Plantinga Chapter 3

The third chapter of Engaging in God’s World by Plantinga brought a lot of discussion to our class. This discussion came about over the two topics of total depravity and common grace. Total depravity means that man in dead in his sin, and he is not able to do any good on his own. This truth is taught very clearly in Romans 3:12b, “there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Because we are completely depraved in our sins, we are entirely dependant upon God for our salvation.

In his book, Plantinga tries to tie this concept of total depravity with the idea of common grace, but in reality the two beliefs cannot exist together. Common grace is the idea that “the goodness of God is shown to all”, and an example of this is that even the most ungodly of people can do “good” works. Yes, a brain surgeon can save someone’s life, but that is not necessarily a good deed. A good deed is a deed in which the sole purpose of it was to glorify God. It’s a great thing for a surgeon to save someone’s life from our perspective, but we cannot see the man’s heart as God can. The surgeon may have other reasons for performing this act: to earn money, to feel good about himself, or to have others see how “good” of a person he is. Even doing something as wonderful as saving a person’s life is not considered a good deed unless it was done solely to glorify God.

While reading this chapter of the book, one quote stuck out in particular to me, “If you put together the doctrines of common grace and total depravity, you’ll be in a position to explain a remarkable fact: worldly people are often better than we expect, and church people are often worse.” I went back and read this sentence over because it didn’t make sense to me. If everyone is totally depraved in sin, how can one person be better than another? Worldly people may appear to be doing good acts, but that doesn’t show what is going on in their hearts, and the same goes for God’s children. The only thing that makes the two groups of people different is that God loves His people, and He hates the ungodly. Proof for this is found in Romans 9:13, “As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” No one knows why God chose certain people to be His children and not others, but by faith we know that God loves us and has chosen us to be His elect. We can do nothing to earn our own salvation, but thanks be to God who has blessed us with this salvation through His son Jesus Christ.