Greed can render one as tone deaf as Wall Street firms handing out $18.4 billion in bonuses while asking for, and receiving, public money to stay afloat (v. NYT 1/30/09 A16). Another consequence is worse. God is the life of the soul; in lusting after things less than God, we feed on junk food and spiritually starve to death. John Calvin was later to say that our nature is “totally depraved.” This view was echoed in the old confession’s phrase “there is no health in us” (1928 BCP p. 6). The 1979 Prayer Book dropped the phrase, even in Rite I, because it is inaccurate. If there were no health in us, we would be dead. If our natures were totally depraved, we would not know there was anything wrong with us. Our sense of guilt and shame is a symptom of health.
“Does the Episcopal Church believe in original sin?” a woman once asked Albert Mollegen, a professor at our seminary in Virginia. “Believe in it?” Molly replied; “why, madam, we practice it daily.” But our catechism actually waffles on the question. The universal fact of sin is noted (“From the beginning, human beings have misused their freedom and made wrong choices,” BCP p. 845) but no explanation for this is advanced. I do not have one either. All I know is that it is damn easy to sin. The real challenge, the great adventure, the defiant, counter-cultural, revolutionary endeavor is righteousness.
The writer, I think, misunderstands what the doctrine of total depravity means. Even Calvinists admit that the term “totally depraved” is easy to misinterpret as being “utterly” depraved; many prefer the term “radical corruption” instead of “total depravity” for that reason. There was nothing at all wrong with the phrase “there is no health in us,” because within us, springing from us, even the good we do is tainted. It’s regrettable the author here seems to treat the question of original sin as unanswered, and the heretic Pelagius as somehow on an equal footing with Augustus. If we are free not to sin, as Pelagius believed, and the writer seems to think at least possible, one must ask why we would need a Savior.
The phrase “there is no health in us” does not speak of total depravity nor is it inaccurate. “There is no (wholeness) in us” is merely the human state apart from God. We are unable to provide remedy from ourselves. Despite the protestation at the words, the reality is evident for all to see … the empirically evident truth that Christianity teaches … “very far gone from original righteousness”.