“”We need to make plain that total depravity is not just badness, but blindness to beauty and deadness to joy; “”
More gibberish from piper.
Here is what Blessed Augustine writes...
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/ipb-e/epl-01/agenc-01.txt
A good that wholly lacks an evil
aspect is entirely good. Where there is some evil in a thing, its
good is defective or defectible. Thus there can be no evil where
there is no good. This leads us to a surprising conclusion: that,
since every being, in so far as it is a being, is good, if we then
say that a defective thing is bad, it would seem to mean that we
are saying that what is evil is good, that only what is good is
ever evil and that there is no evil apart from something good.
This is because every actual entity is good [omnis natura bonum
est].
But if you think Augustine is denying the fallen nature of mankind, you are mistaken.
As the link explains...
Underlying this work is a consistent Christian optimism based on the sovereignty of God and an understanding of the radical dependency of evil upon the good that it perverts. Evil, writes Augustine, is finally a hopeless parasite: It does not exist in its own right, but only as a corruption of something good. He repeatedly claims that the vices of human life are “nothing but privations of natural good.” In fact, as long as something is in the process of being corrupted, we can be confident that it still has some good “of which it is being deprived.” Consequently, if corruption were complete in destroying all that is good in something, that thing and the corruption itself would disappear. So evil cannot last. In short, “nothing can be evil except something which is good,” in spite of the fact that good and evil are genuine contraries.
Are you understanding that? Augustine is saying that men were created good, and that evil, the result of the fall of Adam, corrupts all men. And yet, even that corruption is under the control of the sovereign God who has promised to return men to that original good by the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
In The Enchiridion, Augustine fully embraces the logical implications of his concept of evil: he asserts that even the life and vital power of wicked angels and wicked people depend on the continuing gifts of God. Obviously, he says, God’s purpose is to bring some great good out of evil; otherwise, he would not bother to sustain evil beings. In fact, God must think it is actually “better to bring good out of evil, than not to permit any evil to exist.” After all, the end result of redemption will be greater than the original creation, for in the next life we will have a “more perfect immortality” free, finally, from the very desire for sin. So by God’s sovereign grace, he concludes, our future is even better than our pristine beginning. The paradox Augustine develops here is the venerable doctrine of Creation and Fall that so defines our lives. The creation is good, and our sovereign God continues to sustain and control it well. Actually, only because God’s creatures are good can sin corrupt and pervert them. This Augustinian claim makes sin especially reprehensible—for it is the corruption of God’s very handiwork—while it makes redemption all the more believable—for God remains sovereign. By God’s grace, we can seek what is good as the satisfaction of our real present needs, and as the restoration of our ultimate human “health.”