Posted on 10/18/2019 11:34:54 AM PDT by Carpe Cerevisi
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.
Solzhenitsyn’s statement that “even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained,” is, I think, the single most hopeful statement regarding humanity that I have ever encountered. It is, first, an axiom of Orthodox Christian belief. A notion of total depravity, of human evil so thorough that nothing good remains, is alien to Orthodoxy. Whether it is Dostoevsky’s story of the old woman saved by a rotten onion (or “potentially saved” by that single miserable act of generosity), or the last-minute salvation of the thief on the Cross, the faith celebrates the extreme mercy found in such stories.
C.S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce, offers an interesting take on the presence of this tiny bridgehead of goodness. People from what might become hell take a bus-ride to the edge of heaven, and may stay. It is an offer that reveals the innermost heart – the in’s and out’s of how someone might walk away from heaven itself. There is a woman in the story who seems to have nothing wrong with her other than the habit of grumbling about everything. Lewis wonders what is so wrong with her. He is told:
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.ancientfaith.com ...
Great piece, thanks for posting this!
He obviously does not understand the term total depravity.
Yep, that was my thought as well.
total depravity = Satan, a.k.a. Lucifer
Well....since we are talking about the total depravity of man and since Satan is not a man, that is not what total depravity means. Nor does it mean that man is totally evil throughout him totally which is what the author believes and tries to argue against. So, he is arguing against a straw man.
I THOUGHT we were talking about TOTAL DEPRAVITY.
My bad.
We are talking about the total depravity of man. The term “total depravity” is a term that is applied to mankind.
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