Yes, Quix, this is unfortunately true. And, of those 6 or 7 major statements that Harley mentions, I find that many of them try to straddle a very important fence, without coming out on one side or the other. That is the fence between synergism and monergism. I am saddened that Baptist leaders won't take a position as a body, and I assume it is to be inclusionary. However, I think it really hurts our ability to STAND for SOMETHING theologically. So, as an SB myself, I agree with Harley that this is a weakness in our faith.
As I understand "total depravity", and I may well be wrong, it's simply an assertion that no aspect or faculty of the human is free of taint. Consequently, even if we choose the right thing, our choosing will be at best imperfect. Where it gets dicey in is thinking about Reason.
And, yes, Hell on earth is kind of what's at stake here. Best case, without God's salvific intervention there is a kind of prolepsis not only of grace but of damnation. AND that's in Dante, so it MUST be true.
And as to Free Will, I think it's helpful to return to the phenomena once in a while and to realize that the notion is not a slam dunk. I simply cannot think that Luther and Calvin are, uh, totally depraved -- or significantly more depraved than I am, if left to my own devices. So I don't see Calvin is obviously perverted in his account of things. Maybe wrong, but not setting out to do evil.
My metaphor FWIW for understanding grace and the will is this: (I think I shared this with FK once.):
Your sadistic geometry prof has assigned you a difficult original. You spend hours on it. Every line you take on it fails. You are sick and tired. Then the answer comes to you.
And isn't that how we say it? It "came to me", as though it were not a result of our efforts but a gift from outside. In fact, I think all important truths (because they are True by virtue of the Truth Himself, Jesus Christ) "come to us".
Now when the answer comes we do not say,"Well, okay, I have the answer here. I can choose it or I can choose to go back to digesting my stomach lining. Hmm, what to do, what to do ...."
There is no question of choice. We embrace the answer and try to understand it and to work it out and live with it because our chance of choosing between this futile effort and that equally futile effort is swallowed up in the freedom of the truth.
Once I know the best way to New York, I don't think, "Gee I'll try and see if I can get there by going south." And we don't experience the loss of choice about how to get to New York as a loss of Freedom, but as the gaining of Freedom.
I don't think this is an exhaustive metaphor. It doesn't deal with every aspect of life in Christ -- and we still all have to ponder how it is that anyone, having tasted that Truth and Love, could look up from the fire on a chilly morning and say,"I do not know the man." But there's enough here to remind us, when we jump all over our Calvinist brethren for their detestable enormities and abominable heresies, that the question is deeper than we can deal with in a few angry or contemptuous words.
Yes, yes: I know I'm bad tempered and self-righteous.
I had the honor in my first tour in Taiwan in the Navy to meet up with Precious SB folk. I forget all the greats . . . some children of . . . who was it . . . the great early SB missionary to China . . .
Anyway—they were all solid Christians with solid well thought-out theology.
Some of them who are still alive are aghast at the turns of events in the denomination as a whole.
I don’t know about the shades of this’s and that’s. I know they hate the attempts to water down inerrancy. And that Scripture has a super high priority in their daily lives and in their theology.
Also, I don’t fault them for putting a super high priority on soul winning and loving people into The Kingdom and into maturity in Christ.
I do fault them for being wimpy and dismissive about walking in Holy Spirit’s giftings a la I Cor 12-14, however.