Total Depravity, Common Grace, and the Image of God

Although sinful men, especially very sinful men, do not seem to be God’s image, these men could not sin unless they were. Sin presupposes rationality and voluntary decision. Sinning always starts in thought. 

. . . Let strong emphasis therefore be placed on the sinfulness of man. Man is dead in sins and is totally unable to do any spiritual good. 

 --Dr. Gordon H. Clark

I have great respect for the Protestant Reformed Churches in America and their stand against the semi-Calvinist doctrine of the three points of common grace, the free offer of the Gospel, and God's well meant desire to save the reprobate.  And I greatly admire the minister, Angus Stewart, who got his master of divinity training at the Protestant Reformed Theological Seminary in Wyoming, MI.  At least that is where he was trained if my memory serves me correctly.  I once heard Rev. Stewart preach a sermon on the dispute between John Calvin and Albert Pighius which I thought was excellent and honestly I had never heard of Pighius or the book Calvin's Calvinism, by John Calvin until I started reading the Protestant Reformed articles online and in the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal.  (You can hear Rev. Stewart's sermon on Calvin versus Pighius here).  That's because the semi-Calvinists do not promote the historical positions that cut against their own compromises with the Arminian doctrine of common or prevenient grace.

I will discuss the issue of common grace again in future posts.  But for now I want to disagree strongly with Rev. Angus Stewart for his misrepresentation of Dr. Gordon H. Clark's view of the divine image of God.  In the following quote you can see that Rev. Stewart asserts that Dr. Clark is merely another rationalist and that he had no doctrine of total depravity whatsoever:

Others see the image of God as speaking specifically about man’s constitution. Augustine’s "primary use of the imago symbol," writes Hall, is in his De Trinitate "where he shows that a ‘vestige of the Trinity’ is found in [the] human being, namely, in the faculties of memory, intellect and will."²⁸ In his zealous crusade against anti-intellectualism, Gordon Clark emphasizes the mind in his presentation of the image of God.²⁹ Clark would have greatly approved of the following remark of Johann Kepler, a seventeenth century German mathematician and astronomer:

For what is implanted in the mind of man other than numbers and magnitudes? These alone we comprehend correctly and, if piety permits us to say so, this recognition is of the same kind as the divine. Geometry is one and eternal, a reflection out of the mind of God. That mankind shares in it is one of the reasons to call man an image of God.  (From:  The Image of God:  A Reformed Reassessment).

While it is true that Dr. Clark attributed the source of all knowledge to the image of God and that man is the image of God, it is not true that Dr. Clark limited knowledge to reason or mathematics.   For Dr. Clark the very ability of babies to learn languages that even adults cannot learn is an indication of the divine enlightenment of every human being by the divine Logos.  (John 1:1, 9).  According to Dr. Clark, man is the image of God.  (1 Corinthians 11:7).  It is also true that Christ is the uncorrupted perfect image of God.  (2 Corinthians 4:4).  The reason for Christ being God's image is that He is the second Adam who came to die for the sins of His people.  (Matthew 1:21).  The reason that man can think in formal languages, do mathematics and invent many wonderful machines that make life easier is due the to the fact that man is an intelligent and rational being who is God's image.  But it does not follow from this that this is all that Dr. Clark said about the image of God.  It is fairly easy to demonstrate that Dr. Clark also had a doctrine of total depravity and he discusses his view of the doctrine of man's image and the doctrine of total depravity in many places.  In fact, I would dare to say that Rev. Stewart would be surprised to learn that Dr. Clark did not agree with the semi-Calvinist doctrine of common grace or their doctrine of partial depravity.  I will quote him here to show why Rev. Stewart misrepresented Clark's view:

Although sinful men, especially very sinful men, do not seem to be God’s image, these men could not sin unless they were. Sin presupposes rationality and voluntary decision. Sinning always starts in thought. Adam thought, incorrectly, but nevertheless thought that it would be better to join Eve in disobedience than to obey God and be separated from her. Sin has interfered with but does not prevent thought. It does not eradicate the image but causes it to malfunction. Responsibility (q.v.) depends on knowledge. Animals cannot sin and are not morally responsible because they are not rational or intellectual creatures. Therefore man remains the image of God even after the fall.  (From:  The Gordon H. Clark Foundation:  The Image of God).

Because my time is limited I cannot post at length here.  But suffice it to say that Dr. Clark did not disagree with total depravity.  His view, like that of the Protestant Reformed Church, is that the original righteousness of Adam was lost in the fall.  Man's mind has been darkened by sin so that his original righteousness and holiness has been totally corrupted such that you could say it was completely lost.  This does not mean, however, that man never thought any good thoughts at all.  It means that man's thinking was so corrupted that he could no longer think only good thoughts but also sometimes thought wicked thoughts.  (Genesis 6:5).  This in no way endorses the three points of common grace or partial depravity.  In fact, Dr. Clark once quoted Proverbs 21:4 to prove that even the good deeds of a wicked man were in fact sinful.  A man must provide for his family by working.  But since the man does not glorify God, his good deeds are in fact sinful deeds.  His motivations are wrong and are not intended to bring God glory.  (Matthew 5:16;  1 Corinthians 6:20; 1 Peter 2:12; 4:16).  

In rejecting John Stott's appeal to emotionalism as some sinless part of the human nature Dr. Clark says the following:

The Scripture pictures an unregenerate farmer doing his spring plowing, and it says that even the plowing of the wicked is sin. No matter what an unregenerate man does, it is a sin. This Biblical theme is well summarized by the Westminster Confession in chapter 16, paragraph 7: “Works done by unregenerate men, although, for the matter of them, they may be things which God commands…yet, because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith…they are therefore sinful…. And yet their neglect of them is more sinful and displeasing to God.” 

Let strong emphasis therefore be placed on the sinfulness of man. Man is dead in sins and is totally unable to do any spiritual good. For this reason an evangelist may well be cautious in relying too greatly on the mind. He should be cautious in relying too greatly on the man. The evangelist should rely wholly on the Holy Ghost to regenerate his auditors. 

But though we should not rely “too greatly” on the mind for something it cannot at all do, still the mind, sinful though it is, can exercise its natural functions. Mr. Stott says, “the human mind is both finite and fallen, and will neither understand nor believe without the gracious work of the Holy Spirit” (23). Most emphatically, the unregenerate man cannot believe or have faith without the irresistible work of the Holy Spirit. But he can understand the Gospel with the mind as it is. If he could not understand the message, why preach it? Why in particular should a missionary spend years in hard labor learning a foreign language, if his hearers cannot understand the message? Why should he not preach to them in English? In the providence of God, faith, though it be the gift of God, is given through hearing. And it is not through hearing an unknown tongue, but through understanding an intelligible message.

Gordon H. Clark. What Is The Christian Life? (Kindle Locations 2605-2619). The Trinity Foundation. Kindle Edition. 

This should put to rest the straw man fallacy that Dr. Clark did not accept the doctrine of total depravity.  I could quote more from his book, What Do Presbyterians Believe?, but my time is limited and I will comment more on these issues in the near future. 

You can also read a full theological article by the late Dr. Gordon H. Clark on the topic.  His article was published in The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society and the title is "The Image of God in Man."

May the peace of God be with you,

Charlie

Addendum:   David Engelsma also rejects the doctrine of absolute depravity.  See:  Total, Absolute, or Partial Depravity