they be assisted by grace, but it has no powers whatever except such as are excited by Divine grace. 'Twenty-Five Public Disputations: Disputation XI. On the Free Will of Man and its Powers," in The Works of Arminius, trans. James Nichols (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1986), 2:191-92.
Scripture is clear that all have sinned, but then what.
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God ;
Now they both held to the doctrine of total depravity of man, the major difference between the two concerning their doctrine of depravity is in the solution of God in overcoming the effects of the fall.
Calvin basically drew a picture of man with no free will, all his abilities for good taken from him to the point that man just sits and waits for his execution or salvation with no input. Concerning the sinful state in which humanity exists, Calvin writes:
'Therefore, since through man's fault a curse has extended above and below, over all the regions of the world, there is nothing unreasonable in it extending to all his offspring. After the heavenly image in man was effaced, he not only was himself punished by a withdrawal of the ornaments in which he had been arrayed, i.e., wisdom, virtue, justice, truth, and holiness, and by the substitution in their place of those dire pests, blindness, impotence, vanity, impurity, and unrighteousness, but he involved his posterity also, and plunged them in the same wretchedness.'
It just seems wrong, as man from the beginning had free will that was the whole reason man was able to sin. If anything it was not God that takes it away but Satan, as evil plunges man into its grip and takes away his free will.
For Arminius, a person must be graced by the Spirit of God in the overcoming of the depraved nature so that the person may be freed to believe in Christ Jesus. If such is accomplished and not resisted, then the person is justified and regenerated. But sinners must be enabled by the Spirit of God because they are totally and utterly depraved, captured and enslaved by sin, and completely undone.
This seems to be with more understanding of grace, that anyone, through the workings of the Holy Spirit, can be saved. It is that God, (since He know the end from the beginning) knows who will respond to the workings of the Spirit, and out of freewill, man chooses what is extended to him, the gift of eternal life.